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In the US it is clear that Joe Biden is much more of a mover and shaker than previously thought with all sorts of things happening – a worryingly tensions with China escalating. I suspect this is the story of the decade.
In the UK vaccinations continue as the relationship with China goes from bad to worse.
In Australia men abusing women has become a quite seminal issue as the PM loses control of the national agenda and the rage within the women is just enhanced by continuing awful revelations. We too are in deep and worsening problems with China. An awful mess…..
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Major Issues.
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https://www.afr.com/markets/equity-markets/the-best-stocks-for-an-inflationary-world-20210315-p57asi
The best stocks for an inflationary world
It’s crucial fund managers keep an eye on the macroeconomic backdrop as well as busying themselves with company fundamentals, says Dan Bosscher.
Sarah Turner Reporter
Mar 22, 2021 – 12.00am
The reflation theme is real, says Perennial Value Management portfolio manager Dan Bosscher. The signs are all there, he says, and it’s just a matter of time before price hikes start showing up in the data.
With that, Bosscher waded into the hottest debate gripping financial markets – will central bankers move to clamp down on higher inflation if, or when, it shows up in the data?
Central bankers say no. Unlike in the past, they are not going to jump at the first sign of price rises. Instead, they say, they are looking forward to higher prices to get inflation back to target ranges.
US Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell couldn’t have been clearer after the FOMC meeting last week – the Fed is going to wait until it sees the data that shows inflation is sustainably above 2 per cent before considering adjusting policy.
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Bringing an end to the buy now, pay later lunacy
Karen Maley Columnist
Mar 22, 2021 – 12.00am
You might think a country that boasts a level of household debt among the highest in the developed world would not be anxious to encourage its citizens to add to their borrowings. But you’d be wrong.
Australian regulators have fallen over themselves to facilitate the exponential growth of the buy now, pay later (BNPL) sector, which allows consumers to buy goods and services by paying some of the price at the time of the transaction, and the rest in a series of instalments.
The sector, which features local operators such as Afterpay and Zip and global players such as Klarna, has ballooned over the past few years.
The Reserve Bank of Australia calculates that, based on the company reports for a number of the locally listed buy now, pay later players, “the value of BNPL transactions grew by around 55 per cent in 2019/20 and tripled over the previous two financial years.”
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https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/forward-guidance-risks-future-credibility-20210321-p57cl1
Forward guidance risks future credibility
The RBA’s assurance that interest rates will stay nailed to the floor until 2024 creates political and financial risks.
Warren Hogan Columnist
Mar 21, 2021 – 12.44pm
In the past week, we have seen the RBA’s policy tool of choice in full flight. No, there was no adjustment to the cash rate nor did the board announce a change to the QE program – it was forward guidance.
Forward guidance is the central bank providing information about the future path of interest rates in an attempt to increase the effectiveness of monetary policy when the cash rate is on the zero lower bound.
The objective is to convince everybody that rates will remain low and not be raised as the economy recovers. Interest rates will only move higher when the economy is at full employment with inflation within its target band.
The RBA governor has gone to great lengths to outline why he thinks inflation will remain low for an extended period. Wage growth is well below a level that will spur higher inflation. If inflation is to run at 2-to-3 per cent, then wages, as the largest cost component in the economy, must increase by at least 3 per cent each year.
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Why the Quad’s a big strategic step forward for Australia
It achieves Australia’s two key goals: a regional architecture that balances China’s rise while engaging the US more firmly in the Indo-Pacific.
Alexander Downer Columnist
Mar 21, 2021 – 12.31pm
Ever since I became the foreign minister in 1996, I’ve been convinced that the rise of China – while in many ways desirable – required a power balance in what we now call the Indo-Pacific region. Only then will that rise be peaceful and successful.
Let me explain what I mean. If China came to dominate the region and reduce other regional countries to nothing more than client states, that in time would create real tensions. These tensions could easily spill over into localised conflicts, or worse.
I thought – and still think – that the Indo-Pacific power balance requires two elements. First, there needs to be inclusive regional architecture. We have had APEC, of course, but it covers a huge geographic area and is limited to being a consensus-driven economic forum. It’s been an important driver of economic liberalisation throughout the Asia-Pacific region but it hasn’t made a major contribution to strategic or security issues.
That was why in the 1990s and early 2000s the region was looking for new architecture to bind it better together. I didn’t like Mahathir Mohamad’s idea of creating an East Asian Economic Caucus that would include the ASEAN countries and China, South Korea and Japan, but exclude Australia, New Zealand and India.
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Perception gap widening between bonds and central banks
Time will prove one or both camps to be wrong, the only difference being whether it is reputations or portfolios that are lost, says Ardea’s Tamar Hamlyn.
Tamar Hamlyn
Mar 22, 2021 – 12.00am
There’s nothing quite like a bracing rise in bond yields to sharpen the mind. The shift higher in bond yields this year has done exactly that, with economists and strategists scrambling to analyse the move.
Investors and asset owners, in turn, are now mapping out very carefully the paths that bond yields might take over coming months, while being thankful that other asset classes have held up well – at least so far.
Rising inflation expectations were portrayed as the early culprit for the move higher in yields, but later this switched to increasing real yields as growth expectations recovered.
Not helping matters was another bumper Australian employment release, beating expectations for the eighth month in a row and placing the post-pandemic recovery beyond doubt for many.
The US Federal Reserve’s tacit consent for higher bond yields is also a factor. The Fed has good economic reasons for maintaining policy stimulus for longer, as this should ensure a lasting recovery and allow for higher bond yields over time.
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AFP boss concerned about inquiry into who knew about Brittany Higgins case
By Anthony Galloway and Katina Curtis
March 22, 2021 — 11.13am
Australian Federal Police Commissioner Reece Kershaw says he is concerned an inquiry being undertaken by Australia’s top public servant into a rape allegation made by former Liberal staffer Brittany Higgins will hamper the police investigation into the matter.
Scott Morrison has asked his department head Philip Gaetjens to check on whether his office was alerted to an alleged rape after contradictory claims about when those close to the Prime Minister were alerted.
Asked in Senate estimates on Monday whether Mr Gaetjens should pause the investigation, the AFP boss said: “My view is that’s a matter for him... to my knowledge I don’t have access to that material so that is a matter for the secretary.”
Mr Kershaw’s evidence came at the same time that Senate President Scott Ryan refused to answer questions relating to Ms Higgins’ allegation on the grounds it could “complicate” police investigations and potential legal action.
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Is superannuation facing the same fate as the goose that laid the golden eggs?
Jennifer Duke
Economics correspondent
March 22, 2021 — 12.05am
The tale of the goose that laid the golden eggs is the best moral warning we have about greed, the importance of patience and why one shouldn’t be tempted by get-rich-quick schemes.
In what is one of the best known of the hundreds of Aesop’s Fables, a cottager and his wife own a goose that lays one golden egg. Rather than be happy with this miracle, the couple instead become fixated on the belief the goose must have gold inside of her. They kill the goose only to realise there is no gold and they have destroyed the source of their wealth.
Today, you’re most likely to see an image of a golden nest egg when reading about the superannuation industry. The image has become so synonymous with the industry that even the 600-page Retirement Income Review, released in late-2020, warns about the conservative impact this framing is having on retirees’ spending.
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https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/telstra-s-big-bang-moment-is-looming-20210322-p57cvj.html
Telstra’s ‘Big Bang’ moment is looming
Stephen Bartholomeusz
Senior business columnist
March 22, 2021 — 11.56am
Telstra’s plan to radically reshape itself in a restructuring that could eventually transform the telecommunications sector is on track.
Telstra said on Monday that the restructuring, which will eventually divide the existing group into four discrete units, is expected to be complete by December this year. Shareholder approval for the schemes of arrangement that will create the new structure will be sought at the annual meeting in October.
Telstra provided an outline of its plan to separate its assets and operations into three new entities last November when it said its existing infrastructure businesses would be divided into two separate entities - InfraCo Fixed and InfraCo Towers – while its retail operations and the spectrum and technology that support them would reside within ServeCo.
