Liberals to keep key plank of mining tax - The West; Coalition talks tough – The Fin; Gold miner slumps as contract tensions rise – The West; Report puts pressure on Cliffs' WA mines – The Aus; Business aims to bridge the China gap – The Fin
Liberals to keep key plank of mining tax
The federal Opposition plans to retain a key part of Labor's mining tax package, convinced it will generate billions of dollars in the decades ahead. The West
Coalition talks tough
An Abbott government would use a measure that paints a much bleaker picture of the current state of the federal budget to inform its medium term fiscal strategy, says Opposition finance spokesman Andrew Robb. The Fin
Gold miner slumps as contract tensions rise
Silver Lake Resources shares plunged yesterday after the company revealed a 30 to 40 per cent blowout in the construction cost of its new Murchison gold mine, and said it may be heading into a legal dispute with engineering contractor Resource Development Group. The West
Report puts pressure on Cliffs' WA mines
US-based Cliffs Natural Resources of Cleveland has dismissed suggestions a looming US iron ore supply glut will force it into the .75 billion ($1.67bn) sale of its Koolyanobbing iron ore mines in Western Australia to pay down debt. The Aus
Business aims to bridge the China gap
The chairman of Fortescue Metals Group, Andrew Forrest, is leading a group of senior business leaders to China on Friday in a major attempt to make up for the lack of high-level effort put into the bilateral relationship over the past several years. The Fin
Top Resources Headlines
Gold miner slumps as contract tensions rise
Silver Lake Resources shares plunged yesterday after the company revealed a 30 to 40 per cent blowout in the construction cost of its new Murchison gold mine, and said it may be heading into a legal dispute with engineering contractor Resource Development Group. The West
Report puts pressure on Cliffs' WA mines
US-based Cliffs Natural Resources of Cleveland has dismissed suggestions a looming US iron ore supply glut will force it into the .75 billion ($1.67bn) sale of its Koolyanobbing iron ore mines in Western Australia to pay down debt. The Aus
Business aims to bridge the China gap
The chairman of Fortescue Metals Group, Andrew Forrest, is leading a group of senior business leaders to China on Friday in a major attempt to make up for the lack of high-level effort put into the bilateral relationship over the past several years. The Fin
Shell fuels import fear
Oil major Royal Dutch Shell is hunting for a buyer for its Geelong oil refinery to try to avoid a closure that could cost up to 600 jobs in Victoria and leave Australia reliant on imprts for more than half its petrol and diesel needs. The Fin
Rio Tinto's divestment gathers pace with Northeparkes mine on market
Rio Tinto has hired Macquarie Group to find a buyer for its majority stake in the Northparkes copper and goldmine in NSW, swelling a list of assets for sale as the mining giant focuses on cutting costs and bolstering its balance sheet. The Aus
Top Politics Headlines
Liberals to keep key plank of mining tax
The federal Opposition plans to retain a key part of Labor's mining tax package, convinced it will generate billions of dollars in the decades ahead. The West
Coalition talks tough
An Abbott government would use a measure that paints a much bleaker picture of the current state of the federal budget to inform its medium term fiscal strategy, says Opposition finance spokesman Andrew Robb. The Fin
ALP states embrace 457 visas
Labor governments in South Australia and Tasmania have emerged as the largest employers of 457 visa holders in their states, using foreign workers to meet labour shortages in their health systems and blunting the Gillard government’s crackdown on the temporary visa program. The Aus
PM: jobs, growth tell story
Australia has a better record on jobs and growth, wealth, inflation, productivity and industrial disputes than most countries yet suffers from “economic cringe”, according to Prime Minister Julia Gillard. The Fin
Big rail projects start to unravel
Colin Barnett's funding plan for his big public transport election promises is in danger of unravelling after federal Opposition leader Tony Abbott said yesterday that he did not believe the Commonwealth had a role in funding urban rail projects. The West
Top Property Headlines
Property Council says 60,000 construction workers jobless
Almost 60,000 construction workers who lost their jobs amid the global financial crisis are still unemployed, as the sector enters its third year of recession and the nation’s new home building market remains in its most dire state in 40 years, according to the property industry’s peak lobby group. The Aus
Lift in housing activity leaves analysts cold
Housing is gaining strength in NSW and Western Australia but weakening in Victoria. The Fin
The West Australian
Page 1: The federal Opposition plans to retain a key part of Labor's mining tax package, convinced it will generate billions of dollars in the decades ahead.
