Guest essay by Viv Forbes
To compete in today’s world we need to score well on resource availability, capital assets, energy costs, tax burden and workforce/management. It also helps to have secure property rights and a sound currency. Today’s Australia scores poorly on all counts.
In 1901, the year of Federation, Australia was the richest country in the world per capita.
The Pioneer generations, with freedom to explore and invest, had developed valuable mineral assets – gold, silver, lead, zinc, copper, coal, tin and iron. And they had bred up large numbers of sheep and cattle on our native grasslands.
Energy was abundant – wood, horse power, kerosene, gas, hydro and coal powered electricity – we were among world leaders in cheap energy. Sydney had gas lights in its streets as far back as 1820.
The Pioneering innovators also invented game-changers such as the stump jump plough, the Ridley-Sunshine Harvester and froth flotation of minerals, and they developed better Australian versions of Leviathan coaches, Southern Cross windmills, Merino sheep, Shorthorn cattle, Federation wheat, Kelpies and Blue Heeler dogs.
The Builder generations who followed the pioneers invested heavily in productive capital assets like flour mills and wool sheds, mines and collieries, smelters and saw mills, power stations and electric trams, trans-continental railways and overland telegraph lines, orchards and plantations, stockyards and abattoirs, breweries and vineyards, dams and artesian bores, factories and universities, exploration and research, pipelines and harbours, railways and roads. There were no “Lock-the-Gate” signs.
Governments were decentralised with minimal taxes and red tape, creating new business was easy and union power was minimal and generally beneficial for workers.
But then the Termite generations took over, and for much of the last forty years taxes, handouts and green tape have been smothering new enterprise. We are sponging on the ageing assets created by past generations and building little to support future Australians. The monuments left by this generation are typified by casinos, sports arenas, wind-energy prayer wheels, sit-down money and debt.
The trendy war on carbon has already inflated our electricity costs – this will hasten the closure of more processing and manufacturing industries. Green tape is shutting-the-gate on new investments in exploration, grassland protection, dams, power stations, fishing, forestry and coastal development. Taxes are weakening existing industry and the savings that could build new industries are being wasted on bureaucracy, delays, legalism, subsidies, climate tomfoolery and green energy toys. Finally, union featherbedding is crippling any large survivors.
Australia’s future prosperity demands cheap energy, more investment in productive assets, reduced government costs, more productive labour and the freedom to explore and innovate.
We must change, or more jobs will follow Holden.
More at carbon-sense.com
Some posters upstring seem to think that I don’t support free enterprise or the market.
This is complete nonsense.
I admire the tremendous energy that comes from free enterprise and I believe that, in the absence of natural monopolies, the market is a critical tool for generating efficient and effective outcomes. I am pleased that all of my offspring work in the private sector and that all of them either have their own enterprises or are working to develop their own enterprises.
Of course all the rent seekers, corporate parasites, crony capitalists and crooks who try to cheat each other, their clients, the woodies and the environment for a free ride have to be regulated.
“climateace says:
December 28, 2013 at 11:51 pm”
That’s a rather bold assumption. What makes you think no-one else posting here has grown and picked produce in the way you describe (As you mention it, I’ve used both manual and mechanised methods for spuds in the past. With Irish hertiage who’d a thought that eh)? Or worked in a butchers/abattoirs yard where beasts, machines or blades can injure or even kill you? You appear to assume you are the only one who has done any hard work along with any associated risks in those lines of work. Heck, I still have minute bits of an IBM 3745 in my eye. Thankfully, don’t cause any pain or problem but look nice according to the optician.
Some posters upstring seem to think that I don’t support free enterprise or the market.
This is complete nonsense.
I admire the tremendous energy that comes from free enterprise and I believe that, in the absence of natural monopolies, the market is a critical tool for generating efficient and effective outcomes. I am pleased that all of my offspring work in the private sector and that all of them either have their own enterprises or are working to develop their own enterprises.
Of course all the rent seekers, corporate parasites, crony capitalists and crooks who try to cheat each other, their clients, the woodies and the environment for a free ride have to be regulated.
