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November 13, 2013
I watched part one of Kerry O'Brien's interview of Paul Keating on ABC TV last night. In it Keating refers to his working class background in Western Sydney and his break with old style Labor with his embrace of the market and private capital as wealth generators.
There was no mention of corporate power or how business corporations belong on the inside of political power. They are part of the nexus of power that creates public policy and their interests have now been woven into the fabric of the main political parties in Australia. Corporate capital increasingly controls almost all our politics and in doing so truncates parliamentary democracy and turns it into a form of show biz.
David Pope
The conservative politics of corporate power is expressed by Maurice Newman, chairman of Abbott's business advisory council. Newman, a climate science denialist, says that Australia's average weekly wages were too high, that there was a need for workplace reform and reckoned the adoption of the Gonski education reforms and national disability insurance scheme were ''reckless'', given the size of the country's debt.
He also called for a review of Australia's competition laws, suggesting they should be diluted rather than beefed up to enable big companies to merge to get the ''necessary critical mass in a small domestic market without running up against trade practices issues''. This is necessary to avoid Australia becoming a branch economy, and if Australian companies are to become national champions at home then there needs to be a rebalancing the interests of consumers and businesses. To fail to do this is to encourage companies to shift to more friendly domiciles, sell to foreigners, or, if all else fails, to close their doors.
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"Newman, a climate science denialist,"
The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI), the Australian Industry Group (Ai Group), the Business Council of Australia (BCA) and the Minerals Council of Australia (MCA) say delaying the repeal of carbon pricing would be “deeply unhelpful” for business as it imposes big costs on business.
They backed the LNP so that Australia would get rid of carbon pricing