Page 4: Colin Barnett's funding plan for his big public transport election promises is in danger of unravelling after federal Opposition leader Tony Abbott said yesterday that he did not believe the Commonwealth had a role in funding urban rail projects.
Page 5: New Water Minister Terry Redman believes recycling sewage could be a “fantastic” solution to WA's drying climate, paving the way for it to come on stream as a drinking source within two years.
Page 6: Burning household rubbish to produce electricity is shaping as the answer to Perth's recycling woes after WA's environmental watchdog said yesterday it was comfortable with the idea.
Page 7: Australians have opened their wallets and started buying homes, cars and household goods as the Reserve Bank's interest rate cuts start to have an effect.
Page 13: Aboriginal businessman Tony Shaw has joined the debate over the treatment of Aboriginals by Perth taxi drivers, claiming discrimination has become “endemic”.
Page 20: Julia Gillard has declared Australia can “win” the Asian century even as she warns competition for key markets is intensifying in the emerging powerhouse of China.
Business: Silver Lake Resources shares plunged yesterday after the company revealed a 30 to 40 per cent blowout in the construction cost of its new Murchison gold mine, and said it may be heading into a legal dispute with engineering contractor Resource Development Group.
West Africa-focused gold hopeful PMI Gold has drawn a line under the ugly spat that pitted its biggest shareholders against the company's board earlier this year, yesterday appointing resources veteran Jim Askew chairman and adding two new non-executive directors.
Perth-based telco iiNet hailed the competition watchdog's draft decision to reject the company building the National Broadband Network's pricing and access arrangements for the next three decades.
Curtin University held a briefing with seven WA-based agencies yesterday, as the institution kicked off a four-month creative tender process for its advertising contract.
Parkerville Children and Youth Care is dramatically expanding its presence in Geraldton as part of a corporate tie-up with Gindalbie Metals' Karara iron ore mine and rail operator Aurizon.
About 450 Shell refinery workers in Geelong face a long wait for a lifeline that analysts and unions doubt will ever come.
The chances of Billabong sealing a takeover deal remain up in the air despite the indefinite suspension of the troubled surfwear retailer's shares while talks drag on.
The Australian Financial Review
Page 1: The federal government is accelerating efforts to end damaging speculation surrounding superannuation changes and wants to announce the changes as early as Friday.
Japan's central bank has taken its most aggressive action yet to reverse two decades of falling prices by doubling its purchases of government bonds and other assets and vowing to hit its target of lifting inflation to 2 per cent by next year.
Page 3: The chairman of Fortescue Metals Group, Andrew Forrest, is leading a group of senior business leaders to China on Friday in a major attempt to make up for the lack of high-level effort put into the bilateral relationship over the past several years.
Page 4: An Abbott government would use a measure that paints a much bleaker picture of the current state of the federal budget to inform its medium term fiscal strategy, says Opposition finance spokesman Andrew Robb.
Page 5: Australia has a better record on jobs and growth, wealth, inflation, productivity and industrial disputes than most countries yet suffers from “economic cringe”, according to Prime Minister Julia Gillard.
Page 6: Oil major Royal Dutch Shell is hunting for a buyer for its Geelong oil refinery to try to avoid a closure that could cost up to 600 jobs in Victoria and leave Australia reliant on imprts for more than half its petrol and diesel needs.
Page 8: Coalition leader Tony Abbott vowed he will not fund expansions of state rail networks, a decision which means Liberal state governments face multi billion-dollar funding holes for their pet rail projects if he wins the election.
Page 9: Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chairman Rod Sims says the regulator will enforce strict caps on broadband prices, preventing NBN Co from passing on any inefficient spending to consumers.
Page 11: Consumers launched into 2013 with the biggest spending splurge in 12 years, supporting speculation the Reserve Bank of Australia's next move will be to raise interest rates.
Page 12: The number of solar panels installed on the roofs of Australian homes and businesses has broken through the 1 million mark as a result of rising power costs, falling unit prices and generous government subsidies.
