Tony Haggarty: "It’s not fair in my view and in my experience, certainly, with a large international corporation, British Petroleum back in the ‘70s and ‘80s, the arguments were the same – multinationals raping and pillaging poor old Australia.  I mean the fact was, in all the time I worked in that industry, there was never a dividend paid.  There were profits made but all of that, profits and more were reinvested in the industry.  And my view has always been dividends are the tip of the icing on the cake.  People talk about taxes and dividends but the real economic benefit comes out of the costs and the capital investment that go into producing the mine and then producing the product from the mine.  And that money stays very close to the mine, it stays in New South Wales in the Hunter Valley and the...Basin and that’s usually 80% of the economic benefit, because there’s only at best a 20% profit.  So I think people lose sight of that and totally, you know, are misled by those statements about the fat cats and the massive profits."

Categories: Coal in Australia, Resources & Economy
Author: Tony Haggarty