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We are now into the really pointy end of the US election period with the polls really tightening and some really desperate politics being played. Where it goes from here is really impossible to know and whatever happens the impact on the world will be very significant. Hang on tight is all I can suggest!
In the UK to count down to Brexit and the
virus are both causing major difficulties and there are some real questions
emerging regarding the competence of the Johnson government. We note that there have been some new restrictions put in place in the last few days.
In Australia we have a disastrously deep
recession and considerable worry about how we can work our way out in anything
other than geological time with the virus being a source of considerable
uncertainty. It will get harder before it gets easier! And now the NSW Government appears to have collapsed!
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Major Issues.
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https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/morrison-sticks-to-new-china-doctrine-20200827-p55pqa
Morrison sticks to new China doctrine
Phillip Coorey Political editor
Aug 31, 2020 – 12.01am
Australia is dealing with China using a doctrine of "strategic patience and consistency" and will never trade away its sovereignty or security in the face of threats to its economy, Prime Minister Scott Morrison says.
Mr Morrison said it was in Beijing's interest to recognise its relationship with Australia was "mutually beneficial'' because the two-way trade between the countries had "been of great benefit to China".
With relations between Beijing and Canberra at a nadir, the Prime Minister suggested it was China which had changed its behaviour in recent years, not Australia.
"If you're asking me what's changed in several years, I would say that our positions haven't changed, and so it is open to analysis then what has,'' he told The Australian Financial Review in an exclusive interview.
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https://www.afr.com/chanticleer/the-29b-credibility-gap-confronting-investors-20200830-p55qoa
The $29b credibility gap confronting investors
For the ASX 200, underlying profit came in 76.5 per cent higher than statutory profit, as companies massaged the message and minimised problems.
Aug 31, 2020 – 12.00am
When is a profit not a profit? When it’s delivered by one of Australia’s biggest companies, it seems.
Analysis by this column of the 172 members of the ASX 200 that reported profits during August has revealed their combined statutory net profits were 76.5 per cent, or $28.6 billion, lower than the underlying profits they also trumpeted.
While underlying figures are used to try to give investors a better picture of the performance of a company, they can also be used to massage the message of companies under financial pressure.
In notable examples from the August reporting season, blue chip companies including Qantas, Boral, Santos and Woodside Petroleum reported statutory losses of well over $1 billion – but also said they were profitable on an underlying basis.
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Investors still in the dark post-earnings season
William McInnes Reporter
Aug 30, 2020 – 3.42pm
Investors have been left in the dark following the August earnings season, with this week's release of the second-quarter GDP figures set to give further insight into just how damaging the COVID-19 pandemic has been on the economy but unlikely to provide much illumination for the path ahead.
ASX futures were down 40 points, or 0.7 per cent, ahead of the market open on Monday, with shareholders largely flying blind for the year ahead, after companies offered only limited earnings guidance and sounded caution on what the end of JobKeeper could mean for balance sheets.
"The outlook is still highly uncertain," Perpetual head of investment strategy Matt Sherwood said.
"We're dealing with uncertain events and there's some sizeable tail risks out there."
Despite the sizeable tail risks in the domestic economy, the Australian dollar shot 1.5 per cent higher to US73.66¢ on Friday, with the US dollar weakening significantly following the Federal Reserve's decision to dump its policy of deploying monetary policy to maintain 2 per cent inflation.
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Australia’s looming default cliff
The key thing now, apart from getting Victoria back on its feet, is to ensure the pandemic doesn’t turn into a financial crisis. This should be consuming every waking moment of the national leadership: it should not only be all-consuming, but bipartisan.
Usually recessions start with a credit squeeze then turn into a decline in activity and employment as businesses respond to higher interest rates and falling demand by cutting production and staffing and, in many cases, by going broke.
This one has worked the other way around: the reduction in demand and production was government-imposed and came first. Loan defaults and bankruptcies were wisely postponed by loan repayment deferrals, income support and temporary suspension of the prohibition on trading while insolvent.
All of those things have an arbitrary end point, starting next month.
As things stand the temporary lifting of the ban on trading while insolvent is due to end on September 27 and loan repayment deferrals were due to end at the same time but have been extended… up to a point.
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How Australia's big bet on China is going wrong
China's trade is managed for geopolitical advantage – and Australia risks becoming a vassal state if it is not careful.
Adrian Blundell-Wignall Columnist
Aug 31, 2020 – 3.01pm
Policy decisions are made with a great deal of uncertainty. A consensus emerges about likely outcomes – let's call them "priors" – and a decision is made. If new facts come to light that contradict our initial expectations, so that the chance of them being realised is reduced, the priors need to be updated. Policy changes are needed as a more informed view emerges.
Sounds sensible enough. But does this describe Western thinking about China?
In the late 1990s, the main prior of global policy makers, economists and businesspeople was that welcoming China into the WTO would bring on prosperity by unleashing a new wave of globalisation; the largest country by population, urbanising and trading with the West. Real wages in cities would rise, imports from the West would accelerate and everyone would gain.
Fast forward to today. China invests and saves 50 per cent of GDP. That requires massive exports to the West at subsidised prices, while imports from countries that China regards as strategic competitors are substituted in favour of those that fit into a global vision with China at the centre. This pattern long pre-dates the 2013 announcement of the Belt and Road Initiative.
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Diplomatic turmoil as China detains Australian TV journalist
Andrew Tillett Political correspondent
Aug 31, 2020 – 10.22pm
Foreign Minister Marise Payne has confirmed an Australian TV journalist has been detained by Chinese authorities, plunging relations between Canberra and Beijing into further turmoil.
Friends of Cheng Lei, an anchor with state-run English language broadcaster CGTN, had become alarmed when she did not respond to messages in recent weeks, the ABC reported.
It is not clear why Ms Cheng was detained. Authorities are allowed to hold people without charge for months without access to lawyers. Ms Cheng’s two children are staying with family in Melbourne.
Minister for Foreign Affairs Marise Payne has confirmed in a statement tonight that the Australian government was told Cheng Lei had first been placed in detention by Chinese authorities on August 14.
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MLC sale marks end of an error as banks exit wealth management
Two decades after the major banks piled into wealth management in an $18bn splurge, the sector has completed one of the great strategic U-turns in local corporate history after NAB’s sale of MLC.
