The Treasurer has literally lost the plot

PUBLISHED: 07 MAR 2012 00:08:20 | UPDATED: 07 MAR 2012 04:06:14 THE AUSTRALIAN FINANCIAL REVIEW Where should Australia’s Treasurer be directing the national conversation right now? Perhaps he should be preparing Australians for a tough budget in May that will necessarily spread belt- tightening across the community while driving productivity-enhancing policy reforms to make the economy more flexible, to ease the painful adjustments of some industries to the high dollar and to encourage broader wealth generation as commodity export prices come off their peaks.

Instead, Wayne Swan has spent the past few days indulging in a belligerent and almost incoherent rant against some of the entrepreneurs who are at the heart of the biggest mining boom in more than a century and who are helping drive the national income to unprecedented heights.

Then yesterday he was put in the seemingly contradictory position of having to defend coalminers against attacks by Greenpeace and other environmental groups seeking funding from other wealthy entrepreneurs to disrupt and delay the new mines and infrastructure that would entrench this prosperity.

Yet, with his rant against mining magnates Gina Rinehart, Clive Palmer and Andrew Forrest, wealth creation appears to have become, at least in Mr Swan’s eyes, a vice that runs against the grain of Australian society and which must therefore be fought against at all costs.

Just two months before he hands down his fifth budget, this is a time when the Treasurer should be focused on trimming the fat from government spending and getting Australia’s budget out of deficit, particularly given the warning from our biggest export market that China is shaving its economic growth target. A truly reforming Treasurer also would be driving Labor’s internal debate on how to reverse the economy’s alarming productivity slowdown.

Instead, Mr Swan appears fully behind Labor’s reregulation of the job market in ways that reinforce Australia’s traditional them-and-us culture industrial relations culture. He has also has backed Labor’s extension of government assistance to rent-seeking sectors of the economy such as the car industry and coastal shipping.

Trapped by Labor’s fealty to its trade union backers, Mr Swan has reverted to the politics of envy and resentment and a form of class warfare more reminiscent of the 1950s. Among other things, this job market re-regulation is lifting the economy’s “natural’’ unemployment rate and hurting the very low-skilled workers he professes to champion.

Mr Swan happily admits that his jihad against high-wealth individuals is a deep-seated part of his political “postcode’’ ideology. Yet Labor focus group polling also no doubtԜis showing that Opposition Leader Tony Abbott is scoring very well with Howard’s battlers in the electorate. Prime Minister Julia Gillard was defending the class-warfare mentality of her second-in- command, telling journalists in Canberra yesterday that she “commended” Mr Swan’s rambling essay in the latest edition of The Monthly magazine.

But Business Council of Australia president Tony Shepherd was quick to expose the colander of holes in Mr Swan’s diatribe, noting in a joint press conference with Ms Gillard that Australia was “definitely not America” when it came to inequality. Mr Shepherd warned against political rhetoric that could lead to a “divided society”, while Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief Peter Anderson said Mr Swan’s anti-business campaign was “not a helpful intervention”.

Contrary to Mr Swan’s silly claims, Australia’s middle class is not being hollowed out or exploited by a 1 per cent of the super-rich. Middle Australia is more prosperous than it has ever been, in part because of the entrepreneurial efforts of MsԜRinehart, Mr Palmer and Mr Forrest who, along the way, have broken into the iron ore duopoly of BHP Billiton and RioԜTinto.

The Treasurer’s argument that our mining entrepreneurs are some sort of threat to democracy are ludicrous given the Labor-commissioned report by former judge Ray Finkelstein that would impose an unprecedented level of government intervention on Australia’s free and open press. It is further exposed by yesterday’s revelations that environmental groups are seeking to effectively sabotage Australia’s coal boom.

Countering this threat to the living standards of the people Mr Swan professes to represent merely highlights the need to amplify the voice of the mining entrepreneurs Australia’s Treasurer is shamefully trying to vilify with attacks thatԜencourage some of the worst aspects of our national character.