August 26, 2021 Edition
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There are
really only 2 stories this week. First we have the COVID still spreading like mad in NSW and
Victoria. Second we have the awfully sad collapse of Afghanistan and the
Taliban taking over in chaotic circumstances, with all sorts of issues
regarding how things have been handled. Fortunately some have escaped on all the evac. flights
In the UK the latest data – 21 August – has cases at 32,000 per day, 1000 admissions per day and 70 COVID deaths per day. Hardly re-assuring given the vaccination rates.
In OZ ‘freedom
rallies’ are pretty sad and violent. Pretty sad. In OZ politics we are seeing a transition from a suppression of COVID19 Strategy to a 'living with the virus' strategy which offers zilch to the young and looks pretty dodgy - time will tell!
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Major Issues.
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Unis are financially fit to ride out pandemic storm: Tudge
Julie Hare Education editor
Aug 16, 2021 – 12.05am
Universities came into 2021 in a financially strong position and will be able to weather the storm caused by evaporating international student enrolments without further government support, according to Education Minister Alan Tudge.
In a terse speech to higher education leaders, Mr Tudge will tell The Australian Financial Review Higher Education Summit that universities’ diminishing revenue streams in 2020 were more a consequence of falling investment returns than from international students deferring or not enrolling.
Mr Tudge’s speech will likely further inflame already tense relations with the university sector with the implication universities have been overstating the financial impact of closed borders on their bottom lines.
Mr Tudge will say that analysis by the federal Education Department reveals the majority of universities entered 2021 in a “relatively strong financial position”, with 25 reporting surpluses, including five with their best operating surplus in the past five years and 10 with surpluses in excess of $30 million. Seventeen reported deficits.
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Universities count losses, search for gains
Australian universities are adapting to a dramatically different business model, but closed borders are exacerbating the financial arguments with Canberra.
Jennifer Hewett Columnist
Aug 16, 2021 – 5.51pm
Over the last decade, Australian governments have been keen to boast about the remarkable growth of a shiny new export – international education worth $40 billion in 2019.
Australian universities have been just as happy with the ever accelerating increase in revenue from international students, boosting budgets and cross-subsidising discretionary spending, including on research.
That enabled universities to improve global rankings and facilities, which in turn encouraged yet more high-paying international students. In certain courses they vastly outnumbered domestic students, with Australia second only to the US in terms of international students – leading to domestic student concerns about the weight of numbers.
That simmering debate has been overwhelmed by the advent of COVID-19, and Australia’s suddenly closed international borders abruptly sharpened the contours of this conveniently fuzzy picture of claimed excellence. It also exacerbated the already tense relationship between Canberra and the higher education sector.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/wages-growth-falls-to-gfc-levels-20210818-p58jpy
Wages growth falls to GFC levels
Ronald Mizen Economics correspondent
Aug 18, 2021 – 12.28pm
Wages growth fell to 0.4 per cent in the June quarter, on par with the depths of global financial crisis, prompting some economists to rethink their expectations for when interest rates would begin to rise.
Despite the jobless rate falling to 4.9 per cent in June, the lowest level in a decade, wages remain stagnant, according to the Bureau of Statistics, coming in well below the market consensus of 0.6 per cent.
The result came as a surprise given widespread reports over the three months to June 30 that labour shortages in parts of the economy were resulting to significant wages pressures.
“The subdued 0.4 per cent q/q rise in the wage price index in [quarter two] underlines the tight labour market didn’t generate large cost increases even before the latest virus restrictions,” Capital Economics’ Marcel Thieliant said.
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At last, a prospectus just for you! Pierpont is back for a milestone
The first Pierpont column appeared in 1972, shortly after the Poseidon boom went bust. He penned his last column in 2017, but has emerged for our 70th anniversary. From our Platinum 70 magazine out now.
Trevor Sykes Columnist
Aug 20, 2021 – 5.00am
Having snared a position in this 70th anniversary magazine, Pierpont and his geriatric cronies figured that any reader who got this far would have his or her mental capabilities battered by all the fine writing before now. Their brain cells having been reduced by all that intellectual effort, some of them might just be in a condition where they would be unable to resist subscribing to a prospectus for Trans Global Lithium Limited.
Like all prospectuses issued by Pierpont and his archaic colleagues, it is written to appeal to the current modish fashions. It offers, for a mere $2 a share, a lithium mine. The prospectus is a thin document, mostly writing about how lithium is the previously little-known metal that is now taking over the world.
Without actually saying so, the prospectus leaves readers with the impression that any reader who doesn’t have lithium already in their portfolio will be poorer as soon as the lithium boom really gets into gear. As there are already a couple of dozen companies offering lithium to punters, Pierpont’s crew are hoping the chaps from the Australian Securities and Investments Commission don’t pay too much attention to this modest offering, which is seeking a mere $20 million from the unwary.
So send us a cheque and open a celebratory bottle of Bollinger, and don’t bother reading the rest of this column, which is devoted to a few dreary facts that may otherwise disturb your equanimity.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/keating-howard-show-good-policy-is-good-politics-20210818-p58jpm
Keating, Howard show good policy is good politics
The two living transformational shapers of postwar Australia should be leadership models for the current generation of politicians.
Aug 19, 2021 – 7.18pm
Paul Keating and John Howard are the two living transformational shapers of postwar Australia. Before their time in office, the country was over-regulated, protected, insular and even fearful about the outside world. After them, it was an outward-looking, export-driven, cosmopolitan, liberalised G20 middle power.
Two long, revealing interviews in Friday’s The Australian Financial Review Magazine Platinum 70 Year edition show how much Mr Keating and Mr Howard bookend each other.
They were political antagonists, but policy contestants for the same ground of mainstream Australia that they shaped in the process. Mr Keating’s opening of the economy, alongside his enabler Bob Hawke, created a new aspirational class that Mr Howard then consolidated.
Much as they may dislike the idea, each reinforced the other. The sons of family business owners, they both entered politics in the 1970s as the postwar Keynesian consensus on economic policy was breaking down.
“We were spinning our wheels … and the more I realised how important economic reform was,” says Mr Howard.