I see we are deep into “Alice Through the Looking Glass” territory.
6. Humpty Dumpty: Through the Looking Glass, by Lewis Carroll
Sorry about the repeats of the same post everyone—I don’t know how it happened.
The Climate Council [ Tim Flannery’s mob] is demanding that Australia’s fossil fuels be left in the ground, and still no ‘journalist’ ever asks the ‘experts’ which renewable energy will provide base load power for whatever Australian industry survives , and where will Australia’s export income come from—–the funding we need to pay for the safety nets for those who really need them —the genuinely disabled etc.
This is dereliction from journalists that borders on deliberate subversion of the interests of their own country. These questions must be asked and answered before Australia has to endure one more day of Labor’s campaign to prevent the Abbott government from rescinding the carbon tax.
IMO, the fact that none of these questions are even asked, and the fact that so much [ like the climategate emails and the corruption of peer review they revealed—–and the fact of the ‘pause’ and the effects of black carbon etc] —–is ignored and unreported, while every bit of weather is either loudly or slyly attributed to CAGW—– indicates that the CAGW proponents , including the MSM ‘journalists’ know that it’s dangerous for the ’cause’, to seek those answers and report on the objective facts, lest their whole thesis is undermined.
They only survive on lies.
So IMO it’s becoming increasingly obvious that there’s an unspoken pact that everything that’s said must support the ’cause’, and if it would likely undermine the ’cause’, then it will go unsaid and unquestioned and unreported.
It’s time for the CSIRO and BoM and ANU scientists who are the ones providing cover and justification for governments and media [ the devils that made them do it]—-to start to protect themselves by coming forward with the truth, before it’s too late, and science and scientists in Australia and around the world take a hit from which they will never recover in the minds of the taxpayers who fund them.
They could explain the gatekeeping and the sacking and sidelining of scientists whose work came to inconvenient conclusions—even when it was replicated in other countries.
They could start by revealing exactly what adjustments are used between the raw data and the public announcements and statements intended to alarm.
They could answer all the questions on the dodgy inquiries used to shut down questions on Climategate emails.
On any other issue, the public would be outraged in the extreme at the idea that Dracula would be put in charge of the bloodbank, as was the case with some of the UK inquiries.
Everything the warmists do, indicates that they know their house of cards is far too shaky to withstand even the most basic of questioning.
metro70 says…
May I suggest you read what E. M. Smith (an economist) has to say?
In reality the goals of the “Socialists” and the large corporate “Capitalist” are the same, CONTROL. This is why it does not matter which of several parties is put in office Global Governance and complete control is the objective of the moneyed elite since the 1930s as Pascal Lamy,s Director of the World Trade Organization, made clear. All the rest is just a dog and pony show to divert the masses and give them the illusion they have a ‘Democracy’
Because of the concentration of the worlds’ wealth in the hands of a very few, no politician who is against the goals of the elite has a chance in Hades.
A peer-reviewed paper by two physicists, The Network of Global Corporate Control, traced control to just 737 top holders. “[w]e find that only top holders accumulate 80% of the control over the value of all TNCs” (TNCs = Transnational Corporations)
Read what a former respected member of international banking, John Perkins, said in “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man” and interviews:
Was Perkins just a disgruntled employee? I doubt if Mr. Budhoo thinks so.
Mr. Budhoo, resigned from the staff of the International Monetary Fund, with these words in an open letter:
…
On to Mr. Smith’s explanation of why ‘Socialists’ and corporate ‘Capitalists’ have the same goals.
In other words as Dwayne Andreas of Archer Daniels Midland Co. made very clear in that Mother Jones Article (see below) the large corporations are all for ‘Socialist’ programs and regulations because they give them a monopoly. Just one law with its created bureaucracy and regulations can break the back of the small and medium sized competition. If that doesn’t work the Government-Corporate revolving door puts in place the cartel’s puppets who target the little guy.
You can read about how that worked in US agriculture in these four articles.
