The WA Nationals’ plan for a jobs and GST-destroying mining tax appears stranded with the WA Liberal, Labor, Greens, Shooters, Fishers and Farmers and One Nation parties ruling out implementation of the scheme in letters to the Chamber of Minerals and Energy WA (CME).
In January 2017, CME wrote to all political parties (except the WA Nationals), asking them to unequivocally state they would not go along with the WA Nationals’ tax plan. Within weeks all parties had replied.
Chamber of Minerals and Energy Chief Executive, Mr Reg Howard-Smith, said the clear rejection of the WA Nationals’ tax was welcome and left the party with nowhere to go to implement the plan.
“The WA Nationals cannot implement this tax in isolation and CME now has unequivocal commitments from the other parties that the policy has no support from them," Mr Howard-Smith said.
“While this leaves a significant hole in the funding of commitments made by the WA Nationals, the main objective of CME's anti-tax campaign is to stop a policy that would destroy thousands of local jobs and damage our local industry which provides 20 per cent of the State’s revenue.
“CME is pleased with the responses it has received and accepts them in good faith. It would be very difficult for any of the parties which responded to go back on their word.
“CME and its members will always fight hard against any scheme that unfairly targets the resource sector and puts at risk the investment into the state and tens of thousands of jobs the sector creates which WA families rely on.”