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In this Afghanistan moment, compassion must trump political risk
Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra
August 20, 2021 — 10.26am
Prime Minister Scott Morrison this week pointed to the government’s closure of Australia’s embassy in Afghanistan in May as a good decision for which he had been criticised.
More credibly, it was a bad decision, on principle but also very likely for practical reasons.
The scramble by Western countries to evacuate their nationals and Afghans who had assisted them was always destined to be chaotic.
But it is possible, if we had retained a small contingent of embassy staff in place to the end, we might have been able to process the Afghans more efficiently, thus smoothing — even slightly — the exit.
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Inertia is the Morrison government’s personality disorder - and it keeps dawdling to destruction
Political and international editor
August 21, 2021 — 5.00am
The Liberal government minister was asked whether Australia needed to raise its ambitions for cutting carbon emissions. Not just its long-term target but its 2030 target, too: “You don’t win the 100 metres at the Olympics by walking it,” he replied.
In other words, it is a race. Those words were not spoken by any minister in the Morrison government. Heaven forbid. Recall that Morrison initially insisted the vaccine rollout was “not a race”. Until eventually admitting that it was.
It was the NSW Minister for Energy and Environment, Matt Kean, in an interview with the ABC’s Richard Glover.
“There’s a race on for the future of our planet,” Kean told me later. “Walking it is what we’re doing with our silly target of 26 to 28 per cent,” he said, referring to the Abbott-era 2030 aim that was set to keep Australia in rough alignment with the United States. The US has since doubled its 2030 ambition and committed to net zero by 2050. The Morrison government remains immobilised in the Abbott era.
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Coronavirus And Impacts.
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PM can’t find the words to lead Australia through COVID-19
Unlike some past prime ministers who have seized what history threw at them to shape the rhetorical landscape, Scott Morrison has failed to make a major address to help the country through this crisis.
James Curran Columnist
Aug 16, 2021 – 5.00am
Some years ago, in the last term of the Howard prime ministership, no fewer than four edited collections of Australian political speeches were published in quick succession.
Their appearance was all the more surprising since, according to the conventional wisdom, Australians were not overly fond of official orations. Historian John La Nauze once noted that his fellow citizens were “inclined to associate sophisticated speaking with condescension or insincerity”.
For artist Robyn Boyd, it was just as well. He once quipped that when Australians deigned to open their pursed lips, it revealed not only bad teeth but “worse words”.
Nevertheless, these collections did reveal an Australian rhetorical tradition, a contest over ideas though a style attuned more to the practical than the providential. They also revealed some leaders’ ability to find the words to rouse their people to action and soothe at moments of collective grief or hardship.
Sadly, new editions of these collections are unlikely any time soon.
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https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/nsw-must-now-do-whatever-it-takes-20210815-p58iw3
NSW must now do whatever it takes
The daily case count puts the state on an unstable trajectory, in terms of health system capacity and a socially and politically acceptable number of fatalities.
Grant Wilson Contributor
Aug 15, 2021 – 1.15pm
NSW is on the brink. It needs to say and do whatever it takes from here.
Last weekend, we explained how the state was failing the nation and jeopardising the reopening posited by the national plan.
That remains our view. Additionally, NSW is now facing an ever-deepening crisis of its own, and of its own making.
This was referred to last week as a “disaster” by Sir David Skegg, chairman of New Zealand’s Strategic COVID-19 Public Health Advisory Group. It is difficult to disagree with that assessment.
Over the past month, the growth in daily cases has remained impervious to incrementally tighter restrictions and enhanced compliance measures.
The greater Sydney perimeter has now been breached, exposing regional NSW, including remote Indigenous communities, to the virus and to the risk of the threadbare health system capacity being exhausted.
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https://www.smh.com.au/national/when-doctors-are-scared-it-s-time-to-listen-20210815-p58itx.html
When doctors are scared, it’s time to listen
By Danielle McMullen
August 16, 2021 — 5.00am
The WhatsApp group for the Australian Medical Association’s NSW council is in full flight. Exhausted, scared doctors from across NSW are sharing their concerns for their communities. Overworked surgeons from western Sydney are trying to work out how they can train in vaccination and head to western NSW to help. Paediatricians are sharing concerns about children across the state, particularly our most vulnerable children in Indigenous communities.
GPs are sharing their exhaustion of caring for patients and trying to beg and plead with those Sydneysiders still waiting for Pfizer, to choose AstraZeneca instead. This conversation is the front line of what is happening in every general practice, every private practice, every hospital in NSW.
Eighteen months ago, we were prepared for a COVID crisis. As case numbers soared in countries around the world and the death toll climbed higher and higher, we reacted quickly. We closed the borders, bolstered stocks of personal protective equipment, bought ventilators, locked down, stayed home, washed our hands, used hand sanitiser, wore masks and … it worked. We escaped the worst of the first wave, but with our success came a false sense of security.
If we were scared about COVID-19 in March 2020, we should be terrified about its Delta variant in 2021.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/health-and-education/we-score-an-f-for-covid-19-testing-20210817-p58jc1
We score an F for COVID-19 testing
The medical bureaucracy’s failure to expedite vaccine supply is matched by the lack of action on faster testing kits.
Steven Hamilton and Richard Holden
Aug 17, 2021 – 4.40pm
Much has been made of Australia’s total failure on vaccines – indeed, most of the country is now living through its consequences.
A key source of that failure has been the inability of our medical-regulatory complex to fully comprehend the consequences of inaction and delay. But that disease has spread well beyond vaccines.
Our regulators are like the hapless baseball scouts in the movie Moneyball—wedded to old-fashioned rules of thumb rather than understanding what it actually takes to win with the right tools at your disposal.
In that story the brilliant Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane gets it right with clear thinking unburdened by convention. We need the same kind of thinking in our COVID-testing regime.
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Why now is the time to learn to live with COVID-19
Patrick Durkin and Finbar O'Mallon
Aug 19, 2021 – 5.23pm
Health experts warn the country may have to come to terms with living with the virus earlier than expected, as the mental health and economic costs of long lockdowns bite.
