The Business Council’s “Seize the moment” report — or is it “Realising our full potential”, or “Living on borrowed time” — comes so heavily laden with irony it’s hard to go more than a few pages without stopping and marvelling at the front of these greedy spivs.
For example, the BCA invokes, in support of its usual demands of company tax cuts, polling that it says shows “most Australians think they pay too much tax, and don’t believe the government spends taxpayers’ money effectively. They are also concerned that a high company tax rate in Australia will make local businesses less competitive, resulting in lower economic growth, fewer job opportunities and businesses moving offshore.”
Yep, sounds plausible — Australians are kept awake at night by the idea that big corporations are paying too much tax. Who did the polling for “Seize our full potential”? Why, the Liberal Party’s own campaign strategy powerhouse (and top-flight state capture agency) C|T Group. The BCA’s new head might be a former senior Liberal staffer. It might use the Liberals’ own campaign outfit. It might have employed Liberal figures to run Liberal-aligned campaigns. But don’t dare suggest the BCA is just a Liberal Party front.
While the C|T Group findings offer such profound insights as “nine in 10 Australians agree that spending on research and development is vital to give us a competitive edge”, the irony deepens when you read in “Living the full moment” that “half of all Australians believe successive governments over the past 20 years have failed to outline a clear plan and vision for the nation”. Given that the Coalition has been in power for 13 of those years, and C|T Group and its previous iterations were their primary campaign strategisers that whole time, that seems a rather damning self-indictment.
But the irony starts plunging to Mariana-like depths on the issue of climate action, given C|T Group’s role with the Liberal Party and News Corp over the past two decades of demonising any climate action of any kind. “Almost two-thirds of Australians support reducing carbon emissions to meet net zero by 2050,” the BCA quotes C|T Group as claiming, sadly omitting the caveat that that is in spite of the best efforts of C|T Group.
But then the BCA talking about climate action and the need to reach decarbonisation targets is equally ironic. The BCA is — after the Coalition, News Corp and the big fossil fuel companies — the biggest climate saboteur in Australia, despite its blithe insistence that it supports climate action of some vague, unspecified kind. Let’s run through the BCA’s climate positions over the past 20 years:
- Opposed the ratification of the Kyoto protocols in 2007;
- Opposed the Rudd government’s carbon pollution reduction scheme;
- Opposed the Rudd government’s emissions abatement targets;
- Opposed the Gillard government’s carbon pricing scheme;
- “Welcomed” the repeal of the carbon pricing scheme by the Abbott government;
- Demanded the removal of the renewable energy target;
- Opposed any possibility of the Coalition’s version of the safeguard mechanism actually having some impact;
- Opposed Labor’s 45% by 2030 emissions reduction target as “economy wrecking”.
The BCA masquerading as an advocate for climate action is beyond farcical — it’s the equivalent of the arsonist lamenting the damage caused by the fire they lit.
And what action does the BCA want on climate? It wants more gas, and it wants carbon capture and storage — which, oddly enough, is exactly what its members such as Origin, Woodside and the big fossil-fuel multinationals like Shell and BP want as well. It quotes C|T Group to declare “more than half of Australians surveyed by the BCA said they supported more investment and government approvals for gas projects to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, with 20% in strong agreement and just 7% strongly disagreeing”. C|T Group’s links with the world’s biggest fossil fuel companies are well known.
Really, this is simply a continuation of what the BCA has been doing on climate for two decades: vaguely supporting the principle of climate action, but opposing any policy that might actually curb the emissions — and the profits — of its members.
One of the few mentions of inflation in the hundreds of pages of “Seizing the borrowed potential” — a subject otherwise absent from it, as noted yesterday — occurs in the energy section: “Australia’s domestic energy prices have increased dramatically as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. This was made worse by historically wet weather in Australia and the structural problems facing our energy system as we decarbonise.”
No mention of the profiteering and price-gouging by energy producers or retailers who make up its members; no mention of how that profit-driven energy inflation has forced prices of other businesses up, in turn driving higher overall inflation across the economy — all to the benefit of energy company shareholders.
But then the BCA has never been honest in the past when it comes to energy and climate. It’s not about to start now.
“ But don’t dare suggest the BCA is just a Liberal Party front.”
I suggest that the Liberal Party is just a BCA front.
LOL
However I believe you’re dead right.
Me too!
Just what I came down here to say.
The Liberal Party has simply become a hollowed out, anodyne and order following ‘delivery system’ for imported US fossil fueled policies, strategies and tactics; one would guess the BCA shares more with the IPA?
I couldn’t believe Sarah Ferguson wasted a valuable 10 minutes interviewing Jennifer Westicott on 730 Report last night. Going on about more tax cuts for business blah blah she sounded like a scratched record. Fair dinkum, I’d rather sit through an interview with Marie Kondo talking about tidying up than hear Westacott again.
I agree. Sarah Ferguson is usually a good interviewer, but she gave Westacott a national platform and bowled up a bunch of soft questions.
I totally agree. I was shocked by the whimpy questions asked by Sarah. What the heck is happening to my ABC?
Ask Ita.
Good interviewer she may be, doesn’t mean she has a backbone.
Yes, the interview was disgraceful; Ferguson had done no homework (e.g. Crikey, The Monthly) which would have presented Westacott with alternative facts for the rubbish she was sprouting.
She admitted it was her first day back from holiday, but still no excuse
think about what your saying at least Lego capture and storage isn’t a doomsday proposition..
The BCA are as challenged in logic, facts, and self-analysis as Fox News. Maybe they use the same writers. And what a shame that John Hurt is dead. He would have been my actor-of-choice to play Westacott in her film biography.
Tom Waits..
Some of us are old enough to remember the mining tax, a modest return on Australia’s resources, which the BCA and other business groups used to destroy the Rudd government. (Not that that government was much good, but if they’d stuck to their principles they would have been far superior).
When is someone – anyone – going to take on these relentless rent-seekers?
Sarah Ferguson gave Westacott 10 minutes because like most ABC journalists she is also captured by neoliberal economics (‘small government’ – low taxes). Crikey will have to face the fact the public – and the BCA – don’t like higher taxes.
The issue should come to the fore, as outlined in the IGR.
I don’t think they mind taxes, just as long as only poor people have to pay them and they only get spent on subsidising big business. That’s why they want higher G.S.T.