Payback is alive and well under the Rudd regime

THE Prime Minister's light-hearted comment has a serious message to the mining industry.

THE Prime Minister's light-hearted comment has a serious message to the mining industry.

LAST Wednesday, at the press gallery mid-winter ball in Canberra, the Prime Minister told mining representatives in the audience, "Can I say, guys, we've got a very long memory."

He was talking about the ongoing super-profits tax debate, in particular the campaign miners are running against the government. When confronted with the remarks and what he meant by them on the ABC's 7.30 Report, Rudd claimed the comments were simply a light-hearted attempt at a joke.

While I am sure Rudd was trying to be funny (trying is the operative word), only the certifiably naive would think that the statement didn't include a deliberate message for the mining industry to watch itself.

The most amusing aspect to Rudd's defence was when he tried to claim the ball is supposed to be an off-the-record event. Apart from the stupidity of thinking you might be able to make controversial comments in front of hundreds of people, many of whom are journalists, and they would go no further, what about the way Rudd and his office acted at the last mid-winter ball?

That was the time and place Rudd's own BlackBerry mobile phone was used to take a photo of his senior adviser Andrew Charlton talking to then opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull. They were discussing the infamous Oz Car email, which turned out to be a fake.

The photo was leaked to the press (Gee, I wonder who did that?) and Charlton made a file note of his conversation with Turnbull that was also given to journalists. Not a lot of respect for off-the-record there.

Rudd's comments at the ball isn't the first time the federal Labor team has issued a warning to the business community. Far from it.

Ahead of the last federal election, Julia Gillard warned business that it risked getting "injured" if it engaged in the industrial relations debate over the merits of scrapping Work Choices.

Like Rudd last week, in 2007 Gillard moved quickly to clarify the statement. Apparently it was also just a light-hearted comment, an attempt at using a footballing analogy gone wrong if you believe that.

Payback is hardly a new phenomenon in politics or business, but that doesn't make threatening remarks any more edifying.

This week started with the government in a position to announce that it had struck a deal with Telstra over the delivery of it's national broadband network. It was a good news story albeit with some unanswered questions that remain about the commercial viability of the arrangements and what they mean for potential consumers. But the deal only came after numerous threats by the government about breaking up Telstra if it didn't play ball -- it was the kind of talk that sends share prices tumbling.

However inappropriate generalised threats of payback might be when running a government, they are at least less menacing than personalising the threats. But, to be sure, Rudd's nature doesn't confine him to generalised threats. Before he was even elected to government, as opposition leader Rudd told members of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry that a Labor government he led wouldn't deal with its then chief executive Peter Hendy. "Don't expect us to treat Mr Hendy as some bona fide independent spokesman for an industry organisation," Rudd was reported as saying in October 2007.

Hendy had been a Liberal staffer at an earlier point in the Howard government, so Rudd labelled him a "Liberal Party operative" for life because he was pressing the interests of ACCI members by raising concerns about Work Choices being abolished.

Rudd didn't always have a problem with Hendy having worked for the Liberal side of politics. He wrote a reference for him when he went for the ACCI position in the first place. But when Hendy opposed Labor rolling back Work Choices on behalf of an industry whose interests (rightly or wrongly) were best served by him doing so, Rudd got personal and did what he could to damage Hendy's career. It was vicious stuff.

After the Howard government was defeated, Hendy left the ACCI to work for the new Liberal opposition leader, Brendan Nelson (who could blame him?), from where he subsequently moved overseas for work. What choice did he have after the new Prime Minister declared him persona non grata for any organisation that wished to deal with government?

Now Labor members are openly discussing the government's intention to marginalise Minerals Council of Australia head honcho Mitch Hooke if they are returned to government because of the ferocious way he has prosecuted the miners' argument against the new super-profits tax.

Payback is alive and well in the Rudd government.

Not that Hooke has been any more ferocious than the government in the mining tax war. It has gathered up $38.5 million of taxpayers money just for starters to wage an advertising campaign against the mining industry. To do so, it bypassed it's own advertising rules, the ones Rudd said if he didn't apply he would resign, guaranteeing that the ads are more about propaganda than information. Labor ministers have labelled miners "fat cats" and claimed they don't pull their weight in terms of taxation paid, distorting the figures when mounting the argument by ignoring 30 per cent company taxes.

A very senior politician once told me that the problem with a bully is that one day they will run into someone who won't be bullied. Rudd is discovering that the mining industry won't be pushed around, even by a bully-boy Prime Minister whose modus operandi is to smear and threaten whenever he feels it is necessary to do so.