Mining, Tax & Sovereign Wealth Fund | Q+A

for anything we mine should we be taxing the hell out of it once it's mined it's gone forever unlike farming which produces product year after year yeah do we wish to end up like Naro when the phosphate ran out the revenue would go into a sovereign wealth fund so the value of these National Assets are preserved for future Generations what does the panel think M I know I'm nostradam take it away I mean I you sound like a Norwegian yeah Norway said we are sitting on a lot of oil this is Norway's oil this belongs to the the people of Norway and not just people now but future generations and so they taxed their oil industry they're sitting on a $2.4 trillion Sovereign wealth fund I think in 2023 the fund alone made 320 billion something like that here in Australia we basically give our gas to multinationals to export and then they minimize their corporate tax it it makes no sense I I think it is you know you look at the major parties it is some sort of insanity it's pathological to not say we should be getting a fair return because as you said once once it's gone it's gone yeah so Ian what would you like to see happen everything that DAV has just been saying um Kevin rug Kevin rug tried the super profits tax and there was and how did that go for him and there was a massive scare campaign by Murdoch and the fossil fuel industry and that didn't go ahead and my fear is that if any of the parties tried something R in that regard they the cashed up um mining companies would ALS run another scare campaign to a major degree you're you're going to have a problem electorally um you're always going to confront electoral problems whenever you advocating for policy change in this space so yes we saw what happened with with that scare campaign that you're referencing but it was pretty well funded campaign pretty well funded campaign both major parties now are struggling to get the 75 seats that means their Pathway to Victory will drive sooner or later through one of the seats that is heavily populated by by a mining community and and the problem is you're going to have both sides of politics to be animated by this industry for many many years to come so I think that politically it's going to be very difficult I just want to point out something on the mining tax and and I absolutely agree with you on the super profits tax it's just ironic that after the pandemic many countries in the world put in a super profits tax we didn't uh we still can't come at it but if it's any consolation BHP and Rio for example are now paying a lot of tax tax they're amongst our top taxpayers so actual mineral companies even Gina reinhardt's paying the woman who stood on the back of the flat bed truck the mineral companies are paying more now at the time the petroleum resource rent tax the pr was held up as an example we now know that that was just a waste of time state governments have given that away too a really badly designed tax that in some cases somebody some companies will never pay but a lot are going to start to pay it's because they invested so much they got all these tax breaks and it might not be in our lifetime that we see it and that's the problem so if we're going to increase gas and this government is talking about it you have to redesign how you do it we have to learn from the mistakes we made then but there's not much we can do on what we've done in the past but learn from the mistakes except as go said I don't think we're learning from them are we algra given the sort of campaign that political parties would face why would they go near it because this is the right thing to do and I think it's up to us as Australians to stand up and say you know we want this I think times have changed since you know the early since the mining tax our debate I think Australians have watched you know the price of fossil fuels of gas of coal go up like this and our energy bills go up like that too and feel like we're not getting benefit from this so I think this is a different time and I actually think this is what why the crossbench is there and why so many people have been elected like myself and and David is because people are saying look we we need to look at the difficult questions you know the Electoral Mass isn't what it's about this is about what is good for the country and this is time that we did this okay so you're saying there could be electoral benefit from it essentially I think that there are options and I think that's what we need to we need to be more Brave and I think we need to stand up because I think Australians are asking us to do this they do want as came back to the first question they want a vision of where we are going as a country and a vision where they feel like everyone's got a chance to get ahead so main well I'm someone that's faced the backlash of um the mineral Council for standing up to them um in the state election in New South Wales they funded a big campaign in my own Electra to forby um how did that go after I capped coal prices during the illegal Invasion by Russia of the Ukraine and the price of coal went through the roof so we capped coal prices in New South Wales because otherwise that would have fed through to wholesale electricity prices more than it already did and I cop that backlash but the reason we did it was not because we wanted to stand up for vested we did it because we wanted to protect the community's interest and we need more people in the political class willing to do that on the topic to you sir what I'd say is that again it's not how much we tax and I agree with the proposition that these resources and these minerals are the property of the people of Australia it's how we tax and we need to incentivize the mining industry to invest in Australia we need to incentivize it because it's critical for our economy and it's particularly critical for our regional economies so we need the mining industry however when the profits go through the roof because of commodity shocks and stuff like that the people of Australia should benefit from that so that's why we need a tax system that incentivizes investment but rewards the people and would you like to see the gas companies pay more tax well what I would yes yes what I'd like to see is the labor government who have just said that they're going to allow gas into the future be serious about what it's about clearly it's not about energy Security in AUST if it was they'd put in a a reservation policy for here Australia this is all about making money and Jim and protecting Jim charms' budget he should just be honest about it

Channel: ABC News In-depth

Views: 11,733

Keywords: abc news, australian news, abc news indepth, documentaries, long-form journalism, Q&A, Q+A, QandA, abc, allegra spender, auspol, australian politics, budget 2024, business, cost of living, cost of living crisis, david pocock, economy, federal budget 2024, gig economy, housing crisis, independent, janine perrett, kos samaras, labor, liberal, matt kean, mining, patricia Karvelas, politics, poverty in Australia, rent, tax, work

Id: EAE1mmdAj9I

Length: 6min 40sec (400 seconds)

Published: Thu May 16 2024