The report, written by economist Naomi Edwards, finds that over the next five years $50 billion will be sent overseas as dividends to foreign owners of Australian mining ventures.

It also finds that increasing foreign ownership is creating a drag on Australia's current account balance and that net profit margins for copper and gold are 23% and 27% respectively yet they are excluded from the Mineral Resources Rent Tax.

No surprise then that during his National Press Club speech Brown said he would move to expand the MRRT to include coverage of gold and uranium, oppose the company tax cut for big business and work to set up a sovereign wealth fund.

"We will continue to campaign for the Treasury-formulated super profits tax as well as for a sovereign wealth fund so all Australians can benefit from the boom," he said.

"As Canberra buckled under the mining billionaires' bulldozer it left a thinner purse for public infrastructure like bikeways, housing, solar power, cheap light rail in our cities, fast regional rail and, between the biggest cities, high speed rail.

"Labor's compromise on the mining tax may cost the public purse $100 billion over the coming decade. But Tony Abbott, who sides with Gina Rinehart and Xstrata in opposing any tax at all, would rob a further $45 billion from that thinner public purse.

"This mining industry is largely foreign owned. While Australia gets jobs, export income, royalties and company tax from our minerals, the foreign owners get profits, dividends, capital appreciation and influence."

Interestingly the Australian owners of some of these ventures seem to get the same thing but do not seem to cop a mention in Brown's reckoning.

Nor do the Australian inventors that have created technology that has made mining more efficient and environmentally friendly. They run world leading companies yet do not seem to be on his radar.

"Most of Treasury's planned super profits tax is now due to end up in the deep, deep pockets of millionaires in Switzerland, London, Calcutta and Beijing, rather than in Australian schools, hospitals and railways," Brown said.

"Whichever way you look at it Australia should have a better discussion about optimal mineral extraction rates, value-adding and profit ownership."

Brown also makes the point that from Monday, the Greens will hold the balance of power in the Australian Senate.

He argued the party already held the balance of power in the lower house thanks to its sole House of Representatives representative Adam Bandt. Perhaps the independents Bob Katter, Rob Oakeshott, Andrew Wilkie and Tony Windsor may have a different view on that.

Brown's dislike for the nuclear industry is clear from the text of his speech.

"Meanwhile, Australia's uranium is turning up as deadly radioactive materials in Japanese fish and lettuce," he said.

"Approximately 80,000 people have been evacuated from the Fukushima-Australia uranium contamination zone."