"If so, politically, the RSPT is not seen as a “pure rent” tax at all, but as an instrument of industry manipulation"

Rudd did say before he was censored that he wanted to impact the Australian dollar exchange rate. Indian students expenses with higher dollar was his example to the mining company and he also cited tourism.

When you look at the benefit of the tax itself the most obvious is for the government pay it's way out of over spending. The superannuation link is dismal plus it hurts super ot start with??.

So the only two reasons to implement this tax is to reduce government debt and to trash the Australian dollar. The second part, confirmed by Rudd is intervention/manipulation to assist Education and Tourism industry.

That is not guessing either, Rudd said as much though has been strangely silent since.

I totally agree with the previous comment.

Currently the Australian economy is growing at around 3% and unemployment sits at around 5%. The last time it was in the position was 2006 and the Federal Government reported a surplus of $17.3 billion.
This year under similar economic conditions the Federal Government is projecting a defict of $40 billion. This is a $57 billion turnaround.

Why do we need a RSPT? To pay for all the wasted expediture undertaken by the Rudd Government. All this discussion about structure etc. is spin to disguise the Government's fiscal incompetence.

It has to be EQ, plus the marrying of it to budget but not really? How bizzare.

Norway takes a hefty tax. Invests in other currencies to balance the foreign exchange impact and it is called a Sovereign Wealth Fund. It actually does do what Rudd government claim this tax will do..but won't. No government is allowed to spend the principle on day to day operations.

To quote the article
“Sovereign risk” is now a major Australian issue.

This is the main concern really, BHP and other miners are mobile and can spread cost out across the globe and still grow good profits for shareholder. If we are down rated then investment finance maybe harder to source and cost more, even for homeowners. It could be Australian companies not even in mining will be impacted more than global mining companies. May not happen then if it does we are down the proverbial.

Plus removing royalty that cannot be discounted and replacing it with income tax that can be avoided by non profit driven organisations such as Chinese steel mills that can utilise transfer pricing also favours foreign companies. So not sure it even delivers on it's promise to make foreigners pay, seems to hurt Australian companies more.

according to Julia Gillard today, all should be ok in about 40 years due to this tax.