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The dual catastrophes in India and Brazil are clearly the biggest issue for the week and probably the month. Talk about seeing into the ‘Gates of Hell’!
In the US the pandemic appears to be lessening while we see Pres. Biden doing what he can to assist the US recovery. The US economy appears to be in a major recovery phase and seems to be on the way back.
In the UK as the vaccinations go forward we see restrictions lifting and the economy and mood rising.
In Australia we all await the Budget next
week with the so-called ‘pre-Budget leaks’ coming thick and fast at the Liberal
Government totally changes direction from trying to reduce ‘debt and deficit’.
What an amazing change after 50 years! How much of this will be wasted? The #myHealthRecord spend is a waste for sure!
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Major Issues.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/taiwan-conflict-should-not-be-discounted-dutton-20210425-p57m5q
Taiwan conflict should not be discounted: Dutton
Matthew Cranston Economics correspondent
Apr 25, 2021 – 11.32am
Defence Minister Peter Dutton has given a measured warning that conflict between China and Taiwan cannot be discounted and Australia would look into the appropriateness of arrangements such as the Chinese ownership of the Port of Darwin.
The Australian Financial Review reported earlier this month that the Morrison government had sharply escalated its internal preparations for potential military action in the Taiwan Strait.
Asked whether the prospects of a “battle over Taiwan” were growing and could happen “quite soon”, Mr Dutton told the ABC’s Insiders: “I don’t think it should be discounted.”
“I think China has been very clear about the reunification. If you look at any of the rhetoric that’s coming out of China particularly in recent weeks and months in response to different suggestions that have been made, they’ve been very clear about that goal.”
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A war over Taiwan would be nothing like Afghanistan
If Taiwan triggers a military conflict, the PM will need to think harder about Australia’s strategic habit of going to war whenever America does.
Hugh White Contributor
Apr 25, 2021 – 2.24pm
War is not an end in itself. It can only ever be justified as a means to achieve some specific objective, and the wisdom of a decision to go to war must be judged accordingly. What is the objective? Can it be achieved? At what cost, and is the objective worth that cost? National leaders have a duty to weigh these questions carefully before deciding for war.
Scott Morrison should be thinking deeply about all this, because if war breaks out between America and China, which is a real possibility, he would face the gravest decisions that any Australian leader has had to make since 1939. He acknowledged this himself last year when he aptly compared today’s strategic risk with the late 1930s.
And just last week, as tensions continue to mount, it was reported that his government is now escalating preparations for conflict in the Taiwan Strait. So one hopes that Morrison is thinking seriously about the circumstances under which it would be worth going to war with China. And one hopes that he is trying to learn what he can from past mistakes.
That makes it worrying and disappointing that last week, when announcing the end of Australia’s war in Afghanistan, he gave such a slick answer when asked, “Was it worth going into Afghanistan?”
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‘Very courageous’: Former Obama official backs Australia’s hardline stance against China
April 26, 2021 — 10.11am
A senior defence official under former United States president Barack Obama says the Five Eyes spy network should be used as a diplomatic grouping to pressure China, in a direct contrast to New Zealand’s attempt to narrow its remit.
Michèle Flournoy, who was at one stage the favourite to be President Joe Biden’s defence secretary, also backed Australia’s hard-line stance against China’s growing assertiveness, saying Canberra was “seen as very courageous in Washington right now”.
Australian officials were blindsided when New Zealand’s Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta last week criticised efforts to pressure China through the 70-year-old intelligence-sharing partnership known as “Five Eyes”.
Asked about New Zealand’s position, Ms Flournoy, who was under secretary of defense for policy between 2009 and 2012, said, “New Zealand is an example of a smaller country that is under a lot of pressure and probably feels significant risk with making waves or sort of provoking China”.
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Rising house prices could derail post-COVID economic recovery
Jennifer Duke
Economics correspondent
April 25, 2021 — 12.15pm
It was eight months before coronavirus had become a pandemic when the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) published a discussion paper that policymakers should take note of today.
The central bank’s researchers Fiona Price, Benjamin Beckers and Gianni La Cava took a close look at the effect of mortgage debt on consumer spending. What they found is that households cut back on spending when they have higher levels of debt.
Home prices in Sydney and Melbourne are continuing towards double-digit price rises this year, with huge jumps over the first quarter, and for some buyers this will mean a commensurate increase in the mortgages they need to service to put a roof over their heads. It could also mean more borrowers choosing to take on more debt as property investors.
Rising house prices come with their own set of challenges both for the economy and individual households desperate to get on the property ladder. But while fears about young first-time buyers being stuck forever out of the market are a constant, one of the concerns that should be front of mind is the effect on spending.
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Drawing a snake and adding feet: New Zealand avoids offending China, ends up offending closest partners
Anne-Marie Brady
Specialist on Chinese domestic and foreign policy
April 26, 2021 — 5.30am
The New Zealand Labour government has been in the headlines for all the wrong reasons. Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta gave an important speech last week, only her second in the role, that was meant to lay out her government’s position on matters of concern with China, without causing diplomatic offence.
Yet the outcome was that her words ended up offending New Zealand’s closest partners, while the Chinese state media launched a disinformation campaign against the speech that damaged New Zealand’s international reputation.
A Chinese fable from the Warring States period sums up this diplomatic fiasco well: hua she tian zu, drawing a snake and adding feet to it. In other words, to ruin an effect by adding something superfluous.
According to the fable, a family in the state of Qi offered wine to honour their ancestors, but there wasn’t enough wine to share with everyone after the ceremony. So they held a competition to draw a snake; the person who finished drawing first would get the wine. One young man finished first, then to show how clever he was, added feet to his drawing. The fable describes the foolishness of a person who does something that is not only useless, it actually causes harm.
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Five Eyes split demands Australia reset with New Zealand
By William Stoltz
April 26, 2021 — 5.30am
During a speech outlining her vision for the relationship with China, New Zealand Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta made the striking assertion that her country would resist efforts by its allies, including Australia, to expand the role of Five Eyes in responding to China.
The remarks contrast starkly with Australia’s decision this week to scrap Victoria’s Belt and Road deal with Beijing and the declaration by the British Parliament that China is carrying out a genocide against its Uyghur population.
Indeed, Mahuta’s decision is the latest in a steady drifting of New Zealand away from the hardening posture towards China adopted by other Western states, particularly its partner nations in the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, America, Australia, Britain, and Canada. They have drafted joint Five Eyes statements decrying China’s human rights abuses and the subjugation of Hong Kong.
It is indicative of China’s leverage over New Zealand that Mahuta’s decision also follows the recent upgrading of New Zealand’s China Free Trade Agreement. It is a lucrative deal for a vulnerable New Zealand economy recovering from pandemic recession.
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Academic Jane Golley backtracks on Uighur abuse article
April 26, 2021
An “anonymous article” casting doubt over grave human rights abuses in Xinjiang, cited by the head of Australia’s top China-focused academic institution, labels female sterilisation as “family planning” and says claims regarding genocide and the incarceration of one million Uighurs are “unsupported.”
“Just last week I received a scholarly article that debunks much of what you have read in the Western media on this topic, including the figure of one million Uighurs in detention camps, the pervasive use of forced labour, and of calling it genocide,” she said.
“The authors sent it anonymously because they fear the reaction here in Australia by those who are committed to the dominant narrative.”
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Australia had just two universities in the top 100
Julie Hare Education editor
Apr 26, 2021 – 9.01am
Melbourne is the most highly ranked university for the sixth year in a row, but Australia’s overall performance is in decline as well-funded Chinese universities climb the ladder on an international ranking.
Australia had just two universities in the top 100 and another five in the top 200 of the 2021 Centre for World University Rankings released on Monday. This is down from four in the top 100 in 2018.
“With 39 universities ranked highly among the world’s best, Australia clearly has a very good higher education system,” said Nadim Mahassen, president of CWUR.
“For many years, Australian universities were able to attract a large number of international students, particularly from China. But with China’s extraordinary rise in the rankings, Chinese students might not find the idea of studying in Australia as attractive as before.
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The federal government is walking a budget tightrope
This is not the time for austerity, but nor is it the time to bake in community expectations of unaffordable support.
Tony Shepherd Contributor
Apr 26, 2021 – 12.14pm
Australia has managed the COVID-19 crisis and the recovery better than most countries in the world, and without spiralling into a prolonged recession. As the “lucky country” we have also been supported by high demand and increased prices for most of our resources.
The forthcoming federal budget is a challenge because we cannot afford to indefinitely spend more on recurring expenditure than the government receives in tax revenue.
Thank heavens we had our fiscal house in order when the crisis hit, allowing the government to comfortably borrow at very low interest rates. However, over time we must carefully rebuild our fiscal capacity. We should recognise that debt is still debt and must be repaid. We cannot afford to gamble on the lowest-ever interest rates continuing in perpetuity.
The best way to pay down debt is to grow the economy. If we grow at 4 percent a year until 2023/2024 we would generate an extra $170 billion in GDP and $40 billion more in government revenue. Our nation’s prosperity relies on business doing the heavy lifting, as it is business that creates prosperity and governments that redistribute wealth.
There are sectors of our economy that have not recovered and are still suffering, including tourism, hospitality, entertainment, airlines and international education. This is not the time for austerity. Fiscal repair must wait until the rate of unemployment comes down close to or under 5 per cent.
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How your super can look after your loved ones
If you have a substantial balance, plan carefully for what happens to your retirement savings after you die to avoid big tax implications.
Michael Hutton Contributor
Apr 27, 2021 – 12.00am
The superannuation system is celebrating its 30th birthday this year. For most people, it has been in place for their entire working life. Despite this, it’s still a bit of mystery to many – particularly death benefits (what happens to the balance after death).
The balance may be pretty substantial. If retirees have been drawing on the capital at five or six per cent a year then, after earnings, there may have been little reduction in the balance.
The first thing to remember is that for all superannuation funds – whether self-managed, retail or industry – members can nominate whom the money goes to. This can be through a binding nomination (which means the trustee must pay it in the way nominated) or a non-binding nomination. Some retail and industry funds don’t allow binding nominations.
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Defend Australia first: why John Curtin might salute Peter Dutton
Peter FitzSimons
Columnist and author
April 27, 2021 — 5.30am
Defence Minister Peter Dutton’s remarks on the eve of Anzac Day about the future posture of the Australian Defence Force were enormously significant. From now, he said, the “core business [is] making sure they are keeping Australia safe and secure”, presumably rather than being able to project our defence capacity to distant parts of the world such as the Middle East, where we have just ended our involvement in Afghanistan.
“The threats are understood,” Dutton said, “and we’ve come to the end of our 20-year engagement in the Middle East, so there is a refocus and pivoting back to our own region.”
So much history. See, for the first 40 years or so of our existence as a nation, the broad plan was to amass enough Frequent Fighter points with Great Britain that we could cash them in when necessary so it would come to our aid if we were threatened. And we so identified with Australians being the “loyal sons and daughters” of Great Britain – Great Britain in the South Seas – that such a stance of having a “forward defence” and sending off “expeditionary forces” was rarely questioned.
