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?

China may just look around and find it has its own Iron ore! gee really.
Belly,
Yet another flippant leftie quip ! Do you not know that Japan has been stockpiling all the coal bought from Australia for the past 30 years ? They even designed & built special ore carriers which deposit the coal in the shallows of the coast for retrieval when needed in years to come. I'd bet to think that the Chinese are just as clever to do the same with iron ore. Just because our Union hangers-on don't have such pragmatism & foresight doesn't mean the intelligent Asian don't have it either. Very much on the contrary.

Indy you do have your self on old mate.
China for the present is buying our iron and will pay the tax's on it, not Australian consumers.
Face it how will you explain Labors return? its victory, will you say voters got it wrong?
I laugh at the claims I am blind to other than my party's views,, you give evidence it is you and others who throw that stone who are,, lefty?
Mate it is the extreme right the Abbott family who threaten this country's future.

Mikk>>Any price effect of the mining tax would be felt first and foremost by China and Japan.

This is exactly why I said, 'tax the eggs, not the chickens'.

Put a tax on the minerals, not the miners, the job creators.

Wobbles>>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

They already pay profit based tax, it's called company tax.

Far to many jobs are at risk by taxing the job creators.

Labor has stuffed this country, not the miners, coles or wollies.

Belly,
you're missing the point. I wasn't talking about Lib/Lab politics here. I was drawing attention to the short sightedness of the "want profit now" brigade. That encompasses all political parties, Labor in particular. May I suggest we have chook raffles before the election, one run by Julia & one by Tony. That would give us a clearer picture of their economic competence & integrity.

Something that will not differentiate either in the chook raffle is the chook will probably be one bred in an overcrowded environment, possibly genetically modified or fed GMO, possibly given antibiotics or hormones and will no doubt be foreign owned or an import. :)

To the original question...

It's basic economics...

Supply stays the same,
Demand stays the same,
Price stays the same...

Like the GST, the market will decide the prices, not the tax.

Woolies and Coles may well try to pass on the tax to consumers, but in reality little will be affected apart from their profits.

Mining giants will still take massive profits out of Australia, they just won't be as massive because they're contributing to the Australian Government like all other entities making a profit in this country.

To insist jobs will be lost etc is to believe the spin of the mining companies...

Wake up everybody !
You, me and the man in the street will pay for everything.

There is no one else there that will pay for everything in the long run.
All there is, is short term advantages of one over the other.
Sooner or later it all evens out to the consumer paying for everything either through the cash register or in taxes.

Ok here we go, todays little rant...

The broadband network, it really is ordinary, the thinly veiled contempt for rural people. Saying things like "97% of the population will have it" is really slimy. All you need to do to achieve that is make sure things are fine in Sydney/Canberra/Melbourne, where they actually can get ADSL already and have a great choice of providers. Well, if you live 12km from an exchange, or if the exchange is an older one (RAX?), or if any of the pits leak when it rains (most do), then you cant get ADSL. There is a great scheme to finance satelite broadband, but if you have trees on your block (quite common in rural areas) you wont get it either. And so for me, I am paying about $70 per month for dial-up and as we type I am getting 31.2k, but that goes down to about 16k if it is raining. That 3% who wont ever get ADSL or broadband of any type, are possibly those that grow your vegetables and raise your beef. So on behalf of all of us in the bush, thanks for bloody nothing.

The other clown is no better, the idea of welfare quarantining and sending young people to outback western Australia might seem like a good idea at the time, though would you like your own grandparents to be forced to pay for things with foodstamps or charity vouchers? Its fine to want to humiliate unemployed people, because apparently that makes them feel more included and worthwhile. How about when one of your own kids is between jobs, and then forced to go to Kunanurra to operate farming machinery or drive a forklift or something... Often these ideas only apply to other people's kids or grandparents.

Pat, I can understand your frustration.
If you are within about 60 Km of a town Wimax should work for you if
you have a decent antenna at a good height.
Wimax is not time multiplexed like mobile phone systems which have a
distance beyond that they will not work no matter how strong the signal.
I have seen talk that Wimax is to be used by NBN in remote areas.

What many do not realise is that with fibre at 100 Magbits you will not
get downloads at that speed.
Data is sent in packets. The packets arrive at 100 Mbits but you will
find that the gap between packets is longer.
It all depends on the remote computer to which you are connected.
How fast can it dump its data into the internet ?

Unwired uses an early version of Wimax and they are to update to Wimax.

Pat, the broadband network will bring fast broadband to a lot more communities than if it was left to private enterprise. The whole point is that by the government doing it we will have this product available to communities that would never see it otherwise allowing them the economic opportunities that come with this system. also understand that the optic cable is only limited by the technology that is plugged into it, so it will improve with advances in technology.
As for increases in prices at coles, well the tax is direct to them so the price rise is direct to us. As for the mining tax, Trshcanman covers it perfectly. Eventually it will get us through lower employment in the sector and you can bet less investment though this will balance out with longer life for the sector into the future.
My question is why do we avoid taking much stronger action to curb the over exploitation of our natural resources for the short term greed of a single generation? History will surely show that the majority of resources were consumed by a single generation in a fit of greed that left little for the future and nothing to their children.