Page 13: Immigration Minister Brendan O'Connor has launched a fresh defence of the government's planned reforms of 457 working visas, saying new data shows the system is broken.
The federal government's top infrastructure adviser has recommended that private freight users be forced to pay more for building and maintaining the road network.
Page 15: The federal Coalition will consider pressing for an increase in the number of public hospitals run by private operators if elected, expanding on models developed in the Liberal-led states of Queensland and Western Australia.
Page 17: Nine Entertainment Co subsidiary Mi9 has not ruled out holding onto its 30 per cent stake in online comparison business iSelect when it floats next month.
Page 19: Paul Naude's consortium leading the bid for Billabong International has submitted an offer of between 60c and 65c for the troubled surfwear manufacturer, valuing the business at between $287 million and $311 million.
Page 42: Housing is gaining strength in NSW and Western Australia but weakening in Victoria.
The Australian
Page 1: Labor governments in South Australia and Tasmania have emerged as the largest employers of 457 visa holders in their states, using foreign workers to meet labour shortages in their health systems and blunting the Gillard government’s crackdown on the temporary visa program.
Labor's allies are turning against the idea of raising taxes on superannuation in next month’s budget, declaring that any changes must wait until after the federal election, amid growing concerns about the risk to confidence in the retirement system.
More than 13,000 boat people who have arrived in Australia since the government suspended processing of refugee claims last year are yet to undergo full ASIO assessments, raising concerns about the rigour of the nation’s security checks.
Page 2: Julia Gillard has declared that Australia can grow its relationship with China while ‘‘tending’’ to its friendship with the US, playing down tensions caused by an agreement to allow US marines to exercise near Darwin.
Page 3: Academic and prominent climate change sceptic Ian Plimer warned former NSW mining minister Ian Macdonald and a union leader that the idea of a controversial training mine was ‘‘absolute madness’’ and would endanger the lives of students.
Class-warfare rhetoric poses a threat to Australia while free markets will lead to a better life for all Australian families, not just the rich, Rupert Murdoch has told a gathering of some of our most influential leaders.
Page 4: A third union has admitted employing an overseas worker on a 457 visa.
Page 6: The nation’s longest continually operating oil refiner, Royal Dutch Shell, will exit the low-profit business in the next few years through the sale or closure of the 59-year-old Geelong refinery, as a high dollar and competition from Asia continue to threaten local jobs.
Qantas is set to ditch the Aboriginal motifs on its uniforms in favour of a radically revamped chic European design inspired by its famous flying kangaroo logo.
Hopes of a consumer-led recovery in the parts of the economy not linked to the resources boom have been fanned by the best two months of retail sales in four years.
Business: Fairfax Media has implemented a radical corporate restructure resulting in the departure of senior executives including Metro Media boss Jack Matthews as the company’s revenues come under acute pressure.
Rio Tinto has hired Macquarie Group to find a buyer for its majority stake in the Northparkes copper and goldmine in NSW, swelling a list of assets for sale as the mining giant focuses on cutting costs and bolstering its balance sheet.
One of the miners involved in the secret talks on Julia Gillard’s 2010 ‘‘breakthrough’’ deal on the mining tax has warned that the shortfall in the tax’s revenues has added to ‘‘misinformation’’ that resources companies do not contribute their fair share to the Australian community.
The billionaire founder of one of Nine Entertainment’s US hedge fund owners has broken his silence about owning the media company, delivering an impassioned riposte to criticism from media tycoon Kerry Stokes.
The latest retail sales data may show that Australians are starting to spend again after a protracted downturn, but some industry players are holding back on declaring it a genuine turnaround.
Billabong International appears no closer to agreeing to a takeover deal with one of its suitors as unresolved negotiations forced the company to suspend its shares indefinitely from trading.
The Business Council of Australia has slammed the Gillard government’s draft laws requiring companies to reveal whether they have clawed back wrongly paid executive bonuses and to reveal past, present and future pay, claiming this will just add to shareholder confusion.
US-based Cliffs Natural Resources of Cleveland has dismissed suggestions a looming US iron ore supply glut will force it into the .75 billion ($1.67bn) sale of its Koolyanobbing iron ore mines in Western Australia to pay down debt.
