TONY’S DUG A BIG, BAD BLACK HOLE
In mid-June 2010 I returned from a few weeks overseas to find much of the nation in a state of spluttering indignation.
A cabdriver expressed it to me succinctly: “That Kevin Rudd, he’s going to send the mining companies broke. What will that do to the country? After all, it’s their resources, they’re entitled to make a profit from them.”
Evidently, the mining companies had been running TV ads warning of dire consequences should the Federal Government proceed with plans to tax super profits from the current resources boom.
I told the driver he had been duped.
“The mining companies don’t own those resources,” I told him. “We do.” I then gave him my two-minute spiel on why the whole country was entitled to share in the bounty from these leaseholds. As he took my money, he looked at me in astonishment. “No one ever explained it that way before,” he said.
And that was the problem.
In the almost 18 months since Julia Gillard took over as Labor leader and, hence, Prime Minister, she has not proved particularly effective at explaining policies either.
She tends to didactics rather than persuasion but unlike her predecessor she excels as a negotiator.
As a result, not only has the “carbon tax” now become law against all odds, but the “mining tax” that will pass the House of Representatives this week now enjoys significant popular support. And it has been her negotiating prowess that has helped turn around public opinion.
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