"I read with great interest your comments on the proposed giant tax on the Australian mining sector. The reality is that not one member of our Labor Government has ever had any business experience. Rudd himself is a bureaucrat with diplomatic experience, and the vast majority of the rest of the cabinet are all ex-union officials. That is why they have managed to squander the billions they had in the coffers when they inherited office to be faced with a huge deficit now. That is why their insulation roll-out is going to cost $1 billion to fix. That is why the building projects for the schools has been rorted by everyone involved - some builders reportedly charging double, and some country schools with not one student doing languages have been forced to build language laboratories! Added to this, we currently have a Governor of the Reserve Bank who could only be compared to his counterpart in Japan, all those years ago, about whom you wrote plenty. He is obsessed with inflation in Australia and seems to be totally oblivious to what is going on in the rest of the world - doggedly putting up our interest rates when Europe is in melt-down. Thanks for the consistent high quality of your comments. I'm off to pour myself another whisky!"

Eoin Treacy's view Thank you for this informative email. Miners are an easy target for acquisitive governments, particularly following the sector's successful rebound over the last 18 months. One would hope that in pursuing such a populist measure they do not succeed in killing the goose that laid the golden egg.