Advertisement
From Rio Tinto CEO Sam Walsh via the AFR:
“I don’t know what Andrew was thinking,” Mr Walsh said to a packed mining industry lunch on Thursday.
“I think the comments are absolute nonsense, I’m not sure if Andrew actually sought legal comment before.”
“It (a cap) won’t help us in the longer term to prop up projects that are actually not competitive.
“It is essential that we foster Australian industry…that is internationally competitive, and is not being propped up by tariffs or artificial means. That is not a way to run this great country. We have the wherewithal to be competitive with our mining, and to try to artificially prop it up with some harebrained scheme, that is just physically not going to do it.”
Gold!
Advertisement
About the author
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific's leading geo-politics and economics portal.
He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.