Opinion Piece Published in The Punch 4th June 2010

The RSPT - – Senator Barnaby Joyce

Every now and then, a select group from the economic illuminati retire to their monastic study and devise a splendid idea to try and pay off their previous splendid idea.

Splendid idea number one was to borrow so much money that we put ourselves in more strife than the early settlers in our desire to adorn the nation with an eclectic mix of rubbish that apparently was going to save us from Asia ceasing to purchase our minerals. The relationship between our stimulus and mineral exports was as clear as mud, but there was an emphatic defence of this fantastic proposition by Labor.

The Treasury corruption of the graphs depicting the relationship between our and other nations’ fiscal stimulus packages and the effect on their respective economies shows that when the graphs were corrected the relationship was hardly apparent. We really were sold a lemon on Labor’s “go hard, go early, go household strategy” in response to the North American and European financial crisis and are currently lumbered with in excess of $144 billion gross federal debt while on our merry way to in excess of $220 billion gross federal debt.

The next chapter in the Labor Party Magnus Opus was called “massive debt” and the next problem for Treasury was “how do we pay it off?” The Labor Party thought to increase their revenue stream in the most politically parochial way. They explained to Australia that the big miners are morally lacking, are exploiting the workers, and they as a government, Robin Hood – like, would restore the balance of fiscal morality. It would mean the partial nationalisation of our whole mining sector, however.

They had it on good advice from the Secretary of the Treasury, that he had studied a theorem at high school that no matter how you flog this mining sector, it’s going to hang around and continue to support you.

The sobering reality is this, despite the Secretary of the Treasury stating that you can put taxes up in the mining sector and not affect the investment profile, he is wrong on this occasion. If taxes go up at an exponential rate to where they formerly were, people will make the logical decision to go where the taxes are less. If the Secretary of the Treasury tells you that a new tax will assist in cooling the planet, you really have to ask yourself if this is necessarily so.

If you surround yourself with hedges of economic theorems and carpets of policy papers and spend your nights fanatically trying to turn human emotion into predictable mathematical models, and don’t recognise what is yelled to you as common sense by the peak industry groups, you will come unstuck when you find that your models don’t match their experience.

During Estimates one can get quite frustrated with well meaning pontificating by well paid bureaucrats about a perfect world they have created and what happens in it. This world has created a Newtonian expectation of preciseness to economics as required to match government policy desires. It supposes that gravity and economics are the same and that people’s actions are as predictable as other items of physics- like a mathematical model for love. Commonsense expectations on actions and reactions are put aside for superb anodyne reflections on economic issues.

The basic premise that must be first applied when analysing the RSPT is this – if a miner can make more money in another venue, then to that other venue they will go. Unfortunately it appears that this statement of the bleeding obvious, that one cannot predict the economic speed of sound, has meant that a realistic gut instinct of what happens when you put a 40% tax on mining has not been followed.

The reality of the RSPT, which was blatantly obvious to virtually everyone, has now of course come to be in the actions of such companies as Xstrata in the reduction of their investment decisions in Australia. How can we believe the Labor Party’s lauding of their so-called management of the GFC and take for granted their endorsement that it was their school halls program that saved us from a recession, when it is the same Labor Government inspired brains trust that is creating this stuff up?

Dr Henry, in answer to my question at the Economics References Committee Inquiry earlier this week, stated that it didn’t matter whether the RSPT tax was at 40, 60 or 70 percent, as to how it would affect investment in Australia. I was left no choice but to believe that he was correct in his description of a theory but had completely departed from reality as to what was actually going to happen.

This new tax will not only be a bombshell to such mining areas as Gladstone, Townsville, Wollongong Newcastle and Mackay and the whole of WA, but ultimately it will affect those other big coastal towns such as Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney as they come to the startling reality that these Labor Party splendid ideas are going to have dire consequences to the investment and export structure of our nation.

