Hi Pericles,
I think I misunderstood you too.
It might just be that we're violently agreeing with each other.
Had to happen eventually :)
Have a good one.
Cheers,
Anthony
http://www.observationpoint.com.au

Hi Hasbeen,
I'm intrigued by the amount of insulting that you do of those who don't agree with you, (which, by the way, probably adds up to a ginormous number).
So, let me just understand your world view here. KInda save us all some time.
Basically, anybody who doesn't agree with you is naive. Have I got that right?
And if so, wouldn't that mean that the free world has an epidemic of naivete?
Cheers,
Anthony
http://www.observationpoint.com.au

Hasbeen I like your non de plume but sometimes your comment makes me wonder if you and a few others 'were ever'! [just a joke]. No not you, you fool! Anthony I've just read your blogs; you make some good points with great humour. congratulations to you. I find it very interesting to read everybody's contributions but there is a degree of wooly thinking out there. Perhaps though the mix of ideas will be threaded together into a useful whole given time. Everyone is trying, or is that 'very trying'. Just to avoid confusion I can tell you that I can see hope in the blend of socialist capitalism in which neither destroys the other. We will do well to remember that human nature is at once both social and individual. Here endeth the lesson.
DEN71

Hi Den71,
THanks for visiting my blog.
I agree that, when insults aren't being hurled back and forth, there are many astute observations here.
And the diverse range of views is what keeps bringing me back to OLO.
Cheers,
Anthony
http://www.observationpoint.com.au

I can see what you're saying here, Paul. And, in an ideal (though perhaps Marxist/socialist) world, the government would be making the investment and reaping the rewards here.

The problem is that, as Pericles pointed out at the start of this thread, it was left to private enterprise to take the risk and pour money into extracting the minerals from under our feet. The Palmers and Rineharts of this world don't take the risk unless they're pretty sure they get to keep the profits. And the profits aren't much good if they can't buy something - perhaps public opinion - with them. We, the proles, need to be clear that our opinions are not for sale.

Perhaps what Swan should be doing (rather than bagging out our big money, big investors and big employers) is lobbying for a change to the way we extract our mineral resources in the future. Perhaps it's time not to reclaim existing ventures, but to invest public money in the extraction of future mineral resources.

The billionaires have a role to play, too. Rather than buying public opinion with their newspaper ads, they could buy it by giving back to their communities. Not by funding hospital wings (which will inevitably be named after them) but by improving the towns in which they establish their operations, rather than sucking the souls out of them. Rather than driving property prices up so that local kids can never afford to live in their sleepy hometowns, invest in property. Build mining towns. Build infrastructure. Help employees to buy their homes and make mining towns family places rather than FIFO hotbeds. It costs more, but it could:
a) help to decongest bigger cities
b) help to make towns viable even after the minerals have dried up
c) curry favour among the general public
d) divert a small part of the wealth generated by our minerals back to the nation.
It's worked in many other places. It could be worth a shot here.

State rights to minerals is not under attack directly, as they collect royalties but the feds are saying WA, for example, will have its GST share docked if it raises these. This is an indirect path towards dispossessing the mining states and raising the MRRT in the future.

Perhaps WA should insist on a super tax on the tourist industry in far more beautiful places, and another on the finance industry that does so well on the eastern side of the continent. These taxes could be market-linked going up and down with international tourist numbers or the level of foreign investment.

The MRRT is a federal tax, not a royalty, that is linked to mineral market prices . Being the devil's advocate here, why just the mining industry? Is it all about the non-renewable aspect of the resource or just that it's doing so well?