September 6, 2018 Edition.
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Trump would appear to have wandered off the reservation with plans for huge tariffs on China which will not be good for anyone while being progressively being pinned down by legal woes. His disapproval levels have reached 60% with the same being a good deal higher. Hard to know where all this will go from here I believe.
The late news is a senior staffer saying in an op-ed in the NYT that many in the Trump admin are working to stop him doing bad / stupid things. The hunt for the anon. writer is on, to say the least. Staggering stuff!
The late news is a senior staffer saying in an op-ed in the NYT that many in the Trump admin are working to stop him doing bad / stupid things. The hunt for the anon. writer is on, to say the least. Staggering stuff!
In OZ Labor is the Government in waiting as Big Mal nicks off the New York to rest in luxury.
Parliament and the Royal Commission are back soon so that will cause more distress to say the least….
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Here are a few other things I have noticed.
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Major Issues.
- Updated Aug 26 2018 at 6:39 PM
Scott Morrison's new cabinet: It's all about the base
Scott Morrison has tried to keep everyone happy. He has reached out to the party's base by splitting the energy and environment portfolios, which effectively junks the National Energy Guarantee and banishes once more any consideration of emissions reduction under energy policy. Price and reliability are the only priorities. This pretty much ends Australia trying to reach its Paris climate change commitments too, unless it does so passively.
Signalling his priorities, the words "Industrial Relations" return to cabinet, there is a new Population Minister, and Small Business also returns to Cabinet. Given last week's decision to fast track the company tax cuts that have already been legislated for small and medium businesses, and which Labor opposes, that confirms one key battleground come election time.
To help appease the cabinet plotters, Peter Dutton keeps his Home Affairs job, albeit with duties slightly diluted, Mathias Cormann stays in Finance, Greg Hunt stays in Health and Steve Ciobo clings on. He loses Trade but picks up another job.
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- Updated Aug 26 2018 at 11:00 PM
Five things ScoMo should do with his prime ministership
I've been privileged to know and work with many political leaders in Australia and overseas. Now we have a new national leader, we all wonder how he'll shape up.
Scott Morrison does have experience. He knows the Liberal Party – its moods, its character and its peccadillos – and he knows it well. That's a huge advantage. He's also been a minister in portfolios that have given him a broad overview of the work of government. Coming into office having thought about and dealt with everything from Indigenous affairs and health to tax policy and global security can be daunting; ScoMo's had experience in all those areas especially during his period as Treasurer.
All that is a good start.
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Rudd savages Abbott and Murdoch for wrecking Australian democracy
By Nick O'Malley
27 August 2018 — 12:01am
Former prime minister Kevin Rudd has launched an incendiary attack on Tony Abbott and News Corp executive chairman Rupert Murdoch, who he claims have undermined Australian democracy and contributed to the "orgy of political violence" that led to Malcolm Turnbull's ousting.
In an opinion piece written for Fairfax Media on Monday, Mr Rudd writes that Australian politics has become toxic and unstable due to an obsession with opinion polls and the juvenile culture of a "Young-Labor/Young-Liberal generation of child politicians".
But Mr Rudd, who was prime minister from December 2007 to June 2010 and again from June to September 2013, argues that the most destructive forces upon politics have been the "unique negativity, toxicity and hatred" of Tony Abbott as well as Mr Murdoch, who he describes as the "greatest cancer on the Australian democracy".
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Cancer eating the heart of Australian democracy
By Kevin Rudd
27 August 2018 — 12:15am
Beneath the sound and light show that passed for Australian politics last week, there is a much deeper question of what underlying forces have been at work that have brought us this low. The uncomfortable truth is since the coup of June 2010, Australian politics has become vicious, toxic and unstable. The core question is why?
There have been many factors at work. First, the histrionic politics of climate change dividing the nation for more than decade - we have lacked the national political maturity to just get on with it, despite Australia being the driest continent on Earth.
