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In the US there seems to be a lot happening with passage of a huge stimulus package and broadening activity on the diplomatic front to improve engagement in the world. At home there is the start of work for a huge infrastructure package which Trump was never able to do.
In the UK the safety of women has become a major topic as vaccination races ahead.
With Parliament on this week what happens is totally unpredictable what will happen in Australia with all sorts of controversy swirling around!
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Major Issues.
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https://www.afr.com/business-summit/is-cheap-money-too-much-for-markets-20210304-p577nk
Is cheap money too much for markets?
Unless central banks back off the monetary policy throttle and hand off stimulus to fiscal policy, the rising risk of inflation and financial instability could threaten the real economy.
Mohamed El-Erian Contributor
Mar 7, 2021 – 1.50pm
For many years, the operational simplicity of positioning investment portfolios has contrasted sharply with the complexity of national and global economic outlooks.
By getting the central bank policy call right and simply overweighting index products, investors profited substantially from both stock and bond investments. Meanwhile, economists struggled to predict even basic economic variables such as growth and inflation.
This configuration may well be changing, and not because the massive liquidity injected by the US Federal Reserve is likely to stop any time soon. It won’t.
Rather, more fiscal policy is now set to add to the Fed’s flooding of the system with liquidity. This raises interesting questions as to whether the beneficial result for markets will compound or, instead, involve volatile contradictions requiring careful active management.
Powered by ample and predictable liquidity injection, investors set aside many traditional economic and political influences as the Fed vacuumed up securities at non-commercial prices. The indirect effect has proved as consequential, conditioning investors to buy every market dip, whatever the cause, and allocate more capital to ever riskier investments.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/why-the-rba-plans-to-keep-rates-low-for-years-20210306-p578e8
Why the RBA plans to keep rates low for years
The RBA has realised the unemployment rate has to fall much further to generate wages and inflation pressure.
John Kehoe Senior writer
Mar 7, 2021 – 2.05pm
To understand if the official overnight interest rate will remain near zero until 2024 as the Reserve Bank of Australia suggests, RBA watchers need understand the bank’s thinking on the economic concept known as NAIRU.
The bond markets (and admittedly myself) have been a bit sceptical that the RBA can anchor rates so low, for so long.
Nevertheless, the RBA’s evolved thinking on the non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment (NAIRU), must be considered by those circumspect about the bank’s ultra-easy monetary policy.
Economic history suggests that wages growth is the most likely source of future inflation, barring a supply shock such as an oil price spike (less likely in the US shale oil era) or a big jump in consumer price expectations.
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‘Very concerning’: Indian students abandon Australian universities
By Lisa Visentin
March 8, 2021 — 5.00am
The number of new Indian students choosing to study at Australian universities collapsed by more than 80 per cent in the second half of 2020, in a further blow to the country’s more than $30 billion international education system.
The Indian student market was worth $6.6 billion to the Australian economy in the 2019-20 financial year, second only to China as the top source country of foreign students studying in Australia.
But the impact of ongoing border closures has proved devastating for universities’ recruitment efforts. Around 2500 Indian students began studying at Australian universities between July and November last year — a decline of 83 per cent compared with the same period in 2019, data from the Department of Education shows.
In contrast, new commencements from Chinese university students declined by just over 8 per cent to around 8600 students over the same period. It is unclear how many international students elected to defer their universities studies in 2020 as the data has not been made public.
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The gloom after no boom: La Trobe University suffers heaviest hit
By Adam Carey
March 7, 2021 — 7.19pm
As La Trobe University staff logged back on last month after an uneasy summer break, they were greeted by an update from vice-chancellor John Dewar warning them that as tough as 2020 had been, this year was going to be even harder.
“Last year was tough for all of us,” Dewar wrote. Valued colleagues had been lost, salaries had been shrunk, courses had been discontinued or pared back.
The university, with its main campus in suburban Bundoora, went $9.5 million into deficit last year Dewar told them, amid a $90 million downturn in expected revenue. Its forecast for 2021 is worse: a $170 million hit to revenue compared with pre-COVID forecasts and no end to the downturn expected in 2022.
The sustained closure of Australia’s borders had led La Trobe to give up on the return of full fee-paying international students in 2021.
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Greensill implosion exposes risks of shadow banking
Revolutions in finance have a nasty way of ending badly, especially when they happen at breakneck speed. The capacity of shadow banking to spring more dangerous systemic shocks should not be underestimated.
John Plender
Mar 8, 2021 – 12.07pm
Relief tempered by residual nervousness will be the likely reaction of central bankers and financial regulators to the sudden implosion of Greensill Capital, a sizeable shadow bank.
The plight of this global player in supply chain finance appears to pose no systemic threat or need for a central bank bailout. Yet its rapid passage from hubris to nemesis raises disquieting questions about the evolution of the global financial system and the ability of the regulatory authorities to keep abreast.
Greensill bore many of the classic signs of a financial accident waiting to happen, starting with a flamboyant founding entrepreneur, Lex Greensill. The company’s website trumpets his trajectory “from humble beginnings to revolutionary thinking”, explaining that he saw the devastating impact that inefficient financial supply chains can have on a business as he grew up on his parents’ sugar cane and melon farm in Australia.
Revolutions in finance have a nasty way of ending badly, especially when they happen at breakneck speed. Greensill Capital went from nothing in 2011, when Lex Greensill abandoned a big-bank career, doing global supply chain financing at Morgan Stanley and Citibank, to go it alone.
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Greensill Capital in severe financial stress, enters administration in UK and Australia
The Australian arm of controversial supply chain financier Greensill Capital has been placed into administration after it warned overnight it was in “severe financial distress” and unable to repay a $140m loan to Credit Suisse.
Grant Thornton was appointed as the administrator of Greensill’s Australian operations on Tuesday morning. This follows Grant Thornton being appointed to the head company in the London overnight.
Chris Laverty, Trevor O’Sullivan and Will Stagg of Grant Thornton have been appointed as joint administrators of Greensill’s UK operations (GCUK). Meanwhile Matt Byrnes, Phil Campbell-Wilson, and Michael McCann, also of Grant Thornton, have been appointed the voluntary administrators in Australia.
It comes after Greensill was hit by “defaults” from its key customer Sanjeev Gupta’s GFG Alliance.
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https://www.afr.com/companies/financial-services/financial-castles-built-on-sand-20210308-p578pi
Financial castles built on sand
Investors have long used the US 10-year bond yield as the benchmark for pricing all financial assets, including shares and property. But what happens when they suspect it’s a ‘fake’ rate?
Karen Maley Columnist
Mar 8, 2021 – 5.52pm
What will happen to financial markets if investors start to lose confidence in the foundation stone that underpins the whole financial system: the US 10-year bond rate?
Investors have become increasingly alarmed the yield on benchmark US 10-year bonds has risen to 1.6 per cent, up from 0.92 per cent at the end of last year.
That means that bond yields are now back to levels in early 2020, before the pandemic struck.
It’s hardly surprising that the 10-year US bond yield has moved sharply higher.
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https://www.afr.com/business-summit/morrison-plans-recovery-phase-migration-critical-20210308-p578nf
Morrison plans recovery phase, migration critical
Phillip Coorey Political editor
Mar 8, 2021 – 10.30pm
Scott Morrison will tip another $1.2 billion into wage subsidies for apprentices and flag migration changes to fill areas of workforce shortage, in a speech focusing on growing the economy as it emerges from the recession.
This week he will also unveil targeted supports for the international tourism, travel and aviation sectors, which will be left behind when the supports are withdrawn at the end of March.
In his keynote address to open Tuesday’s The Australian Financial Review Business Summit, the Prime Minister will say the economy is now entering “the post-emergency phase” and must be weaned off costly supports like JobKeeper.
“We can now switch over to medium- and longer-term economic policy settings that support private sector, business-led growth in our economy,” he will say.
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Wages growth too slow for rates to rise: RBA
Jonathan Shapiro Senior reporter
Mar 10, 2021 – 9.00am
Reserve Bank governor Phil Lowe says wage growth needed to be “materially” higher before the central bank would contemplate stepping back from its ultra loose monetary policy settings.
The comments made at The Australian Financial Review Business Summit are at odds with the bond market, which is testing the central bank’s commitment to holding the cash rate at its 0.1 per cent setting for the next three years.
The bond market, Dr Lowe, noted is pricing in a possible increase in the cash rate as early as late next year and then again in 2023, but he said this is not “an expectation that we share.”
For the bond market pricing to be right, he said, it would require inflation to be sustainably above the 2 to 3 per cent range and for wages growth would need to be sustainably above 3 per cent.
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Blame austerity, not the RBA for post-GFC slow growth
Ross Garnaut is wrong to fault the Reserve Bank for not cutting rates during the ‘Dog Days’ of 2013-2019. The real culprit was elsewhere.
Stephen Grenville Contributor
Mar 9, 2021 – 2.43pm
Ross Garnaut’s “Reset” provides another valuable contribution to the debate on Australia’s post-COVID-19 future. But in reviewing the past, he mis-assesses macro-policy in explaining what he calls the “Dog Days” of 2013-2019. It was fiscal austerity, not monetary policy, that restrained growth in this period.
Garnaut says monetary policy was too tight, missing the opportunity to get unemployment down to match the US.
