Orchestral manoeuvres and national emergency

On ABC-TV’s Lateline last night, Tony Jones reported:

At a protest rally in Perth mining bosses, workers and Liberal MPs joined forces to denounce the [super profits] tax.

There was no suggestion this rally, which included billionaires and socialites, was anything other than a spontaneous uprising.

In contrast to the rally’s hostility to the Rudd Government, the Community Cabinet convened in Como by the PM seemed, though not uncritical, to be a rather thoughtful bunch. Reporter Dana Robertson was somehow moved to wonder “whether the audience was well vetted, or just very friendly.”

This just gets funnier by the day.

Only a day or so ago Clive Palmer “retreated” from his claims about scrapping mining projects because of the tax.

Fortescue Metals boss Andrew Forrest yesterday told the Perth rally:

“In China right now there’s a fierce debate about how to lower their resources tax to encourage the mining industry.”

Today we read:

Analysts in China were perplexed by Mr Forrest’s comments, as China is in fact taking steps towards imposing a resources tax, which Beijing sees as a means of conserving resources, slowing environmental destruction and rebalancing an economy that delivers bloated corporate profits at the expense of households.

These captains of industry couldn’t lie straight in bed. And naturally, unprincipled Liberal fronts and flakes go into bat for them without question. Andrew Forrest is ‘Twiggy’ to the basking sycophant, Doctor Easychair.

So maybe the Government’s hyperbole of ‘national emergency’, to describe the misinformation campaign being conducted by these people, isn’t so out there after all.