Almost 60,000 construction workers who lost their jobs amid the global financial crisis are still unemployed, as the sector enters its third year of recession and the nation’s new home building market remains in its most dire state in 40 years, according to the property industry’s peak lobby group.
Travis Tyler, the young banker at the coalface of Westpac’s development of apps and widgets, says he’s seeing no let-up in demand for greater mobile phone and tablet functionality.
The Daily Telegraph
Page 1: North Korea moved a step closer to war when it sanctioned plans for a nuclear strike on the United States.
Page 2: Drivers could be locked out of an even longer stretch of George Street when the CBD light-rail line is built, under new plans announced by the City of Sydney.
Page 3: Qantas has removed pork from its in-flight menu on flights to and from Europe as a result of its partnership with Middle Eastern airline Emirates.
World: The Connecticut Senate has approved a historic and far-reaching gun control bill that proponents said was the toughest in the nation's response to the December 14 school massacre in Newtown.
Business: Retailers are celebrating the best start to a year in more than a decade as households begin to feel the benefits of a string of interest rate cuts.
Sport: Mariners midfielder Troy Hearfield has been sacked by the club in the wake of a failing drugs test that revealed traces of a recreational drug.
The Sydney Morning Herald
Page 1: The Australian government has warned North Korea that South Korea cannot continue to ignore threats to its security as the communist state's deadly game of brinkmanship edged closer to armed conflict.
Page 2: The peak body representing super funds has offered the treasurer an olive branch, saying it would be prepared to consider reduced or zero tax concessions on super accounts with very high balances.
Page 4: It's the City of Sydney's vision of George Street transformed, with a tree-lined boulevard accessible only to pedestrians and trams from Bridge to Liverpool streets.
World: Indonesia has guaranteed Foreign Minister Bob Carr that none of the 1500 religious schools funded out of Australia's aid budget is teaching radical Islamic doctrine.
Business: Oil major Royal Dutch has been given little hope of finding a buyer for its struggling oil refinery at Geelong, which was dramatically thrust into the shop window on Thursday.
Sport: Nash Rawiller has his superstars on Saturday - Pierro and More Joyous - but he also hopes the Golden Slipper will fit again as he rides Whittington in the 1200-metre dash at Rosehill.
The Age
Page 1: The Gillard government is set to announce funding for Melbourne's $9 billion metro rail tunnel, placing it at odds with Opposition Leader Tony Abbott, who has said he will back the east-west road link if elected prime minister.
Page 2: The Australian government has warned North Korea that South Korea would not continue to ignore threats to its security as the communist state's deadly game of brinkmanship took several steps towards armed conflict on Thursday.
Page 3: The man charged with raping and murdering Jill Meagher in a Brunswick lane is expected to change his plea to guilty in the Supreme Court on Friday.
World: Xi Jinping, China's new president, has taken power, made his first foreign trip, reintroduced his (well-dressed) wife to the public. And now, in the reverse and sometimes obtuse way these things happen in China, he has launched his political campaign.
Business: Shell has been given little hope of finding a buyer for its struggling oil refinery at Geelong, which was dramatically thrust into the shop window on Thursday.
Sport: AFL boss Andrew Demetriou is directly warning players of the dangers of dabbling in drugs that are not approved for human use, in addition to the established bogies of performance-enhancing, illicit and prescription drugs.
The Herald Sun
Page 1: Plans are being drawn up to evacuate thousands of Australians from South Korea in the event of war breaking out on the Korean Peninsula. Authorities were warned that Adrian Bayley was a risk of attacking a woman before Jill Meagher was raped and killed.
Page 2: News Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch has hit out at the Gillard government's failed attempt to impose bureaucratic oversight on the press and said class warfare rhetoric or greater market regulation would damage Australia's economy.
Page 3: What parents have long suspected has been confirmed: the school a child goes to affects their university entrance ranking.
World: The United States has offered $5 million for the capture of Lord's Resistance Army chief Joseph Kony, one of the world's most wanted men, and also posted rewards for three other rebel leaders evading trial for war crimes.
Business: Retailers are celebrating the best start to the year in more than a decade as households begin to feel the benefits of a string of interest rate cuts.
Sport: Hawthorn will demand to know before the end of the season whether Lance Franklin will stay at the club.
