We’ve seen a very unedifying ‘debate’ on the RSPT over recent days, with silly accusations by Coalition figures about a paper from the NBER, Liberal MP Peter Lindsay’s claim that it would drive pie carts out of business, and absurd ascriptions of all manner of unrelated economic developments (the dollar, the fall in the stock market) to the tax.

Now, John Quiggin and a number of senior economists have released a statement decrying the misinformation surrounding the RSPT.

Meanwhile, in an otherwise extemely unedifying episode of Q&A, Canadian political philosopher John Ralston Saul had this to say:

But it’s pretty hard to find a moment in history when commodities industries were happy about any tax whatsoever at all and, secondly, it’s pretty hard to find examples of commodities industries helping in the redistribution of wealth to create a middle class to support a democracy. The history of commodities-dependent societies, with the exception pretty well of Canada and Australia, is one of dictatorships, right? And we’ve been smart. We’ve avoided that because we’ve actually controlled the commodities industries and made them do what they didn’t want to do and they’ve taken enough money away from them and put it into things like health and public education so they weren’t able to do what they did throughout Latin America, Central America, South East Asia and so on. So commodities industries, one has to be quite careful about. My guess is right now there are probably Canadian commodities industries threatening to come to Australia for some other reason, but I don’t know anything about this tax.

I’ll leave the logic and veracity of that claim for readers to ponder.

What is certain, though, is that the scare campaign has reached a truly hysterical and hyperbolic level, as this letter to Fortescue shareholders with its talk of socialism and nationalisation surely indicates.

Pollster Gary Morgan observed the other day that this election year might have parallels with 1949 – when a Labor government sought to take commercial banks into public ownership.

It’s interesting to ponder that statement as well.

Mining capital has a relationship to the state different from that of other industries. Resources can only be sold once, and are not owned by the companies, but rather by the people. Prices, in many instances, are not set through anything akin to a retail market, but through negotiated contracts with long time lines. Mining companies only exploit the resources, rather than create a product (particularly in Australia, where there is little value-adding).

So, it could well be argued that the industry, with its tendency to throw an enormous amount of political weight around, and whose investment decisions so greatly affect the economy, ought to be nationalised. The sticking point is the amount of capital needed.

But that’s very far from what we’re seeing proposed here, which is simply an attempt to ensure the owners of the resources, us, receive a fair return. That is the actual stake of that political game, and the attempt to assimilate the private interests of resources capital with the public interest is precisely what needs to be resisted.

The evidence was clear. Yet the publication of News Ltd’s poll (Newspoll) in the first place had already had a major impact. The evidence showing the ‘error’ of Newspoll was literally ignored by media discussion (e.g. the Insiders on ABC TV and the impact of the ‘rogue’ poll was allowed to run unabated).

Pollsters and those who publish the polls have a responsibility to report the facts and the truth.

Newspoll should have conducted another poll as soon as possible when they saw the dramatic change in their results — and if different, released the data to correct the misconceptions caused by their ‘rogue’ poll.

It is extremely worrying that today’s Newspoll on “boat people” clearly did include questions on ‘Political support,’ but the results from the ‘Political support’ question were not published.

A statistical analysis of the data reported on Australians’ attitudes to “boat people” issues — specifically the breakdown by ‘Political support’ — suggests the ALP vote in that poll was very strong. The percentage supporting each political party clearly should have been released.

Polls and their publishers should not seek to set the agenda by selectively releasing polling data.

Polls and their publishers are powerful but with that power comes responsibility.

Predictably tonight, the ABC and SBS news, and the 7 30 report ran with lines shaped by The Australian‘s coverage of Newspoll, with no or just a bare mention of the Nielsen results. It may be that the voting intention results will be released tomorrow, but the delayed release and the lack of context to the results on questions about asylum seekers presents a picture which is deliberately distorted, stoking the claims about “crisis” and inflaming the issue further.

This really is getting to be a complete disgrace.

Update: William Bowe on Chris Mitchell’s explanation:

Queried by Andrew Crook of Crikey, The Australian’s editor Chris Mitchell explained that “even Crikey” should be able to understand that a non-fortnightly set of voting intention figures would cause a disturbance in the force. Mitchell further invoked a Beatles-and-the-Stones style arrangement between Newspoll and Nielsen in which they have agreed not to step on each other’s releases. Yet just one month ago, on the same day that Nielsen produced its regular monthly poll, The Australian published a “special Newspoll survey” on the Liberal leadership in between its regular fortnightly polls, and was not in the least bit shy about informing us that the sample produced the same 58-42 split in favour of Labor as recorded the previous week. In fairness, it should be noted that Crikey “understands that on Sunday morning, Newspoll chief Martin O’Shannessy contacted his Nielsen counterpart John Stirton and agreed not to release the two-party preferred vote to The Australian”.