-----
In the US we saw a global climate summit and the continuing fall-out of the George Floyd verdict as well as continuing discussion of the Afghanistan withdrawal decision.
In the UK is seems political corruption is raising its ugly head and not being welcomed at all!
In OZ we have seen a more normal ANZAC day as
COVID is lessening as well as concerns around the looming Budget – with many
bids for funding being lobbed! Sadly tensions with China only appear to be rising...
Sadly India is in the midst of a COVID catastrophe and Indonesia has lost a submarine with all hands. Miserable news….
-----
Major Issues.
-----
International student enrolments hit record highs and staggering lows
Julie Hare Education editor
Apr 19, 2021 – 12.00am
The University of Queensland has enrolled a record number of international students in 2021, defying predictions that closed borders and negative messaging from the Chinese government would dampen demand.
Enrolments of overseas students surged past 2019’s record to reach 18,000 at the beginning of 2021, up from 14,900 in 2020 and 16,600 at the same time in 2019.
UQ has also seen a 50 per cent increase of Chinese students compared with 2020, with numbers rising from 7466 to 11,265. That is also well above 2019’s figure of 8995.
Vice-chancellor Deborah Terry said the record figures were a combination of new students and deferrals from 2020 enrolling for the 2021 academic year.
-----
Push to cut high price of financial advice: FSC
Aleks Vickovich and James Eyers
Apr 19, 2021 – 12.00am
Onerous, overly prescriptive financial advice laws have pushed median fees up 16 per cent in a year to $3256 and must be wound back to stop the vast majority of the population being priced out of the market, the peak body for Australia’s $3 trillion financial services sector says.
Almost a decade after Labor’s landmark Future of Financial Advice (FOFA) laws came into force, the Financial Services Council will release a plan on Monday to water down the consumer protection regime, which it argues is tripping up advisers in red tape. This has forced a quarter of advisers to exit the industry in two years and pushed up barriers to entry.
The proposals include scrapping “statements of advice”, which the lobby group says have become “unwieldy”, sometimes running to as long as 80 pages and, at a cost of $2400 to $3000 each, identified as the main driver of higher fees.
SOAs should be replaced with a “letter of advice”, a new document that would be “short, concise and consumer orientated”, the FSC said.
-----
Space companies making one giant leap for Australia
Andrew Tillett Political correspondent
Apr 18, 2021 – 5.25pm
As Australia steps up its involvement in the space race, a Sydney start-up is building the nation’s largest homemade spacecraft and plans to be part of a launch in less than 12 months.
Space Machines founder and chief executive Rajat Kulshrestha has dubbed Optimus-1 a “space taxi”, capable of rendezvousing with rockets to ferry satellites to their final orbit.
“We want to be like FedEx. You tell us where to go,” he said.
“We’re going to be proving the capability to be mobile in space, move around and provide responsiveness.
“There are a couple of companies overseas but given space is a very regulated domain, the availability of those services to Australia and Australian interests is very limited at the moment.”
-----
https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/the-key-to-avoiding-a-repeat-of-juukan-gorge-20210329-p57euo
The key to avoiding a repeat of Juukan Gorge
Money can’t reverse the destruction, but better resources for groups looking after traditional owners’ rights will go a long way to ensuring this doesn’t happen again.
Peter Ker Resources reporter
Apr 19, 2021 – 12.00am
There’s a saying around Canberra that every parliamentary inquiry casts a villain, a victim and a hero.
Auditions for the role of the villain were not required when a federal autopsy into Rio Tinto’s blasting of Indigenous heritage at Juukan Gorge began last year.
But by the time the inquiry had delivered its findings, there was a clear message that room for improvement existed among the biggest victims of the disaster.
The cottage industry that manages the legal and financial affairs of Australia’s native title custodians was found to be struggling to meet “basic legal and administrative obligations, let alone heritage protection”.
The advisory work of Yamatji Marlpa Aboriginal Corporation was openly questioned by the inquiry, after the Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura (PKKP) members said they did not understand the 2011 land-use agreement that Yamatji negotiated with Rio on the PKKP’s behalf.
-----
Cleaning up the financial advice industry has made it unaffordable
Regulations have helped clean up the shocking conflicts of interest that used to be rife in the financial advice industry but most Australians aren’t willing to pay thousands of dollars for financial advice. How to get the balance right?
Jennifer Hewett Columnist
Apr 19, 2021 – 8.12pm
Making it possible for ordinary Australians to get affordable, accessible and decent financial advice sounds like a sensible public policy goal. It’s proving very difficult to achieve in practice.
The Financial Services Council is the latest to point out some unintended consequences. Financial advisers are fleeing the industry because their business models can no longer offer the new standards and protections for consumers without charging their clients much more in fees. Most Australians can’t or don’t want to pay thousands of dollars in upfront fees, meaning they are missing out on getting any financial advice.
One obvious result is the number of financial advisers in Australia fell by nearly 3000 last year to just over 20,000. More significantly, that decline is expected to accelerate over the next few years, with only around 13,000 still likely to be in business by the end of 2023.
-----
https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/keating-lauds-decision-to-leave-super-alone-20210419-p57kf1
Keating lauds ‘decision’ to leave super alone
Phillip Coorey Political editor
Apr 20, 2021 – 12.01am
Paul Keating has welcomed speculation the Morrison government will not meddle with the superannuation guarantee, saying such a decision would not only be commendable from a retiree’s perspective, but would also help the nation reduce its current account deficit.
Mr Keating said if the pre-budget reports were true and compulsory super contributions were allowed to reach 12 per cent by 2025, as is already legislated, “then the government deserves commendation for a mature decision”.
He said it was now time the legislation was left alone for good so that people could plan their retirements safe in the knowledge the rules would not be changed on them, while super funds could also make longer-term decisions.
“Such a decision would amount to a
consensus between the parties on the
superannuation aggregates, underwriting a generational opportunity for superior
income adequacy in retirement,” he told The Australian Financial Review.
“Such an outcome would allow people to plan for retirement knowing they are able to rely on a much larger accumulation, while allowing funds to create longer-term instruments.
------
New polling does away with the two-party preferred results and gets behind the issues
Tory Maguire
National editor
April 20, 2021 — 8.00am
This week The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age restart publishing political research, with the launch of the Resolve Political Monitor (RPM).
You’ll notice a few differences from the way we used to conduct and report polling. Firstly, we do collect voting intention – emulating as closely as possible the real ballot paper ranking without an “undecided” option - but no longer report two-party preferred results.
Our readers told us in the past they did not appreciate the “horse race” nature of the way we reported the results of TPP questions and they wanted something deeper.
It wasn’t just that all the major polls, including the one published by the Herald and The Age, predicted a TPP win for Labor at the last election, although that was clearly a factor in our new approach. Years of leadership contenders using polling as a justification for knifing incumbent prime ministers led, understandably, to the perception the polling was distorting politics, not just examining it.
I have written before about how we needed to consider the impact this “horse race” approach had on our reporting during the last federal election.
-----
Australia’s Huawei ban ‘vindicated’ by Dutch spying reports: MPs
By Latika Bourke and Morgan Meaker
Updated April 19, 2021 — 6.33pmfirst published at 1.23pm
London: Australian and British MPs who pressured Boris Johnson’s government to ban Huawei from the UK’s 5G network say they have been fully vindicated following reports the Chinese vendor was able to eavesdrop on conversations taking place on a Dutch telephone network.
Huawei staff were able to eavesdrop on all mobile numbers on the KPN network, according to a 2010 internal company record obtained by Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant, including then prime minister Jan Peter Balkenende and Chinese dissidents living in the Netherlands.
Australia’s governments have long banned Huawei from both the broadband and 5G networks over spying and security concerns.
But Prime Minister Boris Johnson resisted pressure from his own MPs and the Trump administration to block the company, causing tension amongst the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing club, comprising Australia, United States, Britain, New Zealand and Canada.
-----
A ‘Britcoin’ could be a financial game-changer
Senior business columnist
April 20, 2021 — 11.59am
Britain’s announcement that it has established a taskforce to explore the potential of a central bank-issued digital currency underscores the extent to which China’s piloting of a digital yuan and the explosion of interest in bitcoin and cryptocurrencies is accelerating the efforts of the major central banks to consider whether they need to issue their own digital money.
On Monday the UK chancellor, Rishi Sunak, announced that the UK Treasury and Bank of England would evaluate the creation of a digital currency – a “Britcoin” – to protect sterling against cryptocurrencies and improve the UK payments system.
The Bank of England said no decision had yet been made on whether to issue a CBDC (central bank digital coin).
Previous discussion papers issued by the BoE have indicated, however, that if it were to issue a CBDC, it would be within a two-tier system, sitting alongside cash and bank deposits rather than displacing them.
It would not be a cryptocurrency nor would it necessarily use the distributed leger technology that underpins existing cryptocurrencies.
-----
Treasury to review financial advice quality and affordability
Aleks Vickovich Wealth editor
Apr 21, 2021 – 10.07am
The Morrison government will ask Treasury to review the quality and affordability of financial advice and associated problem of “under-insurance”, merging and expanding the scope of two Hayne royal commission recommendations.
Financial services minister Jane Hume has announced the government will commission a review of the financial advice sector in 2022, as recommended by royal commissioner Kenneth Hayne to assess whether ethics and standards in the troubled industry had improved three years after his scathing final report.
However, the government will depart from Hayne’s edict by expanding the scope of the inquiry to include a commercial focus on accessibility of financial advice services and handing the task to Treasury, rather than the corporate regulator.