It’s now decided to add a fourth leg to the structure, with its international assets to be carved out into another new entity, Telstra International, over time. All four of the new entities will be owned by yet another new entity, with shareholders swapping their existing shares for scrip in a new holding company.
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Coalition staffer sacked after lewd sex act on female MP’s desk
Phillip Coorey and Andrew Tillett
Mar 22, 2021 – 7.01pm
A government adviser has been sacked and others could follow him out the door after revelations of a series of lewd acts inside federal Parliament by male Coalition staffers.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison ordered the dismissal of one staffer who was easily identifiable in a report by Channel 10 that featured an anonymous whistleblower revealing such behaviour as one staffer performing a “solo sex act” on the desk of a female MP.
Others could be sacked once identified and their roles ascertained.
As well, the whistleblower told of Coalition staffers procuring “rent boys” for government MPs, regular sex in Parliament’s meditation room, and male staffers swapping pictures and video of themselves performing various lewd acts.
“I received so many that I’ve become immune to it,” said the whistleblower.
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‘Rubbish and crap’: Scott Morrison says attitudes to women must change
By Katina Curtis
March 23, 2021 — 9.54am
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has welcomed the spotlight placed on the “rubbish and this crap” that women have put up with for their entire lives, after further revelations of lewd behaviour among coalition staffers.
“I’m shocked and I’m disgusted. It is shameful... I was completely stumped, as I have been on more than one occasion over the course of this last month,” he said.
“These events have triggered, right across this building and indeed right across the country, women who have put up this rubbish and this crap for their entire lives, as their mothers did, as their grandmothers did.”
Mr Morrison acknowledged that many people had not liked or appreciated his own personal responses to the allegations of sexual assault and harassment and the tens of thousands of women who rallied around the country in the March 4 Justice last week.
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https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/pm-s-mea-culpa-will-mean-little-without-action-20210323-p57das
PM’s mea culpa will mean little without action
The government cannot afford to have this issue still raging when Parliament returns in May for the budget.
Phillip Coorey Political editor
Mar 23, 2021 – 7.16pm
For four consecutive sitting weeks now, the government has been unable to extricate itself from the mire of rape allegations and, more recently, lewd and bizarre behaviour by its staffers.
Scott Morrison gave it a red hot go on Tuesday with an emotive press conference in which he acknowledged both the scale of the forces that were unleashed in mid-February, and how his government was slow off the mark to grasp it.
“These events have triggered, right across this building, and indeed right across the country, women who have put up with this rubbish and this crap for their entire lives, as their mothers did, as their grandmothers did,” he said.
“We have been talking about it in this place for a month, they have been living with it for their entire lives.″.
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Scott Morrison apologises after News Corp denies harassment complaint claim
By David Crowe
Updated March 23, 2021 — 11.52pmfirst published at 5.34pm
A shock claim about the harassment of a journalist in a women’s toilet has triggered a rebuke from News Corp Australia to Prime Minister Scott Morrison over his assertion the company was dealing with a human resources complaint over the matter.
News Corp executive chairman Michael Miller declared Mr Morrison’s statement to be “simply untrue” and said there was no such incident in a toilet and no complaint before the company.
Late on Tuesday night, Mr Morrison issued an apology in a post on Facebook.
“I deeply regret my insensitive response to a question from a News Ltd journalist by making an anonymous reference to an incident at News Ltd that has been rejected by the company,” he said.
“I accept their account. I was wrong to raise it, the emotion of the moment is no excuse.
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https://www.afr.com/wealth/investing/why-the-10-year-bond-rate-matters-20210322-p57d1e
Why the 10-year bond rate matters
Mark Draper Contributor
Mar 24, 2021 – 12.01am
The most important number right now for professional investors is the 10-year bond rate.
It is an important anchor point for investors as a “risk-free rate of return” that is used in valuation models to calculate the value of assets including shares, property, infrastructure and fixed interest investments.
In short, lower bond rates result in higher asset values and, by contrast, higher bond rates result in lower asset values.
Since 1994, investors have enjoyed the tailwind of falling bond rates. But the tide has turned since the last quarter of 2020, when Australian 10-year rates rose from about 0.7 per cent to around 1.7 per cent. That is a 140 per cent increase.
In valuation terms, Arvid Streimann, head of macro at fund manager Magellan Financial Group, says that a 1 per cent increase in the 10-year bond interest rate generally results in a 9 per cent decrease in the capital value of 10-year bonds and about 15 per cent for equities.
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https://www.afr.com/companies/financial-services/commissioner-hayne-s-lasting-legacy-20210324-p57dj7
Commissioner Hayne’s lasting legacy
There’s now nary a director on any board in the country who questions the concept of the “social licence to operate”. And that’s largely thanks to Commissioner Kenneth Hayne.
Karen Maley Columnist
Mar 24, 2021 – 6.23pm
It’s in the nature of news reporting that there will inevitably be a flurry of stories that commemorate the first anniversary of a major event, but that attention dwindles with each successive year.
And this process is inevitably hastened if a global pandemic occurs in the interim which allows the erstwhile villains – in this case, the country’s major banks – a chance to redeem their sullied reputations.
So it’s scarcely surprising that the second anniversary of the date when Commissioner Kenneth Hayne, AC, QC, handed over his final, fateful report into misconduct in the financial sector – February 1, 2019 – passed without much media fanfare.
It is, of course, true that much of the change in bankers’ attitudes had occurred even before Hayne penned his final report.
After long months spent watching their peers face merciless questioning over their shabby, unethical and often illegal conduct, even the most obtuse banker realised that the days of ancien regime – where arrogant bankers could happily thumb their nose at feeble regulators and flout the law with casual nonchalance – were over.
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After 10 years governing NSW, a tick for the Coalition as economic managers
Percy Allan
Public policy economist
March 25, 2021 — 5.00am
For an outfit criticised as having too many bankers and not enough economists in its ranks, the NSW Coalition government has presided over an economy that has done remarkably well over the past decade. And as for the limitations of state economic management, I’ll say this about the state economy: you’ll know it when it’s handled badly.
Most striking about the NSW economy is that it has held its share of the national economic cake, or GDP, at almost 32 per cent over the past 10 years while in the previous decade it had dropped from over 36 per cent. Also, it increased its output per person relative to that for all of Australia by 3 per cent whereas previously it had fallen by 9 per cent.
So, at the macro-level, the NSW economy matched Western Australia and outpaced all other states. Only the smaller territories of the NT and ACT did relatively better. NSW gained a competitive edge on several fronts.
The most important was the scale of social and economic infrastructure construction which helped Sydney and regional cities catch up with their strong population growth. Proceeds from selling government businesses (tagged “asset recycling”) and heavy borrowing in the past three years tripled capital spending on works from $7 billion in 2010/11 to more than $22 billion this year. Some projects, such as stadium demolitions, Randwick light rail and the Powerhouse museum relocation, were dubious, but the vast majority withstood cost-benefit analysis.
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Generation Z to feel heat of a ‘lower-return world’
By Clancy Yeates
March 23, 2021 — 10.00pm
It is staggering how sharply sharemarkets have recovered from their COVID-19 induced despair of this time last year. From a low point on March 23 last year, the benchmark S&P/ASX 200 share index has surged about 53 per cent, while in the United States, the S&P 500 is up a whopping 70 per cent.
However, despite the big gains, financial experts are keen to remind us that we are now living in a “low-return world” – a result of ultra-low levels of bond yields and interest rates.
This may have particularly bleak implications for younger investors, as explained in a recent Credit Suisse report, which projected that Generation Z – those born between 1997 and 2012 – would likely experience much lower returns than the generations before them.
Credit Suisse analysed decades of financial history, exploring the relationship between returns from shares and the yields on government bonds — the “risk-free” assets that sit at the heart of the financial system.
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Higgins complains to Prime Minister’s office about backgrounding
By Katina Curtis
March 25, 2021 — 1.07pm
Former Liberal staffer Brittany Higgins has formally complained to the Prime Minister’s chief of staff that colleagues in his office were backgrounding media with negative information about her partner.
