2012-03-03

Australia's Treasurer Starts Class Warfare and Promotes Socialist Lies and Finger Pointing


Amazing story, and amazingly stupid behaviour by the politicians in Australia, biting the hand that feeds the whole bubble economy and starting a social warfare on the people and companies who basically run the country which would be wasteland without mining and agricultural companies.
March 2 (Bloomberg) -- Australian Treasurer Wayne Swan said resource tycoons including Gina Rinehart, Clive Palmer and Andrew Forrest are threatening the nation’s democratic process by using their wealth to shape policy to their interests.
They wouldn't be able to shape anything if:
  1.  Politicians and the state didn't have so much power to being with, as libertarians have been promoting for hundreds of years
  2. Politicians were not so corrupt, and wouldn't accept money, legally or under the table, to change their mind on any topic.
In an article in The Monthly magazine, Swan said the billionaires are undermining the Australian notion of a “fair go” -- where everyone has an opportunity to prosper. He cited a mining companies’ campaign against the resource profit tax in 2010 that contributed to the ouster of former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.
Oh, now I see it. He wanted to tax them, take by force their property and wealth, and they fought against it. Should they just let the robbers create a low to legally expropriate them?
“The infamous billionaires’ protest against the mining tax would have been laughed out of town in the Australia I grew up in, and yet it received a wide and favorable reception two years ago,” Swan said. “A handful of vested interests that have pocketed a disproportionate share of the nation’s economic success now feel they have a right to shape Australia’s future to satisfy their own self-interest.”
When you fail on the ideological debate, make it personal against the people, and attack them on other grounds. Well done Swan.
The article is a signal of stepped up efforts by Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s administration to build public support for taxes on mining profits and carbon emissions due to take effect on July 1. Her government trails the opposition Liberal- National coalition by 10 percentage points, a margin that if replicated at the election due in the second half of next year would represent a landslide defeat.
 I can only hope that they will fail, and that voters will through these liars and corrupt politicians out. If they don't, well, the future of Australia — already extremely bleak — will be at stake.
“This government, if anything, has been too circumspect in criticizing vested interests,” said Paul Strangio, a senior lecturer on Australian politics at Melbourne’s Monash University, who primarily researches the Labor party. 
“These very wealthy people -- some have described them as oligarchs -- are throwing their weight around in public policy and if they do enter the public arena, and try to impose their influence over public policy, it’s within the government’s ambit to answer that,” Strangio said.
Of course, university professors, socialists and pro-government by definition, always will support attacks against the rich.
BHP Billiton Ltd., Rio Tinto Group and Forrest’s Fortescue Metals Group Ltd. campaigned against the government’s proposed 40 percent tax that helped turn public opinion against Rudd. The former prime minister’s weakening poll ratings were among reasons Labor lawmakers cited for his ousting in a late-night coup in June 2010. Gillard negotiated a lower tax rate to assuage the resource industry.
Seems like politicians will, once they have lost by the rules, try to hit under the belt.
Fortescue said in a statement that its board met earlier today to discuss the “unfounded attacks” by Swan on Forrest. 
The company said it will pay more than A$1 billion in taxes, royalties and other government assessments this year and is projected to pay more than A$2 billion next year. Fortescue described Swan’s comments on its taxes as an “irrational outburst.” 
Forrest “started with nothing and repeatedly put everything he had earned at risk in building one of the most important mining operations in the world,” the company said in response to the treasurer’s comments. “Andrew epitomizes the spirit of what an Australian can do if given a ‘fair go’.”
Who has built something valuable and useful? The "Mining Oligarch"? or the Politician? Who is creating thousands of jobs?
[...]“To be blunt, the rising power of vested interests is undermining our equality and threatening our democracy,” Swan said. “We see this most obviously in the ferocious and highly misleading campaigns waged in recent years against resource taxation reforms and the pricing of carbon pollution.”
How irritating is Swan...
[...] Swan criticized the nation’s four biggest banks last month after Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. boosted interest rates independent of central bank policy. The Reserve Bank of Australia kept its benchmark unchanged at 4.25 percent at its Feb. 7 policy meeting.
“For reasons that they can explain themselves, from time to time they decide that they want to give priority to their shareholders over their customers,” Swan told reporters Feb. 10. “The fact is that the major banks in this country are very profitable and their interest margins are back to where they were prior to the global financial crisis.”
The fact is that it's none of your business, Swan. Corporations belong to shareholders and ALWAYS give priority to them over their customers. Customers have the right to either go to competition, or decide to pay more.
[...] Rinehart, whose $18 billion fortune tops Forbes Asia’s rich list for women, is set to become the world’s wealthiest woman this year, surpassing Wal-Mart Stores Inc.’s Christy Walton. Forrest has a net worth of $5.3 billion, making him the third- richest Australian, Forbes said. Australia’s BRW magazine estimates Palmer’s wealth at A$5.05 billion ($5.5 billion). 
Australia’s economy is propelled by a mining boom predicted to last decades as the urbanization of hundreds of millions of people in China and India drives demand for iron ore, liquefied natural gas and coal. [...]
I'll cut short here.  Seems like politicians in Australia are as bad as those in France and Greece. God — or, more realistically, Voters — protects and saves the Australians from their destructive and dangerous ideas.

2 comments:

farmland investment said...

This is a CLASSIC case of a left wing political party trailing in the polls and looking for a spark. Its the same thing Obama is doing, demonizing the wealthy and the wealth creators for political reasons.

pej said...

Agreed, "farmland investment", nice summary of the whole article.