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Billionaires' reasons for not sharing are a bit rich

From: Herald Sun
May 28, 2011 12:00AM


HOW much is enough? $1 million, $10 million, $1 billion? In the case of our richest Australians, even several billion dollars doesn't seem to be enough.

They want more.

Take Australia's richest person, mining heiress Gina Rinehart. She topped the latest Rich 200 list this year with an estimated wealth of $10 billion.

Cosying up behind her are fellow mining billionaires Andrew Forrest with his $6 billion and Clive Palmer with $5 billion - chicken feed, really.

Three of the top five Aussie billionaires make their fortunes from digging up Australia's natural resources and selling them overseas.

And a lot of this new-found wealth has been pure good fortune, as demand for resources around the world has pushed prices sky high.

Yet when it comes to sharing those profits a bit more fairly, they have and still are fighting tooth and nail against it.

When the Government announced a mining company "super profits" tax, the cries were deafening.

It's always interesting how much farther voices carry when they speak from the top of a big pile of money.

And those big wealthy voices were heard loud and clear in Canberra, to say nothing of the multi-million-dollar advertising campaign they thought was worth paying for to kick the fight along even further.

But how is it that $10 billion or $6 billion or $5 billion is not enough?

And why can't ordinary Australians share in this good fortune from digging up Aussie dirt that's supposed to belong to us all?

You see, the extra mining tax, now a much watered-down version called the resources rent tax, is not all destined for Canberra's bottomless money pit but will also boost everyone's superannuation savings.

THE money - that the big wealthy miners think is unjust to share - is to help fund the Government's push to increase compulsory super contributions from 9 per cent to 12 per cent and boost retirement contributions to our lowest-income earners.

Most Aussie super balances are not nearly enough, and never will be, to provide a comfortable lifestyle in retirement.

So taxing the rich miners and spreading some of the good fortune across the superannuation savings of every Australian sounds like a no-brainer to me.

And why not?

Take Ms Rinehart, for example: a healthy good-looking 57-year-old working woman with a $10 billion nest egg - and the chance to accumulate several billion dollars more before retirement.

Now compare this with the super balance of the average 57-year-old Aussie working woman of just $54,500 - and if the investment gods are with her, she might squeak that up to a whopping $63,000 by the time she retires.