Ms Higgins says in a letter to chief of staff John Kunkel on Thursday that “numerous journalists” had made her aware of the information being briefed in the days after she went public with allegations she was raped in a ministerial office in Parliament House in March 2019.
Ms Higgins’ allegations, made public in mid-February, sparked intense scrutiny of the culture within Parliament House that has morphed into widespread anger about the treatment of women and prompted many others to speak out about their own experiences of sexual harassment and assault. Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins is now leading a review into the culture of Parliamentary workplaces.
Labor has repeatedly questioned Prime Minister Scott Morrison in Parliament over whether his staff backgrounded against Ms Higgins or her partner, and what he has done to find out if it was true.
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JobKeeper morphs into JobLoser
Up to 150,000 jobs and 110,000 small businesses are at risk after the $90bn JobKeeper scheme ends on Sunday according to Treasury secretary Steven Kennedy, with Josh Frydenberg unveiling a $135m government life line to help support thousands of workers in the arts sector.
Revealing official estimates around likely job losses for the first time, Dr Kennedy said about 1.1 million workers would lose their wage subsidy of up to $1000 a fortnight when the scheme ends on 28 March. He said he remained confident the bulk of recipients would remain in jobs and the labour market recovery would not be derailed.
“The unemployment rate could rise a little in coming months before resuming (a) downward trajectory,” he said.
Treasury’s December forecasts predicted the jobless rate would peak at 7.5 per cent in the March quarter, but instead Dr Kennedy noted the unexpectedly rapid fall in unemployment to 5.8 per cent in February.
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Survival demands urgent action to bolster our defence
Scott Morrison has compared our time with the 1930s. The admiral in command of US forces in Asia says there is a strong chance China will invade Taiwan in the next six years. The US is committed to Taiwan’s security and would respond militarily. Politically, strategically and technically, it’s inconceivable Australia would not be involved.
Our communications facilities are critical to US submarine, missile detection and missile launch capabilities. They would be a prime target in serious military conflict. Every civilised leader is trying to prevent such conflict. The way to do this is soberly to make it clear to Beijing that invading Taiwan would come at enormous cost.
However, Australia should also pay attention to what the region might look like for us if the US lost such a conflict. This almost certainly would mean our dealing with a much diminished US military presence in our region.
Therefore, as a matter of the greatest urgency, Australia must beef up its independent military capabilities, both to support the US and prevent conflict, and to be able to look after ourselves whatever happens.
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The new cultural reality finally mugs the Parliament
Twenty years ago sex in the meditation room was a laughing matter. But the jokes aren’t funny after the tidal wave of allegations and revelations of mistreatment of women.
Phillip Coorey Political editor
Mar 25, 2021 – 8.00pm
The meditation room in Parliament House has long been synonymous with sex.
To be precise, ever since one particular day in mid-2000 when Tim Fischer, one of the few MPs to regularly use the room for its intended purpose, told Parliament he had walked in recently to discover a couple in flagrante delicto.
“I was literally filling in 10 minutes between a committee meeting and something on the Senate side,” he said.
“They were certainly not meditating.
“I had the good manners and gentlemanliness to walk away and leave them to their heterosexual activity.
“Clearly, the meditation room is a place to keep an eye on.″
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https://www.afr.com/world/africa/how-to-dislodge-a-200000-ton-ship-from-a-canal-wall-20210326-p57e9b
How to dislodge a 200,000-ton ship from a canal wall
Ann Koh and Alex Longley
Mar 26, 2021 – 9.20am
When you can’t shift a ship that’s stuck fast into the wall of a canal that’s vital to world trade, there’s only one thing to do: call the salvage guys.
The Ever Given container ship – a 200,000-ton behemoth – has been blocking what is probably the world’s most important waterway, the Suez Canal, since Tuesday morning.
The struggle to dislodge it is now turning the world’s attention to the work of SMIT Salvage, a legendary Dutch firm whose employees parachute themselves from one ship wreckage to the next, saving vessels often during violent storms. The company is synonymous with some of the most daring naval salvages, including lifting a sunken Russian nuclear submarine in 2001, and removing fuel from inside the Costa Concordia cruise ship after it ran aground in Italy in 2012.
SMIT, a unit of Royal Boskalis Westminster, is one of the companies appointed by Ever Given’s owner to help move the vessel. The first job would be to work out exactly how entrenched in the wall the ship was, said Boskalis spokesman Martijn Schuttevaer.
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Fix it now, Prime Minister, or it might all be over
Chief political correspondent
March 26, 2021 — 5.30am
The anger of Karen Andrews carried so much heat on Tuesday morning it could have fired up an entire government if there was a way to bottle it and share it around.
Andrews, the Minister for Industry and Science, was livid over the story of a Liberal adviser filming himself masturbating on the desk of a female MP, in another sordid insight into a problem that goes beyond Parliament House.
There seemed to be years of frustration in Andrews’ voice as she asked for heads to roll among Liberal staffers who shared the video. The blood seemed to drain from her face as she spoke to journalists in a Parliament House corridor, to the point where she really was white with anger.
Nobody asked Andrews to speak out that morning. The Prime Minister’s Office did not send her out to help the boss. She was just fed up. So she chose to speak to Radio National and a gaggle of journalists. Unlike many around her, Andrews was not raised in the hothouse of Parliament House. She never worked as a staffer. She is a mechanical engineer who worked in business before entering Parliament at 50. Perhaps her revulsion was stronger because she had a life outside politics.
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PM urged to act after Laming apologises for ‘shocking’ trolling behaviour
Updated March 26, 2021 — 9.30amfirst published March 25, 2021 — 11.19pm
Prime Minister Scott Morrison says one of his veteran MPs, Andrew Laming, is very clear about his expectation of behaviour after the Queensland MP was forced late on Thursday to apologise to two women for trolling them on Facebook.
Mr Morrison hauled the MP into his office on Thursday and demanded he stop using social media to post trolling comments and apologise to the pair both personally and publicly.
“I find it disgraceful and I called him into my office yesterday and told him to apologise and deal with it and he has,” the Prime Minister said on Friday morning. “He is very clear about my expectations.”
A Nine News investigation examines behaviour by federal Liberal MP Andrew Laming, which led to apologies in Parliament to two women.
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Chaos for us if China attacks Taiwan
The West is teaching Beijing that it is weak and can be pushed around. It has until now been extreme folly to underestimate the Americans.
March 21, 2021
The US-China rumble in Anchorage got off to a stark and brutal beginning. This was Cold War 2.0 laid out in all its bare essentials.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has always been a relatively hard-headed official but generally the soul of politeness and diplomatic form. But he insisted the assembled international media stay and listen to his early exchanges with his Chinese counterparts.
If China did not abide by international norms, he said, it would create “a far more violent world”.
The US, he said, had serious concerns about five main issues: China’s human rights abuses in Xinjiang, its suppression of democracy in Hong Kong, its aggression towards Taiwan, its continued cyber attacks and its economic coercion against US allies.
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China a vindictive and unreliable trading partner: ambassador Graham Fletcher
By Will Glasgow and Geoff Chambers
5:26AM March 26, 2021
Australia’s ambassador to Beijing says China is a “vindictive’’ and “unreliable’’ trading partner and Foreign Minister Marise Payne has described human rights violations in Xinjiang as “amongst the world’s most egregious’’, as the diplomatic rift between the countries deepened.
Graham Fletcher, Australia’s ambassador in Beijing, said the federal government did not know if China was able to “objectively reassess” its position after 10 months of trade tensions.
“So we’ve got a stand-off. Both sides are very determined … because it’s so public, it’s actually harder for either side to make any such adjustments,” Mr Fletcher told an online briefing of the Australia China Business Council from Beijing on Thursday.
“I’m not sure China realises the damage that is occurring both in Australia and internationally. It’s been exposed as quite unreliable as a trading partner and even vindictive.”
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https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/morrison-finds-himself-all-at-sea-again-20210326-p57e8q
Morrison finds himself all at sea – again
A year ago, Scott Morrison was behind in the polls and facing questions over his judgment and agenda. Here we go again.
Phillip Coorey Political editor
Mar 27, 2021 – 12.00am
This time last year, the nation was in free fall.