Just before World War I the man who would be prime minister, Andrew Fisher, famously said Australia would “stand beside the mother country to help and defend her to the last man and the last shilling”.
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If Afghanistan was bad enough, let’s not countenance a war with China
Peter Hartcher
Political and international editor
April 27, 2021 — 5.30am
The US decision to pull out of its longest war is an admission of the war’s hopelessness. Announcing the end to 20 years of allied occupation of Afghanistan, Joe Biden said as much himself: “We went to Afghanistan because of a horrific attack that happened 20 years ago. That cannot explain why we should remain there in 2021.”
So why should the US and its allies remain? Not sure, really, the US President suggested: “We delivered justice to bin Laden a decade ago, and we’ve stayed in Afghanistan for a decade since. Since then, our reasons for remaining in Afghanistan are becoming increasingly unclear, even as the terrorist threat that we went to fight evolved.”
So what was everyone waiting for? “We cannot continue the cycle of extending or expanding our military presence in Afghanistan, hoping to create ideal conditions for the withdrawal, and expecting a different result.”
Putting it all together: We don’t really know why we’re in Afghanistan; it’s not going to get any better; so we may as well leave now. This amounted to a thoroughgoing admission of strategic pointlessness after the deaths of more than 3500 coalition troops including 41 Australians, an estimated 100,000 Afghans and a total bill of well over $US2 trillion.
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‘Get ready to fight for our liberty,’ Home Affairs secretary Michael Pezzullo
One of the nation’s most powerful national security leaders has declared the “drums of war” are beating and Australia must be prepared “to send off, yet again, our warriors to fight”.
Home Affairs secretary Michael Pezzullo, who is tipped to take the top job at Defence, said in his Anzac Day message to staff that Australia must strive for peace, “but not at the cost of our precious liberty”.
Amid growing tensions between the West and China, with Taiwan a potential flashpoint, Mr Pezzullo said free nations continued to face the “sorrowful challenge” of being “armed, strong and ready for war”.
“In a world of perpetual tension and dread, the drums of war beat – sometimes faintly and distantly, and at other times more loudly and ever closer,” he said.
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The drums of war are growing louder
Later this year Australia and the US will mark the 70th anniversary of our military alliance. We seek to be militarily self-reliant in all contingencies short of great-power war.
Nonetheless, our national defence strategy has at its heart the protection afforded to Australia in the most perilous circumstances by the military might of the US — including by way of the deterrence effect of its nuclear arsenal — and its willingness and preparedness to wage war against a major-power adversary.
Of course, before the striking of the alliance agreement in 1951, Australians and Americans had already fought side-by-side in two world wars. The ANZUS Treaty gave formal shape to implied strategic understandings. So, to mark the passing of Anzac Day this year, I should like to draw attention to remarkable — but too little remembered — addresses by two US generals of the army, who in terms of Australian military rank would have been field marshals.
General of the army Douglas MacArthur gave an address to the US Military Academy at West Point on May 12, 1962. This general, who had known war over 50 of its bloodiest years, reminded the cadets of West Point that their mission was to train to fight and, when called on, to win their nation’s wars. All else was entrusted to others. MacArthur reminded the cadets that only the dead had seen the end of war and that for so long as war afflicted the human condition, a nation’s warriors had but one dedicated purpose, with all else being secondary.
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We must not fall for Beijing’s magical narrative
In 2014, President Xi Jinping reached back into Chinese Communist Party folklore to reintroduce Mao Zedong’s concept of magic weapons that could be used to achieve the great rejuvenation of the country and achieve his “China Dream”. Xi was referring to the co-optation tactics of the CCP’s United Front network to win friends, influence governments and eliminate dissent inside China and in other countries.
In recent years the CCP has developed another magic weapon that complements its accumulation of material power. This is the success Beijing is having in shaping grand narratives in Australia and our region about China.
The genius is that these narratives condition us to accept Chinese policies meekly even if they are against our national interests.
The magic weapon is a narrative buttressed by five basic messages: Chinese dominance is the historical norm and is inevitable; the objectives of the CCP are permanent and unchanging; a CCP-led China is fundamentally undeterrable; the party is prepared to pay any price to achieve its core objectives; and the US is an increasingly weak and unreliable ally.
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Is Australia ready for a semiconductor crisis?
Jonathan Restarick
Last year certainly threw us some curveballs. Lingering in the shadows of larger issues was a powerfully destructive problem – the impending global shortage of the computer chip, or semiconductor, the life blood of the technology that our critical infrastructure – from health to defence to telecommunications, and our everyday devices, are so heavily reliant on.
The computer chip has been hailed as ‘the new oil’ – the driver of economic progress and production. And while the recent Suez blockage received huge coverage for the $13B impact to global GDP, the approximate $80 billion loss to car manufacturers due to an unexpected shortage in semiconductor chips has gone largely unnoticed.
Semiconductor supply chains are far from linear – from chip design to wafer manufacturing and all the way to OEM Assembly. It is complex and capital-intensive, and there are no cheap or easy solutions to solve this problem. It can take semiconductor manufacturers six to nine months to build additional capacity and the fact that global supply is largely dominated by a few countries and companies further exacerbates the issue.
However, as with most problems 2020 has thrown up, there is also opportunity. With COVID recovery progressing at different rates between nations, and tensions between China and the USA escalating, countries are looking for strategic access to semiconductors, including sovereign self-reliance. Considering Australia’s positive rate of recovery, and our abundance of natural primary resources to make the chips, there is ripe opportunity for us to create a new industry and reduce our reliance on global supply chains – all we need is the willingness and drive to do so.
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Australia needs to draw a line between policy and posturing on China
Australia’s geopolitical pushback strategy is sound. But we needlessly leading with our chin by chest beating and publicly proselytising against Beijing.
John McCarthy Contributor
Apr 27, 2021 – 12.48pm
The past few weeks have confirmed that the strategic parameters of our regional policy are basically sound. However the hubristic self-righteousness of some of our actions demonstrate overreach inconsistent with the national interest.
The government is doing the right thing by our country on the American alliance.
If Australia does not adhere to its tenets, we cannot complain if American commitment to the Indo-Pacific region beyond Guam diminishes.
We have shown public confidence in the Biden administration, which as an ally we owe it, and thus far Joe Biden has justified that confidence. He has set out his policy on China. Allowing for permissible cant, his language has been sensible.
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Morrison’s budget challenge: stop the economy’s roar turning to a meow
Ross Gittins
Economics Editor
April 27, 2021 — 7.45pm
Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg look like they’re sitting pretty as they finalise what may be their last budget before the federal election due by the first half of next year. Look deeper, however, and you see they face a serious risk of the economy’s recovery losing momentum over the coming financial year. But, equally, they have a chance to show themselves as the best economic managers since John Howard’s days.
So far, the strength of the economy’s rebound from the “coronacession” has exceeded all expectations. Judged by the quantity of the nation’s production of goods and services, the economy contracted hugely during the three months to June last year. As our borders were closed, many industries were ordered to stop trading and you and I were told to leave home as little as possible.
But with the lifting of the lockdown in the second half of the year, the economy took off. It rebounded so strongly in the next two quarters that, by the end of December, our production – real gross domestic product – was just 1 per cent below what it had been a year earlier, before the arrival of the coronavirus.
The rebound in jobs is even more remarkable. The number of people in jobs fell by almost 650,000 in April and May, and that’s not counting the many hundreds of thousands of workers who kept their jobs thanks only to the JobKeeper scheme.
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ANU academic slammed over citation of ‘sub-par’ Chinese genocide research
By Latika Bourke
April 27, 2021 — 12.35pm
An Australian academic has been savaged as “unethical” for citing an anonymous report containing factual errors, which she said “debunked” claims China is committing genocide.
Professor Jane Golley, who runs the Australian National University’s Centre for China, caused a storm among Sino-watchers when she used an address to the National Press Club last week to refer to an anonymous document to say the estimated figure of 1 million Uighur Muslims who have been through re-education camps was probably exaggerated.
The paper, seen by this masthead, also claimed findings of forced sterilisations were in fact “family planning”.
The anonymous 18-page document took aim at work by Australia’s Strategic Policy Institute but primarily focused on the work by German academic Dr Adrian Zenz, a senior fellow in China studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation who was recently sanctioned by China.
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https://www.smh.com.au/national/victoria/schools-summit-monday-story-20210426-p57ml8.html
Tudge ‘very cautious’ on international student return
By Michael Fowler, Madeleine Heffernan and Sumeyya Ilanbey
Updated April 27, 2021 — 4.57pmfirst published at 3.49pm
Melbourne University’s international chief has urged the federal government to take up Victoria’s proposal to fly in international students from May 24, as Education Minister Alan Tudge warned he was in no hurry to accept more arrivals as coronavirus rages overseas.
Speaking at the Age Schools Summit on Tuesday, Mr Tudge confirmed Victoria was the first Australian state to submit an international students plan. But he tempered expectations, saying the federal government would be “very cautious” in considering the proposal.
He was speaking the day after Victoria wrote to the federal government asking to start a second stream of 120 overseas students, migrant workers and actors quarantining in the state each week on top of its quota of 1000 returning Australians.
“We just received the letter last night, and obviously we’ll carefully look at it, get the advice,” Mr Tudge said.
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There’s a lot more to ETF performance than just the numbers
By Graham Parkes
April 27, 2021 — 10.00pm
Global financial markets have largely been continuing with the reflation theme, although parts of the so-called reflation trade have paused for breath.
Reflation is both accelerating economic growth and inflation, with ultra-easy monetary policy and big spending fiscal policy leading to an increase in inflationary expectations and rising bond yields. This leads to a rotation in sharemarket leadership, where the outperformers tend to be the classic cyclical sectors of financials (which likes higher bond yields), resources (like inflation), industrials and energy (rising oil prices as demand returns).
However, performance is not always what it appears.
When major macro factors, such as bond yields, inflect higher or lower from their respective business cycle low or high points, this can also play a significant role in the performance of both sharemarket sectors and products, such as Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs).
Understanding the underlying macro forces at work is important to be able to contextualise investment performance.
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Finally, a super idea for extra retirement income
Money columnist
April 27, 2021 — 11.00pm
The federal government’s recent Retirement Income Review pointed out that many retirees live on just the income from their superannuation, rather than drawing down on the balance as they progress through retirement.
This seems to be partly due to the major misunderstanding that this is how the system is supposed to work, and partly because seniors are afraid of running out of money, as they cannot estimate how long they will live. So, they draw only the minimum pension required.
As a result, many retirees die with a major chunk of their financial assets unspent, sacrificing their own living standards in the process, and leaving more to their beneficiaries.
In December, 2016, Treasury called on income stream providers to develop new products that would help solve this problem. However, until now, the industry has been slow to take up the challenge.
After a lot of talk and not much action, we finally have one super fund that has come up with an interesting solution.
