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INTERVIEW-Australia Greens: will not stand in way of mine tax

by reuters | Thomson Reuters Foundation
Thursday, 9 September 2010 06:36 GMT

CANBERRA, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Australia's influential Greens party said on Thursday it would not stand in the way of the newly-elected Labor government's plans for a 30 percent tax on coal and iron ore miners.

Greens Leader Bob Brown told Reuters the Labor-Greens alliance in a minority government should be good for financial markets, and sought to ease concerns the Greens would enforce a radical agenda to try to tax bank profits or clamp down on uranium mining.

"There is a lot of hot air which is based on faulty analysis," Brown said in an interview.

"It's a political bias that has got no basis in reality -- that says that Labor and the Greens are not good for markets."

Brown said that while the Greens would like to raise more money from the mining tax, the party did not have the numbers in parliament to enforce any changes and would also be unable to include uranium mining under the new tax regime.

(Reporting by Rob Taylor; Editing by Ed Davies)

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.


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