Citizens Electoral Council of Australia

Media Release Tuesday, 14 October 2014

Craig Isherwood‚ National Secretary
PO Box 376‚ COBURG‚ VIC 3058
Phone: 1800 636 432
Email: cec@cecaust.com.au
Website: http://cec.cecaust.com.au

Infrastructure: Hockey loots Australians, tries to sabotage new, China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB)

The 20-21 September meeting of G20 finance ministers and central bank governors in Cairns adopted Treasurer Joe Hockey’s proposal for a Global Infrastructure Initiative (GII) as a centrepiece of the Brisbane G20 heads of state summit in November. Hockey claims to have proposed the GII, to be coordinated through a new Global Infrastructure Centre (GIC), as the engine which will drive a targeted two per cent annual growth rate for the G20 economies.

Joe Hockey is a liar, who couldn’t care less about global growth rates. His GII/GIC proposal, like former ANZ Bank director John Dahlsen famously observed of Hockey’s Financial System Inquiry (FSI) in the 18 August Australian Financial Review, is “by bankers, on behalf of bankers, for bankers”: to use the power of governments in order to loot their populations on behalf of private interests through the mass privatisation of infrastructure, just as he is doing in Australia. Where China’s new proposal for an Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) is committed to nation-building and therefore to financing masses of new public infrastructure both in Asia and worldwide, the sole purpose of Hockey’s GII is to privatise existing publicly-owned infrastructure as quickly as possible to the benefit of private bankers, just as he is doing in Australia. In fact, as reported in The Australian of 16 September (“Abbott faces uphill battle on G20 infrastructure goal”) his new GII is based on the notorious, private financier-run Infrastructure Australia.

Just do the maths. According to the Asian Development Bank (ADB), Asia alone requires an investment of $750 billion per year, of which the London and Wall Street-controlled World Bank and ADB provide a paltry $20 billion per year, and that only under loan-shark “conditionalities”. The AIIB, by contrast, will begin operation at the end of this year and will initially issue $50-100 billion per year for new infrastructure. Together with the New Development Bank (NDB) founded at the BRICS summit (Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa) in Fortaleza, Brazil in mid-July with an initial capital of $100 billion, the two new institutions could soon be issuing several hundred billion dollars per year for infrastructure. And, according to a recent review of these developments by Executive Intelligence Review magazine, “The AIIB’s purpose is clearly to accelerate the worldwide spread of high-speed and magnetic levitation rail corridors, water management and navigation projects, nuclear power development and fusion power research, and new communications infrastructure.”

Hockey, by contrast, proposes not to issue a single new dollar for infrastructure, but only to “coordinate” “public-private partnerships” (PPPs) on a global scale, where governments provide the guarantees and take all the risks, but where the private sector takes all the profit. As reported in The Australian of 9 October (“Joe Hockey urges global investors to back public infrastructure plan”), “The Australian initiative would not invest in new projects and would instead focus on learning from joint ventures between governments and private investors on how to make it faster and cheaper to raise funds.” (Emphasis added.) Said Hockey of his GII/GIC, “It can cover everything from private-sector involvement in the provision of basic infrastructure like water and electricity, right through to cross-border PPPs”, which Hockey claimed would be a “game-changer” for the construction of global infrastructure.

Look at Hockey’s plans for Australia. He and the “Infrastructure Prime Minister” Tony Abbott are looting the hell out of Australia’s public infrastructure by raffling it off for a pittance to the private sector, even providing bribes to help force states to sell their assets through an “asset recycling initiative”, by giving the states a 15 per cent bonus for all public assets they flog off as long as the funds are recycled into new infrastructure—which will consist entirely of “user-pays” PPPs—looting the public yet again.

This past week Hockey made a pilgrimage to Wall Street to meet the CEOs of Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley to encourage more U.S. funds to buy up Australian infrastructure cheap. Bank of America Merrill Lynch hosted Hockey at an investor roundtable lunch at its headquarters, so fund managers could salivate over such deals. Queensland, for instance, is committed to an electricity, port and industrial water pipeline privatisation/leasing plan in a bid to raise around $37 billion, while NSW has sold three major ports. South Australia is proceeding with the sale of its motor accident commission, which could raise $1.5 billion, but will likely see motorists facing rises in insurance premiums.

But what’s the surprise? Hockey has always been a flunky of London and Wall Street. Indeed, he gave his first foreign address as Australia’s new treasurer at a business lunch hosted by JPMorgan Chase in New York on 15 October 2013 under the title “Open for Business”, while his chief of staff Grant Lovett formerly worked for the giant Swiss bank UBS as did John Fraser, a 20-year veteran of UBS tipped to be the new boss of the Treasury. After an investigation of UBS last year by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the bank admitted that it had helped rig the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) and Australia’s Bank Bill Swap Rate (BBSW); both are used as benchmarks for all sorts of financial contracts, including home mortgages. These are the people running the Australian Treasury?! And are these top private bankers taking massive pay cuts to work for the Australian government out of the kindness of their hearts? Reported the AFR of 6 October 2014 about Fraser, who headed UBS’s global asset management division, “Mr. Fraser’s appointment would satisfy Treasurer Joe Hockey’s goal of bringing his department closer to the real-world reality of markets.”

Anyone with half a brain can see through all these lies at a glance. The question is, “What are you going to do about it?” Will you just continue to grumble as you have been doing probably for years now, as our nation has plunged ever deeper into a London and Wall Street-owned hell? Or, will you finally do what you should have done awhile ago and join the CEC, the only organisation which has both the knowledge and the guts to not only challenge these lying bastards, but finally to defeat them? Join the CEC today with a $20 membership and fight with us for a decent future.

The CEC prepared a blueprint in 2002 of major infrastructure projects which would transform Australia. Click here for a free copy of that report, “The Infrastructure Road to Recovery”.

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