“Other central banks adjusted more swiftly to the new lower cost of capital by lowering the interest rates that they control more than the Reserve Bank of Australia lowered Australian policy rates. This caused the foreign exchange value of the Australian dollar to be higher than it otherwise would have been.”
In the four years following the 2008 global financial crisis, Australian interest rates were clearly higher than those in the US, because the country had come through the GFC well, with no financial stability issues. GDP continued to grow at a reasonable pace, and inflation was at the high end of the 2-3 per cent range.
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We don’t turn enough research into money spinners: Universities head
Julie Hare Education editor
Mar 10, 2021 – 12.01am
A slimmed-down list of national research priorities that are backed by clear incentives and policies that encourage business to be less risk averse would help turn university-generated ideas and discoveries into money spinners.
Australia’s reputation as a global heavyweight in the production of high-quality research was diminished by long-term under-performance “at the back-end of innovation”, Professor Deborah Terry, chair of Universities Australia, will tell the National Press Club on Wednesday.
“Not enough of our research is being translated to drive social and economic benefits for the nation. Not enough of our inventions are being commercialised in a way that creates new industries and jobs in Australia,” she will say.
Professor Terry will point to the federal government’s Modern Manufacturing Strategy that has just six clearly defined priorities. Instead, the research sector was pulled between numerous competing priorities which failed to either fully prioritise or capitalise on the nation’s $12 billion annual spend.
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https://www.afr.com/chanticleer/nicholas-moore-s-sanguine-inflation-message-20210309-p5797a
Nicholas Moore’s sanguine inflation message
There are two good reasons why Nicholas Moore believes inflation may be some way off.
Mar 9, 2021 – 6.43pm
Former Macquarie Group chief executive Nicholas Moore has always had a great knack of providing long-term context that helps to explain the latest gyrations in financial markets.
And so it was on Tuesday at The Australian Financial Review Business Summit when Chanticleer asked how he was seeing the recent ructions in debt and equity markets.
Moore explained that he joined the workforce at a time of double-digit interest rates and rampant inflation – and then spent the rest of his working life watching rates head south.
But while economic theory suggests the big increase we’ve seen in the supply of money in the last 12 months should lead to an increase in inflation, Moore is cautious for two reasons.
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International student numbers plunge as Universities Australia defends lobbying efforts
By Lisa Visentin
March 10, 2021 — 5.00am
The pipeline of new overseas students plunged by more than 60 per cent in the second half of 2020, as the peak body for Australian universities defended its failed efforts to convince the Morrison government of the need for an urgent plan to bring back international students.
Universities Australia, which represents the country’s 39 universities, estimates at least 17,300 jobs were shed from Australian campuses in 2020, with the loss of international student fee revenue the major cause of budget pressures.
Border closures and travel restrictions saw the numbers of new overseas students commencing their studies at Australian universities plunge by 62 per cent to around 15,400 students in the second half of 2020 compared with the same period in 2019, according to the latest data from the Department of Education.
The effectiveness of Universities Australia’s advocacy is now under scrutiny, with findings of an external review of its role and functions expected to be handed to the lobby’s board in coming weeks.
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Interest rates will stay low until wages grow, says RBA governor
By Shane Wright
March 10, 2021 — 9.03am
Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe has smacked down growing market expectations of an increase in official interest rates, saying the bank is unlikely to lift them until at least 2024 on the back of much stronger wages growth and low unemployment.
Speaking in Sydney to the Australian Financial Review’s business summit, the governor made clear that despite the economy doing much better than expected out of the pandemic recession, there was still a long way to go before the bank would consider a rate rise.
The bank cut official rates to a record low of 0.1 per cent last year. It is also engaged in a $200 billion quantitative easing program, buying federal and state government debt with the aim of keeping yields on these bonds at record lows.
But growing global inflation expectations, plus signs the Australian economy is growing quicker than expected, has prompted market speculation the RBA may lift rates next year or early 2023.
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Peter Costello warns ultra-low rates risk creating the next financial crisis
By Clancy Yeates
March 9, 2021 — 12.25pm
Future Fund chairman Peter Costello has warned ultra-low interest rates risk creating the next financial crisis if central banks keep borrowing costs at record lows for longer than necessary.
Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe has said he expects to keep the cash rate at just 0.1 per cent until 2024, but Mr Costello on Tuesday said he hoped this would not be the case, because it would represent ongoing economic weakness.
Mr Costello, who is the chairman of this masthead’s owner, Nine Entertainment, said the key issue facing central banks and governments was how to remove extreme forms of stimulus that were put in place to shield the economy during an emergency.
Mohamed El-Erian, Peter Costello, Andrew Liveris at the Business Summit on the risks of low rates, inflation, asset bubbles and the Greensill collapse.
Failure to develop an “exit strategy” would sow the seeds of the next financial crisis, the former treasurer warned.
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Vanguard hatches bold plan to crash the super party
By Charlotte Grieve
March 9, 2021 — 11.00pm
A new superannuation product by US-based investment giant Vanguard that could shake the $3 trillion industry on its foundations is inching closer to launch.
Structured much like an industry super fund, the $US6.7 trillion ($8.68 trillion) fund manager aims to have its highly disruptive product in the market by the end of the year. However, industry sources say it could be sooner.
Like industry super funds, Vanguard likes to refer to itself as a non-profit. It is owned by its clients and emerged from Pennsylvania in 1975 out of a determination to maximise value for them – not shareholders – by providing cheap access to stocks. It is a specialist provider of low-cost investment products, such as hugely popular Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs).
The company has operated here since 1996 and is now the largest provider of passively managed ETFs in the country.
The money manager is employed by many large super funds to maximise retirement savings for their members. The nation’s biggest fund, AustralianSuper, for example, has more than $800 million invested through Vanguard, according to its last annual report.
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Growth prospects for Australia and world upgraded by OECD
By Shane Wright
March 9, 2021 — 9.01pm
The Australian economy is expected to grow at its fastest rate in a decade as it emerges from the coronavirus pandemic, with the OECD sharply upgrading the nation’s prospects and those of the rest of the globe.
In its interim economic outlook released on Tuesday evening, the Paris-based think tank predicts the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines in much of the developed world will translate into far stronger economic results.
In December, the OECD forecast Australia’s economy to grow by 3.2 per cent through 2021. Now it believes the economy will expand by 4.5 per cent before growing another 3.1 per cent through 2022.
The last time Australian GDP grew so quickly was between 2010 and 2011, when the economy emerged from the global financial crisis on the back of low interest rates and a mining construction boom that included iron ore, liquefied natural gas and coal.
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International trade is back, boosting optimism about a global recovery
Stephen Bartholomeusz
Senior business columnist
March 10, 2021 — 12.05pm
A flurry of recent trade data is signalling that the global economy is springing back from the effects of the pandemic faster and harder than anticipated.
When the pandemic hit last year, global trade plummeted amid dire predictions of a slump as deep as the Great Depression. The World Trade Organisation, and others, saw international trade collapse by as much as a third.
While global merchandise exports did dive 15 per cent in the June quarter last year, they started to bounce back in the second half of the year, and data for the first two months of this year suggests the recovery is continuing and broadening.
That – and the massive $US1.9 trillion ($2.5 trillion) of further US stimulus provided by the Biden administration’s new fiscal package -- supports the more optimistic view of the prospects for the global economy (and Australia’s economy) depicted in the OECD’s latest forecasts issued this week, which have upgraded the outlook for global growth this year from 4.2 per cent to 5.6 per cent.
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As economy rebounds, where are investment risks and opportunities?
By John Collett
March 9, 2021 — 9.45pm
Australia’s economy is staging a spectacular turnaround after the biggest collapse of Gross Domestic Product since records started in 1959.
The economy roared back to life during the second half of 2020, with share prices largely recovering most of their losses from the coronavirus pandemic-induced slump earlier in the year. Property prices are also booming.
However, a belief that share and property prices can only go up from here that is driving some investors to take the plunge is contrary to the fundamental principles of investing.
Figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show a 23 per cent increase in new loan commitments by property investors in January, compared to the same period a year earlier.
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There’s no interest rate rise on the RBA’s horizon
Wages growth consistent with the inflation target is unlikely before 2024. So the cash rate will stay at the record low 0.1 per cent for the next three years, the RBA governor says.
Philip Lowe Reserve Bank governor
Mar 10, 2021 – 12.23pm
Over the past year, monetary policy has complemented fiscal policy in cushioning the economic effects of the pandemic and in building the bridge to the recovery in economic activity and jobs.
The RBA’s policy measures have been keeping financing costs very low, contributing to a lower exchange rate than otherwise, supporting the supply of credit to businesses, and strengthening household and business balance sheets. In doing so, we have been helping in the national recovery effort.
The Reserve Bank is committed to continuing to provide the necessary assistance and will maintain stimulatory monetary conditions for as long as is necessary. We want to see a return to full employment in Australia and inflation sustainably within the 2 to 3 per cent target range.
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Will we fight to save Taiwan like the Anzacs saved France?
Australia’s former Chief of the Army says we must avoid a future situation where a PM might say the US is at war and as a result, Australia is also at war.
Peter Leahy Contributor
Mar 10, 2021 – 11.46am
One of my proudest moments in the uniform of the Australian Army was during a ceremony around ANZAC Day where I stood in the courtyard of the school at Villers Bretonneux with the mayor of that small village in France. During the ceremony he turned to me and said, ’We Frenchmen do not understand why you Australians came here in 1915, but you helped save our democracy.