Second, the cult of opinion polls, leaving the political class in permanent fear of losing their jobs if they actually acted on long-term policy.
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Watch as the wheels fall off this government
- August 27, 2018
Today’s Newspoll is interesting in more ways than one. For a start the question who is best to lead the Liberal Party saw Peter Dutton secure the support of … wait for it … six per cent of Australians. Apparently “the base” wanted him, according to those spruiking Dutton last week, but when those who were polled is isolated to Liberal voters only, his support drops to five per cent.
So the government appears to have dodged a bullet with the result of the leadership ballot last Friday, thanks to the incompetence of the Dutton forces being unable to successfully manage the coup. Small mercies.
Then we have the two party result in the wake of the week that was: down to 44 per cent for the government. Keep in mind under Malcolm Turnbull’s leadership there had been four consecutive polls showing the Coalition trailing by just 49-51 per cent.
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It’s no wonder Australians are so annoyed
By Amanda Vanstone
26 August 2018 — 11:26pm
The events last week in Canberra exhibit the most disgraceful conduct I have seen in more than 40 years. It’s no wonder Australians are so annoyed. I’ve been out of Parliament for 11 years and people were stopping me in the street to say how angry they are.
Some very foolish people thought that with the economy going well and people therefore finding jobs, with more money in education and health, with big infrastructure in the pipeline, perhaps it would be better if they were at the helm.
Never mind that their party was at the point in the polls from which no government has lost. Some very jealous people saw the PM about to achieve what other governments haven’t for the last decade or more: a national energy policy. Desperate to deprive him of that achievement they set about to whittle away at it and him.
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At last, maybe a real choice on climate change
- August 27, 2018
It’s a good thing the National Energy Guarantee wouldn’t do much and doesn’t really matter, because it’s unlikely to be a big priority of the Morrison government.
The new energy minister, Angus Taylor, is a prominent anti-renewables campaigner and climate change sceptic. Appointing him, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said he would be “the minister for getting prices down”.
So there seems little chance that anyone will be bothered doing the hard work needed to get the NEG across the line. In fact it would be surprising if the NEG wasn’t entirely ditched as policy pretty speedily, along with any kind of climate change policy at all.
Bring it on, I say. Then we might finally get a clear choice at the next election: action on climate change versus no action.
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Scrap compulsory super, liberate Australians’ wages
- 12:00AM August 28, 2018
If the Morrison government hopes to distinguish itself, it will need a policy that deals with the fundamental gripes of our time — stagnant wages and housing affordability — in an immediate, tangible way.
No more promises of tiny tax cuts in seven or eight years, after who knows how many others have taken a turn in the Lodge. No more creating new “ministers for cities” to ease congestion using non-existent constitutional powers over roads and zoning, or talk of giving obscure regulators “greater powers” they’ll never use.
The government needs a policy that reflects liberal values and makes a political ally of the royal commission into financial services rather than the chief manufacturer of ammunition for the Labor Party.
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Trade war could trigger global recession, warns KPMG
- August 28, 2018
The trade war between the United States and China will bring losses to the Australian economy and possibly a global recession if it continues to intensify, analysis by accounting firm KPMG shows.
With the US about to raise the value of Chinese goods on which punitive tariffs are imposed from $US50bn to $US200bn, KPMG says Australia’s economy stands to lose $36bn over the next decade, even if there is no further escalation.
KPMG chief economist Brendan Rynne says Australia has very little direct stake in the trade conflict, with the United States unlikely to take trade actions that targeted here, because it already runs a large bilateral trade surplus.
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- Updated Aug 28 2018 at 7:08 PM
Wealth, income inequality rise in Australia, but policy softens blow – PC
by Ben Potter
Inequality has increased, whether measured by incomes or wealth, but Australia's tax and transfer system eliminate much of this, a report from the Productivity Commission says.
It finds that young people's incomes have grown especially slowly since the mining boom ended, and sons' positions on the income scale are heavily determined by their fathers' positions.
