I find it curious, that a tax affecting Coles and Woolies will simply be passed on to consumers, but a tax on mining will not be... A carbon price (tax) will help the environment deal with carbon dioxide, and not be simply passed on to consumers as an additional cost of living. Easy to do with products that have inelastic demand.

Making additional funds available for mens mental health initiatives, but only in a reactive manner. In a perfect world, one would consider why men are more affected by mental health issues than the general population is. Of course, you wouldnt ask this if you just wanted to throw a few bucks at Lifeline phone counsellors and say the problem has been solved.

Great to hear people acknowledge suicide and depression are a huge issue for men, a great shame nobody really cares about it beyond scrounging a few scabby votes.

Who consumes the minerals?
Not the shoppers at coles and woolies thats for sure.
Any price effect of the mining tax would be felt first and foremost by China and Japan. They are the ones who consume the minerals dug up by BHP et al. We may eventually pay higher prices on imported goods but that is also the case if the exchange rate changes, wages go up in China, demand increases from other countries etc etc. The money we would recoup from the tax would more than offset the small increases in the price of finished goods it would induce

I think it is mainly the miners who would bear the cost of the tax. China etc don't have to worry they can simply buy from another country as the global price is not about to rise proportionly simply because Aust raises a tax. Until supply is limited that is.

Beyond all the hysteria about Mining profits being "under serious threat" by making some huge transnational companies pay a fair amount of tax in Australia, do you seriously think that they would put up the costs of their products world-wide just to compensate?

Would they really pass on the increased costs to all their international manufacturing customers who would then pass them onto just us - a minor consumer on the international market?

It's far more likely that local companies (especially Coles and Woolworths who between them take almost half of every consumer dollar spent in this country)would jack up their prices using any excuse they can.

Do our power companies/states use coal.
Have they not already jacked up prices.

Come now we can do better than that.
Why the constant comments China can buy its iron ore from another country?
Are we thinking of the pacific Islands?
Another said true! China may just look around and find it has its own Iron ore! gee really.
A fact is China buys our ore because it costs less to use than other country's, less to get there and the tax will be paid by them ,we however will return it by buying their products it is called commerce.
True just think before posting this claim and show me how else Abbott will pay for his tax breaks to business if not by taxing us?