I wonder if at some time in the future, a mayor of a small village in Taiwan might say the same thing to a future chief of the Australian Army.
Australia’s relationship with China has significantly deteriorated. Our prime minister and foreign minister have spoken of how our values are different to those of China. China is seen as an authoritarian, communist state with an increasingly abrasive and assertive approach. Some compare current events to those prior to World War II.
Then, Australia went to war because Germany invaded Poland. At the time our prime minister said that Great Britain is at war and as a result, Australia is also at war.
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Winning by dividing the West from the rest
Jennifer Hewett Columnist
Mar 11, 2021 – 4.44pm
Zak Kirkup says it’s important to tell voters the truth: He has absolutely no chance of becoming Western Australian premier this weekend. It’s not a choice between Mark McGowan and him, folks. It’s a choice, he says, between dangerously untrammelled power for a Labor Party without a functioning opposition to hold the government accountable.
He also wants to remind voters – especially those Coalition voters of a certain age what happened the last time Labor was so dominant. That was the era of WA Inc and deals for mates under the premiership of Brian Burke in the go-go 1980s.
These days even the disgraced Burke suggests from the sidelines that perhaps the government should be a little careful about the perception that the McGowan government is too close to property developers.
The inside political joke, of course, is that the biggest property developer in Perth is Nigel Satterley, former staunch Liberal supporter turned vehement critic a few years ago and now fervent McGowan backer. No doubt a surging WA property market after a decade in the doldrums is the cream on a very large cake.
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https://www.afr.com/wealth/investing/how-to-position-for-the-global-recovery-20210310-p579b2
How to position for the global recovery
As economists update forecasts and GDP growth returns, the rotation into recovery stocks is a big theme. Here are 10 to watch.
Sarah Turner Reporter
Mar 12, 2021 – 12.22pm
Investors are preparing for a strong global growth tailwind this year, buying up travel, energy and bank stocks in the belief they will benefit when the global economy takes off.
Fund managers say it’s not too late to participate in this major theme for markets if investors are selective in their choice of company, sector and country.
“I think that we will have a very strong 2021 and that will probably flow through to 2022,” says Andrew Clifford, chief investment officer at Platinum Asset Management.
“In the stockmarket there are opportunities because I think that the natural state of being for the economic system is for it to grow.”
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Cormann pulls off upset win to take OECD top job
Hans van Leeuwen Europe correspondent
Mar 13, 2021 – 1.03am
London | Former finance minister Mathias Cormann has pulled off an against-the-odds victory in the tense campaign to lead the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, delivering a powerful boost to the international standing of the Morrison government.
Mr Cormann will take the role of secretary-general at the 37-member rich-nations’ policymaking club for a five-year term on June 1, following a marathon six-month campaign that went down to the wire.
In a statement, he said it would be “a privilege and an honour to take on the leadership of the OECD”, and described himself as “ambitious” for the Paris-based body.
He offered a clutch of priorities, including: to help bolster the recovery from COVID-19; to “drive and promote global leadership on ambitious and effective action on climate change to achieve global net-zero emissions by 2050”; and to wrap up the OECD’s contentious negotiations on taxing the tech giants.
Critics laughed when Cormann chased the top OECD job, but they underestimated him
By Bevan Shields
March 13, 2021 — 5.59am
London: Mathias Cormann first came to Australia from Europe 27 years ago and now Australia is sending him back there.
The former finance minister’s selection as the next secretary-general of the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Development and Co-Operation is not just a diplomatic coup for the Morrison government; it also represents the pinnacle of an extraordinary career for the 50-year-old political operator.
The Belgium-born Cormann only flew to Australia in 1994 to meet the family of a girl he’d recently met, but fell in love with Perth instead and made the permanent move two years later. He rose through Liberal Party ranks, entered the Senate in 2007 and spent a record seven years and 42 days as finance minister.
Critics laughed when he quit Parliament last October to run for the top international post. They argued he would have no chance in a crowded field of 10 candidates and predicted the OECD’s Europe-dominated membership would rally behind one of their own. They said the OECD was too good an outfit to ever consider someone like Cormann as its leader, but the further he advanced in the selection process, the more they started arguing the OECD must be worthless.
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https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/the-quad-squad-takes-diplomacy-to-a-new-level-20210311-p579pf
The Quad Squad takes diplomacy to a new level
It is the most consequential diplomatic shift in decades, deepening the divisions between China and the rest of the specifically democratic world.
Years in the making, the Quad is finally a real group. The leaders of the US, Japan, Australia and India will hold regular meetings . David Rowe
Jacob Greber, Andrew Tillett and Michael Smith
Mar 13, 2021 – 12.00am
At a nondescript hotel conference room in Manila in November 2017, senior diplomats from Australia, the US, Japan and India gathered to talk shop.
While the East Asia Summit had been dominated by US President Donald Trump skipping out on the event, the officials were meeting quietly to revive the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue.
In a sign of modest expectations, Australia’s foreign policy white paper, released just a week later, contained no mention of the Quad. But 3½ years later, the group’s importance has been elevated to the point that the four leaders are holding their first face-to-face meeting, albeit virtually.
It is the most consequential diplomatic shift in decades – deepening the divisions between China and the rest of the specifically democratic world and their economies.
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Historic Quad summit to turbocharge vaccine rollout
Andrew Tillett Political correspondent
Mar 13, 2021 – 2.00am
Australia will assume the lion’s share of responsibility for distributing coronavirus vaccines to south-east Asian and Pacific nations as part of a combined effort to deliver one billion doses under the revitalised Quadrilateral Security Dialogue to counter China’s own vaccine diplomacy.
The Morrison government will kick in $99 million ($US77 million) for so-called “last mile” delivery of vaccines to ensure people in south-east Asia receive them. This is in addition to its commitment to vaccine delivery in the Pacific.
And in a strong message to China following their first leaders level meeting, Australia, the US, Japan and India vowed to have an Indo-Pacific region “unconstrained by coercion” in their joint communique.
The leaders have also agreed to establish a working group to tackle climate change, including developing low-emissions technology and co-operating on climate mitigation, resilience, adaptation and finance.
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https://www.afr.com/chanticleer/geopolitics-could-choke-supply-chains-20210312-p57a7t
Geopolitics could choke supply chains
Global supply chains are being squeezed by the rising geopolitical tensions between the United States and China. This poses a challenge for companies heavily reliant on Chinese suppliers.
Mar 13, 2021 – 12.00am
An Australian car dealer who sells cars made by three well-known Japanese companies was told last month one high-profile brand would only be able to supply him with half of the normal quantity of a popular vehicle.
The shortage reflects the negative impact of COVID-19 on the global auto sector, which is scrambling to cope with a breakdown in the supply of the semiconductor chips used in car manufacturing.
The model in question is reliant on a component from China that is not available because of China’s shortage of semiconductors.
The semiconductor shortages will cause reductions in global automobile output of 2.5 million vehicles between January and June of this year, according to analysts at Japan’s leading investment bank, Nomura.
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https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/pork-for-airlines-thin-gruel-for-the-jobless-20210312-p57a30
Pork for airlines, thin gruel for the jobless
The haphazard splashing of money on airfares contrasts with the precision strike on those who still depend on JobSeeker.
Laura Tingle Columnist
Mar 12, 2021 – 4.32pm
It’s hardly a new phenomenon: the ramping up of positive government announcements just before the weekend, when Newspoll is due to go out into the field to measure how voters are judging our politicians.
But this is perhaps the first time a nervous government has offered half-price holidays to lift the public mood.
The Morrison government’s announcement of its $1.2 billion tourism and aviation support package on Thursday – payments to the major airlines, which are to be passed on to contented taxpayer holidaymakers from April 1 – was announced with little detail about how the destinations eligible for the cut-price fares had been chosen, other than that they were destinations hit by a fall-off in international tourism.
Well-known international tourism meccas, for example, such as Merimbula in far south NSW, as well as more obvious places like Cairns were on the original list. And of course there have been some subsequent random additions to the list, apparently as someone somewhere has thought of them – including Darwin and Adelaide.
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Prospect of a gender gap a ticking time bomb for the Morrison government
George Megalogenis
Columnist
March 13, 2021 — 5.30am
Scott Morrison could be forgiven for wondering how his political year might be going if the Australian of the Year had been a man, not a woman; if the former chief medical officer Professor Brendan Murphy, one of the heroes of our world-beating response to the coronavirus, had won the award instead of Grace Tame, the Tasmanian sexual abuse survivor who successfully fought her state’s archaic laws that prevented women like herself from speaking publicly about their experience.
It was an image of the Prime Minister sharing the podium with Tame that hardened the resolve of former Liberal staffer Brittany Higgins to speak out about her alleged rape in Parliament House on the eve of the 2019 election.
“I was sick to my stomach,” Higgins told journalist Samantha Maiden last month. “He’s standing next to a woman who has campaigned for ‘Let Her Speak’ and yet in my mind his government was complicit in silencing me. It was a betrayal. It was a lie.”
If Higgins hadn’t stood up for herself, Morrison would have been free to talk up the government’s plans to vaccinate the population against the coronavirus, and re-open the economy. The historical rape allegations against the Attorney-General Christian Porter may still have reached the public domain, but they wouldn’t have had the same wider context of community outrage.
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Australia’s women are roaring, but where are their Coalition sisters?
