Following the ‘debate’ over the Resource Super Profits Tax (RSPT) last year, Robert Gottliebsen described how:
Here at Business Spectator, Alan Kohler, Stephen Bartholomeusz and myself realised that Rudd and Swan had made a diabolical mistake soon after it was announced. We decided to highlight every aspect of this terrible measure until it was changed.
And they did indeed do just that, throwing just about everything, including the kitchen sink, at the proposed tax. To my mind, the high point of the storm was when Robert Gottliebsen argued that the RSPT would deflate house prices.
Yet today, almost one year on to the day, Gotti adopts an equally hysterical tone in defending the value of your home against the very boom that the tax was designed to manage:
I am still hopeful that the Reserve Bank will not throttle the Australian non-mining economy by raising interest rates another half a per cent during 2011. But the zealots in the Reserve Bank and Treasury want people in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane to lose their jobs and have their homes jeopardised so that hundreds of billions can be spent on mining projects over the next five years. Any miner who thinks that will not cause an unprecedented backlash should spend some time with the people in the cattle industry who did not understand the implications of what was happening in Indonesia.The public will demand to know: Why do we need to build so many projects at once and so force interest rates and the Australian dollar through the roof with the consequent devastation to the main centres of population and voting power?
… We have been convinced to believe we need all these projects because we will miss out on markets if we don’t act quickly on, say, gas. In reality this is a negotiating game the skilled Chinese use to boost supply so as to keep prices under control. Japan did the same thing when it was the major buyer of iron ore.
… To slow the boom down why not pitch the energy resource (carbon) tax at the high end of the current scenarios? That will cause a number of LNG plants promoters to have second thoughts which will take some of the pressure off the economy. And if it doesn’t slow them down we will at least get a lot of money.
Now, it is of course fair enough to change your mind, even if, as in this case, you end up arguing opposite positions with total conviction. Many good commentators have done so, including me.
But Gotti hasn’t acknowledged any of change of direction. And, in fact, just last week, he argued the opposite again, when he condemned the carbon tax as nothing but a disguised RSPT (which he repeats today), designed to do nothing but fatten government coffers:
The new carbon resources tax is a massive blow to the energy export sector. In the original Henry-Swan mining tax the projects had not been announced, so a capital strike took place. This time, by accident, Canberra is much smarter and the exporters are stymied because they have since announced the projects. They may have to take it on the chin and to some extent the tax is offset on the capital side because the higher Australian dollar has slashed the costs of all the projects.
If Australia was serious about reducing carbon instead of just being interested in raising money and using the tax as a resources tax the Gillard government would combine the tax with some of the Abbott-style plans. And indeed we would use the money raised by the carbon resources tax to fund those carbon reduction plans. By combining the government and opposition plans we would achieve real carbon abatement.
Gotti is a legend and his story-telling skills are unmatched, but his readers deserve better than this daily dose of hysteria.
