Anti-uranium Labor Govt. loses Western Australia

Australia’s two main conservative parties agreed on Sunday to form a coalition....

Australia’s two main conservative parties agreed on Sunday to form a coalition government in resource powerhouse Western Australia, ending the coast-to-coast power grip of the centre-left Labor Party.The conservative Nationals, representing mostly farmers, agreed on Sunday to support the Liberals in the state’s Legislative Assembly, paving the way for an expansion in uranium mining.The WA decision dealt the Labor Party its first state-level election defeat in a decade."The state council has endorsed the parliamentary team to negotiate a power-sharing arrangement with a minority Liberal government," Nationals leader Brendon Grylls told a media conference in Perth. "The power-sharing arrangement is to be negotiated over the coming days."Both Labor Premier Alan Carpenter and the opposition Liberal Party leader, Colin Barnett, have been courting the Nationals since last weekend’s state poll delivered a hung Parliament.Carpenter had called the election five months early to capitalise on disarray caused by a conservative leader caught sniffing the chair of a female staffer.With 82.5 percent of the votes counted, Labor is tipped to win 25 of the 59 seats, while the Liberal Party was tipped to take 22. The Nationals were likely to win four seats and others three with the distribution of preferences continuing in a number of seats, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation said.Western Australia is at the centre of Australia’s resource boom with vast iron ore and offshore oil and gas projects, but the state’s centre-left Labor government opposes uranium mining, meaning eight major deposits remain unexploited.On the other hand, the WA conservatives went into the election supporting uranium mining. They said they wanted to see a project operating within five years, raising industry hopes that new mines could help meet booming worldwide demand for nuclear energy.The Nationals have demanded that 25 per cent of mining royalties be set aside for regional projects as a condition to extend support to the Liberals.The Liberal Party’s Barnett has also said mining giants BHP Billiton (BHP.AX) (BLT.Lz) and Rio Tinto (RIO.AX:) (RIO.L) could face higher royalty payments if BHP’s hostile $145 billion takeover bid for Rio succeeded. He said it was not in the state’s interests to have such a dominant mining force.WA accounts for a third of the A$1 trillion national economy on the back of the international resources boom, and a third of global iron ore exports.Australia has 40 percent of the world’s known uranium reserves, but only three operating mines, Ranger, owned by Rio Tinto Ltd unit Energy Resources Australia, Olympic Dam, owned by BHP Billiton, and Beverly, owned by a local unit of General Atomics of the United States.Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s federal Labor government supports uranium mining, but it is up to each of the six states and two territories to approve new mines. Only South Australia and the Northern Territory currently allow uranium mining. (Editing by Roger Crabb)