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Let war games begin: ADF bases upgraded
Scott Morrison has ordered sweeping upgrades of military training bases in Northern Australia to enhance land combat capability and support simulated exercises in a major strategic step-up aimed at expanding “war gaming” with the US and defending the Indo-Pacific.
The Prime Minister will announce a $747m defence package in the Northern Territory on Wednesday after Home Affairs Department secretary Michael Pezzullo warned the “drums of war are beating” and that Australia must be prepared “to send off, yet again, our warriors to fight”.
The upgrades of four training bases include an overhaul of weapons firing ranges, lengthening the Northern Territory’s Bradshaw Field Training Area airstrip to support heavier aircraft and new training facilities for Australian Defence Force personnel and US marines.
“Working with the United States, our allies and Indo-Pacific neighbours, we will continue to advance Australia’s interests by investing in the Australian Defence Force, particularly across Northern Australia,” Mr Morrison said. “Our focus is on pursuing peace, stability and a free and open Indo-Pacific, with a world order that favours freedom.”
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Michael Pezzullo right to warn of war danger
Mike Pezzullo, the head of the Department of Home Affairs, will not become secretary of the Defence Department any time soon. That is not because of the sober, measured Anzac Day reflections he circulated to members of his department. These were submitted to his minister, Karen Andrews, in advance. She certainly raised no objections. They do no more than restate common government strategic judgments and describe, in a perfectly reasonable fashion, the strategic situation the nation confronts. They do not mention China by name.
The reaction to Pezzullo’s email has been nearly hysterical, as though a lofty historical judgment by one of Australia’s most senior and effective public servants is somehow a threat to international security.
That the government is not planning to move Pezzullo to Defence reflects a longstanding preference by Scott Morrison not to move a minister and their department secretary at the same time. The PM, not unreasonably, thinks this can cause too much disruption.
It is also the case that the government has the highest confidence in the current Secretary of the Defence Department, Greg Moriarty. Moriarty is an impressive senior Canberra bureaucrat, a very hard-headed individual who has served in all manner of senior and often highly sensitive government roles.
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Wine exports to China have all but ceased with producers not holding out for a resolution
The Chinese wine export market has been all but destroyed, with exports in the first full tariff-affected quarter falling 96 per cent to just $12 million, latest figures from Wine Australia show.
This compares with $325 million in the same quarter of 2020, and implies a more than $1bn hit on an annual basis to the nation’s winemakers, should other export markets not be found for the product.
In the year to September last year, before China introduced tariffs on bottled Australian wine of up to 200 per cent, wine exports to China increased 4 per cent to $1.17bn.
New Wine Australia figures released on Thursday show total Australian wine exports declined by 4 per cent in value to $2.77 billion in the 12 months to March 2021, compared with the previous corresponding period.
The drop was driven principally by the Chinese tariffs, as well as the cumulative
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Shock and iron ore – is this the last China windfall?
Iron ore — Australia’s single most important export — has suddenly vaulted every record to reach an all-time high just under $US200 a tonne, but it just might be the last time we get quite so lucky on a commodity windfall.
It’s not that the price of iron ore will drop later in the cycle — of course it will — rather, we are looking at something much more significant, the inevitable end of our splendid isolation as the lords of the seaborne iron ore trade into China.
We export the majority of our iron ore, and 85 per cent of those exports go to China.
In turn Beijing — already a difficult customer — is actively seeking alternative sources for its steel mills.
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Australia’s Indigenous population may have been 3 million, study finds
By Mike Foley
April 30, 2021 — 1.01am
The Indigenous population of Australia may have once reached 3 million, triple the largest previous estimate, according to findings from a study that archaeologists worldwide hope can lead to international breakthroughs.
At the point of first contact with Europeans there was no organised effort to quantify the Aboriginal population, which was decimated by new diseases and frontier violence, but previous estimates of Australia’s pre-colonial population ranged from 30,000 to 1 million.
A new peer-reviewed study published on Friday in the journal Nature Communications used powerful computer modelling and applied a combination of methods incorporating the ecological, human and climate factors at play on the continent.
During the last Ice Age, the researchers calculated, there were 2 million square kilometres more coastal plain exposed compared with today and the larger landmass could have been home to more people.
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Super funds brace for government to get the power to cancel investments it doesn’t like
April 29, 2021 — 5.21pm
The $3 trillion superannuation sector is bracing for the government to get new powers allowing the Treasurer to block investments and spending decisions politicians dislike.
The Senate Economics Legislation Committee has recommended the federal government’s Your Future, Your Super legislation be passed, including a controversial change giving politicians the ability to block investment decisions by super funds. The reforms were introduced during last year’s federal budget in a bid to reduce multiple accounts by stapling members to their funds, reduce fees and improve super fund performance by subjecting them to benchmark tests.
A dissenting report from Labor opposes the passing of the bill, raising a host of issues with the proposed changes. The “political override power” on spending decisions has been particularly concerning to the opposition and the super sector, who warn such a power is “extraordinary” and would allow the Treasurer to personally choose to block any payment made by a superannuation trustee.
Another concern raised by Labor’s report is that the stapling of funds ahead of performance tests being rolled out across the entire industry would potentially leave three million workers stuck with underperforming funds unless they choose to change accounts.
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PM warns identity politics, abuse of social media are undermining society
April 29, 2021 — 10.52pm
Prime Minister Scott Morrison says identity politics and the moral corrosion caused by the misuse of social media are forces seeking to undermine society.
In a speech to the United Israel Appeal NSW donor dinner in Sydney on Thursday night, Mr Morrison also said voters should contribute more to the community than they expect from the state.
Mr Morrison made the remarks in a speech – in which he repeatedly referred to his Pentecostal faith – called “the responsibility of citizens in building community to achieve national success”.
“As citizens, we cannot allow what we think we are entitled to, to become more important than what we are responsible for,” he told an audience that included his best friend and prayer partner, cabinet minister Stuart Robert, and Liberal backbenchers Dave Sharma and Julian Leeser.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/crunch-time-on-labour-shortages-20210430-p57nsp
Crunch time on labour shortages
By strangling immigration indefinitely, the Morrison Government is placing politics above economic recovery. It’s a gamble that could backfire badly.
Jacob Greber AFR correspondent
Apr 30, 2021 – 7.00pm
Neil Perry is a worried man. The celebrated chef is punting on a bold new solo-venture – a Sydney neighbourhood restaurant named after his mother, Margaret, which he’s racing to open in mid-June.
“I’m putting $4 million into a restaurant in Double Bay and I don’t have one sleepless moment about having enough customers. But I’m really worried about having enough staff to open seven days a week.”
A lack of international students, erratic state borders, and a frozen immigration system have drained his normal pools of “arms and legs” workers for jobs such as waiters, kitchen hands, bar-backs and fishmongers.
It has stranded some of his most experienced hands –higher-skilled chefs who retreated overseas when the pandemic broke out – in countries such as Italy, Hong Kong and South Korea, with no way of returning to Perry’s kitchen.
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How to invest in residential property - without buying a house
With property prices rising again, some investors are seeking a slice of residential real estate via new-age crowdfunding and investment funds.
Aleks Vickovich Wealth editor
May 1, 2021 – 12.00am
t the height of Australia’s coronavirus panic in March and April last year, few serious analysts of the housing market expected prices to be where they are today.
In fact, many predicted house prices would fall by as much as a third, plunging the nation into a property downturn amid the escalating public health crisis.
Instead, they fell by about 2 per cent nationally and fund managers such as Coolabah Capital now tip house prices to rise an astonishing 25 per cent by 2023, based on similar modelling to the Reserve Bank of Australia and thanks to low interest rates and, hopefully, some wages growth.
That is good news for established property investors and landlords or the many Australians reliant on the value of their family home as the cornerstone of their personal wealth.
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https://www.afr.com/world/europe/hermit-condition-stunts-australia-s-global-standing-20210430-p57np1
Hermit Australia risks never opening up at all
The Indian crisis is making Australia even more cautious about opening up, when actually it should finally make us acknowledge that COVID-19 risk is inevitable.
Hans van Leeuwen Europe correspondent
Apr 30, 2021 – 11.28am
London | Trade Minister Dan Tehan did something last week that has become slightly unusual for an Australian, even for an Australian government minister: he went overseas.
In pursuit of trade deals and some relief from European export restrictions, his week-long sortie took him to Geneva, Berlin, Brussels, Paris and London. He met ministers, business executives, diplomats and journalists.
On the trip’s penultimate day, he sat down to breakfast with several Australian correspondents in London. Most of the talk was about trade; but discussion then turned to a topic never far from the lips of any Australian abroad – the country’s zero-tolerance coronavirus strategy, and the seeming lack of any path towards unsealing the border that keeps us cut off from our loved ones back home.
“You’ve been around Europe, you’ve been around London, you’ve been able to do business,” one of the journalists observed.
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How to prepare for war with China
While the wider community is mostly oblivious to the risk of war, there is a very real chance that the Australian homeland could be in the cross-hairs.
Christopher Joye Columnist
Apr 30, 2021 – 2.29pm
Long-time readers of this column have been hearing about the drum beats of war between China and the US for the best part of a decade. Back in May 2020, Coolabah Capital gave a detailed private seminar to hundreds of our wholesale clients assessing these risks and advised that the probability of major power conflict in the Indo-Pacific had lifted to as high as 50 per cent.
While none of our geopolitical advisers had quite such a pessimistic perspective (they tended to be in the still-elevated, circa 25 per cent camp), most are now handicapping war as a toss-of-a-coin prospect. In fact, one of our most accurate foreign policy advisers said Thursday that the conflict probabilities have lifted above 50 per cent. A “tell” in this regard is the combatants probing the contours of the cyber-security battlespace much more aggressively than before.
The prospects for war are actually higher in the next five years than the period thereafter because of how successfully China has closed the military capability gap with the US. Every day President Xi Jinping delays, his potential adversaries in a battle over Taiwan (which would undoubtedly include the US, Japan, Australia and the UK) are investing enormous effort to prepare for war and once again expand the capability gap. Sadly, the wider Australian community has yet to come to grips with these morbid contingencies.
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Upgrade looms for submarines, frigates amid rising regional tensions
Andrew Tillett Political correspondent
May 1, 2021 – 12.00am
A major review into Australia’s submarine warfare capability is likely to recommend bringing forward upgrades for the navy’s frigates and Collins class submarines in light of the deteriorating strategic environment confronting the region sparked by China’s rise.
Amid warnings from the government over the growing risk of conflict, defence sources have told AFR Weekend the review, led by one of the navy’s most senior officers, will focus on short and medium improvements to the naval fleet.
Senior military commanders are concerned that although Australia and Western allies enjoy a technology edge over China’s military – a case of quality over quantity – that is being eroded.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison commissioned the review earlier this year amid growing tensions with French shipbuilder Naval Group over the $90 billion future submarine project.