“The Quality of Advice Review will be conducted under the one roof by Treasury, who can appropriately consider the full breadth of issues impacting on both quality and affordability of all forms of financial advice,” Senator Hume told the Financial Services Council Life Insurance Summit on Wednesday.
-----
Peter Singer and Journal of Controversial Ideas aim to cancel the cancellers
“Cancel culture” has become so prevalent and damaging to free speech one of Australia’s top philosophers has set up an academic journal in which contributors can publish under a fake name.
Peter Singer, a professor of philosophy at the elite Princeton University in the US, together with two other academics, will launch the Journal of Controversial Ideas later this month, to allow researchers to publish articles without risking their careers or suffering intimidation on social media.
“Clearly there has been an increase in various forms of behaviour that can intimidate people from writing on controversial topics,” Professor Singer told The Australian.
“We have noticed it in many fields, including in philosophical writing, and this isn’t a good thing. We’ve all had personal experiences with harassment,” he added, referring to his two co-founders Jeff McMahan and Francesa Minerva at the universities of Oxford and Ghent, respectively.
The journal, which will include renowned thinkers such as Lawrence Summers, Jonathan Haidt and Philip Tetlock on its editorial board, comes amid growing concern that universities — including in Australia — are increasingly dominated by and beholden to extreme and aggressive elements, typically from the left, who demand conformity.
-----
Yes, we can spend our way to recovery if we are careful
Australia has rightly lost its fear of big deficits. But we must walk back debt in lockstep with private sector expansion.
Stephen Grenville Contributor
Apr 21, 2021 – 12.39pm
COVID-19 transformed federal budget policy miraculously. Canberra had been rigorously on-course to satisfy the long-standing bipartisan objective of budget surplus. However, as soon as the enormity of the virus was apparent, a deficit of nearly 10 per cent of GDP – one of the highest in the world – was implemented, with universal approval.
Miraculous though this is, the next stage requires even greater policy dexterity: getting the budget back to normal. But the COVID-19 experience has upended what normality might be.
While there are still true believers in the intrinsic virtue of budget surpluses, the pandemic experience has changed many perceptions. It has shown just how successful fiscal expansion can be, with earlier gloomy forecasts quickly upgraded, thanks to this bold stimulus.
Fears that fiscal expenditure was intrinsically slow to respond have been falsified. Concerns that government debt would reach an unstable tipping point have lost credibility. Credit rating agencies are less intimidating after their pathetic performance in the 2008 crisis. Moralising about burdening future generations with debt seems over-egged, given the substantial public assets they will inherit.
-----
https://www.afr.com/policy/foreign-affairs/hard-moves-in-the-diplomatic-dance-20210421-p57l8v
Hard moves for Australia in the diplomatic dance
Geostrategic rivalry and tensions between Beijing and Washington are increasingly playing out in the Indo-Pacific, and this country is on the front line.
Jennifer Hewett Columnist
Apr 21, 2021 – 6.36pm
Xi Jinping may be willing to join Joe Biden’s virtual climate summit this week and talk up the need for global co-operation and economic integration. But any potential agreement on greater emissions reductions won’t translate into a broader reset of China’s tense relationship with the US and determination to assert its authority regionally.
That ensures Australia will continue to be on the front line, given China’s willingness to use economic coercion and trade retaliation to express its displeasure with the Morrison government. Yet Canberra is feeling far less isolated due to the Biden administration’s renewed attention on the region as well as growing unease about China’s ambitions among ASEAN nations.
In an address to the Asia Society on Wednesday, Frances Adamson, secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, said what would matter most in coming years is the ability of the region to find “the right balance” between competing powers in the face of unsettling trends.
The key difference with the advent of the Biden administration, she says, is its demonstration of “genuine focus on allies and partners” and its willingness to engage and consult with them.
-----
Victoria’s Belt and Road deal with China torn up
By Anthony Galloway and Eryk Bagshaw
Updated April 22, 2021 — 1.08amfirst published April 21, 2021 — 7.55pm
The Australian government has torn up Victoria’s controversial Belt and Road agreement with China, saying it falls foul of the country’s national interest, in a move that will further inflame tensions between Canberra and Beijing.
China’s foreign mission reacted swiftly on Wednesday night, warning the decision would put any recovery in the relationship between Australia and its largest trading partner in jeopardy.
“This is another unreasonable and provocative move taken by the Australian side against China,” said a spokesperson for the Chinese embassy.
“It further shows that the Australian government has no sincerity in improving China-Australia relations. It is bound to bring further damage to bilateral relations, and will only end up hurting itself.”
-----
Victoria’s Belt and Road deal ripped up, threats of retaliation from China
A decision to rip up Victoria’s Belt and Road deal has been met with threats of retaliation. But Defence Minister Peter Dutton has issued a warning.
Jade Gailberger
NCA NewsWire
April 23, 20218:36am
Australia will not “surrender” to threats of retaliation from China after Victoria’s Belt and Road deal was ripped up.
Defence Minister Peter Dutton issued the warning on Friday before pointing the finger at Premier Daniel Andrews for entering into an agreement that flew in the face of national interest.
“Dan Andrews did the wrong thing,” Mr Dutton told Today.
“We are not going to surrender our sovereignty.
-----
Australia leads the world confronting China, for better or worse
By Eryk Bagshaw
April 21, 2021 — 8.47pm
There will be those who dismiss the scrapping of Victoria’s Belt and Road agreement as merely the end of a memorandum of understanding – a deal that commits no funds and no projects while offering nothing but trouble for its two major players.
But nothing could be further from the truth. For China, the BRI represents its greatest global project. It’s a multi-trillion dollar investment vehicle through which Beijing projects its influence and prestige throughout the world.
“The East is rising and the West is declining,” China’s President Xi Jinping said in March. The BRI, which sweeps across Asia, the Pacific and into Europe, connecting trade, transport, digital networks and infrastructure, is the embodiment of that ethos.
Australia has already infuriated China by banning Huawei and implementing world-leading foreign interference legislation. On Wednesday it set a global precedent by tearing up an agreement similar to one that China has signed with dozens of other countries.
-----
Australia was blindsided when Five Eyes ally New Zealand backed away from China criticism
April 22, 2021 — 5.00am
Australian officials were blindsided when New Zealand’s Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta criticised efforts to pressure China through the 70-year-old spy alliance known as the “Five Eyes”.
“We would much rather prefer to look for multilateral opportunities to express our interests on a number of issues,” Mahuta said on Monday.
The language is carefully couched but it has real consequences. Our nearest neighbour did not inform Australia of its position before Mahuta this week voiced her government’s discomfort about the “expanding remit” of Five Eyes. While Wellington’s conspicuous absence from a few joint statements had caused unease in Canberra over the past year, Australian officials did not know about New Zealand’s official opposition to using the spy network to exert diplomatic pressure on Beijing.
While there have been other incidents over the past year demonstrating how strained trans-Tasman relations have become, this development is likely to cause diplomatic friction in the coming weeks.
-----
Creditors vote to liquidate Greensill
Creditors have voted to wind up Greensill’s Australian business after it attracted no buyers that would carry on Lex Greensill’s Bundaberg-headquartered empire, which collapsed into insolvency last month.
Creditors voted 23-0, with three abstentions, to liquidate Greensill at a meeting on Thursday morning.
Liquidation was the only option after no buyers came forward to take on the company, which has debts estimated at $4.9bn.
The latest report from administrators Grant Thornton, released overnight on Thursday, says Greensill Capital’s Australian staff should get the $2.2m in entitlements they are owed, but other creditors – including Japan’s SoftBank, owed $1.5bn – will have to wait for the UK administrators until untangle Greensill’s labyrinth financial affairs before they know whether they will receive any cash at all.
Grant Thornton said in the report, issued last week ahead of Thursday‘s meeting, that Greensill Capital has just $4 million in the bank and its four remaining staff are working out of temporary offices as administrators try to sell its sole remaining asset, fintech company Omni, valued at about $26m on Greensill’s books.
-----
https://www.afr.com/world/asia/the-night-china-s-secret-police-came-knocking-20210419-p57kei
The night China’s secret police came knocking
After a late-night visit from security officials, the race was on to get AFR Correspondent Michael Smith safely out of China. In a new book, he reveals the diplomatic manoeuvering that took place.
Michael Smith China correspondent
Apr 23, 2021 – 12.00am
It was well after midnight when China’s secret police knocked on my door. Their arrival on that muggy Shanghai night in September 2020 woke me from an uneasy sleep.
The previous day had started with a phone call from the Australian ambassador telling me to get out of the country “as soon as possible”. My bags were packed and I was booked on a China Eastern flight out of Shanghai to Sydney the next evening.
The heavy pounding on the front door, one flight down from my bedroom, reverberated through the wooden hallways and stairwells of the traditional laneway house which had been home to the The Australian Financial Review’s China correspondents for 16 years. Then someone found the doorbell, adding it to the wake-up chorus.
Accompanied by the pounding on the door, which was now being repeated every two seconds, it was clear my late-night visitor had urgent business. I padded downstairs barefoot in boxer shorts and a T-shirt, pausing only to grab my glasses from the bedside table. The fog of sleep meant I had not yet had time to process what was happening.
-----
https://www.afr.com/policy/health-and-education/anu-reports-160m-loss-from-pandemic-20210423-p57lpa
ANU reports $160m loss from pandemic
Julie Hare Education editor
Apr 23, 2021 – 11.00am
Australian National University has posted the second-largest deficit in the country’s higher education history, suffering a $162 million shortfall last year as it was battered by the pandemic and its own policies to downsize international student enrolments.
However, the deficit is $57 million better than predicted thanks to a huge insurance payout after the campus was badly damaged by flood in 2018 and a massive hail storm in January 2020.
