Australia’s Industry Assistance
Nation Building ?
Or More Corrupt Bureaucracy?

Australia’s Industry Assistance is now at about A$20 billion a year and the majority of Australians seem to continue to remain oblivious to its existence. What is it? If you’re a politician or a bureaucrat, especially one of the SES mandarins, it’s a great service the nation and its citizens should be proud of and it continues to contribute to industry, jobs and wealth creation. (If you believe that line then you should also worry about the power of brainwashing.)If you are one of its business beneficiaries it is to be kept a well earned secret because there could be more where that came from. Because a percentage of it ends up getting kicked back to the government of the day at federal and state level it insures neither major party is going to stop it and as to be expected is going to keep it rolling. This is in spite of the Productivity Commission as one example continually stating it as bad for the economy because it distorts the business system. Any international political economist worth a bean will confirm this is the case. In other words it is a formula for all kinds of corruption which is why it always grows every year. A small kickback to the main parties of 1% via the businesses that receive this industry assistance and those who would like to means both parties split about A$200 million (1% of $20 billion) each year. (They use it for example to buy buildings in Canberra or other cities where they then rent them to other bureaucracies and insiders like Centrelink for example. It makes the AWB wheat corruption look like peanuts by comparison.) And it could never have a Royal Commission simply because there are too many living off it. Even the ASX is being distorted by its existence. The coalition and labor now have another major source of funding both direct and indirect and that is your superannuation contributions. The details are lengthy so we will save it for a future item. But once again it is a large sum each year and can go through a range of kickback processes many of which are convenient grey areas. Overall this gives more financing to the political status quo than in history and allows them to control more. But it’s systemic corruption and is providing many unprecedented opportunities for ex politicians and mandarins to enrich themselves beyond their wildest dreams! And they have also created something called a Future Fund, which is being seed funded using Telstra T3 , and is mainly intended to be the mandarins main trough forever. No doubt they believe they deserve this multibillion dollar transfer of funds from Telstra which they have been using for years to line their pockets, while the majority including business, still get copper telephone infrastructure that really in the last analysis can only be relegated to scrap because of the technological and economic efficiency of fibre optic infrastructure. You might also check that if you are paying for broadband you are more than likely getting dial-up speeds, because copper simply, without any doubt, cannot deliver broadband.
For the two main political parties Industry Assistance is a wonderful slush fund that guarantees they are able to prevent diversity in politics and keep out any challenges by having a reliable predictable almost secretive source of cash that no one else can match. It is used to pork barrel and buy business from one end of the country to the other.
Each state is divided into about 8 to 10 regions and based on whether the region has marginal electorates the government of the day will hand out the “industry assistance” accordingly to basically buy the electorate. Australians seem to think they are clever in capturing some of this corruption say in the form of a useless multimillion dollar equestrian centre. (Basically this now entrenched culture explains why Australia must rely on economic powerhouses like China to temporarily save its historically poor economic efforts and the political parasites who flourish off it, and why the foreign debt is $650 billion and rising.)
A multimillion dollar equestrian centre in the middle of nowhere that only gets used a few times a year is as mentioned a typical good recent example. (Maybe the Aussie horse shit gets packaged – value added- and exported?) They were popular during the recent tenure of the recent Deputy Prime Minister Mr. John Anderson. (Yes one of the same ag mafia politicians who should have been subpoenaed by the Cole Commission but of course wasn’t. He knows too much and on oath would have had to spill some of the beans at least.)
But these vote buying bribes basically got found at for what they were- pork barrel vote buying pay-offs- and have been quietly sidelined fro a while. Not the funds though. Being designed by bureaucrats for bureaucrats and the political status quo, the funds are never likely to be handed back to the people. They simply get together and cook up some more schemes to insure the budget gets blown. Twenty billion a year is a lot of money! Naturally Australia being what it is the mandarins and politicians use it to fund and underwrite their business interests, careers and business interests of their mates. This is also used to help pave dual career paths because if and when they get out of government they have already opened many doors for themselves in handing out this rather large chunk of your money. If they have a career plan that includes consulting then as government mandarins they will make sure large chunks go to a range of international and local consultancies. Often they are some of the consultancies who hire ex military generals and ex treasury bureaucrats and so on to get them closer to other troughs they can pig out from. Networking! Smaller businesses in local regions might belong to a mate and they can find themselves enriched by the experience as they proceed to put less fortunate businesses out of business. (This is why most international economists consider it bad for any economy. One of the many distortions and why Australia’s mandarins now keep all the details of the handouts a secret!) Because it is so corrupt they have to hide as much of it from the public as they possibly can and because Australians seem to be so apathetic about such things they are getting away with this heist on a large scale.
The media mafia rarely touches it with a ten-foot pole and any content producers who have are rarely seen producing content for the media mafia again. Conform to their loyalty –to- the- political -status -quo – standards and you will have a long and lucrative career. Probably believing you are one of the free worlds leading examples of an investigative journalist.In a relatively small economy like Australia’s this $20 billion a year has a serious distorting impact on entrepreneurship for example. We mentioned the Looksmart and eBay differences and outcomes elsewhere. Looksmart was launched using Industry Assistance and the government agents engaged in hyping it to the public and made a $200 million profit after which the share price dropped down to less than its listing price. Many shareholders but especially Telstra T1 and T2 (especially T2) would recognize the scam. Unfortunately there are a disproportionate number of ASX listed companies dependent on this government subsidized business model. Once again some of these are part of Centrelink’s mafia network of job agencies and so on! Aussie capitalism?
Industry assistance encourages wealth transfer and how to get into it rather than wealth creation. Of course after years it becomes systemic, which is the case in Australia. One of the tricks this cohort has cooked up to keep their show on the road is to establish business of the year awards and so on. They declare a number of businesses they have fed Industry Assistance money into as winners in various categories and this gets loyal media promotion. Obviously this all helps prove their corrupt negative sum game schemes are nation building. But of course! They get to keep their empires and get more money from pork barreling political parasites and declare it all a “win-win”. (They will not publish names of beneficiaries and so forth for obvious reasons. Business competitors are likely being put out of business and of course the nation is still accumulating an unprecedented foreign debt of $650 billion and rising in correlation with the growth and persistence of the industry assistance and so on.)
These are some of the benefits of systemically corrupt bureaucracy that gets found out like the wheat corruption and then gets rewarded. We could only get 1998 Industry Assistance for NSW but if you would like to put your name to an FOI to get the rest up to 2006 let us know. No takers?
But also an Economic Bill of Rights will go some way to cleaning out this dung heap once and for all.