Two stimulus and assistance packages worth a combined $83 billion had been announced, the much-vaunted budget surplus had vanished, and the economy was rushing headlong towards recession.
JobKeeper, estimated then to be worth $130 billion, was two days away from being unveiled, huge queues were forming outside Centrelink offices as hundreds of thousands of workers were being laid off daily, and the eastern states were talking about going into something known as stage-three lockdown.
Experts were deeply pessimistic that a vaccine could be developed and the government, privately, was bracing for civil unrest amid fears people would fight each other in the streets for access to a hospital bed. Internationally, the G20 was bracing for global unrest, fearful that entire states would fail.
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Scott Morrison’s fantastical edifice of process is teetering
This week the government could no longer hide behind a screen of reviews, formalities and news management.
Laura Tingle Columnist
Mar 26, 2021 – 5.07pm
It was at some point shortly after 8am on Thursday that the full extent of the political chaos seemingly engulfing the Prime Minister’s mind became crystal clear.
“Can you categorically say,” asked Sabra Lane, the host of the ABC’s AM program, “that your office hasn’t been backgrounding against one of [Brittany Higgins’] loved ones?”
“No one,” Scott Morrison primly responded, “there has been no one in the gallery, nothing has been raised with my office from anyone in the gallery making any of those accusations, or any discomfort about anything that my office has done.
“People make allegations all the time – second, third hand. But there’s no one who has raised that with my chief of staff out of the gallery, no.”
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Scott Morrison wanted to show us the female side of his brain but then it all went horribly wrong
George Megalogenis
Columnist
March 27, 2021 — 5.30am
For a brief moment on Tuesday, at the bewildering press conference where he came to apologise to the women of Australia for not hearing them but wound up losing his temper, Scott Morrison seemed to grasp that he might personify the very problem we’ve all been talking about. That there was something in the way he conducts himself as Prime Minister – in his private dealings with female members of his government, and in his public dealings with the press – that has added fuel to the month-long debate about the treatment of women.
Morrison revealed that he had been “listening carefully” to female colleagues and friends “about the issues and the traumatic things that they have had to deal with”. One of the things he learnt was that men in power don’t see women as equals.
“I have heard that women are overlooked, talked over, by men, whether it is in boardrooms, meeting rooms, staff rooms, in media conferences, in cabinets, or anywhere else,” he said.
The key words here are “media conferences” and “cabinets”. There is no other person who his colleagues and friends could have been referring to. They may have sugar-coated their observations by assuring the PM that he didn’t mean to come across this way, and that his federal predecessors, as well as countless state premiers, were also prone to mansplaining. But Morrison is that guy he described, and it is a credit him that he could acknowledge it as part of Tuesday’s mea culpa.
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https://www.smh.com.au/national/how-parliament-s-sexual-revolution-lost-its-way-20210326-p57edy.html
How Parliament’s sexual revolution lost its way
By Chip Le Grand
March 27, 2021 — 5.30am
Six weeks after former Liberal staffer Brittany Higgins publicly alleged she had been raped inside Parliament and four weeks after historic rape allegations against Attorney-General Christian Porter emerged, a tearful Prime Minister Scott Morrison vowed to “get this house in order”.
What was it, after so much had been said and written and demanded about the treatment of women, that finally moved the PM?
Someone masturbated four years ago inside the office of the government’s former chief whip.
Nathan Winn, the man fired this week for wanking on his boss's desk, is not accused of using his position to pressure women for sex. He hasn’t raped or sexually assaulted anyone. There is no suggestion from anyone who worked with him that he is a misogynist or that he made Parliament a more difficult place for women.
He is a gay man who, due to the nature of the parliamentary duties he held off and on for more than a decade, worked long hours in the building and was well known among Liberal MPs. He was good at his job and generally well-liked.
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A death spiral Morrison struggles to arrest
Peter Hartcher
Political and international editor
March 27, 2021 — 5.00am
Scott Morrison has bungled the response to sexual assault against women at every turn. Now he’s about to bungle it again. Even voters who are unconcerned about the underlying problems of justice for women will be impressed by the sheer political incompetence on display day after day, week after week.
It took five weeks of unrelenting scandal, accumulating outrage and national dismay for the Prime Minister to realise he had a serious problem on his hands.
“I have heard,” he said during his tearful Tuesday testament. “We must put the politics aside … We must recognise this problem, acknowledge it, and we must fix it.”
But he hasn’t fixed it, he isn’t fixing it, and, based on what he’s saying about his intentions, he won’t fix it.
He is right that there can be no national solution to the national problem of justice for women if his fix is a political one. A national fix needs to be a bipartisan one.
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China extends tariffs on some Australian wines for five years
· NCA NewsWire
Australia’s wine war with China may be escalated to the World Trade Organisation after the country announced it would continue massive tariffs on some winemakers from Down Under.
On Friday, China’s Ministry of Commerce confirmed it would impose “anti-dumping measures on some Australian wine imports from March 28 for (another) five years”.
China has previously accused Australian wine producers of “dumping”, or lowering prices below the cost of manufacturing in a bid to increase market share in its gigantic economy.
Beijing has accused the federal government of subsidising Australian wines in order for them to be exported and sold cheaply in China.
Those suspicions prompted China to introduce a four-month tariff of up to 200 per cent as part of anti-dumping measures.
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Leaked audio: PM admits Coalition failings on sexism in address to staff
By James Massola
March 28, 2021 — 5.00am
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has admitted his government’s shortcomings in tackling sexism and bad behaviour head-on, in an extraordinary behind-closed-doors speech to 400 Coalition staff.
Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack said “sorry” three times in a five-minute address during the meeting, which was designed to reassure government staff after months of shocking claims and revelations about standards in Parliament.
The remarks, a recording of which has been obtained by The Sun-Herald and The Sunday Age, were delivered last Tuesday afternoon and highlight – as does the leaking of the audio – the degree to which morale has plummeted among Coalition staff. There was also consternation among some attendees that Minister for Women Marise Payne did not speak or attend.
Mr Morrison’s government has been hit by a series of shocking claims in the past six weeks, starting with former staffer Brittany Higgins’ rape allegation, the historical rape claim against Christian Porter (which the Attorney-General has vehemently denied) and claims of bullying and a toxic culture in Parliament House. In addition, it has been revealed that a Liberal staffer masturbated on a female MP’s desk.
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Greensill’s long and winding road to oblivion
Sorting out the global ruptures caused by the collapse of Greensill Capital will be anything but simple – and is likely to take years.
Jenny Wiggins, Simon Evans and Hans van Leeuwen
Mar 26, 2021 – 4.45pm
Investigations into alleged fraud. Insurers challenging claims. Battles over where the cash comes from to pay billions of dollars of debts.
Sorting out the global ruptures caused by the collapse of supply chain financier Greensill Capital will be anything but simple and is likely to take years, bringing a bonanza in legal fees to the myriad law firms set to become involved.
But the more immediate fallout is potentially immense. The 35,000 people who work at dozens of steel plants owned by Sanjeev Gupta’s GFG Alliance are watching nervously.
Gupta had been relying on about $6 billion of Greensill funding to run his empire, which includes the Whyalla steelworks in South Australia, and is frantically trying to fill the gap with alternative sources.
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Liberal Andrew Laming steps aside from parliamentary roles after fresh allegations emerge
By James Massola and Peter Fegan
Updated March 27, 2021 — 11.20pmfirst published at 8.07pm
Queensland MP Andrew Laming will step aside from all parliamentary roles after a Brisbane woman accused the Liberal National Party MP of taking a mobile phone photo of her bottom while her underwear was visible in 2019.
In a statement late on Saturday evening, Mr Laming said he was stepping aside to “complete both the counselling courses I committed to as well as additional clinical counselling, and [I] ask for privacy while that is completed”.
“I will have more to say on my future as soon as that process is completed. I would like to thank my local Redlands community for their understanding during this time and assure them my electorate staff remain available to them,” he said.
Mr Laming is the third Liberal MP to stand aside in the past six weeks over issues related to alleged sexual misconduct, as the Morrison government has seen its political agenda thrown in disarray by a range of serious allegations.
