This blog is totally independent, unpaid and has only three major objectives.
The first is to inform readers of news and happenings in the e-Health domain, both here in Australia and world-wide.
The second is to provide commentary on e-Health in Australia and to foster improvement where I can.
The third is to encourage discussion of the matters raised in the blog so hopefully readers can get a balanced view of what is really happening and what successes are being achieved.
Quote Of The Year
Timeless Quotes - Sadly The Late Paul Shetler - "Its not Your Health Record it's a Government Record Of Your Health Information"
or
H. L. Mencken - "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."
Thursday, November 07, 2019
The Macro View – Health, Economics, and Politics and the Big Picture. What I Am Watching Here And Abroad.
November 7, 2019 Edition.
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What can one say about the US. Sadly nothing good as Trump is getting more out of control by the week. It is hard to see where this all ends, but the public hearings on planned impeachment will be must watch TV when they occur.Next week I hear
We now have an election on December 12 and the carry on between then and now I am sure we will be fascinating…
ScoMo is totally off on a frolic trying to supress the public concern regarding climate change by banning protest and boycotts. How il-liberal can you be for a so called Liberal Government who has all its advisors telling it how dangerous climate change actually is! The drought is unrelated I am sure - but it is costing a lot to try and help...
Even worse for ScoMo is the damning interim report on Aged Care which demands expensive and prompt action and a disastrous and expensive drought. Oh and Private Health Insurance is unravelling as we watch while poor mental health is costing $180bn a year - yikes!
He has more than enough on his plate while we have Minsters going around annoying the Chinese. Good he at least had a good meeting at the East Asia Summit with the Chinese Premier!
First-home buyers wanting to tap into the federal government's new deposit scheme will be limited to properties sold for less than $700,000 in Sydney and $600,000 in Melbourne, under new draft rules released on Sunday.
The scheme allows low- and middle-income earners to buy property with a deposit of as little as 5 per cent. It comes as first-home buyers stretched themselves to the limit financially to remain competitive in the busiest week for auctions since December 2018.
Surging markets in Sydney and Melbourne dipped slightly but remained strong over the weekend, with a preliminary auction clearance rate of 75 per cent. This was despite a 33.5 per cent week-on-week increase in the volume of properties – a total of 2610 homes – going under the hammer in Australia's capital cities. Clearance rates hit 33 per cent in Brisbane, 74 per cent in Adelaide and 47 per cent in Canberra, according to Domain.
Apparently, if you think Scott Morrison's refusal to use the budget to boost the economy is motivated by an obsession with showing up Labor by delivering a huge budget surplus, you’re quite wrong.
No, he’s sticking to the highest principles of macro-economic management (which principles Reserve Bank governor Dr Philip Lowe doesn’t seem to understand).
We now know this thanks to the first speech of the new secretary to the Treasury, Dr Steven Kennedy, made last week. He explained to Senate Estimates the long-established orthodoxy among macro-economists in the advanced economies that "short-term economic weakness or unsustainably strong growth is best responded to by monetary policy" (interest rates) not fiscal policy (government spending and taxation).
Vital water infrastructure has been delayed for years across a swathe of the state's central west due to bureaucratic bungling and personal grievances, worsening the impact of the drought, according to the findings of a damning investigation handed to the Berejiklian government.
New bores and dam upgrades were left unfinished because of personal grievances and "an inability to make necessary decisions", the Office of Local Government concluded.
The revelation is the most recent in a string of problems that has left parts of the state ill-prepared for one of the most severe droughts on record.
The investigation, conducted by the Office of Local Government's deputy secretary Tim Hurst, found there had been "a serious failure" over water security issues at the Warrumbungle Shire Council, which includes the town of Coonabarabran, including a failure to adopt a drought-management strategy.
Columnist and former adviser to Labor prime ministers Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard.
October 28, 2019 — 12.14am
Five days before the 1974 election, Patrick White, recently awarded our country’s first Nobel Prize for literature, spoke at a rally at the Sydney Opera House. Gough Whitlam and Jorn Utzon, that building’s architect, he said, were both “men of vision who build for the future while not losing sight of the everyday details”.
We are less likely these days to pay as much attention as we should to artists. That is a great pity, because to my mind the most incisive analysis of the last election was offered by our only other literary Nobel laureate, J.M. Coetzee. In a long piece in The New York Review of Books, focused on sharp criticism of the major parties’ refugee policies, Coetzee noted that the contest was “won and lost on arcane issues in the tax code”.
The Labor Party is currently engaged in a debate about what went wrong in that campaign. Everybody in the party has their opinions, and in two weeks we’ll get the official version, when Anthony Albanese responds to the party’s election review. So far, we’ve had some potshots, some shadowboxing around individual legacies, but the only interesting feature is how limp the debate has been. It seems at times as though MPs are arguing only because they know they should.
'It is all part of the same disease': media and other key institutions under threat
By Nick O'Malley
October 28, 2019 — 5.40pm
The prosecution of journalists, cuts to the ABC budget and the appointment of “dud” politically connected officials to roles in key agencies present an unprecedented threat to democracy in Australia.