But leading epidemiologists have stopped short of advocating an immediate exit from lockdowns when 80 per cent of eligible Australians have been vaccinated, with most arguing a reduction in cases will be needed first.
The question of how and when the country leaves behind lockdowns was brought into sharp relief on Thursday. Vaccination rates have accelerated, leading to half of eligible Australians now having received at least one dose, but the delta variant has proven difficult to get under control.
NSW reported a record 681 local coronavirus cases and another death on Thursday, but NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian warned that Australia can’t “live in our bubble forever”.
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https://www.afr.com/wealth/investing/doing-the-numbers-on-opening-up-australia-20210818-p58jqq
Doing the numbers on opening up Australia
Australia should be in a position to avoid future lockdowns come November.
Christopher Joye Columnist
Updated Aug 20, 2021 – 3.38pm, first published at 1.56pm
There’s good news and bad news. The positive development is that Australia is starting to hit the “gold standard” globally for vaccination rates, which is a pace of more than 1 per cent of the population each day, despite supply bottlenecks.
This is superior to the peak vaccination speeds seen in the UK and US, although lags the 1.4 per cent rate temporarily touched in Canada and the 2.1 per cent pace Israel achieved for a short period.
Months ago our modelling suggested Australia could realistically vaccinate 70 per cent of the total population, or 90 per cent of adults, by January, assuming no acceleration in inoculation speed.
We noted that, in practice, a ramp-up was likely, pointing to the possibility of hitting those targets in late 2021. This is now playing out.
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Children are the new front line for the delta variant
If delta is the game changer infectious disease experts insist it is, then is now the time for Australia’s kids to roll up their sleeves?
Tom McIlroy Political reporter
Aug 21, 2021 – 5.00am
Exasperated and with few weapons left to fight delta’s relentless march across Sydney, Kerry Chant called for help.
Facing record new case numbers day after day, the dogged NSW chief health officer spoke for millions of Australian parents this week when she highlighted an obvious gap in the nation’s plan to vaccinate its way out of the pandemic crisis.
“I firmly believe that we need to get in and vaccinate our 12 to 15-year-olds,” Chant told a crowded media conference. “I believe in targeting school-age children, in particular high school children, very quickly because we know they contribute to transmission.”
As adult vaccination rates inch higher, and with countries including the US, the UK, and Canada already giving jabs to teenagers, Australia risks being left behind again.
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Confused lockdowns have all but shredded Berejiklian’s credibility
August 20, 2021 — 4.59pm
For the past eight weeks, NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian has dismissed COVID-19 measures such as curfews, outdoor mask wearing, an effective “ring of steel” around Sydney and limits on outdoor exercise.
They have been employed in other states to varying degrees of success but Ms Berejiklian has rejected them, often with contempt, promising her government’s “proportionate response” would lead the state to “freedom”.
She has been right to say, as we all agree, the evidence in favour of curfews and limits on outdoor activities is mixed at best because there is simply no strong evidence of outdoor transmission. But Ms Berejiklian has also failed to acknowledge that these measures would send a clear message that this Delta strain is not to be messed with. The Herald agrees with epidemiologist Tony Blakeley of the University of Melbourne who wrote that, “in a public health crisis, you have to use a balance of evidence and theory. And the theory is quite simple here – measures that reduce mobility and contacts reduce transmission”.
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https://www.ausdoc.com.au/news/australia-heading-towards-covid19-catastrophe
Australia heading towards a COVID-19 'catastrophe'
It's a national emergency, with an Italian-style crisis on the way unless urgent action is taken, warns the Burnet Institute
20th August 2021
By AAP
A leading infectious diseases researcher has warned Australia is heading towards a "national emergency" with coronavirus cases set to soar further, as the nation's COVID-19 crisis deepens.
NSW reported 642 local infections on Friday - the third consecutive day infections have exceeded 600 - and four deaths, while Victoria reported 55 new cases.
Burnet Institute director and infectious diseases expert Professor Brendan Crabb said modelling showed daily cases could jump to between 3000 and 4000 within 30 days unless urgent steps were taken.
"We're in now what is a national emergency," he told the Nine Network last week.
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8.23AM
Doherty report model assumed small daily caseloads
Professor Jodie McVernon, director of Doherty Epidemiology, said the Doherty report did not consider reopening when there were still hundreds of cases a day, as is the case in NSW at the moment.
The NSW Premier insisted yesterday that the state would start to reopen once vaccination rates hit 70 per cent, even if hundreds of cases were in the community.
Professor McVernon told Sky News this morning that further modelling into whether NSW could ease restrictions, given the current large number of daily cases, was being led by UNSW professor James Wood for NSW Health.
“I think it’s important to differentiate between what our [National Cabinet] report is discussing which is making a transition from a state of no or very few cases to a more immunised environment and then thinking about how transmission might be managed there as opposed to coming off a high caseload,” McVernon said.
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https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/a-paradigm-shift-in-thinking-about-covid-19-20210819-p58k22
A paradigm shift in thinking about COVID-19
The tilt from zero tolerance to vaccination and living with the virus is becoming more pronounced among medical realists as well as politicians.
Aug 20, 2021 – 7.18pm
Led ironically by COVID-hit NSW, Australia is months away from breaking out of the gilded cage of lockdowns and into the next stage of managing the new pandemic world.
Yes, the infection numbers in NSW are still high and tragically dispiriting: 644 new cases on Friday. That meant that the formal extension of the Sydney lockdown for another month was already expected. And, yes, Victoria is struggling to contain its outbreak even after locking down hard and early.
But the vaccination program is hitting the same pace as now highly vaccinated countries achieved earlier this year. NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian’s hardening of the lockdown in Sydney’s hotspots includes pulling more on the vaccination lever.
Governments and businesses are starting to reward vaccinated people with more freedoms. Workers in Sydney’s hotspot suburbs will have to be vaccinated, or be subject to rapid testing, to travel to jobs outside their area. More businesses, such as Qantas, have announced a no jab, no job policy.
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Climate Change.
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ETFs are the best way to capture clean energy sector gains
Jonathan Porter
Aug 17, 2021 – 5.00am
Annual growth of up to 76 per cent, the thrill of saving the planet and a sense of satisfaction in working towards a larger purpose are worthy reasons to look at clean energy ETFs.