ANU’s lower-than-expected deficit stemmed from higher research income and tuition fees from domestic students.
Professor Brian Schmidt, ANU’s vice-chancellor said no more redundancies were planned beyond the 460 announced last year.
Only Melbourne University has ever posted a higher deficit after it reported a $210 million loss in 2010 after its investment portfolio declined sharply in the global financial crisis.
-----
How Anzac got lost in a cult of veneration
Politicians who wrap themselves in the flag of a generation of fallen have separated Anzac from the realities of modern Australia and the context of why these wars were fought.
James Curran Columnist
Apr 23, 2021 – 12.25pm
Difficult though it may be to conceive of a time when Anzac did not dominate rituals of Australian nationhood, not long ago Anzac Day itself was on virtual life support.
Its dwindling observance in the 1960s and ’70s, largely on account of the unpopular Vietnam War, but also because of the dubious overtones of empire and Britishness, brought forth widespread predictions of the day’s likely demise.
Anzac’s extraordinary revival in the 1980s and ’90s, stretching to the recent World War I centenaries, is due largely to its shedding of anything to do with why Australians fought in those wars. “For king and country” became paeans to “mateship”.
Popular culture drove the resurgence. Peter Weir’s 1981 film Gallipoli had almost nothing to do with why the Anzacs were actually there – to kill Turks – fashioning instead a saga of British duplicity, of young Australians sacrificed on the altar of imperial – indeed Churchillian – folly. Britain became the foe.
-----
Qld explains why the PM is so cautious on climate
The Morrison government is not looking for policy positions to win seats in the other states, just to hold onto the ones it has got. The Coalition can’t afford to lose seats in Queensland or Western Australia.
Laura Tingle Columnist
Apr 23, 2021 – 2.32pm
What is it about the federal government and targets that seems to so often get it into trouble?
For the past couple of weeks, as the vaccine rollout has flailed around amid conflicting messages, supply problems, lack of transparency on availability and eroding confidence, the government has been defending its decision to dump its original vaccination targets.
Not only would we not “meet and beat” the rollout targets, we were being told we didn’t need the targets in the first place and people should just get over it.
When it comes to climate change the whole target (meeting and beating) story is a bit more complicated.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison and members of his cabinet such as Energy Minister Angus Taylor say people are too hung up on targets and that the important thing to focus on is what is being done to cut emissions.
-----
https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/we-must-pick-better-fights-with-china-than-this-20210422-p57lec
We must pick better fights with China than this
Hedging against China’s threats is not the same as prodding it for no obvious gain on moribund Belt and Road agreements
Apr 23, 2021 – 6.31pm
Australia has few illusions about China under President Xi Jinping. Since 2013 he has steadily restored one-man authoritarian rule to the country with a new high-tech twist, and become practised at using China’s vast markets as a geopolitical club for those who displease.
In The Last Correspondent, Michael Smith’s book, launched this week, on his forced exit last year as The Australian Financial Review’s Shanghai-based reporter, he describes what it’s like to encounter China’s police state at first hand. Australian exporters have been counting the cost of Beijing’s political weaponising of trade for a year now.
China follows only the rules and norms that suit it. At the Boao Forum this week, Mr Xi said that “any effort to build barriers and decouple works against economic and market principles”, yet China’s mercantilism has always decoupled its key markets and industry sectors from the rest of the world’s investors.
Mr Xi also promised at President Joe Biden’s Earth Day climate summit that China would “strictly control” new coal-fired power plant building, though it does the reverse when it wants to.
-----
https://www.afr.com/wealth/personal-finance/how-to-invest-in-a-toppy-market-20210420-p57kto
How to invest in a toppy market
Like other bourses, the ASX is rallying on an optimistic growth story. The one potential hiccup, say fund managers, is inflation.
Sarah Turner Reporter
Apr 24, 2021 – 12.00am
This month’s bullish prediction by the International Monetary Fund of the highest growth on record for 2021 confirmed what sharemarkets are already banking on – the global economy is firing up.
The IMF upgraded its 2021 global growth forecast to a record 6 per cent, and the fastest expansion since the IMF started measuring global growth in 1980.
Encouraging COVID-19 vaccine trials late last year opened the door to a supercharged recovery, as massive fiscal spending continues this year with America’s $US1.9 trillion ($2.4 trillion) aid package.
-----
The world is cooling to Morrison’s Australia
Political and international editor
April 24, 2021 — 5.00am
The host of the 40-nation climate summit, US President Joe Biden, opened the event by urging all the leaders to pledge to “overcome the existential crisis of our time”. It was “a moment of peril, but also a moment of extraordinary opportunities”, he said on Thursday night Australian time.
The next speaker was the secretary-general of the UN, Antonio Guterres. “We are on the verge of the abyss.”
After America’s four years of climate absenteeism under Donald Trump, several leaders expressed relief at Biden’s activism in leading the planet back from the edge. With the world on a trajectory to warm by 3 degrees, the collective effort has to bend it to hold warming to a maximum of 1.5.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel described the task ahead as “Herculean”.
Scott Morrison was excluded from the list of almost 80 leaders invited to speak at a climate summit hosted by Britain’s Boris Johnson in December last year. Organisers made clear that Australia lacked the climate action to earn a place.
-----
Cities might yet have their revenge on a Prime Minister who belittled them
Columnist
April 24, 2021 — 12.30am
There are three possible explanations for Scott Morrison’s calculated attack this week on hard working Australians who live in the inner city. One, he thinks that the next election will be a re-run of the last, with the nation irreconcilably divided between the regions and the capital cities. Two, he is uncomfortable with the diversity of his hometown Sydney and its cosmopolitan rival Melbourne, and couldn’t hide his feelings on the night. Or both of the above.
Either way, the statement read like something that the ABC’s comedian and broadcaster Sammy J would have scripted for the PM; the leader as an old school footy coach who sees democracy as a tribal sport. “We’re not going to achieve net zero [greenhouse gas emissions] in the cafes, dinner parties and wine bars of our inner cities,” Morrison told the Business Council of Australia annual dinner in Sydney on Monday.
It was a charmless, counterproductive thing for a prime minister to say. Surely some of the “pioneering entrepreneur[s], farmers and scientists” Morrison wants to drive Australia’s clean energy future have a soft spot for the inner city, having studied at sandstone universities.
Still, you had to respect his partisan honesty. We are 13 months into a global pandemic and Morrison is no longer pretending to look for common ground with people who will never vote for him. By pitting the inner city against the regions, Morrison hopes to reprise the miracle of 2019, when he secured re-election for the government with super majorities in Queensland and Western Australia, which offset shortfalls in every other state and territory. It is a double-or-nothing bet on the fault lines that have defined federal elections since 2010.
-----
Win some, lose some: PM’s snarky emissions about city voters could cost him vital seats
Chief political correspondent
April 23, 2021 — 5.30am
Only a politician with a surplus of snark would turn up to dinner with the nation’s business elite and tell them, over the best food and wine at a city hotel, that he had no time for people at inner-city wine bars.
But that is what Scott Morrison did this week when he tried to take both sides of the climate change debate in a two-step routine. First, promise to do something. Second, take a casual swipe at voters who want him to do something.
“We’re not going to achieve net zero in the cafes, dinner parties and wine bars of our inner cities,” he said. He wanted to sip the chardonnay, if you like, but pose for the cameras in the act of spitting it out.
It was good chardonnay, too, according to those at the Business Council of Australia dinner at the Fullerton Hotel in Sydney’s old post office on Martin Place. The wine list included Peter Lehmann Riesling and Shiraz, Burton McMahon Chardonnay and Giant Steps Pinot Noir. The menu had cured ocean trout, grain-fed beef and roasted snapper. The chicken was organic.
-----
The age of corporate activism imperils the democracy we hold dear
Columnist and communications adviser
April 24, 2021 — 5.30am
“We stand for democracy” announced a double-page ad in The New York Times last week, undersigned by the some of the United States’ best-known corporations and chief executives.
The statement was a protest against reforms to voter registration that passed in the US state of Georgia at the end of March and raises the question: in the age of corporate activism, does democracy as we celebrate it still have a chance?
The Georgia law reform, SB202 as it is known to its friends, was championed by Republican senators as a way of guarding against voter fraud. The legislation aims to ensure the integrity of the US electoral system by requiring a form of ID from voters.
Democrats object to the legislation on the grounds that it could lead to voter suppression – discouraging or making it impossible for disadvantaged and minority communities to vote by introducing hurdles to participation. In its original form, the bill included changes such as a ban on voting on Sunday – this would have put an end to the “souls to the polls” voting drive that black churches use to turn out their communities to cast a ballot, reducing participation among a key Democratic voting bloc. The ban was opposed in the Senate process and removed from the final bill. After a month of debate and modification in the chamber, the legislation was passed in the regular way that laws are made.
The corporations “standing for democracy” in the Times are objecting to a bill produced by elected officials through the established political process, and advocating for overriding the outcome using the power of corporate voices.
-----
Time to face down the wolf warriors
Beijing’s threats require a united, measured and calm response.
From Inquirer
April 24, 2021
After another tumultuous week in the Australia-China relationship, four conclusions are becoming increasingly clear. First, we are going to be on this rollercoaster ride for years. National positions are hardening. Neither Beijing nor Canberra will back down and the prospects for negotiation are zero given China’s “wolf warrior” mania.
Second, Scott Morrison and his senior ministers look increasingly confident in their stance to seek “a balance in favour of freedom”. The language used about relations with China is careful but is becoming clearer and more definitive. There is something to be said for knowing when your back is hard up against a strategic wall.