The purchases of Colonial by Commonwealth Bank, BT by Westpac, ING by ANZ and MLC by NAB were united by a common purpose — using the sector’s distribution muscle to cross-sell wealth products and supercharge mandated superannuation flows.
The recent round of shameless exits also have a common purpose: simplicity.
“The sale of MLC will enable NAB to prioritise investment and focus on executing our refreshed strategy of delivering simpler, more streamlined products and processes for our customers and colleagues,” NAB chief executive Ross McEwan said in a statement on Monday.
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https://www.rba.gov.au/media-releases/2020/mr-20-20.html
Statement by Philip Lowe, Governor: Monetary Policy Decision
Number 2020-20
Date 1 September 2020
At its meeting today, the Board decided to maintain the targets for the cash rate and the yield on 3-year Australian Government bonds of 25 basis points. It also decided to increase the size of the Term Funding Facility and make the facility available for longer.
Under the expanded Term Funding Facility, authorised deposit-taking institutions (ADIs) will have access to additional funding, equivalent to 2 per cent of their outstanding credit, at a fixed rate of 25 basis points for three years. ADIs will be able to draw on this extra funding up until the end of June 2021. This extension will ensure that all ADIs continue to have access to the Term Funding Facility after the end of September, when the window for drawings under the initial allowance of 3 per cent of outstanding credit closes. Additional allowances associated with an ADI's growth of business credit will now also be available until the end of June 2021. Further details are provided in the accompanying notice.
To date, ADIs have drawn $52 billion under the Term Funding Facility and further drawings are expected over coming weeks. Today's change brings the total amount available under this facility to around $200 billion. This will help keep interest rates low for borrowers and support the provision of credit by providing ADIs greater confidence about continued access to low-cost funding.
The Term Funding Facility and the other elements of the Bank's mid-March package are helping to support the Australian economy. There is a very high level of liquidity in the Australian financial system and borrowing rates are at historical lows. Government bond markets are functioning normally, alongside a significant increase in issuance. Over the past month, the Bank bought a further $10 billion of Australian Government Securities (AGS) in support of its 3-year yield target of 25 basis points. Since March, the Bank has bought a total of $61 billion of government securities. Further purchases will be undertaken as necessary. The yield target will remain in place until progress is being made towards the goals for full employment and inflation.
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WA to roll out new Aboriginal heritage laws
The McGowan Labor government says it is ready to unveil new Aboriginal heritage laws to replace the “grossly inadequate” legislation that allowed Rio Tinto to push on with the destruction of the Juukan Gorge Rock shelters even after the discovery of artefacts showing Aboriginal people used the caves for 46,000 years.
The West Australian government’s rewrite of the state’s 1972 Aboriginal heritage act gives traditional owners and land users such as miners the same rights of appeal. Penalties of up to $10 million would apply for breaches. From September 21 the public, traditional owners and miners will be asked to comment before a bill is taken to state parliament.
The McGowan government came to power in March 2017 on a promise to align the state’s heritage laws with native title rights and reset the relationship between traditional owners and industry. The draft legislation was almost finished in May when Rio Tinto blasted the Juukan Gorge Rock shelters, drawing worldwide condemnation. The company had obtained permissions to destroy the rock shelters in 2012 and 2013, before the discovery and removal of ancient artefacts including a bone sharpened into a tool and braided hair. The company’s own submission to a parliamentary inquiry into the blasts acknowledges there were other options and it missed opportunities to take them.
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Official figures confirm biggest economic contraction since WWII
Australia’s economy contracted by 7 per cent during the June quarter, confirming the nation’s first recession since the early 1990s as the COVID-19 crisis dealt the country its most severe economic blow since World War II.
Over the year to June the economy shrank by 6.3 per cent, the seasonally adjusted figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics revealed. Real GDP dropped by 0.3 per cent in the March quarter, making it two consecutive quarters of contraction – the technical definition of a recession.
“This is, by a wide margin, the largest fall in quarterly GDP since records began in 1959,” ABS head of national accounts Michael Smedes said
Private demand detracted a massive 7.9 percentage points from GDP, driven by a 12.1 per cent fall in household final consumption expenditure, the ABS said, as social distancing measures restricted peoples’ movements and shuttered many businesses.
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Voluntary assisted dying laws used by 124 Victorians in first year
More than 300 people have applied to end their lives in Victoria since the state’s voluntary assisted dying laws came into effect in June last year, and at least 124 have done so.
The Voluntary Assisted Dying Review Board’s inaugural annual report, tabled in state parliament on Tuesday, shows 124 terminally ill Victorians legally ended their lives between June 19 last year and June 30 this year — swamping Premier Daniel Andrews’s June 2019 estimate of “around a dozen” people using the laws to die in their first year of existence.
Permits to obtain lethal medication were issued to 231 people over the same period.
The numbers have prompted concern from a group of eminent doctors, who say the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted inadequacies in the aged-care system and state Department of Health and Human Services which give little cause for confidence in VAD safeguards administered by DHHS.
The Australian Care Alliance, which opposes VAD, said the report raised “far more questions” than it answered. It said it was unclear how many doctors had participated in the process of sanctioning deaths under the laws, how long deaths took if there were complications in the dying process, how many of those who died were alone, and what proportion of applicants underwent palliative care assessment and treatment prior to opting for VAD.
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Record number of Australian universities crack world's top 200
September 2, 2020 — 9.00pm
A record number of Australian universities have been ranked among the world's top 200, but experts warn their success could be short-lived if they can no longer fund strong research.
Nine of the country's 12 top-ranked universities have improved their position on the annual Times Higher Education rankings, which its chief knowledge officer Phil Baty said demonstrated Australia's "extraordinary success" in attracting international talent.
"But what we can reasonably assume is this is very vulnerable success [because] it is dependent on international students," he said.
The University of Technology Sydney showed the most improvement, bolting 34 places to joint-160th, while Macquarie University nudged into the top 200 for the first time, at joint-195th.
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https://www.afr.com/wealth/personal-finance/how-to-profit-from-global-disruption-20200902-p55rop
How to profit from global disruption
With COVID-19 having supercharged change across all industries, some argue retail investors need to rethink portfolio construction with innovation a core theme.
Tony Featherstone Contributor
Sep 5, 2020 – 12.00am
COVID-19 is disrupting disruption. Megatrends meant to take years are being squeezed into months, creating windfalls for early investors and crushing laggards.
