The Case for Royalties for Voters
by David Archibald, author of Australia’s Defence and Twilight of Abundance
19 November 2017
The riddle of why Haiti remains so poor has been answered as follows:
The answer has to do with the regime. It is a well-known fact that any accumulation of wealth in Haiti makes you a target, if not of the population in general, then certainly of the government. The regime, no matter who is in charge, is like a voracious dog on the loose, seeking to devour any private wealth that happens to emerge.
That sounds what Western Australia will be like under Brendan Grylls’ proposed big, new tax on iron ore.
The plunder: Iron ore train arriving at Port Hedland, WA
Of course the Nationals, Liberals, and Labor won’t stop at a near doubling the taxes on iron ore. The Liberal/National government are spendthrifts –- running up a further $35 billion of debt during the mining boom. They have no interest in living within their means, which means that taxes will keep rising. Today it is iron ore but tomorrow it will be gold, nickel, copper, LNG — anything showing a bit of profitability at the time.
Brendan Grylls’ proposed tax will cost 2,400 jobs in WA’s iron ore industry, with most of those job losses in Mr Grylls’ own seat of Pilbara. Mr Grylls is treating the people of his own electorate with contempt. He must know that it will hurt all businesses in the Pilbara, but he is quite happy to trade their misery for political gains down south.
If eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, that is also true of equitable tax rates. Mr Grylls’ new tax must be killed off. Even if Mr Grylls changed his mind before the next election, that would not be enough. Eventually the tax would come back. Mr Grylls must be removed from parliament as an example to others. The wisdom that the budget can be balanced by reducing expenditure must replace the current practice of taxes, along with expenditure, increasing in perpetuity.
Even that won’t be enough. Much is made, from time to time, of reducing red tape but nothing ever happens except increases in regulations and form-filling. Everyone in business knows that too much time is wasted in filling out forms.
Royalties for Voters’ philosophy is that if there is no benefit from a regulation, let’s get rid of it. That includes things as bizarre as bag limits on herring and the law that people have to wear a helmet in order to ride a bicycle.
Royalties for Voters is the only political party that is explicitly pro-mining. We will get the dead hand of the EPA, or whatever is called now, off mining. The EPA has a budget in excess of $250 million a year, which is mostly spent on torturing people in the bush, miners and farmers alike. We are also the only party that knows that global warming is a big con job and that there is no point in wasting money on it.
As Socrates said, the penalty that good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men. Brendan Grylls may not be overtly evil but he is set on a path which will send the State of WA backwards, and his own electorate faster than most. The good men and women of Royalties for Voters invite you to join them in fighting for lower taxes and less regulation.
Register now at royaltiesforvoters.com.au
Background
Brendan Grylls, the leader of the National Party in Western Australia, is a peculiar sort of agrarian socialist. He wants to redistribute wealth, as all agrarian socialists do, but his proposed extra tax on iron ore will destroy 2,400 jobs in his own electorate for the benefit of other electorates close to 2,000 km away. He is a mad and bad socialist. He must be stopped or otherwise the tax increases will just keep on coming.
If you are on the electoral roll in WA and want to preserve our standard of living, please consider signing up to Royalties for Voters, the only party which wants to not only stop Mr Grylls’ evil plan but also roll back all the stupid and unnecessary regulations that have built up over the years.
The result in the recent Orange by-election in NSW shows that the existing order can be overthrown, but only if there is another party which will do the right thing by the electorate. At the moment Royalties for Voters is our only hope –- sign up your whole household.
