CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
A bloke who has spent just about every cent he made as a fly-in-fly-out mining labourer between 2010-2014 says the mining tax ruined our economy by discouraging international corporations from investing in full-scale resource extraction projects.
“What was the point of it?” roars 32-year-old Micky Kelp.
“What, so we could keep a bit for our government?”
“Like they fucking deserve it”
The mining tax, which was created to scrape 30% of the “super profits” from the mining of iron ore and coal in Australia, was introduced on 1 July 2012. It stipulated that a company was to pay the tax when its annual profits reached a certain amount – so that the nation could walk away from the resources boom with a bit of a cut. The original threshold was to be $50 million until independent MP Andrew Wilkie negotiated a bit more for the companies, leaving it at $75 million.
However, as one of the many men who were on and under the ground during this phenomenon of environmental intrusion, Mickey says he’s pretty certain the mining tax fucked the whole thing up.
He claims that as a lifelong reader of the Daily Telegraph and devout talkback radio listener, it wasn’t lost on him that the Labor minister were just trying to get a piece of the pie.
“They were just jealous that I was making more coin than they were fresh out of school” he says.
“Tony Abbot is the best Prime Minister this country had for getting rid of that shit”
As Micky points out, the concept of leaving a bit to help mend the earth and provide Australians with a bit to show for the resources being torn out of their soil by Indian and Chinese companies didn’t sit well with the Tony Abbott-led coalition, who insisted it was hurting working class families and promised to destroy it if he were elected. His party won the 2013 election, and after one failed attempt to pass the bill, the Mining Tax Repeal Bill finally passed both houses of Parliament on 2 September 2014 and the tax was subsequently repealed.
“You should have seen how much fucking tax I had to pay when I was FIFO, and then they go and sting the bosses for more”
“It was a fucking stitch up mate”
With a busted jet-ski in his Titan shed and eight plasma flat screens that are now too embarrassingly outdated to have on his walls, Micky says none of this would have happened if it wasn’t for the greenies.
“I wouldn’t be working on the wharfs that’s for sure” he says.
“I’d be still on 220k a year”