Peter Hartcher
Political and international editor
March 13, 2021 — 5.00am
Scott Morrison won’t confront women’s concerns head-on, so women are coming to Parliament House to confront him head-on. By the thousand.
By trying to make women’s concerns disappear, he has now created a quandary for himself. The Women’s March4Justice rally has invited him, and all other MPs and senators, to attend the gathering outside Parliament at midday on Monday. The rally’s originator, Janine Hendry, says the movement is “inclusive and respectful”.
But if the Prime Minister turns up, he risks being booed. His inaction, after all, has fed the anger of women across the country. His staff will be telling him that he must not allow any such scene – it would be filmed, replayed endlessly and used against him.
But if he doesn’t turn up, he will be confirming his lack of respect and concern for women. And that will only feed more anger and stoke the movement. You can be sure that many Labor, Greens and independent MPs and senators will turn out in support. The Prime Minister would be conspicuous by his absence. He wanted the issue to disappear, but he’d be the one accused of disappearing.
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Repealing responsible lending laws will hurt consumers
John Collett
Personal finance editor
March 13, 2021 — 12.28pm
The government’s proposal to water down responsible lending legal obligations will lead to financial hardship, particularly among vulnerable consumers who will fall into a spiral of debt.
Lenders are under legal obligations make credit assessments and approval of loans to a standard set by law, where they have to take steps to help ensure prospective borrowers can afford the loan.
If the repeal of the obligations, which came into effect in 2009, is successful, red-tape will be removed for lenders and borrowers and there will be a freer flow of credit as the government says. But at what cost?
Critics of the proposal, such as Gerard Brody, the chief executive of the Consumer Action Law Centre, says without the obligations, lenders will have their own credit assessment and approval processes.
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Boomer feminism is not what we need at this transformational moment
Parnell Palme McGuinness
Columnist and communications adviser
March 13, 2021 — 5.30am
I was around five years old when I got my first feminist T-shirt. “Women are not chicks” it read, with a little drawing of a baby chicken underneath. My father explained that it wasn’t acceptable for women to be talked about as though they weren’t human, which made sense. I loved that T-shirt.
In the intervening years, I have owned many feminist T-shirts and I have had plenty of time to reflect on what feminism has achieved. I am deeply conscious that I am beholden to the women who went before me, who made it possible for me to choose education, independent travel and a career. I have also had plenty of time to reflect on some of the ways in which feminism has not worked for women, on the shallowness of the feminism we celebrate, and the unintended consequences of Boomer-era feminism.
We are now in a transformational feminist moment. The powerful words of Australian the Year and child abuse survivor Grace Tame unleashed pent-up anger. She exhorted women to no longer be silent about sexual abuse and harassment. Her call was answered by allegations of rape inside Australian Parliament House, and amplified by the stories of non-consensual experiences that thousands of young women poured into an online petition. A rape allegation against a cabinet minister, who stongly denied it, has ensured that the focus of the anger remains centred on Parliament House. These are connected social issues.
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Covid has shown us what an Indigenous voice to parliament would look like
Little did anyone know that just a few years after the Uluru Statement from the Heart was presented to the Australian government (and rejected), the First Nations leadership would be able to show just how powerful having a voice could be for their health and wellbeing.
Given the previous experience with the H1N1 influenza pandemic in 2009, our First Nations health professionals were aware of the likely disastrous outcomes of the approaching COVID-19 pandemic. In 2009, the exclusion of First Nations peoples in preparedness and response planning in the Federal Government’s Action Plan resulted in higher notifications, hospitalisations and deaths from H1N1 in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders across the nation.
The early information from China and Italy alerted us to COVID-19 being more contagious, more likely to require hospitalisation (including intensive care) and have a higher case fatality rate (deaths per people infected) than influenza, particularly among the elderly and those with chronic disease. Translating this to our First Nations meant that they would be at particularly high risk from COVID-19.
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Will the old destructive demons be unleashed?
After the most intense year of decision-making since World War II, an ascendant Scott Morrison is suddenly vulnerable.
By Paul Kelly
· From Inquirer
March 12, 2021
The Morrison government and the political system have reached a crossroads. After the most intense year of decision-making since World War II, an ascendant Scott Morrison is suddenly vulnerable, with the risk that politics will sink into convulsion and paralysis.
The test for Australia now is whether it seizes defeat from the jaws of victory. Having delivered a world-beating economic and health response to the pandemic, having set ourselves up with a proven record of competent government, effective social contract, substantial results and soft power allure, the test is whether the old destructive demons will be unleashed.
Those demons are well known. They have plagued Australia’s performance for much of the past 15 years — third best policy, unconvincing governance, parliamentary sabotage, voter distrust, poll-driven short-termism and renewed culture war.
The issue is whether 2020 was an Australian aberration. That is a test for ourselves, our community leaders, our media, and our politicians.
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https://www.afr.com/politics/labor-surges-to-record-poll-victory-in-wa-20210313-p57agc
McGowan landslide a ‘disaster’ for Liberals
Brad Thompson Reporter
Mar 13, 2021 – 10.12pm
West Australian premier Mark McGowan has led the Labor party to a resounding election victory that could leave the Liberal Party with as few as two seats in the state’s lower house.
The WA Labor government surged to the biggest election victory in the state’s history on Saturday, plunging the Liberal Party into crisis after a disastrous campaign.
Political editor Chris Uhlmann says WA is now effectively a "one-party state" following a historic landslide election that could have alarming implications for the Morrison government.
The massive Labor win and Liberal bloodbath came after Mr McGowan stuck to his popular hard border policy throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Her story: The woman who said the Attorney-General raped her as a teen
March 13, 2021
There were seven young people in the Australian national debating teams of 1988 and 1989.
All of them were clever, precocious, and poised on the threshold of a life that held great things. Of the cohort, two became members of Parliament, one of those the Attorney-General.
Others moved into banking, entrepreneurship, the law, the arts and media.
One, the brightest of the lot, so bright she was in the team in both years, was a prefect and a star debater.
She later worked in academia as a historian but struggled with her mental health from adolescence. Friends say she never lived up to the promise of those early years.
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Coronavirus And Impacts.
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Picture worth a thousand jabs as Gillard backs vaccine push
The government is confident the AstraZeneca vaccine will work well and quell any anxiety or suggestions it may not be the best one to offer all Australians as the backbone of its COVID-19 strategy.
Jennifer Hewett Columnist
Mar 7, 2021 – 5.39pm
Greg Hunt looked delighted to receive his AstraZeneca jab on Sunday as Australia begins the next phase of its vaccine rollout. The Health Minister calls this one of the greatest logistical challenges in the nation’s history, with more than 4500 general practices signed up to participate.
But Hunt’s appearance – alongside Julia Gillard – was also designed to encourage greater community confidence in the safety and effectiveness of vaccines against COVID-19, and of AstraZeneca in particular.
According to a study by the Australian National University, scepticism or “hesitancy” about taking the vaccine has grown over the past six months –especially among young women.
Australia’s remarkable progress in stopping community transmission is making some people less inclined to get vaccinated given they don’t sense the same risk of infection. The result is that more than one in five people say they probably or definitely would not get vaccinated.
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Australia’s dilemma is getting out of the gilded cage
To reopen the international borders once the vaccine rollout is complete, the political narrative and public expectations about zero cases must change.
Shitij Kapur Contributor
Mar 9, 2021 – 4.56pm
Australia has done well in dealing with the pandemic.
If you look at cases, if you look
at hospitalisations, if you look at deaths, it’s
somewhere along with New Zealand and Taiwan as one of the leading nations in
its public health outcomes.
It has been a very good health outcome, and a reasonably good wealth outcome. We’re proud of it – and should be.
What was usually the tyranny of distance became the splendor of isolation. The fact we are an island nation, and a continent, helped.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/get-set-for-a-slow-uneven-recovery-20210309-p5797g
Get set for a slow, uneven recovery
Just as patients of “long COVID” struggle to regain full function, the pandemic’s tail of long-lasting or permanent damage will weigh heavily on the economic future.
Satyajit Das Contributor
Mar 10, 2021 – 12.08pm
In response to the pandemic, policymakers have poured near-unlimited amounts of other people’s money into a leaky economy creating the impression of a full bucket. Overcooked, duplicated and sometimes ill-directed support has overstated growth, consumption and income levels. Its withdrawal in the coming months will test the economy’s true position.
Hysteresis – effects that persist after the initial causes are removed – may result in a weaker than expected recovery.
First, the costs of COVID-19 for individual countries vary but are likely to be large. The estimate for the US, including lost income, premature death and long-term health impairment, is more than $US15 trillion ($19.5 trillion) – 75 per cent of GDP. For some, rising share and house prices may ultimately restore lost wealth, assuming you were not forced to sell your holdings. For most, the losses, usually running down limited savings and assets, are irrecoverable.
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Coronavirus: UK variant more deadly, new study finds
The highly infectious UK variant of COVID-19 is between 30 to 100 per cent more deadly than previous strains, according to new research published in the British Medical Journal on Wednesday.
The study compared death rates among people in the UK infected with the so-called UK variant (B117) against those infected with other strains, with scientists concluding that the variant had a considerably “higher rate of mortality”.
The research sample of people infected with the variant were between 32 and 104 per cent more likely to die from the virus than those infected with previous variants.