“There is no doubt that ESG investing is growing in popularity among investors who are looking to align their money with their morals,” Finder investments specialist Kylie Purcell says.
“Factors like an increase in Gen Z investors, a greater focus on sustainability from businesses and the current discourse around climate change are all contributing to the popularity of ESG ETFs,” she says.
“From a financial perspective, this is an industry with huge growth potential. The finite nature of fossil fuels means that the energy industry is looking for alternatives, which is creating value in the clean energy space.”
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Who created the renewable energy miracle?
By Paul Krugman
August 21, 2021 — 8.45am
As terrible as many things in the world are, climate is unique in posing an existential threat to civilisation. And it’s horrifying that so many political figures are dead set against any serious action to address that threat.
Despite that, there’s still a chance that we’ll do enough to avoid catastrophe — not because we’ve grown wiser but because we’ve been lucky. We used to believe that achieving big reductions in greenhouse gas emissions would be difficult and expensive, although not nearly as costly as anti-environmentalists claimed. Over the past dozen years or so, however, we’ve experienced a technological miracle. As nicely documented in an article by Max Roser, the costs of solar and wind power, once dismissed as foolish hippie fantasies, have plunged to the point that quite modest incentives could lead to a rapid reduction in use of fossil fuels.
But was it really luck? Did this miracle — actually two miracles, since generating electricity from the sun and from the wind involve completely different technologies — just happen to arrive in our moment of need? Or was it a consequence of good policy decisions?
The answer is that there’s a pretty good case that policy — the Obama administration’s investments in green energy and European subsidies, especially for offshore wind — played a central role.
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Royal Commissions And The Like.
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No entries in this category.
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National Budget Issues.
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This could be the recession we did not have to have
Federal and state governments have chosen policies which allowed the virus to spread - and which clash oddly with their usual fixations on public security.
Saul Eslake Contributor
Updated Aug 16, 2021 – 2.47pm, first published at 2.32pm
Last month, the US National Bureau of Economic Research’s Business Cycle Dating Committee formally determined that the US recession that began in March 2020 ended just a month later – making it the shortest of the 35 recessions that the US has experienced since 1854.
This determination underscores the fact that, at least in the US, it has never been a necessary or sufficient condition for identifying a recession that there be two or more consecutive quarters of negative growth in real GDP.
That rule of thumb was coined by Julius Shiskin, an economist who at the time was head of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (and who invented the most widely used method of seasonally adjusting economic time series), in an interview with the New York Times′ economics editor Leonard Silk, which was published on August 28, 1974.
It’s become widely used in countries which don’t have anything like the NBER’s Business Cycle Dating Committee – including Australia.
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Students, holiday visas putting pressure on wages: RBA
By Shane Wright
August 16, 2021 — 7.30pm
The Reserve Bank’s own economics research department identified students, holiday makers and the partners of people brought into the country on skilled migrant visas as reasons for Australia’s sluggish wages growth ahead of the coronavirus pandemic.
Documents obtained by The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age under Freedom of Information laws show “changes in Australian immigration policies” were one of the long-term structural factors that had contributed to spare capacity in the jobs market and “subsequently low wages growth”.
RBA governor Phil Lowe ignited a public debate over immigration last month when he used a speech to argue the nation’s high levels of immigration were partly to blame for years of low wages growth while allowing businesses to avoid properly training their own staff.
The bank believes wages growth has to get back above 3 per cent a year to help push inflation back into its 2-3 per cent target band.
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Why it may be tight for jobs even when we are jabbed
Experience overseas of ‘living with the virus’ as foreseen by Doherty could still mean a lot of workplace disruption.
Jo Masters Contributor
Aug 17, 2021 – 4.30pm
Vaccination is a critical tool in the fight against the delta variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and, encouragingly, jabs are on the rise. But we have to be realistic that “success” won’t mean zero community transmission, or that vaccination will happen for everyone.
So, what should plans look like for navigating this new world?
Developments in countries with high vaccination rates are sounding a cautionary tale. In Britain, Iceland, and the United States, infection rates are rising, and increasingly affecting younger people. While mortality rates are much lower, the economic impact of high infection rates is becoming clear.
As we’ve learnt, there’s a lot of moving parts to analysing a pandemic, an intersection of health, science, politics and economics.
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It’s the rich wot get to complain and the poor wot get infected
Economics Editor
August 18, 2021 — 6.00am
If you’re anything like me, you’re getting mighty tired of lockdowns. I miss being able get out of the house whenever I choose, I miss going to restaurants and – my favourite vice – going to movies. That bad, huh? You’re right, I don’t have much to complain about. I don’t envy those having to school their kids while working at home – although I do miss seeing my grandkids in the flesh.
If you think I need reminding of how easy I’m doing it compared with a lot of others, you’re probably right. But I suspect that’s true of many of us, even those of us doing it just a tiny bit tougher than me.
Apart from those with kids to mind, the first hardship dividing line is between those of us easily able to work from home and those not. This probably means those still on their usual pay and those reliant on some kind of government support.
Even those unable to work from home but “fortunate” to work in an essential industry probably pay the price of running a much higher risk of getting the virus. And that without anyone doing enough to help them get jabbed.
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Barring red-flag ripples, the bizarre is explicable
7:11PM August 17, 2021
Australians might be wondering why RBA boss Philip Lowe is reining in his bond-buying program from September at a time when half the population is under stay-at-home orders to tame an economy-wrecking outbreak that so far refuses to be tamed.
Westpac’s Bill Evans calls this apparent act of monetary policy self-harm a “bizarre development”. So if the RBA is not prepared to act now to cushion the blow of the Delta crisis, when on earth would it?
To answer that question, consider two things.
First, monetary policy is slow acting medicine. The boffins at Martin Place know that monetary easing taken today – say, maintaining the QE program at $5bn a week, or even expanding it to $6bn – would start to have an impact in only about six months, by which point the RBA expects the recovery to be back in full swing.
