Former World Bank chief economist Joseph Stiglitz has admonished that the resource sector has too much control on the political debate on Australia's mining tax.

The Nobel laureate drew similarities between the advertising campaign executed by the Australian mining industry on the resource levy and the US finance industry's power to dilute finance-sector reforms passed by Congress.

''[Australian miners] have been overly influential in shaping the debate,'' Dr Stiglitz said.

He said that to date the windfall gain from the upward sweep in iron ore had gone unduly to the companies, while a disproportionately small portion had gone to Australian citizens.

''The natural resources belong to the people,'' he said. ''You need to have a well-designed competitive auction to have different companies compete so that companies get the necessary returns to do the investment - but the surplus goes to the Australian people.''

Dr Stiglitz compared efforts by the Labor government to obtain a better share of wealth from commodities extracted from Australian soil with a proposal in the US during his role as lead economic adviser to President Bill Clinton.

His remarks come as the Association of Mining and Exploration Companies relaunches an ad campaign in a bid to force the Gillard government to revise its minerals resource rent tax.

Speaking as a guest of the Economic Society of Australia, Dr Stiglitz said miners in advanced industrial countries ''try to make the most of spurious arguments that often have a grain of truth''.

''What we've seen in the battle for financial reform [in the US] is very, very akin,'' he said.

''Most Americans felt very strongly we needed financial reform, but the campaign contributions, the lobbying, the revolving doors in American politics, were sufficiently strong that they could outweigh the strength of the well-being of 309 million Americans.''

The outcome had left a weaker financial-sector reform, Dr Stiglitz said.