With more than 20 mutations in its genetic code, scientists suggest the variant is approximately 40-70 per cent more transmissible than previous circulating variants.
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Climate Change.
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‘Closures any day’: Coal-fired power plants in peril as prices plunge
By Nick Toscano
March 8, 2021 — 12.00am
Most of Australia’s coal-fired power plants are running at a loss as electricity prices continue to slide, battering the profits of energy giants AGL and Origin and sparking warnings from within the industry of earlier-than-expected plant closures.
An influx of renewable energy has been driving down daytime electricity prices and piling enormous pressure on the nation’s fleet of coal-fired power stations, which are far more expensive to operate and, increasingly, struggling to compete.
New figures reveal baseload electricity prices in Victoria have crashed 70 per cent from about $80 a megawatt-hour in March 2020 to $24 this month. In New South Wales, prices have more than halved to $38.
“The price falls would place most baseload thermal generation into negative profitability,” JPMorgan analyst Mark Busuttil said. “An announcement of capacity closures could come any day.”
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Disclosing climate change risk in bonds a costly challenge: RBA
Matthew Cranston Economics correspondent
Mar 8, 2021 – 5.54pm
The Reserve Bank says the disclosure of climate change risks in the sale of government bonds would create significant challenges and costs for governments, but has welcomed the inclusion of any meaningful risks to better inform investors.
Activist investors have signalled that companies and governments face growing risks of litigation over their climate change disclosures and emissions-reduction policies.
Late last year, the government’s debt manager – the Australian Office of Financial Management – faced legal action from an investor who claimed it should have disclosed climate change as a risk in the value of bonds. The AOFM has pushed back on such a suggestion. A court hearing date has not been confirmed.
In response to questions on notice from Greens leader Adam Bandt about the need for such disclosures, the RBA has highlighted the burden issuers would face if they had to outline such risks.
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Victoria’s Yallourn coal power plant to close early as clean shift slashes prices
By Nick Toscano
March 10, 2021 — 10.14am
Victoria’s largest coal-fired power station, Yallourn, will close four years earlier than scheduled, casting doubt over the future of hundreds of jobs.
Energy Australia is licensed to run the brown coal-burning power plant in the Latrobe Valley east of Melbourne until 2032. But the company told staff on Wednesday it would now shut in mid-2028. Yallourn supplies up to 22 per cent of Victoria’s electricity demand and employs about 500 workers.
Energy Australia is planning a multimillion-dollar support package for those affected.
The decision comes as a flood of new renewable energy has been driving down daytime power prices and piling enormous pressure on Australia’s fleet of ageing coal-fired power plants, which are far more expensive to operate and, increasingly, struggling to compete.
New figures reveal baseload electricity prices in Victoria have crashed 70 per cent from about $80 a megawatt-hour in March 2020 to $24 this month. In New South Wales, prices have more than halved to $38.
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Business told to lift its green game, or else
More than 40 per cent of Australia’s largest companies have “insufficient” climate change plans, with only one-fifth of the nation’s biggest firms disclosing science-based targets aligned with goals under the Paris Agreement.
Analysis of the climate change ambitions of ASX 200 companies by accounting firm PwC found half of businesses with environmental, social and governance arrangements had not “adequately” linked those ESG plans with core business strategies.
The analysis comes amid moves by the Morrison government to establish new rules forcing hundreds of the nation’s largest businesses — including Commonwealth Bank, BHP, ANZ and AMP — to be transparent about climate change targets or face being publicly named.
PwC Australia chief operating officer Liza Maimone said many companies viewed their ESG strategies as a “risk-mitigation exercise, or even an afterthought”, with 42 per cent registering “insufficient reporting”.
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Royal Commissions And The Like.
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What help is available for looking after an elderly parent?
Knowing where and how to access support services can make all the difference when older parents are no longer independent.
Louise Biti Contributor
Mar 8, 2021 – 12.00am
It can be hard for older parents to accept that they need help. They may not want to accept getting older or may resist what they see as interference from their children. But the need for help may become inevitable.
And when older parents do accept the help, it can be hard for their “sandwich generation” children to juggle all the obligations in their own lives. The children may find themselves sandwiched between the care needs of older parents and young grandchildren – and at a time when they are either making the last savings dash to secure their own retirement or are in early retirement and trying to tick off their bucket list.
Life can seem a bit overwhelming. The good news is that support is available. Knowing where and how to access support services can make all the difference. For carers, the support needs might be emotional or financial or support for the tasks you can’t do.
There are two broad categories to consider: what help is available for your parents; and what help is available for you.
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Wind back retirement tax breaks to pay for better aged care
Rather that just hit working people with a tax hike, the government should tighten the superannuation concessions that have just one in six older Australians pay any income tax.
Brendan Coates and Anika Stobart
Mar 8, 2021 – 11.09am
The Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety has made it clear: Australia needs to transform its aged care system. The final report, released on Monday, showed that too many older Australians don’t get the care they need, including the 100,000 currently on the home care waiting list.
The royal commissioners lay the blame for this crisis on, among other things, inadequate funding. The present ration-based approach means funding is determined “irrespective of the level of need, and without sufficient regard to whether the funding is adequate to deliver quality care”. Expenditure has not kept pace with demand.
The royal commission calls for a new rights-based Aged Care Act, stronger regulation, more transparency, and a better trained and paid workforce. It proposes a needs-based funding model, where all care costs, such as nursing, are covered by the government, just as patients in public hospitals are funded by Medicare.
The rationale is clear: all older Australians access to needed care shouldn’t be based on people’s capacity to pay. This would then leave ordinary living costs, such as cleaning and accommodation, to be paid by individuals (after a means-test), just as these personal expenses are ordinarily met by people in the community.
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We’re stuck with crappy aged care because Morrison won’t ask the young or the old to pay to fix it
Ross Gittins
Economics Editor
March 9, 2021 — 3.30pm
I’m sorry to be so pessimistic but I fear that, in just its first week, the likelihood of the aged care royal commission’s report leading to much better treatment of our elderly has faded.
Within a day or two, Scott Morrison and his Treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, made it known they had “little appetite” for the commission’s plan to use an “aged care improvement levy” of 1 per cent of taxable income to cover the considerable cost of the reforms it proposed.
Morrison wants to be seen as delivering lower – not higher – taxes. I suspect the pair have realised that announcing an increase in tax on all income earners wouldn’t fit well with the costly third stage of their tax cuts, due in 2024, which will go mainly to high income-earners (like my good self).
Rather, the pair are murmuring about making the elderly contribute more from their own retirement savings towards the cost of their care by tightening the means-testing of aged care benefits. Maybe there’d be more and bigger “refundable accommodation deposits”.
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What good aged care looks like after the royal commission
Should the final report go nowhere as previous inquiries have, activists intend to make aged care a powerful election issue.
Bina Brown Contributor
Mar 11, 2021 – 4.22pm
If anyone should have a say about the future of the aged care industry, it is older individuals and their families.
The unleashing of Aged Care Reform Now, a people-powered movement born out of a Facebook group, coincides with the release of the final report of the Royal Commission into Aged Care.
The movement of hundreds of self-motivated activists sits alongside the recently formed Australian Aged Care Collaboration (AACC), an alliance of six aged care peak bodies specifically lobbying for change.
Should the final report go nowhere – as have more than 20 previous reviews and inquiries into related issues – both groups intend to make aged care a major election issue.
Giving older people and their families a voice is vital if we want to see an aged care system that is transparent and effectively regulated, says Sarah Russell, co-founder of Aged Care Reform Now and a long-time industry researcher.
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‘A major killing field’: Victoria’s brutal history to be uncovered at Indigenous truth-telling commission
By Tom Cowie and Jackson Graham
A brutal period in Victoria’s history is set to be retold as part of the Yoo-rrook Justice Commission, the state government’s truth-telling inquiry into the wrongs committed against Aboriginal people after white settlement.
One of the most difficult of these truths to confront will be the wave of slaughter unleashed in the mid-1800s, when Indigenous people were massacred by white pastoralists and explorers across the state’s frontiers.
Lyndall Ryan, from the University of Newcastle’s Centre for the History of Violence, has spent years researching the widespread killing of Aboriginal people by colonisers.
On her map of the massacres, Victoria is covered in horrifying dots — each one representing the indiscriminate killing of at least six Aboriginal people. But two clusters stand out: one in Gippsland, and a larger one in Victoria’s Western District.
Professor Ryan identified about 50 massacre sites in Victoria, with at least 1200 Aboriginal people believed to have been killed from the 1830s until the 1850s. Information was gathered from written sources, such as letters, memoirs and newspaper reports.
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National Budget Issues.
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https://www.afr.com/business-summit/more-work-to-do-if-happy-days-are-here-to-stay-20210304-p577nn
More work to do if happy days are here to stay
Australians are remarkably optimistic about the economy. But complacency is the biggest threat to a sustainable business-led recovery.
Jeremy Thorpe Contributor
Mar 7, 2021 – 1.01pm
The COVID-19 pandemic has made the past 12 months one long and intense roller coaster, but it seems Australians are now ready to say (or sing): “So long sad times … happy days are here again.”
When we took a pulse check of Australian community attitudes this time last year we were reeling from the devastating impacts of the Black Summer bushfires and the first COVID-19 case had just been confirmed in Australia. At that time about half of the respondents said they were feeling happy about Australia’s immediate future.
