Forrest, one of the world’s richest men, claims that a private deal over Australia’s controversial super-tax on coal and iron ore cost former prime minister Kevin Rudd his job.

Gillard, the woman who replaced Rudd, denies that she did anything more than settle a dispute that was damaging Australia’s economy and international reputation.

It sounds obvious, but both cannot be right, which is why Australia and its important mining industry, is set for a prolonged brawl of claim and counter claim which can only have one winner – Forrest.

Gillard, trailing badly in public opinion polls and with more trouble brewing on her back bench, cannot afford to indulge in a slanging match with a private, non-political, citizen, no matter how loud and colourful that citizen might be.

If she does lash out at Forrest and argue that he is merely a rich man indulging his fantasies then she will, rightly, be accused of dodging the essence of his allegations.

If she does that under Parliamentary privilege she will be, rightly, accused of using her lofty position as a smokescreen to avoid answering the questions raised by Forrest.

And what are those questions?

Essentially, Forrest reckons that BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto and Xstrata orchestrated a brilliant manoeuvre which achieved multiple objectives, such as:

• The big mining houses achieving a much lower tax rate than originally proposed in the first version of the mining tax, the one championed by Rudd;
• Delivering the prime minister’s job to Gillard because she was able to make a “peace in our time” claim to her Labor Party colleagues; and
• Isolating Rudd, leading ultimately to his loss of a Cabinet position because he could not convince enough backbenchers that he was the best man for the PM’s job.

For Forrest, the challenge is proving what amounts to an agreement between some of Australia’s most powerful companies, and some of the country’s most powerful politicians to settle a dispute in a way which triggered the displacement of the country’s prime minister.

It is a breathtaking claim that is yet to be sustained with documentary proof of the type investigators call a “smoking gun”

Forrest, obviously, was not in the room when the big miners and government representatives were arguing the fine detail – and neither, so it seems, was Rudd.

Those are telling points for Forrest’s critics to throw back at him, suggesting that he has read too many conspiracy thrillers, and if senior people in government and senior people in the big miners agree that nothing untoward happened in their negotiations then it must be so.

The problem for the big miners and government staff defending Gillard is two-fold: Firstly, why is Forrest bothering because his company, Fortescue, will probably benefit as much as BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto and Xstrata, from Gillard’s Mark Two version of the mining tax; and secondly, what does Rudd know?

On the first point, Forrest can claim that he is going in to bat for small miners who have been sidelined by a deal which favours the biggest companies – the sort of thing Robin Hood might do, fight for the forgotten people.

On the second point, there has been a deep silence from Rudd, the man who has paid the highest price for Australia’s mining tax fiasco, and silence is not an attribute normally associated with Rudd.

It’s when you bore down into Forrest’s claims of a private deal between the big miners and senior government officers closest to Gillard that sideline critics wonder what will come next.

Will Rudd make an appearance and dismiss Forrest’s allegations, or support them? His silence so far is tantamount to support.

Or will Gillard and her treasurer, Wayne Swan, continue to lambast Forrest as a rich man with idle time and an axe to grind?

As far as Dryblower can interpret events, Forrest is on a crusade that he cannot lose because he is not running for re-election next year, and is painting himself as a mining sector hero.

Gillard and Swan have much more to worry about because Forrest has successfully opened another front on which they are being forced to fight, whether they like it or not.

And in the background, keeping his ammunition dry, is Rudd, a man bearing more than one grudge and a man who knows a lot about what happens in the backrooms of government – and might even have the odd document to demonstrate who said what and to whom.

This article first appeared in ILN's sister publication MiningNews.net.