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trample the weak, hurdle the dead .....

trample the weak, hurdle the dead .....

Australia's economic success is at risk from a tiny minority of wealthy business people who are using their money and influence to ''poison'' the political and economic debate with arguments that benefit their self-interest but hurt the community, the Treasurer, Wayne Swan, has said.

In an essay for The Monthly magazine likely to stir controversy, Mr Swan names business people Gina Rinehart, Andrew Forrest and Clive Palmer as examples of the self-interested ''0.1 per cent'' against whom he rails.

''I fear Australia's extraordinary success has never been in more jeopardy than right now because of the rising power of vested interests. This poison has infected our politics and is seeping into our economy. Though these vested interests have not yet prevailed, every day their demands get louder,'' he writes.

Mr Swan said 99 per cent of business people wanted what was best for the country but a small minority used their ''considerable wealth to oppose good public policy and economic reforms designed to benefit the majority''.

''For every Andrew Forrest who wails about high company taxes and then admits to not paying any, there are a hundred Australian business people who held on to their employees and worked with government ... during the GFC,'' he says.

Mr Swan, who plans to elaborate on his argument in a National Press Club address next week, says the effects of the vested interests had been seen ''most obviously in the ferocious and highly misleading campaigns waged in recent years against resource taxation reforms and the pricing of carbon pollution''.

He says the campaigns mean politicians have a choice ''between exploiting divisions by promoting fear and appealing to the sense of fairness and decency that is the foundation of our middle class society, between standing up for workers and kneeling down at the feet of the Gina Rineharts and the Clive Palmers''.

And he says Mrs Rinehart's purchase of a 12.6 per cent per cent shareholding in Fairfax Media is ''the latest example'' of the trend he describes.

He writes that her share purchase was ''reportedly ... an attempt to wield greater influence on public opinion and further her commercial interests'' and quotes the media proprietor John Singleton from an article in the Herald in which he said he and Mrs Rinehart had been able to ''overtly and covertly attack governments'' by employing journalists who agreed with their thinking.

Treasurer Lashes Out At 'Poison' Of Tycoons

In May 2010...

 

In May 2010 the country's treasurer, Wayne Swan, proposed a tax on mining super profits that, according to Treasury estimates, would have netted Australian taxpayers $15 billion per year. It was a tax that should have made eminent sense to Australians – it was time to share, and stow away, the immense profits of the boom.

Predictably, the proposed tax unleashed a grotesque wailing from the biggest miners, who had already been crying poor over the proposed emissions trading scheme. Gina Rinehart will be remembered, in particular, for bellowing "Axe the Tax!" on the back of a truck – or maybe not, if she succeeds in manoeuvring herself into a position to decide what we will and won't recall. As Swan writes in this issue, such billionaire activism would have been "laughed out of town" in the Queensland he grew up in.

http://www.themonthly.com.au/blog-march-2012-editors-note-monthly-wire-4685

 

yes Gus, but .....

Having accused the kettle (one K. Rudd) of being “a man of great weakness”, the pot (hailed as the world’s greatest treasurer), Wayne Swan, was quick to demonstrate his own outstanding qualifications in that regard.

In trying to vilify Clive Palmer & Gina Rinehart, whilst clumsily attempting to cast himself as the noble defender of aussie battlers everywhere, Swan simply succeeds in making himself look weak on the one hand & hypocritical on the other. As Paul Barry rightly observes, Swan is a member of our national government, allegedly elected to run the country in the interests of all Australians, so why not just get on with it?

Is it Clive Palmer’s fault that Swan & his mates have no character or determination? Is it Gina Rinehart’s fault that Labor can’t lie straight in bed, compromising every principle & squibbing every policy initiative at every turn?

Listening to Swan, we could be forgiven for thinking that Clive & Gina are the first Australians to try & influence or derail government policy …. “the infamous billionaire’s protest against the mining tax would have been laughed out of town in the Australia I grew up in …..” Swan opines. Oh really?

Where was Wayne when the Packers, the Fairfaxes & a thousand other movers & shakers over the years turned the manipulation of government policy in this country into an art form?

May be...

I will beg to differ slightly here... Swan has been doing far better than Costello ever did while economic sunshine was pouring on the world at large. Swan has had to deal with a a Global Financial Crisis of humongous proportion that is still troubling the world while "Australia is now victim of its own success" with the currency sharks profiterers creating a dollar too bloody high... In the running of a capitalist nation by a Labor (weak-socialist) government, there is always give and take, different from the give and take of a conservative government... Otherwise we'd have a revolution every five minutes and fall into the hand of gun-totting madmen unless we join the fray. There will be many relative ideologies and economical hubris to pull the rug here and there for private benefit versus the "common good"... Mistakes will be made... but some are redeemable. There is no two way about it, governments these days need the media in order to survive and the country needs some rich people to pull the cart. Meanwhile the super-rich of today are obscene beyond those of the past.. It's also when the rich start to dictate the terms rather than "influence" some of the terms of the social constructs that a major boundary is crossed. The Rudd and the Gillard Labor governments have had to plod against the media's major push, of promoting the Conservatives, for too long a time and the media will carry on doing so... Abbott is given far too many free kicks when he should be kicked in the arse... No one's perfect and I could be wrong. The amount of hubris, unfortunately, is multiplying at a rate of knots (mostly due to a silly opposition led by a nutty negative small-minded person)... and we could despair about the state of things... The Liberal (conservative) losers shall never pass, should I have my ways...