SYDNEY (Reuters) – Australia’s new prime minister, Julia Gillard, has become the first woman to lead her country, but her leadership style evokes the past, not the future.

A quick-witted politician, with a broad Australian accent and a working-class pedigree, Gillard is in many ways an old-school Labor Party politician, more reminiscent of Labor prime ministers from the 80s and 90s than her bookish predecessor, Kevin Rudd.

SYDNEY/CANBERRA (Reuters) – Australia and China signed more than $8.8 billion of commercial and mining deals on Monday as a senior Chinese leader urged closer trade ties, in a sign that Australia’s mining tax has not deterred investment.

China is Australia’s largest export market, accounting for 19 percent of exports worth A$48 billion ($41.7 billion) in 2009, including almost A$22 billion of iron ore and concentrates.

SYDNEY, June 17 (Reuters) – Australia’s proposed mining tax
threatens more than $20 billion in investment, according to
angry miners, but no major project has yet been scrapped and
several have actually been advanced since the tax was unveiled
on May 2.

As the nation braces for miners to meet their threat to
cancel multi-billion-dollar projects, the industry has made the
following announcements on project advancements or deals with
foreign investors worth a total of more than $10 billion.

SYDNEY, June 11 (Reuters) – Hopes for a truce in
Australia’s spat with miners over a planned new mining-profits
tax faded on Friday, with Prime Minister Kevin Rudd denying
media speculation that he was about to announce a watering down
of the tax.

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SYDNEY (Reuters) – Global miner Xstrata threatened to scrap $5.4 billion in Australian coal and copper projects, blaming a new mining tax and taking the value of new developments put on hold to above $20 billion in just a month.

Xstrata’s move, which targets Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s home state of Queensland, will further pile pressure on the government to water down a proposed 40 percent tax on mining profits and give new ammunition to the tax’s political opponents.

SYDNEY, June 3 (Reuters) – Global miner Xstrata (XTA.L: Quote, Profile, Research)
threatened on Thursday to scrap $5.4 billion in coal and copper
projects in Australia, blaming a new mining tax and bringing to
more than $20 billion the value of shelved new developments.

Xstrata’s move, which targets Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s
home state of Queensland, will further pile pressure on the
government to water down the proposed 40 percent tax and give
powerful new ammunition to the tax’s political opponents.