The Australian Financial Review revealed earlier this week the Defence Department was refusing to sign a new contract with Naval Group after the company came in over budget with its estimates for the next phase of the project.
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The politics of standing up to Xi’s China
Peter Hartcher
Political and international editor
May 1, 2021 — 5.30am
The new Defence Minister, Peter Dutton, has been criticised for warmongering this week, and the government stands accused of trying to set up a China panic to boost its re-election chances. The toughest critic probably was Kevin Rudd. The former prime minister told the ABC’s Leigh Sales that the government was seeking “the khaki terrain of a national security agenda”.
Rudd told me that “Morrison and company are addicted to the drug of ‘standing up to China’ every day of the week” because it helps the government politically. National security was “old faithful for the next election” while other issues weren’t running in the government’s favour. “And that is what the agenda shift to China is all about.”
So what did Dutton say? In an interview on the ABC’s Insiders show on Sunday, host David Speers asked Dutton: “Two of your former colleagues, Tony Abbott and Christopher Pyne, now believe the prospects of a battle over Taiwan are growing, could happen quite soon. Do you share that view?”
Dutton: “I don’t think it should be discounted. I think China has been very clear about the reunification and that’s been a long-held objective of theirs and if you look at any of the rhetoric that is coming out of China from spokesmen, particularly in recent weeks and months in response to different suggestions that have been made, they have been very clear about that goal.”
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‘There’s no back-up copy’: Australian treasures are on the brink of destruction
By Michelle Arrow
May 1, 2021 — 5.30am
Do you remember taping programs off your television with a VCR? Back in the days before streaming, many of us amassed small libraries of movies this way, the tapes becoming scratchy and wobbly with age. Then along came the DVD: a much more stable, digital format. The VCR quickly became obsolescent, and all those VHS tapes, lovingly compiled, became unplayable, virtually overnight.
Simply put, this is the dilemma that faces the National Archives of Australia. It is stuck, metaphorically, in the VHS era, and without an urgent injection of funds, it will be trapped there. It has a vast collection of historical records: not just documents and files, but tape recordings, films, and television programs. And much of it is on the brink of destruction.
If rapid action is not taken to convert all the archives’ audio visual material to secure, digital formats, in 2025, it will topple off what archivists call the “digital cliff”. A combination of deterioration and outmoded technology will conspire to destroy it.
Many paper documents held in the archives are in similar peril, as the Herald reported on Monday.
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Identity politics? Drums of war? Quick, look over there – hobgoblins!
Associate editor and special writer
April 30, 2021 — 3.30pm
There is always a reason why political leaders seek to turn everything on its head, frighten the horses and bellow that dreadfulness stalks the night and must be stared down by the forces of light, which is to say, those in power.
Scott Morrison and his currently loyal sidekicks, you may have noticed, are ladling out all these techniques with furious enthusiasm.
Peter Dutton, having barely warmed the seat as Defence Minister, warns of a possible war with China on the very day (ahem, Anzac Day, as it happened) his national security minion, Mike Pezzullo, offers his concern that “free nations again hear the beating drums and watch worryingly the militarisation of issues that we had, until recent years, thought unlikely to be catalysts for war”.
Trying to turn the narrative on its head? Frightening the horses? Tick and tick.
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PM warns identity politics, abuse of social media are undermining society
April 29, 2021 — 10.52pm
Prime Minister Scott Morrison says identity politics and the moral corrosion caused by the misuse of social media are forces seeking to undermine society.
In a speech to the United Israel Appeal NSW donor dinner in Sydney on Thursday night, Mr Morrison also said voters should contribute more to the community than they expect from the state.
Mr Morrison made the remarks in a speech – in which he repeatedly referred to his Pentecostal faith – called “the responsibility of citizens in building community to achieve national success”.
“As citizens, we cannot allow what we think we are entitled to, to become more important than what we are responsible for,” he told an audience that included his best friend and prayer partner, cabinet minister Stuart Robert, and Liberal backbenchers Dave Sharma and Julian Leeser.
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Future Fund’s Costello highlights inflation fears as assets hit $179b
April 29, 2021 — 1.47pm
Future Fund chairman Peter Costello has highlighted investor concerns that any rise in inflation could push up interest rates from record lows, as booming markets drove the fund’s total assets to a record of $179 billion.
In an update on Thursday the taxpayer-owned fund notched up 10.1 per cent returns for the year to March and 4.5 per cent over the quarter, as global sharemarkets powered ahead. Despite the bounce, however, the fund reiterated its cautious stance, pointing to challenges ahead as governments unwind extraordinary stimulus policies that have inflated asset prices.
Chairman Peter Costello said the outlook was “greatly improved” from the depths of last year, but also pointed to a number of risks including the possibility of global setbacks, and the concern in financial markets about the risk of inflation sparking higher borrowing costs.
“With interest rates at historically low levels, markets are very sensitive to any prospect of inflation and rising rates as a consequence,” said Mr Costello, who is also chairman of this masthead’s owner, Nine Entertainment.
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Morrison may strike a chord on identity politics but he’s wading onto contested ground
By David Crowe
April 30, 2021 — 6.32pm
Scott Morrison stepped onto contested ground when he chose to make a speech about morality and community. The Prime Minister condemned identity politics for pitting Australians against each other, called for a stronger sense of community and argued against people defining themselves by a sense of entitlement.
“We cannot allow what we think we are entitled to, to become more important than what we are responsible for as citizens,” he said on Thursday night.
Morrison put faith at the heart of his message about morality and personal freedom. He quoted Alexis de Tocqueville: “Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith.” He quoted Friedrich Hayek: “Freedom has never worked without deeply ingrained moral beliefs.”
Critics see a threat from Morrison’s personal faith in language like that, especially after the leak of a speech he gave to Christian church leaders on the Gold Coast last month. Those who dislike his Pentecostal beliefs even see a risk to the separation of church and state.
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Australians to be jailed or fined if they fly in from India
The government has denied it is leaving thousands of Australians to the mercy of the world’s worst COVID-19 outbreak in India.
Finn McHugh and Rhiannon Tuffield
NCA NewsWire
May 1, 202112:02pm
Australians stuck in India are not being left to the mercy of the world’s worst COVID-19 outbreak, despite new jail terms and massive fines for those seeking to return from India, the treasurer says.
Returning citizens who have been in India in the past two weeks will be threatened with the prison sentence or a $66,000 fine.
The law, the first in Australia’s history making it illegal for citizens to return home, comes into effect from Monday and will be reviewed on May 15.
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Emergency powers from Monday to block all travellers from India
Health Minister Greg Hunt will invoke emergency powers to block all travellers from India, amid concerns that transiting passengers who have been in the coronavirus-ravaged country may still enter Australia.
The powers, which have never been used before, will come into force from Monday and people who breach them face five years’ jail or a fine of up to $66,600.
Mr Hunt made the determination under the Biosecurity Act to stop people who have been in India during the past fortnight from arriving in Australia, after receiving advice from Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly.
“The risk assessment that informed the decision was based on the proportion of overseas travellers in quarantine in Australia who have acquired a COVID-19 infection in India,” the Minister said.
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China warns Australia to avoid getting ‘burned’ by colluding with ‘terrorists’
· NCA NewsWire
China has accused Australian politicians of colluding with ‘terrorists’ in Xinjiang and warned Canberra it will get “burned” if it continues to back Uyghur activists.
The comments are the latest salvo in a war-of-words over the region, where human rights groups warn the Muslim Uyghur minority face horrific abuses.
Chinese media has seized on an article, published by fringe political group the Australian Citizens Party, criticising local politicians’ support for the East Turkistan Australian Association (ETAA), a Uyghur advocacy group.
The article claimed the ETAA supported terror groups in Xinjiang.
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Border can’t open until the world is vaccinated: Sinodinos
Ambassador to the US Arthur Sinodinos has raised the prospect of indefinite restrictions travel in and out of Australia, suggesting the border couldn’t open until “the world is vaccinated”.
Speaking at an online event on Friday at the Washington DC-based Hudson Institute, Mr Sinodinos suggested reopening the border was an “economic imperative” but unlikely to happen soon, especially given popularity of restrictions.
“We have major industries like international education which require people coming in, immigration has been big driver of Australian growth and that’s really tailed off. For us there’s a real economic imperative to getting borders open,” he said.
“Because we’ve done well on community transmission there isn’t same pressure from the public to get the vaccines out … it’s not like the US and elsewhere where there’s been a real urgency,” he added.
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Labor gets room to pursue an agenda on its turf
After dumping its decade-long “debt and deficit” warfare narrative the government will now be judged on reforms that assist job creation and service delivery.
Laura Tingle Columnist
Apr 30, 2021 – 4.19pm
In the early days of the Hawke government, when Labor and a dynamic young treasurer, Paul Keating, kept confounding a hostile and suspicious business community with market-friendly policies, the cartoonist Patrick Cook would draw the then previous treasurer, John Howard, as a battle-scarred veteran.
Howard was covered in plasters and bandages of the battles – of which the legends grew – that he had had with his prime minister Malcolm Fraser, to try to push a deregulatory agenda that was then sweeping other parts of the Western world.
By the time Paul Keating was handing down budgets, Cook’s Howard had been reduced to a legless, but heavily medalled, old warrior on a skateboard, glumly looking on as his Zegna-suited successor strolled past, declaring nonchalantly there was “nothing to it”.
Howard may have, and did, claim the satisfaction of seeing the agenda he wanted to be implemented. He had won the war, it seemed.
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Years of grief caused by icare ‘could have been avoided’: former judge
By Lucy Cormack and Tom Rabe
May 1, 2021 — 5.00am
The country’s biggest workers’ compensation scheme suffered from a failure of governance, sloppy execution and difficulties in getting injured workers access to their entitled benefits.
State insurer icare was on Friday served the latest in a series of damning report cards into its governance, including one from a retired Supreme Court judge who said five-and-a-half years of grief could have been avoided.
It follows revelations of financial mismanagement, the underpayment of thousands of injured workers and net losses of more than $2.5 billion in the two years to 2020.
Almost all the senior executives embroiled in the scandal have since left icare.
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Gutwein claims victory in the Tasmanian election as Liberals edge closer to majority
By James Massola and Amelia McGuire
Updated May 1, 2021 — 10.55pmfirst published at 8.33pm
The Tasmanian Liberals were on track to form government on Saturday evening, with Premier Peter Gutwein claiming victory.
The election - which is the fourth time a state government has faced voters since the COVID-19 pandemic began - is being watched closely in Canberra for indications of whether, or to what extent, the Apple Isle’s three marginal seats could swing at the next federal poll.
“What a night,” Mr Gutwein told party faithful.
“Whilst we have won this election convincingly, it appears increasingly likely that we will also govern in majority.
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Coronavirus And Impacts.
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https://www.afr.com/technology/five-lessons-from-covid-19-that-will-change-us-all-20210428-p57n69
Five lessons from COVID-19 that will change us all
Julie Hare and Paul Smith
Apr 28, 2021 – 6.10pm
The pandemic triggered a fundamental shift in the nation’s relationship with technology, accelerating existing trends and radically changing expectations of everyday consumers.