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Asian shoppers, greyer citizens and climate: three megatrends shaping NSW
Matt Wade
Senior economics writer
March 28, 2021 — 5.00am
On the last Sunday in March in 2011, NSW woke to a new government. After 15 years in opposition the Liberal-National Coalition had walked into office with a record-breaking swing. “Bloodbath. Barry O’Farrell leads Coalition to historic wipeout of Labor” was how The Sun-Herald’s front page summed it up that morning.
During the past few weeks there’s been a swag of analysis about the government’s performance over the past 10 years.
But the anniversary begs another question: what’s in store for the state in the coming decade and beyond?
As the health and economic crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic showed, governments must always be ready for the unexpected. But there are three megatrends certain to shape NSW in coming decades, no matter what surprises emerge along the way.
The first is economic change being driven by the growing wealth of Asian consumers. By the end of this decade two-thirds of the world’s middle class – those with discretionary income to spend – will reside in Asia, most of them in China and India. The focus is no longer on what the emerging economies of Asia produce for western countries such as Australia but what we can produce for them.
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Coronavirus And Impacts.
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A nation in the dock: Britain faces up to heavy cost of its pandemic failures
By Paul Nuki
March 21, 2021 — 3.54pm
London: The virus may yet have surprises in store for us, but there’s no doubt the inquisition into Britain’s pandemic response is under way.
Downing Street last week launched an operation of normalisation: a wide-ranging round of off-the-record briefings through which it is admitted that mistakes were made. The strategy, say observers, is to take the political sting out of the inevitable public inquiry even before it has started.
Johnson, we are told, would have acted “harder, earlier and faster” if he had his time over. Former senior adviser Dominic Cummings has promised to reveal the inside story of “why things went so catastrophically wrong”. This is politics, slippery and bombastic, but those who found themselves in Downing Street when the virus stuck are ultimately unlikely to figure large in the history books. They will be seen as bit part players dealt a duff hand and without the gumption to magic an ace. “Not as bad as Trump” will be the likely epitaph.
Instead, it will be the British state itself, together with the public health establishment, which finds itself in the dock when the public inquiry gets under way later this year or next. The really big questions will not revolve around who pulled what levers and when, but why we had so few levers to pull in the first place.
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https://www.afr.com/chanticleer/covid-s-worst-scars-may-take-years-to-heal-20210322-p57d08
COVID’s worst scars may take years to heal
A top Federal Reserve policymaker says parents and school kids might bear the brunt of the scarring from the pandemic.
Mar 22, 2021 – 4.01pm
For Tom Barkin, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, and a member of the committee that sets US interest rates, the Northern Hemisphere spring has brought optimism not seen for more than 12 months.
“I am hopeful that we are on the brink of completing the recovery,” he declared at the Credit Suisse Asian Investment Conference on Monday.
“Vaccines are rolling out and case rates and hospitalisations are falling. Excess savings and fiscal stimulus should help fund pent-up demand from consumers freed by vaccines and warmer weather.”
Spending in the United States (and other parts of the world) has come back faster than jobs have, with US employment still 6.2 per cent below the level of February 2020.
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Delays, confusion: Vaccine rollout needs less hype, more efficiency
Health economist and former health bureaucrat
March 23, 2021 — 5.30am
It is more than six months since Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced a deal to secure the AstraZeneca vaccine for Australia, and it is three months since the vaccination rollout started in other countries. But it is only one month since vaccinations started in Australia.
Australia’s delay was partly understandable – the virus has not been circulating in the community and so there was not the same level of urgency as in the many countries with high daily infection rates and death tolls.
But every day’s delay in Australia adds to risk – including risk from breaches of quarantine – and delays the return of the economy to normal.
Australia’s vaccine rollout has been slow and fraught. The target for the end of March is four million doses, yet only a tenth of that has been delivered. The end-of-October deadline for full rollout has been deferred by three months already. There have been well-publicised failures – overdosing of patients by a Commonwealth subcontractor and vaccines tipped down the sink.
‘Rubbish and crap’: Scott Morrison says attitudes to women must change
By Katina Curtis
March 23, 2021 — 9.54am
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has welcomed the spotlight placed on the “rubbish and this crap” that women have put up with for their entire lives, after further revelations of lewd behaviour among coalition staffers.
“I’m shocked and I’m disgusted. It is shameful... I was completely stumped, as I have been on more than one occasion over the course of this last month,” he said.
“These events have triggered, right across this building and indeed right across the country, women who have put up this rubbish and this crap for their entire lives, as their mothers did, as their grandmothers did.”
Mr Morrison acknowledged that many people had not liked or appreciated his own personal responses to the allegations of sexual assault and harassment and the tens of thousands of women who rallied around the country in the March 4 Justice last week.
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COVID vaccine rollout a rocky road for GPs left in the dark
By Todd Cameron
March 24, 2021 — 11.55pm
The World Health Organisation declared COVID-19 a pandemic on March 12, 2020. In a stunning feat of co-operative scientific effort, the first doses of a COVID-19 vaccine were delivered in the US and UK in early December 2020. Warp speed indeed.
Australia did so well in getting community transmission to zero or near zero in 2021, thanks to the efforts and sacrifice of our community. A special mention to Melburnians, of course.
Repeated leaks from hotel quarantine and more aggressive mutations of the virus have reminded us that the only path out of this pandemic is through immunisation. Australia was not under the same time pressures as most other countries to rein in the spread, thus we assumed more time meant better preparation when it came time to roll out the program.
The first stage, phase 1a, of Australia’s vaccine rollout began on February 21 using the Pfizer vaccine. This phase has been delivered via aged care facilities and hospitals, and has been a less complex operation than phase 1b, which involves general practices in the delivery.
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https://www.afr.com/world/europe/third-wave-breaks-over-battered-europe-20210326-p57e8b
Third wave breaks over battered Europe
Hans van Leeuwen Europe correspondent
Mar 26, 2021 – 8.21am
London | “There is little left we can do.” Estonia’s Prime Minister, Kaja Kallas, herself laid out with COVID-19, had barely a word of consolation for her country’s 1.3 million people as the pandemic’s third wave breaks.
Tight restrictions are in force in Estonia, yet the COVID-19 infection rate has risen 7 per cent in a week – and 10 per cent in the over-55s. As coronavirus infections hit a record high in the Baltic country, Ms Kallas braced her people for the possibility of an entire summer in lockdown.
Gradually, the penny is dropping across Europe. A few weeks ago, there was talk of how the Continent would revive in time for the summer holidays, and the economy was ready to start revving again.
Now, infections are climbing in 19 of the EU’s 27 countries, hospitalisations are increasing in 15, and deaths are on the upward march in eight. The British, South African and Brazilian variants have caught out a complacent Continent.
Despairing Europeans had dared to hope, but now the prospect of a return to normality has retreated over the horizon yet again.
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Coronavirus: PNG variant of Covid-19 confirmed by Queensland Health
7:09PM March 25, 2021
Queensland Health has confirmed the existence of a Papua New Guinea variant of COVID-19.
As the rapidly spreading outbreak of the virus this week reached villages a few kilometres from Australia’s northernmost islands, testing of COVID-positive arrivals from PNG has shown a new variant.
It is believed the new strain, the most commonly detected in COVID cases from PNG, is less contagious than the super-virulent UK strain that swept across Europe this year.
The new strain was confirmed through genomic testing conducted on people who had already arrived in Queensland and were in quarantine.
It comes as PNG reported a record number of daily COVID-19 cases, with 560 new positive tests lifting its total caseload to 4660.
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Climate Change.
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Wave of disasters sparks fears parts of Australia are becoming uninsurable
By Charlotte Grieve
March 27, 2021 — 5.00am
Tenterfield farmer Bronwyn Petrie says her insurance premiums have increased by around 20 per cent since last year and now she no longer insures parts of her farm because it’s too expensive.
Petrie’s family have owned a cattle and timber property for six generations near the north-east regional New South Wales town that has been hit with devastating fires, the pandemic and now, floods – all in the past 15 months.