E-commerce (as a proportion of retail sales) could more than double this year in the United States. The previous doubling took seven years. In April, Microsoft said COVID-19 had condensed two years of digital transformation into two months – a trend surely more pronounced now.
This digital tsunami was always coming, but nobody expected a virus to trigger seismic change. Across industries, companies are digitising this year at light speed.
“We are witnessing one of the great industrial revolutions,” says Alex Pollak, chief investment officer of Loftus Peak. “Disruption today is no less profound than the invention of the steam engine or electrification. In 20 years, we will see this period as a defining moment in history.”
The mistake, says Pollak, is believing gains are over. “Trends such as growth in online payments and cloud computing are just starting. Whatever one thinks Amazon.com is worth today, it will be worth a lot more in a decade due to its cloud-computing business (Amazon Web Services). Investors need significant, long-term portfolio exposure to this disruption trend.”
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Improved financial advice finally on the way
John Collett
Personal finance editor
September 1, 2020 — 10.00pm
There have been voluntary codes of practice, revisions of those codes and conflicts-of-interest registers, but every previous attempt to improve the professionalism of financial advice has failed.
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission has even slapped advice firms with enforceable undertakings over years in the hope of effecting cultural change.
However, new standards enshrined in the Corporations Act to improve the level of professionalism among financial advisers may finally do the trick.
Not only do new advisers need to have at least a batchelor's degree to meet the new standards, they must also complete a professional year, within which they must pass a 3½-hour exam before they can become fully fledged advisers.
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The other virus: distrust rides high on the back of COVID-19
By Jewel Topsfield
September 5, 2020 — 12.00am
As someone who has spent decades defending the sex industry, Fiona Patten is no stranger to what she calls the “rough and tumble”. “It’s not like I am a snowflake,” the libertarian and social reformer says.
But Patten, now a Victorian Legislative Council member and leader of the Reason Party, says she has never experienced abuse like this. For days her office has been bombarded with vituperative phone calls, emails and outlandish conspiracy theories.
Patten has been told the coronavirus isn’t real, it’s a World Bank conspiracy, people would have died anyway and there are cures for COVID-19 that are being hidden.
“This fake pandemic was designed to usher in the Evil New World Order and to enslave all people on Earth into a Communist Dictatorship, which also includes very significant and well-planned depopulation by 2025,” someone wrote on her Facebook page.
Last week Patten brokered a compromise deal which gave the Victorian government a six-month extension of its powers to declare the pandemic an ongoing state of emergency.
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Ideological assault on superannuation will leave us worse off
The Coalition’s opportunistic assault on superannuation is nothing short of outrageous. Frankly, it staggers me that anyone would think it’s a good idea to dismantle a system that is the envy of the world. In addition to helping people fund their own retirement, Australia’s $3 trillion superannuation sector provides important stability to our markets as well as valuable funds that get invested in nation-building infrastructure.
Let’s hope the rumblings within the government are nothing more than maverick backbenchers freelancing. The concern, however, is that the assault is much more calculated than that. When asked about plans to junk legislated increases in super contributions, both Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg have implied the upcoming budget may include just such a shift.
The compulsory rate of superannuation contributions is due to lift from 9.5 per cent to 10 per cent from July 1 next year, eventually increasing to 12 per cent in 2025. But the fact businesses are doing it tough right now is being used as a fig leaf to conceal an ideological assault on super. And it is sucking in some financial experts who seemingly don’t realise that eroding super has long been a partisan goal for conservatives. Because Labor introduced compulsory super, Liberal MPs, who seem to have lost their zeal for necessary reforms in other areas, are hellbent on tearing down the system.
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It’s not a normal recession, and stimulus won’t fix it: we need compo
Naturally enough all the headlines after the June quarter national accounts went something like: “Australia now in its first recession in 29 years!”
I was even asked to go on BBC TV that night because they thought it must be really bad news for the world if even the Lucky Country is in recession.
I had to explain that we’re talking about data from two months ago, Australian statisticians being the slowest/most painstaking in the world, so the word “now” may or may not apply, and anyway the idea that Australia has not had a recession since 1991 is just a quirk of definition: the only reason there haven’t been two consecutive quarters of negative real GDP in 29 years is population growth. Per capita recessions … we’ve had a few, but then again, too few to mention apparently.
But there’s a problem with calling it a recession at all.
It’s true that GDP fell for two quarters, but it’s not a recession in any other sense. The government told people to stay home and a large number of businesses were forced to close. Two months later the ABS tells us that demand and output fell, of course. But that’s it: a government-mandated reduction in national output to control a virus.
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Policy goes in the wrong direction at the worst moment
The virus has provided cover for the government to avoid parliamentary scrutiny on aged care, universities, and the environment.
Laura Tingle Columnist
Sep 4, 2020 – 4.13pm
Legislation to wind back government assistance that has kept millions of Australians functioning financially these last six months, and the economy on life support, became law on Wednesday, the same day it was confirmed the economy was in its worst slump in 100 years.
Sure, the legislation extends the JobKeeper wage subsidy and the doubled dole payment JobSeeker for longer than was originally intended. But it is sobering to think what we would have been facing at the end of this month if they had both run out.
Instead, they have been extended, but will be reduced over coming months.
Passing that legislation was probably the most important thing Parliament has done in the fortnight of sittings just finished, the first in two months.
But it was probably also the thing that best symbolised the rest of the sitting: policy heading in the opposite direction at possibly the worst moment.
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End of empire awaits if the West doesn’t wake up
RACHEL SYLVESTER
· The Times
Lenin said “there are decades where nothing happens and there are weeks when decades happen”. If COVID-19 is the great accelerator then perhaps the most significant change it has hastened is the shift in the balance of power between East and West.
In a timely new book, The Wake-Up Call, John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge argue that the virus has exposed serious flaws in Western governments and demonstrated the growing strength and resilience of many eastern states. With high death rates and a looming economic crisis, Britain, the US and the EU have failed the “stress test” of the pandemic. A virus that at the start of this year looked as if it might be “China’s Chernobyl” now appears more like the “West’s Waterloo”.
This is not just about the clash of civilisations between Beijing and Washington. There was a swift and effective response to the pandemic by governments across Asia. Only seven people have died in Taiwan, 27 in Singapore and 35 in Vietnam. London has lost almost 7000 people and New York more than 23,000, but in the South Korean capital Seoul — which is slightly bigger, with similarly busy streets and crowded public transport systems — the death toll is only 23.
