January 06 2022 Edition
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In the US we see worrying tensions with a number of countries with both China and Russia making hostile noises and taking at least some provocative actions. The storm that destroyed 1000 homes I Colorado was just horrific and shows how climate change seems to be having increasing effects. Omicron is running wild!
In the UK and Europe we see Omicron loose and the UK realising that Brexit may not have been such a great idea.
In OZ we have
the PM ‘monitoring for synptoms’ while Omicron cases rise. To my eye the COVID
response has become chaotic and confused. It may not end well at all and we are seeing incompetence on a very special scale I believe with the management of the pandemic.
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Major Issues.
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Palmer, Hanson, Joyce lead the list of least liked politicians
By David Crowe
December 27, 2021 — 5.03am
Australians have rated mining magnate Clive Palmer as the nation’s least likeable politician in surveys that show he has a net result of minus 51 per cent, more than twice the negative rating for One Nation leader Pauline Hanson.
Mr Palmer, the founder of the United Australia Party, has the lowest personal rating among his federal peers with only 8 per cent of respondents saying they have a positive view of him.
Another 59 per cent are negative, while 25 per cent are neutral and 8 per cent do not know of him.
Mr Palmer is closely followed by UAP colleague and party leader Craig Kelly, the former Liberal MP who has a positive rating of only 9 per cent, while 34 per cent of respondents are negative, 23 per cent are neutral and 35 per cent do not know of him.
The exclusive findings are from surveys of more than 1600 respondents each month in recent months, showing consistently low results for Mr Palmer, Mr Kelly, Senator Hanson and their parties.
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Inflation is here, but how long will it stay?
By Olivia Rockeman and Matthew Boesler
December 26, 2021 — 12.12pm
The US Federal Reserve and bond market investors have traditionally been hard-eyed cops on the inflation beat. But as prices started to rise when the pandemic eased in early 2021 they remained unruffled, attributing the increases to “transitory” factors.
Plenty of others did worry and some central banks even took action. Later in the year, as price increases reached levels not seen since the early 1990s, the Fed added some caveats to its calm and hinted at a willingness to change course. Even so, a debate continued over whether inflation would fade when the world returns to normal, or take on a life of its own.
How did inflation get going?
In early 2020, the spread of the coronavirus triggered the steepest economic downturn on record. A year later, mass vaccinations and trillions of dollars in government stimulus led to a pickup in consumer spending in much of the globe.
Supply chains took longer to rebound. Semiconductor production, for example, slumped during the 2020 lockdowns and then couldn’t be ramped up fast enough when demand for cars and electronics returned. Prices for those items jumped, as did airfares and hotel rates.
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Newspoll shows support for minor parties back to pre-pandemic levels
8:30PM December 26, 2021
Support for fringe parties and independents has returned to the levels of the last federal election, both nationally and in the battleground state of Queensland.
An exclusive Newspoll demographic analysis reveals support for the minor parties categorised as “others” – not including the Greens and Pauline Hanson’s One Nation – has jumped from 10 per cent in the September quarter to 12 per cent in the December quarter, on par with the 11.8 per cent of the vote they won in 2019.
The state-by-state breakdown of the federal vote also shows Scott Morrison and Anthony Albanese both face negative approval ratings nationally entering the new year election campaign.
In Queensland, the Newspoll shows almost three in 10 voters plan to vote for minor parties or independents, almost matching the 29.6 per cent who didn’t vote for the Coalition or Labor at the last election.
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This is the best time to take stock of your finances
Bruce Brammall
4:00AM December 26, 2021
Christmas Day is fun an’ all. But how much better is Boxing Day?
Off come the pressures of presents, family and food preparation, while on goes the TV for a cricket and basketball marathon.
Out come leftovers you just don’t get at other times of the year, to be inhaled during intervals for lunch, tea and time outs.
Go on, try this one at home. Toasted ham and cheese sandwiches are always awesome, but they never get any better than today.
Why? Because of what’s in your fridge and pantry right now.
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JPMorgan says investors are too bearish, no sell-off in sight
Nikos Chrysoloras
Dec 28, 2021 – 2.53am
There’s little reason to fear that the rally that catapulted US stocks to successive records this year will end soon, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co strategists. In fact, it may get broader.
“Conditions for a large sell-off are not in place right now given already low investor positioning, record buybacks, limited systematic amplifiers, and positive January seasonals,” the strategists led by Dubravko Lakos-Bujas wrote in a note to clients.
“Investor positioning is too bearish -- the market has taken the hawkish central bank and bearish omicron narratives too far.”
While the S&P 500 climbed toward yet another record on Monday (Tuesday AEDT), the rally has recently been driven by a narrow group of mega-cap companies, which is reminiscent of the bubble in tech stocks at the turn of the century.
With the economic rebound following the pandemic-induced slump now past its peak, some fund managers have warned that the next stage in the cycle is a correction, as central banks and governments wind down stimulus measures to tame surging inflation.
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Japan defence accord with Australia military nears OK
Dec 28, 2021 – 4.37am
Tokyo | The governments of Japan and Australia have entered the final coordination phase of an agreement on cooperation between the Self-Defence Forces and the Australian armed forces that may be concluded as early as next month, several government sources said.
The Reciprocal Access Agreement (RAA) stipulates the legal status of elements of the SDF and Australian military during their stays in each other’s country.
The agreement will simplify the procedures on arms, ammunition, supplies and other property brought into each other’s country when they have a temporary stay for joint drills, disaster relief and the like. FDC
Keeping China in mind as it intensifies its maritime advance, the agreement is aimed at facilitating elements of both countries to visit the partner country, thus beefing up security cooperation.
Unlike the Japan-US Status of Forces Agreement, which assumes a long stay for the US forces in Japan, the RAA bears joint drills and the like in mind, and is the first to be signed by Japan.
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More worried by charts than policy: Critics circle RBA ahead of review
By Shane Wright
December 28, 2021 — 5.00am
The Reserve Bank’s quantitative easing policy may be hurting the long-term interests of the economy, one of the nation’s leading economists has warned, while a former RBA official has argued the institution has failed the country and become more focused on formatting charts than its policy framework.
In separate academic papers, Macroeconomics chief economist Stephen Anthony and Centre for Independent Studies chief economist Peter Tulip have taken aim at the RBA’s policy settings and operation over growing concerns about the post-pandemic economy.
Both the Labor Party and Coalition have pledged independent reviews of the Reserve Bank following next year’s election. The RBA is the only major central bank not to have undergone an independent review over the past 40 years and follows complaints it held interest rates too high for too long ahead of the coronavirus recession.
The bank has held official interest rates at 0.1 per cent since November 2020. As part of its quantitative easing policy, it has been buying $4 billion worth of government bonds a week. It currently holds a record $326.3 billion of government debt including $265 billion federal debt.
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Are we even remotely ready for a real crisis?
11:00PM December 27, 2021
Not long ago, federal Education Minister Alan Tudge wondered out loud whether today’s school kids would be willing to fight for a country they’d been taught not to believe in.
It’s a fair question: why would young people be willing to risk their lives for an Australia they’d been taught to believe was fundamentally illegitimate, had a sub-optimal culture and was helping to destroy the planet by exporting coal to the wider world?
Yet that’s the intellectual subtext for every course these days, given the national curriculum’s insistence that all subjects be taught from an Indigenous, sustainability and Asian perspective.
At the close of a year that again has been dominated by Covid-19, it’s not only the erosion of people’s pride in our country that calls into question our long-term ability to defend ourselves; it’s also the culture of safetyism that entirely has driven Australia’s response to the pandemic.
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It’s time for Scott Morrison to govern, except he never will
Politics for Morrison’s Coalition is about scheming to stay in power, while Australia starts regressing into its old insular ways.
Geoff Kitney Columnist
Dec 28, 2021 – 11.30am
It’s time! Well, OK, not very original and not really capturing the national mood the way this memorable slogan did in 1972 when Labor offered its most commanding leader, Gough Whitlam, as the alternative prime minister to feeble Bill McMahon.
Anthony Albanese is no Gough Whitlam. Which might be Scott Morrison’s best hope of another election miracle because Morrison actually is beginning to challenge McMahon as one of the country’s least-convincing prime ministers.
