The Abbott Government has developed no coherent plan for maintaining Australia’s economic prosperity beyond asinine soundbites — but the mainstream media don’t care, writes Ronald Ostrowski.
JUST AFTER THE ELECTION, I often heard Abbott and some of his new Government Ministers tell us that the adults are back in charge — that they have a plan for the future.
On the table was the promise to create 1 million jobs. With the supposed most hopeless government in history being despatched at the ballot box, they told us to expect some pain as they cleaned up Labor’s supposed mess, with things to become very rosy at some unspecified time in the future.
Apparently, there was a plan developed to make all this happen. Yet, just how many in the mainstream media ever refer to it ‒ either before the election of after it ‒ let alone subject it to some analysis?
At this point in time, it may be found on the Liberal Party website and comprises a mere paragraph or two. Just short enough for Liberal MPs to parrot for the benefit of lazy mainstream journalists to dutifully report.
Here is an excerpt, highlighting the main thrust of the plan:
The Coalition's Real Solutions Plan will build a diverse 5-pillar economy to build on our strengths, including in manufacturing. We will:
- Repeal the carbon tax and the mining tax, provide a 1.5% company tax cut, cut red and green tape by at least $1 billion a year, and delay Labor’s compulsory superannuation increases;
- Provide stronger anti-dumping laws, improve the Fair Work laws to restore the balance to the sensible centre, and undertake a once in a generation review of competition laws; and
- Deliver billions in infrastructure projects to build the roads and transport corridors that are essential to manufacturing.
Note that this plan on a page focuses on the Fair Work laws, company tax cuts and transport infrastructure projects. This, it seems, is the silver bullet that will save the day!
Of course, we will have to await the promised austerity of the coming May Budget to see if the infrastructure projects will be delivered, or remain forever an illusory election promise — like so many others already.
And, speaking of that, we should factor in the other cuts to CSIRO scientist positions and clean energy industry subsidies. These would have assisted with the creation of innovative technologies to provide skilled jobs to Australian workers while the rest of the world acts to address climate change. Now, Abbott has abolished them from the job creation equation, whilst continuing to support dirty fossil fuel subsidies.
Sadly, the mainstream interviewing journalists generally nod in agreement or fail to probe for clarification when Abbott, Abetz and Hockey claim that unions and workers, are to blame for the thousands of job losses in the now soon to be extinct Australian high tech automotive industry.
It makes one wonder if one is in an alternative universe where the public conversation is presided over by silly yet vicious twelve year olds.
If the media did some basic research, they could have immediately quashed these much vaunted LNP claims. The public should know that Ford in the USA announced a record profit. It has paid out to each of its workers an $8,800 bonus. Ford America, is also fully unionised as well as Government subsidised.
So, the media should counter these claims by the LNP, and many inept industry leaders, with facts and stop this ever growing meme, which is blaming workers’ pay and conditions for all our economic ills. Surely, best practice in management, strategic planning, entrepreneurship, workforce planning and market positioning should also enter any discussion about productivity.
But the Toyota CEO, a Liberal MP and the SPC Ardmono CEO have all contradicted Abbott and sections of the Murdoch press, exposing the LNP lie in blaming worker conditions.
In response, high profile political commentator Michelle Grattan wrote recently that:
Overreach seems to be endemic in this government. One would think that, after Tony Abbott laid it on far too thick about workers' conditions at SPC Ardmona and received a tongue lashing from one of his own, Treasurer Joe Hockey would have been extra careful.
But no. Hockey fell into a similar trap – and his slap down came from a rather bigger player.
When it announced that it planned to shut down its Australian manufacturing, Toyota cited a range of reasons. But Hockey wanted to put as much blame as possible on the costs imposed by the workers' conditions.
We should note that Michelle uses the softer term of “overreach” rather than the word “lying”, whch she used previously whenever she referred to Gillard’s so-called carbon tax “lie”.
