Treasury exposes mining tax flaws...

Why all this waste of Public Service time & thus taxpayer Money? It a few months time the whole farce will become history so who care who was the biggest fool. Can't we concentrate on the realities after Julia & Scrudd and get on with repairing the damage they have caused to us?

Dumb and dumber, this sorry saga continues. Swan should resign and gillard should put us all out of our misery and call the election today.

Wayne Swan and Martin Parkinson should both resign, or be forced out! This is unbelievable incompetence from the Australian Treasurer and the Head of Treasury, who appears complicit because of his now public disclosure.

Whitlam and his duumvirate, Swann and Ferguson in private talks with Miners... makes one wonder whether the Unions and their Labor Party are really interested in due parliamentary processes. God knows what else goes on that the Elecyorate should be conerned about.

Kerry Packer said "You only get one Alan Bond in a lifetime" when he sold NINE for a premium. Likewise the three CEOs of BHP, Rio and Xtrata must have been rubbing their hands with glee and licking their lips when Gillard, Swan and Ferguson walked into the room. What a bunch of incompetent morons in charge of the country.

It's not so bad that the tax didn't raise much money, after all, it's a profits based tax. It's do bad that this foolish govt spent all eggs money before it came in.

What a pair of incompetent fools Gillard and Swan must be. It's not just their incompetence in setting this whole debacle up, it's about Sovereign Wealth. What share do we get from this, the people of this country need to know? It' s ok to splash cash around if you have it in your hand, however this pair of fools have splashed the cash and now have to borrow from overseas to repay it. What breaks my heart is that they are still promising huge spending plans for the future and there is no way they are going to pay the debt that is recurring every day. Fools, the pair of them.

Inept ,incompetent and in disgrace .Labor are on par with the greens when it comes to economic management.

Rio says that they paid no mining tax but $7B in other taxes including royalties I suspect. This shoud not be overlooked. The industry is paying a lot of tax. If we must have an additional burden on this industry, then the tax structure is in fact pretty good as a super profits tax. If prices go up more profits and more tax. But rejigging this tax to make a bigger take when there are not super profits will have a negative effect on investment and the returns to our superannuation funds. If the government takes too much profit from these companies they will eventually exit and leave the industry in the hands of Chinese companies who are less interested in profit. In which case even less Tax will be paid. This the a real risk.

What a joke, this government is useless, and as for the mining tax you can blame Gillard and Swan as they were responsible for it. How much longer do we have to put up with these bunch of clowns for? Too long if you ask me.

And these folks did not see this? Either this government has not done is homework or they were convinced to change the depreciation writeoff values to get the three big miners on side. Therefore, they either sold the farm before they signed up or they were outclassed by the miners. My money is on the fence.

Not very smart from " the worlds greatest treasurer" in other word he is "the worlds dimmest treasurer". A great big joke

This government has got so farcical that the whole world is laughing at AUSTRALIA.

Time to get a petition going to get rid of the untruthful PM and Treasurer. We can't wait until September. They have misled the House on this issue infact lied to the House, it should be all over. Recall Parliament now, the people demand it.

Incompetence and failure with no accountability. That's the problem with labor. Any minister that stuffs up on the scale that Swan Gillard and Ferguson have should be sacked. But we have a situation where they are all as incompetency as each other. There's no CEO type figure setting standards of performance

In other words, Gillard has misled parliament...

Maybe Wayne Swan will stop harping on about the Coalition having Treasury vet its "costings". His own "costings" don't look too flash.

Swan demands the Coalition have their numbers crunched by Treasury? How many times has Treasury let us down in the last five years? Who do we trust indeed.

So, surprise, surprise, the world's greatest treasurer, and his boss, have stuffed up again. How long do we have to put up with this rag tag union rabble running the country?

Proving once again that Labor is too stupid to run the country!

so we the tax payers get screwed again by swan/ gillard/fergusion no surprise this govt is completely ignorant re $$$ management how much longer will the voters of OZ suffer this incompetent govt we wait to give pay back at the ballot box SOON PLEASE

As was pointed out by an online writer yesterday, Swan only has an Arts Degree - in Public Administration, apparently. Therein lies a huge problem, the treasurer running this country does not have an Economics or Accountancy Degree. He would not even get to the interview level, if he was applying for a private enterprise job in a similar position. The other problem child JG, has a Law Degree. These days, the Degrees and their professions are becoming increasingly specialised, due to the complicated world we live in. Voters need to start demanding more information on potential politicians - before we get to vote for them and if voted into office, the leaders must be more careful about examining the qualifications and skills, in my personal opinion, of those they promote into powerful positions. It is not the 19th century, when you might be able to go a long way without a university degree. At least with TA, we know he is well qualified, so no problem there.

Mr Swan please resign . It is obvious this tax has actually cost us money. Australian is it possible to start a petition in your paper asking for his resignation

World's greatest treasurer.

Parkinson is covering up. When he's trying to forecast revenue, and he doesn't have the data he needs, what would any reasonable person expect him to do? He's got two choices: either a) ask for the data, or b) tell Swan and Gillard no reliable estimate can be made, and why. Which did he do? Ian Mcfarlane said at the time the MMRT would collect no tax, and he wasn't the only one. But Treasury went ahead and prophesied a fair few billions that didn't eventuate. In the event, the massed brainpower of the Treasury Department didn't come close. Because Parkinson is a nong? Doubtful. Because Swan insisted? Was Treasury misinformed? More likely the latter. Hard to say, since when Gillard & Swan 'negotiated' their 'secret' deal, they did so without Treasury's involvement. That was unprecedented, and obviously it was a VERY bad move. Regardless, the reliability and integrity of Treasury have been seriously compromised. Surely, the rationale for their advice to government is on record. The honest thing would be to revisit the process used to estimate MMRT income at a public inquiry. Billions are involved. We need to know what went wrong, and why.