The Coalition desperately needs to go into this election with voters convinced that Albanese and his program are too risky.
That said, the argument that it is time for a change of government is hardly less compelling than it was in 1972.
The truth is, the Morrison government has become a government in name only, led by a leader who has little to offer as he seeks to take the Coalition to a fourth successive term in office. The Morrison government is occupying, not governing.
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What inflation in 2022 will teach us about capitalism
We should be watching prices not just for their impact on the economy, but for what they’ll tell us about the future of our societies.
John Authers
Dec 28, 2021 – 10.17am
In 2021, inflation returned. After a year-long debate, nobody can any longer deny this. Next year, we will discover whether it’s here to stay and how much bitter economic medicine will be required to quell it.
On this vital issue, opinion is as divided as ever. Optimists still maintain that even if inflation has turned out to be more than a transitory blip, it will soon die down. Whether they’re right depends on the outcome of some of capitalism’s most profound conflicts.
A number of factors will indeed combine to push downwards on inflation next year. Used-car prices doubled and gasoline prices rose by 50 per cent last year. That’s not going to happen again. Bottlenecks in global trade have already begun to loosen up a little. And there is ample room for central banks to tighten monetary policy; so far, there has been no attempt to reduce demand by raising the price of money or cutting back on its supply.
It’s encouraging that the bond market expects inflation to barely exceed 2 per cent five years from now and the Fed’s interest rates not to rise even that high. Consumer expectations aren’t much different. If they were to change and become entrenched, then inflation would be hard to dislodge. But for now, investors believe that price rises can and will be brought under control relatively painlessly.
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Australia drives up debt to Menzian levels with no end in sight
By Shane Wright
December 28, 2021 — 3.10pm
Australian government debt has increased the most of any major economy this century, more than doubling over two decades, with the nation facing at least another 10 years of budget deficits.
Government and household data collated by the International Monetary Fund show federal government debt has grown by 221 per cent since 2000. At 44.1 per cent of GDP, federal debt is at its highest share of the economy since Sir Robert Menzies was prime minister in 1964.
Australia is the only member of the G20, the world’s 20 largest economies, to have increased debt by more than 200 per cent over a period that includes the dot.com recession, the global financial crisis and now the coronavirus recession.
Other nations that have driven up their debt include the United States (188 per cent), Britain (185 per cent), South Korea (174 per cent) and Spain (121 per cent). But some have managed to reduce their debt levels, including Switzerland (down 40 per cent), Indonesia (down 55 per cent) and Turkey (down 3 per cent).
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https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/an-election-beckons-with-all-still-to-play-for-20211227-p59kac
An election beckons, with all still to play for
It is unclear who will win the next election. It is only too clear what kind of post-pandemic budget and reform task they will face.
Dec 28, 2021 – 5.19pm
The federal election of 2022 is not decided at all. Victory or defeat remains there for the taking. Most voters today are focused on the still unfolding pandemic, fathoming what the latest omicron variant will mean for them and their lives.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison is a formidable campaigner. He will hope that the voters’ bottom line after two years of COVID-19 is that they got jabbed, and they kept their jobs. Strong vaccination rates mean most people are now safe from serious illness. The V-shaped economic rebound as restrictions have eased has brought the fastest monthly jobs growth in Australian history.
By March or May, with a further booster shot campaign, Mr Morrison will still be hoping to capitalise on the economic boom that chief executives are expecting in 2022 as, omicron permitting, Australians go revenge-spending with a huge national household savings pot.
Mr Morrison was sidelined and upstaged during much of the pandemic by state premiers who had practical control of closures and restrictions. For the first time, The Australian Financial Review Magazine’s Power issue did not name the prime minister as the most powerful job in the country.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/foreign-affairs/don-t-let-the-china-hawks-frighten-you-20211227-p59kad
Don’t let the China hawks frighten you
China will become more powerful -- but any hostile reach towards Australia will always be limited by technology and regional politics.
Sam Roggeveen Contributor
Dec 28, 2021 – 1.23pm
When planning for the security of our nation, it pays to assume the worst.
While China faces enormous problems – low birth rates, environmental degradation, high debt – it takes an awful lot to knock such a big country off its historical course. Even a catastrophe such as a major war, a natural disaster or a demographic crisis may not do it.
The United States went through a great depression and several recessions, two world wars, a Cold War, and several major regional wars, yet to this day it remains clearly the biggest and most powerful nation on earth.
So, Australia should assume that China’s problems are manageable and that it will eventually become indisputably the biggest economy in the world and eventually the most capable military power in Asia, simply because its population is enormous, and it still has so much unrealised potential.
Australia therefore faces a future unlike anything it has faced before because the leading power in our region will no longer be our ally. But does that justify the dark warnings we hear from government and hawkish security commentators about Australia’s vulnerability? Will China’s national power become so great that Australia won’t be able to resist it? It doesn’t look that way.
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Here are four big ideas for Australia to consider in 2022
There are win-win reform gains to be had in industry policy, taxation, social spending and super. Why don’t we take them?
Stephen Anthony Contributor
Dec 28, 2021 – 12.52pm
Maybe in 2022, in an election year, the Lucky Country will reward those intrepid politicians who seek to play positive sum policy reform games. This approach means embracing reforms that encourage voluntary exchanges between parties that incorporate mutually beneficial trade gains.
Done rightly, successful trades (unlike contracts that restrain trade) benefit third parties by increasing their opportunities for exchanges. Win-win contracts leave not only their immediate parties, but the rest of the world better off too. With lower transaction costs, overall human happiness is advanced. A leading proponent of this reform approach is the contract lawyer and eminent legal scholar Professor Richard Epstein from New York University.
The positive sum reform approach directs activity towards productive exchanges and away from coercive loss-making transfers.
This neglected approach contrasts favourably with the one-sided policy thinking (and deliberate political opportunism) over the last decade in Australia. It has led to declining per-capita GDP growth, falling productivity, and a massive erosion in housing affordability. This was fuelled by uber-easy monetary policy whose gratuitous uncertainty erodes capital stocks, both public and private.
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AdBlue prices fault of ‘broken’ system
6:30PM December 28, 2021
The founder of the largest formulator and distributor of AdBlue in Australia says price gouging is not a key factor behind soaring prices after the competition watchdog was asked to crack down on any suppliers of diesel exhaust fluid exploiting a shortage in refined urea.
DGL Group chief executive Simon Henry told The Australian on Tuesday the issue was that for the past 25 years, Australia had “become accustomed to a very reliable ‘just in time’ stock management system”.
“It broke,” he said. “We pushed it too hard and it snapped … Supply chain managers got very skilled at running their stocks very low, expecting materials to turn up from China … but it doesn’t anymore.”
Mr Henry said soaring prices were the product of plants in China and Japan going offline and congested shipping channels around the word, which had created a supply crisis placing enormous pressure on the Australian model. “We went into this crisis with significant stocks of urea and other materials running into the tens of millions of dollars. I’m constantly criticised by the investment community for running an old-fashioned balance sheet.
“We have enough urea for AdBlue to supply our historic customer base with the normal demand. What we can’t do is supply our competitors whose supplies have run out of material … We can’t collude.
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20 investment ideas for the new year
Kick off the year by seeking to optimise your investments but don’t expect another bumper year like the one we just enjoyed.
By James Kirby
From Business
December 29, 2021
As an investor, you would like to think that every year you get better. In 2022, the ability to navigate investment waters may well be much more important than the year just gone.
It’s the perfect time of the year to take a good, hard look at your portfolio settings as an investor. Here’s the 20 things you might do in 2022.
Become more cautious
History suggests that over a 12-month period if you get 14 per cent on your shares (against a long-term average of 9 per cent), and a 23 per cent price improvement on your house (against an average of 6 per cent), it does not happen two years in a row.
Find the portfolio balance that’s right for your age
For as long as anyone can remember, the rule for a balanced portfolio was that your age represented the percentage of assets you should have in defensive investments.
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A new year, and fresh turmoil in world order
11:00PM December 29, 2021
As the year drags to an exhausting end, the international strategic outlook remains bleak.
