Tom Price was the man responsable for locating the richest iron ore mountain in AU, he went back to US and died. It just happened to be on Hancock grazing lease.
Au only gets a fraction of the wealth generated by iron ore. A very disproportionate share.
This is AU's wealth not anyones elses, It was found on crown land.
All these gigantic profits should be left in AU, not syphoned of to another country.
I can't understand how crown land mineral can become the ownership of the leassee, which has now passed on, and aparantly so has the lease.

579 and ponde

This bit about Australia only getting a fraction of the wealth from mining is total nonsense. Most of our current wealth actually comes from mining.

579, you must know that the statistic you quote that 80 per cent of revenue from mining goes overseas is entirely wrong. So is your statement about crown land minerals becoming the property of mining companies. All minerals in Australia are owned by governments, state and federal - they are not part and parcel of freehold use - and those governments charge royalties to companies that dig it up. Much of the argument they have over the mining tax a couple of years back was as a result of this very point.

C can you expand on that somewhat,
Mt Tom price was on hancock pastoral lease, so how did lang hancock and gina get in on the act.
i will try and find those figures again about the 80%.

The program Dirty Business, as with this article must be some of the most disgusting lefty propaganda ever published. Slime of the highest order.

I do find it interesting how many authors are so impressed by other authors, they can't stop quoting them. I suppose it could be that reading the opinion of others is the only way these people get something to write about.

Then we get the dills who can't understand that without the foreign exchange earned by mineral exports we could not afford to import the computer they are typing on.

I abhor the loss of our manufacturing, but you can't blame people for not investing in a country where idiots are treated as if they had some idea.

A mate of mine, an electrician went mining 30 years ago. He was a safety officer on night shift. He complained about being bored stiff. Union rules meant he was not allowed to do any work, except in an emergency, & then only to make safe, not repair. Today it is worse.

Mining is the only industry that has been able to survive this sort of bloody mindedness of unions, & Labor in Oz. The rest has failed under the strain. I wonder how much longer it will survive this rubbish along with carbon tax, & mining tax rhorts by this lefty government.

“Dirty Business” was not quite as bad as I had expected for its title and promos. At least it made some effort to show some of the benefits as well as the costs of mining – which is all obviously too much for Sarah.

For those who doubt the benefits of our current resources expansion, look at those developed countries that don’t have our minerals or access to China’s growing markets. The USA and Europe have flat or contracting domestic economies, stubbornly high unemployment, and massive government debts. Australia’s economy would be in much worse shape without resources.

579 is woefully misinformed. The education system has failed us again. Tom Price came to Australia because Lang Hancock, a remarkably hard-working and energetic pastoralist, prospector and miner discovered vast amounts of iron ore and convinced Rio and Kaiser to provide the capital and expertise to develop these riches. In a single-engined aeroplane made of metal tubing and cloth, he flew the decision makers from the UK and the USA over unfriendly terrain to show them his discoveries, and similarly guided the geologists to the sites. He was responsible for the creation of Hamersley Iron which built the infrastructure and asked no money up front, simply a nominal share of the resultant wealth. He and his daughter Gina ploughed most of that share back into further exploration and development of a hitherto neglected and always difficult part of this continent where weather extremes are truly extreme. I weep at the johnny-come-latelys who now make such ill-informed criticisms of the achievements of Lang Hancock and Gina Rinehart.