Joseph Collins (Department of Political Economy, University of Sydney) - 'Possession vis-à-vis power: Toward a socially significant theory of mineral-rent in Australia'

The mining tax in Australia was a short-lived and impotent affair. Its second coming portends a contentious fate for the elections in Western Australia scheduled for March 2017. Brendon Grylls’ proposal to raise the production rental fee on iron ore to $5 per tonne from its current level of $0.25 has focused the minds of the politicians involved while stoking the ire of BHPB and Rio Tinto. Will this initiative fail as did the last attempt to claw back resource revenues from the mining giants? Probably. This episode does, however, present an opportunity to reflect critically upon why resource rent taxation seems to be a quagmire of ineffective policy and inept economics. Perhaps the problem with debates on this issue is the narrow scope of rent theory which underpins parliamentary-political machinations and public discussion. This seminar paper brings rent theory in for a critical reappraisal. It contends that orthodox rent theory is deficient in its refusal to accept the active role of modern landed property in conditioning the rent relation. Beginning with the Physiocrats and going through Ricardo and the Marginalists, this analysis concludes that rent theory today must integrate a historically specific theory of property in land to begin to understand the social relations which constrain subsequent policy debates around resource rent taxation.

Organised by the Department of Political Economy at the University of Sydney.

Date and Location:

Thursday 22 September 2016, Darlington Centre Boardroom, 4:00pm – 5.30pm.

All welcome!