Plans by Australia’s conservative Liberal-National government to repeal the country’s mining tax have been blocked by the Labor opposition and the Australian Greens Party in the upper house Senate.
After days of debate, the Senate voted against a move to scrap the Minerals Resource Rent Tax (MRRT), 35 votes to 32.
AAP Newsagency reports cries of “shame” were heard around the chamber as the result was read.
Scrapping the mining tax was a major platform on which the Liberal-National Prime Minister Tony Abbott campaigned at last September’s federal election.
Even with the support of independent senator Nick Xenophon and Democratic Labour Party senator John Madigan, the coalition did not have the numbers for the bill to pass its second reading.
Opposition debate on the bill focused on the need for mining companies to pay more for the right to harvest Australia’s finite resources.
The money, forecast to be several billions of dollars, was to be injected into community-building programs under the former Labor government’s plan.
However, coalition senators said the tax had failed to reap the forecast benefits and was instead causing a loss in confidence for foreign investors viewing Australia.
AAP reports Liberal Senator Mathias Cormann described the mining tax as a “dog’s breakfast”.
It was bad for the economy, jobs, and the state of Western Australia, he said.
“It was designed deliberately to hold WA back, to make it harder for West Australians to be successful, to make it harder for WA to grow the economy and make more jobs.”
AAP reports as WA heads back to the polls in April for a Senate election re-run, coalition senators repeatedly raised the state in their debate.
“The dagger was put in the heart of Western Australia,” Liberal senator Michael Ronaldson told the chamber following the vote.
Voters in WA would voice their disappointment about this decision when at the polls on April 5, he said.
Championing the tax during earlier debate, Labor senator Lin Thorp said scrapping the tax would increase the burden on future governments as they struggle to cover high pension and welfare support costs.
The vote comes less than a week after the Senate rejected government legislation to abolish the carbon price laws.
Federal Treasurer Joe Hockey, speaking in the lower House of Representatives, said the mining tax will be remembered in 100 years as the worst tax that was ever designed.
Mr Hockey told parliament shortly after the vote that the MRRT was originally meant to raise $12.5 billion dollar next year but is hardly raising anything.
The problem is Labor pre-spent $16 billion against a tax that “barely raises a dollar”, he said.
He labelled the MRRT an “abject failure”.
