This week, Jim Chalmers made an unusual plea to WA business leaders, including mining executives: could he “push the friendship” over the government’s environmental bill?
“If you want a good, sensible outcome here and you have a way to lobby our political opponents, I think that would be a very good use of your time,” the treasurer told them at a press conference in Perth.
It’s a far cry from the rhetoric under Kevin Rudd, whose attempt to tax the mining sector prompted such a fierce backlash it contributed to his knifing. Chalmers’ former boss, then Treasurer Wayne Swan, oversaw a watering down of that plan.
But the current turmoil in the Coalition, and Labor’s thumping majority, have left another veteran of the Rudd–Gillard era emboldened to pursue a long-held ambition.