But in light of the Opposition Leader’s attacks on the Government’s performance, she had this to say:
But it is a simplistic attack, which doesn’t do justice to Shorten’s own economic knowledge. Shorten’s attention should be on the creation of a forward looking industry policy, because the end of the auto sector will be a fait accompli (production is due to finish in 2017) by the time of the next Labor government.
Interestingly, while for the past three years Michelle never similarly challenged Abbott and Hockey as they relentlessly proclaimed that an international Triple A rating was nonsense and that we were in the same dire economic situation as Greece. In fact, no journalist, to my recollection, ever took the LNP Opposition to task as it constantly talked down Australia's good economic performance.
One could say that Grattan's piece calling Shorten politically opportunistic for exposing the obvious is hypocrisy at its very worst. Furthermore, asking an Opposition Leader after just months of being in the role, and not PM Abbott, is stupendously stupid. She and all the other mainstream media folk are not even asking Abbott to abolish the 5% tariff on imported vehicles.
But what are other countries doing to maintain their respective automotive industries?
In June 2013, Dr Remy Davison and Dr Phillip Toner highlighted comparisons of Australia’s subsidy with that of Germany and the USA:
‘When you look at the cost of government funding for each vehicle produced, Australia sits in between these two countries. Each Australian unit costs the taxpayer approximately 1.5 times that of a German vehicle but only around 67% that of a US-produced vehicle, despite the scale economies available to the American auto industry.’
The mainstream media do not seem to pay much attention to other jobs being lost.
In Canberra, these losses ‒ without any assistance packages to create Canberra based jobs ‒ are attributable to Abbott’s own massive cuts to the public service, implemented without even paying lip service to workforce planning. Subsequently, Canberra’s economic prospects are being hit for a six.
Rio Tinto’s closing down the Gove Refinery, with 1,500 jobs lost, does not even raise a murmur from those LNP MPs representing that community. Shorten, to his credit, did pay them a visit recently, but what can he do from Opposition?
The privatisation plan of revenue generating public assets is hardly being raised in the public conversation. Nor has anyone even picked Hockey up on his gleefully telling all in sundry that he would reap $130 billion after selling all of these assets.
Way to go, Joe! With this “adult in charge” telling prospective buyers what the price tag is —taxpayers can forget about maximising any returns on our assets.
Privatisation has a massive impact on job losses and, as was the case with Qantas and Telstra, inevitably results in jobs migrating offshore. The costs to the community can be massive, as proven in the selling off of Telstra — resulting in shareholder interests outweighing those of consumers wanting a high speed broadband service at the same low price enjoy by most overseas consumers. And let’s not even talk about the skyrocketing electricity bills we all received after those utilities were sold off.
So, forgetting about the highly politicised Commission of Audit Abbott has established to be run by his Business Council cronies, just what is our true economic position?
Listening to economists, it seems that lack of balance in our two-tier economy will be further exacerbated as the mining investment of past years delivers increased commodity exports and again increases the value of the Australian dollar. All Abbott is on track to deliver is a handful of mining industry jobs for the lucky few and a massive decrease in the manufacturing and related industries job market. And who knows what increases in 457 visa approvals will have on the employment prospects of working Australians.
It seems that the Abbott Government is ignoring the realities of our economic global position and also failing to address the real economic challenges for our future. Instead, they are using the recent job losses as a means to destroy the unions and, by extension, their main rival’s major source of donations.
Apart from that and few other grubby pieces of transparent politicking, they seem, quite frankly, to have no coherent plan at all. While they ignore Canberrans, Rio Tinto workers at Gove and SPC workers, they subsidise industries in marginal seats.
That is not a plan – it is a laughable shemozzle.
Clever countries support their industries for the long term and have plans in place to weather the storms of anticipated economic downturns.
Stupid countries imbue their public conversation with the rhetoric of inevitability and defeatism. That stupid country strategy is clearly Abbott’s approach as he elects to ignore some industries and support others on the basis of electoral advantage or concessions to powerful lobbyists.
There is no serious and mature plan in action here — shame on our mainstream media for failing to bring this to the attention of the general public.
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