Drive for surplus blunting RBA cuts – The Aus; Gorgon LNG project blows out to $52bn – The West; Eight-year high for strike delays spurs reform push – The Aus; Cloud over timing of EMAs – the Fin; Oakajee delay irks Beijing – The West
Drive for surplus blunting RBA cuts
Federal and state efforts to repair budget bottom lines at all costs — including Wayne Swan’s drive to deliver a slender surplus this financial year — threaten to undermine the efforts of the Reserve Bank to revive an already fragile economy. The Aus
Gorgon LNG project blows out to $52bn
Chevron has cemented Australia's position as one of the world's most expensive places to do business, announcing a $9 billion blowout on the cost of its huge Gorgon gas project – to $52 billion. The West
Eight-year high for strike delays spurs reform push
Strikes in the public sector and the construction industry have pushed the number of days lost to industrial action to their highest in eight years, prompting employers to renew their push for swift changes to federal workplace laws. The Aus
Cloud over timing of EMAs
Doubts are emerging about whether the Gillard government will accept foreign guest workers on big resources projects before next year's election – including Gina Rinehart’s plan to employ 1,715 foreigners on her $9.5 billion iron ore project in Western Australia. The Fin
Oakajee delay irks Beijing
The most senior Chinese official to visit the barren Oakajee port site since the $6 billion venture hit a funding brick wall says the Middle Kingdom is frustrated that its many iron ore mines in the Mid West have been stranded by the project's delay. The West
THE WEST AUSTRALIAN:
Page 3: Perth motorists could save $150 a year simply by changing the day they buy their petrol.
Page 4: WA's jobs market is defying the doomsayers with new figures showing the state unemployment rate nosediving and employment opportunities growing across the nation.
The WA government should consider emergency financial relief for building subcontractors owed millions of dollars for work as part of a bungled national building program, the group's lawyer says.
Page 6: Peel Health Campus boss Neale Fong has compared the crisis facing the Mandurah hospital with the horror year the West Coast Eagles had in 2010.
Premier Colin Barnett is under more pressure to sign up for the national disability insurance scheme after Julia Gillard sealed a deal with the Liberal premier of Australia's most populous state.
Page 7: Queues at licensing centres will get longer and waiting times for driving tests are set to blow out after an internal Department of Transport memo revealed job losses and overtime bans will be needed to meet Barnett government budget cuts and staff freezes.
Page 13: Nationals leader Brendon Grylls has described the Pilbara as a “basket case” because of government failures to plan for its growth, leaving its 50,000 residents to live with a raw deal.
Page 16: The City of Fremantle has started planning for Fremantle Oval without the Dockers after conceding the AFL club's preferred option was to leave its home of 18 years and move to Cockburn.
Business: Chevron has cemented Australia's position as one of the world's most expensive places to do business, announcing a $9 billion blowout on the cost of its huge Gorgon gas project – to $52 billion.
The most senior Chinese official to visit the barren Oakajee port site since the $6 billion venture hit a funding brick wall says the Middle Kingdom is frustrated that its many iron ore mines in the Mid West have been stranded by the project's delay.
The Albany Port Authority has warned that moves by Chinese interests to establish their own grain handling facilities will be weighed against the potential to attract mining exports.
Though Silver Lake Resources is still 100 per cent focused on gold production, a $20 million copper and base metals exploration program offers intriguing possibilities, according to managing director Les Davis.
The French have entered into a unique joint venture with Aboriginal seafarers that will give them job opportunities in WA's booming oil and gas industry.
Mining industry bodies have backed the state government's decision to prevent mining and exploration on some of the land pegged by Pegasus Metals near the Kimberley's Horizontal Falls.
PMI Gold shares jumped 7.3 per cent yesterday after news the Perth-based company is planning to merge with Vancouver-based Keegan Resources to form a new exploration company under the name of Asanko Gold.
THE AUSTRALIAN FINANCIAL REVIEW:
Page 1: The Gillard government is preparing to dump its commitment to a budget surplus if economic growth slips below its long-term average in the current quarter.
Ten Network director Gina Rinehart has admitted the troubled television company can do more to cut costs and lift ratings but defended its strategy to chase younger viewers.
Big business accused the federal government of backflipping on its own promise to reduce green tape regulations for multi-billion dollar resource projects after the states failed to agree on a nationally consistent approach.
Page 7: State premiers will tell Prime Minister Julia Gillard that they are willing to discuss streamlining inefficient taxes as a trade-off for broadening the base of the GST – starting with increasing the amount raised through online imports.