TrashcanMan>>Mining giants will still take massive profits out of Australia, they just won't be as massive because they're contributing to the Australian Government like all other entities making a profit in this country.

So please explain what 'company tax is' if it's not paying thier fair share, just like other companies. If you can!

Naribe >>My question is why do we avoid taking much stronger action to curb the over exploitation of our natural resources for the short term greed of a single generation?

This is also the time in history when we have less individuals paying taxes and more relying on hand outs and,along with boat the people and massive government waste, we are also fighting some elses war, all of which costs us billions each and every year.

This is why we rely more on resourse taxes/royalties than ever before and, there appears to be little improvement on the horrison.

If we stop the waste and stop the 'hand outs, this in turn will reduce our relience on resources, then we can look towards preserving the supplies by increasing the prices or offering limmited supplys.

But, until we find a way to take presure off the relience on the mining industry to top up our economy, then we have little choice other than to sell as much as possible, to the highest bidder.

It's all about everyone doing thier fair share and gross government waste.

"It's all about everyone doing their fair share and gross government waste."
Rehctub, on the surface this is a pretty straight forward statement. I would put to you that it is not just about people paying tax as with the current unemployment rate being within one percent over the last few years and a larger business sector than we have ever had i would have thought the number of tax payers was up and that it was the rate of tax paid that was down. Also the GST and tax file number system have cut out a lot of the black economy that existed before the eighties. I completely agree with you on government waste and behaviours like fighting wars that are none of our business, but to over come much of this it would require a change in our societal thinking. Such as who we see as the threat and why, less personal greed and sustainability, meaning control over population and resource use not sustainable profits at any cost because i need the new plasma from my family tax bonus this year. This all means less for the individual and that is why it will never happen.

nairbe
It's not about who pays tax and who dosn't, it's about who pays 'positive taxes' and that figure is just over 58% of tax payers. 42% of tax payers receive more in 'hand outs' than the contribute in taxes. Unemployed and pensioners, both old age and others don't enter the equasion.

Put bluntly, that leaves the 58% to 'pick up the slack', then pay all the bills.

I read somewhere that when the old age pension was introduced, there were 27 tax payers per 1 pension recipient. That figure is now 2 tax payers per recipient.

Put simply, our resource sector needs to perform and perform well so we can rape it for all it's worth, otherwise, we will simply fold.

Our manufacturing is all but gone and tourisum is on its knees, retail also is starting to buckle.

Mining is our last line of defence and, unless we take drastic action to stop the wastage, I fear our future generations will have a pretty bleak future. After all, they will all be born with an unwanted debt.

Yes Rehctub, longer life has made a significant impact and couple it
with the tendency of women to have children in their late 30s and
early 40s instead of 20s has not helped.

The other big problem that we are not facing up to is the campaign
that a number of countries have in buying up farms around the world
to meet their future food demand.
It seems to be utterly stupid to allow this to happen.
The Chinese government has already bought farms in Australia.

I wonder why ?

BAZZ, two reason I can think off off the cuff.

1. Because they (the chineese) simply don't, or won't, have the land to grow their future food requirements.

2. They know that our farmers won't be able to afford to employ staff in the next decade or so, to remain remain competetive and will ultimately go out of business. They will most likely grow 'bio-fuel' instead, all of which requires minimum labour input as machine can harvest 'non-food stuffs'. Who can blame them, hey!

The chineese are very clever and can see that we will have to literally charge the earth for our goods, so they are looking to the future, not like us.

It's a bit of a 'no brainer' if you ask me, yet the labor governments and thier unions just can't see the big picture.

Meanwhile, our best farming land is being sold to the highest overseas bidder and we do nothing.

I agree rehctub, my question was rhetorical of course.
With large parts of western China being taken over by desert their
food producing areas must be decreasing and the move to the cities by
the young and the single child policy probably means their food
production will fall not rise.

Frankly if famine becomes a problem in China I can see the food being
exported direct to China and the local markets running empty.
I can even imagine Chinese guards at the farm gates, after all it will
be land owned by the Chinese government.

A Madmax scenario I agree, but not unimaginable.

Rehctub,

Mining companies don't pay the same company tax as other companies, they are massively discounted due to concessions. They PAY MUCH LESS, only 15% in fact.

So there, I CAN answer. You are being fed BS from the mining sector and it's advocates in parliament and the media. They are robbing this country blind of it's primary resources and the ants like you are jumping on the side of the spiders.

Sure they give jobs, but those jobs won't go anywhere, because there is still way to much profit to be made even with this proposed tax increase.

Trashcanman, I have seen previously that mining companies get concessions
on their operations, but I have never seen any detail. Also the pollies have
not mentioned it either. Do you have any detail ?

One thing that has not been accounted for by many is that the super tax
applies *before* they pay interest on their borrowings.
As it will apply to mines that are already financed this sounds very dangerous.
It could in fact wipe out their profit entirely if they were reasonably
highly geared as I imagine many mines would be. It could also leave
them in a position that they are unable to pay their ordinary company tax.

I agree it shouldn't apply before interest payments.