The Australian mining tax and the political power of business

The press and issue framing in the Australian mining tax debate

“…(Hansard 2010: 3593) The minerals industry commissioned a multi-million-dollar advertising campaign, involving television, print and radio. The government responded with a wellfunded advertising campaign of its own (Marsh, Lewis, and Chesters 2014; see also Gilding et al 2013;McKnight and Hobbs 2013). As the campaigns progressed and remained central to political reporting, Labor's polling did not improve (see Figure 1).…”

National competition policy: Effective stewardship of markets

“…It did not involve the rolling out of administratively complex programs. And, it did not embroil the government in conflicts with powerful private-sector opponents-as, for instance, occurred in the more recent mining tax debacle (Marsh et al 2014). On the contrary, it was strongly supported by business, particularly big business (Harman 1996).…”

Industry vs. Government: Leveraging Media Coverage in Corporate Political Activity

“…Similarly, our frame analysis of the texts produced by the actors means that framing effects (which might establish whether the competing frames produced any variance in public opinion about the policy) are beyond the scope of the study. Thus, there is still some uncertainty over whether the mining industry's media dominance influenced public opinion regarding the political issue (Marsh, Lewis, & Chesters, 2014) and whether this was the key reason why the government abandoned the policy. Nevertheless, government sources reported that the mining industry had convinced the public (Bell & Hindmoor, 2014), which suggests that by aligning frames with the media, the industry established 'what the public thinks' (Gamson, 2004, p. 246) through outside CPA (Kollman, 1998).…”