In the town of Wandoan, there are some farmers who are happy today due to the fact that a major mine is not going ahead and yes we should not be mining prime agricultural land because this is the ultimate non renewable resource. This Labor Party package was not to protect prime agricultural land but to prop up Treasury with a new tax. In fact the Labor Party hoped the mining would go ahead in Wandoan. However, there are some other families who were hoping that the income from the mine will increase their standard of living, and they are very unhappy, because Labor Party hopes are not their reality.

There were people who were going to build a $1 billion railway line from Wandoan to Banana and they are unhappy today as they are not going to build it anymore. There was supposed to be the development of a massive income stream to support lots of shops, chemists, school teachers, nurses, contractors, metal fabricators, diesel fitters and they are all going to miss out. They are all very unhappy. They are all unhappy because some group of individuals in Canberra decided that they were beyond questioning and resolute in a desire to inflict on the Australian economy what would have to be the most incongruous economic policy since the 1949 desire by the Labor government to nationalise the banking industry.

Investment Banker: It’s Going To Get Nasty – Buy Land, Barbed Wire And Guns!

Here is a little snippet of info coming out of the US concerning their financial woes. The US is in dire financial straights as their manufacturing sector is moved offshore (sound familar) and the US Federal Reserve, a Rothschild owned private bank, continues to print money to bail out the banking sector.

The report comes from Prison Planet.

"A top investment banker has warned that the economic fallout of the sovereign debt crisis could get so nasty over the next five years that people would be wise to abandon the markets and instead buy land, barbed wire and guns.

With gold smashing through its all time record high this morning on the back of fears over a double dip recession, analysts are turning increasingly bearish on the markets, Anthony Fry, senior managing director at Evercore Partners, told CNBC that the bond markets could turn nasty over the next few months and said that the current problems created by the European debt crisis could be with us for at least five years.

“Look at the current situation. You have Greece, now you have Hungary and huge issues surrounding Spain and Portugal,” he said, warning of a “nightmare scenario” of hyper-stagflation, where inflation rises dramatically but asset prices deflate.

“I don’t want to scare anyone but I am considering investing in barbed wire and guns, things are not looking good and rates are heading higher,” said Fry.

RBS Chief Strategist Bob Janjuah echoed Fry’s sentiments, predicting that governments would inject at least $15 trillion dollars more qualitative easing into the system and that investors should get into gold to offset the depreciating value of fiat currencies.

Janjuah pointed out that, while gold has dramatically risen in value over the last ten years, the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones have both remained flat over the course of a decade.

Gold hit a record high of $1,251.85 dollars an ounce this morning as investors continued to flock to the precious metal as a hedge against economic turmoil and the very real possibility of a double dip recession.

With U.S. debt moving towards parity with GDP, members of Congress and leading financial experts are warning that the United States will be in the same dire situation as Greece within 7-10 years unless the federal government implements radical austerity measures.

The backlash to those austerity measures usually takes the form of rioting and violence, as we have seen unfold in Greece.

Top historians, social and financial analysts, along with police bodies are all predicting that Europe and America are set to experience a summer of rage, with social discontent building as a result of economic hardship.

“Far be it for me to make a dicey situation dicier but you can’t smell the sulphur in the air right now and not think we might be on the threshold of an age of rage,” wrote historian Simon Schama in his recent Financial Times column."

See: http://www.prisonplanet.com/investment-banker-its-going-to-get-nasty-buy-land-barbed-wire-and-guns.html

Only a Totalitarian State Disarms Law-abiding Citizens

Did you know that you are four times as likely to be killed by a knife as by a gun?

In heavily armed America, only 13 per cent of burglaries take place while householders are on the premises, because intruders fear being shot.

Britain in 1998 after the Dunblane Massacre, introduced totalarian gun laws.

In 2007, the British Home Office claimed that gun crime was falling. It was David Davis who uncovered the truth, buried in a Home Office statistical bulletin, and confronted the then Home Secretary Jacqui Smith with the facts: “Gun-related killings and injuries (excluding air weapons) have increased over fourfold since 1998.”

