Julia Gillard may be gone but her most hideous legacy remains. From The Australian:
LABOR’S already slashed mining tax forecasts are under more pressure, with the nation’s biggest and most profitable iron ore miner paying no tax in the first quarter of the new financial year despite healthy prices and a lower dollar.
It is understood Rio Tinto, which paid no mining tax in the first half of 2012-13, has decided it is not liable to pay any tax for the June quarter due earlier this week.
This is despite quarterly prices averaging a healthy $US125 a tonne in the quarter and providing Rio with more than 50 per cent margins.
Rio and BHP Billiton were expected to be only two miners paying the tax in its early years.
The poor start to government revenue for the year will put pressure on even the meagre $700 million revenue forecast Treasury estimated in May for 2013-14.
…The MRRT was hastily drawn up by the Gillard government and Rio, BHP and Xstrata (which has since merged with Glencore) in the wake of the 2010 ousting of Kevin Rudd, whose original resource super-profits tax provoked an advertising campaign from the miners and played a big part in his decline.
The watered-down, miner-influenced MRRT is just on iron ore and coal.
Actually, the tax was hastily drawn up by BHP, was presented to Wayne Swan, Julia Gillard and Martin Ferguson in the Cabinet Room (Treasury was excluded). The entire watered-down process, if you can call it that, was supported wholeheartedly by The Australian’s coverage at the time.
I think this horrible sell-out did undermine the Gillard government from day one, bur the general lack of anger about it amazes me to this day.
