In a recent essay in The Monthly magazine, Federal Treasurer Wayne Swan accuses a ‘handful of vested interests’ of shaping Australia’s economic future in their own image: He describes Gina Rinehart’s investment in Fairfax Media as an attempt to unduly influence public opinion for her own interests; he attacks iron ore billionaire Andrew Forrest for ‘closing the doors’ of Australian business during the Global Financial Crisis; he asserts that such ‘ruthless individualism’ and ‘unquestioning materialism’ threatens our Australian egalitarianism (The Australian, 2 March, p.6). It’s all a capitalist conspiracy, isn’t it?
Let’s see, now.
Gina Rinehart’s ‘billions of dollars’ investment in Fairfax Media will give a financial boost to all Fairfax operations including new equipment, new publications and, best of all, additional employment and a healthy rise in Fairfax shares in Australian Stock Exchange. No matter – Wayne Swan sees this as breaking the so-called ‘social contract’ between the wealthy and the ‘rest of Australia’. What nonsense! There is only employment and the market for that employment. Call it ‘social contract’ if you will, but it is the market, always the market, that shapes the economy.
Similarly, Mr Swan cannot understand that Andrew Forrest’s reducing prospects for employment because of the threat of having to pay unrealistically high company taxes (on top of the proposed mining tax) was a natural reaction to being stripped by the Green Labor Federal Government of the opportunity to create more employment – and, of course, profit for Andrew Forrest’s iron ore company from which employment opportunities arise.
Obviously, Mr Swan does not wish to recognise that the Global Financial Crisis bypassed the Australian economy through the actions of China and India buying our iron ore, the very export produced by the iron ore companies (including that of Mr Forrest).
As to egalitarianism, it is no more than a fanciful name for the inability of socialist parties everywhere — including, of course, our own Green Labor and the Independents — to come to grips with the proposition that men are not born equal but, under capitalism, may better themselves as individuals and materialists.
Dr Paul Fidlon