The 60-year-old says poor regional fire management combined with the drought saw parts of the town burn that had never seen flames before. She lost farm infrastructure and fencing and now pays around $1800 per month for insurance, up from $1500 the previous year.
“You’ve got to pay that before you eat,” Petrie says. “You pay that with your phone, power, fuel and food before you do anything with your animals or other maintenance.”
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Royal Commissions And The Like.
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No entries in this section.
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National Budget Issues.
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https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/companies-shun-4b-jobmaker-force-changes-20210321-p57cmf
Companies shun $4b JobMaker, force changes
Matthew Cranston Economics correspondent
Mar 22, 2021 – 12.00am
Corporate leaders have ignored the Morrison government’s $4 billion JobMaker hiring scheme, forcing Treasurer Josh Frydenberg into making changes to eligibility criteria in the May budget that should give businesses multiple incentives to bring more young people into work.
While Mr Frydenberg confirmed changes to eligibility, he is defiant that the age cap for recipients, workers between 16 and 35, will remain.
The scheme has delivered only 521 new jobs in its first six weeks – but on Treasury’s projections that number should have been at least 10,000 in the program projected to deliver 450,000 jobs in 2½ years.
“While the JobMaker program is still in its early stages, given the take-up to date the government will examine its criteria and settings in the context of the budget,” Mr Frydenberg told The Australian Financial Review.
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There’s more to running the state than keeping a lid on wages and debt
Economics Editor
March 24, 2021 — 5.00am
You’d think that, when it came to assessing the performance of a government in power for 10 years, its handling of economic issues would be central. But, in truth, not as central as you’d think. Much that state governments say about their “state economy” is mere boosterism – or another word starting with b.
The present NSW Treasurer, Dominic Perrottet, is no slouch in telling us how well the state’s doing economically. Before the arrival of the coronacession changed his tune, he used to say we had the “fastest-growing state economy over the past five years” and were “leading the nation” in this or that.
He told us about the Coalition’s “strong financial management” which kept the government’s triple-A credit rating secure, had produced a string of budget surpluses and a “negative net debt”.
“The greatest threat to our future prosperity,” he told us, “would be a return to the budget deficits ... of the past”. Ask him about the present huge deficit and the return to positive net debt and he’ll tell you we’d be crazy not to be borrowing when interest rates are at rock bottom.
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Jobless can be absorbed ‘within months’ say economists
The economy is likely to absorb the end of the government’s flagship JobKeeper wage subsidy program with unemployment unlikely to spike, according to top economists.
Most analysts are predicting the rapid pace of Australia’s economic recovery means any additional unemployed as a result of the program end are likely to find a job “within months”.
The $90bn program will end on Sunday, an event federal opposition leader Anthony Albanese on Friday said will do “real damage” to the economy and workers benefiting from the program.
Treasury secretary Steven Kennedy earlier this week said that between 100,000 – 150,0000 jobs could be lost as JobKeeper winds up with 1.1 million workers still accessing the scheme, but economists broadly predict the actual figure will be in the lower bound or even under the government’s prediction.
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Health Issues.
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No entries this week.
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International Issues.
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https://www.afr.com/world/asia/myanmar-crisis-jeopardises-asean-dream-20210321-p57cm3
Myanmar crisis jeopardises ASEAN dream
A strategy to bear down on the junta must be developed urgently, with top priority given to securing a ceasefire.
Kavi Chongkittavorn
Mar 21, 2021 – 4.33pm
ASEAN has prided itself on being one of the world’s most successful regional organisations, with an impressive record in its handling of both economic and political affairs. But the Myanmar coup of February 1 has jeopardised the 10-member bloc’s dream of being one big, happy family of 655 million, with 55 million people now living under threat of gunfire and arrests throughout Myanmar.
From the 1990s to the 2010s, ASEAN protected the previous Myanmar junta and shielded the country from international isolation and sanctions. The bloc used to be confident that member countries could solve their own domestic problems as they arose.
Myanmar joined ASEAN in 1997, despite Western opposition to its long dictatorial rule. When reforms began in 2011, the world stood taken aback: few had expected that the military would voluntarily loosen its grip on power. ASEAN was vindicated, but not for long.
With Myanmar under military rule again, ASEAN faces the same dilemma of whether the whole ASEAN family should stake its reputation to support an errant member.
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Trump probably won’t make a political comeback in 2024, says expert
Tom Porter
Mar 22, 2021 – 8.44am
Key Points
- Professor Allan Lichtman has successfully predicted the outcome of presidential elections since 1984.
- He thinks Donald Trump is unlikely to run for office again in 2024 successfully.
- The former president is too mired in legal and financial problems, Mr Lichtman told the Miami Herald.
A historian renowned for his track record of successfully predicting the outcome of presidential elections has told the Miami Herald that he thinks Donald Trump is unlikely to make a successful bid for re-election in 2024.
Allan Lichtman, a professor of US political history at the American University, has devised a series of “13 keys”, or questions he uses to establish the likelihood of a candidate winning a presidential election, which he revealed in a recent book, Predicting the Next President.
He used the method to successfully project that Mr Trump would be the winner of the 2016 election, when most pundits and bookmakers were ruling out the reality TV star’s chances, and predicted Joe Biden’s win last year.
His track record of successfully predicting the result of presidential elections dates back to 1984.
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‘Genocide in plain sight’: Bipartisan motion calls out China’s treatment of Uighurs
By Anthony Galloway
March 22, 2021 — 8.55am
Australian Uighurs are urging all federal MPs to support a bipartisan motion in Parliament which criticises China for “serious and systematic breaches of human rights” in Xinjiang.
The government has allowed debate on the motion put forward by veteran Liberal MP Kevin Andrews and Labor MP Chris Hayes, which will mark the strongest ever condemnation by the Australian Parliament of the Chinese government’s treatment of Uighurs.
The motion, introduced on Monday, urges the United Nations to investigate Beijing for its re-education camps and calls on the Australian government to ensure the country is not profiteering off forced labour in Xinjiang.
The Chinese government has repeatedly denied accusations of human rights abuses, including genocide, in the far western province.
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Sea Tomahawk to counter threat of Chinese expansion
· The Times
The Tomahawk cruise missile, one of America’s most successful and combat-proven weapons, has been modified to take on an anti-shipping role to help counter the threat posed by the rapid expansion of China’s navy.
A new version of the missile, known as the Tomahawk Block V, is being fitted with a maritime target-seeking system to track and hit enemy warships from more than 1600km away.
The Tomahawk, previously a land-attack weapon fired from surface ships and submarines, can hit a warship steaming at 20-30 knots. It is viewed as a crucial part of the Pentagon’s strategy to build sufficient size and firepower to deter China from pursuing military domination in the Indo-Pacific region.
The Tomahawk Block V, a subsonic missile with a maximum speed of about 880km/h, has upgraded electronics and navigation to help evade enemy antimissile radar. The warhead will be modified to help penetrate warship armour and its range extended to 2400km.
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Biden’s diplomatic team debut is heartening for Australia
Canberra wants Beijing and Washington to manage their contest, so that the rest of us can get on with making our way in the world.
Michael Fullilove Contributor
Mar 22, 2021 – 4.51pm
Consider the current international scene. The President of the United States is a stable, decent and law-abiding person. His advisers are smart and competent. America’s allies feel assured and comfortable. Meanwhile, Russia and China look rattled.
What a difference a few months make.
The Biden administration is off to a confident and composed start. President Biden wants to approach the world, in the words of National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, from “a position of strength”. That means effective governance at home and adroit alliance management abroad.
You can’t be successful abroad if you’re not successful at home. Donald Trump’s shambolic mismanagement of COVID-19 and his inexcusable involvement in the storming of the US Capitol weakened America enormously. In two months, however, Biden has restored a good part of its strength.
He quickly assembled a cabinet and passed a $US1.9 trillion ($2.4 trillion) coronavirus stimulus bill. He turbo-charged the vaccination program: 100 million doses have now been administered.
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American overreach in Anchorage points to conflict with China
It’s fantasy to think that the US can still lay down the law as it attempted to in Alaska. Avoiding a Pacific war will take hard statecraft instead.
