MCA responds to Michael West Media article

Michael West Media should immediately retract the false and misleading article published on 26 May in which it claims that Australia’s miners may be receiving more in government subsidies than they pay in royalties.

The assertion that mining companies receive more in subsidies than they pay in royalties is demonstrably wrong.

According to the Productivity Commission’s authoritative Trade and Assistance Review, the mining industry received $390.9 million in budgetary outlays and tax concessions in 2018-19 (the latest year analysed) – equivalent to just 3 per cent of the total royalties paid by minerals companies in the same year ($14.6 billion).

The Productivity Commission also points out that:

• Tariff and budgetary assistance to mining is ‘disproportionately small’
• The effective rate of assistance for mining – the ratio of total assistance to output – was just 0.2 per cent in 2018-19, the same low rate as the previous three years
• Over the six years to 2018-19, budgetary assistance to mining declined by nearly 30 per cent
• Three-quarters of budgetary assistance attributed to mining consists of R&D tax incentive offsets, which are available to all industries.