The Good Fight by Wayne Swan

Author:Wayne Swan [Swan, Wayne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2014-08-19T04:00:00+00:00

15

AN EPIC FIGHT TO THE DEATH

As I walked into the press conference at Parliament House on Sunday 2 May 2010 with Kevin Rudd and Martin Ferguson to announce our response to the Henry Review, including the Resource Super Profits Tax (RSPT), I knew we were prosecuting a case with a high degree of political difficulty and that both the government and I were in for the fight of our lives. It would not only need an enormous amount of courage, but a lot of luck to pull it off. The coming weeks would require me to deliver the Budget, travel the country selling it, consult with the miners on the RSPT and then engage in bloody hand-to-hand combat through five weeks of parliament, most likely the last sitting weeks before the election.

My public image has never been that of a bomb thrower, but I’ve never been afraid to chance my arm on the big calls. Whether it was quitting an academic job to become Wayne Goss’s campaign director, or making sure the Queensland ALP didn’t take a backward step in the fight against Pauline Hanson in 1998, or backing myself during the GFC, I’ve never been one to take a backward step on the things I believe in. And this instance was no different. ‘It’s the big hard reforms that are the worthwhile ones,’ I told the hundred-strong media pack that day. ‘They’re always the toughest to implement, but they’re always the most worthwhile.’

We had just stared down a global recession in the face of fierce political opposition from the conservatives and I could see how important tax reform, particularly resource tax reform, was in setting Australia up for the Asian century. I also knew that it wasn’t a politically viable option to sit on the Henry Review and do nothing. Now was the time to make sure we handled this next boom better than the previous government handled the last one. It had allowed infrastructure bottlenecks to flash amber and then red; it had totally ignored the non-resource economy, and failed to save wealth for the future. But, most importantly, it had failed to capture a fair share of the wealth generated from the community’s mineral resources for all Australians. And I’d be damned if I was going to let us squander the opportunities as it had.

My determination grew as each month rolled on during early 2010. With each passing day, with daily reports of rising commodity prices and the strengthening local economy, it became more and more obvious that our country was once again going to experience another of its trademark bouts of good luck. The summer before last, we had worked intensely on our fiscal stimulus package to rescue the country from the onslaught of the global recession. This summer, I left all that sand between the pages of the Henry Review. This tale of two summers was more than just a case of economic and emotional whiplash for me. It reminded me of what we have

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.