Authoritarian regimes are threatening conflict in Europe, the Middle East and Asia. The key democracies look distracted, internally riven and unwilling to defend the global order they originally designed.
It wasn’t meant to be this way. The formal dissolution of the Soviet Union on December 26, 1991, was supposed to usher in an era where liberal democracies would flourish.
Instead, 2022 may be the year in which democracies operating in a rules-based international order will face their toughest test.
After several decades where Western military forces focused their efforts on largely unsuccessful counter-terrorism and counterinsurgency operations in the Middle East, we face the alarming prospect of state-on-state conventional conflict in several regional trouble spots.
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2001: The year Howard drew a line in the sand and transformed Australia
John Howard and his government looked doomed. But then came events that changed everything, including hardening the way Australia saw its place in the world.
By Tony Wright
January 1, 2022
John Howard’s government entered 2001 – the year it would face its third election – in decidedly ragged shape.
Voters were screaming about rising fuel prices, small business operators were furious at the complexity of the business activity statement (BAS) required under the new goods and services tax (GST), there was anger over the new tax being applied to beer and caravan parks, and self-funded retirees were unhappy over a superannuation surcharge.
Having scraped back into power in 1998 without winning a majority of votes, the Howard government’s chances of securing a third term at the general election due in 2001 were considered minimal at best.
And yet, when Australia went to the polls on November 10, the Howard government was comfortably returned. The Labor opposition, led by Kim Beazley, suffered its lowest primary vote since 1934. It was perhaps the swiftest turnaround of political fortune in Australia’s history.
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Consider a flat year for stocks in 2022 a success
Nobody should complain if stocks have very low or even no returns over the next 12 months because there is the potential for something much worse.
Jared Dillian
Jan 1, 2022 – 9.26am
In talking with a number of market players the last few weeks, there seems to be a broad consensus that 2022 is going to be more challenging than 2021, which almost makes me wonder if stocks won’t be up another 20 per cent next year, defying bearish expectations yet again. But things are a little different than this time a year ago.
For starters, the Federal Reserve is beginning the process of reversing its ultra-loose monetary policy. It’s not moving fast enough relative to the inflation that was unleashed, but it’s doing so in an environment where markets are increasingly sensitive to the potential for higher interest rates, due to the vast amounts of leverage in the system and the amount of government debt incurred in the last few years.
The Fed hasn’t increased rates yet, and probably won’t until March, but the yield curve has already flattened to a very slim 80 basis points, suggesting that we are moving ever-closer to a recession.
I have been through a few yield-curve flattening cycles and every one is accompanied by a raft of dumb analysis. The first is the mechanics behind the measurements.
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The most important number of the week is 85.6
You have to go back to the end of the 1990s to find a three-year stretch as good as the current one for the global stock market.
Robert Burgess
Jan 1, 2022 – 9.41am
Now comes the hard part. That’s the clear message from the world’s most sophisticated investors, controlling about 15 per cent of all tradeable assets.
You have to go back to the end of the 1990s to find a three-year stretch as good as the current one for the global stock market. For 2021, the MSCI All-Country World Index was up 16.9 per cent through late Thursday, after surging 14.3 per cent in 2020 and 24.1 per cent in 2019.
These results may seem like a paradox given the raging global pandemic that has led to more than 5.4 million deaths globally, massive disruptions to supply chains that have made many goods scarce, evidence of accelerating climate change that has resulted in more severe natural disasters and soaring rates of inflation that have put the cost of such staples as food and shelter out of reach for many.
Nevertheless, it shouldn’t be hard to understand why financial assets have performed so well. Chalk it up to the rapid response by governments and central banks at the start of the pandemic to keep the initial economic shock from doing lasting damage.
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Strength from fear
When it comes to religion, it is no surprise when doctrinal differences clash, but they are far less prominent in the West than is claimed by the anti-religion secularists.
By RACHAEL KOHN
From Inquirer
December 31, 2021
When it comes to religion, it is no surprise when doctrinal differences clash, but they are far less prominent in the West than is claimed by the anti-religion secularists who strenuously act to hobble religious expressions on the assumption that they are harmful to society. After all, their view of religion is largely as a land of make-believe, where the myth of divine rescue is out of step with reality.
The old adage that there are no atheists in foxholes is one of the ways secularists assured themselves that they knew something basic about faith. The World War I combat scenario from which the saying derives imagines that when the bullets are flying and the soldier in his freshly dug hole cries out “Oh God, save me!” he’s proclaiming his belief in the transcendent divinity spoken of in the Bible.
Ironically, atheists like to quote this as proof that faith is the last resort of extreme fear, desperation being the vital link to belief in the divinity. To some extent they are right.
The biblical tradition contains many sayings that immediately spring to mind:
● Though I walk through the valley of deepest darkness, I fear no harm, For you are with me (Psalm 23:4).
● In God I trust, I am not afraid (Psalm 56:12).
● When you lie down you will be unafraid … you will not fear sudden terror … For the Lord will be your trust (Proverbs 3: 24-26).
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COVID 19 Information
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https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/hazzard-warns-everybody-will-get-omicron-20211226-p59k6k
Everybody ‘will get omicron’, warns Hazzard
Updated Dec 26, 2021 – 5.33pm, first published at 11.24am
NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard has warned the public that everybody should expect to get infected by the omicron variant of the coronavirus.
NSW posted another record number of cases on Boxing Day and hospitalisations jumped from 388 to 458.
Victoria reported a decline in cases and new cases in Queensland fell to 714 from 765.
“Bottom line here is that we would expect that pretty well everybody in NSW at some point will get omicron, we’re all going to get omicron.
“If we’re all going to get omicron, the best way to face it is when we have full vaccination including our booster,” he said.
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Tough business lessons from the pandemic
Ultimately, the great lesson of 2021 is to be certain of uncertainty, and wary of any suggestion that the worst is over.
Pilita Clark Columnist
Dec 27, 2021 – 9.58am
Boris Johnson is an idiot surrounded by idiots who should stop drumming up “mass hysteria” about omicron and treat the viral variant as sensibly as leaders in the rest of Europe, Michael O’Leary raged the other week.
“They’re not all panicking in Italy or Spain or Germany or Holland,” the blustering boss of the Ryanair airline told a reporter from The Times newspaper in London.
Alas, a day after his interview appeared last weekend, the Netherlands imposed a nationwide lockdown to curb omicron’s spread and Germany brought in tough new travel rules for arrivals from the UK. France already had similar travel limits by then and by last Monday even O’Leary’s native Ireland had an 8pm curfew for pubs and restaurants.
He had overlooked a basic lesson of the pandemic that has been as true in 2021 as it was in 2020: certainty is fleeting in a world beset by uncertainty.
But what if this is just the start of even greater volatility?
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https://www.smh.com.au/national/omicron-what-s-going-to-happen-next-20211227-p59kav.html
Omicron: what’s going to happen next?
Paediatrician
Updated December 28, 2021 — 7.13amfirst published December 27, 2021 — 12.30pm
Omicron is so fast-moving we have seen how it has become the dominant variant within a very short time in places such as South Africa, London and Denmark.
This is not the first time we’ve been faced with what appears to be a seemingly unstoppable disease. Previous pandemics ended through a combination of public health measures with or without vaccines.
The Spanish flu was more deadly than COVID. Ultimately, the virus mutated so much that it got less deadly. But remnants of this are still with us today and that is why we need to adapt and live with COVID in a way that the public is able to tolerate.
For COVID, we have unique challenges. Unlike Ebola and SARS, it can be spread by people who don’t realise they have it. SARS made people too sick so they were unable to walk around infecting everyone and were only infectious while symptomatic. SARS-CoV-2 has a lot of walking well where it infects a lot of people but doesn’t kill enough of them to run out of victims. For most people, it’s so mild that it convinces others they don’t have to take it seriously.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/the-plan-to-make-covid-19-normal-20211215-p59hw5
The plan to make COVID-19 normal
Two years into the pandemic with no sign of respite, state governments are quietly working on plans that would return life to near normal. Getting the timing right, however, is the risky part.
Aaron Patrick Senior correspondent
Dec 29, 2021 – 5.00am
There was a moment, on Boxing Day, when the challenge of getting their tired and anxious society through the pandemic was demonstrated by NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet and Health Minister Brad Hazzard.