“Media provides crucial accountability and transparency functions,” said a report by the Centre for Public Integrity, due to be released this week. “Investigative journalists often unearth wrongdoing long before any public integrity agencies investigate, for example the recent Crown Casino investigation by Nick McKenzie at The Age [and The Sydney Morning Herald], and the Four Corners investigation of police corruption in Queensland that triggered the Fitzgerald Inquiry.
"Media outlets have faced attacks in the form of centralisation of private ownership, funding cuts to public broadcasters, and potential prosecution of journalists, including News Corp journalist Annika Smethurst.”
An explosion in class action claims funded by overseas litigation backers is threatening investment and jobs in Australia, with more than $10bn in claims lodged against businesses in the last financial year.
Ai Group chief executive Innes Willox has warned that the surge in litigation presented a “clear and present danger” to the nation’s “fragile economy” amid record insurance premium increases and limited regulation to minimise class action exposure.
Business, legal and insurance figures have called on the Morrison government to urgently address the spike in class action claims in the past two years.
The Ai Group, representing the interests of more than 60,000 businesses, will release a seven-point plan on Wednesday aimed at reining in class action claims before they damage the economy.
Commonwealth Bank economist Gareth Aird believes that the September quarter CPI reading, due on Wednesday, won't be any different from the last 15 quarters of below-target core inflation outcomes.
Economists have forecast a quarter-on-quarter result of 0.5 per cent, down from 0.6 per cent in the June quarter. The year-on-year pace of inflation is expected to lift to 1.7 per cent from 1.6 per cent, according to Bloomberg estimates.
Meanwhile, the US Federal Reserve is preparing to lower the Fed funds rate once again early on Thursday (AEDT). US inflation, at 1.7 per cent, also remains stubbornly below the Fed's 2 per cent target.
Updated Oct 29, 2019 — 4.37pm, first published at 4.18pm
Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe would be the first to admit that the direct efficacy of monetary policy to stimulate growth and spending is reduced.
For example, rather than inspiring shoppers, surveys suggest the June and July rate cuts actually hurt consumer confidence as Australians worried what it implied about the state of the economy.
The Labor leader is now selling some of the same aspirational messages that Scott Morrison has just won the election with.
Oct 30, 2019 — 12.00am
Labor leader Anthony Albanese is out talking about a competitive and integrated world economy, disruption and opportunity, and about creating wealth as well as distributing it.
There was even a reference in his speech in Perth on Tuesday to Australia's deadly enemy of complacency. There was nothing at all about the plutocrats at the “the big end of town” or their “unfairness”.
This is different language from Labor, recognising that wealth in wages, taxes, and profit has to be earned first with investment and productivity. “Economic success is not inevitable,” Mr Albanese says.
His predecessor Bill Shorten thought that it was, to the extent that he made the May election into a “referendum on wages” so that people could vote themselves higher wages through new mandatory wage floors and industry pattern bargaining.
The former treasurers both suggested earlier this month that monetary policy was not useful any more after three 0.25 percentage point interest rate cuts had left the official cash rate at 0.75 per cent.
There are concerns that interest rate cuts and tax cuts have not adequately lifted consumer spending and that people were using their cheaper interest rates to pay down their mortgage.
"It's not surprising when interest rates come down people try and pay off their debt," Dr Lowe said in a question and answer session at Australian National University. "In the end though, I don't think that effects the effectiveness of monetary policy. It may mean it's just a bit delayed."
Anthony Albanese will use his first major speech as Labor leader to call on his wounded party to be "first and foremost" in "the business of creating wealth" and start talking about job opportunities in renewable industries.
In a further attempt to divorce the federal opposition from five years of attacks on business and "the top end of town", Mr Albanese will throw his support behind the mining industry in an address in Perth on Tuesday afternoon, saying Australia can cash in on Queensland's coal exports to help provide the steel to build the world's wind turbines.
While Anthony Albanese awaits the outcome of the official review into Labor's failed election campaign, he's giving a series of speeches, starting with jobs and the future of work.
Fear of missing out or FOMO has been explained as one of the primary drivers of the explosive price growth in the housing market until 2017. Can the same phenomenon be applied to investors clamouring to get into Australian growth shares?
As history shows falling interest rates enabled those infected with the FOMO virus to run the property market into bubble territory two years ago from which it then suffered a 15 per cent correction.
At its peak Australia housing was among the most expensive in the world.
Two years ago, I first wrote of my desire to become a home owner.
“Here it is, an embarrassing confession from a long-time advocate of renting: I want to own a home."
Having relished the freedom and flexibility of renting, I’d entered a stage of life where I was ready to put down roots, stop bankrolling the profits of 3M hooks and graduate to banging nails into my own walls.
I’d also finally cottoned on that our entire tax system is rigged in favour of home ownership – our most sacred tax shelter of all.
As it turned out, my FOMO-crescendo (that's my Fear Of Missing Out, in case you didn't know) coincided precisely with the peak of the most recent property price boom.
Central bankers, government treasurers and economists around the globe are puzzled by the dearth of business occurring in an ultra-low interest rate environment. Stock exchanges are concerned about the shrinking pools of listed companies. Are low rates a solution to low growth or do they help cause it?