Here is an article from Gerald Warner of the Telegraph.co.uk concerning the reaction to the mass murder by UK taxi driver Derrick Bird.

"You could not look for a better encapsulation of the mentality of the state-worshipping ruling elite than the claim by Sir Ian Blair, former disastrous Metropolitan Police Commissioner and newly-appointed peer (nothing succeeds like failure), writing in The Guardian on the topic of gun control: “The possession of a firearm is a privilege, not, except in a few cases, a necessity.”

Have you got that? The possession of a firearm is a “privilege”. In fact it is nothing of the sort: it is a right, guaranteed to all British subjects by the Bill of Rights of 1689. This assertion by Blair, whose police officers notoriously abused their firearms privileges by shooting dead Jean-Charles de Menezes, affords an instructive insight into the leftist/liberal belief that the state is the all-powerful authority controlling human existence. It may deign to extend privileges, such as firearm ownership, to a minority of its helots, but it does so as an act of grace, not in deference to any rights they might claim.

The state, in reality, is supposed to be the servant of the public. Its role should be rigidly limited and every power it exercises jealously scrutinised for overreach. For centuries, the entire basis of English Common Law was the assumption that everything that was not forbidden was legal. Today, the British subject is presumed to have virtually no rights (unless he belongs to a politically correct minority) and only by the most laboured exertion on his part may he make his case to the state, his master, that a privilege such as gun ownership should graciously be extended to him.

It was inevitable that the mass murder in Cumbria would be the cue for the control freak lobby to demand still more rigorous regulation of firearms. As even Blair concedes, controls are already so Draconian it is difficult to see how they could be tightened. As it is, competitive pistol shooters have to train in Switzerland to represent the UK in the Olympics. There is little more that could be done, short of banning guns altogether, which is the ultimate objective of the anti-firearms fanatics.

Blair suggests involving the wider community in any decision to grant a firearms licence: “Is it possible that we should compulsorily involve family members, neighbours and colleagues in such decision-making?” Oh, great: a People’s Shotgun Certificate, just what we need, with feuding neighbours maliciously lodging objections.

The reality is that no system will ever detect the likes of Derrick Bird, normal in his behaviour for years, then suddenly running amok. These tragedies happen: hard cases make bad law, as Dunblane taught us. All that can be done is to appraise licence applicants as one would potential car drivers. Health and Safety cannot be allowed to snuff out all normal human activities: the general population cannot be brought down to the lowest common denominator of the psychopath.

It is illegal gun ownership that poses the overwhelming risk to life – what are the authorities doing about that? Or knife crime: people are four times as likely to be killed by a knife as by a gun.

The entire report can be viewed at:

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/geraldwarner/100042285/only-a-totalitarian-state-disarms-its-citizens-we-want-no-more-gun-laws-to-oppress-law-abiding-citizens/

Garrett The Parrot - Left Out on a Limb!

ENVIRONMENT minister Peter Garrett has admitted he was not consulted about the government's decision to ditch its proposed emissions trading scheme and that he knew nothing about it until he read it in the newspapers.

Mr Garrett said the decision was taken by Kevin Rudd's inner Cabinet as part of the budget process and he had taken no part in the discussions. He said it was disappointing that the decision had been leaked and revealed that the first he knew about it was when he read a story in a newspaper report on April 27.

"That was an announcement and a decision that was leaked and I found out about it when it was leaked," Mr Garrett told Sky News' Saturday Agenda.

Mr Garrett's admission is confirmation that the ETS decision was not discussed by the full cabinet and that the discussion was restricted to the so-called gang of four: Prime Minster Mr Rudd, his deputy Julia Gillard, Treasurer Wayne Swan and Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner.

It also confirms that the ETS proposal was abandoned as part of the Budget process. Factoring in the ETS costs would have made it harder for the government to meet its accelerated target for eliminating the budget deficit.

Reports today have suggested Mr Tanner was a voice of dissent when discussing the idea, but the other three senior figures carried the day.