After a news conference at a suburban vaccination centre where Hazzard predicted that “every person in Australia” would be infected with the omicron COVID-19 variant, Perrottet, Hazzard and a few reporters huddled around the health minister’s iPhone.
Hazzard rang Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant, who was meant to be at a family barbecue, to nail down a fact: what proportion of COVID-19 patients in intensive care wards had omicron.
Even though the variant had surpassed delta as the dominant strain two weeks earlier, Chant said the state health department hadn’t established how many of the sickest patients omicron had infected, which is the crucial indicator of its severity. The testing is a priority, Chant said.
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‘Not the same disease’: top Oxford scientist says Omicron not deadly like Delta
By Prinesha Naidoo and Janice Kew
Updated December 29, 2021 — 7.05amfirst published at 1.52am
The Omicron variant that’s sweeping around the world is not “the same disease we were seeing a year ago,” says a top University of Oxford immunologist, reinforcing reports about the strain’s milder nature.
The strain first discovered at the end of November appears to be less severe and even patients who do end up in the hospital spend less time there, John Bell, regius professor of medicine at Oxford, said on BBC Radio 4’s Today program.
“The horrific scenes that we saw a year ago - intensive care units being full, lots of people dying prematurely - that is now history in my view, and I think we should be reassured that that’s likely to continue,” said Bell, who was a lead scientist on the English university’s Astrazeneca vaccine and a member of the British government’s scientific advisory group.
Infections in Britain have jumped by more than a quarter of a million in the past week, reaching a record 129,471 new cases on Tuesday (wednesday AEDT), even though the numbers for Scotland and Northern Ireland were not included.
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How we’ll adapt to our new COVID reality
NSW Premier
December 30, 2021 — 5.00am
Many people have experienced the heartbreak of cancelled plans over Christmas, thanks to isolation requirements and testing delays caused by Omicron. The disappointment is hard, but it reveals something about us as a community: that we continue to hope against hope that we will overcome whatever the pandemic throws at us.
Optimism invites disappointment, but it is also the key to navigating life’s challenges. In NSW our people continue to meet hardship with hope – with world-leading vaccination efforts – and that is why I know we will get through this latest challenge too.
All this has taken place against the unnerving backdrop of Omicron, the most transmissible variant yet, which is driving case numbers higher than ever. But our exceptionally high vaccination rates, further strengthened by a strong take-up of booster shots, helps ensure people who catch COVID are at a much lower risk of getting seriously ill.
The preliminary data also indicates the Omicron variant is less severe than Delta. Recent estimates from the UK suggest a range from 15 to 80 per cent reduction in the risk of hospitalisation compared with Delta, according to NSW’s Chief Health Officer, Kerry Chant. That’s why even Queensland’s Chief Health Officer has said now is the time to change strategy and allow the virus to become endemic – essentially, to live with it.
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Titanic challenge to turn around two years of COVID messaging
By Shane Wright
December 29, 2021 — 4.03pm
The Prime Minister, premiers and chief health officers must now know how Captain Edward Smith felt back in 1912.
The captain of the Titanic could not turn his ship about fast enough to avoid an iceberg.
Scott Morrison, Dominic Perrottet and Dan Andrews, and many others, are now finding that after the best part of two years of direct instruction to the general public about COVID-19, the message has to quickly change.
Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, the nation’s political and health leaders have urged people even with the slightest of symptoms to get tested.
But with the Omicron variant now sweeping the country and a vast number of Australians spending large parts of their holidays stuck in a car outside a testing centre rather than on a highway to a beach or river retreat, the message needs to vary.
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Floodgates thrown open for rapid antigen tests
December 30, 2021
The nation will be flooded with tens of millions of free rapid antigen tests within a week, with the Morrison and Andrews governments launching programs to distribute the DIY kits.
The move will relieve pressure on the state-based PCR testing sites, make it easier and quicker for close contacts of positive cases to obtain the 15-minute tests and save Australians from being stung between $15 and $20 per kit.
Demand for rapid tests has been outstripping supply, leading to sellouts at supermarkets and pharmacies in the past week as infection numbers soar and governments move to endorse the tests.
Victoria on Wednesday announced it had bought 34 million rapid tests. Within hours the federal government said it had approved $375m to secure 50 million more, on top of 10 million it had already procured.
As cases soar and Australians rush to buy tests, Scott Morrison is coming under increasing attack from Labor and the states for the current shortages and was accused of leaving a testing policy vacuum.
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Rapid Covid test boss John Kelly of Atomo Diagnostics fears Australia ’will be left behind’ as Omicron spreads
7:44AM December 29, 2021
The boss of one of Australia’s leading rapid test makers has a simple message for public health authorities.
You need to start planning for more rapid testing now.
John Kelly, the chief executive of ASX-listed medtech Atomo Diagnostics, says Australia needs to catch up with the rest of the world – particularly Europe – when it comes to widespread use of rapid testing and accept that it can play an important role in the Covid healthcare response.
With testing sites around the nation swamped and results taking days to arrive, Kelly says it is time health authorities rethink their reliance on costly lab, or PCR, testing for Covid.
“If the current situation doesn’t make that clear – I’m not sure what would. Rapid testing is one of the key pillars of Covid response,” he says.
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Scott Morrison seizes moment to change direction
7:31PM December 29, 2021
This is Scott Morrison’s great pandemic pivot.
Australians have endured almost two years of strict Covid rules, destructive lockdowns, gruelling 14-day quarantine requirements and the constant fear of daily life being put on hold because of a “close contact” with the virus.
But Omicron is a gamechanger. While the variant presents a serious new challenge for Morrison, he has seized on it as an opportunity to overhaul the pandemic rule book, liberalise restrictions and build public confidence towards living with the virus.
It is a transformation that Australia must inevitably make.
But just months out from an election, Morrison has gambled that there is a major political advantage in moving quickly to return life closer to normal for Australians. He proposes to do this by changing the definition of what constitutes a close contact.
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Close contact redefined as states agree to charge for rapid tests
Michael Read Reporter
Dec 30, 2021 – 4.18pm
Australians will not receive free rapid antigen tests after the national cabinet agreed to a raft of changes on Thursday afternoon including a narrowing in the definition of a close contact.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced on Thursday that a close contact would only be a household contact or household-like contact of a confirmed COVID-19 case. A household contact was someone who had spent more than four hours with an infected person in a house or accommodation setting, he said.
The new definition of a close contact will come into effect at midnight in NSW, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia and the ACT.
Tasmania will adopt the definition on January 1, while West Australian Premier Mark McGowan said it was unlikely he would adopt the new definition before February 5 given the state’s low caseload.
South Australia’s Premier, Steven Marshall, said states could alter the definition of close contact in certain circumstances.
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With New Year’s Eve upon us, Perrottet must take stronger measures
This author is anonymous due to area health service policies.
December 31, 2021 — 5.30am
While the Premier may state that NSW is in a very strong position at this point in time, the same cannot be said for the NSW health system. Already, within a few short weeks of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus hitting our shores, daily new cases in NSW now exceed 12,000, more than seven times the peak number of daily new cases recorded for the Delta outbreak (1603; Sept 11, 2021), and placing us as a state ahead of all but a handful of countries for daily new infections.
While the early data is suggesting that the rate at which Omicron puts people in hospital is lower than Delta’s, its rapid spread is putting enormous pressure on hospitals. The rate of increase of hospitalisations for infected patients in the current outbreak exceeds that seen with the Delta outbreak, even though Omicron is circulating in a substantially more vaccinated population. During the Delta outbreak, it took 34 days for NSW to go from 134 cases admitted to hospital to 761. It has taken just 26 days to go from 139 hospitalisations in early December to Thursday’s 746. Current low ICU percentages tell us little; ICU numbers lag by weeks.
Already in south-western Sydney, hospitals are approaching capacity for managing new admissions with COVID-19. And these admissions are not just the unvaccinated now. At one hospital I know of, an extra COVID ward has been opened, the emergency department is full of COVID cases, they have paediatric COVID cases for the first time in the pandemic, and record numbers of staff furloughed due to being close contacts of COVID-positive people.
