Proposals for new taxes on Australia’s mining industry have been a source of con-troversy since a proposal for a Resource Super Profits Tax cost then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd his job in June 2010. Julia Gillard replaced Rudd as prime minister and negotiated the MRRT with Australia’s three largest international miners—BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto and Xstrata. However, the tax has drawn ongoing criticism from other sectors of the mining industry.

The Association of Mining and Explora-tion Companies (AMEC) on March 19 post-ed an article on its website headlined “Sad day for national interest.” The MRRT is ill-conceived, poorly designed, unfair and dis-criminatory AMEC CEO Simon Bennison said. “AMEC is astounded that a tax favor-ing large multinational businesses and dis-criminating against smaller businesses can be passed through Parliament. The tax is simply unfair to smaller emerging miners and is so complex that the administrative and compliance burden on industry and government will be extreme.”

News reports suggested that MRRT may face court challenges and also that the gov-ernment’s forecast of A$10.6 billion in rev-enues from the tax during its first three years would not actually be realized.