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COVID ‘hermit economies’ like Australia are heading for catastrophe
By Matthew Lynn
August 19, 2021 — 10.30am
The mountains and valleys may not be quite as dramatic. The swirling fog might need a little more CGI to achieve maximum impact. And the extras may not be quite as well built. Even so, all things considered, Amazon has decided that the latest season of its epic Lord of the Rings series, one of the most expensive pieces of television ever made, will now be shot in the UK rather than in New Zealand.
That is a bonus for the already booming British production industry, of course, especially in the aftermath of our departure from the EU, but it is something more important as well. It is an early sign the “zero-COVID” countries are turning into “hermit economies”.
Of course, controlling COVID through lockdowns and closed borders was a triumph to start with. As the pandemic has dragged on, and borders remain sealed for years without end, it is going to take a huge economic toll. Australia is heading back into recession even as the rest of the world recovers. New Zealand is seeing investment flee.
In truth, in an increasingly globalised, networked world countries cannot exist in semi-lockdown forever and borders cannot remain permanently closed without doing huge economic damage. They can turn themselves into hermits if they want to - but the price will be a very high one.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/jobless-rate-falls-to-4-6-per-cent-20210819-p58k30
Jobless rate falls to 12-year low of 4.6pc
Ronald Mizen Economics correspondent
Aug 19, 2021 – 11.56am
The jobless rate fell 4.6 per cent in July a level not seen since 2008, as tens of thousands of NSW residents stopped looking for work during lockdown, putting them outside of employment statistics.
Employment in NSW fell 0.9 per cent and the participation rate fell by 1 per cent as people gave up on job hunting, meaning about 64,000 people exited the labour market in a trend economists say is likely to worsen.
“Normally when the unemployment rate hit a 12-year low, it would be a cause for celebration. But not today,” Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said. “Today’s numbers show the impact that the lockdowns are having.”
Alex Joiner, chief economist at IMF Investors, said when adjusted for people falling out of the labour market due to pandemic factors, it could be argued the unemployment rate had actually increased to about 6 per cent.
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Health Issues.
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Delays in breast cancer surgery linked to increased deaths
By Anna Patty
August 19, 2021 — 5.00am
The suspension of breast cancer screening due to the COVID-19 pandemic could put patients at greater risk, as medical experts warn that delaying surgery for up to 12 weeks could result in 500 extra deaths.
Radiation Oncologist Associate Professor Peter O’Brien, who chairs the Radiation Therapy Advisory Group and specialises in breast cancer treatment, said international studies also suggest there was a greater risk of delayed diagnosis and the need for more intensive treatment.
BreastScreen NSW on Monday announced it would temporarily suspend all routine breast screening by Thursday to allow its staff to be redeployed to help manage the COVID-19 pandemic.
A global analysis of the impact of delays in cancer treatment published in the British Medical Journal by researchers from Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada suggested that delays of up to 12 weeks in breast cancer surgery over course of a year, such as during a COVID-19 lockdown and recovery, could potentially result in 500 extra deaths in Australia.
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Early data from seven US states hint at infections among the vaccinated
By Apoorva Mandavilli
August 18, 2021 — 3.29pm
New York: Since Americans began rolling up their sleeves for coronavirus vaccines, health officials have said that those who were immunised were very unlikely to become infected, or to suffer serious illness or death. But preliminary data from seven US states hint that the arrival of the Delta variant in July may have altered the calculus.
Infections in vaccinated people – referred to as breakthrough infections – accounted for at least one in 5 newly diagnosed cases in six of these states and higher percentages of total hospitalisations and deaths than had been previously observed in all of them, according to figures gathered by The New York Times.
The absolute numbers remain very low, however, and there is little doubt that the vaccines remain powerfully protective. This continues to be “a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” as federal health officials have often said.
Still, the rise indicates a change in how vaccinated Americans might regard their risks.
“Remember when the early vaccine studies came out, it was like nobody gets hospitalised, nobody dies,” said Dr Robert Wachter, chairman of the department of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. “That clearly is not true.”
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International Issues.
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Afghanistan’s President flees as Taliban capture Kabul
Matthew Cranston United States correspondent
Updated Aug 16, 2021 – 9.51am, first published at 6.29am
The Taliban has taken full control of Afghanistan a month before the 20th anniversary of September 11, raising fears of a new wave of terrorism similar to that of ISIS following the withdrawal of US military from Iraq.
The Afghan president Ashraf Ghani fled Kabul as Taliban leader Maulana Abdul Ghani was declared Afghanistan’s new President and the country was renamed the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.
More than 5000 US troops and NATO forces are in Kabul coordinating the evacuation of thousands of Afghans fearful of what the Taliban’s new governance of the country would mean for them. An estimated 60,000 could qualify for visas. The US Ambassador also fled.
Prisons were being opened up by the Taliban across the country, including the Bagram military prison and the largest, the Pul-e-Charki prison east of Kabul.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid asked people not to panic and tweeted: “We assure all embassies, diplomatic missions, institutions and residences of foreign nationals in Kabul that no danger is posed to them.”
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https://www.afr.com/world/middle-east/biden-s-last-helicopter-out-of-kabul-20210803-p58fa1
Biden’s last helicopter out of Kabul
The US President was a Senator during the Saigon evacuation at the end of the Vietnam War. Now he is waiting for the last helicopter out of Afghanistan.
Matthew Cranston United States correspondent
Updated Aug 15, 2021 – 6.54pm, first published at 11.33am
Washington| At 7.53am on April 30, 1975, a helicopter carrying Major James Kean and 10 Marine Security Guards departed from Saigon for the USS Okinawa. It was the last US helicopter out of Vietnam, in a mission known as Operation Frequent Wind to evacuate all remaining “at-risk” Americans from the Vietnam War.
At the time, President Joe Biden was a senator, watching the handling of the operation by then-president Gerald Ford.
Now, 46 years on, Biden, Commander-in-Chief, is the one under pressure over his decision to fully withdraw civilians and troops from the Middle East hornet’s nest that is Afghanistan.
On Saturday (Sunday AEST), after meeting with his top security team, Biden announced that another 2000 troops – for a total now of 5000 – will be deployed to Afghanistan to “make sure we can have an orderly and safe drawdown of US personnel and other allied personnel and an orderly and safe evacuation of Afghans who helped our troops”.
