Gillard's Travails

One of the ways to attract Australia’s rich (by rich we mean more than $1 million outside super and their principal place of residence) to a breakfast focus group is ask them to share their impression of the Gillard Government.

Despite discovering an invariable inclination of the wealthy for managing their emotions well (apparently self control and being wealthy are pretty closely related in psychological terms) there is little love lost for Ms Gillard and her Government.

Last week’s breakfast ire was reserved especially it seems for Greg Combet and the Carbon Tax, with one investor involved referring to it as the economic equivalent of invading Iraq alone.

“We appear to be doing it because we think it’s a good idea – we are going to effectively tax the production of electricity; then give half of what we tax back to people who have to pay the bills and then no one has told us what we are doing with the rest.”

“This Government, appears to be the Government of good ideas poorly thought through… insulation, mining taxes, energy taxes it’s simply madness. Put it this way ‘how can we be taxing the production of carbon while building giant coal loaders. Wouldn’t it just be cheaper and smarter not to build the coal loaders or is exporting carbon to other places ok?’

While the current Labour government was written off as a Government of confusion and indecision – it wasn’t great news for Tony Abott, who they described as a terrific bloke but… no Prime Minister.