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Yes had to have approval from the WA gov, but The WA gov warming to the idea...

Barnett hopeful of ore royalty deal with BHP
17th June 2009, 6:00 WST

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Premier Colin Barnett said yesterday he was confident of a positive outcome on a new royalties deal for iron ore when he met BHP Billiton chief executive Marius Kloppers in Perth this morning for the first time since BHP and Rio Tinto announced that they wanted to merge their Pilbara iron ore operations.

Mr Barnett said the deal could not go ahead without the agreement of the State Government.
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There would need to be major changes to the State Agreement Acts, so this cannot be done without the agreement of the State Government and ultimately the State Parliament,” Mr Barnett said.

“In that sense we will be looking for a royalty regime which is consistent with all new mines. In other words, getting rid of some of those 1960s concessions where iron ore was basically sold at half price to the wealthiest mining companies in the world.”

While Mr Barnett has claimed the deal had been structured to avoid stamp duty, he was more conciliatory ahead of the meeting.

“It’s my view that stamp duty would apply, but obviously we’ll be getting legal advice from the State taxation officials and also the State solicitor. We would even consider looking at the legislation, if there’s a loophole in the legislation we will close the loophole,” Mr Barnett said.

“It seems to me that the way this was structured as a production joint venture could well be in part to avoid paying the stamp duty. That’s something we’re looking at very carefully and I’d like to discuss that with Marius Kloppers. There may be some other reason they’re doing this but it seems to me a strange arrangement.”

Mr Barnett described Mr Kloppers, who has overseen the closure of the Ravensthorpe nickel plant with the loss of 1800 jobs, as a “very nice guy”.

“I think he very well understands that the iron ore belongs to the people of Western Australia . . . he does not own the iron ore, we the people own the iron ore,” Mr Barnett said.