That question has become more pertinent since central banks, including the Reserve Bank, embarked on another round of rate-cutting.
Despite the monetary stimulus, business investment globally has been weak, although mining investment and, more recently, a wave of infrastructure investment have helped sustain activity here.
Following meetings over the past week with the chief executives of the big four banks, Mr Frydenberg said that although small businesses were exempt from responsible lending standards, many had been inadvertently caught in the tightening of those standards in the wake of the Hayne Royal Commission.
That was because a lot of small business operators used the family home as security.
"We can't have small business loans caught up in responsible lending obligations,'' Mr Frydenberg told The Australian Financial Review.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has flagged new federal anti-protest laws that target environmental activists and "anarchists" who campaign against businesses, particularly those supporting the mining industry.
In a speech to be given to the Queensland Resources Council, Mr Morrison will warn that such protest activity is bad for jobs and investment.
Previewing his speech, Mr Morrison told Melbourne radio station 3AW while he respected the right to protest, some activists had gone too far.
"I really think they are starting to push the envelope where there are reports of people being spat at just because they are wearing a business shirt on their way to work," Mr Morrison said, referring to violent protests outside a mining conference in Melbourne this week.
However, he acknowledged he could not stop protests that brought cities to a standstill, such as protesters blocking intersections or gluing themselves to roads, saying they were a state law enforcement matter.
Immigration – a long-running point of domestic controversy with profound consequences for foreign policy – is a compelling Australian analogue to the issue that divided Britain.
There are strong parallels between Australian politics and the chaos witnessed in recent years in Europe and the United Kingdom.
My contention is that in Australia, immigration – a long-running point of domestic controversy with profound consequences for foreign policy – is a compelling analogue to the issue that divided Britain in 2016.
Just as Britain’s party political elite were aligned on the need for the UK to gradually develop closer relations with the European Union, immigration policy is a point of elite consensus in Australia. The major parties basically agree, with minor points of difference, that the current high rate of immigration is beneficial.
Sydney and Melbourne house prices surged through October with prices in some parts of the country now growing at their fastest rate in a decade.
CoreLogic's closely watched home value index showed house prices in Sydney jumped by 1.8 per cent last month while in Melbourne they bounced by 2.4 per cent.
National dwelling values have increased 1.2 per cent in October, the fourth consecutive month of growth since bottoming out in June.
Melbourne's house values have increased by 5.7 per cent over the past 3 months or by almost 23 per cent at an annualised rate.
After three years of inertia, a new intellectual paradigm has emerged from within the Reserve Bank of Australia. It has gradually taken form in speech after speech from the governor, Phil Lowe, and his acolytes. And its increasingly lucid logic rubbishes the concerns of critics worried about the consequences of extremely low rates, and our forecast for a sharp rise in national house prices, which is playing out right now.
Understanding this new operating model is essential for all investors and has crucial consequences for portfolio construction.
The first insight is that the need for low rates is not a temporary phenomenon, but rather a powerful long-term dynamic driven by a fundamental excess of savings over the desire to invest in productive assets.
It’s almost six months since the federal Coalition, much to its own surprise, was returned to office after winning one more seat than it did in the 2016 election. Yes, time flies when you are having fun.
Though just how much fun the government is having is a moot point. It’s all going pretty well at one level, particularly since Labor is still licking its wounds. But there are problems within the Nationals, and between the Nationals and the Liberals. And, well, not everybody has a lot to do.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has sparked a furore over free speech by vowing to draft new laws to ban protesters from boycotting companies, prompting claims his "feverish" talk would curb the rights of all Australians.
NSW Council for Civil Liberties president Nicholas Cowdery said Mr Morrison's plan was "totally contrary" to the right to freedom of expression and that existing laws could deal with unruly conduct or assault.
"Large issues such as climate change and protection of the environment encourage strong responses by citizens whose broader rights are affected," Mr Cowdery said. "Protest action may well increase if effective measures are not taken by commercial interests to address those issues. Citizens should not be criminalised for taking such action.
Condemning a protest is easy. Passing a new law to limit free speech is another matter altogether.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison is being transparently political in targeting climate groups like Extinction Rebellion in the hope he can tap into a resentment against activists who disrupt everyday life.
But he is yet to prove he can act on his tough talk when his own side of politics is supposed to stand for individual liberty. Would his own party room approve a law that forbids someone organising a boycott?
Isn't it free speech to urge your fellow citizens to ban a product or boycott a store or transfer their savings to a bank that will not lend to a controversial coal mine?
The Morrison government's promised $1080 low and middle income tax boost to 4.5 million Australian taxpayers which would lift the economy has turned into a $420 bump barely noticed by the nation's shopkeepers.
Australian Tax Office figures show the average tax refund received by those who rushed to get the tax offset announced in this year's budget have received far less than expected.
In the April budget, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg unveiled a doubling of the low and middle income tax offset which he said would deliver up to $1080 to single earners and up to $2160 for dual wage families.
He said 10 million taxpayers would get some of the offset with 4.5 million getting the full amount, which the Treasurer predicted would flow quickly into the economy.
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