A truly hilarious reform summit is underway this week. From the AFR:
Business leaders have vowed to put short-term corporate interests aside and focus on long-term ways to boost productivity later this week at the first wide-ranging, non-partisan summit on economic reform to be held in Australia since the watershed gathering convened in the first year of the Hawke government three decades ago.
…Australian Institute of Company Directors managing director John Brogden said there shouldn’t have to be a crisis but “it’s all too apparent that it could again take a hard lesson in economic reality to refocus public policy away from self-interest to the national good”.
Westpac and Transurban chairman Lindsay Maxsted, who is also a director of BHP Billiton, said…”To grow the economy we have to be competitive. To this end we cannot solely rely on monetary policy. Sound fiscal policy and structural reforms have to play their role,” he said.
And Rio Tinto managing director Phil Edmands described the gathering as a call-to-arms for reform to boost living standards by lifting growth and business activity.
Commonwealth Bank of Australia chief Ian Narev said…”We need to focus on finding a tax system that is more efficient and fair, building high-quality and well-prioritised infrastructure and getting the settings right for trade and foreign investment,” he said.
Man, are these folks really so blinded by ideology that they can’t see the irony here? Or is it such grand cynicism that it’s now indistinguishable from truth for our business elite?
John Brogden has turned a failed political career into a very successful lobbying career, which pretty much tells you what he thinks about reform.
For Lindsay Maxted and Ian Narev to make any contribution both will need to stand up at the summit and argue for:
- tax reform that removes housing subsidies and increases the burden on the rich and boosts business lending over mortgages (possible);
- killing off the population ponzi (yeh, right);
- removal of large scale banking guarantees (no bloody way), and
- reform that aims to increase capital productivity (labour is improving already) including the breakup of national oligopolies, ending the land ponzi, boosting tradable sectors as opposed to increasing sales of assets to foreigners (fat chance).
For RIO to make a contribution it will need to acknowledge that a broad-based and national profits-based rent tax on big miners is necessary (lol) so that the mining cycle no longer hollows out non-resource tradables.
And all of these reforms will need to be honestly reported by the two majors sponsors of the conference – Farifax and News Corporation – which themselves are these days transformed into a pair of politicised rent-seekers for the housing bubble and digital congestion.
This summit is the hilarious epitome of what is wrong with the economy, not the answer to it.