Page 9: Toyota has opened a new $330 million engine plant, boosting the hard-pressed local car industry and strengthening the business case to build a third model at its Melbourne assembly plant.
Page 11: Abolition of the federal building watchdog and expansion of conditions that can be included in collective agreements have been blamed for more days lost to industrial disputes.
Page 12: One of the world's largest dredging operators says unions are using Australia's “vague and ambiguous” occupational health and safety laws to take advantage of foreign companies entering the market.
Doubts are emerging about whether the Gillard government will accept foreign guest workers on big resources projects before next year's election – including Gina Rinehart’s plan to employ 1,715 foreigners on her $9.5 billion iron ore project in Western Australia.
Page 13: Chevron has slowed plans for the $US12 billion expansion of its Gorgon liquefied natural gas project after a 40 per cent cost blow-out, compounding worries that Australia risks missing out on LNG investment unless it becomes more competitive.
Industrial relations issues and a high Australian dollar are forcing CSL, Australia's largest healthcare group, in increasingly consider countries such as Singapore and Switzerland for manufacturing new products.
Page 15: Boral has joined a growing list of building materials producers to withdraw from manufacturing clinker in Australia in favour of importing the product as the high Australian dollar and rising costs weigh on profits.
BHP Billiton has folded the Olympic Dam project into its Santiago-based base metals portfolio in a move that analysts say reflects the constrained capital environment for miners.
THE AUSTRALIAN:
Page 1: Federal and state efforts to repair budget bottom lines at all costs — including Wayne Swan’s drive to deliver a slender surplus this financial year — threaten to undermine the efforts of the Reserve Bank to revive an already fragile economy.
Strikes in the public sector and the construction industry have pushed the number of days lost to industrial action to their highest in eight years, prompting employers to renew their push for swift changes to federal workplace laws.
Julia Gillard has intensified pressure on hold-out states after clinching a deal with NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell for a full roll-out of the National Disability Insurance Scheme in the state by 2018.
Page 2: A surprise fall in the jobless rate last month shows business is still hiring, but weaker employment outcomes are expected over coming months.
Page 4: Julia Gillard has spurned a state offer to streamline ‘‘green tape’’ on major resource and construction projects, drawing blunt criticism from business leaders taken by surprise at the backdown yesterday in a closed-door forum in Parliament House.
Julia Gillard has defended her record of Labor Party reform following calls by elder statesman John Faulkner to dilute the power of the factions and demands by the backbench for action.
Page 5: Immigration Minister Chris Bowen has defended the practice of screening-out boat arrivals from formal refugee checks, saying it was a necessary response to the escalating number of economic migrants arriving from Sri Lanka.
Page 9: The majority of research conducted in Australian universities is of a world-class standard or higher, the second audit of research quality has found.
Page 10: BHP Billiton has downgraded its Australian presence in the wake of the cancelled Olympic Dam mine expansion, shifting responsibility for the project to Chile.
Business: Chevron could be forced to deliver more bad news about its Gorgon gas project on top of yesterday’s announcement that costs at the company’s massive liquefied natural gas venture in Western Australia have blown out by $9 billion to $52bn thanks to a soaring wages bill, logistics problems and bad weather.
Credit rating agency Moody’s has given the nation’s banking system a clean bill of health but warned pressures could build after next year’s investment peak in the resources sector.
Mining magnate Gina Rinehart continues to keep her billionaire counterparts with a stake in the Ten Network guessing, not yet committing to take part in the No 3 TV company’s $230 million emergency fund raising.
BHP Billiton has been forced to reshuffle its senior executive ranks following the departure of its highly rated Sydney-based energy coal president, Ian Maxwell.
Atlas Iron boss Ken Brinsden says the iron-ore sector’s history of over-promising and under-delivering will see new supply targets missed, boosting demand from existing producers.
The chief of General Electric’s new global mining division, Geoff Knox, says its latest mining equipment acquisition is testament to GE’s confidence in the underlying demand for resources.
Perth-based Perseus Mining is holding back committing to a $US115 million-plus development of its Sissingue gold project in the West African nation of Ivory Coast until the nation’s government clarifies its proposed windfall tax.
Shipbuilder Austal has delivered the first of its joint high speed vessels to the US Navy.
Woolworths’ planned acquisition of a Canberra supermarket is under threat after the competition regulator warned the deal could substantially reduce competition in the local market.