Third, the Chinese Communist Party’s rhetoric suggests a hint of panic is seeping in. Statements from the Chinese embassy in Canberra and from the foreign ministry in Beijing are as shrill as they are counter-productive, implicitly threatening those who engage in “the despicable tactic of smearing China on the Australian side”.
Beijing’s usual Australian support base has largely gone to ground and public opinion has swung significantly against the People’s Republic.
-----
We’ll all be rooned by culture of criticism
1:00AM April 24, 2021
Watching the collective hysteria because of delays in the national vaccine rollout reminds me that Australia really is the lucky country. So lucky, we will find anything to complain about. Which is not to undersell the problems attached to the rollout or the mistakes ministers have made over-promising and underdelivering.
Donald Horne asserted in his 1964 book The Lucky Country that “Australia is a lucky country, run mainly by second-rate people who share its luck”. But let’s get some perspective.
While Australian politicians seek to find better ways to deliver the vaccines in coming months, using better co-operation between the commonwealth and the states, other nations the world over are battling second, third and fourth waves of the virus.
These are nations that really are led by second-rate politicians, if judged against the job they have done managing COVID-19. While Australia opens a travel bubble with New Zealand — mutually enjoying our largely COVID-free lifestyles — countries such as India daily battle new cases in the hundreds of thousands and surging ever higher. More than three million people across the world have died from the virus and many more will die before it’s brought under control.
-----
The milkshake ad: since when do we have to be coy about sexual assault?
Jacqueline Maley
Columnist and senior journalist
April 25, 2021 — 5.30am
It may be time to redeploy the novelty giraffe. Healthy Harold – an Australian life education icon – used to be engaged to visit schools to talk to children about respectful relationships, bullying, drugs and alcohol.
Harold combined a long neck with a pleasant demeanour, and his popularity was such that no one (at least not at my school) ever thought to ask why a giraffe, exactly, was talking to us about such grave matters.
The basis of Harold’s expertise was unclear but his enthusiasm was evident, and that was enough.
A cursory internet search shows Harold’s popularity seems to have tailed off since his heyday in the 80s and 90s – back when “stranger danger” was a thing and few people thought to educate children and young people about the far greater danger of men they know.
The federal government’s “milkshake” ad – which purported to teach young people about sexual consent through the metaphor of a milkshake – made Harold look good. The ad was released last week to such great derision that it was quickly removed from the government website where it premiered. It was notable for not using the word consent, let alone sex or assault.
-----
Peter Dutton reveals how Australian troops will fight greater threats and uncertainty at home
· News Corp Australia Network
Exclusive: Australian Defence Forces will return to “core business” in defending Australia’s interests with uncertain times creating new home front threats, Defence Minister Peter Dutton has declared.
Speaking on the eve of Australia’s most revered day, Anzac Day, Mr Dutton thanked the more than 39,000 troops who served in the Middle East but said now the focus was on home.
He said the skill sets learned in the conflict zone over the past 20 years would serve the nation well as Australia faced multiple threats including the militarisation of bases and islands on our doorstep, notably by China, the level of foreign interference and cyber threats, and the “heavy influence” into our neighbour.
Mr Dutton was in Brisbane yesterday and had planned to speak with soldiers of the 3rd Battalion at Lavarack Barracks to commemorate the Battle of Kapyong during the Korean War, when Australian troops slowed Chinese forces advancing on Seoul.
-----
ASIC clamps down on two high-risk investment products
The Australian Securities & Investments Commission is often referred to as the country’s chief investment watchdog for good reason.
In its primary role of overseeing many aspects of Australia’s corporate and financial landscape, ASIC is known to bite if it believes investors are being put at risk.
That’s why, just before Easter, the regulator made separate announcements on two heavily marketed, high-risk investment products — contracts for difference (CFDs) and binary options.
CFDs and binary options are different types of investment products, but they both allow investors to speculate on future price movements.
According to ASIC, the other main thing these products have in common is that a large percentage of the retail investors who have used them in the past have ended up losing their money.
-----
Coronavirus And Impacts.
-----
Surging global cases of COVID-19 threaten Australia’s vaccine exit strategy
By Mike Toole and Brendan Crabb
April 19, 2021 — 5.00am
Two seemingly incompatible statistics were released on Friday. The number of COVID-19 vaccine doses administered worldwide reached 878 million and more than 832,000 new infections were reported.
That is more than double the number reported just two months ago and the second highest on record. In this third global surge, no region has been spared. Most European countries are experiencing massive third waves, far worse than previous waves. In Canada and the American midwest, cases are surging and Latin America is once again the global epicentre of the pandemic. Brazil is reporting an average of 71,000 cases and more than 3000 deaths a day. Even in Chile, where the vaccination rate is third highest in the world, new cases have doubled since late February.
In the Asia-Pacific region, India is spiralling out of control, reporting more than 250,000 cases daily. Pakistan, Bangladesh, the Philippines, Cambodia and Thailand also have second or third waves. Closer to home, Papua New Guinea and Timor-Leste are experiencing major surges.
So what’s going on? Firstly, it’s important to be clear that the portfolio of eight vaccines available to the world is excellent at preventing severe disease and – going by trends in Israel and Britain – infection. The problem is that the global rollout of vaccines is not equitable, nor is it keeping pace with accelerating rates of transmission drive by viral variants of concern, young people’s increased vulnerability, and complacency around suppression measures.
-----
$20 billion and counting: the economic hit from vaccination delays is a very big deal
By Steven Hamilton and Richard Holden
April 20, 2021 — 5.28am
The coronavirus vaccines are a modern miracle. Right now, in countries that have been ravaged by the virus, like Israel, Britain and the US, the vaccines are enabling a swift return to normal life. Social distancing can end. Travel can resume. The cloud of uncertainty can lift.
While our earlier performance led the world, the tables have turned rather quickly. Others are gaining protection from the virus even without social distancing, but our delayed rollout leaves us exposed. The government appears to have finally realised this – proposing a target of a million vaccinations a week in the last three months of the year. While many have claimed delays are no big deal, make no mistake: the costs are very real and very large.
There is the ever-present threat of an outbreak, and the renewed lockdowns and border closures that would inevitably bring. That threat continues to cast a pall over consumer and business confidence. If you think our recovery has been strong so far, imagine how much stronger it would be were we all immune to the virus.
But the key source of ongoing damage is our international border. Our first line of defence, the border has been pivotal to saving tens of thousands of lives and preventing even greater economic destruction. And the simple fact remains that our border cannot reopen safely until our population is largely vaccinated.
-----
An invasion of corporate zombies may still be on the horizon
Stephen Bartholomeusz
Senior business columnist
April 19, 2021 — 1.00pm
A year ago it appeared the global economy was about to fall into a pandemic-carved abyss. Now, according to the International Monetary Fund, it is experiencing its strongest growth on record.
That global growth – the IMF has forecast six per cent this year and 4.4 per cent in 2022 – means an economic catastrophe has been averted, or at least largely blunted hasn’t, however, come without a cost.
The IMF’s estimate of the fiscal responses of government to the pandemic is $US16 trillion ($20.7 trillion), a number that is still rising and which may even now be conservative. It has said the peak for global fiscal deficits last year was about 14 per cent of world GDP – a 10 percentage point increase on 2019.
The four major central banks – the US Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, the Bank of Japan and the Peoples’ Bank of China – have so far expanded their balance sheets by about $US10 trillion over the course of the pandemic.
-----
‘Long hauler’ study shows COVID-19 can kill months after infection
Jason Gale
Apr 23, 2021 – 7.04am
One of the largest studies of COVID-19 “long haulers” has proved what many doctors suspected: Not only are many patients suffering a raft of health problems six months after infection, they’re also at significantly greater risk of dying.
Survivors had a 59 per cent increased risk of dying within six months after contracting the SARS-CoV-2 virus, researchers reported on Thursday (Friday AEST) in the journal Nature.
“We’re starting to see a little bit beneath that iceberg, and it’s really alarming.”
— Ziyad Al-Aly
The excess mortality translates into about 8 extra deaths per 1000 patients -- worsening the pandemic’s hidden toll amid growing recognition that many patients require readmission, and some die, weeks after the viral infection abates.
“When we are looking at the acute phase, we’re only pretty much looking at the tip of the iceberg,” said Ziyad Al-Aly, chief of the research and development service at the St Louis VA Medical Centre in Missouri, who led the study. “We’re starting to see a little bit beneath that iceberg, and it’s really alarming.”
Al-Aly and his colleagues documented the cascade of debilitating effects that plague survivors months after diagnosis, from blood clots, stroke, diabetes and breathing difficulties to heart, liver and kidney damage, depression, anxiety and memory loss. They also found the risk of complications was far higher than with the flu.
-----
Infection control experts call for an end to hotel quarantine in Australia
April 23, 2021 — 7.45pm
The NSW government will impose a three-day lockdown on anyone arriving from Perth following a COVID-19 outbreak, with top infection control experts and doctors calling for an end to the hotel quarantine era.
A Melbourne man is suspected of acquiring coronavirus during his quarantine period while staying at Perth’s Mercure hotel, which had already been earmarked for closure as a quarantine facility because of its poor ventilation.
Western Australian Premier Mark McGowan said the Melbourne man, aged in his 50s, spent five days in Perth following his quarantine and health authorities were assuming he was infectious while there sparking a three-day lockdown of the city.
New Zealand has paused quarantine-free travel with Western Australia, with a flight due to leave Perth on Friday night cancelled.
-----
https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/step-up-and-help-mcgowan-slams-canberra-20210424-p57m2g
‘Step-up and help’: McGowan slams Canberra
Julie-anne Sprague and Brad Thompson
Apr 24, 2021 – 4.07pm
West Australian premier Mark McGowan has threatened to permanently halve the number of international arrivals into Perth unless the federal government opens up dedicated quarantine facilities and has called for an immediate ban on anyone from Australia travelling to India.
