captain feather sword strikes again

yer yer no wind its enough to make you
question politics and stuff

I REALLY don't like Wayne Swan.

It seems to me his objective was to get in first before the anticipated ramp up of the campaign against the mining tax, and then say something about vested interests Who knows I think he is paranoid!

His method of being diversive has me beat... He is showing he has no idea how to lead and how to get people on-board with his ideas.

His attack on Andrew Forrest (in particular) is stupid. I would be intrigued to see who has done more for indigenous employment, Andrew Forrest (and FMG) or Wayne Swan Andrew has a plan to create employment for 50 000 indigenous people. Wayne Swan has a plan to feather his own nest, with the feathers of the nation.

I'd like to here seabreezes own Australian Labor employee on this one, Loggy

I'm not really up on this but anyway ...Didn't Swan berate the miners for using their money in a self serving political attempt to further their own profits?: answer, Yes. Well seems like an open and shut case to me.

Yep



Captain Fairy Sword can't handle people with opinions that differ to his. Can't handle that this is out of his control. The Labs, we'll let you do what we think is right for you... Least they are back in business, and have stopped g(r)azing only at their own navel.

Those that follow, those that comply can have whatever voice they like. What next, will fairy feathers be unhappy that the unions have a voice... oh, hang on...

Had to laugh. This was discussed on Q & A last night.

One suggestion put forward was that this little tantrum was brought about by the fact that in all of the recent discussions over the best choices for labor leadership that his name wasn't mentioned once, and that this was just his way to score a little air time.

Hmm mining is booming, retail is sagging, manufacturing is dying, hmm
When the coal pit empties, and we havent invested in education, manufacturing and small business,

The "Australian living treasures" - who have most of our treasure (and want more" will be sitting fat and pretty in their tax havens.
-and do they all pay fair tax?
There will be less fat for the masses, and more fat for the small number who are already fat.

The gap is widening every day - fact. So if you find yourself in the lower wealth bracket in 5 or 10 years after the boom , will you be able to afford to eg trade your kite for a new one at season start ? or pay for the all important lessons to learn ? or will you have to eg steal someones gear of the beach, Ahh not nice - Love your work Swanny

^^^Yes, Vanstone was on fire... again... And to think back, some of the things she used to say about boat arrivals... anyway...

The rest sounds like spin to me. There may be a push for the government to have followed a more consultative process, like Hawke did with the petroleum resource rent-tax. Or perhaps some resistance is due to the proposed MRRT creating an uneven playing field (proved), with greater benefits (less tax paid) for certain other large companies. Perhaps the involvement of Don Argus in the process is seen as some kind of collusion which has biased the result. Perhaps it is just more Labs incompetence and poor judgement that lead us to where we now are. I don't know.

Do you really think Andrew Forrest (in particular) has done nothing? Might be worth reading this, from wikipedia:

Indigenous Australians

During his tenure at Fortescue, Forrest has been recognised for his work on the issue of indigenous disadvantage,[36] using Fortescue Metals Group's Vocational Training and Employment Centre to equip members of the indigenous communities for employment in the mining industry.[37]

After stepping down as Chief Executive Officer of FMG to reflect that he had been spending more than 50% of his time on Indigenous philanthropy,[3] and to hand leadership reins to former head of engineering company Thiess, Nev Power,[38] he became Ambassador of the Australian Indigenous Education Foundation.[39] Encouraged by the philanthropic work of the Rockefeller Group, Warren Buffet, and Melinda and Bill Gates,[40] Forrest founded the Australian Children's Trust with his wife Nicola in 2001.[41] He also started the GenerationOne project, which was founded as a result of his hero and first mentor[42] outside his father, Scotty Black.[15] Forrest obtained assistance from James Packer and Kerry Stokes, who are each donating $2M, along with the support of their respective media stations, Channel 9 and Channel 7.[43] The organisation works with the Australian Children's Trust to help create sustainable solutions on addressing social disadvantage.[37]

With Kevin Rudd (you remember this guy, don't you), Forrest launched the Australian Employment Covenant,[37] which campaigns to have businesses hire indigenous Australians, as they could "add value" to Australian businesses because they were "professional and reliable and wonderful" and that there is no reason for indigenous disparity.[15] He stated that he was dedicating time to the Covenant not because he was a "great guy", but that it was "good business".[44] GenerationOne ran a series of television advertisements privately funded by Forrest, Packer and Stokes.[45] Between 2008 and 2011, he obtained 253 business signatories to his covenant.[44] With then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, Forrest is planning to employ 50,000 Aborigines.[46][47]

Forrest has long opposed welfare dependency for indigenous Australians.[48] As apart of this opposition, he recounted stories of young Aboriginal girls in the Pilbara offering men sex for cigarettes, which caused five indigenous women from the region to collectively lodge a complaint with the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission that the comment was racist and vilified the community.[49] Some indigenous activists have accused Forrest of engaging in questionable methods of land acquisition.[50][51]