While Downing Street wavered, Seoul’s politicians put testing booths on street corners and introduced temperature checks at bus stops. As US doctors were reduced to wearing ski masks and Donald Trump suggested that people could protect themselves by injecting bleach, South Korea ensured that all its hospitals had proper equipment and resolutely stuck to the facts. In April, more people died in London than in the worst four weeks of the Blitz in World War II. By early June, Seoul had ended its lockdown and was going back to work.
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Climate Policy
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No articles this week.
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Coronavirus And Impacts.
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Arguing against lockdowns? This is why you're wrong
Stephen Duckett
Health economist and former health bureaucrat
August 30, 2020 — 11.52pm
As we approach the end of the current lockdown period, the Victorian government is facing a critical choice – keep us at stage four or slacken up a bit. Easing restrictions would give us all a lift, but is not the right call when new cases are still in triple, or even double, digits.
The trends are good, but the government should not succumb to pressure to lift restrictions too soon.
National cabinet has agreed that Australia's goal is zero cases of COVID-19. Lockdowns are currently the only strategy that will get us there.
There are two arguments against lockdowns, both fallacious.
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Pandemic: inconvenience for the privileged, tough luck for the poor
Ross Gittins
Economics Editor
September 2, 2020 — 12.10am
The popular coronavirus refrain that "we're all in this together" is a call for everyone to pull together and be more conscious of the interests of others, not just our own. What it's not is a statement of fact.
Far from it. When you take a closer look, what you see is inequality and injustice – on many dimensions. Some of these have been created by the way our governments have decided who gets help to cope with the pandemic and who doesn't.
But others are the consequence of our politicians going for years pushing problems under the carpet because fixing them would just be too expensive for taxpayers.
You and I have generally been content for these problems to be kept out of our sight. But the virus has drawn these injustices to light. In some cases, the victims have continued to suffer in silence. In others, they've continued going about their business in ways that have undermined our efforts to limit the virus's spread.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/shell-shocked-victorians-count-cost-of-lockdown-20200904-p55sf8
Shell-shocked Victorians count cost of lockdown
Patrick Durkin BOSS Deputy editor
Sep 4, 2020 – 6.16pm
Half of Victoria has been left mentally scarred by the strict lockdown with higher levels of depression and anxiety among the young, exclusive new polling reveals.
Drinking and obesity are up, cancer and health checks are down and the economic cost to jobs and household budgets is forecast to get worse with no clear end in sight to what has effectively been a six-month lockdown of metro Melbourne.
Premier Daniel Andrews, Treasurer Tim Pallas and Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton provide an update on the coronavirus situation in Victoria.
A growing list of heavyweights across business, unions, science, education and health are warning Premier Daniel Andrews has become too fixated on the virus alone and are calling for the strict lockdown to end on September 14 to balance other equally serious risks.
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Royal Commissions And The Like.
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Aged care regulator 'too late to act' in enforcing standards
By Dana McCauley
August 31, 2020 — 10.37pm
Aged care homes will have to employ on-site infection control officers to receive COVID-19 prevention funding as new data reveals the federal regulator did not enforce national infection prevention standards in some homes until tragically late.
A timeline provided to the Senate's COVID-19 committee shows the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission issued 13 Victorian residential facilities with "notices to agree" in the five months to August 4, but 10 already had outbreaks of the disease when the action was taken.
The notice, officially called a Notice of Requirement to Agree to Certain Matters, sets out terms the provider must immediately implement to address compliance failures before its accreditation will be withdrawn.
By the time St Basil's Homes for the Aged in Melbourne's north received a notice on July 21, the centre already had 51 cases of COVID-19 in an outbreak that would kill more than 30.
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https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=1de23f30-f169-4c53-91cf-bfbced0a73e7
Spotlight on an industry aging (dis)gracefully - Rescuing residential aged care
Residential aged care has recently been in the news for all the wrong reasons, with headlines due to the particularly heavy impact of COVID-19 on this sector, the interim findings of the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety and the alarming declaration by Leading Age Services Australia that a pre-COVID-19 accounting review indicating that almost 200 nursing homes housing some 50,000 people were operating at an unacceptably high risk of insolvency – a finding supported by the recently released report by the Aged Care Financing Authority (ACFA) which found “nearly all residential providers consulted said that their financial results had deteriorated in 2019-20”.
Australia’s aged care industry operates within a strict and complex legislative scheme under the Aged Care Act 1997 (Cth). It’s an industry that makes an impact – providing services to over 1.3 million Australians and generating annual revenues totalling over $24.4 billion (about 1% of GDP). The industry is heavily reliant on taxpayer funding, receiving $19.9 billion in Commonwealth funding in 2018-19, an increase of 10% from 2017-18. Almost 66% of total funding ($13.0 billion) was for residential care. A national benchmarking review conducted in March 2020 indicated that 60% of the aged care homes recorded an operating loss with 34% recording an Earnings Before Interest, Tax and Depreciation (EBITDA) loss.
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https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=9c470359-22f3-48f0-8602-dbe612103870
Clinical governance, risk and duty of care for aged care providers in times of COVID-19: a look at CPR
The additional scrutiny on aged care as a result of COVID-19 draws particular attention to issues such as infection control and workforce management. While these domains represent individual components of the Aged Care Quality Standards (ACQS) respectively, organisational governance (as espoused in Standard 8), including clinical governance, is the ‘overarching’ standard that must support all others under the ACQS.
Clinical governance in aged care
Particularly in this pandemic, we suggest clinical governance is key and foundational to other obligations in aged care, including a provider’s duty of care. Also crucial is training to ensure aged care staff are familiar with, and understand, their employer’s policies and procedures - this is essential to their implementation.
As with any situation, effective clinical governance within the unpredictably dynamic environment presented by the COVID-19 pandemic requires aged care providers to consider their individual circumstances and seek contemporaneous clinical input. However, contemporaneous guidance is also relevant and it is important for aged care providers to keep abreast of emerging literature.
In this vein, a recent consensus statement published in the Medical Journal of Australia[1] (consensus statement), addressing the management of cardiac arrest in pre-hospital settings and associated risk to healthcare workers, offers a useful approach to CPR in aged care. However, as with any other guidance, it should not be considered in isolation.
