Fortescue to challenge MRRT

Fortescue Metals Group has announced it will challenge the federal government’s mining tax in the High Court in the next few weeks.

Fortescue flagged the challenge to the Mineral Resources Rent Tax (MRRT) on constitutional grounds.

CEO Neville Power said the company would go ahead with the legal action.

“We are instructing counsel as we speak and briefing them in terms of the challenge to the MRRT and we would expect to be launching that challenge in the next few weeks,” = AAP reports.

West Australian Premier Colin Barnett said last month the state government would support the challenge, but this month admitted he believed any High Court challenge to the tax would probably not succeed.

The news comes after Fortescue’s billionaire chairman Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest said he and former prime minister Kevin Rudd had struck a deal to rewrite the mining tax on the eve of the Labor party leadership coup in 2010.

Forrest is the great-great nephew of John Forrest, who was the first premier of Western Australia.