Just one year on, and despite the pandemic still looming over us, it seems the good times are rolling in. Our 2021 community attitudes survey paints a brighter, better picture as almost two-thirds of the respondents are feeling happy about Australia’s immediate future. That’s a 10 per cent increase year-on-year.
Feelings of optimism about Australia’s prospects for growth have also increased. A similar proportion expects the economy in Australia to be better in two years, compared with just 25 per cent last year.
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Why we’ll live longer, healthier lives over the next 40 years
By Matt Wade
March 7, 2021 — 7.30pm
The NSW government expects residents will live longer, healthier lives over the next 40 years than previously forecast, easing pressures on the state budget caused by the ageing population.
Analysis by NSW Treasury has found longer working lives, and better health in later years of life, will reduce a long-term “fiscal gap” forecast for the state finances by up to $1.5 billion.
In 2016, the NSW intergenerational report warned the state was facing a $17 billion hole in its finances by mid-century, largely due to escalating health costs associated with an ageing population, unless changes were made to rein in spending and boost revenue.
But a new technical research paper prepared for the next NSW intergenerational report, due in mid-2021, says recent studies in Australia and several comparable countries suggest increases in life expectancy will be accompanied by a proportionate increase in good health.
“Improvements in health outcomes at all ages will alleviate pressure for healthcare as people enter their later stages of life, as well as support economic growth potential by enabling Australians to remain productive and participate in the workforce for longer,” it says.
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QE is a lobster pot: easy to get in, hard to get out unscathed
Ross Gittins
Economics Editor
March 7, 2021 — 11.00pm
Since the global financial crisis and more so since the coronacession, the normal way things work in financial markets has been turned on its head. Standard monetary policy (the manipulation of interest rates) has stopped working so, led by the US Federal Reserve, the biggest rich economies have plunged into “quantitative easing” (QE) and other “unconventional policies” which, frankly, are weird and wonderful.
Heading our response to this topsy-turvy world has been Reserve Bank governor Dr Philip Lowe. There’s never a shortage of smarties thinking they could do a much better job than the governor – whoever he happens to be – but Lowe’s getting a double dose of second-guessing. I don’t envy him – I’m just glad it’s him making the impossible calls, not me.
Lowe’s having to respond to forces way beyond his control. We’ve seen official interest rates around the world fall to zero because of a lasting global imbalance between saving and investment (or, alternatively, because the US Fed stuffed up). With interest rates already so low, further rate cuts ceased to have much effect in encouraging borrowing and spending on consumption and investment goods.
Undeterred, the Fed leapt into QE - buying longer-dated second-hand government bonds with created money - and soon were joined by the Europeans, Brits and Japanese. This did little to stimulate demand for goods and services, but did inflate the prices of houses, shares and other assets, as well as lowering your exchange rate relative to everyone else’s.
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https://www.afr.com/property/residential/sydney-property-prices-hit-record-high-20210311-p579q7
Sydney property prices hit record high
Martin Kelly Property Reporter
Mar 11, 2021 – 11.44am
Sydney has become the latest Australian city where residential property values have hit a record high, following Brisbane, Canberra, Adelaide and Hobart into uncharted territory.
Property data company CoreLogic said increases in Sydney dwelling prices (houses and units) are being driven by top-end property sales in premium markets such as the Northern Beaches, North Shore and Hills District.
CoreLogic said median Sydney dwelling values reached a new high of $895,933, narrowly edging out the previous record median of $895,117 set in August 2017.
“I would expect the middle and lower end to follow through 2021,” said Eliza Owen, Head of Research Australia at CoreLogic.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/rba-brutally-bashes-bond-bandits-20210312-p57a3a
RBA brutally bashes bond bandits
The market has failed to understand that the central bank has exhausted its traditional tools in responding to the crisis and its quantitative easing program is here to stay.
Christopher Joye Columnist
Mar 12, 2021 – 10.50am
The Reserve Bank of Australia’s governor Phil Lowe did a sublime job this week of radically recalibrating flawed market perceptions of the central bank’s monetary policy posture while quietly, yet brutally, steam-rolling “short-sellers” that were questioning his commitment to unconventional stimulus.
The back-story here is that there has for some time been mixed-messages on the RBA’s bond-buying, aka “quantitative easing” (QE), program, which has undermined its efficacy.
Because Australia rather fortuitously sailed through the global financial crisis in much better shape than its northern hemisphere peers, suffering only a modest increase in unemployment and avoiding a technical recession, the RBA did not have to floor its cash rate to 0 per cent (it troughed at 3 per cent in 2009).
This obviated the need for the RBA to unfurl alternative measures to support growth, such as buying government bonds to reduce longer-term risk-free rates, as other central banks did.
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We’re not home and hosed on the recovery, despite what Morrison says
Economics Editor
March 12, 2021 — 11.10am
I fear we may be changing places with the United States. I fear the economy’s rapid rebound may have misled Scott Morrison into believing we’re home and hosed. I fear the Smaller Government mentality may trip us up again.
In response to the global financial crisis of 2008, the Americans and Europeans spent huge sums and ran up big budget deficits and public debt. They had to rescue their teetering banks and get their frozen economies going again.
It worked. The financial crisis dissipated and their economies started to recover. But before long they got a bad case of the Smaller Government frights. Look at those huge deficits! What have we done? Our children will drown in government debt!
So they put their budgets into reverse and cut government spending – especially spending aimed at helping the poor and unemployed – to get their deficits down and slow the growth in debt. Critics dubbed this a policy of “austerity”.
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Birth strike: the fertility rate in NSW is set to dive
Matt Wade
Senior economics writer
March 14, 2021 — 12.00am
There was little fanfare. But last month the NSW government published some blockbuster findings on the state’s future.
A report posted on the NSW Treasury website with the catchy title Preliminary Fertility Rate Projections for the 2021 NSW Intergenerational Report flagged a precipitous fall in the average number of children each woman in the state is expected to have over the next 40 years.
The paper recommends the government slash its long-term assumption for the state’s fertility rate to 1.63 births per woman – way lower than the forecast for 1.95 births per woman made only five years ago. That’s a significant shift which foreshadows a bigger share of elderly people in NSW than previously expected in coming decades and a smaller pool of younger workers paying taxes to support them.
The fertility rate in NSW peaked in the early 1960s at around 3.5 babies per woman but fell during the following decade as the introduction of the contraceptive gave women greater control over pregnancy. The rate stabilised at a little below two births per woman for most of the 1980s and 1990s but began to decline again following the 2008 global financial crisis. Last year the state’s fertility rate reached 1.67, the lowest since records began.
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Health Issues.
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Sonic’s boom due to COVID-19 tests, but how long will it last?
Carrie LaFrenz Senior reporter
Mar 8, 2021 – 12.00am
There is little doubt that Sonic Healthcare had one of the top half-year results of the recent reporting season, but market watchers are split over its immediate outlook.
Sonic is the world’s third-largest medical laboratory company, operating in eight countries. Its biggest market is the United States, which makes up 27 per cent of revenue. Germany this year overtook its home market of Australia as its second biggest market. The group also operates radiology centres and a primary care business.
Atlas Funds Management chief investment officer Hugh Dive said while some companies had done well out of the pandemic, it is difficult to think of one that has flourished well as Sonic.
“In the outstanding result of the reporting season, Sonic demonstrated one of the reasons why we like the company. Pathology is a volume game, laboratories have high fixed costs, but as much higher volumes flow through the same lab, profit margins increase,” he said.
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Private health insurance has big sting in the tail
By Joel Gibson
March 9, 2021 — 10.00pm
The cost of private health insurance goes up again in about three weeks. However, if you have to pay a couple of hundred dollars extra for your cover, spare a thought for those whose premiums will soar more than $500 a year.
An average gold-level family policy now costs about $7000 before the government rebate is applied. But some customers pay closer to $12,000 for that same policy and their hikes will be much higher.
It seems crazy to pay that much for private health cover but the latest data suggests that some people in their 60s are so desperate that they are doing just that.
After dropping for years, the number of people with private health insurance has rocketed in the past six months as the coronavirus pandemic gripped the nation. It grew by 100,000 from July to September and by another 34,000 from October to December.
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Doctors, healthcare workers to be punished for anti-vax COVID claims
By Kate Aubusson
March 10, 2021 — 11.03am
Doctors, nurses and pharmacists who spread COVID anti-vaccination claims will face harsh penalties, including being stripped of their ability to practise by the medical watchdog.
The national medical boards and the Australian Health Practitioner Regulatory Agency (AHPRA) released a joint directive warning healthcare practitioners that they risk regulatory action if they spout false or deceptive misinformation to patients or on social media that could undermine the national vaccination program as the AstraZeneca vaccine rollout begins.
Wednesday March 10: Prime Minister Scott Morrison has confirmed 100,000 jabs have been administered in Australia with 1.3 million vaccines now in the country's stockpile.
“There is no place for anti-vaccination messages in professional health practice, and any promotion of anti-vaccination claims including on social media, and advertising may be subject to regulatory action,” spokesman for the medical boards and Pharmacy Board chairman Brett Simmonds said.
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International Issues.
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Carrier sailing straight into China cyberstorm
· The Times
British military chiefs are bracing for the Royal Navy’s aircraft carrier to come under cyberattack as it sails towards China on its maiden grand voyage this year.
