A cluster of corporate heavy hitters this afternoon spanked Tony Abbott for his populist policies. Mark Carnegie makes eminent sense on carbon, from the AFR:
“What is Tony Abbott actually going to do with a two-term government? When you have got Exxon and Shell and BHP all calling for a carbon tax … he is going to turn around and roll back the carbon tax at a time when it clear that the revenues in the budget are under an immense pressure and one of the least painful ways to raise a significant amount of money has been the carbon tax…He has said that is going to go as a source of revenue as well at a time when the budget is clearly fracturing in front of us. The real question is that we know what Tony Abbott has said he is going to do, but what is he really going to do, because he is the person least committed to the market and free market economics of any of the viable political leaders,” Mr Carnegie said.
RBA board member Jillian Broadbent chimed in:
“I do not know what he [Tony Abbot] is going to do, but I do have a concern … about discontinuity in public policy and that goes to the carbon tax, the NBN the mining tax. Unfortunately, the pitch from the opposition is that we will unwind these things and I think there is a danger of throwing out the baby with the bath water.”
Hamish Douglass, the chief executive of Magellan Financial Group, added that a mining tax was good public policy and that he worried that we had nothing left when the mining boom ended.
It seems the business community is suddenly so confident of victory that they are already turning on their champion’s madness. Imagine what the Coalition’s lead in the polls would be if they had a real leader.