But the report, Rising inequality: A stocktake of the evidence, also finds that inequality in Australia is either in the middle of the pack of rich countries or below average, the tax and transfer system and public services such as health and education eliminate much inequality at the point of final consumption, and most increases are not that recent.
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- Updated Aug 28 2018 at 6:52 PM
Scott Morrison pushes united front as cracks widen
Attempts by Scott Morrison to unite his party are being hampered by ongoing internal recriminations and a growing push by Labor to exploit the government's woes and force an early election.
Former foreign minister and deputy leader Julie Bishop added another twist to last week's bungled leadership coup by leaving open the possibility of staying in Parliament and vying for the leadership should the Coalition lose the next election.
Sources said it was unlikely Ms Bishop would stay on in opposition. While she will not make a rushed decision, her comments were aimed more at settling down Western Australia's business community and Liberal Party, which is in meltdown over the events of last week, raising the spectre of a fundraising crisis.
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'A truth which must not be spoken': what's really happening to prices
By Ross Gittins
28 August 2018 — 12:09pm
I’ve heard of the gap between perception and reality, but this is ridiculous. According to the experts, increased competition among supermarkets, department stores and other retailers is holding down prices in a way we’ve rarely seen before.
This fits with the consumer price index, which showed prices rising by just 2.1 per cent over the year to June. Over the past three years, the annual increase has averaged even less: 1.8 per cent.
What it doesn’t fit with are the complaints we keep hearing about the high cost of living. I read it’s got so bad parents are raiding their kids’ piggy banks to help make ends meet.
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- Aug 29 2018 at 10:00 AM
Future Fund delivers 9.3pc annual return
The Future Fund has increased its exposure to risk assets as it tries to balance the rosy short term outlook with its longer term concerns about the global economy and asset prices.
The sovereign wealth fund reported an annual return for the 2018 financial year of 9.3 per cent, lifting its assets to to $146 billion.
The gains, which tracked ahead of its 6.1 per cent annual return target. The fund has now returned 8.7 per cent per annum over 10 years, above the 6.6 per cent.
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One policy behind fall of a run of Australian leaders
By John Hewson
29 August 2018 — 11:49am
Climate policy has now proved a defining element in the demise of a run of Australian political leaders, from John Howard through to Malcolm Turnbull.
Each of the fallen increasingly played short-term, opportunistic politics, mostly for personal political advantage, on an issue upon which most Australians agree - the need to address climate change. How can it be that voters don’t get heard by our politicians, who claim to listen to and be in touch with their constituencies?
While in all this, we have come close to putting a price on carbon, and developing a deliverable transition pathway, we are really no closer today than we were a decade ago – indeed, in many respects we are further away. As leaders fail and fall - Howard, Brendan Nelson, Tony Abbott, Julia Gillard, Kevin Rudd and Turnbull - we have squandered a host of growth opportunities, investment, and jobs.
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The bombshell decision Canberra wanted to bury
By Peter Hartcher
28 August 2018 — 12:10am
It would have been the biggest news in Australia in any other week of the year. But with the prime ministership in crisis, there was scant media interest in the email that was issued without fanfare at 8.51am last Thursday, the last full day in the life of the Turnbull government.
The subject line was deliberately unexciting – "Morrison - Fifield - Joint Release - 5G security". The announcement from the then treasurer, Scott Morrison, and Communications Minister Mitch Fifield, was a minor masterpiece in obfuscation.
The 1000-word statement did not mention China, or the Chinese telecommunications equipment giants Huawei or ZTE. Nor did it plainly state the bombshell decision that they are to be banned from building Australia's new telecommunications network.
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The Secret State: How you are kept in the dark
By Farrah Tomazin & Tammy Mills
29 August 2018
Somewhere in Melbourne, there’s a public hospital where the risk of something going wrong is much greater than in another hospital across town.
But you’re not allowed to know which hospital it is – because this type of data is hidden from patients and doctors.
