RIO/BHP enter “stupid” WA election race

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WA has anew political party for its election, via the AFR:

Internal polling conducted by WA Chamber of Mines and Energy has affirmed the iron ore miners’ collective view that their public standing is nowhere near as parlous as the state’s political classes, among others, might imagine.

…They were also asked to rank the mining’s importance to the state. And the results were as surprising as they were affirming for the miners, with 94 per cent of respondents agreeing that mining was either very important or somewhat important to the WA economy.

Only agriculture did better with a 98 per cent endorsement, which is no surprise given the rural focus of the first of the CME’s tracking polling that will continue through to next year’s state election on March 11.

…The Grylls pitch is built around both its blank (stupid?) simplicity and the notion that Australians generally and Western Australians particularly are increasingly resentful of the mining industry generally and BHP and Rio particularly.

This polling would appear to suggest there is a gap between this notion and the grass roots reality. And we are assured that the data we have not seen is just as informative of difference between received wisdom and what the polling is showing.

…While we haven’t seen the data generated by those questions, we hear that the results dent perceptions that Grylls is Mr Pilbara and put support for the tax plan at just better than 50 per cent.

That, of course, is not such a bad result for Grylls. But this polling was conducted ahead of any general or targeted anti-tax campaigning by the miners. And you only have to ask Wayne Swan how much the mood of the people can be swayed by a cleverly assembled, expensively funded, facts-based campaign aimed at re-heating the coals of community support for mining.

So, WA, you have a new political party. Though in reality it is far from new, only more openly aggressive. Sadly this contest is a battle of stupidity. The Grylls pitch is stupid (not because it is wrong because it’s poorly argued). The miner’s response is just as stupid, adding another episode to the annals of Australia’s spectacular collapse into Banana Republic politics. The media coverage is the most stupid of all with zero grasp of the arguments.

My own view remains that nothing can save the WA Coalition from electoral wipe out given its criminal mismanagement of the boom so it’s all academic anyway. The Grylls episode has provided some short term amusement as WA heads deeper into its super-cycle depression and levels of political chaos so far undreamed of.

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About the author
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.