Tonight and tomorrow, we will see a huge amount of anguish from the mega majors and any other miners with significant Australian ops (including CLF, say 20%) regarding the announced Super Profits tax on mining (40%) (Based on Henry report). Nothing really new here, but a lot of people thought they would not do it. Politically designed to slow the resource development boom there while increasing public pensions.

The bad : Big miners (esp BHP) will definitely sell off somewhat depending on their Aussie profits; concern of tax contagion into Ontario, something that can happen anytime but very unlikely as Ontario is quite underdeveloped miningwise at this point. Some of Friday's action would relate to this. Current Aussie mentality is that Mining is a big cash cow benefitting only the Chinese and the capitalist mine owners and driving inflation . That won't change even with higher taxes. Reality is someone has to pay for all the socialism. If they were really concerned about non-renewability, they would simply limit mining period. Spelled CASH GRAB.

The good: The potential tax/impacts were not unknown and somewhat baked into share prices; the legislation will be highly political because it takes most of its money from big existing ops, while simply discouraging new investment ( the tax makes no allowance for return to capital risk, allowing only a minor interest factor tied to bond rates); phase in from 2012; effectively replaces existing base corp and state mining tax thru credits or deducts.

The tax is a "heads we win tails you lose approach to taxation" so it will mostly divert new investment elsewhere. Ontario , Quebec and Cliffs should ultimately benefit. with CLF becoming even more desireable to say BHO, Rio, etc.