Overview: History HACCP and the Food Safety Con-job
The USDA put in place new international standards and then lied about it telling the public there had been no changes to food safety ‘Laws’ in years when the food borne illnesses doubled and the MSM screamed about it.. HACCP Disconnect From Public Health Concerns A second better article is in Food Safety news.
An example of how the little guy is targetted: Five Minutes With John Munsell & A Trip To The Woodshed With The USDA
An example of how the big guys are protected: Investigative Report: SHIELDING THE GIANT: USDA’s “Don’t Look, Don’t Know” Policy
10 Corporations Control Almost Everything You Buy – CHART
This is The Mother Jones article showing an example of the interlock between government and a corporation:
climateace says: @ur momisugly December 29, 2013 at 12:09 am
….Of course all the rent seekers, corporate parasites, crony capitalists and crooks who try to cheat each other, their clients, the woodies and the environment for a free ride have to be regulated.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Now there I agree with you. We need a government to keep the playing field level. To keep the Big Boys from creating monopolies, cheating people and trashing the environment.
The problem is keeping the Big Boys with all their power and money from OWNING the government. Unfortunately the US Supreme Court has made it very very clear they are not on the side of the masses or interested in following our Constitution.
And on our right to a jury trial where the jury has the right to set aside laws that are harmful. (Jury nullification)
There are of course many many more examples but those two are probably among the most harmful to the people of the USA.
metro70 says: @ur momisugly December 29, 2013 at 6:41 am
…to start to protect themselves by coming forward with the truth, before it’s too late, and science and scientists in Australia and around the world take a hit from which they will never recover in the minds of the taxpayers who fund them….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
In my case it is already too late. Once your eyes are open and you look around and start adding things up you can never go back to sleep again.
I regard most university scientists, universities, peer-reviewed journals and scientific societies as having sold out their countrymen for forty pieces of Eight.
Climate ace , where are you going with this?
Please , just briefly describe the Australia that you see in existence 30,000 years from now , and say what the problem is.
@ur momisugly Metro 70
You’re a repetitive little bugger aren’t you? Why do I not refute you? Couldn’t be bothered. If you cannot understand that statism is the enemy of freedom then there’s not much more to say. You say:
You seem to agree with me that the ALP adopted the ideology of the Coalition. If the ideology is the same, how can it be different? Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Dumber.
Apropos the accountant’s claim that there were no accountants available to take on new business in the transition; that was certainly true. It’s possible there were accountants available in other states, but what use was that to me? Even though I could have afforded the air fares, I didn’t have the luxury of sufficient time.
I made what I thought a sensible business decision; wind up the business rather than spend an inordinate amount of time understanding the legislation and all its implications while still operating a one-man business that was already stretching my resources to the limit (60-80 hrs/week). I was not alone in making such a decision and maybe 40% of us did wind-up; for all I know it was 20% or 95%. You are correct that “there was a heap of advice available at the time” and that was the very problem. Much of it was contradictory and the volume was such that it would take many hours to assimilate; hours that few sole-operators have to spare. Businesses with many employees have the advantage of sole-operators in this regard. Everyone at the ATO GST seminar I attended was a sole-operator; the seminars were focussed on the GST as it applied to the type of business enterprise one was engaged in.
Of course I could have “biggered” my business and engaged employees and all the rest of it. But that takes time and I was old enough and wise enough to know that it was time to slow down rather than speed up. I knew from my experiences in the 70s that the cost of employees was equal to the wage paid to them. I have never regretted the decision to retire from business. A good friend in the industry decided to bigger and ended up being ripped off by his partner. I recall thinking: “There but for the grace of Big G go I…” Biggering entails risking the loss of significant amounts of capital.