Perth and the Peel region are in the first day of a snap three-day lockdown after a returned traveller caught COVID-19 while in hotel quarantine and triggered the first cases of community transmission of the virus in more than 12 months.
There was one new case of community transmission on Saturday and the city remains on edge about the potential for more infections after it emerged a man who acquired the virus while in hotel quarantine had been moving freely around Perth for five days before boarding a flight with 257 passengers to return home to Melbourne.
A woman who the man in his 50s stayed with while in Perth tested positive on Friday. She lives in the Perth suburb of Kardinya and works at a dental clinic in Applecross.
-----
Climate Change.
-----
https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/pm-sets-sail-for-net-zero-emissions-by-2050-20210419-p57kcy
PM sets path to net zero emissions by 2050
Phillip Coorey Political editor
Apr 19, 2021 – 8.01pm
Scott Morrison has all but locked in a commitment to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 by starting to detail how it could be achieved and the benefits for those industries which led the way.
Speaking to the Business Council of Australia dinner in Sydney on Monday night ahead of participating in this week’s greenhouse summit being hosted by US President Joe Biden, Mr Morrison outlined the types of technological advances to enable net zero to be reached.
“We need to change our energy mix over the next 30 years on the road to net zero emissions,” he said.
“We will not achieve net zero in the cafes, dinner parties and wine bars of our inner cities.
“It will not be achieved by taxing our industries that provide livelihoods for millions of Australians off the planet, as our political opponents sort to do, when they were given the chance.
-----
Industry key to Australia’s emissions target, not ‘inner city dinner parties’: PM
By Shane Wright
April 19, 2021 — 8.00pm
Farming and manufacturing have been named as key sectors in the federal government’s push to achieve net zero carbon emissions, as Prime Minister Scott Morrison promises action on climate change ahead of a global summit that is likely to demand a 2050 deadline for the plan.
Mr Morrison said the “road to net zero” was already under way and would include energy and industry as well as agriculture and manufacturing.
But he put no timeframe on the ambition in a speech on Monday night to the Business Council of Australia, which supports the Paris agreement on climate change and achieving net zero by 2050.
Mr Morrison is expected to come under pressure from other leaders to commit to net zero by 2050 at a series of global meetings this year, starting with a gathering hosted by United States President Joe Biden this week, followed by a meeting of G7 nations in Cornwall in June and culminating in the United Nations climate summit in Glasgow in November.
-----
Morrison picks a climate change fight he didn’t need to have
The Prime Minister’s tone has been off-key for a range of audiences beyond inner-city cafes. He needs to read the national room better.
Jennifer Hewett Columnist
Apr 20, 2021 – 4.17pm
Scott Morrison may be right that Australia will not achieve net zero emissions “in the cafes, dinner parties and wine bars of our inner cities”. But why did he bother to pick that particular fight?
It’s another example of the Prime Minister letting his political style get in the way of the substance he wants to get across. Sometimes that style works well in ignoring the loudest political noise to appeal to his “quiet Australians” in marginal electorates. More recently, his tone has often seemed off-key for a range of audiences well beyond inner-city cafes.
It’s true Australia’s substantive record on reducing its emissions is much more impressive than many other countries despite it being such a resource-dependent economy, and that the Coalition gets little credit for this.
But politics is always about managing popular sentiment as well. Easy rhetorical lines that supposedly target inner-city greenies or Labor just provide the government’s many critics further ammunition to suggest it really doesn’t care about climate change. That charge is even more sensitive in the same week as the virtual summit of 40 world leaders called by US President Joe Biden to try to get greater commitments on emissions reduction by 2030.
-----
https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/two-leaders-two-speeches-same-target-audience-20210420-p57kop
Two leaders, two speeches, same target audience
Scott Morrison and Anthony Albanese are targeting the blue collar and other workers who need to be assured that tackling climate change will be good for them as well as the planet.
Phillip Coorey Political editor
Apr 20, 2021 – 3.26pm
In the space of 24 hours, Scott Morrison and Anthony Albanese both delivered speeches on climate change which, while differing in style, were aimed at precisely the same audience: the blue-collar and other workers, predominantly in the regions, who need to be assured tackling climate change will not only be good for the planet, but also for them personally as well.
Albanese got the ball rolling in October 2019, when he used his first so-called headland speech to broaden Labor’s pitch on climate change beyond the environment.
His heralding of the potential for renewable energy to create a new “manufacturing boom” was a direct pitch to those voters, including the coal communities in the Hunter and Queensland, who had spurned Labor in May that year.
They are the same voters Joel Fitzgibbon argues are the difference between Labor being in government – and therefore being able to effect change – or remaining in opposition.
Albanese gave examples at the time, including how the metallurgical coal industry would benefit from a low-carbon future because it is needed to produce steel for wind turbines.
-----
We lead way on climate change, says Scott Morrison
Jacob Greber AFR correspondent
Apr 20, 2021 – 7.46pm
Scott Morrison says Australia is already doing the “heavy lifting” to lower domestic emissions and will beat its 2015 Paris commitments at a canter – and its track record is better than the the United States, the host of this week’s climate summit.
Whether Joe Biden, his special climate envoy John Kerry, and the rest of the world’s newly-emboldened “climate club” of leaders pushing for greater action accept those assurances is another matter.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday revealed he has ordered America’s diplomats to challenge nations “whose action – or inaction – is setting the world back”.
“When countries continue to rely on coal for a significant amount of their energy, or invest in new coal factories, or allow for massive deforestation, they will hear from the United States and our partners about how harmful these actions are,” Mr Blinken said.
-----
Banks could dump climate-change exposed clients, regulator says
April 22, 2021 — 3.32pm
The banking regulator says lenders may need to limit their exposure to customers at most risk from climate change, or even consider dumping some of these clients, as it pushes the industry to sharpen its focus on climate risks.
The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) on Thursday for the first time released prudential guidance on climate change risks in a move to give banks, insurers and super funds more clarity on a fast-moving issue.
The document did not set hard rules on lending or investment, but said institutions were expected to assess their portfolios for economic sectors, or regions, with higher climate risks. This could include the physical risks of wild weather; damage to asset values caused by moves to slash emissions; or the threat of lawsuits against companies that failed to respond to climate risks.
APRA said it expected banks would generally work with clients most exposed to climate risks to improve the risk-profile of these customers.
-----
Royal Commissions And The Like.
-----
https://apo.org.au/node/311846
The next steps for aged care: forging a clear path after the Royal Commission
18 Apr 2021
Stephen Duckett, Anika Stobart, Hal Swerissen
Publisher Grattan Institute
Resources
The next steps for aged care: forging a clear path after the Royal Commission 6.88 MB
Description
Major reform of Australia’s aged care system must start now. The final report from the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety has landed, declaring that fundamental change is needed to uphold the rights of older Australians.
Community expectations are high after two years of horrific stories exposing systemic failings that have persisted for decades. The Royal Commission called out successive governments for lack of leadership and inadequate funding. It highlighted perverse service and funding models, with weak accountability and an over-stretched, under-trained, and underpaid workforce. These conditions combine to create a system where thousands of older Australians miss out on care and one in three receive substandard care. This is unacceptable and cannot go on.
But unfortunately, the Royal Commission did not provide a clear roadmap to a better system. The final report was littered with disagreements between the two Commissioners.
The Government’s response to the Royal Commission report has not been promising so far. The Government must lift its ambition, and seize this opportunity to introduce landmark social policy reform fit to stand next to Medicare and the National Disability Insurance Scheme. Aged care reform is more than a political challenge, it’s a moral imperative.
Publication Details
ISBN: 978-0-6450879-1-8
Copyright: Grattan Institute 2021
License type: CC BY-NC-SA
Access Rights Type: open
Issue: Grattan Institute Report No. 2021-03
Post date: 19 Apr 2021
-----
Scott Morrison announces royal commission on veteran suicides
By Angus Livingston
April 19, 2021 — 12.58pm
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has announced a royal commission on veteran suicides after a long-running campaign by former soldiers and pressure from his own MPs who voted in the Senate to establish it.
The announcement comes just days after Mr Morrison revealed Australia would remove its final 80 Defence personnel from Afghanistan in September, ending the nation’s longest war after 20 years in the country.
“Every single day the service of our veterans is something that is pressed on my mind,” Mr Morrison said on Monday. “There is a far greater cost that is borne beyond those deployments, and that is the mental toll taken on the veterans after they return. That cost is most significant when we see it in the death by suicide of our veterans.”
Mr Morrison will release draft terms of reference for the royal commission later on Monday. He said it will need the support of state and territory governments, and he will address that at national cabinet on Monday afternoon.
-----
National Budget Issues.
-----
Economic recovery drives $50bn boost to budget
The May 11 federal budget will reveal a $50bn improvement in the budget bottom line for this financial year, economists predict, as the Reserve Bank says the powerful post-COVID-19 rebound has already returned national GDP to its pre-pandemic level.
The extended boom in the iron ore price, which at above $US180 a tonne is well over triple the $US55 used in Treasury assumptions, and a labour market recovery that has defied all expectations will drive a dramatically smaller deficit than expected in the mid-year update only five months ago.
Commonwealth Bank head of Australian economics Gareth Aird said: “The fact that government finances are going to look a lot better than they thought does provide more wriggle room on the policy front.”
The Department of Finance has released numbers to February showing actual budget outcomes were $23bn better over the first eight months of the financial year, and analysts believe the eventual number will come in tens of billions better still.
