Friday, May 14, 2010

I would have gasped too

Another story to shake your head at. The Labor Government is increasing the taxes on the Australian mining industry. And this is the reason why:

Addressing complaints from David Flanagan, head of Atlas Iron, about the effect on investment of having a super profits tax cut in at 6 per cent, Rudd said it was companies such as Atlas that were pushing up the dollar and making it hard for foreign students to live in Australia.

There was a collective gasp, with executives asking Rudd if he “wanted to wipe out the iron ore industry to help foreign students”.

Rudd is so keen to sell passports to overseas students that he's willing to sacrifice the profitability of the most healthy real industry we still have.

What can you say to this, except that Rudd once again has shown that he belongs to a liberal elite with no connection to his own tradition.

14 comments:

  1. They're in lala land. I'm not a lackey for the big end of town but this policy seems absurd to absolutly everyone. I guess buisness only have themselves to blame for supporting, in whatever fashion, this useless party.

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  2. The fact is that the Australian dollar is not getting stronger; it is all other currencies, and particularly the dollar and the euro, that are getting weaker. Australia produces something tangible and useful that people want (mineral resources). The USA and Europe produce nothing except more and more debt. Thus Australia's currency must and will appreciate relative to the dollar and euro. There is not a damn thing Rudd can do to stop this, because the problem is not within Australia. The problem is the printing presses in Europe and North America.

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  3. Some of these gold companies have such high production costs that even at 1300 an ounce they are just breaking even and giving back to all their investors after years and years of pain. I know some companies have like production costs of 800-900 and ounce.

    Government wants their cut---they are socialists.

    It's the foreign student part that's the surprising arse kicker.

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  4. Anon wrote,

    There is not a damn thing Rudd can do to stop this, because the problem is not within Australia.

    Uh, yes there is, and it's precisely what he intends to do: raise taxes to confiscatory levels and drive the mining companies out of business.

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  5. Wow, this statement by Rudd is so perverse I'm at a loss for words.

    So, I'll just let the Apostle Paul, writing to Timothy, speak in my stead:

    But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.

    1 Timothy 5:8, King James Version

    Rudd: worse than an infidel.

    I think that fits him pretty well.

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  6. Oh I just thought of something!!!

    So small to mid-level commodity companies take out loans with banks (in Canada Brookfield Asset Management and Tricap are pretty evil) to explore and develop their mines.

    Oftentimes the banks purposefully do stuff to make the companies default (aka massive shorting on the stocks so that the companies can't make any funds...or even extreme cases...say having a major producer delay payment to a subcontractor so the little guy defaults on a debt payment to the bank and goes into bankruptcy)

    Anyways...the end result of the small company defaulting on the loan is seizure of assets to the bank. So overnight a bank could own all the land and minerals of these small companies for absolutely nothing. It's legal stealing plain and simple.

    Soooo...maybe Rudd is passing these taxes to help the banksters steal more assets? These taxes will put the little start up mining couples in trouble...thus making them a) default to the banks or b) gobbled up by bigger producers for much less than they are worth.

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  7. What Krudd did is what he and all of his ilk always do. He saw a fat wad of cash and decided to grab it in order to use for his own aggrandisement. To do so he used the language of socialists the world over in calling them "super profits". This was meant to get all the sheeple on his side and all would be well. West Australia doesn't count in his eyes and is only there to pay for other states mismanagement.
    However the real question that no-one is asking, is when does he intend to have a crack at the Four Pillars for their "super profits" or do they pay enough to keep him quiet?

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  8. Rudd sees himself as the president of the Asia-Pacific Union, rather than the Prime Minister of Australia. So his constituents are Indians as well as Australians. As shocking as that may be, it is the real Kevin Rudd. The public mistakenly views Rudd through the prism of nationalism. But he is not a nationalist, he is a card-carrying globalist. His top-order priorities are regional integration of Australia into Asia, and advancing global governance. Domestic policies are a low-order priority that Rudd engages in to maintain a nationalist facade. Ban Ki-moon enunciated Rudd's core belief: "This is, after all, an era of integration. Regional integration is taking place all over the world". Hence, like the European Union, Rudd declared that Australia and Asia should move towards one superstate by 2020, called the Asia-Pacific Community.

