Macfarlane slams opposition as MRRT repeal is blocked in Senate
PERTH (miningweekly.com) – The highly contested minerals resource rent tax (MRRT) remains in play after the Australian Labor and Greens parties banded together to defeat the abolition of the tax in the Senate.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott introduced legislation to abolish the MRRT in December last year, in the hopes of having the tax repealed by July this year. However, in a Senate meeting this week, the current ruling party was unable to garner enough support to abolish the tax.
Minister for Industry Ian Macfarlane said the Labor Party’s refusal to get rid of the mining tax was a direct assault on the Australian economy, in particular the strong mining state of Western Australia.
“The Australian resources sector is one of our economic powerhouses. By voting to keep the MRRT, the Labor Party has shown it doesn’t care about safeguarding billions of dollars of future investment or the tens of thousands of jobs the mining industry supports,” Macfarlane said.
“While the Australian government has been working to get rid of the tax burden on the mining sector and to encourage investment, the opposition has been working with the Greens to burden the resources sector with a tax that discourages new growth and investment, and makes it harder for Australia to compete with other nations.”
He said that the MRRT was a tax that had hit mining companies with layers of red tape and tens of millions of dollars of compliance costs, while generating virtually no income.
The projected revenue raised from the MRRT has been downgraded on several occasions, with the tax only raising A$126-million in the first half of the 2012/13 financial year.
“It’s a classic example of policy bungling from the Labor Party, which spent six years in government treating the resources sector as an ATM for its reckless spending,” Macfarlane said.
“The Labor Party doesn’t even have the decency to be upfront with the Australian people.”
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