Charitable donations

Through his children's charity, as of 2007, Forrest has donated $10M, which of September 2007, received an extra $80M injection to a total $90M.[40]

In 2008, Forrest donated the proceeds from the sale of 5,000 tons of iron ore to the Chinese earthquake relief effort.[52]

Forrest and his wife contributed to Hale School's "150th Anniversary, Gateway to the Future Appeal". In 2009, Forrest opened Hale's new library, named the Forrest Library in recognition of the contributions made by the Forrest family to the school.[53]

Forrest participated in the 2010 and 2011 St Vincent de Paul Society CEO sleepouts, joining the CEOs of Burswood Entertainment Complex, Perth Convention and Exhibition Centre, YACWA, Lycopodium Minerals, among others, to raise $3M.[54]

So.... If you do something, you are bad; if you do nothing, you are bad

Are you suggesting that the motivation for his work with the children's charity and indigenous employment is a tax deduction

$90 million, including $80 million of shares.

http://www.ato.gov.au/individuals/content.aspx?menuid=0&doc=/content/00103838.htm&page=1#P54_3134



And:

Miners? yeah great guys .... until the resource runs dry or the shares dip ..... or sell out to foreign interests ... this thread is done

But the tax payer isn't paying for the services that the charity delivers.



Perhaps I read Forrest's criticism of the mining tax different to the way Wayne Swann reads it.

I thought the initial objections from all sides was that the tax was announced to the media by Rudd, with very little discussion with either industry groups, Rudd's cabinet or anyone else, including the statement directly contravening a whole host of agreements Rudd had with an industry group only a few days before.

It is interesting to note, but not highlighted by Wayne Swann, that when the original announcement was made the iron ore miners in WA were just agreeing a change to royalty agreements that saw them paying an increase on hematite fines somewhere around the 0.5% to somewhere about 7%. None of them publically objected to this raise.

This raise would be greater than the super-profits tax. And Barnett has publically announced he intends to lifts royalties further in the future. Where does Swann see the objection to this ?

Perhaps no objection because consultation has been done and the miners have been convinced that the taxes aid the community (the Royalties for Region's scheme being one good example).

The super-profits tax / MRRT or whatever it is now called is opposed by many on the grounds it is unnecessarily bureaucratically complex, is ill conceived in achieving it objectives, it favours long established operations over new projects (which surely on its own is a dumb thing to do) and had lacked the normal consultation processes.

Perhaps if Swann went talked to industry, demonstrated that the MRRT was about delivering to community and encouraging business, was associated with the removal of inefficient taxes and resulted in a simplier buisness environment then he might get a better response.

If the MRRT comes across as being all about inefficient Victorians wanting a slice of the hard work that West Australians and Queenslanders do for nothing, on top of the GST he steals from them both and the fact that mineral royalties are a state issue not a federal one, and that his government is about redistribution of wealth not about creating the environment for wealth to grow then what does he expect ?


And, in reference to his last outburst against the banks it now seems every other fincance expert, including the reserve bank, says that what the banks did that he objected to so much was a fair and reasonable thing to do.

Maybe after a drug screen the Europeans will want their 'World Championship Chancellor' medal back ?

The tax payer isn't paying for the deduction either, I think the shares exceed the $5000 limit

^^^I reckon that's an unfair assessment of the new media regulations. People have different views.....there, I'm over it. And if you think the media enquiry is about strangling dissenting voices...well I reckon you're barking up the wrong tree.

^^^^Oh, just went to the SMH link..... and **** me it's bloody Chris Berg, Ya know Chris Berg from the IPA. Ya know the IPA..... the Cash for comment kings....you'd get a more balanced opinion out of Andrew Bolt. Berg should never have given up his singing career!

Nah, you're wrong

BTW, I don't agree... see the difference in this expression - wrong and don't agree? The Labs believe people are wrong, so they don't have a right to speak.

I don't care where the opinion pieces come from... I have been concerned about media control since it was announced by The Incompetents...

Whenever a government or state starts deciding what can be said or what can't then it's time to start considering whether the state is going in the direction of freedom or control. By state I do mean NSW or Tasmania for example. I mean the state as in the collective institutions that have somehow been given the authority to rule us. It seems to be an authority ultimately delegated from God.

If the state is having trouble getting it's message out or the people generally don't believe the message, the state should not have the ability to regulate and silence those who are critical of the message. Perhaps the message has it's faults. Perhaps the government has its faults.

There would be very few governments or states that could ever be considered to be without fault. There would be very few government policies that would be above any criticism either. Part of job of government is to explain the necessity of a policy. If the government fails to explain why the policy does more good than harm then the policy or laws should be reviewed and abolished.