From this article: PM pressured to tax gold http://www.smh.com.au/national/pm-pressured-to-tax-gold-20110927-1kvie.html Bob Brown wants gold miners to be taxed as part of the proposed resource super profits tax.
Since the greens and independents run the government it may get in. The Greens better enjoy their little power trip while it lasts, because they are history at the next election.
I wish you were right there mate, however I dont believe their base will change, they target a specfic demographic, with great sucess mind you. Issues like gay marriage are key policies to draw on the vote. Unfortunately also they get all preferences from labor so their Senate control will not change in the short to medium term. I wonder how many swing voters really regret their decision in 2007 now?
The way to stop the use of Labor preferences to empower the Greens is to mark all the Senate boxes in your preferred order. Don't be a sheep and mark above the line!! Use your vote. The Greens get no preferences if you don't give them your preference. The wheeling and dealing about preferences only decides where the parties put each other on their "how to vote" cards - unless of course, you mark one box above the line and thus let someone else decide what you want. After this example of the Greens at work, every lunatic on the sheet I'll mark up is getting a higher preference, even if it is the "National Coalition for the Demise of Green and Blue Painted Long Toenails"
that's correct - their base is a rabid bunch of commie barstads as well as a whole bunch of clueless people who have no idea of what's going on in any case, except that its 'kewl' to support the environment and such. that's about 12% of the population which should just be written off! The problem in 2007 came in when a large portion of traditionally Lib voters voted for Kevin07 because he was younger and better looking than Howard... along with a few other half baked reasons. Hopefully this significant block of voters has now finally learned their lesson that to let Labor in again will always completely f.. the ccountry up!! [/rant]
Would be novel if it had to be paid in bullion. Onya Costello. Beware any push to extend GST onto gold and silver sales though... extending the coverage of GST onto "more" goods and services is being mooted.
that would be terrible! the ever increasing stranglehold of bloated government on our lives is depressing to say the least
Yeah I just saw Bob Brown on SBS world news, and what struck me was his sense of entitlement. "This isn't going to put them out of business, and this isn't going to cost any jobs" he said, "remember, this is a tax on 'Super Profits', not regular profits". I mean its just this attitude that, because large profits exist, that alone is justification to snatch them, which really strikes as no less than naked greed. What needs to be appreciated is true nature of profits, whether they be 'Super Profits' or not. You see, profits are not 'evil', profits are not even morally ambiguous. Profits are nothing less than an essential mechanism in the free market system that allows diverse and varied data across the entire scope of a market to be aggregated and synthesized into a signal that informs all participants about how they may most valuably serve one another's needs and best interests. When you attempt to meddle in this process, you set yourself up for all sorts of malinvestments and inefficiencies. We must let the market work purely. It was meddling in the market that caused the economic woes the world experiences. Yes that's right, it wasn't the free market that has caused our economic malaise, it was government intervention in the free market, such as providing an implicit guarantee to Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae, such as changing laws to force lenders to lower their lending standards to encourage people to buy homes who couldn't afford them, such as thinking it was up to them to prevent firms who they thought were 'too big too fail' from experiences the consequences of their reckless behaviour, thus magnifying the problem and setting us up for the mother of all depressions. Leave profits alone! They are necessary. They are good. We need them, not the actual $$$, I mean, we need the principle of profits to have integrity, to be pure. You know what I mean? Butt out of it Bob Brown.
the miners can see what is coming down the road - the know the future is in precious metals - thats why they don't want a "super profits" tax - because they stand a good chance to make super profits in pm's by digging it up for bugger all ... right under our noses ....