Basic maths indicate ongoing exponential growth will soon overwhelm the system. What does this mean? Patients who suffer “ordinary” illnesses like heart attacks, strokes, injuries from car accidents or falls from ladders, or women who go into premature labour, may not have access to timely transport to hospital, or a bed in hospital, or a nurse or doctor to treat them. Whole programs of cancer therapy may be unavailable, or cancers may simply not be diagnosed at a time that curative treatment can be offered.
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‘Irresponsible’: PM slammed over inaction on free rapid tests
Finbar O'Mallon Reporter
Dec 31, 2021 – 11.29am
Small businesses have dubbed the Prime Minister’s failure to act on calls for free rapid COVID-19 tests “disappointing”, while social services groups have called it “irresponsible and callous”.
Testing providers, the small business industry lobby and pharmacists have disputed Scott Morrison’s claims “private industry” was pressuring the federal government to not make the crucial tests free.
Instead, they’ve called for them to be made free, or heavily subsidised, and provided through pharmacists to help prevent hoarding and ensure concession and healthcare cardholders can access them.
It comes as NSW reported 21,151 new local COVID-19 cases – a record – on Friday.
Council of Small Business Organisations Australia chief Alexi Boyd said small businesses needed free tests to help keep their doors open during a critical time, even with the national cabinet agreeing to reduce isolation periods.
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‘Staggering’: South African fourth wave passes quickly with few deaths
By Adeel Hassan
December 31, 2021 — 1.38pm
New York: The South African government says data from its Health Department suggests the country had passed its Omicron peak without a major spike in deaths, offering cautious hope to other countries grappling with the variant.
“The speed with which the Omicron-driven fourth wave rose, peaked and then declined has been staggering,” said Fareed Abdullah of the South African Medical Research Council.
“Peak in four weeks and precipitous decline in another two. This Omicron wave is over in the city of Tshwane. It was a flash flood more than a wave”. The rise in deaths over the period was small, and in the last week, officials said, “marginal”.
Some scientists were quick to forecast the same pattern elsewhere.
“We’ll be in for a tough January, as cases will keep going up and peak, and then fall fast,” said Ali Mokdad, a University of Washington epidemiologist who is a former Centres for Disease Control and Prevention scientist. While cases would still overwhelm hospitals, he said, he expected the proportion of hospitalised cases would be lower than in earlier waves.
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Pharmacies opposed widespread free tests amid fears ‘worried well’ would overwhelm system
Updated December 31, 2021 — 3.59pmfirst published at 12.16pm
The nation’s Pharmacy Guild opposed completely free access to COVID-19 rapid antigen tests, lobbying the federal government to subsidise the cost for low-income households but make others pay to stop chemists being overrun.
Pharmacy Guild of Australia national president Trent Twomey has backed the government’s new self-testing plan, which provides free tests in high-risk settings such as aged care and for close contacts but leaves others buying them from a retailer.
He had proposed a “hybrid” model to the government and warned a free-for-all on tests would leave the system swamped by healthy people wanting to stock up.
“Otherwise we will have the ‘worried well’ taking publicly funded tests away from those who need them,” he said.
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True number of new virus cases in NSW could be over 40,000
Michael Read Reporter
Dec 31, 2021 – 10.35am
NSW reported a record 21,151 new COVID-19 infections on Friday, but epidemiologists say the true number of infections could be more than double the reported figure given the limits on testing capacity.
The state chalked up more infections in a single day on Friday than it did over the first 76 days of its second wave, which was characterised by the spread of the less transmissible delta variant.
Daily records were also set in Victoria, which posted 5919 infections, Queensland, which had 3118, South Australia, which recorded 2093, and Tasmania, where 137 people contracted the virus. More than 138,000 Australians have an active infection, according to the Covidlive website.
UNSW infectious disease expert Marylouise McLaws told The Australian Financial Review that the real number of new cases in NSW could be double the reported figure.
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Official coronavirus tally falling behind real virus numbers
By Michael Koziol, Mary Ward and Aisha Dow
January 1, 2022 — 5.00am
NSW has no plans to officially include positive rapid antigen tests in daily coronavirus numbers, despite more people using this testing method and Victoria developing a system to incorporate these results.
NSW’s official daily coronavirus numbers are falling increasingly short of the actual rate, with authorities urging people who get a postive at-home result to follow it up with a PCR test so they are counted in the official tally.
Despite Victoria revealing it would develop a system to track positive rapid antigen tests in the community, Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant said there were no plans at this stage to officially include at-home tests in NSW.
“As we work through living with COVID we may change that advice at times, but at the moment, we’re saying if you have a positive test, get tested using a PCR test,” she said, noting having a diagnostic test would allow health authorities to allocate resources for care of confirmed cases.
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COVID healthcare staff who are close contacts to be ordered back to work
Updated December 31, 2021 — 10.35pmfirst published at 6.59pm
Essential healthcare workers who are close contacts of COVID-19 cases could be ordered back to work under changes confirmed on Friday night after a snap phone hook-up between NSW Health and unions.
Staff would be returned to work before completing their seven days of isolation if they are deemed essential to service delivery and it is approved by a senior manager based on a risk assessment.
Rising hospitalisations due to COVID-19 and the furloughing of about 2000 healthcare workers as confirmed cases or close contacts have led to staff shortages and put pressure on the system, with NSW recording more than 21,000 new cases on Friday.
Health Services Union NSW secretary Gerard Hayes said he understood the need to get more health workers off the bench at this critical time, but said the process was rushed.
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Omicron hospitalisation risk around one third of Delta, UK analysis shows
January 1, 2022 — 4.24am
For our free coronavirus pandemic coverage, learn more here.
London: The risk of hospitalisation with the Omicron variant of coronavirus is about one-third that of the Delta variant, according to a British analysis of more than a million cases of both types in recent weeks.
Britain is experiencing a surge in COVID-19 cases driven by the highly transmissible Omicron variant, with record daily infections of 189,846 reported on Friday.
While hospital admissions have started to rise, the government has said it believes the new variant is milder than the Delta variant.
The number of patients needing mechanical ventilation beds has also remained steady through December, unlike previous peaks in the pandemic.
The analysis was published by the UK Health Security Agency, after it worked alongside Cambridge University MRC Biostatistics unit to analyse 528,176 Omicron cases and 573,012 Delta cases.
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https://www.smh.com.au/national/welcome-to-2022-the-year-this-pandemic-ends-20211230-p59kzf.html
Welcome to 2022, the year this pandemic ends
Former deputy chief medical officer
January 1, 2022 — 5.00am
In 2022, the COVID-19 pandemic will end. Driven by the inexorable, inevitable spread of the Omicron variant and the use of vaccines, the global population will generate immunity to this virus.
The basic proposition of a pandemic, an infectious disease spreading globally among an infection-naive population, will be void. We will live our lives again as part of the incredibly social and incurably optimistic human species that thrives on this planet and has emerged from countless pandemics over history stronger and more capable of managing the next.
In Australia, we have seen extraordinary displays of community unity over the past two years, none more so than our uptake of vaccination. The primary driver has been a desire to protect our community, our family, and our vulnerable. Witness the extraordinary and world-leading vaccination rates of Victoria and NSW being mirrored around the nation. Witness the willingness to accept extreme restrictions to protect our vulnerable during 2020. Witness the fact that young Australians endured without complaint extreme imposition on the most formative and important years of their lives.
With a significant contribution from Australian science, COVID-19 is now the most treatable respiratory virus known to man. The case-to-fatality ratio of Omicron is likely to be less than that of influenza, and not a particularly bad flu at that. That will allow us to release all but the least intrusive of restrictions.
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Australia is finally doing what we should have done 18 months ago – but thanks to lies from our politicians, the public is panicking, writes Joe Hildebrand.
January 1, 2022 - 6:09AM
OPINION
Australia is trapped in a paralysis of cognitive dissonance. If our country was a person it would be borderline schizophrenic.
The symptoms were clear at the highest levels of government from the earliest days of the Covid-19 outbreak. National cabinet would meet, the Prime Minister and all the premiers would declare a common position of what they were doing and then the states would all go off and do something completely different.
