http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/07/gina-rinehart-wants-australian-thatcherism-but-...
In an incredibly bizarre and paternalist move, Gina Rinehart has this week said she wanted to propagate Thatcherism in Australia.
It should be obvious that Australia needs Thatcherism as much as it needs a billionaire telling us that their interest is the national interest. It is bad enough that Rinehart organises secret trips to mingle with the likes of senators Michaelia Cash, Cory Bernardi and Bronwyn Bishop, or that she flies Liberal ministers off to a wedding in India at her own expense. Is Rinehart’s love for money, acquired through selling our under-taxed minerals, greater than her love for the country?
After all, we already have another billionaire in parliament, and we hear far too much from those with 10 digit net–worths in our public policy discussions.
Thatcher, the “milk snatcher”, destroyed the British social contract as established by the 1942 Beveridge report – and to this day, millions of Britons are not better off for it. Does Australia want to turn its cities into the worst parts of northern England? Do we want a Glasgow, where 30% of children live in poverty and where, in 2008, life expectancy for men had plummeted to 54 years?
Thatcher was the wrecking ball destroying the wealth of communities which once had proud mines, steel, car and ship building industries. In the period she was in power, the proportion of people with incomes below 60% of the median income grew from 13.4% in 1979 to 22.2% in 1990. Unemployment reached 12%, and the top 20% of Britons had their share of wealth grow from 35% in 1979 to 43% in 1990-91. Are these things to be proud of?
Sadly, signs of this brand of Thatcherism are already at play Down Under. Sacked Adelaide and Geelong plant workers will soon be applying for jobs that don’t exist (there’s an 800,000 gap between unemployed Australians and job advertisements; adding more low skilled workers to the dole queues will not help). Most of these workers left school at 16 and have had little opportunity to up-skill in order to enter a growth industry, and most have the added barrier of functional illiteracy.
he was a dear friend.
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