TURNBULL MADE A CALL SOUTH AUSTRALIA COULD BANK ON
BHP’S departing chairman Jac Nasser has blamed the Turnbull government for giving South Australia the platform to lob its own statebased levy on the banks.
Slicing into the banking sector, firstly with a federal tax in May, followed by last week’s South Australian tax, was bad policy, Mr Nasser said.
“You wouldn’t have the second if you didn’t have the first,” Mr Nasser told The Australian’s Competitive Advantage Forum in Sydney yesterday.
“I think this just isn’t sound policy. You can’t take sectors and start slicing them off and say … ‘We’re going to punish the people who are doing well’,” Mr Nasser said.
“If there’s something fundamentally askew in the banking sector, they should fix that, not just keep taxing.”
Mr Nasser said the nation was at a tipping point and, like a company, must have a strong balance sheet and a clear plan of what is “right”.
“The decision that we take will determine whether we continue as a great country socially and economically, or if we retreat and become one of those countries that are in the game and then drop out.”
Asked whether he was confident in the leadership in Canberra, Mr Nasser noted during the Hawke/Keating/ Howard era there were three prime ministers in 24 years, compared with the past decade’s record of five PMs.
“It’s too simplistic to blame one person, it doesn’t work that way.”
He nominated tax, energy and education as among key policy areas requiring a longterm plans.
Ken MacKenzie is soon to succeed Mr Nasser as BHP chairman.