This nation is rapidly disappearing up its own cloaca at the AFR:
The head of the former Abbott government’s budget audit commission, Tony Shepherd, has warned Australia is becoming a “banana republic” and that Monday’s budget update will confirm the nation is living beyond its means.
Until Australians recognise and understand the scale of the problem it will be difficult to achieve meaningful change, Mr Shepherd writes in an opinion piece for The Australian Financial Review on Monday.
“The era of the Lucky Country is coming to an end as Australia approaches $350 billion in Commonwealth debt this year,” he writes.
“There is no hope of recovery without serious reform which needs to address the fundamental role of government in Australia.”
Mr Shepherd’s language reprises former prime minister and Treasurer Paul Keating’s famous 1986 “banana republic” warning which seized on the nation’s endemic twin budget and current account deficits to win business and union support for unpopular economic reforms.
The 2014 National Commission of Audit chairman has now joined forces with the Menzies Research Centre to take another “serious crack” at addressing the nation’s economic challenges by overseeing an expert panel to find solution.
The so-called Shepherd Review is made up of a seven-member panel including ANZ Banking group managing director Warwick Smith, Council of Small Business of Australia chief executive Peter Strong, co-owner of Buildcorp Josephine Sukkar, Menzies Research Centre director Peta Seaton, founding partner of H2 Ventures Ben Heap, and Geoffrey Winters, lawyer and descendant of the Gamillaroi people near Walgett, NSW.
Here is how Wikipaedia defines a Banana Republic:
Banana republic or banana state is a political science term used originally for politically unstable countries in Latin America whose economies are largely dependent on exporting a limited-resource product, e.g. bananas. It typically has stratified social classes, including a large, impoverished working class and a ruling plutocracy of business, political, and military elites.[1] This politico-economic oligarchy controls the primary-sector productions to exploit the country’s economy.
Is the irony lost on anyone here? Tony Shepherd, former chairman of Transfield and current chair of the Boards of the Greater Western Sydney Giants, the Australian Subscription Television and Radio Association and the Sydney Cricket Ground & Sports Ground Trust, as well as chair of Tony Abbott’s Commission of Audit run by the Business Council of Australia for budget repair is busy declaring the nation a Banana Republic.
While the Commission did a better job than did the Abbott Government, raising such political unpalatables as pension reform, it was also seriously biased against workers in favour of Business Council members, as well virtually exempting Baby Boomers from any contribution to budget repair. This is the same Business Council chock full of oligopolistic rent seekers that unquestioningly back non-stop current account expanding policies such the population ponzi and foreign funding model of growth.
In short, Mr Shepherd and his COA were a shining exemplar of Banana Republican politics, a private policy document produced by sectional interests in support of reform favouring large business and elites.
Now Mr Shepherd, card carrying Banana Republican, is back in league with various other plutocrats and a politically biased think tank to attempt further policy distortion, no doubt again in favour of themselves and their generation.
Just piss off back to the boys club at the SCG, mate. Leave Australia to the governance of those that know its full of Australians.
