Skip Navigation
18 comments
  • By stopping the corruption in the mining sector, where politicians give the miners all of our resources tax free, and then get fat jobs with the miners, we could have everything we need and more.

    How about we just stop the corruption, and get our free university, hospitals, and everything else like a modern country should.

    • By stopping the corruption in the mining sector, where politicians give the miners all of our resources tax free, and then get fat jobs with the miners, we could have everything we need and more

      Prime Minister Kevin Rudd tried to tax big miners

      It didn't end well for him.

      👇👇

      Former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd says three of the world’s biggest mining multinationals have run sophisticated operations to kill off climate action in Australia and continue to wield day-to-day influence over government through a vast lobbying network and an “umbilical” relationship with the Murdoch media.

      “Glencore, Rio [Tinto] and BHP ran sophisticated political operations against my government, both on climate change and the mining tax” he told the Guardian.

      “They worked hard … to get rid of the resource super profit tax, against the interests of other mining companies and the national economy as a whole. They worked hard … in 2013 against the carbon price. They succeeded in both enterprises.”

      Rudd attributes the day-to-day influence of the sector to two mechanisms. The first is what he describes as the vast lobbying network it uses to pressure political parties. The second is its close relationship with the Murdoch media, which owns most of the country’s print media. Rudd describes the relationship as “umbilical”.

      “When did you last see the Murdoch media critical of any of these corporations?” Rudd said. “Rarely. If ever.”

      https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/10/mining-firms-worked-kill-off-climate-action-australia-ex-pm-kevin-rudd

      ______________________________

      By the way, nobody is forcing people to read Murdoch media (The Australian / Herald Sun / Daily Telegraph / Courrier Mail / Sky News).

      Rupert Murdoch is a criminal but millions of citizens are voluntarily consuming his crap.

      • Hmmm, the fact that Rudd tried and failed to carry out a difficult but fundamentally positive reform is not a very strong case against pursuing it again in the future, for better or worse political progress is almost always multiple failed attempts punctuated by small iterative steps forward.

        The idea that Murdoch's influence is down to the consumers is pretty naive. The Murdoch media is so dominant that it has the capacity to poison every narrative, while one can seek alternative sources those sources struggle financially and can't market themselves to compete effectively. Added to this is the fact that their dominance means that nearly all incidental news exposure will be Murdoch, they are the papers on the stands, they are the news breaks after sports matches, they are favoured by social media algorithms. Not everyone has the time or inclination to put in the substantial daily work to combat this, Murdoch media dominance is a systemic problem, not one of individual choice.

  • This is bad policy for everyone except the high income earners. You can bet that $3300 per year won't be adjusted for inflation and we'll just end up paying more tax.

  • Remember when governments took bold steps – deregulating the dollar, introducing the [GST]...

    Clearly the Australian electorate agrees with Kate and that is why the Australian Democrats are the third largest parliamentary grouping behind Labor and the Coalition.

  • Yet our GST is among the narrowest and lowest in the OECD. It applies to just 7.5% of the economy, compared with an OECD average of over 11%, and its rate is half the OECD average.

    I don't think anyone on the ground level of the OECD is arguing in favour of their higher rates

18 comments