The mining companies have warned that jobs would be lost under the resources tax and today we see the reality of what they warned about.

 

Xstrata has announced that two projects which would have employed over 3000 workers in Queensland have been scrapped as they are no longer viable. The $6 billion Wandoan coal project and the $600m Ernest Henry copper mine underground shaft project will not go ahead, mainly because Mr Rudd doesn’t even have the decency to sit down and have a civil conversation with the mining industry.

 

For once, Mr Rudd is right. He said, “The mining industry would fight ‘tooth and nail’ not to pay more tax”. What business is going to commit to future expansion if there is no profit to be made to be ploughed back into the industry?

 

You just don’t need to have an economics degree to understand this, yet Mr Rudd wants us to believe that by increasing the tax on this sector, they will be better placed to grow their ventures.

 

Mr Rudd, what the people of Australia do understand is that when these companies make profits, they can then afford to embark on the costly exercise to create more mining wealth- wealth that Mr Rudd and his colleagues were a while ago lauding for helping Australia to weather the GFC.