As Chevron was trying to gently break the news of a $9 billion cost blowout at its Gorgon liquefied natural gas project in Western Australia, the US Department of Energy was releasing a new report that challenges the business case being pursued not just by Chevron but all the companies behind Australia’s $200bn LNG investment boom.
Chevron's revelation yesterday of a $9 billion cost blowout on its Gorgon natural gas venture off the coast of Western Australia confirms the warning of other resources companies about the rising cost of doing business in Australia.
A respected UBS economist has tipped a rise in growth and a return to commodities-intensive infrastructure investment in China next year — a forecast that will offer encouragement to Australia’s mining industry.
THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD:
Page 1: A police officer is dead after being hit with an axe in a police operation at a neighbourhood row in north west Sydney on Thursday. NSW has reached an agreement with the federal government to implement the national disability insurance scheme by 2018.
Page 2: A navy captain who allegedly rorted spousal allowances was living in fantasy world, a court has been told. Kylie Minogue, a creative ambassador for Sydney new year's eve, wants "everyone to embrace during the fireworks".
Page 3: The creator of the Snoopy cartoons was so infatuated with a woman that he sent her drawings featuring his famous characters. Travers Duncan, a well-known mining identity, has been played a potentially damaging phone call at an ICAC inquiry into former Labor minister Ian Macdonald. The level of industrial disputation has risen to its highest level since 2004.
Business: More than $25 million in cost blowouts have been recorded across Australia's export gas projects.
World: Hundreds of people have died in the Philippines after a devastating typhoon lashed the country.
Sport: The Twenty20 Big Bash League is set to be broadcast free-to-air under a new broadcast deal.
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH:
Page 1: A senior police officer has been killed in an axe attack after trying to resolve a feud between neighbours in Sydney.
Page 2/3: A highly-decorated police officer was allegedly killed by a single axe-blow to the back of the head in a police operation in north west Sydney on Thursday.
Page 4/5: Explosive phone taps have caught out Travers Duncan, a billionaire mining magnate, who denied contacting Ian Macdonald over a controversial coal deal.
Business: Gina Rinhart has slammed struggling broadcaster, Ten Network, for not cutting costs earlier.
World: Serbia's ambassador to NATO has thrown himself off a multi-story carpark in Brussels, Belgium.
Sport: Caddies Mat Kelly and Grant Buchanan had to pulled apart on Thursday after an altercation at the Australia Open.
THE AGE:
Page 1: Protective services officers are handing out hundreds of fines to disabled, mentally ill and homeless people for minor infringements. Dame Elisabeth Murdoch cast a long shadow, if such a thing can be said of a woman who brought so much light to the world.
Page 2: After months of secrecy, Lord Mayor Robert Doyle has revealed who bankrolled his $400,000 campaign for a second term at Town Hall: Melbourne's property, liquor and gaming industries. The Refugee Council of Australia's chief executive has called on the government to urgently halt the forced deportation of Sri Lankan asylum seekers.
Page 3: A jump in the number of Aboriginal women in custody has led to a marked increase in the number of women imprisoned in Australia.
Business: More than $25 billion in cost blowouts have been recorded across Australia's fleet of export gas projects, with Chevron's Gorgon project now officially the biggest overspender of the lot.
World: With many roads and bridges washed away, rescue teams have struggled to reach isolated villages in the southern Philippines after a powerful out-of-season typhoon tore through the region, leaving at least 325 people dead and hundreds missing.
Sport: Ricky Ponting has endorsed the selection of Phil Hughes as his Test replacement as it emerged the 24-year-old was shielded from an international return against top-ranked South Africa.
THE HERALD SUN:
Page 1: Dame Elisabeth Murdoch's spirit will live on through the work of the Royal Children's Hospital and the other charities she dedicated her life to helping.
Page 2: Thousands of people are expected to attend a state memorial service at St Paul's Cathedral to celebrate and honour the extraordinary life of Dame Elisabeth.
Page 3: A love of life and people were shining qualities that Dame Elisabeth's family said they would miss the most.
Business: Ten Network will embark on yet another cost-cutting drive as it turns to investors for fresh cash in a bid to bring an end to its horror run.
World: Allies and foes of Egypt's Mohamed Morsi have lobbed fire bombs and rocks at each other as their simmering standoff over the Islamist president's expanded powers and a new constitution turned violent.
Sport: The names Shane Warne and Muthiah Muralidaran will be forever linked.