    Subsequently, Rudd has worked on two fronts: to weaken our national identity, and to promote regional standards in its place. He is weakening our identity by maximising the transnational flow of people, ideas and business: hence Rudd's record high immigration and foreign student numbers, relaxed foreign ownership, Asia-centric education, relentless free trade agreements, diversifying the military, etc. He is also centralising education, health, law, national security, as a precursor to harmonising with forthcoming regional standards. Climate change was a handy crisis for advancing global governance. The economic stimulus was about shoring up global interdependence and preventing a backslide into protectionism. His entire tenure has been one long gasp.

    In contrast, domestic policies are an afterthought, to maintain the facade of nationalism. But Rudd's facade is cracking and the public is worried about: big population choking infrastructure, foreign buyers forcing up housing prices, immigration straining social cohesion, etc. The ETS back-flip is the biggest crack in Rudd's facade, but it doesn't reveal a hollowness, it reveals a transnational-progressive ideology where the interests of Australia are an afterthought. Rudd has brought the "era of integration" to our hemisphere and the Australian public still mistakenly views him as a nationalist.

    When Rudd announced his Asia-Pacific Union, he said: "The purpose is to encourage the development of a genuine and comprehensive sense of community whose habitual operating principle is cooperation". Which means he wants us to become people without identity and without independent thoughts. Hence, to Rudd, the Australian people deserve no more attention than international students. Rudd is an ideologically-driven wrecking ball, devoid of ordinary sensitivities of identity, social cohesion, carrying capacity, infrastructure, etc. He is a mad ideologue and there are going to be a lot more collective gasps, as he dissolves Australia into Asia, until the public wakes up and votes him out.

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  9. maybe i'm being naive here....but rudd doesn't seem that crazy...compared to US liberals anyways...I'd take him as my enemy over say david axelrod or elena kagan, but hey that's just me

    I think it's more along the lines of high mining taxes makes the little juniors easier to gobble up by the big producers.

    But I could be completely wrong.

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  10. Rudd sees himself as the president of the Asia-Pacific Union, rather than the Prime Minister of Australia.

    Michelle, your comment makes a lot of sense. After all, it wasn't that long ago that an Australian senate committee proposed the formation of a Pacific Union, along the lines of the EU. Then when Rudd came in he advocated a larger regional union, an Asia Pacific Union.

    He was apparently rebuffed by some of the Asian powers, but perhaps he hasn't given up. It would certainly explain the massive inflow of Asian students and the willingness to allow Chinese investors to buy up residential housing.

    My only qualification to your comment is that the Liberals don't seem to be entirely immune to the regional aim either. There were Liberal senate members who were part of the Pacific Union proposal and student numbers were rising at the end of Howard's government.

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  11. Here's another gasper ...

    Rights fear for ‘outsiders’

    THE world’s three million overseas students are treated as outsiders and nowhere in English-speaking countries do they enjoy comprehensive human rights, according to a new Australian study.

    Overseas students were really “temporary migrants”, and all nations could choose to treat them as quasi-residents, the University of Melbourne’s Simon Marginson told a recent conference in London…

    Cross-border student mobility was a phenomenon that had doubled in a decade, reaching three million in 2007, he said.

    “It will keep on increasing at a rapid pace. Only World War III could stop it,”
    he said.


    Way to go professor. You just deferred national sovereignty to uncontrollable immigration. This is what passes for higher education. Unbelievable.

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  12. Uh, yes there is, and it's precisely what he intends to do: raise taxes to confiscatory levels and drive the mining companies out of business.

    Uh, that is not going to stop Australia's currency from appreciating relative to the dollar and the euro.

    maybe i'm being naive here....but rudd doesn't seem that crazy...compared to US liberals anyways...I'd take him as my enemy over say david axelrod or elena kagan, but hey that's just me

    The problem is that Australia's position does not permit its leaders to be anywhere near as crazy as America's. You are small in population, weak in military power, and very close to billions of Asians. Rudd doesn't need to be very crazy at all to doom Australia very quickly.

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  13. As in the UK, Labour wants to have a more compliant electorate. So its population replacement.

    What I find very difficult to grasp is that Australia and NZ had the example of Labour wrecking the UK, and still voted them in.

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  14. I was watching Business Lateline tonight. The super profits tax is one aspect of the change, the other is that failed resource investments will be given 40% government rebates to partially cover their investment costs and that the overall taz will be revenue neutral. Even in the current mining boom there is something in the order of 10 billion in failed mining investment every year.

    So the govt slugs successful mining coys 40% and then props up failing firms to the same percent. Even if the tax doesn’t discourage investment or damage the industry it has the very real prospect of costing the taxpayer more overall. The whole thing is madness. I thought we'd moved past these socialist command and control policies.

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