No Love Lost On Lobbyists

By Pearl Bullivant on June 29, 2011 in Other

NSW might have a new State Government but let’s look at who is really running our state and country. Big business and lobbyists run this country, right under the nose of the gullible masses who constantly have the wool pulled over their eyes by powerful minorities that ‘donate for favours’ or manipulate the balance of power by hiding behind moral or economic platitudes. At present, the Shooters Party appears to be running NSW. ‘The Big BO’ needs Upper House support so we now have a minority group of loonies attempting to hold a gun to his head with some downright bizarre demands.

But the Shooters Party is a world away from the big guns that actually run this country on a federal level – powerful, obscenely wealthy lobbyists and business people who use the spiel ‘it’s bad for the economy’ to protect profits and forestall on environmental measures, a spiel that is nothing but a scare tactic and one that the aspiring masses seem to swallow without question.

Gina Rinehart might earn $9 billion a year but she sure had the public believing her when she cried poor mouth -“a mining tax is bad for the economy”- from the back of a truck. Earlier this year, the telecommunications lobby was up in arms about moves to totally ban the use of mobile phones in motor vehicles. For good measure, they even got Volvo on side. Let’s disregard the study proving that hands-free mobile use is dangerous – a ban is bad for the economy!

Last year Gerry Harvey was lobbying the government to impose tax on overseas Internet purchases, citing yet again, the economy. Myer CEO Bernie Brooks has also been playing a similar hand. A fall in Myer’s profits this year sent Brooks begging the government not to impose a flood levy on those earning over $100K as it would affect their spending power at Myer and it would hurt the economy.

More recently, Brooks has claimed that the RBA has a social responsibility not to increase interest rates. When did being able to afford to purchase in Myer become a social right? Harvey, Brooks, the mining lobby and their ilk are huge fans of unfettered capitalism but as soon as it is affecting their businesses they cry for government intervention at taxpayers’ expense!

Pearl has had a gutful of lobbyists and big business trying to tell us that their personal cause and mission is all for our own good. Why can’t they admit it is for personal greed?

Take property developers, who have the states eating out of their hands at the expense of the public. Time and time again, property developers tell us that development is for our own good; that reclaiming suburban food basins or bushland suburbs for high density housing will relieve the property squeeze and lower house prices. If it was for our own good, developers would instead be creating liveable, eco-friendly suburbs, rather than building cheap, ugly ghettos with no room for trees or personal space.

And the road transport lobby has done its best to have railway lines ripped up so that they can get more trucks on the road, despite it being cheaper and safer for goods to be transported by rail.

Well it’s about time the masses stood up and said ‘enough is enough’. An Egyptian-style protest might be taking it too far but it’s about time we stopped swallowing the crap fed to us by lobbyists and demanded that the governments of this country listen to what the people want, and not to their generous donors with dodgy motives.

Pearl xx
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