-----
The IMF has offered some striking advice just in time for Josh Frydenberg’s budget
Matt Wade
Senior economics writer
April 21, 2021 — 5.30am
As Josh Frydenberg prepares next month’s federal budget, one of the world’s most important economic institutions has offered some striking advice on what his priority should be: fairness.
The International Monetary Fund, which oversees the stability of the global economy, has warned the COVID-19 crisis is “intensifying the vicious circle of inequality”.
In its latest guidance to governments on budget policy, titled A Fair Shot, the fund warns the pandemic has widened the gap between rich and poor in most nations and “could morph into a social and political seismic crack”.
That’s not the sort of language we’re used to hearing from the economic hard heads at the IMF.
I’m old enough to remember when the fund was denounced by protesters for imposing harsh budget austerity on nations in return for a financial lifeline. Activists accused the IMF of being part of an “unholy trinity” – alongside the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation – that promoted a brand of neoliberal capitalism that destroyed local communities and hurt the poor.
-----
The IMF has offered some striking advice just in time for Josh Frydenberg’s budget
Matt Wade
Senior economics writer
April 21, 2021 — 5.30am
As Josh Frydenberg prepares next month’s federal budget, one of the world’s most important economic institutions has offered some striking advice on what his priority should be: fairness.
The International Monetary Fund, which oversees the stability of the global economy, has warned the COVID-19 crisis is “intensifying the vicious circle of inequality”.
In its latest guidance to governments on budget policy, titled A Fair Shot, the fund warns the pandemic has widened the gap between rich and poor in most nations and “could morph into a social and political seismic crack”.
That’s not the sort of language we’re used to hearing from the economic hard heads at the IMF.
I’m old enough to remember when the fund was denounced by protesters for imposing harsh budget austerity on nations in return for a financial lifeline. Activists accused the IMF of being part of an “unholy trinity” – alongside the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation – that promoted a brand of neoliberal capitalism that destroyed local communities and hurt the poor.
-----
https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/retail-sales-smash-expectations-20210421-p57kzo
Retail sales smash March expectations
Matthew Cranston Economics correspondent
Apr 21, 2021 – 12.36pm
The highest consumer confidence in 11 years has helped drive a 1.4 per cent jump in seasonally adjusted retail sales, more than twice what some big bank economists forecast.
Preliminary data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics showed consumers spent $30.7 billion in March with big rises in Victoria, up 4 per cent, and Western Australia, up 5.5 per cent, as both states rebounded from COVID-19 lockdown restrictions in February.
Annual retail sales rose 2.3 per cent in March compared to March 2020 when COVID-19 restrictions were introduced, leading to a spike in sales in food retailing that month.
We think consumer confidence and record household savings will fuel demand, with increased spend on out-of-home experiences.
— Sam Koch, Wilson Asset Management
-----
Chinese trade tensions cost $5.5bn in lost exports
Trade tensions with China have cost Australian exporters $5.5bn in lost sales over the six months to January, despite early evidence that barley, rock lobster, coal and cotton producers had found alternative markets for $500m worth of their wares.
The Morrison government’s decision on Wednesday to veto an infrastructure deal between the Asian powerhouse and the Victorian state government has sparked threats of further trade retaliation from Chinese officials.
Research by Commonwealth Bank shows the imposition of bans and extra taxes on Australian goods into China have triggered $5.5bn in lost exports over the six months to January.
The fall in coal exports to China was equivalent to more than $5bn alone over that period, a drop of nearly 80 per cent.
-----
Morrison government to splash billions to fix ‘women problem’ in budget
By James Massola
April 25, 2021 — 5.00am
The federal government will unveil billions of dollars in new measures to ensure women’s economic security and personal safety in the May budget, after a devastating two months in which it has taken significant political damage for its handling issues related to women.
The Sun-Herald and The Sunday Age understand the budget will contain new policies to bolster superannuation savings, tackle domestic violence and make childcare more affordable.
The Morrison government was criticised by analysts, unions and Labor for not doing enough to support women in its 2020 budget.
Since then, former Liberal staffer Brittany Higgins has gone public with allegations she was raped in March 2019 in Parliament House, other instances of misbehaviour and bullying have been aired and the government has ordered a review of parliamentary culture.
-----
Health Issues.
-----
Medibank confirms David Koczkar as new CEO
Carrie LaFrenz Senior reporter
Apr 19, 2021 – 9.56am
ASX listed health insurer Medibank Private confirmed the appointment of David Koczkar as its new chief executive officer effective from May 17.
Medibank chairman Mike Wilkins confirmed that its chief customer officer will be elevated to the top job, as first reported on Friday in The Australian Financial Review.
Mr Wilkins said that the board was pleased to be able to appoint an executive of Mr Koczkar’s calibre and experience.
“As our chief customer officer David has been a champion for our customers and has played an instrumental role in the growth and re-positioning of Medibank,” he said.
-----
Pfizer, Moderna-style vaccines could soon be made in Melbourne
By Paul Sakkal and Melissa Cunningham
April 21, 2021 — 9.32am
Pfizer and Moderna-style vaccines could soon be made in Melbourne, as the Victorian government has committed $50 million towards establishing a facility to manufacture mRNA coronavirus vaccines domestically.
The mRNA coronavirus vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna have continually yielded strong results in clinical trials with growing evidence suggesting they will be much easier to reconfigure to cover new viral variants than more conventional inoculations such as AstraZeneca’s, which is being made in Australia by CSL.
Vaccination super sites to start priority immunisations in Victoria.
But a large-scale mRNA vaccine manufacturing plant would require huge financial investment and backing from the federal government to get off the ground. Some experts have previously estimated it would cost more than $100 million and take up to three years to build.
-----
How local biotech Aegros plans to shake up CSL’s home turf
Yolanda Redrup Reporter
Apr 21, 2021 – 10.24am
It’s been a 30-plus year journey for small plasma fractionation biotech Aegros, but the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting global plasma shortage have provided the catalysts it needed to gain commercial traction for its product.
The company, which raised $5 million in a round led by Barclay Pearce late last year, specialises in splitting plasma into proteins such as immunoglobulin and albumin, which are used to create therapies to treat a range of conditions including immune deficiencies.
The origins of the start-up date back to the 1980s when Dr Joel Margolis, a renowned haematology researcher, created a separation, or purification, process called tangential flow electrophoresis.
The foundations for Aegros were laid in the late 1990s when Dr Hari Nair joined Dr Margolis’ company, Gradipore, and applied this technique to plasma protein purification.
-----
Australia ‘will move’ to make mRNA vaccines, Prime Minister says
By Rachel Clun
April 21, 2021 — 5.43pm
Prime Minister Scott Morrison says Australia will move to start making mRNA vaccines locally as the Victorian government announced it was investing $50 million towards building a manufacturing facility.
But that manufacturing capability will not alter the nation’s vaccine supplies this year, the Prime Minister warned, as the country’s leaders prepare to reset the vaccination program in a national cabinet meeting on Thursday.
mRNA vaccines had not been used clinically until the pandemic. But the technology has shown huge promise with both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines proving highly effective and evidence so far suggests those vaccines are easier to alter to cover new variants than some other types of vaccines.
Mr Morrison said it was crucial for Australia to have the ability to make those types of vaccines, but not just for COVID-19. mRNA vaccines use genetic code from part of a virus to teach the body to recognise invasive organisms and fight them, whereas adenovirus vaccines use a genetically modified animal virus to do the same thing.
“We will move to do that,” he said. “mRNA vaccines will be important for vaccine development into the future, and Australia is going to be part of that, and my government’s going to be part of that. State governments will be part of that.”
-----
International Issues.
-----
How the West can escape China’s clutches
Matthew Parris
· The Times
Is any sane reader under any illusion about the People’s Republic of China? Assuming not, I shall not labour the point that the Chinese Communist Party is the greatest threat the free world faces in the century ahead.
You know that. You know the CCP is treating China’s Uighur minority with hideous inhumanity, brutalising Hong Kong and breaking its word to Britain, and trying to seize control of the South China Sea; that at home China is becoming a surveillance state of Orwellian proportions, and abroad stealing our intellectual property and tilting the playing field against our exports; that the CCP tries to infiltrate our universities and intimidates great Western commercial institutions such as HSBC into ashamed compliance.
You know, in short, that the CCP’s vision is of a rising China and a free world dwindling by degrees into impotent dependency. Thanks to so many passionately warning voices like those of former Hong Kong governor Chris Patten, experts in the field like the Royal United Services Institute’s Charles Parton, or brave television documentary-makers like Robin Barnwell, these truths should not be in doubt.
But what are we to do? The risk is not of ignorance but despair: a terrible danger we slip from “too soon” into “too late” without an intervening moment of deliberation. That moment should be now, before it is too late.
-----
Stagflation is a growing threat to the global economy
The problem is not just the rush of cheap money, it is the structural bottlenecks in global supply that are emerging in ageing populations and deglobalisation.
Nouriel Roubini Contributor
Apr 19, 2021 – 2.13pm
There is a growing debate about whether the inflation that will arise over the next few months will be temporary, reflecting the sharp bounceback from the COVID-19 recession, or persistent, reflecting both demand-pull and cost-push factors.
Several arguments point to a persistent secular increase in inflation, which has remained below most central banks’ annual 2 per cent target for more than a decade.
The first holds that the United States has enacted excessive fiscal stimulus for an economy that already appears to be recovering faster than expected.
The additional $US1.9 trillion ($2.4 trillion) of spending approved in March came on top of a $US3 trillion package in May 2020 and a $US900 billion stimulus in December, and a $US2 trillion infrastructure bill will soon follow. The US response to the crisis is thus an order of magnitude larger than its response to the 2008 global financial crisis.
