RSS Feed
March 5th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda Treasurer Wayne Swan is keeping up the political pressure on a trio of Australian mining billionaires he has accused of mobilising their wealth against the Labor government’s mining and carbon taxes.
As the nation’s third-largest iron ore producer Fortescue Metals took out full-page advertisements defending its chairman Andrew Forrest, Mr Swan denied he was anti-business or engaging in the politics of envy.
“These are the convenient phrases used by the champions of privilege,” he told the National Press Club in Canberra on Monday.
The stoush comes after the treasurer wrote an essay for The Monthly magazine in which he said “vested interests” were threatening the Australian idea of a fair go and had waged “ferocious and highly misleading” campaigns against the government’s forthcoming taxes.
Mr Swan said his essay was not an attack on the rich.
“It is an attack on an imbalance in influence and opportunity,” he said.
Mr Swan – whose mining profits tax is due to pass the Senate later this month – said the political debate was being distorted.
“We can’t afford to let the market system or the political conversation be undermined by the greed of a wildly irresponsible few,” he said.
“It is a defining issue for our economy and our community. I believe it is also now the major dividing line in our politics.”
In its ads on Monday, Fortescue said the treasurer had been “unfair, untrue and divisive”, and defended Mr Forrest, who gives away more than $50 million a year to charities.
“Andrew epitomises the spirit of what an Australian can do if given a ‘fair go’,” Fortescue deputy chairman Herb Elliott said in the ads.
Mr Swan said although it was “good” that Mr Forrest and his wife gave away their own money, it was no reason not to pay a mining tax.
“Charity is not a substitute for paying tax.”
Mining groups have been openly hostile about the 30 per cent tax on coal and iron ore mining profits, saying it will hurt the resources sector and jobs.
In 2010, the sector’s campaign against the government’s larger resources super-profits tax – and the furore that followed – contributed to the demise of prime minister Kevin Rudd.
The government says the revamped mining tax will raise $11 billion over three years and help spread the benefits of the mining boom.
The carbon tax, which takes effect on July 1, will levy $23 on every tonne of carbon emissions produced by the nation’s biggest polluters.
Mr Swan said “99 per cent” of business people were a force for good in society.
But Opposition Leader Tony Abbott was “kneeling down at the feet” of so-called vested interests, such as WA magnates Mr Forrest and Gina Rinehart and Queensland mining billionaire Clive Palmer, he said.
Mr Abbott said the issue was not about Mr Swan’s “phoney class war on billionaires” but the government’s attack on middle Australia, which was dealing with rising living costs through the carbon tax and the watering down of private health insurance rebates.
Mr Swan’s targets were “wealth creators”, he told reporters in Bendigo, Victoria.
Greens leader Bob Brown said the Fortescue ads showed how “tilted” things had become.
“The average bod, the schoolteacher, the nurse, the small business person can’t do that,” he told reporters in Hobart.
The CFMEU, which represents miners, said Mr Swan was courageous.
“Government has a right to manage the boom and seek adequate revenue from it,” national secretary Michael O’Connor said in a statement.
Mr Palmer said Mr Swan was an “intellectual pygmy” who didn’t know how the economy worked.
“He is just a puppet of the faceless men who give directions on what to do and say,” he wrote in an opinion piece published by Fairfax Media.
Views: 0
Posted in 
Tags: 
