The Australian Greens on Thursday released a report showing the MRRT - which replaced the resource super profits tax proposed by former prime minister Kevin Rudd - would reap up to $115 billion less revenue over nine years than under Rudd’s plan.
“This would be a perverse outcome at a time when the mining industry is [...]

[Read more →]

After his travels to the UK and Canada to examine infrastructure planning, he realised that NSW needed an agency with private sector expertise to advise on government needs, Hazzard said on Thursday.
“Infrastructure NSW will be a key part of our approach to ensure that in future NSW has appropriate infrastructure plans,” he told a Committee [...]

[Read more →]

Conducted by product rating company Canstar Blue, the survey showed one in five respondents were buying green gas, on plans which offset part or all of the greenhouse gas emissions generated from the consumption of natural gas.
The survey also showed Generation Y consumers were more likely to choose the green option with 24 per cent [...]

[Read more →]

“There’s a lot of caution, I think really more than, given the underlying fundamentals in Australia, there should be,” Westpac chief executive Gail Kelly told a business luncheon on Thursday.
She pointed to the booming resources sector, which has Australia’s terms of trade - the ratio of export prices to import prices - at near record [...]

[Read more →]

Mining industry lobby groups expressed disappointment on Wednesday after the West Australian government imposed a royalty on magnetite iron ore, saying it may discourage investment in the fledgling, capital-intensive sector.
A five per cent royalty will be payable on both magnetite iron ore, a low-grade form of the steel making commodity that requires processing, and uranium, [...]

[Read more →]

Adrian Blundell-Wignall, from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), says sovereign debt worries will not affect the growth of Asia’s developing economies, to which Australia’s economy is now so closely linked.
“Is the fiscal crises in the US and Europe big enough to have a negative enough affect on the world to derail the [...]

[Read more →]

“Anyone who is suggesting otherwise is simply having their hand out for more taxpayers’ dollars,” South Australian Senator Sarah Hanson-Young told reporters on Wednesday.
“I don’t think that’s a very honorable or honest thing for people to be saying.
“Under the way the scheme has been structured coal is going to keep booming for quite some time.”
The [...]

[Read more →]

The Seven Group chairman, who recently merged Caterpillar earthmoving equipment dealer WesTrac with the media group and also owns a stake in Chinese English-language newspaper Shanghai Daily, made the comments at the Boao Forum in Perth on Tuesday.
It is the first time the event has been held outside China.
“We must make sure we don’t price [...]

[Read more →]

One day after Prime Minister Julia Gillard unveiled the government’s carbon pricing scheme, Greens leader Bob Brown was in Melbourne spruiking the package, while Regional Development Minister Simon Crean attended a meeting in the Latrobe Valley to talk about the community’s future.
The area’s brown coal-fired power stations, Hazelwood and Yallourn, together provide almost half of [...]

[Read more →]

Rio Tinto managing director for Australia David Peever said Sunday’s announcement was an unfair tax on Australian exporters.
“We are deeply concerned the proposed carbon tax fails to shield Australia’s export sector and leaves it at a disadvantage compared to international competitors,” he said.
The company said the carbon tax would undermine Australia’s international competitiveness and hurt [...]

[Read more →]