Often wrong, never in doubt is Gotti:
I have been reporting and commenting on large enterprises in the Australian private sector for more than half a century. I have never seen significant lumps of the private sector in such disarray as I am now seeing. And in the case of energy the private sector mess is multiplied many times by appalling government from our two largest states.
As a result of this situation we are requiring a Coalition Federal government to intervene in ways that governments of all persuasions over the last 50 years have never contemplated. And, to its credit, the Turnbull administration has started to do it.
I will return to energy later but sufficient at this stage to say that no government of a developed democracy in the western world would stand for what the private sector has done in east coast gas. ACCC chief Rod Sims is right. There is only one remedy — the stick administered by severe legislative action and severe penalties both corporate and personal.
If it was just gas we could confine the private sector problem. But in banking we find our largest bank has been taking in drug money and sending some of it to terrorists. We can blame ATMs and computers but there is no excuse that counts. In housing, banks didn’t bother to check loan application forms so lying has become prevalent. In wealth management and insurance we have seen a whole series of scams.
You did this, Gotti. You and your relentless corporate apologism that has sought rents for every business in the economy for decades, even going so far as to roll governments when your giveaways were disrupted. Do you seriously expect us to believe that following the RSPT debacle you would have supported a Labor government restricting gas exports, bank profits or house prices for Highrise Harry?
Never did you realise that what you should have been defending was markets not businesses.
View it and weep, mate.