Hugh White Contributor
Mar 23, 2021 – 12.15pm
America’s new Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, seemed surprised by the tough talk from his Chinese counterparts when they met in Anchorage last week. He shouldn’t have been, because they were responding in an entirely predictable way to his words just moments before.
Blinken had pressed China hard on such sensitive issues as Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Taiwan, and asserted America’s right to reprimand China on these issues as the leader and guardian of “the rules-based international order”.
No Chinese official could fail to respond stridently to such statements. If Blinken didn’t know this, he has a lot to learn. If he did know it, then he was clearly happy to see this first high-level meeting between the Biden administration and the Chinese government descend into a slanging match that sounded like something out of the old Cold War.
That fits everything we have heard on China from President Joe Biden and his team since the election in November. They have painted China as America’s primary strategic rival and talked up their eagerness to confront and contain it. Biden himself called it “extreme competition”.
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Obama was supposed to change the world but it was left to his goofy VP
Creaky, old-fashioned Joe Biden has moved fast to embrace radical change while Barack Obama has become a cautionary tale.
Maureen Dowd
Mar 24, 2021 – 6.40am
Joe Biden never had a seat at the cool kids’ table at the Obama White House.
Heading into 2016 and 2020, if you told the hotshots from Obamaworld that you thought Biden would be a good candidate, they would uniformly offer a look of infinite patience, tolerance and condescension and say something like, “Well, I could understand how someone would think that.”
The message was unmistakable: Biden was not part of the Obama entourage. He was sort of a goofball and windbag. He was a member of an older, outmoded generation. In other words, uncool.
The West Wing attitude was that Biden should simply be grateful that the Great Obama had handed him a ticket to ride. Biden was viewed as a past-his-sell-by-date pol who needed the president’s guiding hand to keep Uncle Joe from making a fool of himself as vice-president.
In 2012, Biden faced “friendly fire” from the West Wing, as one outraged Biden family member put it to me back then. Obama aides were furious when Biden went on Meet the Press and made a glorious gaffe, blurting out support for gay marriage while his boss was still dragging his feet. They trashed him anonymously to reporters, froze him out of meetings and barred him from doing some national media.
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What Biden’s huge $US3trn plan means for markets
As the preliminary details of US President Joe Biden’s sweeping infrastructure and climate change plan emerge, investors fret that it could put further upward pressure on US bond yields.
Karen Maley Columnist
Mar 24, 2021 – 12.00am
Will US President Joe Biden’s audacious $US3 trillion ($3.9 trillion) infrastructure and training package be the straw that finally cruels the stunning rally in global equity markets?
That’s the fear overhanging financial markets as preliminary details emerge of the sweeping multi-part package aimed at revitalising the US economy and reducing economic inequality.
According to media reports, the first part of the package will consist of a massive infrastructure plan aimed at addressing climate change and enhancing the ability of US manufacturers to compete in emerging high-technology industries such as 5G telecommunications and electric vehicles.
Almost $US1 trillion is expected to be allocated to upgrading US infrastructure, by building roads, bridges, rail lines, ports, electric vehicle charging stations and improving the electric grid and other parts of the power sector.
The second part of the package focuses on boosting work-force skills and education, and includes measures such as free community college.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/hopes-and-fears-of-the-global-recovery-20210324-p57djz
Hopes and fears of the global recovery
The good news is growth is accelerating. The bad news is major economic, health and social risks remain.
Martin Wolf Columnist
Mar 24, 2021 – 10.46am
The recovery from the shock of the pandemic is here. It is driven, above all, by the arrival of vaccines, but also by an improvement in our ability to combine economic activity with social distancing, and huge fiscal and monetary support – especially from the US.
Yet it is vital not to forget the perils we still face and the lessons we must still learn. Nothing can teach the reality of global interdependence better than a pandemic. But is this what we learnt? In our fear, we have turned inwards more than outwards.
Nevertheless, the news on the recovery is good. The OECD’s recently issued interim Economic Outlook shows a clear improvement in growth prospects for 2021 and 2022. Global output is forecast to be 2.5 per cent higher in the last quarter of 2022 than was expected as recently as last December.
The single most important reason for this, after the miracle of the vaccines, is America’s $US1.9 trillion ($2.45 trillion) fiscal support package. This is forecast to raise US gross domestic product by 3.8 percentage points in its first full year. Its effects are also forecast to spill over to the rest of the world, raising eurozone GDP by 0.5 of a percentage point to take one example.
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Stricken Suez ship holds up 165 vessels and $12.5b in goods
Roland Oliphant, Louis Ashworth and James Cook
Mar 25, 2021 – 9.58am
London | Egyptian tug boats backed by an international team of salvage experts are racing against the tides to reopen the Suez Canal after one of the world’s largest container ships was blown off course and blocked the waterway.
The owner and insurers of the 224,000-tonne Ever Given face claims totalling millions of dollars even if the ship is refloated quickly, industry sources said.
The value of goods held up by the blockage will build up by $US9.5 billion ($12.5 billion) a day, according to Lloyd’s List.
“It is potentially the world’s biggest ever container ship disaster without a ship going bang,” one shipping lawyer, who declined to be named, said.
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Suez Canal blockage adds to global supply chain chaos
Senior business columnist
March 25, 2021 — 11.58am
The blockage of the Suez Canal after a mega ship ran aground and created an enormous backlog of shipping on one of the world’s key trade routes is the latest in a series of severe disruptions to already-chaotic global supply chains.
The 400 metre long, 224,000 tonne Ever Given – one of the world’s largest container carriers is wedged across a canal through which about 50 ships a day transport everything from oil and LNG, to consumer goods, grains, live animals and cement. About 12 per cent of the world’s trade passes through the 200 kilometres-long channel.
There’s already a mounting backlog of well over 100 ships either stuck in the canal or waiting to enter it.
It could take days, or weeks, to move the ship and clear the blockage, with shipping lines confronted with the dilemma of choosing between waiting it out or re-routing around the Cape of Good Hope and adding more than a week, significant extra costs and more congestion to already-congested container ports.
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Trump’s election lawyer throws him under the bus
Donald Trump’s former legal representative, Sidney Powell, is trying a bonkers defence: That her poll fraud claims were obviously not factual.
Noah Feldman
Mar 25, 2021 – 9.04am
Sidney Powell, one of former US president Donald Trump’s former lawyers, is being sued by Dominion Voting Systems for defamation. Her lawyers have entered a truly astonishing defence: that her statements alleging the Democratic Party stole the election using the company’s vote counting software can’t be defamation because no reasonable person would have believed them.
The defence is legally wrong. Her statements were clearly assertions of fact – and they were believed by many members of the public.
Nevertheless, it is a fascinating argument – an acknowledgement that any claim associated with Trump could be considered mere bluster, even when framed in factual terms. In short, Powell’s defence is to throw Trump under the bus. The basic idea: He is such a known liar that any assertion made on his behalf in an election can’t be taken as remotely plausible.
Under US Supreme Court precedent, for statements to count as defamation, they must be susceptible of being proven true or false. Opinion statements are protected by the First Amendment from being made subject to libel law. Political opinion is especially protected.
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How Lula da Silva has shaken Jair Bolsonaro’s grip on Brazil
With the former president now eligible to contest the 2022 election, the Brazilian left finally has cause for hope as President Bolsonaro scrambles to gain support.
Nick Burns
Mar 25, 2021 – 7.09am
The lion of the Brazilian left is back in the arena. On March 8, the political landscape in South America’s largest country was remade at a single stroke with the unexpected decision of the Supreme Court Justice Edson Fachin.
The corruption convictions against the former left-wing president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva – known as Lula – were annulled. The decision, which is pending the approval of the entire Supreme Court and perhaps a retrial of the relevant cases in federal court, has freed Lula after three years’ imprisonment and cleared the way for him to run again in the next set of presidential elections in 2022. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court handed Lula another legal victory, ruling he was not treated impartially in the corruption probes of 2017.
In a widely disseminated speech given after his release, Lula sought to position himself and his Workers’ Party (PT) as the leading force of opposition to the government, attacking its privatisation of state enterprises and its record on the vaccine roll-out.
