We plebs don't have much of a say bar election time so better to laugh than cry sometimes.
Good to see Alan Kohler a big opponent of the RSPT.
hot off the press....
Alan Kohler
Trust the government? Not now.
Jun 4
David Murray has identified the key problem with this ridiculous, damaging brawl raging between the government and the mining industry: the success of the resource tax relies on it not resulting in a capital strike or the destruction of trust in the government. But the way it has been handled has already destroyed that trust.
One by one, business leaders who are not miners are coming out against the tax. In the past few days there has been Sir Rod Eddington, who admittedly is a Rio Tinto director as well as chairman of the government body, Infrastructure Australia, Robert Millner on behalf of the Business Council, Mike Smith CEO of ANZ Bank, and now the chairman of the Future Fund board of governors, David Murray, in this morning's exclusive KGB Interrogation in Business Spectator.
We asked Murray whether, if he were a banker today, he would lend against the future tax credit that is fundamental to the way the resource super profits tax works.
He said: "Well, I would be more concerned about that now because of what's happened with the announcement of this tax." There has been no more succinct explanation of the internally contradictory nature of this tax.
David Murray went on to put it into the context of what's happening in the world at the moment: "Sovereign risk is coming back into the picture as a larger issue because of the massive issuance of sovereign debt around the world post-crisis not just post, but before... during and after.
"And in addition to that, our starting point is as a country that needs foreign investment and, notwithstanding all of our success, we still have a ... chronic current account deficit, we're still spending on welfare and we still have a current account deficit. That would be, for future generations, a seriously bad outcome."
If Kevin Rudd won't listen to Mick Davis of Xstrata when he cancels 250 jobs, claiming that he's just grandstanding, perhaps he'll listen to the man responsible for running Australia's own sovereign wealth fund.
