I think you've brought up another topic here thats quite misleading, i see much the same in newspaper like our ABC.
To start with our mining industry is most important for Australia, it's of upmost importance it stays competitive to ensure overseas markets will buy our product, we do not have a monopoly on mining products or mines in the world, there is competition, global competition and because our nation is so reliant on our mining industry for tax revenue and thus social benefits etc it's very important to every Australians well being and it's an absolute must it remains competitive and as profitable as possible, the Australian governments number 1 priority is really to ensure our mining industry remains globally competitive and continues to attract investment over other countries aswell as this ensures future revenues for Australians and lifts our standard of living.
Secondly, you mention 'crumbs' like our ABC does however this is totally incorrect and lets just use BHP to prove 'crumbs' is fake news.
Our government gets 38.9% of everything BHP makes, then Australian workers as share holders through forced superanuation policy get distributed a slice of dividend monies and capital gains which increase individual Australians real wealth from the remaining 61.1%, BHP also has to set aside large amounts of monies from this remaining 61.1% for future investment and for times when it might make losses because we all know theres mining booms and busts or cycles. Also, please don't forget that our government gets 38,9% of BHP's profits without taking one iota of risk, no risk at all, no investment, no shareholding, nothing, this 38.9% cannot be referred to as 'crumbs' if one is rational and honest about the true numbers.
https://www.bhp.com/investors/annual-reporting/economic-contribution-report-2022
Thirdly, If you nationalise BHP and other miners the profits of BHP will disappear, government workers have no where near the ability of the people we have running our mining companies plus the people running them have mandates to make as much money for the SH's and need to be competitively rewarded in the global market place or you'll end up with dimwits and thus the profits will dissappear, and who would finance all the exploration and risk to ensure futures revenue streams are found, developed and made profitable. Mining is a very complicated, high risk, long time frame risky operation, governments have absolutely no hope of running them as efficiently as the current set up and thus would make less money than they currently do and thus would create less revenue for Australia to redistribute through governments plus everyone knows governments are very wasteful spenders, they don't watch the dollars and cents, they recently put a flag up on the HArbour bridge and it cost over $25 million dollars, yes million, just for a flag and the Premier didn't even think it was an unusally high cost for what it was!
Fourth : If you don't nationalise them and just tax them much more than they already are your going to lose investment, Australians forced Super will return less and eventually mining revenues will decline.
The whole idea of it contains many risks and dangers for Australians rather than more benefits, Queensland has already increased mining royalties to the highest in the world on mining companies and we already lost investment as companies no longer find it financially viable to risk the investment required and this is no the only loss either, those investments that have been withdrawn means theres less high paying mining jobs coming online in the future.
At the end of the day Mining companies are too complicated for governments to run, Norway has a much better idea if one is that way inclined politically, it sticks to something real simple with low numbers of employees, i think it's Norway anyway, one of them countries up there, with oil all it has to do is drill some holes, build some pipelines and sell the stuff on the global market, it is also a high margin industry and once set up it's hard to stuff it up and make it unprofitable.
Here in Oz we don't have much oil but we have enormous reserves of untapped gas, now with this i agree the Australian government could do more about the cost of our gas and thus the cost of our power, by rights we should have the cheapest gas in the world for our domestic market and sell as much as we can in the global market, once drilled and pipelines etc set gas don't cost much to produce just like oil, thus Australia should by right have the cheapest gas in the world for our domestic market and for power stations so we can provide cheap energy to Australians, if we reduce the cost of energy here in Oz everyone benefits a lot, cost of goods fall, competitive ness increases which means companies make more money which means governments get more tax revenues, more investment and capital is also attracted here due to things being more competitive aswell and we all grow our wealth quicker, so maybe something like that would be good for government to look at intsead.
