Owning Wayne Swan

After having a good chortle at Wayne Swan’s expense today – as he slowly realises that big companies, like rich people, can afford good accountants – I was intrigued to see he has capped this off by announcing that private property had been abolished in Australia.

While trying to justify the fact that the celebrated mining tax has raised a mere $126 million in six months, Swan announced that ‘Australians own our resources 100%t and when very big profits are made Australians are entitled to share in those profits and that is the purpose of the MRRT.’

Personally, I’ve always wanted to own a diamond mine, even though I’d settle for gold or iron ore. But now I’d like to see Wayne Swan demonstrate the principle first, just to make sure it’s OK. Go on, Wayne — go up to a Rio Tinto site some time, and just wander in and start filling your pockets with iron ore. Take a camera crew with you, so that we can see how it’s done.

Then go and climb Uluru. All that stuff about ‘traditional owners’ is really such a lot of tosh, isn’t it, Wayne, because Australians own our resources 100% and are entitled to share in any profits made from them. So I’d also like my slice of the annual gate at Uluru, if you don’t mind – $25 per person x 500,000 visitors per year = $12.5 million = 56c for me and everyone else, please. I know it says on the website that ‘Part of the park fee also goes back to Anangu traditional owners, to help them maintain their families and the Mutitjulu community’, but they’ll just have to manage on their 56c a year like the rest of us.

In fact, I’d like to come round to Wayne Swan’s office some time – except that you can’t always get through the security at Parliament House – and help myself to some of the profit he’s made with his mining tax. After all, it cost him a bit to get the legislation passed, and it’s just been sitting there raking in the cash ever since. I think that makes it ‘profit’, doesn’t it?

Philippa Martyr blogs at Transverse City, and is looking forward to the cheque in the mail