The Mortimer report
@box text intro = "Spend $21 billion on new jobs, Howard told", was the way the July 24 Australian headlined the Mortimer report on industry assistance. This reflects the Murdoch philosophy of journalism: if you have to lie, you might as well make it a whopper.
David Mortimer is the chief executive of the giant TNT transport company. His assignment from the government was to "inquire" into what handouts big business would like and report them to the government. The only connection with "jobs" is that this is the normal pretext which business and government put forward whenever someone questions government welfare for business. It was the justification of the federal Labor government for its steel industry policy of billions for BHP — and look at how many jobs have been saved in Newcastle.
Mortimer's report is completely within the tradition of "inquiries" whose main function is to provide a veneer of "impartial recommendation" for the government's plans. In the present case, the recommendation is for handouts totalling $21 billion over the next five years. This is "only" about $2 billion more than the government had already indicated it was planning to give away, so at first glance it might appear that the report does not herald a big increase in business rip-offs. But this could be misleading.
The report proposes that the form of business welfare be changed to direct payments; at the moment, most is given in the form of tax breaks. Mortimer says that this would have the benefit of letting us see more clearly how much we're paying and to whom. But how likely is it that parliament would really wipe out all the current tax-related handouts in the course of implementing Mortimer's recommendation? About as likely as that the government will wipe out unemployment.
This is all the more the case because Mortimer's recommendations include "a wide-ranging review of Australia's tax system" and support for the Howard government's tax "reform" rhetoric — that is, for a regressive consumption tax.
So the agenda is: shift an even bigger share of taxation from business to working people, and at the same time give business direct handouts on the false pretext that it is losing indirect ones.
All of this will be done by a government which "can't afford" to pay for child-care or public education or adequate health care. But that's the meaning of "industry policy": give industry what it wants, and to hell with everyone else.