Speaking to The Australian Financial Review Government Services Summit Pradeep Philip, chief executive of Deloitte Access Economics, said 2020 had “taught us to sit up and take notice of the speed of change” and had exposed structural weaknesses.
“The pandemic exposed our errors, the errors of underestimating the virus, its geometric progression, and being underprepared despite the warning,” Dr Philip said.
“[COVID-19] was no black swan event. Rather it is what American author, Michele Wucker, describes as a grey rhino – highly obvious and highly probable, but still neglected and dangerous.”
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Climate Change.
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https://www.afr.com/companies/energy/coal-the-loser-as-power-prices-smashed-20210427-p57mra
Coal the loser as power prices smashed
Angela Macdonald-Smith Senior resources writer
Apr 28, 2021 – 12.01am
Mushrooming rooftop solar and mild summer weather have driven demand for power from the grid to the lowest for 19 years for the peak summer quarter, cutting wholesale prices by up to 68 per cent and pushing major coal and gas power generators such as AGL Energy to the brink.
NSW, Victoria and South Australia all had record low demand for power from the centralised grid for the three months of the year when consumption is typically highest and prices the most volatile.
The installation of rooftop solar panels hit a fresh high for a March quarter of about 800 megawatts.
That contributed to prices dropping more frequently to zero or into negative territory, and caused a slump in black coal power output to the lowest for a March quarter since the National Electricity Market began in December 1998, according to the Australian Energy Market Operator.
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Fastest change in the world: coal’s demise sparks call for energy market reforms
By Mike Foley
April 30, 2021 — 12.01am
The future of coal power is dead and buried as cheaper renewables make it uneconomic for private companies to keep their ageing plants firing, the Commonwealth’s energy adviser says as it calls for urgent reforms to an energy market going through the fastest transition in the world.
The Energy Security Board, which reports to the Council of Australian Governments, called for a nationally co-ordinated approach to address “concerning and urgent” threats to the reliability of the energy grid.
The problem has been building since 2018 when the federal government abandoned its National Energy Guarantee policy, which was intended to co-ordinate the rise of renewable energy with dispatchable energy from large scale batteries, pumped hydro, or gas peaking plants that can be deployed to rapidly fill gaps when solar and wind power aren’t available.
Wind and solar farms, along with rooftop panels, are being built at an increasing pace and pouring more and more power into the grid. But to ensure there are no blackouts, weather-dependent renewables need dispatchable back-up supply to fill gaps in the grid.
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Royal Commissions And The Like.
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No entry in this category.
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National Budget Issues.
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‘The memory of the nation is at risk’ with National Archives desperate for funds
By Katina Curtis and Shane Wright
April 26, 2021 — 5.00am
Recordings of war-time speeches given by John Curtin, tapes of the Stolen Generation royal commission and even the records of the Bounty mutineers could disappear forever without an injection of cash into the National Archives.
Years of funding and staff cuts have caught up with the archives, which is struggling to prevent the disintegration of unique pieces of Australian history, including the personnel files of RAAF non-commissioned officers from World War II and papers for suffragettes Adela Pankhurst and Celia John.
Even surveillance films taken by ASIO, video of the 1998 Constitutional Convention and original films of early Australian Antarctic research expeditions are at risk as the Archives struggles to protect 384 kilometres of records that are growing rapidly every year.
Nicola Laurent, president of the Australian Society of Archivists, of which the National Archives is an institutional member, says it’s highly concerning it has come to the point where such important records are at risk.
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Fresh fight over contracts another blow for $90b submarine project
Andrew Tillett Political correspondent
Apr 27, 2021 – 12.00am
The Defence Department is refusing to sign new contracts with French shipbuilder Naval Group over the troubled future submarine project, as Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Defence Minister Peter Dutton stamp their authority by demanding all major strategic decisions be routed through their offices.
Sources have told The Australian Financial Review the Morrison government is refusing to pay Naval Group’s profit margin on the project and is covering just the company’s costs, forcing the shipbuilder to shed contractors and threatening to see work grind to a halt.
The federal government and shipbuilder Naval Group are facing fresh trouble over the submarine project.
The increasingly bitter contractual wrangling comes as the $90 billion project faces fresh delays, with COVID-19 running rife through the French shipyard and infecting a significant number of Australian engineers and designers, forcing their offices to be closed for deep cleaning.
While the government and Naval Group finally secured an agreement last month for the company to spend at least 60 per cent of the total contract value on local suppliers, the two sides remained deadlocked over the next stage of the project, the detailed design.
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Treasurer urged to revisit standard tax deduction as budget bottom line improves
By Shane Wright and Nick Bonyhady
April 27, 2021 — 12.01am
Millions of Australians would be able to stop collecting receipts in shoeboxes under a proposal to reform the personal tax system as the federal budget bottom line recovers from the coronavirus recession more quickly than expected.
The idea, first examined in detail in the 2009 Henry tax reform, would entitle all Australians to a $3000 annual standard tax deduction. Centrist think tank the Blueprint Institute argues this would benefit low and middle-income earners while delivering an economic stimulus.
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg will in the May 11 budget extend for a single year the low and middle-income tax offset worth up to $1080 for more than 10 million people earning less than $126,000 a year.
But even with the extension, these people still face a tax increase from 2022-23 until the third tranche of the government’s tax reform package starts from 2024-25. Those mid-decade tax cuts, however, will overwhelmingly benefit high-income earners.
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Ghost from the past: Kevin Rudd is making a big mistake reviving an old tax debate
Stephen Bartholomeusz
Senior business columnist
April 26, 2021 — 11.59am
With the iron ore price nudging $US180 a tonne it isn’t surprising that there has been a renewed call for a super profits tax on the iron ore miners.
Last week former prime minister Kevin Rudd argued for a “super profits levy” on iron ore miners, accusing them of greed and of a “giant rip-off of the Australian people.”
It’s probably no surprise that Rudd has raised the issue, given that the aborted Resources Super Profits Tax and the ferocious campaign against it by the mining industry played a significant role in his displacement as prime minister by Julia Gillard in 2010.
The RSPT, as it was known, was ill-conceived then and remains ill-conceived today; one built on misconceptions about the industry and how its “super profitability” has been achieved.
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Inflation eases to 0.6 per cent in March quarter
Inflation fell to 0.6 per cent over the first three months of the year, taking the annual rise in the consumer price index to 1.1 per cent from 0.9 per cent in the previous quarter.
The quarterly reading was below the 0.9 per cent anticipated by private sector economists.
The most significant price rise over the 12 months to March was petrol (up 8.7 per cent), while the largest price fall was for furniture, which fell by 3 per cent.
The less volatile “trimmed mean” inflation – preferred by the Reserve Bank of Australia as a measure of underlying inflationary pressures – fell to 0.3 per cent in the quarter, from 0.4 per cent, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
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Soft 1.1pc inflation eases pressure on interest rates
Matthew Cranston Economics correspondent
Apr 28, 2021 – 12.18pm
Inflation is softer than expected with the headline figure rising only 0.6 per cent in the March quarter to 1.1 per cent annually – significantly lower than economists expected.
The Reserve Bank’s preferred core inflation measure is now at its lowest annual rate on record, leaving the central bank with a greater justification for keeping interest rates low.
Government subsidies in home building and education were the drivers that prevented prices from rising as much as anticipated.
Economists expected headline inflation to rise 0.9 per cent in the March quarter to an annual 1.4 per cent, up from 0.9 per cent in the December quarter.
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Frydenberg aims to spend big to fix jobs and deficit
Phillip Coorey Political editor
Apr 28, 2021 – 10.30pm
The Morrison government has given itself licence for a big spending budget focused on job creation, saying an unemployment rate with a “four in front of it” was needed to lift wages and inflation, as well as drive down debt and deficit.
In a speech recalibrating the government’s fiscal policy ahead of the May 11 federal budget, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg will delay plans – likely beyond the election – to focus squarely on budget repair once the unemployment rate fell to between 5.25 per cent and 5.5 per cent.
Instead, the government will use targeted spending to strive for sustained unemployment levels not witnessed since before the Global Financial Crisis, when the jobless rate remained below 5 per cent between 2006 and 2008.
Citing new Treasury estimates, Mr Frydenberg will say the unemployment rate deemed necessary to “see inflation and wages accelerate” had fallen below the previous estimate of 5 per cent to “between 4.5 per cent and 5 per cent”.
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Debt and deficit disasters gone as Frydenberg aims for low unemployment
By Shane Wright
April 28, 2021 — 10.30pm
It’s only two years ago that Josh Frydenberg stood in a crowded House of Representatives to proclaim “the first surplus in 12 years and the first repayment made on Labor’s debt”.
The budget was “back in black” the Treasurer told voters in a speech that pre-dates the 2019 election “miracle”, the bushfires of summer and then the coronavirus pandemic.
While the Morrison government talked up its economic management skills for the march back to this “surplus”, it ignored the softness in the economy. The Reserve Bank had interest rates at a then-record low of 1.5 per cent, under-employment was climbing and wages growth – already terrible – was slowing.
Just days after the 2019 election victory, the RBA made its own judgement on economic policy in this country by cutting rates even lower.
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Sydney house prices soar to record median of $1.3m after fastest quarterly rise in 28 years
Tawar Razaghitwitter Apr 29, 2021
Sydney house prices have soared to a record-breaking $1,309,195, rising more than $100,000 in the first three months of this year, new figures reveal, the fastest quarterly gain in almost 30 years.
The median house price jumped 8.5 per cent in the first quarter of 2021, according to the latest Domain House Price Report released on Thursday. It is the fastest quarterly growth since Domain records began in 1993.
The unit recovery has also picked up, with the median price rising 2.2 per cent over the quarter to $751,038.
The persistent lack of stock in the face of unabated high levels of buyer demand and ultra-low interest rates has continued to fuel this “extremely rare” rate of growth, according to Domain senior research analyst Nicola Powell.
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No austerity: Frydenberg to fire up economy in major shift to budget policy
By Shane Wright
April 28, 2021 — 10.30pm
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg will use his post-pandemic budget to deliberately run the economy as fast as possible in a bid to drive the nation’s jobless rate below 5 per cent, upending the federal government’s fiscal policy.
In a major shift in rhetoric and budget policy, Mr Frydenberg will on Thursday use a speech to bring the government’s spending plans in line with the Reserve Bank’s own aggressive monetary policy stance while abandoning any rush to post-pandemic austerity.
Mr Frydenberg has overseen the largest budget deficits since World War II, with the 2019-20 shortfall of $85.3 billion to be dwarfed by a deficit of at least $150 billion in the current year. In next month’s budget he is expected to forecast a deficit for 2021-22 of at least $50 billion.
A new report from the independent Parliamentary Budget Office also shows the debts run up dealing with the coronavirus pandemic will weigh on the budget for a generation.