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Afghan government falls as the Taliban take charge of Kabul
August 16, 2021 — 4.49am
London: The Taliban have taken control of the Presidential Palace in Kabul after the President fled, signalling the collapse of the Western-backed government two decades after the United States invaded Afghanistan in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks.
Al Jazeera English broadcast images of a Taliban commander and fighters with guns inside the Presidential Palace just before 11pm (local time) on Sunday night after what they said was a formal handover of the palace.
Taliban insurgents entered Kabul on Sunday and President Ashraf Ghani left Afghanistan, bringing the Islamist militants close to taking over the country two decades after they were overthrown by a US-led invasion.
One of the fighters took down the flag of Afghanistan, rolled it up and placed it on a mantelpiece. Outside, the flag of the Taliban was flown above the palace, replacing the national flag.
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Earthquake death tolls climbs as tropical storm bears down on Haiti
By Laura Gottesdiener
August 16, 2021 — 1.46am
Port-au-Prince: The death toll from a devastating earthquake in Haiti rose to 724 on Sunday as rescue workers scrambled to find survivors buried under buildings a day after the 7.2 magnitude quake struck.
Rescue efforts were made all the more frantic due to a tropical storm making its way towards the Caribbean nation.
The death toll from a devastating earthquake in Haiti rose to over 700 as rescue workers scrambled to find survivors buried under buildings a day after the 7.2 magnitude quake hit the island nation.
The quake flattened hundreds of homes and buildings in a country still clawing its way back from another major temblor 11 years ago and reeling from the assassination of its president last month.
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Low morale, no support and bad politics: why the Afghan army folded
When faced by an imminent US pullout, many Afghans’ more traditional ethnic, tribal and even family ties overshadowed any loyalty they might feel to the nascent Afghan army.
Amy Kazmin, Benjamin Parkin and Katrina Manson
Aug 16, 2021 – 10.48am
New Delhi/Washington | Just six weeks ago, Joe Biden seemed confident that the 300,000 men of the Afghan National Defence and Security Forces had the training, equipment and competence to hold off a Taliban takeover of the country after the US withdrew its military forces.
“The likelihood there’s going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely,” the US president said in early July, as he affirmed his determination to complete the US pullout by August 31. “We provided our Afghan partners with all the tools — let me emphasise all the tools, training and equipment of any modern military.”
Yet despite the Afghan forces’ superior weaponry and training, Taliban fighters last week mounted a lightning offensive that enabled them to capture more than two-thirds of Afghanistan’s territory and reach the outskirts of the capital Kabul, often with little resistance.
The Afghan army troops simply melted away, stood down or retreated to their bases, despite the billions spent on their training and equipment by the US and its allies. In some cases, they left advanced weaponry to be seized by the motorbike riding, Kalashnikov-wielding Islamist militiamen.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/foreign-affairs/america-s-alliances-after-kabul-20210816-p58j3z
America’s alliances after Kabul
The Taliban victory says far less about America’s commitments to its allies than it does about its competence at delivering on them.
Daniel W. Drezner
Aug 16, 2021 – 5.00pm
These are horrific days for anyone in Afghanistan who will suffer at the hands of a Taliban-run theocracy.
It is a bad day for the United States veterans, intelligence operatives and foreign service officers who served in Afghanistan and are watching all their efforts at state building dissolve into nothingness. And it is an uncomfortable day for the foreign policy leaders of four successive US administrations who initiated and managed this debacle.
But let’s not kid ourselves: no American comes out of this looking well.
I could contribute to the dogpile of counterfactual assessments of whether a different policy could have led to a better trajectory. My expertise is in international relations, however, not the comparative politics of Afghanistan. So let’s stay within our lane and consider the emerging debate about the larger ramifications for US foreign policy.
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Biden says he stands ‘squarely’ behind Afghanistan withdrawal
Justin Sink
Aug 17, 2021 – 6.38am
Washington | President Joe Biden defended his decision to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan, fighting back against criticism of a move that pitched the country into chaos as the Taliban reasserted control.
“I stand squarely behind my decision,” Biden said on Monday (Tuesday AEST) as he addressed the nation from the East Room of the White House. “After 20 years, I’ve learned the hard way that there was never a good time to withdraw US forces.”
Deaths reported as some Afghans cling to planes leaving capital.
Biden said the US would continue to fight terrorism in Afghanistan even after the pullout.
“The choice I had to make as your President was to follow through with that agreement, or to go back to be prepared to go back to fighting the Taliban in the middle of the spring fighting season,” Biden said.
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Taliban 2.0 will be little different to Taliban 1.0
12:00AM August 17, 2021
The endgame in Afghanistan came quicker than anyone had anticipated because Afghans have a well-developed survival instinct. Those who were on the losing side did what they normally do – switched to the winning side, and that had a cascading effect all the way to Kabul.
Reports suggest negotiations are taking place in Kabul between a Taliban delegation and Afghan government officials but they seem unlikely to end in anything less than unconditional surrender by the government. At the same time, organised evacuations are continuing from Kabul international airport without interference from the Taliban.
However, for Afghans the door firmly will be shut soon on what Australians regard as a normal lifestyle. For those of us who served in Vietnam, the situation in Kabul is eerily reminiscent of the fall of Saigon in 1975.
Now that the Taliban has won the war, will Taliban 2.0 be much different from Taliban 1.0 in 2001? Well, it’s still a Pashtun organisation run by Sunni religious zealots. Pashtuns comprise 42 per cent of the Afghan population and once again will dominate Afghanistan. Back in 2001 at the height of its power, the Taliban controlled 75 per cent of the country. That’s probably about what it controls now. Taliban 2.0 almost certainly will govern in accordance with Koranic interpretations, as it did before.
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https://www.afr.com/world/asia/why-a-china-centred-future-is-still-uncertain-20210812-p58i3e
Why a China-centred future is still uncertain
The country’s economic take-off would never have happened without the dynamism of its leading businesses. Beijing’s attempts to bring them to heel could backfire.