A few kilometres away, buried in the files of the state Education Department, an explosive police report exists with allegations of a sex “grooming” ring linked to a suburban school.
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- Updated Aug 29 2018 at 11:00 PM
Productivity Commission squashes Labor's inequality myths
by The AFR View
Is inequality on the rise in Australia? This abstract issue, taught in many universities as an article of faith, has become the political truncheon with which Bill Shorten and militant Australian Council for Trade Union's secretary Sally McManus have whacked the Coalition. Inequality is out of control, the fair go is being undermined and the egalitarian way of life is under threat by low taxes, big business, a paucity of unions and conservative governments.
It's useful that amid this nonsense the Productivity Commission quite literally, has taken stock in a report called Rising Inequality: a stocktake of the evidence. The commission's overall verdict is that "over nearly three decades, inequality has risen slightly in Australia". That's it. For the vast majority of Australians the last 30 years has been good news. That's because 27 years of uninterrupted economic growth has lifted incomes of all Australians. It is a record that sits in stark contrast with the United States from where Labor seems to have imported much of its rhetoric.
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Inequality: Nothing to see here is not the true picture
By Ross Gittins
1 September 2018 — 12:05am
This week the Productivity Commission issued a “stocktake of the evidence” on inequality in Australia. Its findings will surprise you. But it wasn’t as even-handed as it should have been.
Its report forcefully dispels the myths of the Left – that inequality is great and rapidly worsening – but is much more sotto voce in telling the Right there’s still a problem and that the reason it’s not as bad as some think is that governments have taken corrective actions the Right usually disapproves of.
This has allowed the conservative commentators of the national press to greet the report with great glee. One in the eye for their ideological opponents. Inequality? Nothing to see here.
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Five fresh facts you might not know about inequality
By Andrew Leigh
1 September 2018 — 12:10am
Superyachts are getting longer. Recently, we learned that one of Australia's richest men has progressed from a 21-metre-long sports cruiser to a 27-metre flybridge cruiser. His latest is a 73-metre Hasna superyacht, worth $75 million. But it's not the biggest privately-owned yacht in Australia. Another rich-lister owns a 74-metre Italian-made yacht.
In the world of luxury boats, one expert observes that "the client who 15 years ago would have been satisfied with a 40-metre yacht, which would then have been one of the largest yachts in the bay, is now surrounded by dozens of yachts of 60 to 70 metres, and this plants the seed that he really ought to upgrade. The world's largest yachts now include multiple swimming pools, submersibles, jet skis, concert halls and dance floors. Running costs alone can be millions of dollars per year. Yet as investment banker Mark Carnegie notes, no matter how large megaboats get, "someone's always got a bigger one".
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'I am not sceptical about climate science': Energy Minister Angus Taylor hits back in new price pledge
By David Crowe
29 August 2018 — 11:45pm
The Morrison government will outline a new “price-busting” pledge to drive down the cost of power, keeping a focus on coal and gas and taking a tougher approach towards renewable energy subsidies.
Energy Minister Angus Taylor will outline the new position on Thursday, along with a strident defence against accusations he is a “climate sceptic” who opposes wind farms and other renewables.
“I am not sceptical about climate science,” Mr Taylor declares in a draft of his first speech as minister.
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Did The Lancet study show all drinking is unsafe? Not quite
By Aaron E. Carroll
30 August 2018 — 10:03am
Last week a paper was published in The Lancet that claimed to be the definitive study on the benefits and dangers of drinking. The news was apparently not good for those who enjoy alcoholic beverages. It was covered in the news media with headlines like "There's No Safe Amount of Alcohol."
The truth is much less newsy and much more measured.
Limitations of study design
It's important to note that this study, like most major studies of alcohol, wasn't a new trial. It was a meta-analysis, or a merging of data, from many observational studies. It was probably the largest meta-analysis ever done to estimate the risks from drinking for 23 different alcohol-related health problems.
