Boost sand royalties and rates

 The State government decision to increase royalties on brown coal should be followed by a similar move on charges paid for sand extraction.The tripling of Victoria's brown coal royalty rate will net an extra $252 million over four years which, the Government says, will help to pay for the  infrastructure, health and education plans. A similar amount could be gained from sand. The sand extraction companies currently pay virtually nothing in royalties, and only pay council rates based on the value of each site as farm land – even though the value of the resource on each site is often nany millions of dollars. The value of the resource should be rated as soon as planning permits are issued in the same way that development land is rated. That could help to remediate the effects of the destruction of vegetation, wildlife habitat and contamination of groundwater. 


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