Former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd says three of the world’s biggest mining corporations have run sophisticated operations to kill off climate action in Australia and continue to wield day-to-day influence over government
They led an intense campaign against the 40% tax on mining profits proposed by Rudd in 2010.
“Glencore, Rio [Tinto] and BHP ran sophisticated political operations against my government, both on climate change and the mining tax” Kevin Rudd told the Guardian.
“They worked hard … to get rid of the resource super profit tax, against the interests of other mining companies and the national economy as a whole. They worked hard … in 2013 against the carbon price. They succeeded in both enterprises.”
Rudd attributes the day-to-day influence of the sector to two mechanisms. The first is what he describes as the vast lobbying network it uses to pressure political parties. The second is a close relationship with Rupert Murdoch’s media, which owns most of the country’s print media.
“When did you last see the Murdoch media critical of any of these corporations?” Rudd said. “Rarely. If ever.”
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👉 Billionaire Rupert Murdoch owns Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, Sky News, and most Australian newspapers.
Oh we are all painfully aware of the influence the mining and media companies have on our politics. They’ve been untouchables for yonks now.
Money cant protect them from real power I know that much.
Rudd is probably correct about this, but You Should Know that he’s also an arrogant fuckwit who tried to pass climate legislation that his own treasury modelling said wouldn’t reduce emissions for 25 years (since this was in 2010, that means we’d still be a decade away from emissions falling). Since the conservative Coalition was never going to support any climate policy, and the left wing Greens refused to suppose such a lazy token effort, that meant his centrist Labor party’s policy failed to pass.
And because he’s such an arrogant prick, he absolutely refused to negotiate to bring about a better policy. Instead, he eventually got ousted by his own party, and the replacement leader did negotiate and did pass real, meaningful climate policy. Until those fossil fuel interests helped the Coalition win the next election, Australia had world-leading reductions in CO2 emissions.
Oh, and that election loss was not helped by Rudd’s own white-anting from inside the Labor party…
“white-anting”?
White ant is another name for termites. Just as termites literally destroy the structure of a house from the inside, a person “white-anting” is acting from within to take an institution down. In the case of Rudd, the goal wasn’t to destroy the Labor party per se, but to take down the Gillard government by, for example, leaking details of what were supposed to be closed internal discussions to the press. And it had the effect of helping Labor lose the following election, giving Australia 9 more years of conservative rule.
Thank you for the explanation!
When do these old fucks die off?!
Slowly over time.
Luckily there’s plenty of younger douchebags to take their place, so we don’t have to worry about them running out!
Should we?
