There was nothing altruistic about this venture. It was...

There was nothing altruistic about this venture.
It was motivated by the generous R&D tax concessions
(which we all paid for in foregone tax)
which was all hunky dory while Rio was making money.
But once it went into the red and it was attacked by BHP
there was no further benefit; hence the flogging of
it to China.

Today's world is much different.
-The miners have had their boom.
-They have had a bumper profit year despite
a drop in resource export prices.(see FY results)
-Australia's terms of trade are getting worse
-Australia's debt is seriously increasing
-Aussie voters have handed BHP & RIO &
others $billions a year of extra profit be the removal of the MRRT.

So such R&D in secondary processing in mini-prototype steel mill
would be a token recognition of the Australian Taxpayers'
concession to these multinationals.

It is amazing how many Aussies are in favour of BHP, RIO,
Twiggy and Ms Reinhart( where do you think she's got her $22 billion from?)
pocketing the super profits rather than them being paid into
Treasury to retire National Debt(which we have all spent already).

Its certainly interesting from the
point of view of Aussie Nationalism. It seems to be:
-let Australia go down the tube so long as multinationals
like BHP, RIO etc are allright. Perhaps in the next war
we'll all fight for BHP & RIO with the last penny of our mineral royalties?

Remember when we had economic sanctions on Iraq in conjunction with the USA
and others in the early 90s when that gung-ho PHP executive was
rorting the trade restrictions via a straw company in Jordan.
struth !!!
Moorookamick