The Minerals Council of Australia and the key mining states of Western Australia and Queensland are up in arms against the new national resources tax proposed by the Rudd government and the Henry tax review.
The Business Council of Australia is enthusiastic for tax reform but it does not want a tax on natural resources. The Rudd government is right,natural resources belong to all of us not just the Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce where Graham Bradley head of NCA voiced his concerns.
The quality of our employment is going down and so is our take home pay. We hear that unemployment has dropped from 5.5% to 5.3% last month as business took on an extra 52,700 workers but when you look deeper things are not so good. According to Treasury secretary Ken Henry there has been a fall in the numbers of hours being worked,with more people working part-time and the fall in hours bring a full-time unemployment rate closer to 7.3%
Employment Minister Julia Gillard said the number of unemployed was still 120,000 higher than it was in September 2008 when the global financial crisis started.
The Australian,12.02.10 p.4.