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Aged care deaths 'far worse' than banking royal commission offences
John Kehoe Senior writer
Sep 4, 2020 – 12.00am
Prominent Melbourne businessman and former AFL chairman Mike Fitzpatrick has called for political accountability for the hundreds of COVID-19 deaths in aged care facilities, arguing the failures are "far worse" than financiers who lost their jobs during the banking royal commission.
As Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews prepares to unveil a reopening plan on Sunday, Mr Fitzpatrick said the state might need to stop focusing so much on daily COVID-19 case numbers and learn from international experience to live with the virus in a functioning economy.
"We need to look overseas at what antiviral drugs are working and how people are moving around in a relatively safe way, because we may not get a vaccine for ages," Mr Fitzpatrick said.
"I hope the plan that is coming for Victoria seeks to stimulate the economy, rather than crush it. The more gradual you are, the more you lose."
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National Budget Issues.
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Criticism of unis for catering to China needs to be unpacked
Raymond da Silva Rosa Contributor
Aug 31, 2020 – 12.01am
The proposed foreign relations bill that allows federal termination of agreements struck by state governments, councils and universities that do not meet the national interest is symptomatic of Australia’s political tension with China.
It also lends credence, perhaps inadvertently, to arguments that Australian universities’ substantial traffic with China in research collaboration and welcoming of fee-paying students come at unacceptable price.
Critics claim Australian taxpayers are subsidising research that benefits China and that catering to foreign students has lowered academic standards to the detriment of Australian students.
The claims are true. There is a research subsidy and Australian-led scientific publications involve more researchers from China than any other country. Further, entry standards have been affected to the disadvantage of some local students.
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Students face 20 years of debt under university fee changes, modelling finds
By Fergus Hunter
August 30, 2020 — 11.59pm
Some students will take 20 years to pay off their university debts under the government's overhaul of fees, with the financial burden of humanities and communications degrees to drag on for twice as long as it does under the current system.
The new modelling by the independent Parliamentary Library, commissioned by the Greens, has found that women will feel a disproportionate impact, taking longer to pay off the larger HELP debts than their male counterparts in a range of disciplines.
According to the projections, men who study a degree made up entirely of social science subjects will take 12.3 years to pay off their HELP debt, up from 6.2 years – a 98 per cent increase. Women studying social sciences will take 14.2 years to repay their debt, up from 7.1 years – a 100 per cent increase.
Men who study a communications degree will take 19.7 years to pay off their debts, a 98 per cent increase from the current 9.8. Women who undertake a communications degree will take 16.7 years to pay off the debt, up 100 per cent from the current 8.5.
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Future taxpayers to bear cost of early release scheme: analysis
Ronald Mizen Reporter
Sep 2, 2020 – 12.00am
People dipping into their superannuation will be tens of thousands of dollars worse off in retirement and potentially add billions to the cost of the age pension over coming decades, according to a new analysis.
It comes as former Treasury secretary and author of the landmark Henry Tax Review says the government should not abandon the legislated increase of the superannuation guarantee from 9.5 per cent to 12 per cent.
The analysis of the Morrison government's coronavirus early release scheme conducted by Industry Super Australia will be used to bolster the superannuation sector's argument to continue with the legislated increase.
"The community knows the government’s dealing with a crisis, but it doesn’t make sense to backflip on the promised super increase when you’ve just let people raid their savings," ISA chief executive Bernie Dean said.
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Future Fund expects volatility as returns slip
By Clancy Yeates
September 2, 2020 — 10.10am
The chairman of the $161 billion Future Fund, Peter Costello, says the money manager is preparing for a challenging and volatile environment, after its annual returns slipped to -0.9 per cent last year as a result of the pandemic.
The taxpayer-owned fund on Wednesday reported slightly negative returns for the year to June, due to an extremely volatile period on global sharemarkets in the second half of the financial year.
"The board is focused on positioning for what will be a challenging and volatile environment in the future," said Mr Costello, a former Liberal Treasurer and chairman of this masthead's owner, Nine Entertainment.
"The factors that have fuelled strong performance in the past may not be there any longer. We will need to be ever more strategic in how we pursue long-term returns in the future."
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Coronavirus Australia: Virus induced recession will require our political leaders to lift
Today’s national accounts data confirms what we already unofficially knew: Australia is in recession for the first time since the early 1990s. The longest run of economic growth is over, courtesy of the global pandemic.
What we are yet to find out is just how deep this recession will be. Today’s data is based on the months of April, May and June. It therefore doesn’t even include the impact of the stage four lockdown in Melbourne, crippling the economy of Australia’s second largest city.
A technical recession is when there are two consecutive quarters of economic decline.
Australia is all but certain to be hit by a third when the next round of data is released three months from now. But what about the chances of this recession becoming a depression? The first since the 1930s.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/gdp-falls-7pc-worst-since-world-war-ii-20200901-p55rgz
GDP falls 7pc, worst on record
Matthew Cranston Economics correspondent
Sep 2, 2020 – 11.38am
Australia is officially in recession for the first time in 29 years after posting a 7 per cent fall in June quarter GDP – the biggest since records started in 1959.
Annual growth is now the lowest since World War II as the economy shrank 6.3 per cent in the three months ended June 30 from a revised 1.6 per cent growth rate in the March quarter, the Australian Bureau of Statistics said on Wednesday.
Our record run of 28 consecutive years of economic growth has now officially come to an end.
— Josh Frydenberg, Treasurer
The June quarter contraction follows a 0.3 per cent quarterly fall in January-March, locking in two consecutive quarters of contraction required for a technical recession.
The June quarter hit was worse than market economists' expectations of a 6 per cent fall in the quarter and 5.2 per cent fall annually.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/just-three-countries-fared-better-than-australia-20200902-p55rly
Just three countries fared better than Australia
Matthew Cranston and Tom McIlroy
Sep 2, 2020 – 4.32pm
Only three countries in the world experienced a less severe June quarter economic downturn than Australia's record 7 per cent hit, according to Treasury analysis.
South Korea, Finland and Denmark recorded economic contractions in the June quarter of 3.2 per cent, 4.5 per cent and 6.9 per cent respectively. All three countries imposed strict COVID-19 lockdowns.
But those countries also all recorded bigger hits to their economies in the previous quarter than Australia did. In March, Australia's economy shrank 0.3 per cent while Korea's contracted 1.3 per cent, Finland's 1.9 per cent and Denmark's 2 per cent.
