Tristan, you said,

"But in recent months these achievements have been obscured behind scandal over the implementation of Labor’s home insulation scheme; and almost entirely overshadowed by a co-ordinated campaign to derail Labor’s proposed “mining super profits tax”.

Yes, but what about the rest of Labor's stuff ups. May be you could write an honest summary of why the Rudd govt is on the nose. It took a while for Australians to see through Rudd (and the govt led by him), but they did wake up.

Why is it so hard for Rudd to sell this? Why can't he successfully remind the public of the benefits of distributive justive? Why is it that people are not being reminded that if they want hospitals, schools and roads then they have to pay tax. This does not lower the standard of living it raises it. Why hasn't the government objected to the liberal MP's who are attacking the government's position on tax when they themselves were responsible for introducing the GST which directly increased the tax of individuals. Why can't Rudd sell the fact that if the miners don't contribute to the cost of communal infrastructure through super profits it will be the individual that pays directly?

Leave Rudd in power long enough, and what he hasn't taxed out of existence he will have nationlalised.

To LEF It is impossible to sell because basically no one believes anything Rudd says any more. But to explain the flaws further, consider that the statement that all Australians own a valuable resource, that is minerals in the ground, is a deeply flawed statement. Yes we may own it but until an enterprising entrepreneur has put a great deal of work and enthusiasm into developing the particular asset it is valueless.
If you live in the suburbs you own (and pay a “royalty” to your local Council for) a fairly inert mineral – soil. However if you put in a lot of work and a small investment, it can be made to yield very considerable value in the form of vegetables. But until you put in the effort it has no value, just like the whole of undeveloped Aus.
Creating a viable resource is a very risky business and enormous numbers fail. If you reduce the possible reward for success (enormous profits on which you will have to pay income tax anyway) no one will bother in the future. Incidentally presumably as a result of the Petroleum tax, I am told that practically no new exploration has been done in Aus and we now import oil. The effort isn’t worth it.
Suggestion to the sensible socialists – Why not encourage the Future Fund, which is I think trying to reduce its forced holding in Telstra, to invest in BHP etc. That way we can get the “excess profits” right back into the ownership of all Australians without ruining the whole industry in the effort.

This article was a fair summation of the proposed new tax regime.

BHP sold off its steel making interest because they weren't profitable enough for the then directors but BHP retained many of the raw material assets and it is now very difficult for Bluescope and One Steel to make even basic profits as they are saddled with paying world prices for many of their feedstocks while competing with "slave labour" wage cost competitors.

Once the depleting non renewable resources are exhausted Australia will have no manufacturing industry and no capacity to pay for our imported needs. The standard of living of the then generations will fall dramatically.

At the end of WW2 the Chifley Government and the then directors of BHP and other companies realised that Australia needed to produce its own consumer goods and as a consequence the Australian car and white goods industries were developed. This required steel plate, sheet steel including galvanised sheet and tinplate production and the development of a fabricating industry. Most of these have now been forced out of existence. Australia now produces no trucks, few if any farm implements, little rail rolling stock, no whitegoods and fewer and fewer cars.

The mining industry is not the key to Australia's long term future. It may be that we should curtain expansion of that industry so that our resources last longer. We need to revive our manufacturing industry and taxing the mining industry so that taxes on manufacturing industry can be reduced and those industries once again become viable is a sensible move for our long term benefit.

Service industries are not a viable alternative.

Dickybird, you raise some good points.

I feel that more has to be said in any analysis of the mining tax to demonstrate the extent to which it is, or is not, scaring off investment. 2010 may pose a different context to the past given that many new mining areas around the world are opening up. It may well be that the world is even more competitive today in mining than what it was in the past.

I support some sort of resource tax, but the debate thus far appears to suggest a future compromise.