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February 21st, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda Australia’s third-biggest iron ore miner, Fortescue Metals Group, would have struggled to raise the finance it needed if the federal government’s mining tax had been in place, a Senate inquiry has heard.
The controversial minerals resource rent tax (MRRT), to be introduced on July 1, seeks to impose a 30 per cent tax on the super profits of iron ore and coal mining companies.
It was passed by the House of Representatives late last year but is still to be given the tick of approval by the Senate.
Fortescue’s strategy director Julian Tapp said it was touch and go in 2006 when the company, which recently posted an $801 million half-year profit, set out to raise finance for its Pilbara iron ore projects.
“We may have got through there, we’ve climbed up the ladder and we’re able to survive because now we can rely on our cashflow,” Mr Tapp told the Senate economics legislation committee sitting in Canberra.
“But we recognise that others coming after us will now have an additional hurdle, which is going to be the difficulty of financing.
“Particularly when that comes to the need for significant infrastructure, and those needs are huge if you want to get into the iron ore game.”
The next generation of miners would be reliant on debt to finance projects, Mr Tapp said.
“It’s our considered opinion, knowing how hard it was to raise that money, that had this tax regime been in place back then, when we had to raise the money, the financing would not have been achievable,” he said.
Mr Tapp said was prejudicial against small companies reliant on debt finance because Treasury considered them risky.
“I’m not saying, `This is a disaster. It’s going to stop all investment and we’re all going to go elsewhere’,” he said.
“But I am saying it will definitely impinge on future investment and it will definitely make it difficult for newcomers to finance investment.”
Minerals Council of Australia (MCA) chief Mitch Hooke disagreed, saying the tax was “workable” in its current form.
“We have done the best we can with the hand of cards that we were dealt with,” he told the committee.
“We still have work to do in mitigating the adverse consequences and the unnecessary complexities to the compliance costs, but this is a much better designed tax, notwithstanding that it was not necessary in the first place.”
Asked if the tax should be passed into law in its current state, he said: “Yep.”
Prime Minister Julia Gillard negotiated a heads of agreement for the MRRT with three major miners – BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto and Xstrata – after the original idea of a resource super-profits tax (RSPT) caused a bitter row between the former government led by Kevin Rudd and the mining industry.
Prominent economist Henry Ergas, from Wollongong University, said the proposed tax would deter efficient investment, risk taking and growth in the next generation of miners.
“I think it would be a great loss to our economy,” he told the inquiry.
“What we really want is the next generation of Rios, Xstratas, BHP Billitons, Fortescues – those are the people we need to worry about.”
Association of Mining and Exploration Companies chief executive Simon Bennison told the hearing his group would continue to oppose the tax because it was unfair, discriminated against smaller miners and was complex in administrative terms.
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