'Twiggy' fails in High Court mining tax challenge
KALGOORLIE (miningweekly.com) – Mining magnate Andrew "Twiggy" Forrest on Wednesday expressed his disappointment in the High Court’s decision to dismiss his challenge against the validity of the minerals resource rent tax (MRRT).
Forrest, backed by his company Fortescue Metals, launched legal action against the MRRT in June last year, claiming that the tax was unconstitutional.
However, the High Court on Wednesday dismissed the challenge, with the Court finding that the MRRT did not discriminate between states, as claimed by Forrest in his challenge.
“We gave it a great shot. We went in, we believe, on strong constitutional grounds and we are happy that we won’t die wondering,” Forrest said on the sidelines of the Diggers and Dealers conference.
He noted that the next step would be to ensure that Australians were made aware of the circumstances surrounding the introduction of the MRRT, which was first introduced in 2010 under a deal with the three mining majors BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto and Xstrata.
“History will judge this tax for what it is, and to a measure it's already done that. We had the multibillion-dollar predictions of how much this tax will raise, and the multibillion-dollar disappointment of how much it didn’t. As each year rolls on, it will become more farcical and more obvious to the Australian people that this tax was a pure political fix, it came in under bad governance, and the result was, therefore, predictable.”
Forrest admitted that, while Fortescue was likely to pay any tax under the MRRT, the company had spent some A$5-million this year in compliance.
“Companies like ours will waste millions to no one’s benefit, in the administration of this tax, because of its complexity. And it makes me glad that we challenged it.”
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