sir Joh was a businessman who came up thru the ranks and had years of grinding it out to be successful.
in dealing with foreign miners, joh was not "easy prey" like bligh, beattie and paloschuk.
bligh and beattie gave away the gas for about 1 billion in royalties. a similar ammount of gas at the same time coming out of Qatar cost the multinationals 20 billion in royalties. no wonder multinationals like labor governments. they are full of pussies.
but joh had the best model of all.
you could mine the coal but the government owned the rail, the ports and they charged huge fees to move the stuff. HUGE and way over the top. he squeezed them til it hurt.
you could build your aluminium refinery in gladstone but the government built the enormous power plant next door and you paid HUGE prices for the power.
all straight back into the government coffers.
and no "one off deal".
you paid and paid in perpetuity.
you never stopped paying joh.
a "minerals rent tax" that worked.
and then we had swan and rudd try to tax miners and the tax cost more to administer then it collected
and now turnbull and morrison tried to tax iron ore but the bottom fell out so they tax the gold miners (and the banks).in fact anyone who is successful has a big target on their back.
this is communism, pure and simple.
this is the politics of envy and the politics of driving everyone to be mediocre.
and now we will have blackouts and appeals not to use your air conditioner.
in the country which is the worlds biggest exporter of coal and a very big exporter of gas.
and instead we will build batteries and pump water back up the snowy and pay enormous subsidies to danish wind turbine makers to instal turbines which currently make less then 3 % of our electricity needs.
what a sick joke this country is