En Passant

Last year the mining magnates on Business Review Weekly’s Rich List increased their net wealth $9 billion.  Rudd Labor’s Resource Super Profits Tax (RSPT) will raise $9 billion in its first year. It looks to me like the filthy rich mining bosses can afford the tax.

But what is Labor going to do with the money from the tax? Spend it on other rich bastards in the form of business tax cuts, accelerated depreciation and infrastructure spending on the mines. Oh, and give $240 million of the $9 billion as a superannuation top up  for workers earning below $37000.  $240 million!

To justify this minor tax (pun intended) the Labor Party argues along national bourgeois lines that the minerals belong to all Australians.  But doesn’t it also accept that the aboriginal inhabitants have some rights to the land the rich list’s forefathers drove them off and the bosses benefit from?

Well, the Rudd Government mouths heartwarming platitudes about Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders. But it does nothing, other than invade their country under the guise of the Northern Territory intervention. The gap between aborigines and the rest of Australian society is actually widening under Labor.

On top of this, the mining companies have a long and sorry history of stealing aboriginal land.

So instead of using the RSPT to prop up the after tax profits of the parasites of the ruling class, why doesn’t Rudd Labor use all the $ 9 billion to fund adequate heath and education services to aboriginal people. After all it belongs to them, let’s pay the rent.

Indeed Labor could go much further. Instead of a resource tax the Rudd Government could introduce a Reconciliation and Surviving People’s Tax of 100 percent on the mining companies’ super profits to fund a real reconciliation program with aboriginal people, giving them control of the tens of billions raised annually  to improve their health, housing and education.