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Westpac signals the end of ultra-cheap homeloans
By Stephen Bartholomeusz
30 August 2018 — 10:56am
Westpac may have been the first mover, but it is inevitable that the other major banks will follow its lead and raise their mortgage rates. Indeed, it’s been inevitable for the past six months.
Some of the smaller banks had already lifted their rates. But the majors held off as long as they could - and long after they would have moved historically - for the obvious reason: the violently anti-big-bank environment generated by the unpalatable revelations before the royal commission.
It was inevitable because funding costs, locally and globally, had risen quite sharply earlier in the year.
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Senate president pushes for reform like House of Lords
- August 30, 2018
Senate president Scott Ryan has proposed two major reforms in a bid to overcome the volatility in the chamber, suggesting all parties could agree not to block policy that is part of a government’s election manifesto.
The senior Victorian Liberal also used the 49th Alfred Deakin Lecture at the University of Melbourne last night to canvas the application of sunset clauses on contentious legislation “to ensure an electoral and democratic assessment of policy at a future date”.
“The Senate has partially evolved from a place of process seeking to negotiate the passage of legislation, to the Senate as a stage for expressing alternative views, and even occasionally seeking attention,” Senator Ryan said.
“From being primarily a house of review, to one that can often be a forum for entrenched positions, or explicit unrelated trade-offs, this is more familiar to the operation of the United States Senate, where consent for legislation is generated through concessions on unrelated policy objectives of individual senators or small parties or groups of senators.”
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https://www.afr.com/news/keystone-coup-could-leave-tony-abbott-the-last-man-standing-20180829-h14o7d
- Updated Aug 30 2018 at 11:00 PM
Keystone coup could leave Tony Abbott the last man standing
Had it not been for last week's Keystone coup, Julie Bishop would have spent last night in Michael Sukkar's Melbourne electorate of Deakin, as the star attraction for a gala dinner fundraiser.
Given Sukkar joined last week's failed push to install Peter Dutton, which cost him and Bishop their jobs, Bishop was at home in Perth instead. She was looking forward to a long lunch on Friday with girlfriends with whom she has not caught up for aeons. New deputy leader Josh Frydenberg stepped in for the fundraiser.
Malcolm Turnbull should have been flying to Jakarta on Thursday with Steve Ciobo to sign the free trade deal with Indonesia that Ciobo, as trade minister, oversaw.
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Was it bullying or just politics as usual?
By David Crowe
30 August 2018 — 11:01pm
Sometimes a dark stare in a Parliament House corridor is all that is needed for a politician to know exactly where she stands with a powerbroker who can decide her fate.
Sometimes a faction leader can utter the most menacing threat in the softest voice. There is no need to slam a door to send a message that those who control the numbers in the local branch will be told how to use them, tossing an MP aside and installing a replacement who knows how to behave.
All it takes is a quiet word over the phone from the one with the numbers to the one without them. Something like: “This is very damaging for you.”
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- Updated Aug 31 2018 at 11:00 PM
Minority government one more challenge for shaky Morrison government
by Andrew Clark
A recent earthquake on the Indonesian island of Lombok was marked by terrible after-shocks. Australian politics is now undergoing its own version of the Lombok after-shocks.
The political earthquake was the August 24 Liberal party room ouster of prime minister Malcolm Turnbull. After-shocks in coming weeks will range from a boil-over in former Liberal prime minister Tony Abbott's seat of Warringah to a hotly contested byelection in Turnbull's old seat of Wentworth, tensions over the Liberal party's treatment of women and deep divisions over energy policy and climate change.
For a Coalition that has temporarily lost its one-seat majority in Parliament after Turnbull's departure from Wentworth, the after-shocks could test its hold on power, suggesting parallels with the dragged-out political crisis that hit Australia in 1941 in the dark days of World War II.
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- Updated Aug 31 2018 at 4:05 PM
Liberal leadership spill: The idea of compromise has not just been lost but made vile
by Laura Tingle
The notion that recent extraordinary events in federal politics were driven by policy differences, rather than just pure spite and collective madness, seems to have pretty comprehensively bitten the dust in the past week of post-coup bewilderment.
