"Rio Tinto will close its New Zealand aluminium smelter in a move that adds to doubts about the future of its three loss-making smelters in Australia." (Source: " The New Daily")
IMO, this is a step too far for a Multinational who has earned hundreds of Billions digging up and shipping our precious ores.
RIO could very well add casting and machining to these smelters, diversify trade and do the rign=ht thing by Aus.
If Rio follows through on closing the smelters, then the proper remedy is to impose extra taxes on their exports to China. Average Aussies simply cant sit around and allow our precious raw resources to be shipped out to China with decreasing Aussie labour/content while at the same time these decent hard working Aussies are been called on to shell out $300 billion for naval-army & airforce hardware to protect ourselves against China.
The quick remedy is for the Commonwealth to not refund mining GST inputs. Collectively this would yield over $8 billion a year which would kick off our building of mega-modern steel & aluminium smelters , IMO