Both Finland and Denmark had higher death rates than Australia's 25.6 deaths per 1 million people.
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Pressure is building for Morrison to do a lot more, not a little less
Jennifer Hewett Columnist
Sep 2, 2020 – 5.43pm
Australians certainly didn’t need official confirmation to know the economy’s recession-free record is well and truly over. The only question was exactly how bad the June quarter figures would be. Answer – very bad.
The stockmarket still continued to shrug off even the record 7 per cent contraction in GDP, dragged down by a collapse in household consumption. That’s not only old news. It reflects the very unequal distribution of benefits and burdens in an economy crawling through the rubble of the COVID-19 era.
The resilience of share prices, profit share and asset values doesn’t mean much to all those people who have lost their jobs or the thousands of small businesses already forced to close or looking at a high risk and heavily indebted future.
But Josh Frydenberg is understandably keen to emphasise the Australian economy is still doing better than almost all other countries and take credit for the government’s “cushioning of the blow” through massive spending.
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Recession we couldn't avoid not as bad as first feared
Yes, the GDP numbers are truly terrible. But Australia has outperformed initial expectations and the rest of the world.
Chris Richardson and Sheraan Underwood
Sep 2, 2020 – 4.23pm
Australia’s economy has just experienced its sharpest ever three-month contraction, driving it to its weakest growth since the end of World War II.
The key damage seen in Wednesday's national accounts is that consumers did not spend. Spending by families is the largest single part of the economy – more than half of it.
But consumers pulled back at record rates, partly because they couldn’t spend (they were locked down, or stores were closed, or what they were after wasn’t on the shelves), and partly because they didn’t want to spend (they were scared to step outside, and uncertain what would happen to their jobs and their savings).
That resulted in some eye-watering cutbacks. Spending at cafes and restaurants dropped by more than a half, and spending on transport services (planes, trains and trucks) dropped by 86 per cent.
That has left behind a trail of broken businesses and lost jobs.
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Australia in recession: Biggest economic contraction since Great Depression, ABS confirms
By Shane Wright
September 2, 2020 — 11.52am
Australia has suffered its deepest economic contraction since the 1930s with new figures showing GDP collapsing by 7 per cent through the June quarter.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics on Wednesday confirmed the nation's first recession since 1990-1991 with the economy shrinking by 6.3 per cent over the past 12 months.
Australia's previous worst quarterly result was 2 per cent in June 1974 during the first global oil shock.
Australia's worst annual result occurred in 1930, during the depths of the Great Depression, when the economy shrank by an estimated 10 per cent. The economy is estimated to have contracted by 5 per cent in the wake of World War II as military production ended.
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Seven reasons not to freak out now we're in a recession
Jessica Irvine
Economics writer
September 2, 2020 — 3.18pm
Folks, these are scary times. So I give you the following seven reasons why you do not need to add to your list of worries the fact that Australia has just clocked up its sharpest decline in economic output on record.
1. It’s old news. The national accounts figures released on Wednesday refer to the value of goods and services produced in the months of April, May and June this year, when severe coronavirus restrictions were in place across the nation. It is entirely predictable those restrictions would mean that Australians were able to produce and sell a lot fewer goods and services during that period.
2. The figures are much better than originally feared. Until quite recently, both Treasury and the Reserve Bank had been anticipating a fall in gross domestic product (GDP) in the June quarter of about 10 per cent. It didn’t happen. It was only 7 per cent. That’s good news.
3. We have done much better than other countries. Britain saw its economic output shrink by more than 20 per cent. The European nations contracted, on average, by about 12 per cent and the United States by close to 10 per cent.
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Tax cuts and more: Economists warn tax alone won't save country
By Shane Wright
September 4, 2020 — 12.00am
Some of the nation's top economists say tax cuts for middle- and high-income earners should be brought forward to support the economy, but warn the Morrison government would have to go much further to get Australia out of its deepest recession since the 1930s.
As evidence grows of the hit to the economy caused by Victoria's lockdown, experts said Treasurer Josh Frydenberg should introduce his own version of a voucher scheme to boost the tourism sector or replicate Britain's "eat out to help out" program.
The government is considering bringing forward $158 billion worth of personal tax cuts in a bid to help Australia get out of recession.
But any measures will deliver a huge blow to the budget, with early tax cuts estimated to punch a $30 billion-a-year hole in the nation's finances.
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Living dead: The post-pandemic world will be full of zombies
Stephen Bartholomeusz
Senior business columnist
September 3, 2020 — 3.04pm
The post-pandemic world appears likely to be littered with zombie companies, zombie markets and zombie economies, underwritten and kept on life support by the unprecedented responses of central banks and governments to COVID-19.
What are the longer-term consequences of that "zombification" and a response to the pandemic by the central banks and governments that is far larger than the actions they took in relation to the global financial crisis?
Some insights into that future can be gleaned from the latest in a series of analyses of zombie companies by the Bank for International Settlements.
While the research paper the BIS released this week is based on somewhat dated data, it provides a more granular insight – including some surprising findings - into the anatomies of zombie companies and their impact on the wider economy.
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How to move out of recession? The tough decisions are ahead
By Shane Wright
September 4, 2020 — 4.26pm
The Melbourne Cricket Ground is the home of the AFL grand final.
The premiership deciding game of the AFL and VFL has been played 123 times of which 114 occasions have occurred on the MCG's hallowed turf.
This year it will be played at the Gabba in Queensland. The last time an AFL grand final was not played at the MCG was in 1991 - the same year Australia was last in recession.
The Age's chief AFL writer, Jake Niall outlines the reasons Queensland were the awarded the AFL grand final for 2020.
In a terrible year for so many people, the data this week confirming Australia's first recession in 29 years - and its deepest since 1931 - highlighted how this year is one unlike any other.
The figures were stunningly bad.
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Health Issues.
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Thousands drop private health insurance after questioning its value
By Nina Hendy
September 1, 2020 — 10.00pm
It's crunch time in many households, with money tighter than ever as the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic hits family budgets hard.
Increasing financial pressures have forced many private health insurance customers to revisit their cover and weigh up if it is still affordable.
Private Healthcare Australia, the industry body for health funds, says private health funds put their scheduled April 1 premium increases on hold for at least six months, in order assist consumers during the COVID-19 crisis. Some have since further extended the planned hikes into next year.