Experts raised concerns that the Chinese military could try to jam signals, make phishing attacks and spread fake information in countries where HMS Queen Elizabeth docks in East Asia.
The deployment comes amid heightened tensions in the region, with Taiwan accusing China on Friday of posing a “grave threat to peace and stability” and calling upon nations to “confront” Beijing.
Taiwan said China had stepped up incursions into its air defence zone in a move its mission in London described as a serious provocation. Taiwan urged the international community to “pay close heed to this growing aggressiveness of China” as it said it welcomed the carrier’s deployment to the region.
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Battlelines have been drawn for the next US-China stoush
Stephen Bartholomeusz
Senior business columnist
March 8, 2021 — 11.59am
The battlelines for the next phase of the tussle for economic and strategic supremacy between China and the US are being drawn, not directly in military capabilities but in a race for advantage in next generation technologies.
China made its ambitions clear when it unveiled its 14th five-year plan at the national congress that got under way late last week.
On Friday, Premier Li Keqiang detailed seven areas of “frontier” technology that China will pour resources into over the next five years: artificial intelligence; quantum computing; semiconductors; neuroscience and “brain-inspired computing; genetic research; genomic and biotechnology research; medical and health research and deep space, earth, sea and polar research.
Li said China would achieve major breakthroughs in advanced semiconductors, operating systems, computer processors and cloud computing and aimed to get 56 per cent of the country onto 5G telecommunications systems. China is already aggressively pursuing research into 6G, which could be 100 times faster than 5G speeds.
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Soft power: Jill Biden sets a new tone as first lady
First Lady Jill Biden is already a much more visible presence than her predecessor, becoming the face of the White House’s campaign to get schools open again as the pandemic eases.
Courtney Weaver
Mar 7, 2021 – 5.32pm
During the Democratic National Convention in August, Jill Biden spoke to the delegation from the empty halls of a high school in Wilmington, Delaware, where she once worked as a teacher.
“With Joe as president, these classrooms will ring out with laughter and possibility once again,” she promised.
Last week, she was back in a classroom, albeit one with children in it. “It’s so nice to be here,” the first lady told the kindergarteners at Connecticut’s Benjamin Franklin school. “I’m Jill.”
But as the pandemic enters its second year, many US public schools continue to rely on virtual lessons; roughly half had no in-person classes at the start of the year.
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https://www.afr.com/chanticleer/where-solomon-sees-strength-el-erian-sees-worries-20210309-p5791r
Where Solomon sees strength, El-Erian sees worries
Goldman Sachs boss David Solomon sees a big year ahead for markets and mergers and acquisitions. But Mohamed El-Erian warns markets are wondering whether cheap money can last forever.
Mar 9, 2021 – 11.48am
The Australian Financial Review’s sixth annual business summit began with two messages of hope and a big warning.
The first slice of optimism came from Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who painted a picture of an economy that had come through the COVID-19 crisis in enviable shape and can now accelerate into a recovery phase.
The second bright spot came via video from New York, where Goldman Sachs boss David Solomon provided an upbeat assessment of a US economy surging again thanks to the vaccine rollout, cheap money and the Biden administration’s new $US1.9 trillion ($2.5 trillion) stimulus package.
“It feels like we’ve got a confluence of things going on that are very positive for economic activity,” Solomon said. “I think we have an environment that is going to be quite constructive for economic activity, quite constructive for asset prices.”
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https://www.afr.com/world/north-america/will-stagnation-follow-the-biden-boom-20210309-p57947
Will stagnation follow the Biden boom?
There’s a growing consensus among economists that the US economy spent most of the decade after the 2008 financial crisis producing less and employing fewer people than it should have.
Paul Krugman Nobel prize winning economist
Mar 9, 2021 – 4.58pm
It’s morning in America! People are getting vaccinated at the rate of 2 million a day and rising, suggesting the pandemic may be largely behind us in a few months (unless premature reopening or variants mostly immune to the current vaccines set off another wave).
The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention has already said vaccinated adults can safely mingle with one another, their children and their grandchildren.
On the economic front, the US Senate has passed a relief bill that should help Americans get through the remaining difficult months, leaving them ready to work and spend again, and the bill will almost surely become law in a few days.
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The dark side of Biden’s stimulus spending spree is becoming clear
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
March 10, 2021 — 11.00am
You can have too much of a good thing. And you can have it at the wrong time. Joe Biden has succeeded in ramming most of his $US1.9 trillion ($2.5 trillion) relief package through the US Senate, running roughshod over Republican objections.
The package comes on top of the $US900 billion pre-Christmas relief bill. It lifts the combined stimulus to 13 per cent of GDP. Three-quarters of this elephantine spending will hit the real economy this year.
America is undertaking an extraordinary experiment. Real GDP will recoup pre-pandemic levels by the end of the second quarter. The economy will run out of slack and hit capacity constraints by the late summer. Capital Economics says stimulus will by then be subject to “rapidly diminishing returns”.
In other words, the extra debt is largely wasted. The fiscal multiplier can be powerful in a slump, when “good” borrowing can pay for itself two or three times over with extra growth: it collapses later in the cycle.
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Australia’s most important strategic grouping after the ANZUS alliance will enter a new phase early on Saturday morning Australian time, with the first-ever leaders’ meeting of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue.
Scott Morrison said the virtual summit with US President Joe Biden, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and Japanese leader Yoshihide Suga would be “a historic moment for our region”, and “another key step forward” in strengthening Australia’s Indo-Pacific ties.
“The Indo-Pacific is our world. This is where Australia lives and our security, our peace and stability that all Australians rely on for their freedom,” the Prime Minister said.
The Quad leaders’ meeting sends the strongest signal yet to China that the Indo-Pacific democracies are prepared to work together to counter its efforts to dominate the region.
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Big early win for Biden as $2.5trn relief bill is approved
Alan Fram
Mar 11, 2021 – 7.13am
Washington | A Congress riven along party lines approved a landmark $US1.9 trillion ($2.5 trillion) COVID-19 relief bill on Wednesday (Thursday AEDT).
President Joe Biden and Democrats claimed a triumph that marshals the government’s spending might against twin pandemic and economic crises that have upended a nation.
The House gave final congressional approval to the sweeping package by a near party line 220-211 vote precisely seven weeks after Biden entered the White House and four days after the Senate passed the bill.
Republicans in both chambers opposed the bill unanimously, characterising it as bloated, crammed with liberal policies and heedless of signs the crises are easing.
“Help is here,” Biden tweeted moments after the roll call ended.
Most noticeable to many Americans are provisions to provide up to $US1400 direct payments this year to most adults and extend $US300 per week emergency unemployment benefits into early September.
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No more soothing moderate: Biden’s bill reveals big government vision
By Matthew Knott
March 11, 2021 — 11.01am
Washington: Bill Clinton, in his 1996 State of the Union address, famously declared that “the era of big government is over”. It was a striking demonstration of the fact that, although a Democrat was in the White House, the economic conservatism championed by Ronald Reagan was still the dominant ideology in US politics.
When Joe Biden delivers the first prime-time television address of his presidency on Friday (AEDT), he’s unlikely to announce that “the era of small government is over; big government is back in fashion”. But in Washington, it is.
Republicans in Congress have argued that Biden’s $2.5 trillion COVID relief package — which has now passed both the House of Representatives and the Senate — goes well beyond providing pandemic relief.
They’re right. Characterising the bill as an economic stimulus package obscures the fact it is the biggest anti-poverty initiative introduced by a Democratic president since Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s.
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Why China might be keeping its citizens in the dark about markets plunging
Stephen Bartholomeusz
Senior business columnist
March 11, 2021 — 11.54am
There was an intriguing and somewhat bizarre Bloomberg report published this week. China, it said, seemed to have banned the term “stock market” from social media searches and there were no references to the plunge in the market in its major financial newspapers.
That plunge – the market had fallen nearly 14 per cent in a couple of weeks, with China’s Hong Kong-listed tech stocks down by about 25 per cent – clearly rattled the authorities, with state-owned funds wading into the market on Tuesday to arrest the declines.
That intervention was only modestly successful but external events – the easing of bond yields in the US Treasuries market after US inflation numbers came in lower than expected and the US Treasury was able to successfully sell two bond issues without pressuring yields – appear to have halted the falls.
China’s stock markets had been trading at record levels last month before the sell-off started and wiped off more than $1.7 trillion of value. Its tech companies, in particular, were trading on valuations that made their US counterparts look cheap.
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Credit Biden’s bid for united states of democracy
Uniting democracies in defence of shared interests and values will be the cornerstone of US President Joe Biden’s foreign policy, showcased by his ambitious Summit for Democracy, to be held later this year. Biden wants the gathering to “bring together the world’s democracies to strengthen our democratic institutions, honestly confront nations that are backsliding, and forge a common agenda”.
Critics have panned the idea, arguing the US needs to get its own house in order first and that the summit risks deepening divisions between democratic and non-democratic states, hindering co-operation when it is needed most. But these criticisms ignore the upside. Biden’s success would help Australia and fellow democracies fend off the growing challenge to our security and institutions from the authoritarian, state-dominated model that China promotes. Maintaining our prosperity and autonomy in the face of China’s power trading will require collective action as well as self-help. Despite its myriad problems, the US remains the only country with the convening power to rally the democracies to resist coercion and reverse the troubling global decline in political freedom and civil liberties.