George Magnus
Aug 18, 2021 – 8.00am
China is on a regulatory warpath against its own private technology firms. The market value of leading companies listed in Hong Kong and in New York, such as Tencent, Meituan and Alibaba, has fallen by 20 to 40 per cent since February. The crackdown has entailed stricter regulation, tougher oversight regarding overseas listings, investigations over the use of data and direct involvement in the operations of several firms.
China’s economic take-off over the past decades would never have happened without the productivity and dynamism of its leading businesses, and so how we think about the country’s role in the global financial system is critically dependent on what happens to its private sector and the economy.
In his recent New Statesman essay marking the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party, historian Adam Tooze concludes that China will shape the future. This is undoubtedly true considering its size and central role as the biggest trading nation and hub of global supply chains. Until Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, the CCP was successful in adapting its version of a “socialist market economy” by blending market mechanisms with state control and opening up to the rest of the world, in ways that the former USSR never did or could.
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Taliban vow ‘no revenge’ in first news conference since seizing power
Updated August 18, 2021 — 2.48amfirst published at 1.19am
Taliban officials have fronted the world’s media in Kabul for the first time since their shock seizure of the city, promising they will not take revenge against those who worked or fought with US forces during their 20-year mission in Afghanistan.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said the organisation had “emancipated” the country and did not want Afghanistan to be the “battlefield of conflict anymore”.
He also vowed to respect the rights of women within the framework of Islamic law, and said terrorist groups would not use Afghanistan as a base to plot attacks on the West – a key demand of the United States, NATO and the international community.
“Everyone is forgiven,” he said.
Mujahid said this extended to thousands of translators and contractors who helped the allied countries and were desperately trying to flee the country.
“All of them have been pardoned, nobody is going to be treated with revenge,” he said.
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What China really fears about its big tech companies
Xi Jinping wants China’s youth and capital focused on the battle for national tech supremacy, not leisure and consumer power.
Adrian Blundell-Wignall Columnist
Aug 18, 2021 – 1.51pm
Beijing’s clampdown on the foreign activities of big tech companies, most notably Alibaba, Tencent, DiDi, and Meituan, is intriguing.
At one level, given their ability to raise billions of dollars and buy up shares in US tech stocks, they would seem a plus for everyone.
And “cancelling” Jack Ma, delaying the Ant IPO, moving to fine Tencent and imposing regulation based on competition concerns seems fanciful when the Chinese Communist Party already reaches into every aspect of companies as a monopoly controller.
After all, Chinese state-owned banks don’t compete at all, while Tencent and Alibaba/Ant are in strong duopolistic competition. So, what is China’s government really up to?
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Afghanistan and the tragic verdict on post-9/11 America
At each point in the story after the 2001 terrorist attacks, big US decisions have been based on conditions on the ground – the ground in Washington, that is.
Edward Luce Columnist
Aug 18, 2021 – 11.04am
So it has come full circle. What started as an operation to eradicate al-Qaeda has ended two decades later with the return of its Afghan enablers to power. Rarely have so many lives and so much cash been spent on so little.
It would be nice to think that US politics will learn from this debacle – and both parties are complicit. But the story is far from over. America may have quit this “forever war”, but it will go on. There will be little time for post-mortems as we come to grips with the implications of a rebooted Taliban.
America’s default tendency is to see the rest of the world in black and white. Such was the response to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the US homeland 20 years ago. Either the world was with America or against it. Linked to that is the assumption that friends want to remake themselves in America’s image, while foes are beyond the pale.
Such binary thinking is a profound strength when faced with a deep menace, such as fascism or communism. But most challenges are greyer than that. A Manichean world view seldom produces good foreign policy.
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Taliban rule a fresh challenge for Australian intelligence: US general
Matthew Cranston United States correspondent
Updated Aug 18, 2021 – 12.54pm, first published at 12.32pm
Washington | The lightning-fast fall of Kabul means Australia should immediately scale up its intelligence resources in the Middle East, says a recently retired three-star US general who fought in Afghanistan.
Lieutenant-General Stephen Twitty, who fought with Australian troops in Afghanistan, said the Taliban’s control of the country could embolden terrorist movements and cells around the world. Afghanistan could once again become a favoured host country for extremist activity, he said.
The US intelligence community had predicted it could take as much as 12 months for the Taliban to gain control of the country once the United States and its allies left. It then changed that assessment to as few as 30 days – and then watched as the Taliban closed the deal in less than a week.
This intelligence failure now has many observers questioning the quality of the Biden administration’s information. Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said this week that reassessment of terrorism networks was now warranted.
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Fed minutes show most officials see taper starting this year
Craig Torres
Aug 19, 2021 – 5.14am
Most Federal Reserve officials agreed they could start reducing the pace of their bond-buying purchases this year because they had hit their inflation goal and were closer to reaching their standard for progress on reducing unemployment.
“Various participants commented that economic and financial conditions would likely warrant a reduction in coming months,” minutes of the Federal Open Market Committee’s July 27-28 gathering released on Wednesday (Thursday AEST) said. “Several others indicated, however, that a reduction in the pace of asset purchases was more likely to become appropriate early next year.”
The minutes also showed that most participants “judged that it could be appropriate to start reducing the pace of asset purchases this year”.
US central bankers next meet September 21-22. While the record shows officials don’t have agreement on timing or pace of tapering yet, most reached consensus on keeping the composition of any reduction in Treasury and mortgage-backed securities purchases proportional.
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Biden’s Afghan disaster will follow him home
What happens in Afghanistan won’t stay there. The consequences of defeat are never small even for the greatest nations.
Bret Stephens Contributor
Aug 18, 2021 – 12.27pm
Joe Biden’s heedlessness, on the cusp of a sweeping Taliban blitzkrieg that on Sunday saw them enter Kabul, will define his administration’s first great fiasco.
It won’t matter that he is carrying through on the shambolic withdrawal agreement negotiated last year by the Trump administration, with the eager support of Donald Trump’s isolationist base, and through the diplomatic efforts of Trump’s lickspittle secretary of state, Mike Pompeo.
This is happening on Biden’s watch, at Biden’s insistence, against the advice of his senior military advisers and with Biden’s firm assurance to the American people that what has just come to pass wouldn’t come to pass.
