Like many, I shuddered when Tony Abbott said these words in his election night victory speech:
“From today I declare that Australia is under new management and open for business.”
The following interview is a Must Watch. Fund manager Roger Montgomery explains extremely well why “open for business” really means “the path to serfdom”. A continuation of decades of selling off Australia’s national assets — our in-ground natural resources, and farmland — to pay for our profligate, housing-bubble-centric lifestyles, and our increasing failure to manufacture anything that other nations want to buy.
Otherwise known in our Orwellian world as “sound economic management”:
World famous investor Warren Buffet explained the problem in an even easier-to-understand cartoon format, aptly titled “Thriftville vs Squanderville”:
All the more reason why I find Barnaby Joyce’s recent reticence to keep the heat in his very public fight against excessive foreign “investment” to be disappointing … and suspicious:
Barnaby Joyce holds his tongue on foreign investment
NEW Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce has muted his outspoken opposition to foreign companies buying up Australian farms, admitting that foreign investment is shaping up as a difficult issue for the Coalition partners to handle…
Mr Joyce conceded yesterday that he had deliberately decided to give the government “some breathing space” by not publicly dissenting on the issue.
In his first address as Agriculture Minister — a speech the famously hot-headed Mr Joyce admitted was his first in which he referred to notes and watched his words — he told cattlemen and farmers gathered in Townsville that they would have to gauge his views based on past comments, and not expect new controversy.
“Judge me by my track record; refer to my recent statements (on foreign investment),” Mr Joyce told the AgForce annual conference in north Queensland.
“My conversation in private is vastly more fervent than what I can say publicly; but I want to give (the issue) room to breathe.”
Mr Joyce denied he had been gagged by Tony Abbott or changed his mind, but said he did not want to make any promises to farmers that he might not be able to keep, now he was a minister.
He also said experience had shown him that good political outcomes were rarely delivered by confrontation.
“In my heart, I still have fervent views and will fight for them behind closed doors; I am not changing my views on anything or dodging the issue (of foreign investment) and people know where I stand,” Mr Joyce said.
“But I am trying to deal with it in such a way that can bring about change; and the reality is that you won’t achieve delivery by backing someone into a corner.”
Has Barnaby been “got at”?
Too early to say, perhaps.
But all things considered, alas, it is beginning to look like it.
And when we see that China has just bought 5% of Ukraine’s best farmland for the next 50 years, there is plenty to be concerned about.
If you did not vote for a “radical”, “protectionist”, “populist”, “nationalist” political party at the recent election, then you are partly to blame for our continuing to tread the path to national serfdom.
Because the economic policies of both the LNP, and ALP, represent just that.
The path to serfdom.
Barnaby Is Right 
Gough Whitlam was thinking about nationalising foreign corporations –
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The bank [Nugan Hand] was founded as a funding operation for U.S. covert operations in Australia74, and was a conduit for Marcos gold. One of the objectives of the ‘bank’ was to bring about the pre-mature closure of the Australian labor government. The Whitlam government had quietly threatened to nationalize subsidiaries of American corporations.
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“The subsequent inquiries have established the Nugan-Hand bank was to be the organisation used as cover for the operations of Task Force 157. The Task Force 157 was a group set up by Henry Kissinger and it
was set up in a quite strange way. It was a mini-CIA which was actually separate from the CIA and probably was set up by Kissinger so he could deny any connection between what the Task Force 157 was doing and the CIA. Nevertheless, the personnel of Task Force 157 included Ted Shackley, who was one of the head of sabotage operations against Cuba, he was Station Chief in Saigon during the Vietnam War, and he was the Chief of the CIA Western Hemisphere Division, so with an impeccable CIA record like that it would be very difficult to disassociate him from what the CIA was doing. The concept of Task Force 157 seems to have been two-fold: firstly, to set up operations against the Whitlam government. And secondly, to go ahead with using Australia as a base for certain clandestine U.S. operations such as arms dealing and smuggling of contraband goods.”75
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Click to access Collateral_Damage_911.pdf
Clive is right.
Yes. Clive is showing some love for his fellow man it seems. Maybe he thinks that if he is to shuffle off this mortal coil, he may as well go out with a bang rather than a whimper.
I actually think that “experience has shown that good political outcomes are rarely delivered by confrontation.” is a very wise and true statement.
I’d like to see more genuine, solution focused conversations around issues affecting our communities, than 3 and 4 word slogans, and nitpick about who’s said what on what side.
#Frustrating #Time-wasting #Expensive
Finally you show some intelligent debate.
>>TBI: “Finally”??! Two points: (1) I have raised this issue repeatedly since the beginning of this blog in Feb 2010. Indeed, I have called for Australia’s natural resources to be nationalised, and expressed admiration for Hugo Chavez and Vladimir Putin for doing so in their countries. There is no “finally” about it. (2) Just because you agree with something, does not automatically make it “intelligent”. Just as your NOT agreeing with something, does not automatically make it unintelligent. Consider this a warning. One more attempted insult directed at the host, or another commenter, and I will not just delete your comment — you will be banned and blacklisted.
I saw Montgomery on ABC The Business and his position is spot on. I can see it but BOTH sides of politics are looking the other way as money flowing into the country from selling off assets hides bad management and the fact that Australians are living above their means. It cannot continue for too much longer as when it is all gone then the game will be over.
I implored, almost begged, some of our mainstream journalists in the lead-up to the election to ask both sides of politics about the sale of our freehold farming land to FOREIGN GOVERNMENTS. The one and only nibble I got from some of our most influential journalists was a question at a western Sydney forum where Rudd showed up. Rudd simply towed the same line that both sides do: that this criminal behaviour is “FOREIGN INVESTMENT”. It is nothing of the sort!!
On another topic you have closed off your climategate forum. You probably watch Suzuki on Q&A last night.
>>TBI: There you go again. Making assumptions about other people. I never watch Q&A. So no, I didn’t watch Suzuki. In my view he is a pretentious, posturing old hippie; a notorious know-nothing, human-hating attention-seeker and failed prophet/profit-of-doom for decades.
I have no interest in his Gaia-worshipping, genocide-justifying nonsense. From what I have read and heard from others today, it seems he once again ably demonstrated just how clueless he is about the actual science of AGW last night. I have deleted the rest of your now-standard diatribe on this topic. I/we know very well by now what you believe. No need to keep reaffirming it.
Roger Montgomery is spot on but he fails to address the creation of new money for growth. Our big four banks have up 49 % share holdings by HSBC, Citibank, JP Morgan etc. No foreign share holding by these groups are below 36% and this includes the Bendigo Bank. They all are arms of the owners of the private US Federal Reserve.They create the money from nothing as debt,loan it to our banks and take it back again.
Why cannot our RBA create at least our inflationary money of 3% GDP of $ 30 billion pa + interest? Currently our banks borrow this amount each year OS just to service mortgages. Our banks will benefit because more money stays here as savings to improve our money creation via the fractional reserve system. No one can answer this simple question.
Spot on Ross. There is no need to sell the farm. None whatsoever. All the arguments raised about “needing foreign capital/’investment'” are just so much myth-propagating, international bankster-serving nonsense once we properly understand how the “money” system works.
If the Commonwealth of Australia is registered in the US as a corporation then one would imagine that its doors would be open for business.
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission,
Commonwealth of Australia [0000805157]
SIC: 880 – American Depositary Receipts
State location: DC | Fiscal Year end: 0630
Business Address, 1601 Massachusetts Ave NW
C/O Australian Embassy
Washington DC 20036