It is not only Dr Parkinson who has stated that the design of the mining tax is flawed and thus failing to produce the forecast revenue.This tax was negotiated by the PM, Treasurer and Martin Ferguson behind closed doors with the three biggest mining companies in Australia. it appears that no treasury officials were present. We ar now witnessing the results of that old saying 'do't send a child to do a man's job'. This is exactly waht has occurred. The three government stooges have been proved to be totally out of their depths and had therefore been completely out manoeuvred.It also seems to have been illustrated that the government negotiators were unaware of the difference between royalties and taxes. The net result is the unholy mess in which the government now finds itself and with little chance of extricating itself before the election.

The MRRT is obviously so badly designed that even Treasury doesn't fully understand it. Moreover, the federal government has declared its intention to interfere with ('negotiate') mining royalties, a sovereign right of the states. This tax deserves to be abolished.

So even if the price of the minerals had not drop would Mr Swan still only received $350 million dollars in tax and not the billions he expected. If Mr Swan and Miss Gillard did just pick the bones out of the Henry Report reforms them this would be a less of a problem. But no they are to frighten because they must pander to the people and borrow more money.I would like to hear Ken Henry on this whole matter. In the chain of money, tax is the last and lowest thing you what to pay and mining companies have proven this point.Both Swan and Ferguson failed in arithmetic class, no doubt Swan and Co will blame Treasury. No doubt we will hear more.This tax will not to hard to over turn by team Abbott as there is no money in it. Next question how much revenue from the carbon tax.

outsmarted by big business = this is what happens to union political wannabes with no business experience

They introduce a tax which they say will produce billions of dollars in income, they then spend the money that they have not yet collected, and then work out that the money is actually not their to be collected. However it is no ones fault, and no one will resign, or even apologise. In the the private sector they would all be sacked.

So the government knew they may not have had all the facts but they erred on the upper end of the estimates and then portrayed it as gospel. Sounds familiar....more hubris from an incompetent government. Just as well Swan is the Treasurer of the Year because obviously only he saved us from a worse outcome.

Another misleading headline amid the ongoing misinformation program being run by this publication. This publication is now nothing more than a conservative opinion mouthpiece.

How interesting.....not only the general public and Caucus kept in the dark, but the Public Service as well. How long will it take for everyone to realise that Julia Gillard does not play with a 'straight bat'? Just wait and see, she will almost certainly endeavour to use Treasury as a weapon against her opponents at the forthcoming election.

Our Feral (Federal) Govt have much to learn. If Ian McFarlane knew that no tax would be paid one week after the new Gillard- Swan renegotiation was signed off, how is it that it took this Govt years to find out!

It just goes to show how incredibly incompetent and ignorant Gillard, Swan and Parkinson are to allow the mining companies to design the tax. Of COURSE Rio Tinto, X-Strata and BHP didn't pay tax - THEY designed it that way and must be laughing all the way to the bank. NOW Swan and Gillard want to help themselves further to our Superannuation. September 14 is too far away - we want an election now.

It is beyond belief that our country is in the hands of people so incapable, naive and un-business like. What fools!

Julia Gillard and Wayne Swan both have no scruples. They stand in Parliament and blame everything but themselves, then they leave a senior public servant to deliver the truth in a forum where lies cannot be told. Both Swan and Gillard would have been briefed on everything that Dr Parkinson said. It would have been no surprise. Yet they still let Dr Parkinson take the heat for their own incompetence. Why would you want to work for these poor excuses for leaders?

It is appalling to think that Swan and co got it so wrong. It is obvious that they went in as chickens to the slaughter with the savvy mining giants outsmarting them.

We want the news, not the opinions of propagandistic journalists

I believe it's time that all State and Federal politicians should be made to disclose their annual Taxation Returns for public scrutiny.

What has treasury been doing since mid 2010,that they only FIND a flaw in 2012.

This massive error by Gillard, Swan and Ferguson has caused extreme economic damage to Australia as a nation. It was a decision that has now been proven to have been seriously against the national interest. Industry would not tolerate such incompetence in management of such magnitude and those responsible would resign as happeneqd with RIO recently. If such a blunder occurred in industry an Extraordinary Special Meeting of shareholders would be called and demand that heads roll. In political terms this would equate to an uprising in the community demanding an immediate election on the grounds of serious economic mismanagement of the nations finances amounting to negligence at the highest level.

And this is the Treasury on whose costings Julia Gillard demands each Coalition policy be judged in the 7 months to the Federal election. When you pull assumptions out of a hat and neglect relevant factors because they don't fit the needs of the government of the day, you are totally compromised. Wayne Swan, Treasury and even Martin Ferguson were focused only on Julia Gillard's coup-against-Kevin day pledge to solve the Mining Tax crisis and end the advertising campaign of BHP, Rio and others. Blind Freddy could see that WA had only to lift its royalties and, under this agreement, the Commonwealth would have to forego revenue, and anyone with business nous should have seen the implications of the write-off clauses in the agreement. But not the Gillard government - nor Treasury! They all deserve the opprobrium for their stupidity which is heaped upon them today!! And more!!!

Lots of comments about how dumb/incompetent etc swan is, but who voted swan in with a majority on 2PP in the Qld seat of Lilley in 2010 and before? Seems to me there are plenty of people in Qld who live in the electorate of Lilley that are much dumber and stupid than what wayne swan is.