MRRT to hit parliament tomorrow, Australia

IRJ – November 1 – Anticipation mounts as the much debated Mineral Resource Rent Tax (MRRT) is due to go before Australia’s parliament for introduction, Wednesday, and vital voter, independent MP Tony Windsor, wants answers related to Coal Seam Gas (CSG) before he pledges support for the proposed legislation.

Windsor and co-independent MP Rob Oakshott want clarification on how the legislation will cover CSG activity, and specifically how it will protect farmlands. Windsor, the seat-holderof  north News South Wales (NSW) New England, has previously said that he wants up to $400 million a year gathered from the MRRT to go to impact assessment works surrounding how CSG activity affects agricultural land.

The MRRT—part of 10 bills Treasurer Wayne Swan is set to introduce tomorrow—will impose a new system of taxation, totalling around 30 per cent of ‘super profits’ made by coal and iron ore miners. It is slated to come into effect on July 1, 2012.

Speaking to AAP news agency, Windsor said that Australia’s politicians “have got to get back to a process people have got confidence in.
“The science and the policy is pretty much non-existent,” he added.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard has said she is prepared to discuss the matter, and recently assured MPs that her cabinet is “listening to the science” behind the tax plans proposed.

Meanwhile, the Australian Green party has suggested that the tax be extended to cover gold miners, but this suggestion was quickly shut down by Swan, who said “The fact is that we would have had extreme complexity if we had decided to tax a number of commodities in a mine and not tax a number of other commodities in the same mine”.

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