National cabinet’s official position was that Australia would adopt a suppression strategy and then the states simply ignored it and pursued an elimination strategy.
National cabinet’s official advice was that schools were not a high-risk environment for Covid-19 but NSW, Victoria and Queensland simply closed them anyway.
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https://www.smh.com.au/national/omicron-is-it-time-to-give-up-20211230-p59kui.html
Omicron: is it time to give up?
December 31, 2021 — 7.48pm
Last week, mask mandates were reintroduced in Victoria, New South Wales and even the barely affected Western Australia to try and slow the spread of COVID-19.
This week there was a huge change, as part of an effort to “live with” the virus. The national cabinet’s decision to redefine a “close contact” to the bare minimum of someone living with a confirmed COVID-19 case or having spent more than four hours with them in a home, accommodation or care facility will inevitably mean cases — and therefore hospitalisations — will rise. Getting tested if you are a casual contact with no symptoms — in a workplace, for instance, or having visited a restaurant where there has been a confirmed case — is now over. Only close contacts and positive cases will need to isolate for seven days.
NSW Health Minister says expectation everybody in NSW will contract virus.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison called it a “gear change”, adding that if you’re not a close contact under the new definition, “you should go home, go to the beach, go and do what you want to do. Read a book in the park”.
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https://www.smh.com.au/national/why-our-big-covid-switch-is-wise-20211231-p59l42.html
Why our big COVID switch is wise
By Sharon Lewin and Deborah Williamson
January 2, 2022 — 5.00am
The start of 2022 marks a major shift in Australia’s COVID journey. Given all our hard work to control the virus tightly over the last two years, this change in strategy can for many of us be confusing — and even unsettling, especially when faced with unprecedented numbers of infections.
These changes are necessary and a pragmatic response to new challenges of Omicron, which has a very different disease and infection profile to previous variants, and which is now spreading at great speed through Australia, including in our vaccinated population.
Adding to the confusion has been variation in policies on isolation, quarantine and testing algorithms across the country. State-based variation was easily understood when we had COVID and non-COVID states: the non-COVID states were sticking with a policy of elimination and chasing down every case with great precision, while the COVID states had moved to less stringent policies. However, with borders now open across the country (except with Western Australia) and a shared goal of living with COVID, consistency is now essential.
Our public health policymakers have a difficult job. They need to weigh up many competing factors: the rapidly changing science on our understanding of Omicron; the risks to our healthcare system and ensuring it can cope; the pragmatic reality that our testing capacity is not unlimited; and the societal and economic impact of isolating many thousands of casual contacts of positive cases when the risk of them getting infected is low (but not zero).
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Climate Change.
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The cost of 2021’s 10 worst climate disasters: $U170b
Damian Shepherd
Dec 27, 2021 – 12.43pm
Ten of this year’s most destructive weather events cost a combined $US170 billion ($235 billion) in damages, according to a new study.
Hurricane Ida, a tropical storm that pummelled much of the eastern US with lashing rain in August, killed at least 95 people and cost the economy $US65 billion.
A month earlier, floods in Europe caused 240 deaths and an economic loss of $US43 billion, according to research published by UK charity Christian Aid. Floods in China’s Henan province in July killed more than 300 and cost more than $US17 billion.
“The costs of climate change have been grave this year,” said Kat Kramer, Christian Aid’s climate policy lead and author of the report. “It is clear that the world is not on track to ensure a safe and prosperous world.”
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Fire and ice: How climate change fuelled Colorado’s winter wildfire
By Jason Samenow, Jacob Feuerstein and Becky Bolinger
January 1, 2022 — 9.13am
Washington DC: The raging inferno that erupted in Boulder County, Colorado became the most destructive wildfire in the state’s history as it burned through hundreds of homes in densely populated suburbs. The fire was fuelled by an extreme set of atmospheric conditions, intensified by climate change and fanned by a violent windstorm.
The fire on Thursday afternoon (Friday AEDT) came at a time of year when a blaze of such violence is unprecedented; Colorado’s fire season typically spans May though September. But exceptionally warm and dry conditions through this autumn, including a historic lack of snowfall, created tinderbox conditions ripe for a fast-spreading blaze.
Boulder County Sheriff Joe Pelle said more than 500 homes were probably destroyed. He and the governor said as many as 1,000 homes might have been lost, though that won’t be known until crews can assess the damage.
Tens of thousands were ordered to flee and at least seven people were injured, but remarkably there were no immediate reports of any deaths or anyone missing in the aftermath of the blaze outside Denver.
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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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Exports resilient despite China trade tactics; ratings agencies raise concerns with Treasury
5:10PM December 27, 2021
Credit rating agencies have raised concerns about the impact of Chinese trade sanctions directly with Treasury officials including Josh Frydenberg, who told them the Australian economy had the flexibility to withstand the shocks.
Documents prepared for two virtual meetings with Fitch and S&P after the May budget, but which have only emerged now after a freedom of information request, show the ongoing trade restrictions had a significant impact on specific firms and regions, but most goods targeted by the restrictions were successfully redirected to other export markets.
According to ministerial briefs prepared by the international economics and security division of Treasury, the effect on the overall Australian economy was “limited”.
That was also the view of Fitch, which released a report in April that said trade tensions with China had not had a material impact and were unlikely to affect Australia’s AAA credit rating.
“As Treasurer I and my department have maintained regular and constructive dialogue with the credit rating agencies, particularly after major fiscal announcements such as the budget,” the Treasurer told The Australian.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/three-forces-will-shape-the-economy-in-2022-20211215-p59htc
Three forces will shape the economy in 2022
The virus, US inflation and the reopening of the international border to foreign workers will be crucial for the country’s economic performance in the year ahead - and the election.
John Kehoe Economics editor
Dec 29, 2021 – 5.00am
Entering the third year of the pandemic, there are three major factors that will shape the economy in 2022.
Indeed, these crucial variables will influence employment, wages, interest rates and house prices. The first issue is obvious, the second is largely beyond Australia’s control, and the third will be delicate in an election year.
Clearly, the COVID-19 virus and, crucially, how federal and state political leaders respond to the fast-spreading omicron and future variants will be pivotal to how the economy performs.
If hospitalisation rates are contained – even as case numbers surge – stimulus-fuelled consumers are well-placed to go on a spending spree and support the business recovery. On the other hand, if a highly vaccinated Australia follows some European countries back into heavy health restrictions and lockdowns, the economy will struggle to thrive.
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Australian house prices outpace wages tenfold
12:01AM January 1, 2022
The recent property boom has caused housing prices to sit 10 times higher than the average annual Australian wage, in yet another sign of worsening affordability.
Cheap credit and increased household savings have spurred a rapid rise in property prices over the past 15 months.
While there are indications that growth is slowing in some of the larger markets, pressure has increased on first-home buyers trying to save for a deposit.
In 2021, the median house price in capital cities was $771,000, according to REA Group PropTrack data. Based on Australian Bureau of Statistics figures, average annual earnings are $69,862, which means house prices are 1104 per cent bigger than average wages.
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Health Issues.
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See pandemic coverage above.
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International Issues.
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https://www.afr.com/world/asia/xi-jinping-s-big-year-of-the-tiger-test-20211220-p59iyr
Xi Jinping’s big Year of the Tiger test
Xi Jinping might be at unbackable odds to be appointed to a historic third term as president in 2022, but his recent form suggests everything else about China is dangerously unpredictable.
Michael Smith North Asia correspondent
Dec 23, 2021 – 5.00am
Tokyo | The Year of the Tiger will be Chinese President Xi Jinping’s biggest test yet.
People born Tigers under the Chinese zodiac are said to be ambitious, competitive, unpredictable and confident. This is also an accurate reflection of China under Xi’s leadership after a year defined by its ability to weather the coronavirus pandemic, increasingly frayed relations with the Western world, and a man whose power seems to know no limits.
There were two historically key events in China in 2021. On July 1, Xi addressed thousands from a podium in Tiananmen Square where he declared there was no room for criticism from, or compromise with, the United States and its allies, including Australia.
“The Chinese people will absolutely not allow any foreign force to bully, oppress or enslave us, and anyone who attempts to do so will face broken heads and bloodshed in front of the iron Great Wall of the 1.4 billion Chinese people,” the 68-year-old leader said to thunderous applause.