Past presidents might have had a senior adviser resign following such a debacle, as Les Aspin, then the secretary of defence, did after the 1993 “Black Hawk Down” episode in Somalia.
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Afghanistan – and disastrously wrong
This is the US President’s first major foreign policy setback, but the swiftness of the Taliban takeover could work to his political advantage.
Michael Hirsh
Aug 19, 2021 – 8.00am
The emerging conventional wisdom in Washington is that US President Joe Biden was disastrously wrong in his assessment of Afghanistan – especially since he declared a little more than a month ago that the Afghan national forces would fight, and possibly dominate, the Taliban. Further painting himself into a rhetorical corner, Biden added: “Never has Afghanistan been a united country, not in all of its history.”
Now that the Taliban seem to have more control of the country than they did even in the late 1990s, that latter Biden appraisal is looking very wrong as well. Afghanistan will now be united all right, but in blood. Very likely a reign of terror by the Pashtun-dominated Taliban will ensue as they subjugate Afghanistan’s large and hostile non-Pashtun ethnic population, such as the Tajiks and Hazaras (the second and third largest ethnic groups, respectively).
Yet in strategic terms Biden may have been essentially right in saying there was no reason for the United States to stay any longer; the Afghan state and its security forces were plainly an empty husk, utterly unable to operate on their own, and any further US involvement would not have altered the military odds, only staving off the inevitable. That has been Biden’s line all along. As the President said at the White House on Monday: “We gave them every chance to determine their own future. What we could not provide them was the will to fight for their future.”
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China won’t be rushing into Afghanistan any time soon
The country is far too fragile for Beijing to offer anything more than pragmatic diplomatic engagement with the Taliban.
Ruth Pollard Middle East Correspondent
Aug 20, 2021 – 12.00am
China won’t be rushing into Afghanistan any time soon – not to fill the political and security void left by the US and not to expand President Xi Jinping’s flagship Belt and Road project.
However decisive the Taliban’s victory looks right now, the country is far too fragile for Beijing to contemplate anything other than a pragmatic diplomatic engagement with a group it has spent decades trying to work with.
It may dangle the promise of enhanced economic relations in front of an Islamist insurgent movement looking to cement key regional relationships, but the likelihood of any infrastructure projects materialising in the short term is remote.
Afghanistan has vast mineral deposits, including copper, coal, iron ore, lithium and uranium, as well as oil and gas. But even though Chinese companies (and mining companies in general) have a higher-than-average tolerance for risk, few have made the decision to enter the market in the war-torn nation.
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Afghanistan collapse reverberates around the world
After 20 years of hard fighting and trillion of dollars spent on weapons and nation building, the end came in just 11 days and will have far-reaching consequences.
Andrew Tillett, Matthew Cranston and Jacob Greber
Aug 21, 2021 – 5.00am
Haidari can’t sleep. Every waking moment is filled with dread at the risk his wife, one-year-old son, parents and siblings face as they shelter in Kabul. “Every time there is a knock on their door, they’re scared it is the Taliban,” he tells AFR Weekend. ” The only thing I can give them is hope and tell them to pray.”
Haidari – not his real name – came to Australia in 2010 on a boat, fleeing persecution he faced as a Hazara in Afghanistan. Now living in Melbourne, he has seen his wife Fatima only once in more than 10 years, during a two-month trip to Iran, and has never met his baby son, Ali.
Now, he is scrambling to get them out, to somehow get them to Iran, Pakistan or India, But with most embassies closed and non-government organisations pulling out staff, the options are limited. “Even though I’m here, my mind is not. My mind is with them and [thinking about] how to save them,” he says.
The collapse of the Afghan civilian government may have seemed inevitable, but after 20 years of hard fighting and the expenditure of trillion of dollars on weapons and nation building, no one expected the Taliban to reassert control over much of the country so quickly and with barely a shot fired.
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Critical moment that sealed fate of Kabul
For a moment on Saturday, it looked as though Kabul might actually hold. But within hours, it was all over.
From World
August 18, 2021
For a moment on Saturday, it looked as though Kabul might actually hold.
Taliban troops had seized Mazar-e-Sharif, capital of the northern province of Balkh, on Friday evening, two hours after breaking through defences held by government troops and militias loyal to warlords Atta Mohammad Noor and Rashid Dostum.
As Noor and Dostum fled, Taliban fighters overran the city, and insurgent columns moved on Kabul from multiple directions.
A dozen other provincial capitals had fallen in the previous few days.
Supported by guerrilla cells inside the city, the Taliban main force – with weapons seized from captured bases, riding US-made armoured vehicles or green Ford Ranger twin-cab gun trucks captured from the Afghan police – swiftly seized outlying districts.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/foreign-affairs/how-the-taliban-seized-their-moment-20210820-p58ke2
How the Taliban seized their moment
Aaron Patrick Senior correspondent
Aug 21, 2021 – 5.00am
In the last weeks of 2003, 502 Afghans gathered in a large tent on the grounds of the Kabul Technical University. For 23 days, the delegates to what is known in Pashto as a loya jirga, or grand assembly, argued, debated and negotiated over a new constitution for the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.
With behind-the-scenes pressure from American diplomats exerted through an exiled Afghan politician, Hamid Karzai, the loya jirga decided to create a US-like presidential system to govern a country that lacked a common political, ideological or ethnic identity.
There wasn’t even a vote. Karzai, who the Americans installed as interim president in 2001, ruled for 13 years. He was succeeded by Ashraf Ghani in 2014. Ruling more like kings than elected politicians, both men allowed corruption to flourish. That destroyed their governments’ legitimacy and sapped their army of the resources and the will to fight.
Among some Australian Afghanistan followers, the 2003-04 loya jirga marked the beginning of the fall of Kabul; a mistake born of Western arrogance that belied two centuries of failed colonial experience.
A different structure – an Australian-like sharing of power between the regions and the capital – might have allowed the political system to reflect the reality of who was most willing to provide governance, security and justice in Afghanistan’s villages, towns, cities and provinces.
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I look forward to comments on all this!
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David.
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