Carbon tax; BHP demands corporate welfare.

Kloppers seeks wider, deeper spot at the public trough.

Cartoon: By Zeg.

"In retrospect it becomes clear that hindsight is definitely overrated!" - Alfred E. Neuman.

With the ink barely dry on the result of the 2010, “There will be no carbon tax under a …,” election, Marius Kloppers, head honcho at BHP Billiton, friend of the mining tax, and compulsive ‘certainty’ seeker, called for a carbon tax, just to give a bit of certainty, and to put Australia ahead of the pack.

Marius, for some reason was not able to see any certainty in not having a carbon tax so rather than oppose the idea, he opted to go for it. This can be likened to sending ships to help your enemy invade so you can be sure of the future. Now he has changed his mind on how good it is going to be and is demanding corporate welfare tart status:

JULIA Gillard is under mounting pressure to give exporters a special deal under her proposed carbon tax after BHP Billiton chief executive Marius Kloppers yesterday became the latest business leader to warn that Australia's go-it-alone approach would be a "dead weight" on high-polluting industries.

Mr. Kloppers, the head of the world's biggest mining company who last year championed putting a price on carbon, yesterday reinforced the company's support for action to cut carbon emissions but told The Australian the government's climate change measures should adopt a "sector-specific" or "mosaic" approach.

His objection in this case is not based on any rational principle other than self-preservation in the face of the results of his own advocacy. Essentially he still supports the concept of a costly job destroying new tax as long as BHP Billiton has a wide enough space at the deep end of the public trough.

Companies have a habit of going along with government policies while at the same time seeking special deals within legislation in order to insulate themselves from it. The result is a gravely distorted economy much of which is consumed by the churn of funds out of and back into the same areas, incurring administration costs along the way.

Kloppers is a symbol of this.