It was the Chinese Communist Party’s 100th anniversary and the event was defined by a lavish display of pageantry in Beijing and a tsunami of nationalism that older Chinese observers said they had not witnessed since the Cultural Revolution.
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https://www.afr.com/companies/manufacturing/how-the-supply-chain-crisis-unfolded-20211225-p59k56
How the supply chain crisis unfolded
Lazaro Gamio and Peter S. Goodman
Dec 25, 2021 – 4.42pm
The turmoil in the global supply chain this year laid bare how complex it can be to do the seemingly simple job of getting a product from one place to another.
The need to ship surgical masks to West Africa from China can have a cascading effect on Ford’s ability to install backup cameras on cars at factories in Ohio and delay the arrival of Amazon Prime orders in Florida in time for the holidays. In one way or another, much of the supply chain crisis can be traced to the outbreak of the coronavirus.
When the pandemic struck in early 2020, people and businesses were quickly forced to restrict their activity, sending the global economy into a brief but damaging free fall.
As offices closed and factories halted production, companies laid off workers en masse, taking spending power out of people’s hands. With fewer goods being made and fewer people with paychecks to spend, companies assumed that demand would drop sharply. But a far more complicated situation unfolded, challenging the global supply chain.
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China, Solomon Islands security development ‘very concerning’, says opposition politician
10:37PM December 26, 2021
Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare’s decision to accept Beijing‘s offer to bolster domestic policing capabilities to help stem month-long riots in Honiara, the capital city, represents a “very concerning” development, according to one of the country’s leading opposition politicians.
On Thursday, the Solomon Islands government released a statement announcing it had accepted an offer from China to provide assistance to the Royal Solomon Islands police force under an existing bilateral agreement — a bid to defuse civil disobedience in the capital city, which has been ongoing since late November.
Describing the situation in Honiara as one of “uneasy calm”, Peter Kenilorea Jr, a United Party member and son of the politician who led the Solomon Islands to independence, said there was broad public appreciation of the support offered by Australia, New Zealand and other regional partners.
However, with rioting in Honiara partially driven by the government instigating closer diplomatic ties with Beijing, Mr Kenilorea Jr said the Prime Minister’s decision to accept the offer of specialised equipment such as shields, helmets and batons and training to the country’s police force, was troubling.
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Biden’s rescue plan is coming apart at the seams
By Matthew Yglesias
December 27, 2021 — 11.55am
With inflation running at more than 6 per cent and President Joe Biden’s legislative agenda in peril, ’tis the season for second-guessing.
So, I’d like to focus on what may well have been the original sin of the Biden administration and the narrow Democratic majority in Congress: last February’s decision to reject Senate Republicans’ offer of a $600 billion COVID relief bill and instead proceed with the $US1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, which Biden signed into law last March.
At the time, I was surprised that the White House rejected the Republicans’ plan — and even more surprised that moderate Senate Democrats signed off on the rejection. But I was pleasantly surprised. I took it as a signal that the moderate Democratic caucus, including Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin, was prepared to enact a much bolder economic agenda.
In retrospect, however, the truth was something simpler: Biden came into office with a great deal of goodwill among Democrats, and when he told them the American Rescue Plan was necessary, they believed him.
Rather than building momentum for further legislative victories, however, this plan backfired.
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‘Conspiracy of everything’ - QAnon lives on without ‘Q’
Davey Alba
Dec 29, 2021 – 5.00am
On December 8, 2020, a few weeks after Joe Biden was elected President, “Q” – the anonymous online account that set off the QAnon conspiracy movement – posted a link to a video with scenes of cars burning on the streets, fighter jets over a stadium and Donald Trump with his hand on a Bible, being sworn in as president. The images played over a song by Twisted Sister, “We’re Not Gonna Take It.”
The Q account has not posted since, and its major predictions have not come to pass.
But the QAnon movement – initially based on a pro-Trump conspiracy theory, that a group of global liberal elites run a child sex ring that Trump would stop – has continued to flourish. In some ways, it is now woven even deeper into the country’s political and social fabric than 12 months ago.
More than 40 Congressional candidates who have publicly stated some support of QAnon are running for national office next year, according to a tally by the liberal advocacy group Media Matters. They include Luis Miguel, a Republican from Florida who has tweeted the QAnon slogan, and Omar Navarro, a Republican from California who has publicly stated his belief in some of the movement’s conspiracy theories, including the lie that Hollywood is running a child trafficking scheme.
Followers of QAnon also regularly show up to events and successfully spread new fallacious claims. In November, hundreds of people turned up in Dallas expecting to see John F. Kennedy Jr. – the son of the former US president who died in a plane crash in 1999 – announce his intentions to be Trump’s running mate in 2024. Many QAnon followers pushed the theory that the recent Astroworld Festival in Houston, in which 10 people died and hundreds more were injured, was a front for a satanic ritual sacrifice.
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US, Russia to hold Ukraine talks early January in Geneva
AFP
December 29, 2021
The United States and Russia will hold much-anticipated talks in early January on European security and the Ukraine conflict after Moscow demanded NATO halt its eastward expansion.
A spokesperson for the US National Security Council told AFP late Monday that the talks with Russia will take place on January 10.
The Kremlin has grown increasingly insistent that the West and NATO are encroaching dangerously close to Russia's borders.
"The United States looks forward to engaging with Russia," the National Security Council spokesperson said.
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Rogue leaders are quietly planning mischief
The Times
12:48PM December 29, 2021
Watch out for the snow leopards, the so-called ghosts of the mountains. Foreign policy think-tankers are turning to this new zoological metaphor to talk about hidden crises that could bite us in the coming year.
Forget for now Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s overused term “black swans”, describing extreme outlier events such as the 9/11 attack that have cataclysmic effects and defy prediction. For 2022 the dangers are of a different ilk, more like the rare snow leopards of central Asia, so beautifully camouflaged that they remain out of sight and out of mind. We have to pay attention to these masked flashpoints because they can activate deeper conflicts across the world.
There are of course obvious conflicts looming – between Russia and Ukraine, between China and Taiwan – yet the diplomatic machinery is beginning to crank into action and, despite the sabre-rattling, neither Moscow nor Beijing may be quite ready for the use of overwhelming force.
As the uncertainty continues, it is beginning to dawn on the West that Ukrainian and Taiwanese freedoms are intertwined. That raises the stakes for the two putative aggressors and may put on hold any invasion plans. I might be erring on the optimistic side but at least these fault lines in eastern Ukraine and the Taiwan straits are under close observation. Crisis scenarios are being drawn up. There is western scrutiny, even if it is still unclear for what the West is willing to fight.
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China’s tech moguls see $110b of wealth evaporate in 2021
Venus Feng
Dec 30, 2021 – 5.37am
It’s been a record year for China’s internet moguls, but not in the way most would have hoped.
The country’s 10 richest tech tycoons lost $US80 billion ($110 billion) in combined net worth in 2021, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, amid wide scale crackdowns by Chinese regulators. The drop represents almost a quarter of their total wealth and is the largest one-year decline since 2012, when the index started tracking the world’s richest people.
Pinduoduo founder Colin Huang lost the most this year -- $US42.9 billion, or two-thirds of his fortune -- as shares of the e-commerce platform plunged nearly 70 per cent.
Alibaba Group Holding’s Jack Ma, who has been keeping a low-profile since authorities clamped down on his sprawling business empire, has seen his wealth cut by about $US13 billion.
Few people better embody this year’s wealth roller coaster than Didi Global founder Cheng Wei.
In the weeks before Didi’s US listing in June, investors snapped up stakes in secondary-market trades, pushing the ride-hailing giant’s valuation to $US95 billion and sending the value of founder Cheng’s stake to $US6.7 billion.
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Inflation and China couldn’t faze markets. But 2022 might be different
Two changes to the markets landscape - rapid inflation, and questions about the viability of investing in China - caught nearly everyone off-guard. Can we expect different next year?