I gained some sense of what the new regime would have been like for my business because the ATO pursued me for GST payments and income tax installments for a good ten years after I became an ordinary wage-earner. Actually the demands for GST statements and payments ceased after five years, but after ten years of being told I owed an outstanding amount of income tax, I received a cheque from the ATO for that amount plus 10 years’ interest. Given the inordinate amount of time consumed by an endless string of ATO employees who probably couldn’t tell whether it was raining or Tuesday, they were the hardest earned dollars I ever received. So it goes…
BTW, the business generated enough money in a year to pay for the world-famous House of Steel. The year spent building it was the happiest and most enjoyable year of my life. Additionally, the money I saved by doing it myself meant I did not have to pay income tax or interest on a significant sum of money. I do know how to do sums…
Patrick said @ur momisugly December 28, 2013 at 9:35 pm
What you say is truthy. Howard nevertheless had done an an about-face on his GST promise claiming that there were core promises and non-core promises, or some such balderdash. Note that neoLiberal John Stone was the severest critic of any form of consumption tax.
John Stone was Secretary to the Treasury during the reign of Coalition Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser and finance spokesman for the Coalition when John Howard was leader in opposition. Hardly the Marxist one might infer from some comments above.
Climateace,
Ok. I don’t see that we’re going to get much farther with this. If we decide that ‘extinction event’ is an arbitrary term, then obviously in that case nobody can object to you calling an extinction rate in man’s presence that is even slightly higher than would be otherwise an ‘extinction event’. This is semantics, but I’d still object to this because it’s not the common use of the term and serves no purpose other than to mislead and sensationalize.
We also don’t look to be going anywhere with my point about human timescales. Perhaps I’ve been articulating this point poorly. Another attempt: I don’t think we can generalize about how our actions will affect things that will happen over the next 30,000 years when this is considerably longer than our recorded history.
I originally thought we’d be arguing about climate change driving extinction events, although at this point I’ve lost interest. 🙂 It’s been fun though.
Metro 70 , you say above “One [ Labor] is the party of big government- ”
and that “The Coalition believes in small government that tries to design the economy so that it supports individuals and business in general , in being the best they can be under their own steam, with as little government interference as possible.”
I don’t think that anyone disagrees greatly with those two statements, but the thing is that Tony et al is not going to bring about small government is he? In fact there will likely be only the most minute changes around the periphery of unnecessary government interference in the the lives of private individuals.
So essentially you are reduced to arguing about which one is tweedledumb and which one is tweedledumber.
I think that all the references supplied by Gail Combs illustrate that point rather well.
MB
My view is that if we lose all, or most, of our vertebrates within 30,000 years we will have a mass extinction event. That is not semantics.
I agree that it is impossible for us here and now to influence future generations’ behaviours.
My issue is that we have initiated the event, and that we are responsible for our actions now.
‘farmerbraun says:
December 29, 2013 at 10:42 am
Climate ace , where are you going with this?
Please , just briefly describe the Australia that you see in existence 30,000 years from now , and say what the problem is.’
See previous post.
Patrick
So, there are two of us who have bled in the course of our work?
Excellent.
Well luckily climateace , we , here in Godzone, will probably be in a position to re-stock the West Island with all the friggin’ bushy -tailed phalangers that you could ever want.
I hope this fact makes you feel better. 🙂
Climateace,
Then the only problem I have left is your contention that we have ‘initiated’ an extinction event, or that we can stop one. We are an extinction event. We’ve agreed intervention prevents some species that would otherwise become extinct from being wiped out on human timescales, that’s a long leap from saying anything initiating or halting an extinction event.
By analogy, you seem to be suggesting that whether or not we change the oil in the fry machine at the start of our shift as temporary low level McDonalds employees is going to dictate quality for our fast food franchise chain over the lifespan of our business. That’s silly.
Climateace,
Once again, argument from ambiguity. Earlier you spoke of 10% of species. Now you’re talking about all or most vertebrates. Despite your links, hard numbers on how many species are going to die out in 30,000 years are wanting. Certainly, the impact of transient government policies on long term species survival is doubtful.
You can’t simultaneously acknowledge that we have no control over what happens tomorrow and say that we’re going to stop an extinction event by passing some laws today – it’s just flat out not true that we can say that what we do today will stop something 30,000 years down the road. You ~can~ say that we are obligated to minimize extinctions within reason on our watch. It’s a different statement.