The Treasurer had previously promised not to start the government’s budget repair plan until unemployment was “comfortably below 6 per cent”. The jobless rate fell to 5.6 per cent in March but with JobKeeper ending that month, both Treasury and private economists believe it could drift higher.
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Markets are behaving dangerously but central banks have their heads in the sand
Senior business columnist
April 28, 2021 — 12.00pm
At the US Federal Reserve Board’s Open Market Committee meeting this week the members will no doubt spend most of their time discussing the surge in economic activity and its longer term implications for inflation. Perhaps they should lift their gaze and look at some of the unusual developments in financial markets this year.
More than a decade of loose central bank monetary policies have been overlaid by just over a year of ultra-loose policy and fiscal responses to the pandemic that dwarf governments’ reactions to the 2008 financial crisis.
The combination of policies has had the desired effects. The US economy is roaring back, with first-quarter GDP expected to show at least 6.5 per cent growth and, with help from the base effects (the reference point is the economic nadir of the pandemic), second-quarter growth could reach double-digits.
Unemployment is tumbling, retail sales are booming, manufacturing activity is surging and there’s been a significant uptick in inflation and in inflation expectations, which are at their highest levels in eight years.
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Canberra clueless to China’s flexible diplomacy
Australia insists on viewing Beijing in black and white. But that’s ill-matched with China’s expertise in the grey zone.
Richard McGregor Columnist
Apr 28, 2021 – 2.04pm
What a shemozzle, from start to finish, with lots of blame to go around.
No, I am not talking about the short life of the now extinguished Super League of the world’s top football clubs, but the much longer brawl over Victoria and its dealings with China.
The federal government’s decision to cancel Victoria’s two agreements with Beijing on the Belt & Road Initiative was greeted with the cascade of political praise and tabloid tubthumping that invariably comes with any tough-on-China decision these days.
Even the Victorian Labor government, with Premier Daniel Andrews - the deal’s architect, absent on medical leave - accepted the decision meekly.
There can be little argument that Victoria should not have entered into these agreements. But that doesn’t mean they should have been unwound in the frontal manner in which they were.
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Treasurer’s jobless target is aimed at the next election
With unemployment falling faster than expected, Josh Frydenberg has recalibrated the fiscal strategy to rule out spending restraint and make it harder for Labor to attack the budget.
Phillip Coorey Political editor
Apr 29, 2021 – 8.00pm
In the lead-up to last October’s federal budget, the unemployment rate sat at 6.8 per cent.
All predictions at the time were that the rate would worsen before it got better.
In a September pre-budget speech to outline the government’s fiscal strategy, Josh Frydenberg said he expected the jobless rate to spike above 6.8 per cent as Melbourne’s crippling lockdown came to an end and people joined the dole queues.
Further down the track, there was an expectation it would spike again, or at least plateau, once JobKeeper was withdrawn at the end of March.
Thus, the Treasurer said, the government would keep spending on job creation via “temporary, targeted and proportionate” measures until the jobless rate fell “comfortably below 6 per cent”.
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$53 million budget lifeline for struggling international student sector
By Lisa Visentin
April 30, 2021 — 12.00am
Private higher education institutes, VET colleges and English language schools will share in a $53 million federal budget lifeline to fund an extra 5000 short course places, adapt their business models and avoid costly registration fees to help the sector survive without international students.
Many private colleges were forced to shed jobs or shutter their operations over the past year as border closures hit overseas student numbers, prompting the sector to plead for a rescue package from the federal government.
Federal Education Minister Alan Tudge will on Friday respond to this call with a package aimed at helping colleges survive the coming months amid uncertainty about when Australia’s borders will reopen for international students.
The measures will include $26 million to fund 5000 course places for Australian students across 100 colleges known as “non-university higher education providers”, which typically enrol high numbers of international students. The government will spend another $17.7 million to waive registration fees for colleges, English language schools and up to 3500 VET providers until December.
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New economic rule: The budget’s the only game in town
Ross Gittins
Economics Editor
April 30, 2021 — 10.57am
There’s a trick for governments trying to manage their economy. Once in a while – maybe every 30 or 40 years – the rules of the economic game change. What used to be the right thing to do becomes wrong, and now the right thing is something we’ve long believed was not the way to go.
Trouble is, the game change is never announced by thunder and lightning flashes from on high that everybody sees. Those paying close attention soon get the message, but many people – even many economists – don’t.
Some people have invested their careers – and their egos – in the old way of doing things and resist any talk of change. They stick to their ideology when it’s time for pragmatism and re-examination of old ideas to see if they still work.
These rare times of change are dangerous for governments. Those that don’t get the message in time stuff up and get thrown out.
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New laws needed to fight terror, says ASIO boss Mike Burgess
Displaying Nazi or Islamic State flags and possessing terrorist manifestos would be outlawed under new powers being sought by the Australian Federal Police to combat violent extremism.
AFP Deputy Commissioner Ian McCartney told the parliament’s intelligence and security committee legislative changes were needed to prevent early-stage planning of terrorist attacks, the radicalisation of new and younger recruits, and the harassment of community members.
The call came as ASIO boss Mike Burgess warned his agency expected a terrorist attack to occur in Australia within the next year, following two lone-actor attacks in the past six months.
The terrorism threat level remained at “probable”, amid credible intelligence that individuals and small groups had the capability and intent to conduct attacks within Australia, he said.
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https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/may-11-budget-may-not-be-the-final-word-20210430-p57nr3
May 11 budget may not be the final word
The May 11 budget will naturally be seen through the prism of the next federal election, but there’s a good chance it won’t be the final word.
Phillip Coorey Political editor
May 1, 2021 – 12.01am
While the May 11 budget will naturally be seen through the prism of the next federal election, there’s a good chance it won’t be the final word.
Speaking to AFR Weekend ahead of his first budget as Finance Minister, Simon Birmingham said the door was wide open to another one before we head to the polls.
He pointed to the 2019 “precedent” in which Scott Morrison pulled the budget forward by a month to April 2, then called the election on the back of it.
“There’s obviously precedent and scope for another budget to occur. The election’s due next year, and exactly when next year and how our budget fits into, that will be a decision for the PM at a later stage,” Birmingham said.
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Morrison government to splash $1.7 billion to slash childcare costs for families
May 1, 2021 — 10.30pm
Parents with more than one child in childcare will be big winners in next week’s federal budget, with a $1.7 billion package designed to slash out of pocket costs and get more people back into full time work.
The government will increase childcare subsidies and remove the subsidy cap for high income earners. The measures are designed to encourage more parents to return to working either four or five days a week and spur Australia’s economic recovery from COVID-19.
“These changes strengthen our economy and at the same time provide greater choice to parents who want to work an extra day or two a week,” Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said.
The new measures - which do not go as far as Labor’s promise of universal childcare - particularly target low and middle incomes families earning $130,000 or less per year and increase the subsidies given to families with more than one child in childcare.
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Health Issues.
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COVID-19 vaccines may interfere with breast cancer screening
Jill Margo Health editor
Apr 27, 2021 – 9.59am
As COVID vaccines can lead to harmless lumps in the armpit, women are being advised to rethink the timing of their screening for breast cancer as these temporary swellings may interfere with the interpretation of a mammogram or ultrasound image.
Two experts from Queensland University of Technology, say women should delay a routine breast screen for six weeks following a vaccine.
After a vaccine in the upper arm, it is normal for the lymph nodes in that armpit to be activated and swell. This happens in men and women and is a sign the body is preparing a protective immune response.
In some, the swelling can be pronounced. About one in 10 may feel a lump that is not always painful and disappears a week or two later.
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How Australia adopted America’s bible of psychiatry
It’s time for a robust review into how America’s mental illness diagnostic manual, which has been fully adopted here, is affecting Australians.
Critics of the American ‘Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders’ say it promotes a “hyper-medicalised model” that reduces the complexity of human behaviour to a tick-box list, devoid of empathy.
Jill Margo Health editor
May 1, 2021 – 12.00am
While Australians may decry the effects of Hollywood, Coca-Cola and McDonald’s on our culture, most are completely ignorant of the dominant role American psychiatry plays in contemporary Australia, says mental health researcher Dr Martin Whitely.
“It affects millions of individuals and their families,” says Whitely, a research fellow in Public Policy at Curtin University in WA. “The central document used in Australia to define who is sane and who is mentally ill – the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) – has been drawn up entirely by committees in the US.
“The DSM is one of the most powerful cultural documents in our country. We have blindly followed America’s lead and a robust review of its impact on Australians is long overdue.”
He says this document is updated and expanded by committees of the American Psychiatric Association, to which Australia doesn’t belong and so has no say.
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International Issues.
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https://www.afr.com/world/asia/debris-found-from-missing-submarine-no-sign-of-crew-20210424-p57m3e
Crew of missing submarine on ‘eternal patrol’
Emma Connors South-east Asia correspondent
Updated Apr 25, 2021 – 5.54pm, first published at Apr 24, 2021 – 11.09pm
Singapore/Jakarta | Indonesians have declared the 53 sailors on the KRI Nanggala to be on “eternal patrol”, acknowledging there is no hope left for those on board the submarine that has been silent since Wednesday morning.
On Saturday, the Indonesian navy concluded the vessel was 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 Saturday local time (6am AEST).
In a YouTube statement on Sunday, President Joko Widodo told the nation: “The Indonesian Navy has raised the status of KRI Nanggala 402 from lost contact or sub miss, to drowning or sub sunk.
“This tragedy shocked us all, not only the family of the 53 crew members, the Hiu Kencana family [submarine honour corp] and the extended family of the Indonesian Navy but also the entire Indonesian people.
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As COVID-19 devastates India, the fallout is felt around the globe
By Jeffrey Gettleman and Sameer Yasir
April 25, 2021 — 1.30pm
New Delhi: India’s coronavirus second wave is rapidly sliding into a devastating crisis, with hospitals unbearably full, oxygen supplies running low, desperate people dying in line waiting to see doctors – and mounting evidence that the actual death toll is far higher than officially reported.
For the fourth consecutive day, the country set a global record of new infections a day, this time 349,691 cases on Sunday. India alone now accounts for almost half of all new cases.
But experts say those numbers, however staggering, represent just a fraction of the real reach of the virus’ spread, which has thrown this country into emergency mode. Millions of people refuse to even step outside – their fear of catching the virus is that extreme. Accounts from around the country tell of the sick being left to gasp for air as they wait at chaotic hospitals that are running out of lifesaving oxygen.
The sudden surge in recent weeks, with an insidious newer variant possibly playing a role, is casting increasing doubt on India’s official COVID-19 death toll of nearly 200,000, with more than 2000 people dying every day.
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Xi unveils three new warships in warning to Taiwan
· The Times
President Xi has presided over a rare public display of China’s growing naval strength by unveiling three new warships - one an amphibious helicopter carrier, hailed as the most advanced vessel in the nation’s fleet - amid growing concern that he is building a force capable of retaking Taiwan.