Mohamed A. El-Erian
Dec 30, 2021 – 9.38pm
A year ago, most economists expected that the COVID-19 pandemic would continue to weigh heavily on the global marketplace, and that the recovery process would be far from smooth. But two changes to the landscape — rapid inflation, and questions about the viability of investing in China — caught nearly everyone off-guard.
Even if we had foreseen these developments, it is unlikely that we would have gotten right their broader implications. And we probably wouldn’t have guessed that markets would by and large take the news in stride. That bears remembering as we attempt to make projections for the coming year while still dogged by the pandemic and other uncertainties.
I know of no forecaster who came close to projecting a nearly 7 per cent US inflation rate for the end of this year, and that includes those of us who pushed back as early as six months ago against the notion that this bout of inflation would prove to be transitory during 2021.
Today, unusually high and persistent inflation has become the consensus call. Yet even now, there is an under-appreciation of the current inflation dynamics, including supply-chain disruptions and worker shortages associated with the new COVID-19 variant, omicron.
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A debate about inflation will matter in 2022. But which one?
So far, the fear that heightened inflation expectations would take on a life of their own has not materialised.
Ramesh Ponnuru
Dec 31, 2021 – 4.45am
Prices have been increasing at the fastest rate in decades, but we haven’t been having a debate about inflation. We’ve been having five. We might do a better job of thinking through the issues if we distinguish among them.
The first debate concerns the magnitude of the current inflation: how long it will last and how high it will get.
It started last spring, when some economists sounded the alarm that we were likely to see the highest inflation in a generation. Others argued first that inflation would remain subdued and then that it would prove “transitory”. It has now stayed high for long enough that Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell has retired the term.
How harmful this inflation is has touched off a second debate. Optimists have claimed that it will help many, maybe even most, Americans because it allows borrowers to repay their loans with devalued dollars. The pessimists, who have the public on their side, have emphasised that the real value of wages has fallen over the last year.
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Europe has never paid so much for power as 2021 costs hit record
William Mathis and Jesper Starn
Dec 30, 2021 – 11.35pm
Europe has never paid so much for electricity as in 2021.
The average cost of power for delivery in the short-term is on track to end the year at a record levels, rising over 200 per cent in Germany, France, Spain and the UK. In the Nordic region - where vast supplies of hydro power tend to cap prices - costs surged 470 per cent from a year earlier.
The crunch is leaving consumers and heavy industrial users with rising bills heading into 2022. Metals smelters from France to Spain have already been forced to curb output, while some fertiliser producers were forced to halt output altogether. Norsk Hydro’s majority-owned plant in Slovakia was the latest casualty, announcing on Thursday that it would further curb production.
And there’s little relief in sight. Even as the year ends with mild weather -- easing demand for heat and power -- households are set to face eye-watering price increases next years when wholesale costs get passed on. Industries will also need to grapple with even tighter supplies in January, when about 30 per cent of the French nuclear fleet will be offline.
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Lithuania is the ‘canary’ of world order
Tod Lindberg and Peter Rough
The Wall Street Journal
11:00PM December 29, 2021
Lithuania, a small Baltic state with an out-size role in promoting human rights and democracy, is in the crosshairs of Russia and China.
Neither Russian President Vladimir Putin nor Chinese leader Xi Jinping has been shy about going after Lithuania. But their recent moves have broader significance, namely testing US and European commitments to allies.
Putin is raising the temperature on Lithuania by absorbing neighbouring Belarus into his security sphere and militarising Kaliningrad, Russia’s territorial exclave on the Baltic Sea. Xi is waging a campaign of political and economic retaliation.
The integration of the Baltic states into NATO and the EU in 2004 was a crowning achievement. Lithuania helped lead Europe’s response to the depredations of the dictatorial regime of Alexander Lukashenko in Belarus by sheltering opposition leaders and staking out hawkish positions. This is the latest way in which Vilnius has irritated Putin, who would like to reclaim Russia’s near abroad as a sphere of influence. In Putin’s fanciful telling, Lithuania is a major source of Russia’s historical insecurity. That places it high on the list of neighbouring states he would like to control.
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Biden reasserts warning as Putin signals satisfaction with call
Jenny Leonard and Ilya Arkhipov
Jan 1, 2022 – 7.36am
President Joe Biden repeated his warning to Moscow to de-escalate the month-long standoff over Ukraine, a day after he and Vladimir Putin discussed the issue during a call the Russian leader expressed his satisfaction with.
“I made it clear to President Putin that if he makes any more moves, goes into Ukraine, we will have severe sanctions,” Biden told reporters in Wilmington, Delaware, on Friday (Satuday AEDT).
“We’ll increase our presence in Europe with our NATO allies and it will just be a heavy price to pay for him.”
Ahead of Biden’s remarks, Kremlin foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov said Putin was pleased with the conversation between the two leaders on Thursday, setting the stage for three sets of negotiations on European security next month.
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The Capitol attack was Trump’s dress rehearsal
The first attempt to subvert a democratic election result was chaotic. Donald Trump and his allies are better organised now.
January 1, 2022
Washington: One year after thousands of his supporters stormed the US Capitol, Donald Trump plans to mark the anniversary on January 6 with a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
It will be no mea culpa.
In a statement issued before Christmas, the former president made it clear that he would use the event to reassert his false claim that the election was “stolen”, and launch yet another attack on the bipartisan select House committee investigating the incident.
“Until then, remember, the insurrection took place on November 3rd,” Trump said, referencing the day of the 2020 election.
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The World ahead: the crucial challenges on every continent in 2022
By Chris Barrett, Latika Bourke, Eryk Bagshaw, Farrah Tomazin, Henry Cooke, Michelle Griffin and Lia Timson
January 2, 2022 — 5.00am
We continue to live in interesting times. Our correspondents and contributors pinpoint some of the major themes we’ll explore in the news this year.
North Asia
Next year will be about as big as it gets for China. It has two major events, one international, one local – and both will have significant implications for the rest of the world. In February thousands of athletes, journalists and officials will descend on Beijing for the 2022 Winter Olympics.
This won’t be your average Games. It is now surrounded by diplomatic boycotts, protests over the treatment of Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai and the ongoing condemnation of its treatment of Uighurs in Xinjiang and pro-democracy supporters in Hong Kong.
The international spotlight will be on China and for the first time in two years, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age will be back in Beijing to bring all the sport, politics and controversy to our readers. That’s only the start of the calendar for China which by year’s end will also install President Xi Jinping for a third term and lock him in as the most powerful leader since Mao Zedong.
The 20th Party Congress will not just be a vote, it will be accompanied by all the pomp, ceremony and nationalism needed to ensure there is no threat to Xi’s unparalleled power for years to come. That makes it a dangerous time for world affairs as Xi looks to assert himself both at home and abroad.
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Kim Jong-un talks food, not nukes, in unusually subdued New Year speech
By Josh Smith
January 1, 2022 — 3.44pm
Seoul: North Korean leader Kim Jong-un capped off his 10th year in power with a speech that made more mention of tractor factories and school uniforms than nuclear weapons or the United States.
North Korea’s main goals for 2022 will be jump-starting economic development and improving people’s lives as it faces a “great life-and-death struggle,” Kim said in a speech on New Year’s Eve at the end of the 4th Plenary Meeting of the 8th Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea.
The meetings coincided with the 10-year anniversary of Kim effectively assuming leadership of the country after the death of his father in 2011.
Kim has used previous speeches around the New Year to make major policy announcements, including launching significant diplomatic engagements with South Korea and the United States.
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Is America still the land of the free?
Contributor
11:00PM December 31, 2021
What poses the greater threat to American democracy – the riot at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, or the political and institutional response to it?
This is a question well worth asking as the first anniversary of this episode approaches, especially now we have much more information on which to base an assessment than was available during the saturation media coverage in the immediate aftermath.
American left-wing columnist Glenn Greenwald, who co-founded online magazine The Intercept, is in no doubt. In several lengthy articles he compares the response to the riot with what followed the 9/11 attacks two decades earlier, of which he was – and is – extremely critical.
A frequent claim made by political figures and in the media is that the Capitol riot is, if anything, more serious than the 9/11 attacks. As such, it requires special legislation and special measures to refocus the “war on terror” on those depicted as domestic terrorists.
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I look forward to comments on all this!
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David.
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