Great article Helen. The reality and the spin of what the mining boom contributes to Australia is miles apart.

Most of the article is barely worth responding to, or even noticing. The bit about miners failing to pay taxes is a statement characteristic of those who nothing about the sector. Most mining companies in Australia are explorers who typically pay no tax at all, because they are not earning any money. So is the writer talking about the spec explorers or the actual miners? I suspect she is not even aware of the difference, and I suspect the author of the original book got himself throughly confused on that point.

Once in business - that is, atually earning money - miners can use past losses to reduce tax like any other Austalian company. Are miners being treated any differently to companies in other sectors? Doubt it. Each industry has its own set of concessions, incidentally.

As for Forrest's Forescue Metals not paying tax it certainly did last year - $313 million or thereabouts.. its annual report is online, so you can see the amount paid plus a reconciliation between what it should pay on a straight calculation from its profits, and the actual amount (there is not much differnce).

Now the authors may then try to claim that really that the difference between nominal and actual amounts paid in tax proves that there are dark and sinister forces at work, but their original statement about Fortescue was simply wrong. Consipracy theorists should make an effort to get their basic facts right.

The author refers to: "the growing pollution that is being caused by coal seam gas exploration."
CSG has been produced in Qld for more than 10 years. There are no examples of significant environmental damage.

"Drilling down into the coal seams to obtain the gas requires the use of toxic chemicals such as benzene, toluene, ethyl benzene and xylene."
No it doesn't. In fact, Qld has specifically banned the use of BTEX chemicals in CSG operations and NSW seems set to follow suit.

This article is lazy and misinformed.

As Curmudgeon points out, any detailed analysis would show that mining companies actually generate, directly and indirectly, very substantial revenues for state and federal governments. In fact, arguably more than any other industry as a percentage of sales.

First, the mining companies pay royalties to the states for the right to extract the minerals. In WA right now the iron ore companies pay 7.5% of sales revenues as royalties. This for assets that the mining companies have discovered and evaluated at their own cost. That weren't even known to exist before they invested millions of exploration capital.

Second, the companies pay payroll tax on their payroll. Their employees pay income tax, and GST on most of their purchases. Their suppliers pay payroll tax, and their employees pay income tax and GST.

Third, when the companies generate reported profits, they pay 30% corporate tax. And now will be asked to pay extra "Super Profits" taxes on top of that.

Which other Australian industry pays as much as a percentage of sales?

Matthew Benns' book is well researched and he shows a thorough knowledge of the mining industry and documents his claims about the environmental damage they cause, and their very perfunctory attitude to broader social responsibilities. For another review, see http://ozleft.wordpress.com/2012/01/09/anythingforaquid/

All the remarks by a number of our Australian country population think more of a prosperous Australian production, whereas the number of Lawyer city members of the political parties are making the decisions of mining exports to destroy our industries. I do want to see our Industries looked after, both the farming and manufacturing, and our workers also treated properly. I am in contempt of those people who rave on that the Labor party is only looking after the unions, the past decisions of them shows that they are only for the rich and the extremely rich, and wish to make them richer, and damn the workers.
The tax system we had from 1950 to 1970, was good for the workers and did not treat the rest unfairly, the 66.6% tax on $450,000 and zero tax on the first $35,000 or even $60,000 would fix most of today’s woes. Going by the results back in that period, there would be less crime, goods and services would be cheaper and our workers would not be getting kicked out of their homes because they would not be restricted to that two or three days work a week that exists now and they would be able to afford the mortgage. Clive Palmer said last year that he did not want that much wealth. Both the Labor and the Liberal parties have destroyed the economy through the low top tax and not increasing the income at which tax is applied, and there should be a tax of about 60% on companies at about $2 billion and zero on profits below about $5 million.
The Labor party is forever jumping on the “Global” problems to blame, but both the Labor and Liberal parties have brought it all on by their stupidity of the low taxes like that of the other countries, and the moron decision of the export of the mining resources, the reciprocal imports are destroying our own manufacturing industries.