Achieving these ambitions will depend on Biden’s ability to find common cause with a Europe that is every bit as divided as the US, especially on China. It’s true that anti-China sentiment is on the rise in Europe as members states are subject to Beijing’s wolf-warrior diplomacy and coercive behaviour. Like their Australian counterparts, some European political and business elites mistakenly believe they can have their cake and eat it, too.
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Getting the Quad right is Biden’s most important job
The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue is the best hope for standing up to China.
James Mattis
Mar 11, 2021 – 11.13am
US President Joe Biden will lead the first Quadrilateral Security Dialogue talks with the leaders of Australia, India, and Japan on March 12. Making the Quad work could be Biden’s most important task in Asia but doing so requires a specific agenda that builds on shared goals. And it’s not just about China – it’s about getting Asia right.
Biden faces a resurgent China, more confident than it was before the COVID-19 pandemic. That will make it harder to deal with a host of challenges in Asia, from maritime security to North Korea. In the face of such risks, the Biden administration is right to continue former US President Donald Trump’s move to reinvigorate the group.
The Quad can play an important role in countering Beijing’s “might makes right” foreign policy, but it has a bigger role than that. Never envisioned as a formal alliance, the group is more an aspiration that is grounded in common interests among the most important democracies in Asia. And it offers the best opportunity to lead a robust values-based partnership in the Indo-Pacific for those democracies and other like-minded nations.
The four Quad countries first acted collectively in response to the devastating 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean, providing disaster response aid in Indonesia in particular. The Japanese prime minister proposed a more formal Quad plan during his first term as premier in 2006. Yet the shortness of Shinzo Abe’s first stint in office as well as concern by Canberra and New Delhi over alienating China led to little action beyond a 2007 meeting on the sidelines of the Association of South-East Asian Nations Regional Forum (ASEAN) and a naval exercise in September that year.
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China’s treatment of Australian exporters fires up Biden team
Jacob Greber and Michael Smith
Mar 11, 2021 – 5.48pm
China has slammed this weekend’s historic Quad leaders meeting between the US, Japan, India and Australia, even as Beijing prepares for its first face-to-face encounter with the Biden administration’s top diplomats.
The China Daily, a Communist Party mouthpiece, in an editorial on Thursday accused Washington of creating fresh friction with Beijing by pushing ahead with the Quad leaders summit on Saturday.
“If US alliances such as the Quad have a Cold War mentality against China, then it will be very difficult indeed for the cooperative aspect of the China-US relationship to gain traction,” it said.
“While the Biden administration has promised what it considers a more co-operative approach than its predecessor, there is obviously a long way to go to put relations on a more constructive track.”
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‘Litany of complaints’: US expects ‘frank, difficult’ meeting with China
By Matthew Knott
March 12, 2021 — 8.19am
Washington: President Joe Biden’s top foreign affairs officials will raise a “long litany” of complaints about China’s behaviour - including economic pressure on US allies such as Australia - when they meet their Chinese counterparts for the first time next week in Alaska.
The meeting comes as top Democrats consider making a package of reforms aimed at helping the US “out-compete” China their top legislative priority after the passage of a massive COVID-19 economic relief bill this week.
Following a trip to Japan and India next week, US Secretary-of-State Antony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan will meet in Anchorage, Alaska, with China’s foreign minister Wang Yi and top diplomat Yang Jiechi.
“We will certainly not pull any punches in discussing our areas of disagreement,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said at a briefing on Friday (AEDT).
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Biden inherited a mess, but his first 50 days have been a big success
Joe Biden has already achieved a historic legislative accomplishment in his first two months as US President – and polls show most Americans are backing him.
John Haltiwanger
Mar 12, 2021 – 9.15am
US President Joe Biden was inaugurated two weeks after a violent insurrection at the Capitol and at the height of a pandemic that had already claimed more than 400,000 American lives and dealt serious damage to the economy by the time he was sworn in.
But 50 days into his presidency, Biden already has a big legislative achievement under his belt. The House on Wednesday passed his $US1.9 trillion ($2.4 trillion) COVID-19 stimulus package, which economists have predicted will provide a huge jolt to the economy. Biden signed the bill – one of the largest economic relief measures in US history – on Thursday.
The legislation includes $US1400 direct payments to eligible Americans, a boost to unemployment benefits, an expansion of the child tax credit, funding for vaccine distribution, and billions to help schools, colleges, and universities reopen.
Republicans overwhelmingly opposed the $US1.9 trillion stimulus, painting it as too costly. But Democrats pushed it through the Senate via a tactic known as budget reconciliation, which protected the bill from a filibuster and required only a simple majority for it to pass.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/foreign-affairs/all-risk-few-options-in-myanmar-20210312-p57a2z
All risk, few options in Myanmar
The coup in Myanmar will weaken ASEAN just when outsiders want it to look solid in an era of big-power competition.
Ben Bland Contributor
Mar 12, 2021 – 11.37am
It is rare for the US, Australia and China to agree on anything substantive these days. But all three governments believe that the Association of South-East Asian Nations should play a key role in trying to resolve the deteriorating political crisis in Myanmar.
South-east Asian leaders appreciate this diplomatic nod to their regional organisation. But now this disparate group of authoritarian regimes and flawed democracies must find a way to help stop the violence and promote reconciliation in Myanmar.
Otherwise, they risk Myanmar spiralling into a conflict that will spill over its borders and leave ASEAN weakened and divided at a time of intensifying great-power tensions.
At first glance, it is not obvious why last month’s coup in Myanmar – and the murderous crackdown by the junta – should trouble the rest of south-east Asia. While ASEAN pays lip service to democracy and human rights, authoritarian rule dominates in the region. And the organisation prizes consensus and non-interference in its member-states’ internal affairs over problem-solving.
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China passes new laws to stamp out democracy in Hong Kong
Michael Smith China correspondent
Mar 12, 2021 – 3.16pm
China has formalised its latest crackdown on Hong Kong”s pro-democracy movement by passing new laws that ensure only “patriots” can stand for office.
Beijing has increased the number of seats for pro-China candidates in both Hong Kong’s Parliament and the electoral body that decides the city’s leader.
As chief executive Carrie Lam defended the sweeping electoral changes, China’s critics decried the move as the final nail in the coffin for democracy in the city and a breach of Hong Kong’s mini-constitution.
“This will mark the death of Hong Kong’s democracy and freedom, and it is almost certain dissidents or the pan-democrats won’t be able to run in public elections forever more,” Ted Hui, a former pro-democracy member of Hong Kong’s Legislative Council who fled to Australia this week, told AFR Weekend.
“There are consequences for them running and being disqualified and possibly going to jail. No matter whether they are radical or moderate, they (candidates) won’t be tolerated any more.”
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Americans harden on China and they’re prepared to pay big
Jacob Greber AFR correspondent
Mar 12, 2021 – 5.10pm
Whether they voted for Joe Biden or Donald Trump, an overwhelming proportion of Americans claim they would pay as much as $US500 ($642) extra for a US-made mobile phone to decouple from China, according to a survey that points to a Cold-War-like hardening in attitudes.
The survey of US voters by The University of Sydney’s United States Studies Centre comes as the US embarks on an Indo-Pacific diplomatic offensive, as well as a historic virtual meeting of the so-called Quad leaders between Mr Biden, Scott Morrison, India’s Narendra Modi and Japan’s Yoshihide Suga.
Almost nine out of 10 of the 2200 surveyed, who were split evenly between the US and Australia, agree that working with allies to stand up to China is “very or fairly important”.
Some 69 per cent believe China’s influence on the US is negative – up from 61 per cent just before the November 2020 presidential election, and considerably above the 43 per cent recorded by the studies centre in mid-2019.
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China arms for war, as Quad fights back
The reality of conflict in the Pacific is moving ever closer. Those are not hysterical words. They are the implicit message in the words of Chinese President Xi Jinping this week.
· From Inquirer
March 12, 2021
Military conflict in the Pacific, which would certainly involve Australia, is becoming more likely.
Those are not hysterical words. They are the implicit message in the words of Chinese President Xi Jinping at the National People’s Congress in Beijing this week.
They are the explicit message of the US Indo-Pacific commander, the man who would have to fight such a conflict, Admiral Philip Davidson, in testimony to the US congress.
And they are the reality behind the remarkable convening of the first ever summit of the Quadrilateral Dialogue — involving Scott Morrison, Joe Biden, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga and India’s Narendra Modi.
Morrison’s personal diplomacy has been important in the elevation of the Quad Dialogue to head-of-government level. His government has co-ordinated with Tokyo to press the Biden administration to elevate the strategic grouping. And the bloody border clashes between China and India in Ladakh last year helped convince New Delhi.
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Submarines are being built to deter Taiwan invasion
· The Times
The US and its allies including Australia are in a race to build enough submarines to deter China from launching an invasion of Taiwan, which a senior American officer has forecast could happen by 2027.
An expanded submarine fleet lies at the heart of a new defensive strategy being adopted by America’s allies in the Asia-Pacific region as China’s navy, at 335 ships, has overtaken the 293 vessels in the US battle fleet.
Taiwan, the self-governing island that China regards as a renegade province to be reclaimed by force if necessary, has only four old submarines but is building another eight.
Australia will add, eventually, 12 more to the six it already has in service, though the first of the new ones is not expected to enter service until the 2030s.
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I look forward to comments on all this!
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David.
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