Many Australians will be deeply troubled by Kevin Rudd’s jackboot attempts to bully those opposed to his mining super tax.

His slurs on foreign investors in concert with the union attacks on individual mining company executives must rank as among the most socially divisive actions ever sanctioned by an Australian prime minister.

Rudd’s decision to invoke the language of class warfare and envy is a deliberate attempt to split Australian society down the middle and pit people against each other.
The behaviour of Rudd and his ministers in attacking mining companies as foreigners who don’t pay their fair share and personalising the issue has been as damaging as the draconian tax proposed.

Rudd gave little hint of his class warfare predilection before the 2007 election. He was, he claimed then, a proud economic conservative.

In one of his first interviews as leader of the opposition, Rudd described socialism as an ''arcane, 19th-century doctrine'', which he rejected. Rudd said emphatically, ''I am not a socialist. I have never been a socialist and I never will be a socialist''.

His speech on election night included the following commitments: ''I will be prime minister for all Australians. And I make this solemn pledge to the nation: I will always govern in the national interest.''

The Kevin 07 character is impossible to reconcile with the language and actions of Kevin10, which have been revealed most alarmingly in his announcement for the mining super tax.

Over the past few weeks, commentators at home and abroad have likened Kevin Rudd’s actions in seeking a de facto nationalisation of our mining sector to those expected of a Hugo Chavez or a Fidel Castro.

Consider the following quote from Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe: ''The non-renewable resources are ours in the first place. You, the investor will get a reward, but that reward will be balanced by what we keep for ourselves.''
Mugabe made these comments while unilaterally announcing his plan to acquire 51 per cent of all mining projects in Zimbabwe on behalf of the people of Zimbabwe.

The response was an immediate 20 per cent fall in the value of mining stocks in Zimbabwe and a freeze on all new investment and exploration from global mining companies.

Comments from the Rudd government in recent days are eerily similar. Kevin Rudd: ''Their massively increased profits . . . built on Australia’s resources are mostly in fact going overseas . . . It’s time that the people got a fairer share.''
Treasurer Wayne Swan: ''Our resources belong to all Australians and Australians do deserve a fair share.''

Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard: ''The mineral wealth that is in the grounds of this country doesn’t belong to one person, doesn’t belong to one company, it belongs to all of us.''

This is not the first time in recent memory that Labor has resorted to divisive and dangerous tactics. Mark Latham, as Labor leader, developed a ''hit list'' of non-government schools that faced funding cuts had Labor won the 2004 federal election.

The policy was based on the simplistic notion that wealthy private schools should not receive any funding from the taxpayer and Labor banked on an old-fashioned class war to bolster support for its campaign.

This approach backfired when it was revealed that many independent, Catholic and community schools in lower socio-economic areas would also have been penalised under the Labor Party’s ham-fisted formula.

Rudd’s mining super tax is similarly based on the simplistic notion that most Australians would approve of taking money off greedy mining executives and redistributing that money to the poor.

The ''unintended'' consequences are now becoming clear as millions of Australians have seen their retirement savings hit by the fall in the share price of resource companies and thousands of jobs are now under threat as companies suspend or cancel proposed developments.

Many of the people that Robin Hood Rudd claimed would benefit from his mining super tax are suddenly confronted with the reality of his rushed and opportunistic assault on the mining sector.

Rudd contemptuously dismisses the mining companies’ concerns and insists that making our resources sector the highest taxed in the world will somehow be good for it.
Australians will hear nothing from Rudd about the lost opportunities from projects that will not get off the drawing board because of this tax - the exploration, mine development, transport facilities and processing plants that would have been undertaken and built and the wages, salaries, royalties, taxes and dividends that would have been paid.

Perhaps we should ask the people of Zimbabwe how they have benefited from the attacks on foreign investment and government intervention in the mining sector.