Coal, iron ore exports slide
Coal and iron ore are losing their place as drivers of Australia's economic growth, according to the SMH.
Trade figures for February show income from resource exports down for the second consecutive month. Over the quarter, income from coal exports slid 19% and income from metal ores and minerals exports slid 10%.
Make mining tax 40% or finish as white trash: Hayden
Former Labor leader and governor-general Bill Hayden said the mining tax should be lifted to 40% and without a levy we would be the “white trash of the South Pacific”, the AFR reports.
Hayden said Australia without a resource tax would be remembered as “the lotus eaters of Terra Australis who glutted themselves into economic oblivion” and “blew the chance of a lifetime”
Old Avebury team digs deep for coal listing
The company that offloaded the troubled Avebury nickel mine in Tasmania for a pretty penny has re-emerged as a Queensland-focused coal explorer and is due to list next month, The Australian reports.
Allegiance Coal is the latest venture from the same Allegiance Mining team that in early 2008 backed an $852 million takeover by Zinifex, which later that year merged with Oxiana to create OZ Minerals.
Allegiance Coal chairman Tony Howland-Rose, who held the same role with Allegiance Mining, yesterday announced in an email that the "old Avebury team" had been busy for the past four years amassing 14 coal tenements covering 236 square kilometres in Queensland.
Consumer watchdog applies the brakes on AGL bid
AGL Energy's $1.5 billion bid to buy 100% of Victoria's biggest brown coal-fired power station may not get the smooth passage through the national competition regulator that chief executive Michael Fraser was hoping for, The Australian reports.
The Sydney-based power and gas company said the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission had suspended its investigation into whether AGL could buy the 67.5% of the Loy Yang A power station and brown-coal mine it didn't already own.
AGL would only say the ACCC had asked for more information by April 18 – one day before its previous targeted decision date on the takeover.