However, many of their customers have already decided to leave and thousands have ditched their monthly private health premiums to take their chances with the public health system.
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International Issues.
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No need for buyer's remorse: realism key to Australia's engagement with China
Australia, unlike the US, never expected China to become like us. That's why the relationship continues to be an outstanding investment in our prosperity and security, writes Geoff Raby.
Geoff Raby Columnist
Updated Aug 30, 2020 – 4.19pm, first published at 2.15pm
Among the many things China is accused of today is that it did not live up to its side of an implicit bargain with the West to become a liberal democracy and a fully paid up member of the US-led international order in return for the West’s welcoming China into the international system after decades of isolation, obscurity and stagnation.
This is the prevailing view in Washington these days on both sides of the aisle, among Republicans and Democrats alike. Perhaps more disingenuously and opportunistically, this view holds sway these days in Canberra as well.
US politicians unreservedly embrace the notion of US exceptionalism and accordingly a belief that the US has a moral duty to make and remake the world in its own image. No doubt, confidence in that has been shaken in some quarters as the US increasingly adopts many of the advanced characteristics of a failed state.
A revisionist history now argues that the past 40 years of engagement with China was a failure. China has developed economically beyond anyone’s expectations when Deng Xiaoping’s reforms began in 1979, although in per capita terms it is still a relatively poor country. Rather than converging towards the norms of political and social organisation prevalent in the West, China has remained an authoritarian state that stands far apart from Western norms. Moreover, its growing wealth, military and technological might have made it a threat to the international order.
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China think tanks sever academic ties as hostilities rise
Michael Smith China correspondent
Sep 1, 2020 – 12.01am
Academics working for Chinese government think tanks and top universities say they are cutting off communications with their Australian counterparts and cancelling plans to travel to the country because they fear they will be accused of being Communist Party infiltrators.
Five prominent academics in China specialising in foreign relations and Australian studies told The Australian Financial Review it was becoming almost impossible to collaborate with Australian universities because of the rise in anti-China rhetoric.
"Now, any bilateral communication is regarded as an infiltration. China investment is regarded as dangerous and harmful. What can we do?
"If we [academics] go to Australia people think we are infiltrating. They think there is some other ill purpose," Liu Qing, director of the Department of Asia-Pacific Studies with the China Institute of International Studies, said. The institute is a think tank under China's foreign ministry.
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https://www.afr.com/world/asia/shinzo-abe-and-his-struggle-with-xi-jinping-20200901-p55r7b
Shinzo Abe and his struggle with Xi Jinping
Gideon Rachman Columnist
Updated Sep 1, 2020 – 10.13am, first published at 10.11am
The Shinzo Abe era has also been the Xi Jinping era. The current leaders of Japan and China took power within weeks of each other.
Mr Abe was elected as prime minister of Japan in December 2012 at the age of 58. Just a month earlier, Mr Xi had been appointed as general secretary of the Chinese Communist party, at age 59.
This was more than a coincidence of timing. Mr Abe’s central task — as described by his closest advisers — was to strengthen Japan to cope with an increasingly powerful and authoritarian China.
The Japanese prime minister is now stepping down due to ill health, with his task incomplete. He has played a difficult hand with some skill and determination. But the uncomfortable truth is that Japan’s strategic dilemma cannot be resolved by Tokyo alone. In the end, the country’s fate may depend on political developments that are beyond its control — in the US and in Mr Xi’s China.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/america-s-coming-double-dip-20200831-p55r20
America's coming double dip
Economic demand in the US is too weak and spooked by the virus for a self-sustaining rebound to take place.
Stephen Roach
Aug 31, 2020 – 6.17pm
The double dip is not a dance. It is the time-honoured tendency of the US economy to relapse into recession after a temporary recovery. Over the years, it has happened far more often than not. Notwithstanding frothy financial markets, which currently are discounting the nirvana of an uninterrupted V-shaped recovery, there is a compelling case for another double dip in the aftermath of America’s devastating COVID-19 shock.
The daunting history of the US business cycle warns against complacency. Double dips – defined simply as a decline in quarterly real GDP following a temporary rebound – have occurred in eight of the 11 recessions since the end of World War II. The only exceptions were the recessions of 1953-54, the brief contraction of 1980, and the mild downturn of 1990-91. All the others contained double dips, and two featured triple dips – two false starts followed by relapses.
The double-dip does not, of course, come out of thin air. It reflects the combination of lingering vulnerability in the underlying economy and aftershocks from the initial recessionary blow.
As a general rule, the more severe the downturn, the greater the damage, the longer the healing, and the higher the likelihood of a double dip. That was the case in the sharp recessions of 1957-58, 1973-75, and 1981-82, as well as in the major contraction that accompanied the 2008-09 global financial crisis.
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Australia at risk of losing subtlety in dealing with China
Prime Minister Scott Morrison's tough realism on China has sent strong signals to Beijing about where Australia stands. But the danger now is one of being locked into an entrenched position.
James Curran Contributor
Sep 1, 2020 – 12.01am
China’s deputy ambassador to Australia, Wang Xining, last week suggested there were "no historical irritants" in Australia’s relationship with China.
Given the deep freeze of recent times and the aggressive tone of some of his colleagues in other Chinese embassies, these comments, to the National Press Club in Canberra, might easily be dismissed as diplomatic flummery.
But this is not the first time that formulation has been used. In the late-1970s Australia’s ambassador to China, Garry Woodard, was told by a Chinese official that there were "no problems left over from history" to bedevil the relationship.
Coming in the shadow of the Vietnam War, the demonising of China that had taken place throughout the Cold War, and the legacy of White Australia, it was a remarkable statement. It affirmed that in China's eyes, Australia carried none of the baggage associated with the historical memories or big power dynamics that typified Beijing’s relations with Japan and the United States.
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Why markets barely blinked at Fed's new direction
Stephen Bartholomeusz
Senior business columnist
August 31, 2020 — 11.44am
Late last week the US Federal Reserve Board unveiled its new monetary policy framework, turning its back on nearly 40 years of prioritising a low inflation rate. The financial markets’ reaction was instructive, with the announcement barely causing a ripple.
That may be because the change the Fed chairman, Jerome Powell, announced at the annual Jackson Hole conference was so widely foreshadowed. It might also be because no one believes it is going to actually change much in the foreseeable future.