-----
If push comes to shove with China, Biden meeting may be marked as the moment Tokyo chose sides
Political and international editor
April 20, 2021 — 5.30am
It took nearly three months for the new US President to hold his first summit with another nation’s leader in person. But when he finally found time and overcame the COVID constraints, which leader did he choose to host in the White House? Japan’s Prime Minister, Yoshihide Suga, who visited Washington at the weekend, Australian time. Why Japan? Because Japan is on the front line of the US confrontation with China, America’s greatest struggle of the 21st century.
Driving home the point, the relationship with Tokyo is “our most important alliance” in the words of a background briefing that a White House official gave the American press corps before the summit. Other capitals will have their noses out of joint, but the truth is that Biden cannot succeed in meeting China’s challenge without solid Japanese support.
Did he get it? The declaration issued by Biden and Suga on the weekend “could be the decisive act on Japan’s part to change from the path of improvement-oriented relations with China to competition-focused or even confrontation, depending on how China reacts”, says a leading Japanese analyst, Yoichi Kato. Because Biden asked Japan to step up its commitment to help defend Taiwan, the self-governing territory that China considers a “red line” priority, against any Chinese aggression. And Japan did.
The world is on alert over China’s moves against Taiwan. Beijing relentlessly has been increasing its military pressure on Taiwan’s airspace and maritime zones in recent months. Just last week Beijing flew 25 warplanes into Taiwan’s air defence identification zone, the biggest number since Taiwan started disclosing such reports last September. Taiwan scrambled its own air force to deter them.
-----
Charles in charge: Prince is now the Queen’s closest counsellor
For the first time in 70 years, the Queen does not have the Duke of Edinburgh to rely on for counsel. The responsibility now falls to Prince Charles, who despite a sometimes difficult relationship with his father, is ready for the job.
Simon Heffer
Apr 18, 2021 – 1.03pm
The simplicity, magnificence and grandeur of the funeral of the Duke of Edinburgh commanded a moment of British national unity and reflection possible only in an old country, with a long and serene history of monarchy.
Her Majesty, like so many of her subjects bereaved in this time of pandemic, had to stand alone, with only a few of her family around her.
With the Duke of Edinburgh’s obsequies over, the responsibility for supporting Her Majesty within what he called “The Firm” has passed to his eldest son, the Prince of Wales. The heir to the throne is now the Queen’s closest counsellor; he will be the first person she turns to when seeking a second opinion on matters of state.
Unprecedentedly in the 70th year of her reign, what Her Majesty does not know or understand about statecraft is not worth knowing. But she is thoughtful by nature and her reliance upon her late husband was based upon a sense of caution. Now, her son and heir must bear the responsibility of being her sounding board.
-----
Five Eyes running rogue on remit, says New Zealand
10:02AM April 20, 2021
New Zealand has told Australia and its other Five Eyes partners the US, Canada and the UK that it is “uncomfortable” about expanding the role of the grouping beyond intelligence sharing, as Wellington tries to avoid a breakdown in its relationship with China.
In an acknowledgment of New Zealand’s difficult strategic environment, Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta said the Ardern government was becoming “more alert to the values that differentiate” Wellington from Beijing, citing concerns on Hong Kong, the treatment of Uighurs in Xinjiang and cyber attacks.
“It’s not getting any easier to be a small country,” she said.
The address was delivered on Monday as Foreign Minister Marise Payne and International Development and the Pacific Minister Zed Seselja prepare to visit New Zealand for three days of talks starting on Wednesday.
Less than three months ago, New Zealand Trade Minister Damien O’Connor set off a Trans-Tasman storm — widely reported in China’s state-controlled media — after he said Australia “should follow us and show respect” to improve its relationship with President Xi Jinping’s administration.
-----
Joe Biden’s big blunder on Afghanistan will backfire
President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw US military forces from Afghanistan by September 11 is his first big blunder in office. This could cost the US dearly in future years and should give America’s friends and allies pause to ask if Biden has the grit for the tough road ahead.
The President’s announcement, laughably titled On the Way Forward in Afghanistan, was nothing more than an unseemly bolt for the exit, based, Biden tells us, on a conviction he formed in 2008 “that American military force could not create or sustain a durable Afghan government”.
In fact, that is precisely what American, Australian and other forces delivered to Afghanistan: a flawed but functioning democracy, keeping the Taliban at bay and preventing groups such as al-Qa’ida from using Afghanistan as a training base from which to attack the West.
Here Biden and Donald Trump are on a unity ticket, locked on to a bizarre sabotage mission, negotiating and now honouring a “diplomatic agreement” with the Taliban while deserting the Afghans who have fought with our forces during the past two decades.
-----
Former Minneapolis policeman Chauvin convicted of murder in Floyd case
Jonathan Allen
Apr 21, 2021 – 7.34am
Minneapolis | Former Minneapolis policeman Derek Chauvin was convicted on Tuesday (Wednesday AEST) of second-degree murder, third-degree murder and manslaughter in the deadly arrest of George Floyd, a milestone in the fraught racial history of the United States and a rebuke of law enforcement’s treatment of black Americans.
The 12-member jury found Chauvin, 45, criminally liable in Floyd’s death last year after considering three weeks of testimony from 45 witnesses, including bystanders, police officials and medical experts. Jurors began their deliberations on Monday.
Judge Peter Cahill read a guilty verdict on all three counts, including third-degree murder, as reached by the jury in the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin in the kneeling death of George Floyd last year.
In a confrontation captured on video, Chauvin, who is white, pushed his knee into the neck of Floyd, a 46-year-old black man in handcuffs, for more than nine minutes on May 25, 2020, as he and three fellow officers arrested Floyd, who was accused of using a fake $US20 bill to buy cigarettes at a grocery store.
-----
The Fed is on the hot seat as the Great Inflation looms
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
April 21, 2021 — 8.29am
We know what caused the Great Inflation of the Johnson-Nixon years: the US stoked a fiscal boom to pay for both the Vietnam War and the War on Poverty at the same time.
America continued to ramp up “guns and butter” spending after the output gap had been closed and the economy was hitting capacity constraints. Rather than raising taxes to pay for welfare expansion, it relied on loose money from the Federal Reserve. The Fed obliged.
Needless to say, it was less clear at the time that the price structure was becoming unhinged. Inflation was very low and apparently stable through the early and mid-1960s, even when unemployment dropped to 4 per cent and the labour market was as tight as a drum. Fed doves could not resist the temptation of running the economy hotter.
They kept playing down signs that inflationary pressures were building in the supply pipeline. They thought they could safely squeeze yet more job gains out of the ageing cycle. The Democrats then in charge of the White House and Congress lavished Fed doves with praise.
-----
Russia defends blocking foreign navy amid military buildup near Ukraine
By Vladimir Isachenkov
April 21, 2021 — 6.27am
Moscow: Russia insisted on Tuesday (Wednesday AEST) that it has the right to restrict foreign naval ships’ movement off Crimea, rejecting international criticism amid Western worries about a Russian troops buildup near Ukraine.
Ukraine last week protested the Russian move to close broad areas of the Black Sea near Crimea to foreign navy ships and state vessels until November.
The US also aired its concern on Monday, with State Department spokesman Ned Price saying “this represents yet another unprovoked escalation in Moscow’s ongoing campaign to undermine and destabilise Ukraine.”
Price noted that the move “is particularly troubling amid credible reports of Russian troop buildup in occupied Crimea and around Ukraine’s borders.”
The European Union also voiced concern about the troop buildup and the navigation restrictions.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov charged that the restrictions on foreign naval ships were in line with international agreements, arguing that it’s common practice to limit areas where military drills are held. He emphasised in remarks carried by Russian news agencies that the restrictions wouldn’t interfere with commercial shipping.
-----
‘An eye for an eye’: Missile strikes near Israeli nuclear reactor, prompting retaliation
By Josef Federman
April 22, 2021 — 12.32pm
Jerusalem: A missile launched from Syria was fired into southern Israel early on Thursday, setting off air raid sirens near the country’s top-secret nuclear reactor, the Israeli military said. In response, it said it attacked the missile launcher and air-defence systems in neighbouring Syria.
The incident, marking the most serious violence between Israel and Syria in years, pointed to likely Iranian involvement.
Iran, which maintains troops and proxies in Syria, has accused Israel of a series of attacks on its nuclear facilities, including sabotage at its Natanz nuclear facility on April 11, and vowed revenge. It also threatened to complicate US-led attempts to revive the international nuclear deal with Iran.
The Israeli army said it had deployed a missile-defence system but could not confirm if the incoming missile was intercepted, though it said there had been no damage. The air raid sirens were sounded in Abu Krinat, a village just a few kilometres from Dimona, the Negev desert town where Israel’s nuclear reactor is located.
-----
The dreaded ‘doom loop’ is back on the agenda
Senior business columnist
April 22, 2021 — 12.00pm
With the pandemic still raging across Europe there’s been a revival of interest and discussion about a concept borne out of the 2008 global financial crisis. Analysts, commentators and bank regulators are again talking about the dreaded “'doom loop'”.
The expression emerged out of the sovereign debt crisis that nearly engulfed southern Europe, most notably Greece, a decade ago when Greece came perilously close to defaulting on its sovereign debt and had to be bailed out by the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank, other Eurozone economies and, via a haircut on their loans, private investors. Its major banks had to be recapitalised by the state.
The eurozone debt crisis of 2010-11 was borne out of the excessive debt burdens of the southern European governments and the nexus between that indebtedness and their also-fragile banking systems, which were overloaded with bad debts and badly undercapitalised after the 2008 crisis.
