Sir Robert Menzies:His perspective on current political matters. high dollar, struggling australian manufacturers, global economy

I would like you to put yourself in the shoes of the spirit of Sir Robert Gordon Menzies, the founder of the Liberal Party.

In the last few weeks you have taken to sitting in the House (invisible to all) and trying to make sense of what you are seeing.

The first thing you have noted is that there is a lot of talk about a 2 speed economy.
This comes up often in debate and discussion. It seems that the mining boom has driven the Australian dollar higher than it otherwise would be.

This means that Australian manufacturers are struggling to compete on the world scene.

This is quite different to what happened in your days in office.

In those days your government controlled the level of the Australian dollar.

Because Australia rode on the sheep’s back and your National Party cohorts had power and imprimatur you kept the dollar low.

This allowed manufacturing to be given a bit of breathing room while it developed its contribution to Australia’s export income.

In your day a global economy meant fighting the prospect of a European Common Market, attending meetings with Commonwealth leaders , flirting with the Queen and being subservient to the USA because they had all the firepower and we didn’t.

But when that scoundrel Whitlam got in he started the rot.

Hawke decided it was a good idea to float the Australian dollar so that Australia would be competitive. In your day the only economists were employed by the public service, the banks and the insurance companies. People who entered parliament from the trade union movement were a rough and ready lot and had no economic qualifications at all.

Now the mining boom has ensued and driven the dollar to new heights.

Much of these mineral sales are going to China who still controls the level of it currency.

The higher dollar means that many Australians now prefer to buy goods overseas.

That’s also been stimulated by this new-fangled thing called the Internet.

In your day it was quite difficult for consumers to buy things overseas. But these days it’s a cinch!

A global economy means that Australians can trade anywhere in the world-----although it still means being subservient to the USA!

So in your day you would unashamedly give tax cuts and provide tariff barriers in order to protect the sectors that you wanted to prop-up or encourage.

So when you heard Tony Abbott say that he was not going to support a company tax-cut you could hardly believe your ears.

And then you hear that the Labor government is schmoozing small business organisations in an attempt to win their support. You do wonder what the world is coming to because normally this would be your domain.

On top of that there was the controversy about Peter Costello not being appointed to the chair of the Future Fund.

In your day, if you had an appointment to make you would never even give a single thought to someone from the other side of politics. So you wonder why they are criticizing the Labor Government for not appointing a true-blue Lib who is so loyal to his party that he never had the gumption to challenge his leader, John Howard.

But for the Labor government to appoint a professional investment banker and public company director!

Well what the hell do they think they are doing? What’s the use of being in politics if you can’t use these sort of appointments to get your political enemies out of the way?

Surely Gillard could’ve offered this position to someone like Kevin Rudd?

Oh dearie me! How things have changed in Australian politics you think to yourself.