What do the big foreign-owned mining companies have in common with the big foreign-owned purveyors of cancer sticks? A lot of money to con punters and pressure pollies, and a lot of weak arguments.

One argument the two industries have in common is that the resource super-profits tax and the plain packaging of cigarettes lack any proof they will work and have never been adopted anywhere in the world. Great argument: it has not been done before, therefore you shouldn't do it.

This is the poor little stupid Australia argument. We should always merely follow the lead of other countries because we're not smart enough to dream up anything good ourselves. Its logic is foolproof: if it has never been done before there's no evidence it works, and if we never try it there never will be.

But if the idea's so unlikely to work, why are the global giants fighting so hard to stop it being tried? Why not leave the stupid Aussies to stew in their own juice? Perhaps because the rest of the world is watching our ''experimental legislation'' and if it works - as it's most likely to - other, bigger countries will copy it.

The big miners claimed the supposedly retrospective introduction of the super-profits tax would increase Australia's ''sovereign risk''. The big tobacco-pushers claim plain packaging would rob them of their brands and infringe ''international trademark and intellectual property laws''.