-----
‘Debt trap’: Bipartisan support for tearing up Victoria’s Belt and Road agreement
By Anthony Galloway, Paul Sakkal and Hanna Mills Turbet
Updated April 22, 2021 — 11.58amfirst published at 9.43am
National security experts and federal Labor have welcomed the Morrison government’s decision to tear up Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews’s Belt and Road agreement with the Chinese government, but some have warned it now needs to manage the fallout including economic retaliation from Beijing.
Foreign Minister Marise Payne announced on Wednesday night the Belt and Road Initiative deal – which tied the state to Chinese President Xi Jinping’s signature initiative to bankroll infrastructure projects around the world – has been cancelled under the Commonwealth’s new foreign veto laws.
The two deals Victoria struck with the Chinese government under President Xi Jinping’s signature foreign policy have been ruled invalid under the nation’s new foreign veto laws on the basis that it contradicts Australia’s foreign policy of countering the infrastructure spending blitz around the world.
-----
Jacinda Ardern savaged as British Parliament declares treatment of Uighurs ‘genocide’
By Latika Bourke
April 23, 2021 — 6.39am
London: New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has been savaged for sucking up to China and turning her back on the Five Eyes alliance during a historic debate in which British MPs unanimously declared that China is carrying out genocide and crimes against humanity.
The vote on the motion addressing Beijing’s repression of the Uighurs in Xinjiang province was carried unanimously, making it the first time in the Commons’ history that MPs have passed a genocide motion without dissent.
During the debate, Australia was praised for its actions in standing up to China, despite the massive cost to the trading relationship, estimated to be worth $20 billion, as Beijing has blocked lobster, wine, barley and some coal imports since Canberra asked for an inquiry into the origins of coronavirus.
But MPs voiced concern about the New Zealand government’s recent comments cautioning against the Five Eyes expanding its remit beyond intelligence sharing - remarks that blindsided Australia but were immediately endorsed by the Chinese.
-----
Russia orders end to huge military drills near Ukraine
AFP
· April 23, 2021
Russia's defence minister on Friday ordered an end to military drills near Ukraine involving tens of thousands of troops and dozens of warships that had exacerbated tensions with the West.
The West has repeatedly called on Putin to pull back troops, and on Thursday the United States said it would wait for Moscow to follow up on its announcement of an end to the military drills near Ukraine.
-----
Belt and Road Initiative termination just icing on Xi Jinping’s cake
Mission accomplished. The now-nullified Belt and Road Initiative memorandum of agreement had achieved its core goal merely by being signed by Victorian Premier Dan Andrews in 2018.
Its termination by the federal government adds icing to that cake.
Beijing is using it vigorously to adduce further evidence for its argument that Canberra is being irrationally mean to the People’s Republic of China. It makes ample use of such events to double down on its rhetorical attacks and commercial coercion.
It will persist with this strategy despite failing to shift either Australian government policies or popular concerns about the PRC.
-----
Australia to help Indonesia find lost submarine; oxygen to run out in hours
Chandni Vasandani
The search for a missing Indonesian navy submarine has become a desperate race against time with the sub’s oxygen supply due to run out by 3am on Saturday.
The 44-year-old German-built KRI Nanggala-402 vessel is feared to have sunk to the bottom of a deep sea trench off Bali early on Wednesday with 53 people on board.
Indonesian navy spokesman Julius Widjojono said the Nangalla, a 1395 tonnes diesel-electric attack submarine, may have suffered an electrical failure and lost control as it submerged around 3.46am on Wednesday (5.46am AEST) during a torpedo drill 37km north of Bali.
While the vessel had 72 hours’ worth of oxygen on board — enough to sustain the 49 crew members, commander and three gunners until early on Saturday — there are fears it has sunk too deep to be rescued and is now at a depth beyond its capacity. If so it will be the first ever major submarine disaster in the Southeast Asian archipelago.
-----
Reading the Xi leaves: what’s next for the Chinese President
If Xi Jinping had followed the rules, he would be stepping down next year. The longer he stays in office without an anointed successor, the greater the risk of a power struggle.
Richard McGregor Columnist
Apr 23, 2021 – 12.58pm
Such is Xi Jinping’s political dominance in China – one dissident called his rule a kind of “exquisite totalitarianism” – that any notion he might one day step down barely registers these days.
Xi appears to have an iron grip on the ruling Chinese Communist Party, the military and the security services. State and private business empires have learnt the hard way not to oppose his edicts. His diplomats style themselves as “wolf warriors”, aggressively prosecuting foreign policy.
However, Xi’s drive for power has far-reaching consequences, not just for China, but given the country’s economic and geopolitical weight and reach, the world too.
In early 2018, without public notice, Xi abruptly removed de facto term limits on the most senior position of power, the head of the Communist Party, and thus far has refused to nominate his successor.
-----
Anger, denial and grief: rich Americans and Biden’s tax plans
Devon Pendleton, Max Abelson and Suzanne Woolley
Apr 24, 2021 – 5.18am
Charles Myers was sitting in a first-class seat on a flight from New York to Dallas when his phone started blowing up on Thursday. News had just broken that the wealthiest Americans could soon face a tax rate as high as 43.4 per cent on gains from their investments.
The chairman of Signum Global Advisors wasn’t thrilled.
“Raising capital gains taxes hurts the capital markets,” he said in a text message. “Better to raise the personal top marginal rate and estate tax. Leave capital gains and dividends alone.”
Myers has raised funds for Joe Biden, and wasn’t shocked by the White House’s plan because it was part of the president’s campaign. But the donor doesn’t think that 43.4 per cent rate will make it into final legislation.
As the plane descended, he added: “Over-taxing success is un-American.”
-----
US and China are pricing in very different futures
By Tom Stevenson
April 23, 2021 — 6.32am
High rates of Chinese growth have raised eyebrows in the past, but the problem with last week’s first quarter GDP numbers was simple arithmetic. When your starting point is the biggest drop in economic output since records began, the comparison a year later is almost bound to look spectacular.
Boosting China’s economy by a record-breaking 18.3 per cent in the three months to March was an impressive performance – evidence of the country being first in and first out of the pandemic. But the number is a one-off curiosity for data nerds, rather than an indication of what lies ahead for the rest of the year. As we heard at the recent national congress, China’s ambition is to grow at a high but sustainable level of 6 per cent.
As ever, the forward-looking stock market reaction is the best guide to what’s really going on. On Friday, it was a shrug. The CSI 300 index of leading shares in Shanghai and Shenzhen barely moved on the news. When you consider that this benchmark has fallen by 15 per cent since February, the lacklustre response showed that no one is getting over-excited by China’s growth prospects.
Investors look through the headlines to what is coming down the track – and in China’s case, expectations are considerably less feverish than they are on either side of the Atlantic. Here, we are still luxuriating in the belief that successful vaccine rollouts, reopening economies and a torrent of fiscal and monetary stimulus will sweep us towards the sunlit uplands.
-----
India’s giant second wave is a disaster for it and the world
April 14th was a big day in India. Hindus and Sikhs gathered to mark the new year. Many Muslims celebrated the first day of Ramadan at late-night feasts with friends and family. In Haridwar, a temple town that this year hosts the Kumbh Mela, an intermittent Hindu festival that is the world’s biggest religious gathering, between 1m and 3m people shoved and jostled to take a ritual dip in the Ganges. And across the country, the number of people testing positive for COVID-19 for the first time surpassed 200,000 in a single day. It has continued to surge since, reaching 315,000 just one week later—the highest daily figure in any country at any point during the pandemic. Deaths, too, are beginning to soar, and suspicions abound that the grisly official toll is itself a massive underestimate. Makeshift pyres are being constructed on pavements outside crematoriums to deal with the influx of bodies.
This horrifying second wave is a catastrophe not only for India but for the world. Allowing the virus to circulate unchecked increases the risk that dangerous new strains will emerge. One worrying variant first detected in India, called the “double mutant”, has already been found in several other countries, including America and Britain. Even as scientists labour to understand how big a threat it poses, more variants are appearing.
A more immediate consequence of India’s second wave for the rest of the world is a disruption to vaccine supplies. India had hoped to be the world’s pharmacy. But with case numbers exploding the government has restricted exports of vaccines. In the first half of April India shipped just 1.2m doses abroad, compared with 64m in the three prior months. The Serum Institute of India, a private company that manufactures the AstraZeneca vaccine, has defaulted on commitments to Britain, the European Union and covax, a scheme to supply more shots worldwide. African countries that had been counting on India to provide them with vaccines are looking on in dismay.
-----
https://www.afr.com/world/asia/debris-found-from-missing-submarine-no-sign-of-crew-20210424-p57m3e
Debris found from missing submarine, no sign of crew
Emma Connors South-east Asia correspondent
Apr 24, 2021 – 11.09pm
Singapore/Jakarta | The Indonesian Navy believes the submarine that has been silent since Wednesday morning is severely damaged after debris was found in the search area in waters north of Bali.
The Navy had earlier estimated the KRI Nanggala would have run out of oxygen by 3am this morning local time (6am AEST). The status of the submarine has changed from missing to sunk.
The debris found included a cooling pipe, a torn prayer mat and a bottle of lubricant used on the submarine’s periscope, said Navy Chief of Staff Admiral Yudo Margono who showed the objects at a press conference live-streamed from Bali on Saturday afternoon.
Admiral Yudo said the condition of the 53 men on board the 44-year-old submarine is unknown. However, sonar suggests the vessel has sunk 850 metres, a depth much greater than the submarine could withstand for an extended time.
-----
I look forward to comments on all this!
-----
David.
No comments:
Post a Comment