But that is not a good reason to forget that, in the midst of the chaos, there was one particular dynamic at work, concerning the future of the national energy guarantee, that we need to think about a lot more, if politics is ever going to make sense at some time in the future.
Remember that on Tuesday, August 14, Malcolm Turnbull and Josh Frydenberg got overwhelming support in the Coalition party room for their proposed national energy guarantee?
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The texts, threats and lies that will haunt the Morrison government
Some moments during the Liberal Party leadership crisis were so brutal they are burnt into the memories of MPs, and make a mockery of claims the Morrison government can unite in time for the election.
By David Crowe
31 August 2018
The shock at the top of the Australian government is almost physical when Liberals recount the trauma of their leadership spill, a moment in political history when a frenzied campaign split their party and toppled Malcolm Turnbull.
A new Prime Minister now claims his team will “go forward together” after the bitter and bruising week, but Scott Morrison now leads a party that is riven by conflicts over what just happened. Every development is a matter of dispute. Few can agree on how their party gave in to what Turnbull called a “form of madness” – a phrase that will stick.
The shock could be heard in the Liberal party room in the moment when Turnbull lost the vote on Friday, August 24, to declare his position vacant.
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Dutton backers won’t stop at toppling Turnbull
- 12:00AM September 1, 2018
By the time of the 2013 federal election, the then Labor government had descended into such internal bitterness and backstabbing that it deserved to lose, irrespective of how worthy its political opponents were of high office.
As it turned out, the Coalition has proved itself unworthy for much the same reasons. An unpopular prime minister, Tony Abbott, was ousted less than two years into the job, while the transaction costs of such skulduggery were overlooked.
Less than three years later, Abbott’s reactionary mates botched a coup to remove their internal enemy, Malcolm Turnbull, delivering a compromise prime minister in the shape of Scott Morrison.
Compromised ministers now adorn the ranks of cabinet and the outer ministry. How anyone could believe any longer a single word Health Minister Greg Hunt utters in combating Labor attacks is beyond me. Put to one side his policy gymnastics in e-health and so on. Hunt stood up in parliament and expressed confidence in his prime minister immediately after voting to oust him, and immediately before doing so again. And he was scheming with Peter Dutton to run on a ticket as his deputy.
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Labor's ATO plan a watershed moment
By Adele Ferguson
31 August 2018 — 4:04pm
It was a watershed moment for small business when the shadow treasurer Chris Bowen promised a massive overhaul of the Australian Taxation Office if Labor wins government.
The decision to create a separate and dedicated appeals group led by a new, second ATO commissioner not only takes some of the sting out of the ATO’s extraordinary powers but brings it into line with comparable international tax collection agencies such as its United States counterpart.
The move to reform the ATO could be seen as a slap in the face to the tax commissioner Chris Jordan, who has long argued that it is fine just the way it is.
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Labor’s high-risk tax revolution: it could lose the unlosable election
- 12:00AM September 1, 2018
If the Labor Party wins the next election — which it definitely would if it wasn’t for the contents of this column, which make a Labor victory less certain — Bill Shorten and Chris Bowen will bring about one of the biggest tax reforms this country has even seen, possibly the biggest.
They will do five things (and counting, maybe more by the time we get there) roughly all at once:
● Restrict negative gearing to new dwellings;
● Halve the capital gains tax discount from 50 per cent to 25 per cent;
● Remove dividend franking cash refunds;
● Tax all discretionary trust distributions at 30 per cent; and
● Repeal the company tax cut for businesses with revenue of up to $50 million.
Each of these things has been announced and is well known, and each is defensible in the context of chronic deficits and big calls on the budget for health, welfare and infrastructure, but taken together they would be little short of a revolution, matched only by the Coalition’s Fightback! plan in 1993, which never happened, because it lost the unlosable election. (Bill Shorten take note.)
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