The carrier, named Hainan, is designed as an offensive platform from which to launch an amphibious or airborne assault and can transport up to 1,200 troops as well as dozens of helicopters and jump jets. The second vessel, the Dalian, is a guided-missile cruiser with stealth technology; the third is an upgraded Type 094A nuclear-powered submarine, the Changzheng-18, believed to be capable of carrying 12 JL-2 intercontinental ballistic missiles.
The ceremony, in a military port in the southern city of Sanya, coincided with a warning from Wang Yi, the foreign Minister, that the US would have to accept China’s rise if it wanted to coexist peacefully. “Democracy is not Coca-Cola, with the US producing the syrup and the whole world has one single taste,” he said.
Xi’s presence at the commissioning ceremony on Friday follows months of growing tensions in the disputed South China Sea and around the self-governing island of Taiwan, which Beijing is vowing to take back by force if necessary. This is the first time that China has openly commissioned a nuclear-powered submarine.
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Russia-China union casts dark cloud over West
In the past couple of weeks, Russia has deployed a large, battle-ready military force on the borders of Ukraine. Elements of that force have now been returned to barracks, but the threat of a Russian attack on Ukraine can no longer be dismissed. Neither can the possibility of military co-ordination between China’s President Xi Jinping and President Vladimir Putin to demonstrate their rising military power compared with the relative decline of America.
First, let us examine the size and preparedness of Russia’s military deployment. Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu has overseen drills involving more than 10,000 troops and 40 warships in Crimea and the Black Sea. But that is far from the full story. Between 80,000 and 100,000 troops from the southern and western military districts of Russia have been deployed on “military drills” along the borders of Ukraine.
This large-scale build-up led to concern in Kiev of a repeat of Russia’s attack in 2014, when Moscow annexed Crimea. General Shoigu has described the deployment of Russian troops as “a snap test of combat readiness” in response to threatening military activities by NATO. He said Moscow was closely watching NATO activity, including the current Defender Europe 2021 exercises from the Baltic to the Black Sea. He announced that Moscow intends to close parts of the Black Sea to foreign military and other ships for the next six months.
The Russian troops included 48 battalion groups of tanks, mechanised and artillery elements, as well as airborne assault divisions and amphibious attack units. They have been deployed with military field hospitals clearly visible by commercial satellite photography. Field hospitals are particularly important because of their preparedness for battle casualties. There is also sufficient air power deployed, including attack helicopters, ground attack and fighter aircraft, to establish air superiority over the battlefield and support the ground troops.
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Powerful, new British aircraft carrier to set sail for Asia next month
April 26, 2021 — 11.44am
London: A fleet of British warships and military aircraft billed as the “largest concentration of maritime and air power to leave the UK in a generation” will depart next month for visits to India, Japan, South Korea and Singapore, in a display of Britain’s ambition to exert a much stronger presence in Asia.
New aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth, the most powerful surface vessel in the Royal Navy’s history, will set sail next month for Asia with eight fast jets on board.
It will be accompanied by six Royal Navy ships, a submarine armed with Tomahawk cruise missiles, 14 naval helicopters and a company of Royal Marines.
Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said the mission aims to show that Britain is “not stepping back but sailing forth to play an active role in shaping the international system.”
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As Biden nears 100 days, polls show persistent partisan divides
Giovanni Russonello
Apr 26, 2021 – 6.11pm
Washington | With US President Joe Biden approaching his 100th day in office this week, a slim majority of Americans approve of the job he is doing, but he has been unable to overcome the country’s entrenched partisan divide, according to separate polls released on Sunday (Monday AEST).
The surveys, from Fox News, NBC News and ABC News/The Washington Post, found that Mr Biden is considerably more popular at the 100-day mark than his predecessor, Donald Trump, but his approval is well behind that of most other modern presidents at this point in their first terms.
The ABC/Post poll found 52 per cent of Americans approving of his performance and 42 per cent disapproving. Comparing those numbers with past ABC/Post and Gallup surveys, he is less popular at 100 days than any other president since World War II except for Mr Trump and Gerald Ford (who at this point had just issued a highly unpopular pardon to Richard Nixon).
The NBC News poll put his approval at a similar level, 53 per cent to 39 per cent, and the Fox poll, which surveyed only registered voters, had it at 54 per cent to 43 per cent.
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Biden polls better than 50pc for first 100 days in office in heavily partisan divide
· AFP
More than half of Americans approve of President Joe Biden’s performance during his first 100 days in office, three new polls show, but other presidents have done better.
Mr Biden’s performance is far higher than Donald Trump achieved in his entire presidency but, with the exception of his predecessor, every US president since Gerald Ford has had higher average approval than Mr Biden at this stage.
The polls show a range of 52-58 per cent of US adults say they approve of the job Mr Biden is doing, compared with 39-42 per cent who say they disapprove.
The polls were released just days before Mr Biden’s first address to congress on Thursday AEST.
The positive ratings are heavily divided along party lines: about 90 per cent of Democrats say they approve of Mr Biden’s performance, while only 9 to 13 per cent of Republicans do.
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https://www.afr.com/world/asia/narendra-modi-and-the-perils-of-covid-hubris-20210427-p57mo9
India’s plight has worldwide implications
The lesson of India is to guard against premature celebration or hubris. The pandemic is not a series of national crises in which countries compete to see who can deal with the virus better. This is an interconnected global crisis.
Gideon Rachman Columnist
Apr 27, 2021 – 9.45am
“It can be said with pride, India ... defeated COVID-19 under the able, sensible, committed and visionary leadership of Prime Minister Modi ... The party unequivocally hails its leadership for introducing India to the world as a proud and victorious nation in the fight against COVID.”
Those were the words of a resolution passed by India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata party, just a few weeks ago in February.
But now India is reeling from a surge in cases. Hospitals are running out of oxygen and acute-care beds. Mass cremations are taking place in makeshift facilities. Heart-rending pictures of suffering are being broadcast around the world. Surveys of mortuaries suggest that the number of COVID-19 deaths may be two to five times higher than the official figure of around 2000 a day.
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https://www.afr.com/world/europe/britain-s-naval-mission-to-asia-not-confrontational-20210427-p57mlr
Britain’s naval mission to Asia ‘not confrontational’
Hans van Leeuwen Europe correspondent
Apr 27, 2021 – 10.14am
London | Britain’s deployment of its new 65,000-tonne aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth to the South China Sea is “confident but not confrontational”, the country’s defence minister has said, as he downplayed any challenge to Beijing.
The carrier strike group, which also includes a ring of accompanying destroyers, frigates, a submarine, and tanker and storage ships, will set off next month on a 28-week maiden voyage encompassing large swathes of the Indo-Pacific, as Britain’s post-Brexit foreign policy “tilts” towards the region.
But Defence Secretary Ben Wallace told MPs on Monday that “more often than not” the carrier group would be in the eastern Mediterranean or the Atlantic. And he rowed back from previous British claims that the imminent mission was intended as a tough message to Beijing.
“China is increasingly assertive, building the world’s largest maritime surface and sub-surface fleets. However, we are not going to go to the other side of the world to be provocative,” he said in a statement to parliament.
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https://www.afr.com/world/asia/this-is-a-catastrophe-in-india-illness-is-everywhere-20210428-p57mzh
‘This is a catastrophe.’ In India, illness is everywhere.
As India suffers the world’s worst coronavirus crisis, the NYT’s New Delhi bureau chief describes the fear of living amid a disease spreading at such scale and speed.
Jeffrey Gettleman
Updated Apr 28, 2021 – 9.18am, first published at 9.15am
New Delhi | Crematories are so full of bodies, it’s as if a war just happened. Fires burn around the clock. Many places are holding mass cremations, dozens at a time, and at night, in certain areas of New Delhi, the sky glows.
Sickness and death are everywhere. Dozens of houses in my neighbourhood have sick people. One of my colleagues is sick. One of my son’s teachers is sick. The neighbour two doors down, to the right of us: sick. Two doors to the left: sick.
“I have no idea how I got it,” said a good friend who is now in the hospital. “You catch just a whiff of this...” and then his voice trailed off, too sick to finish.
He barely got a bed. And the medicine his doctors say he needs is nowhere to be found in India.
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US vessel moves to Black Sea as Russia holds naval drills
By Maxim Rodionov
April 28, 2021 — 5.56am
Moscow: Russia’s Black Sea fleet launched naval combat exercises on Tuesday (Wednesday AEST) as a US coastguard vessel headed to the region at a time of heightened tension between Russia and the West.
Moscow alarmed Kiev and Western capitals in recent weeks by building up forces along the border with Ukraine, though last week it ordered a withdrawal of some troops.
Russia’s Black Sea fleet said on Tuesday its Moskva cruiser would hold live-fire drills with other ships and military helicopters, Interfax news agency reported.
Hours earlier, US Naval Forces in Europe said the US Coast Guard vessel Hamilton, a cutter, was moving into the Black Sea to work with NATO allies and partners in the region.
The RIA news agency quoted Russia’s defence ministry on Tuesday evening as saying the Hamilton had entered the Black Sea and was being tracked by the Russian fleet.
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Egyptian archaeologists unearth 110 ancient tombs in Nile Delta
April 28, 2021 — 3.15am
Cairo: Egyptian archaeologists have unearthed 110 burial tombs at an ancient site in a Nile Delta province.
The graves, some of which have human remains inside, were found at the Koum el-Khulgan archaeological site in Dakahlia province, around 150 kilometres north-east of Cairo, the Egyptian Tourism and Antiquities Ministry said.
They include 68 oval-shaped tombs dating back to the Predynastic Period that spanned from 6000-3150BC.
There are also 37 rectangular-shaped tombs from an ancient era known as the Second Intermediate Period (1782-1570BC), when the Semitic people of Hyksos ruled ancient Egypt.
The remaining five oval-shaped tombs date back to the Naqada III period that spanned from around 3200BC to 3000BC.
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China spy plane tests Taiwan’s air defences
· The Times
A Chinese spy plane attempted to fly below Taiwan’s radar detection system as it gathered intelligence and tested the island’s air defences.
The Y-8 tactical reconnaissance aircraft from the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) flew 30 metres above sea level off Taiwan yesterday as part of China’s growing military manoeuvres around the self-governing island.
Chinese aircraft have made almost daily incursions into Taiwan’s air defence identification zone since September.
This was the lowest flight made in an area that acts as a buffer between international airspace and a nation’s territorial airspace.
Lin Yin-yu, a professor at the Institute of Strategic and International Affairs at National Chung Cheng University in southern Taiwan, told the South China Morning Post that the low-altitude flight served to test the Taiwanese military’s radar response capability.
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America’s naval strategy is at sea
· The Wall Street Journal
The US Navy is at sea, figuratively as well as literally. It has 101 ships deployed around the world — the same number as during the Cold War — yet the entire fleet is only 297 vessels strong. That’s about half the Reagan-era level of nearly 600. The consequences of maintaining current global commitments with a shrunken fleet include long deployments — some sailors spend close to a year at sea — as well as more maintenance and less time for training.
