Entrepreneur exposes elected official to Moral Hazard

Isn’t the following sort of akin to the US feds bailing out Fanny and Freddy?

Australian businessman Dick Smith has pledged to help Australian Greens leader Bob Brown pay a $240,000 legal bill which is threatening to force him into bankruptcy.

Senator Brown has to pay the money to Forestry Tasmania after failing in his efforts to stop logging in Tasmania’s Wielangta Forest.

So, now Mr Smith — who of all people should appreciate the importance of market forces — wants to bail out Senator Brown from the consequences of his actions.

Speaking from his helicopter over Lake Eyre today ...

(er, Mr Smith tends in recent years increasingly to style over substance)

... Mr Smith said it was inappropriate for the industry to threaten someone’s political future.

“I’m very disturbed when I understand the legal letter which came in to Bob Brown threatened to make him a bankrupt, and of course, Forestry Tasmania would know that means he’d have to vacate his seat from Federal Parliament,” Mr Smith said.

But, hey, Senator Brown knew that too when he stuck his beak into the Wielangta Forest.

Meanwhile, fiscal conservative PM Kevin Rudd seems unlikely to intervene:

“I’ve actually got a lot of time for Bob just as a person, a bloke I’ve got to know over the years,” he said.

“I didn’t actually know these facts until I read them in the press today so I’m quite concerned about it for him personally.

“As for what can be done about it, that’s a separate matter.”

Zzzzzzzzz... Decisive as ever.

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Toora-li-additty 2

As previously noted, the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) recently refused a housing development at Toora, on the South Gippsland coast, due to the ‘probability’ of flooding arising from climate-change induced sea-level rise.

A ‘climate change adaptation specialist’, Dr Peter Fisher, in an opinion piece last week observed with regard to the Toora decision:

Curiously, [VCAT] did not invoke a similar precautionary approach when it refused to overturn planning approval for a gas plant upgrade near Marlo. The proposed residential development at Toora was apparently more risky than the processing and storage of liquid hydrocarbons and monoethylene glycol on a low dune next to a lagoon on a flood plain with only frontal dunes between the plant and the ocean.

Curious indeed; however, such inconsistency could be illumined by the fact that one proposal was underpinned by a significant commercial lobby, whereas the other clearly was not.

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