Since Paul Volker raised the Federal Funds rate (the US equivalent of our cash rate) in 1981 to 20 per cent and killed off what had been rampant inflation in the 1970s, the Fed – and most other major central banks – has prioritised keeping a lid on inflation. That was formalised in 2012 when the Fed adopted a two per cent target/ceiling for the US inflation rate.
In what Powell described as a "subtle" shift in policy, the Fed now says that after periods when the inflation rate has been running persistently below two per cent, it will aim to achieve a rate "moderately" above two per cent for "some time."
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September 1, 2020 / 9:17 PM / Updated 6 hours ago
Special Report: Pentagon's latest salvo against China's growing might - Cold War bombers
HONG KONG (Reuters) - On July 21, two U.S Air Force B-1B bombers took off from Guam and headed west over the Pacific Ocean to the hotly contested South China Sea. The sleek jets made a low-level pass over the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan and its escorting fleet, which was exercising nearby in the Philippines Sea, according to images released by the U.S. military.
The operation was part of the Trump administration’s intensifying challenge to China’s ruling Communist Party and its sweeping territorial claims over one of the world’s most important strategic waterways. While senior Trump officials launch diplomatic and rhetorical broadsides at Beijing, the U.S. Defense Department is turning to the firepower of its heavily armed, long-range bombers as it seeks to counter Beijing’s bid to control the seas off the Chinese coast.
Since late January, American B-1B and B-52 bombers, usually operating in pairs, have flown about 20 missions over key waterways, including the South China Sea, the East China Sea and the Sea of Japan, according to accounts of these flights from U.S. Air Force statements and official social media posts. These missions, military analysts say, are designed to send a crystal-clear signal: The United States can threaten China’s fleet and Chinese land targets at any time, from distant bases, without having to move America’s aircraft carriers and other expensive surface warships within range of Beijing’s massive arsenal of missiles.
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Pentagon warns of South China Sea military build-up
Andrew Tillett Political correspondent
Sep 2, 2020 – 3.49pm
China is backing up maritime and territorial claims in the South China Sea by concentrating in the region its most potent strike weapons, including long-range fighters and bombers, nuclear-armed submarines and its first homegrown aircraft carrier.
According to the Pentagon's latest assessment of Beijing's defence capability, China's navy is the biggest in the world and has an edge over the US, with more ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles capable of flying further.
Heightened tensions between the two superpowers come as Australia, too, steps up its calls against Chinese expansionism in the region.
Australia has resolved to speak up more on maritime disputes in a show of moral support for south-east Asian nations, amid fears within the Morrison government that they might buckle to Chinese pressure and do deals that cede territory or rights.
The Australian government last month filed a note verbale – a formal diplomatic note – with the United Nations rejecting the nine-dash line China relies on to lay claim to much of the South China Sea. Canberra maintained there was no legal basis for China to draw straight "baselines" between features to create internal waterways, and insisted there was no legal basis to China's artificial island-building program to create exclusive economic zones or territorial seas.
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China pushing to double nuclear warhead arsenal, says Pentagon
China will double its atomic warhead stockpile to more than 400 in the next decade and is plotting overseas bases in a dozen countries to support potential “offensive operations against the United States”, the Pentagon warns.
The rapid build-up of nuclear forces and the ambition to forge a network of logistics centres and bases around the world are highlighted in the Pentagon’s annual report to Congress on China’s military modernisation program.
The countries on China’s wish list of bases, according to the Pentagon, are Burma, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, the UAE, Kenya, Seychelles, Tanzania, Angola and Tajikistan.
China has only one overseas base, in Djibouti in the Horn of Africa.
The aim is to allow the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to “project and sustain military power at greater distances”.
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Donald Trump has dragged Joe Biden on to his own turf
What should trouble Biden is not the recent narrowing of his poll lead over President Donald Trump. Some tightening is natural as the election nears. Far more ominous is the change in the subject of national discourse.
Janan Ganesh Contributor
Sep 3, 2020 – 9.30am
During a verbose half-century in public life, Joe Biden has never made such a succinct case for his election.
“Ask yourself,” he said in Pennsylvania on Monday, “Do I look like a radical socialist with a soft spot for rioters? Really?” In 16 words — the last one delivered with a thespian frown — the US Democratic presidential hopeful alluded to a long career of moderation.
The Republican friends. The orthodox foreign policy. The prison-building crime bill. There is no less plausible Jacobin in the party.
Everything about the line was perfect, in fact, except its necessity. Two months away from an election, a candidate should not have to distance himself from political violence. As deftly as he did it, one of Washington’s old saws — “If you’re explaining, you’re losing” — feels dangerously apt.
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https://www.afr.com/world/asia/china-is-decoupling-the-global-train-20200904-p55sf2
China is decoupling the global train
China is undermining globalisation with policies to take control of supply chains so that others can be locked out of them.
John Lee Contributor
Sep 4, 2020 – 1.57pm
What are we to make of the growing global conversation about decoupling and economic distancing from China?
Sure, there have long been complaints about the hazards of dealing with China: its intellectual property theft and the massive subsidies it gives to its state-owned enterprises and national champions.
But isn't "decoupling" a recent Trumpian thing, a vainglorious attempt to maintain American economic primacy while trashing the globalisation consensus. Or just a flailing superpower responding to a fast-rising challenger?
Not exactly. China had implemented a decoupling approach to the US long before Donald Trump assumed power, even if Beijing has never used that word to describe what it is trying to do.
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US unemployment rate drops more than expected to 8.4pc
Reade Pickert
Sep 5, 2020 – 5.58am
Washington | The US labour market rebound extended for a fourth month in August, offering hope that the economy can continue to recover despite a persistent pandemic and Washington's standoff over further government aid to jobless Americans and small businesses.
Nonfarm payrolls increased by 1.37 million, including the hiring of 238,000 temporary Census workers, according to a Labor Department report on Friday (Saturday AEST). The unemployment rate fell by more than expected, by almost 2 percentage points, to 8.4 per cent.
The median estimates in a Bloomberg survey of economists called for a 1.35 million gain in nonfarm payrolls and an unemployment rate of 9.8 per cent. It was 3.5 per cent in February, matching a half-century low.
The data signal progress in the labour market is continuing though at a more moderate pace since the initial bounce-back in hiring, with payrolls remaining about 11.5 million below the pre-pandemic level.
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I look forward to comments on all this!
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David.
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