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China’s ‘blatant coercion’ of Australia is a lesson for the world, says Antony Blinken
By Matthew Knott
March 25, 2021 — 8.10am
Washington: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has singled out China’s “blatant economic coercion of Australia” as an example of the urgent threats democratic nations around the world face from increasingly assertive authoritarian regimes.
In a major speech on America’s alliances, Blinken said the Biden administration will not force countries into an “us or them” choice with China. But he called for democratic nations to work closer together to counter the rising superpower’s “aggressive actions” and technological advancements.
Blinken, who clashed spectacularly with Chinese diplomats at a meeting in Alaska last week, said he would particularly like to see democratic nations join forces to develop an global alternative to China’s 5G technology.
“There’s no question that Beijing’s coercive behaviour threatens our collective security and prosperity, and that it is actively working to undercut the rules of the international system and the values we and our allies share,” Blinken said in a speech at the NATO headquarters in Brussels.
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Biden is anything but sleepy as he puts together radical $US3 trillion spending plan
Stephen Bartholomeusz
Senior business columnist
March 24, 2021 — 11.59am
“Sleepy Joe” may turn out to be one of the most energetic, reformist and progressive US presidents in modern history if his administration can follow up its $US1.9 trillion ($2.5 trillion) stimulus package with a $US3 trillion “infrastructure” spending program.
The administration is in the final stages of putting that plan together and it is apparent that it is far more than a plan to upgrade America’s degraded infrastructure.
Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell may have accurately described Joe Biden’s plans as a “Trojan Horse” for a raft of progressive policies, including massive tax increases.
It is clear that the program will include tax increases because Biden has said that, unlike the stimulus spending, the infrastructure program will be funded.
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Tightening its grip: China’s digital currency poses a threat to the West
By Robin Pagnamenta
March 25, 2021 — 10.30am
China’s iron grip over the nation’s internet has taken years to achieve and huge resources to enforce. By blocking virtually every foreign website and allowing Chinese consumers to have access only to information approved by Beijing, the Communist Party has built a powerful tool for control and surveillance.
Tens of billions of dollars have been funnelled into construction of its so-called Great Firewall, including the creation of a giant bureaucracy to monitor online activity, censor content and help push out a rose-tinted view of the government’s efforts at home and overseas.
In terms of its sheer scale and ambition, nothing else globally comes close. From Riyadh to Moscow and Tehran, other authoritarian regimes can only look on with envy at the almost hermetically-sealed information edifice Beijing has carefully constructed.
But China is only just getting started - and the implications for the rest of the world could be startling.
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Aerocars, spacebuses and corpsicles: the sci-fi leaps we’re still waiting for
David Astle
Crossword compiler, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age
March 25, 2021 — 12.07pm
Hey dude, where’s my aerocar? Science-fiction has been promising this flying sedan for 121 years, a cheeky means to leapfrog the gridlock, to slalom the clouds, yet still our commute is limited to road and rubber – no heli-taxi, no spacebus, no gyroferry on the horizon.
FC Smale, an American pulp writer, was the first to promise the aerocar. Back in 1900, his short story Abduction of Alexandra Seine included this tease: “The aerocar…was still outside the large bay window swinging gently to and fro at its moorings in the summer breeze.”
Since then, other writers have carjacked the term. From pulp to Popular Mechanics, from scripts to trilogies, aerocars have been zooming at our fingertips, a jet-like limo condemned to lay-by, the original unobtainium.
Teleporting is another false hope. For all the hype, Uber still can’t offer a molecular transfer. I’d even settle for a space elevator, what Robert Heinlein called a beanstalk in 1981: “A cable that goes up into the sky with nothing to hold it up smells too much of magic.” Too right. Magic and fairy dust. Ditto for time machines, devised by HG Wells in 1894. And don’t get me started on the TARDIS.
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North Korea test fires first ballistic missile of Biden administration
· AFP
North Korea fired two projectiles into the sea early on Thursday, the South’s military said, in what could be its first ballistic missile test during the administration of US President Joe Biden.
Thursday’s launch comes after Pyongyang fired two short-range, non-ballistic missiles in a westerly direction towards China at the weekend.
The nuclear-armed North has a long history of using weapons tests as provocations, in a carefully calibrated process to forward its objectives.
After a tumultuous relationship between leader Kim Jong-un and president Donald Trump, Pyongyang had been biding its time since the new administration took office, not even officially acknowledging its existence until last week.
Seoul’s joint chiefs of staff said in a statement on Thursday that the “unidentified projectiles” were launched into the Sea of Japan, known as the East Sea in Korea, from South Hamgyong province.
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https://www.afr.com/world/north-america/the-radical-unavailability-of-joe-biden-20210325-p57dwc
The radical unavailability of Trump’s successor
The President is calming US politics by not saying very much.
Janan Ganesh Contributor
Mar 25, 2021 – 10.37am
If Americans can hang on for a few months, the unmediated thoughts of former US president Donald Trump will be theirs to savour again. Florida’s grandest retiree is to build a social media platform to replace the ones that barred him for all-too-successful rabble-rousing in January.
If the aim here is to keep the Trump name in circulation, it can work. If the hope is to “redefine the game”, to quote his adviser, he has been beaten to it. Trump’s successor is the one who is overturning the conventions of political communication. And he is doing it through the opposite of round-the-clock verbosity.
On Thursday (Friday AEDT), Joe Biden will grant his first official news conference since taking office on January 20. Those who track these things say that no holder of the presidency in the past century has kept the fourth estate waiting as long. Nor has he yet made time to address a joint session of the 117th Congress.
Even if lockdown protocols are an excuse of sorts, the President is no less terse in the digital arena. When it comes to tweets, he is a one-a-day man, more or less, and sublimely tedious. (“It’s time to treat in-person learning like the essential service that it is”.)
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https://www.afr.com/policy/foreign-affairs/joe-biden-has-a-wildcard-with-china-20210325-p57e42
Joe Biden has a wildcard with China
Does the US President put security or the economy first in tackling Beijing. Or is there a potentially even bigger issue in play here?
Ian Bremmer Contributor
Mar 26, 2021 – 11.42am
From climate change to pandemic response to Middle East relations, US President Joe Biden has fundamentally different policy priorities than his predecessor.
But there is one policy point Biden and Donald Trump strongly agree on - China today is the only true geopolitical rival that can threaten the United States’ perch atop the global order.
This is a view shared throughout all levels of the Biden administration. To that end, the White House has commenced a “strategic review” of US-China relations, asking key officials to review US policies towards China and put forth proposals on where they need to go from here.
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The world we thought we knew is no longer assured
China is emerging as the dominant state and our freedom is at stake if we do not reclaim what we gave up in an emergency.
By STAN GRANT
March 26, 2021
I first saw something stirring on the ground; a mound of bird feathers suddenly rustled and the vague outline of a creature began to form. At first I wasn’t sure what I was seeing, but slowly it shook itself down and became more visible. What appeared was a medium-sized dog. Something, though, was not right – the animal was unsteady on its feet, and what was left of its fur was matted and dirty. I could see red raw skin and weeping sores. It seemed to fix me in its sight and began to move closer; my cameraman started filming.
As the dog drew nearer, I could see its eyes were bright red and swollen, pus oozing from an infection. It was the sickest and sorriest animal I had ever seen alive; in fact, it was barely clinging to life. The most humane thing to do would be to put it down. The dog didn’t make it all the way to me – it didn’t have the energy. After a few weak steps it slumped again to the ground.
This was my introduction to a Chinese animal market in Guangdong Province, in southern China. A virus had broken out from a market just like this one – a lethal virus unseen before that was striking down anyone who came in contact with it. The first symptoms were intense muscle pain, lethargy, fever, a cough and a sore throat. For every 10 people who came down with the virus, one would die. It spread rapidly throughout the population, shutting down some businesses and keeping people indoors. Those who ventured out usually wore masks to reduce the risk of infection. Public health warnings told people to avoid crowded spaces and reduce contact with others. Riding on an escalator or entering a lift might be enough to put your health or even life at risk.
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I look forward to comments on all this!
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David.
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