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Why Andrew Forrest is a big budget winner
Jim Chalmers’ $23 billion bet on turning Australia into a green industry superpower ignores many of the issues on the top of the business sector’s wishlist.

May 14, 2024 – 7.32pm
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It’s hard to find a bigger winner from Jim Chalmers’ third budget than Andrew Forrest.

Chalmers describes his budget as having the dual focus on “near-term pressures and long-term priorities”. Forrest wins on both accounts.


Andrew Forrest’s big wins arrived in the form of tax incentives that will boost both his publicly listed giant Fortescue Metals Group and private interests. David Rowe

As the Treasurer has been saying for months, every taxpayer, from Forrest down, will benefit from the previously announced stage three tax cuts that kick in on July 1.

On Tuesday night, Chalmers kept the handouts coming, announcing a $300 energy rebate that will be delivered to every Australian – whether they live in Penrith, Portland or Perth’s ritzy enclave of Peppermint Grove.

But Forrest’s really big wins arrived in the form of tax incentives that will boost both his publicly listed giant Fortescue Metals Group and private interests.


The first is a 10-year, $6.7 billion package of tax production credits that attempt to turbocharge the nation’s nascent renewable hydrogen sector. This amount might look relatively piddly compared to the hundreds of billions of dollars being spent under the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act, but it certainly won’t hurt Forrest’s ambition to transform Fortescue from iron ore giant to green hydrogen powerhouse.

Secondly, Chalmers has answered the call of the beleaguered critical minerals sector by announcing a 10-year, $7 billion production incentive that will refund 10 per cent of the processing and refining costs for Australia’s 31 critical minerals, including nickel, graphite, vanadium and lithium.

Forrest’s private mining group, Wyloo, which is preparing to shut down nickel mines in Western Australia in the coming weeks as it fights sagging commodity prices, has been pushing for this very initiative for months; its inclusion in the budget was foreshadowed by The Australian Financial Review on Tuesday morning.

by The Australian Financial Review on Tuesday morning.