When questioned about his exclusion from the decision making process, Mr Garrett said it was disappointing that the decision had been leaked before the government had completed its internal discussions.

"It's always disappointing when you get information that makes its way through into a newspaper and that the processes of discussion that otherwise would happen aren't able to happen, but it's a decision that was taken."

This report from The Australian:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/garrett-left-out-of-rudds-gang-on-ets-backflip/story-e6frg6xf-1225875832909

Piracy & Murder (Part 2)

Autopsies were carried out at the Council of Forensic Medicine in İstanbul yesterday on the bodies of nine activists who were killed in Monday’s bloody Israeli attack.

Today's Zaman, a leading Turkish daily newspaper reports:

"Activists say some people who were initially on the flotilla are missing. They are also telling stories of horror, carnage and pure barbarism at the hands of Israeli officials.

In a shocking account, Humanitarian Aid Foundation (İHH) President Bülent Yıldırım, who returned on Thursday, said a photographer, whose first name was Cevdet, was shot in the forehead by a soldier one meter away from him. “Our Cevdet [Kılıçlar], he is a press member. He has become a martyr.

All he was doing was taking pictures. They smashed his skull into pieces. We soon made out that these were real bullets they were firing. Rubber bullets also kill because you shoot at very close range, between one-and-a-half and two meters.”

Kevin Ovenden of Britain, an activist on the ship that arrived in İstanbul on Thursday, also said a man who had pointed a camera at the soldiers was shot directly through the forehead with live ammunition, with the exit wound blowing away back of his skull.

According to İHH official Ömer Yağmur, who spoke to the doctors, US citizen, 19-year-old Furkan Doğan was killed by four bullets to the head -- all fired at close range -- and one bullet into his chest, also fired at close range. He said Doğan was studying at a private high school in Kayseri and hoped to become a doctor in the future.

Activist İdris Şimşek, who also arrived on Thursday, claims that four wounded activists were thrown into the sea. Şimşek also stated that there was immense psychological pressure on the activists. Şimşek said they expected some harassment but had no inkling of what would happen, noting that they were not expecting an armed attack.

He also mentioned that there were no weapons, including a small Swiss army knife that some foreign press organs claimed was on the ship. He stated, as many other activists have, that the person who was waving a white flag to surrender was shot by soldiers.

Erol Demir, another activist on the Mavi Marmara, said they had footage of the chaos and the carnage on the ship, emphasizing that the footage will show the real face of Israeli solders to the entire world. “They even shot those who surrendered. Many of our friends saw this. They told me that there were handcuffed people who were shot.' "

The full report from Today's Zaman is at:

http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/news-212103-israel-killed-more-than-9-threw-wounded-into-sea-witnesses-say.html

Piracy and Murder (Part 1)

This item will never make the mainstream media in Australia.

Neither will the reports that some of the commandos that attacked the flotilla and murdered people in cold blood were Isreali Australians.

This article shows the Israelis pathetic attempt to justify murder.

On the Israeli ministry of foreign affairs’ Flickr page, the pictures of the so-called weapons seized on the ships taking part in the Gaza Freedom Flotilla provide ample evidence of the deviousness of those darned anti-semitic terrorists. Be forewarned: the following pictures are not for the faint-hearted.

PS: Hurry up visiting that Flickr page, as I fear that some photos might be withdrawn soon…

Exhibit A: bulletproof vests

A slight snag though: two commentators, probably anti-semitic, point out that this photo really is from February 2006:

Exhibit B: an axe

An axe on board a ship? Good grief. Another commentator, probably anti-semitic as well, notices that the picture dates from 2003:

Horror knows no bounds- exhibit C: pepper spray.

The comments display the usual hateful fanaticism one can expect from islamo-fascists:

deepvisual says:

"wow
they managed to use them while they were still in their wrappers… damn those Turks are clever.."

Embra says:
"Tiff data: Taken on January 1, 2003."

Exhibit D: a keffieh, kitchen knives, a Saudi flag, and and some CD-roms.

