Rudd steers us into economic disaster

DESPITE the international fiscal crisis, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is still hell-bent on pursuing anti-business policies that he and senior ministers well know will cost even more Australians their jobs.

While US President Barack Obama applauded risk-takers, ``the doers, makers of things'' in his inaugural address, Rudd has demonstrated that the ``makers of things'' come second to the trade unions and to his own vainglorious attempts to achieve global stature through the implementation of his ill-considered and disastrously timed emissions trading scheme. In a column last August, I wrote: ``Australia faces a hard landing as the Olympic distraction ends. In the real world, things are beginning to look worse and worse for the Australian economy. ``Having blamed China's expansion for the economic successes of the Howard-Costello government, Prime Minister Rudd and his Treasurer, Wayne Swan, will soon be given the opportunity to demonstrate their claimed economic skills as the Chinese start to deal with their own inflation problems. ``According to a number of hard-headed business leaders in Beijing during the Games, senior Chinese officials were quite frank about their major concerns about China's inflation rate, which was 0.3 percentage points higher in July than the five per cent rise recorded in June, making July the second successive month China's inflation exceeded five per cent. ``The Chinese were also admitting that their economy would not be immune to the on-going fallout from the US sub-prime crisis (which shows no sign of easing), nor the global factors which have sent the G7 nations into recession. ``Rudd and Swan scoffed at their predecessors' enviable record but, while Australia's economy may have been buoyed by the commodities boom, that also is beginning to come to an end. ``The prices of Australian commodities will suffer for a variety of reasons, including the natural market reaction to the greater available supply _ as well as the pressure on growth within China. ``The Rudd Government seems to believe that China's appetite for our coal and iron ore, particularly, is endless but that may not be so. ``Nor is it apparent that prices for these commodities will remain unaffected by the usual fundamental market pressures.'' It gives me no joy to have been proven correct, but I am bewildered by the failure of the Rudd Government and its economic gurus to have predicted what was so obvious then, I am stunned by the mediocrity of Labor's ideology-driven response to the economic meltdown. I am not an economist, but I can report the bleeding obvious. If you want an economist's outlook, here is Access Economics Chris Richardson, on the ABC's Lateline program last May: ``My guess is, that by the time this year is finished, the Government won't be sitting on a $22 billion surplus, it will be bigger. It will also have an economy travelling faster, more jobs, lower unemployment than they fear, but higher wages and prices, and perhaps, higher interest rates too.'' His tune had changed markedly by last Monday when he told ABC radio: ``The Federal Budget is buggered and it's that way because of what's happened internationally. This is as ugly a set of conditions as I've seen.'' Rudd and Treasurer Swan were initially captivated by the notion that inflation was the biggest problem faced by the Australian economy. It suited their ``blame game'' and they tried to deflect criticism of their policies with references to the former Howard government. They should have asked the experienced former government team to help them with the problem instead of discarding the accumulated wisdom. The penny has finally dropped for the business and mining lobbies. Australian Industry Group chief Heather Ridout, who earned the snide sobriquet Heather ``Sell-Out'' for her perceived acquiescence to the Rudd Government's blandishments, is now expressing the group's concern at a range of Labor initiatives, including its union-friendly Fair Work Bill and its ETS, as are the miners who drove much of the economy during the past five years. There is no indication the Rudd Government understands, or is willing to address its flawed approach to the economic spiral. It's clear that the Christmas giveaway of working Australians' hard-earned tax dollars has had no long-lasting effect. Apart from the owners of poker machines and a handful of big retailers, it was of ephemeral benefit at best. The Government is a disaster. Its determination to press ahead with the ETS in the face of growing disquiet in the scientific community about the political agenda of those who initially claimed global warming was due to human intervention, and now talk of climate change, is nonsensical. Even if there is a skerrick of validity to an anthropogenic factor in climate change, the absurd structure of the ETS, the guaranteed cost to employment, and its sheer meaninglessness in terms of climate difference, renders it a disastrous policy. Not to mention the fact that Labor's abject failure to read the Chinese market, despite the much-vaunted linguistic skills of our Mandarin-speaking PM, has skewed foreign policy to an alarming degree and undermined years of diplomacy with our Japanese and Indian friends. If Rudd was cluey, as opposed to being clever, he would implement a plan to slash taxes on business and jettison the raft of regulation that stifles employment. Our economic survival is at stake.