The figurative sense in which the Navy is at sea is more important and more dangerous. The fleet doesn’t have enough ships to meet global commitments, even as the US faces growing naval competition from China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. Each of these potential adversaries possesses missiles and aircraft whose sole purpose is to keep US naval forces at bay. Sixty-four percent of China’s maritime trade and 40 per cent of its overall trade flows through the South China Sea, through which US naval ships sail regularly.
Were hostilities to break out between China and the US, the conflict would be a naval one. It would test the US ability to move naval and amphibious forces across the 7,000-mile Pacific moat in time to assist American allies and partners, deny China’s use of the shipping lanes between it and the Middle East, and operate effectively to command the South China, East China and Yellow seas. The Chinese Navy would be a formidable foe. It has long-range missiles, a nascent aircraft-carrier force and increasingly modern ships and weapons of all categories, as well as cyber and space capabilities.
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Generals call for Macron’s overthrow over Islamist ‘danger’ to France
· The Times
Twenty retired generals have created a political storm in France with a call for a military takeover if President Emmanuel Macron fails to halt the “disintegration” of the country at the hands of Islamists.
The open letter, published in right-wing news magazine Valeurs Actuelles, comes after a Tunisian Islamist stabbed to death a 49-year-old woman who worked at a police station in the outskirts of Paris last Friday.
Mr Macron’s government has condemned the call, led by Jean-Pierre Fabre-Bernadac, a retired gendarmerie general, comparing it to the failed coup by generals against president Charles de Gaulle 60 years ago.
The lead signatory was Christian Piquemal, 80, who commanded the Foreign Legion but lost his privileges as a retired officer after he was arrested while taking part in an anti-Islam demonstration in 2016.
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French army officers face punishment for ‘coup’ threat
· The Times
Retired generals and several hundred officers face formal punishment after telling President Macron that France was risking a military coup for failing to crack down on Islamists who are causing the country to “disintegrate”.
Florence Parly, the defence minister, has ordered an investigation into the signatories to an inflammatory letter written by a former gendarmerie officer with a far-right background. It was first published on a pro-military website and in Valeurs Actuelles, a right-wing magazine, last week. Many of those who signed it, including non-commissioned officers, appeared to be serving members of the forces.
The letter, written by Jean-Pierre Fabre-Bernadac, a retired captain, said France was being destroyed by immigrant Muslim “hordes” from the suburban housing estates that ring its cities. To avert civil war, it said, required “intervention by our comrades on active service in the dangerous mission of protecting our civilised values and the safety of our compatriots”.
It was condemned by all mainstream parties but supported by Marine Le Pen, leader of the nationalist National Rally and candidate for the presidential election next spring.
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Fed strengthens view of US economy while keeping rates near zero
Craig Torres
Apr 29, 2021 – 4.15am
Washington | Federal Reserve officials strengthened their assessment of the economy on Wednesday (Thursday AEST) and signalled that risks have diminished while leaving their policy interest rate near zero and maintaining a $US120 billion ($154 billion) monthly pace of asset purchases.
“Amid progress on vaccinations and strong policy support, indicators of economic activity and employment have strengthened,” the Federal Open Market Committee said in a statement following the conclusion of its two-day policy meeting.
“The sectors most adversely affected by the pandemic remain weak but have shown improvement. Inflation has risen, largely reflecting transitory factors.”
The Fed said that “risks to the economic outlook remain”, softening previous language that referred to the pandemic posing “considerable risks”.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/foreign-affairs/is-a-war-coming-between-china-and-the-us-20210428-p57n1k
Is a war coming between China and the US?
A new novel about 2034 that starts with a naval battle near Taiwan has unnerving echoes of today’s news headlines.
Thomas Friedman Contributor
Apr 28, 2021 – 12.28pm
If you’re looking for a compelling read, I recommend the novel 2034, by James Stavridis, a retired admiral, and Elliot Ackerman, a former marine and intelligence officer. The book is about how China and America go to war in 2034, beginning with a naval battle near Taiwan and with China acting in a tacit alliance with Iran and Russia.
I’m not giving it all away to say China and the US end up in a nuclear shootout and incinerate a few of each other’s cities, and the result is that neutral India becomes the dominant world power. (Hey, it’s a novel!)
What made the book unnerving, though, was that when I’d put it down and pick up the day’s newspaper I’d read much of what it was predicting for 13 years from now:
Iran and China just signed a 25-year cooperation agreement. Vladimir Putin just massed troops on the border of Ukraine while warning the US that anyone who threatens Russia “will regret their deeds more than they have regretted anything in a long time”. As fleets of Chinese fighter jets, armed with electronic warfare technology, now regularly buzz Taiwan, China’s top foreign affairs policymaker just declared that the US “does not have the qualification ... to speak to China from a position of strength”.
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Apple crushes Wall St targets, to spend $115b buying its own shares
Stephen Nellis
Apr 29, 2021 – 6.48am
Apple posted sales and profits far ahead of Wall Street expectations and announced a $US90 billion ($115 billion) share buyback as customers continued to upgrade to 5G iPhones and snapped up new Mac models with Apple’s house-designed processor chips.
Sales to China nearly doubled and results topped analyst targets in every category, led by $US6.5 billion more in iPhone sales than predicted and Mac sales about a third higher than estimates. Apple chief executive Tim Cook said the company sees an economic recovery coming.
“I think the US will be very strong. Certainly, all indications that I see would be very positive on the US economy,” Cook told Reuters in an interview.
The results came the midst of a global semiconductor shortage that has hobbled US automotive manufacturers but that appears to have left Apple, a major chip buyer known for its supply chain expertise, unscathed.
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One hundred days that shook America from its delirium: Biden’s bold and fast agenda
Senior fellow at the United States Studies Centre and former political staffer.
April 29, 2021 — 5.30am
We have not seen this tableau before: two women seated behind the US President as he addresses Congress on Thursday morning, Australian time, on the eve of his 100th day in office. The next in line of succession are indeed Vice-President Kamala Harris and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. And the VP is a woman of colour. It will be the most striking presentation of the country’s leadership since Barack Obama, the first African American elected president, made his maiden address to Congress in 2009.
President Joe Biden delivers this speech at the apex of his popularity and momentum so far. Biden’s decades of experience show. His cabinet is confirmed and working. His staff is rock solid. Biden’s agenda is clear and straightforward: end the pandemic; restore the economy; rebuild the country’s infrastructure; expand healthcare, education and income security; advance racial equity and voting rights; solve immigration and end the crisis on the southern border; make real change on gun control and climate change; lead the world again.
There are no dramas. The nation’s collective blood pressure is down markedly since Trump, “the former guy”, left office. Same in Australia. We no longer wake up wondering what the hell the President did overnight.
The White House is back to normal. Biden and Harris get briefed every morning by the intelligence services. The press secretary gives daily media briefings, and she does not tell lies from the podium. After 100 days, no major officials have been fired, or interviewed by the FBI. Biden’s speeches rarely last more than 20 minutes. The COVID-19 advice comes from medical experts; there are no recommendations to use bleach in fighting the virus. No weekend crisis tweets from a gilded room in Florida. This President’s tweets are short and to the point on policy and priorities.
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The Fed remains dovish even as the Biden binge hits $US6 trillion
Senior business columnist
April 29, 2021 — 11.46am
The world’s most influential central bank has left its ultra-dovish monetary policies unchanged after the latest meeting of the US Federal Reserve Board’s Open Market Committee. While that was the outcome anticipated by financial markets, there were some hints of a slight hardening of its tone.
The Fed chairman, Jerome Powell and the official statement from the FOMC made it clear that US rates still remain at or near zero, and the Fed will continue to hoover up $US120 billion ($154 billion) of bonds and mortgages a month until it becomes clearer that the pandemic is under control in the US; that the unemployment rate has fallen back significantly and the inflation rate is above 2 per cent “for some time.”
But there were some subtle shifts in language. The pandemic is no longer a “considerable” risk; indicators of economic activity and employment had improved; sectors most adversely affected by the virus, while still weak, had strengthened; inflation had risen, albeit largely reflecting “transitory” factors.
Powell also acknowledged that the Fed’s monetary policies had contributed to markets being “a bit frothy” and to some assets prices being high.
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How I got my ‘double dip recession’ forecast so wrong
This top forecaster with 50 years in the business made the worst mistake of his career by underestimating the power of vaccines, impatient Americans and Bidenomics.
Stephen Roach Contributor
Apr 29, 2021 – 12.12pm
I have been in the economic forecasting business for close to 50 years. I got my start in the early 1970s, on the research staff at the Federal Reserve in Washington, DC, before taking my crystal ball to Wall Street for over 30 years. For more than a decade, I have been in the ivory tower at Yale – still dabbling in forecasting from time to time but mainly teaching, writing, and speaking.
Over that long stretch, my forecasting record has been mixed. There were a couple of memorable calls at the Fed, where I warned of a sharp recession in the mid-1970s and intractable inflation later in the decade.
But I look back with the greatest pride at my collaboration with Larry Slifman in building the Fed’s first “black box” forecasting model that I believe is still largely in use today.
We worked around the clock for several weeks to program linked computer-based spreadsheets (unheard of back then) as a replacement for the single-iteration monthly exercise previously done manually on a Monroe calculator. Our so-called judgmental approach was the point-counterpoint to the Fed’s renowned large-scale econometric model.
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In his first 100 days, Joe Biden’s bold, progressive turn stuns nation
April 30, 2021 — 11.46am
Washington: When Joe Biden delivered his inaugural address outside the Capitol on a frosty day in January, he declared that America faced a “winter of peril and possibility”.
“Few periods in our nation’s history have been more challenging or difficult than the one we’re in now,” Biden said.
Just a fortnight earlier, furious supporters of Donald Trump stormed the Capitol in a bid to overturn what they saw as a fraudulent election. The country was recording 195,000 new coronavirus infections a day, as well as 3000 deaths.
When Biden returned to the Capitol this week for his first presidential address to Congress, he painted an altogether sunnier picture.
“America is on the move again,” he said. “Turning peril into possibility, crisis into opportunity, setback into strength.”
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Europe’s recession shows it pays to unleash money on pandemic
By Peter S. Goodman
May 1, 2021 — 10.44am
London: Economic reports released on both sides of the Atlantic have painted very different pictures of how the United States and Europe are recovering from the pandemic. The lesson: along with vaccines, it pays to unleash enormous amounts of public money in the face of a livelihood-destroying health crisis.
European countries provided less relief and ended up in a so-called double-dip recession in the first three months of the year, a reality confirmed on Friday by an official estimate showing the eurozone economy shrunk by 0.6 per cent.
That came a day after the United States disclosed its economy expanded by 1.6 per cent over the same period after substantial public expenditures aimed at stimulating growth.
The recession in the 19 nations that share the euro currency reflects far less aggressive stimulus spending and a botched effort to secure vaccines that has left many countries contending with continued restrictions on daily life.
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I look forward to comments on all this!
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David.
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