Mining giant Fortescue has hit back at Treasurer Wayne Swan with a spirited defence of its chairman Andrew Forrest in full page ads across national newspapers.
The company has bought full-page ads in The Australian with the headline “Swan's attack is unfair, untrue and divisive”. The ad is the replicate of a statement by Fortescue deputy chairman and lead independent director Herb Elliot released last week.
The latest round of the conflict between the federal government and mining giants, including Andrew Forrest, Clive Palmer and Gina Reinhart, started last week when an essay by Swan published in The Monthly bemoaned the rising influence of the group.
In the ad, Elliot wrote: “Recent attacks by Treasurer Wayne Swan are very disappointing and constitute an attack on the Fortescue Board, its executives, employees and shareholders.
“Andrew epitomises the spirit of what an Australian can do if given a “fair go”. For a politician to suggest that he has lost sight of this “fair go” ethic is baffling to those of us who know him best and who work with him daily.”
Palmer also criticised Swan's essay yesterday when he fronted the media while being named as one of Australia's Living Treasures.
In The Monthly, Swan wrote: “To be blunt, the rising power of vested interests is undermining our equality and threatening our democracy. We see this most obviously in the ferocious and highly misleading campaigns waged in recent years against resource taxation reforms and the pricing of carbon pollution.
“The infamous billionaires’ protest against the mining tax would have been laughed out of town in the Australia I grew up in, and yet it received a wide and favourable reception two years ago. A handful of vested interests that have pocketed a disproportionate share of the nation’s economic success now feel they have a right to shape Australia’s future to satisfy their own self-interest.”
Swan will continue and expand on his argument at the Press Club this week.
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