From the SMH:
Julia Gillard told a dinner hosted by the council last night that Australians deserved to benefit from the mining boom – and that the nation’s resources belonged to its people and not the government or mining companies.
”And here’s the rub. You don’t own the minerals. I don’t own the minerals. Governments only sell you the right to mine the resource, a resource we hold in trust for a sovereign people,” she told a mining industry dinner in Canberra last night.
”There’s nowhere in the world you’d be better off investing. And there’s nowhere in the world where mining has a stronger future. And this is Australia, and it has a Labor government.”
No shit. Below is an image from the AFR from last year, summarising the cost to the Australian people of the compromises Julia Gillard agreed to to settle the RSPT dispute:
Yes, that is as much as $140 billion over a decade. Last night, Gillard went on to say last night to the miners:
”Australians don’t begrudge hard work and we admire your success,” she said.
”But I know this too: they work pretty hard in car factories and at panel beaters and in police stations and hospitals too.”
Increased family payments instead of company tax cuts in the budget were part of the government’s commitment that all Australians benefit from mining wealth. ”They own it and they deserve their share,” she said.
Their share…nice one. For $140 billion, we could conservatively have bought 17 state of the art nuclear submarines, 35 state of the art Royal Children’s Hospitals, or stabilised our banking system forever in some kind of sovereign fund, thus freeing the Budget from its onerous guarantee.
God knows how many police stations.
