Today in Crikey, Bernard Keane contends that “the credibility gap between what the miners and their cheerleaders say and reality grows ever bigger”.
But how to sift out the spin when much of the talk around the Resources Super Profits Tax is based on market sentiment, a fickle beast at best? As speculation mounts that the government is set to amend the aspects of the new regime, Robert Gottliebsen writes on Business Spectator this morning:
The greatest capital strike in Australia’s history officially started at 10am on May 24, 2010. Australia’s second largest minerals company Rio Tinto announced that all its expansion projects would be put on hold and that delay could extend for years if not indefinitely. Moreover, it plans to curb early stage development in Australia and has expressed grave concerns about the sovereign risk implications of parts of the mining tax.
But Keane writes:
Far from the government preparing to cave in on the issue, as some hysterical commentators are trying to suggest, its resolve is hardening. Labor knows a back flip on the issue will be politically fatal to its credibility. It is prepared to negotiate aspects of the new regime, but it is also aware that different sections of the mining industry have different stakes in this — so far we’ve mainly heard from the big foreign companies, not smaller local companies that will benefit from the shift from a royalty to a profits-based regime.
Labor’s problem is that support for the RSPT is slipping – although Essential research today still has more Australians backing it than opposing it – and a Prime Minister who at the moment couldn’t sell a cold beer on a hot summer day. Tax reform is partly about salesmanship, and Labor needs to lift its game to convince Australians that its new tax will benefit all of us.
In the meantime, mind the gap.
Look, one of the problems with the RSPT is the lack of salesmanship by Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan. They dropped the tax on both the mining industry and the public like someone dropping a fart in a lift. Rudd and Swan didn’t get out of the lift quickly enough and they have been fingered because the stench was still lingering when the rest of us got in.
However, the other problem is that the stop-loss aspect represents the part-nationalisation of the resources industry. It is truly Whitlamesque.
The obvious solution is for Julia Gillard to put Kevin Rudd in Lulworth House and for her to keep living in The Lodge. It works for Margaret and Gough.
Failing that, Gospel Tony will be the one enjoying the views from Kirribilli House.
Once again I’m compelled to complain loudly about the blatant bias on Radio National’s hourly news regarding the RSPT. Their report this morning on conflicting figures about the percentage of tax mining companies pay managed to be both excessively pro-Liberal and anti-Green (by including a comment from Xenophon and ignoring the fact that the Greens are five-strong in the Senate compared with this one independent).
This report was followed by a one-liner telling us that the Australian dollar was falling in response to this furore. The evidence? Absolutely zilch. Experts have been saying over the last week that the dollar is falling largely because of the global uncertainty resulting from Greece’s economic slide.
There are so many issues here. The sheer amount of time Radio National news is devoting to the RSPT, clearly responding to the mining lobbyists’ campaign; the pro-Liberal bias of most of its news reports; and, most important, the laziness of reporting in the ‘he said, she said’ mode. In this case what the journalists clearly should be doing is going to the experts and finding out the actual percentage of tax that the mining companies pay. Instead they’re reading bits from each side’s press release, with a clear bias towards the mining companies and the Liberals. The ABC is charged with informing Australians. Why don’t they do their job and damn well find out what the actual percentage is? And then, god forbid, tell us?
I think the ABC’s pro-Liberal bias is more about starving the Greens of oxygen, because Australians are gradually becoming aware that it’s the only viable (and genuinely) progressive political party on the Oz landscape.
Sancho,
When I commented about an article in Crikey last week (on the Salvo’s bad report card to Centerlink) that it should have had a comment from The Greens, a response from a Labor supporter (TOM) was:
“@MW-H – so the media has a responsibility to educate or as you say ‘inform’?”
When it comes to The Greens, I think that both Liberal and Labor want the media to keep the people in the dark.
Terminology is everything. Yet even Crikey continues to refer to the Multinational Corporate Fat Cats of the Mining Industry as “miners” – giving the impression of hard-labouring soot-covered individuals. They are not miners. They are rich, powerful and self serving.