Another anti-semitic commentator spews his hateful bile:

barneygale says:
Hi. Just to confirm that the EXIF metadata points to this photo being taken in 2006:

Do not faint just yet, because here is exhibit E: an electric saw – on a ship! Really, those terrorists really are beyond the pale.

Please bear with me, because here comes exhibit F: night vision equipment, of course utterly useless on high seas, and a 'scope from a rifle, useless without the rifle!
Allow an antisemitic islamo-fascist to point out that picture’s original date:

Date & Time (original): 2006:02:07 05:20:56
Date & Time (digitized): 2006:02:07 05:20:56

Finally, the smoking gun as it were: a butterfly knife of sorts, with a blade slightly shorter than a thumb, a weapon ideally suited for use against marine commandos armed with high-velocity firearms:

See the original article before it is removed(?) at

Gaza flotilla: How Israel’s ministry of foreign affairs fakes photos of seized weapons

Pacific Islands 'Growing Not Shrinking' Due to Climate Change

Low-lying Pacific islands regarded as "poster child" examples of the threat from rising sea levels are expanding not sinking, a new study has revealed.

Scientists have been surprised by the findings, which show that some islands have grown by almost one-third over the past 60 years.

Among the island chains to have increased in land area are Tuvalu and neighbouring Kiribati, both of which attracted attention at last year's Copenhagen climate summit.

In the study, researchers compared aerial photographs and high-resolution satellite images of 27 islands taken since the 1950s.

Only four islands, mostly uninhabited, had decreased in area despite local sea level rises of almost five inches in that time, while 23 stayed the same or grew.

Seven islands in Tuvalu grew, one by 30 per cent, although the study did not include the most populous island.

In Kiribati, the three of the most densely populated islands, Betio, Bairiki and Nanikai, also grew by between 12.5 and 30 per cent.

Professor Paul Kench, of Auckland University, who co-authored the study with Dr Arthur Webb, a Fiji-based expert on coastal processes, said the study challenged the view that the islands were sinking as a result of global warming.

Eighty per cent of the islands we've looked at have either remained about the same or, in fact, got larger.

"Some have got dramatically larger," he said.

"We've now got evidence the physical foundations of these islands will still be there in 100 years," he told New Scientist magazine.

He said the study suggested the islands had a natural ability to respond to rising seas by accumulating coral debris from the outlying reefs that surround them.

"It has long been thought that as the sea level goes up, islands will sit there and drown. But they won't," Professor Kench said.

The trend is largely explained by the fact that the islands comprise mostly coral debris eroded from encircling reefs, which is pushed up on to the islands by wind and waves.

Because coral is a living organism, it continues to grow and establish itself in its new home, so the process becomes continuous.

Land reclamation and deposition of other sediment also contribute to the process.

"These islands are so low lying that in extreme events waves crash straight over the top of them," Professor Kench said.

"In doing that they transport sediment from the beach or adjacent reef platform and they throw it on to the top of the island."

See the full article:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/tuvalu/7799503/Pacific-islands-growing-not-shrinking-due-to-climate-change.html

I wonder did Tipper Gore divorce her husband because his habit of consistently lieing on climate change carried on into their personal life?

Apparently he was never in Bill Clinton's class as a philanderer so The National Post in the US decided to supply him with a few pick up lines for the ladies!

• @umajade: How do I love thee? Let me (recount) the ways
• @muhammedallia: Wanna come upstairs for coffee and maybe polish my Nobel Prize?
• @colsonwhitehead: I promise to finish second.
• @ruthbourdain Baby, all those other guys are unsustainable. Listen, I’ve got a renewable resource. We can go all night.
• @BorowitzReport Did you know I invented the internet?
• @FilmingDocs The inconvenient truth is that you’re coming home with me. Inconvenient because Tipper still lives there.
• @evancohan If things go right you might be seeing my Ohh-zone face.
• @ClockworkAnge‎: Have you seen my Rolling Stone cover?