Andrew Harding meditates every morning and that might explain the calm dispassion that normally characterises his day in business. But on Monday the man who runs Australia's biggest iron ore business has a distinctly angry quaver in his voice.

"It is stunning," he says in reaction to the Australian government's still-stuttering embrace of the need for some form of inquiry into the iron ore market on the back of allegations by competitors that Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton have created a crisis that would not otherwise exist through predatory pricing.