Bottom line, the only definitive power we have today is to annihilate species or not to. We can elect not to, again, within reason and limits. This is not halting an extinction event. Failure to pass laws is not initiating an extinction event, the initiation of the event was the rise of our species and our dominance of the planet.
Gail Combs…
In your comment @December 29 at 7.04am…
You have me mixed up with someone else .I didn’t mention E.M .Smith—not in any of my comments.
metro70 says: @ur momisugly December 29, 2013 at 3:55 pm
You have me mixed up with someone else .I didn’t mention E.M .Smith—not in any of my comments.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
E.M. explains why Tweedle Dumb is the same as Tweedle Dumber.
metro 70: Gail, in response to something that you said, is suggesting that you read what E.M. Smith has to say. She provided the links earlier.
Mark Bofill says: ” the initiation of the event was the rise of our species and our dominance of the planet.”
Can you expand on that? Yes , a few other species of hominids are no longer with us, along with most of the species that ever existed.
Changing conditions on this planet would seem to dictate that the process of evolution will continue.
I have my doubts about ” our dominance of the planet.” What makes you think that is permanent, if indeed it is even temporary?
Pompous Git….@ur momisugly December 29 2013 at 10.43am…
Nothing in your comment supports your Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dumber assessment—and certainly not the fact that Labor adopted the ideology it had been trying to sink without trace—and pretended it was its own.
You would only applaud that move by Labor if you would also applaud the arsonist for getting away with deliberately lighting a fire that caused enormous damage to people and property and the country itself—boasting and signalling that that was his malicious intent all along—- and then , with impunity, joining the fire service to take credit for the methods and efforts required and deployed to try to mitigate the damage.
Of course, with Labor, much of the damage they always cause can never be mitigated—it’s irreversible, and its impact builds.
And in any case , I believe your claim was that Labor pre-Keating was better for business than the Coalition—that’s pre-1983.
That was when the unions, with their Marxist union bosses were in fully feral mode, vocalising their determination that Australia must become a Socialist country—-proclaiming their intention to ‘bring Australia to its knees’—some of them very cosy with and taking advice from Gaddafi—-some with allegiance to the Chinese Communists and taking that country and system as their model—feather-bedding every industry—intimidating workers—making massive ambit claims for wages they knew employers couldn’t possibly pay, and via these thuggish tactics, getting wage rises that even the Labor Minister said were costing other workers their jobs.
Meanwhile , Labor ministers were making illegal deals with shadowy Middle Eastern figures with nefarious connections in an attempt to bypass the Constitution , and saddle Australia with massive illegal loans that would have been a drain on the economy for years to come—and other ministers were seeking ways to nationalize the banks and the means of production and distribution—a long-held Socialist dream of Labor.
That Whitlam Labor government left a toxic legacy of high inflation, high unemployment and utter chaos for the Fraser government that followed.
Fraser was weak and timid and too scared to deregulate as per the advice of the Campbell Report that he had commissioned.
John Howard , as treasurer, along with Liberal Party dries like Peter Costello tried to persuade Fraser to to so, but to no avail.
There is no way that Labor —before or after deregulation could be considered the same as the Coalition.
You say…’If the adopted ideology was the same, how could (the parties) be different?’
In the implementation—and the extent — and the intent—-many ways.
Labor did as Communist China is now doing—-using their version of a free market because they know that no other system will bring the prosperity that is required to stave off unrest and revolution—but at the same time maintaining the elements of their ‘big state’ system that will preserve the tight control of the elite over the workers.
Labor deregulated, and made the unelected union bosses a ruling part of the government —but left the worst of the union thuggery and intimidatory and industry-destroying powers and tactics in place.
Labor also cultivated their pet business people to the detriment of those out of the inner circle—they wrote the book on crony capitalism.
Labor’s intent was less control for the Australian people over their own lives—the Coalition’s intent was the opposite.
Chalk and cheese.
You seem to have allowed one jaundiced view of the expected early days of the GST implementation to drive you out of what appears to have been a good business —and to poison your view of a party and government that brought Australians unprecedented prosperity—-that’s a pity.