Sharing the profits of the resources boom

So is it a "great big tax on mining", as Tony Abbott (big surprise there - not) would have us believe?

Or is it about bloody time that the Australian people got a reasonable share in the profits from a once-off extraction of goods from our lands?

Economics editor Peter Martin says the latter:

But its not really right to think of it as a tax. It's more of a profit-sharing arrangement. At the moment within Australia the states don't share profits with mining companies, they charge them for resources. The charges are levied at more than 40 different rates, usually applied to the value or volume of what is mined, and range from a low of 3.5 per cent for uranium mines in South Australia to a high of 10 per cent for coal mines in Queensland. They are charged whether or not the mine turns a profit and are increased whenever the state needs more money. Queensland has just upped its charges. Western Australia is likely to do the same.
If those charges were replaced with a nationwide resource rent tax as the Henry Review recommends Australia would sacrifice income while the mining companies are doing the hard work for it of developing the resources, and in return would share the booty when those companies have more than got their money back.
 
And perhaps there's a way to further Australia's interests in this. One of the big problems we face is that our resources are shipped off-shore in bulk, raw unprocessed form, then value-added, then imported back as finished products.
 
What if miners were discounted a proportion of their levy where the raw product is value-added through processing here before being exported? Just a thought...