Australian Prime Minister, Mr Rudd, has gone to Western Australia trying to popularise his proposed $9 billion-a-year  super-tax on mining companies.

His message has been to claim that we need this tax because  Australia’s “working families” have not been benefitting from the large profits earned during the last mining boom.

Wrong. The prosperity of the mining companies is the reason why tens of thousands of families are “working families” and not “on-the-dole” families.

That could all change. A recent Newspoll survey found more Australians expecting to be worse off as a result of the new super-tax than those expecting to be better off.

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This tax will penalise the very industry which saved Australia from the worst effects of the recent global financial crisis.

Penalised mining companies may now consider taking their business elsewhere.

The tax having been introduced retrospectively will make Australia seem to foreign investors a risky, unstable place to invest.

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Mr Rudd has angered mining companies by announcing the new tax without consultations with them.

Mr Rudd has appalled his own MPs by announcing the tax without consulting them either.

Mr Rudd has disgusted many Australians by a decision to use taxpayers’ funds on a $38 million advertising campaign to sell the new tax.

Mr Rudd, who spoke ever so eloquently before last election against taxpayer-funded political advertising, has shocked many Australians by choosing to bend the rules and do that very thing himself.

One commentator on television described Mr Rudd as follows, “This man believes in nothing. Absolutely nothing.”

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All this creates a great opportunity for good independent candidates to poll well and perhaps be elected.

Unfortunately it may also give the anti-family, anti-Church, anti-tradition, Greens Party a chance to get a stranglehold on more and more casting votes.

Whoever comes into power next time, there will be a greater responsibility than ever for the Catholic Church to makes its presence felt, and to argue its moral principles at any and every opportunity.