September 01, 2022 Edition
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This week it is all about weather and climate change with floods, heatwaves and droughts in Parkistan, Europe and China. In the US drought is causing all sorts of food supply issues and price rises.
In the EU was a seeing all sorts of energy supply problems.
In Australia we have a feast of investigations into ScoMo, RoboDebt and so on. Lots to browse!
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Major Issues.
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US alliance fear that dare not speak its name
Uneasiness about divided, inward-looking America fulfilling its security guarantees is widely shared, if rarely spoken about, among ministers and officials in Canberra.
James Curran Historian
Aug 21, 2022 – 12.40pm
Since 2017 the Australian public has been subjected to a concerted attempt by political leaders and a compliant media to prepare for possible war with China.
It has worked.
Lowy Institute polling shows that 75 per cent of Australians believe China will pose a military threat to Australia within the next two decades.
The peril is well known now, but the complexities which flow from it are not.
If fear of China is the dominant narrative in the Australian strategic consciousness, another fear dare not speak its name.
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Kerr-Fraser conflict a precedent for governor-general’s intervention
Tom McIlroy Political reporter
Aug 21, 2022 – 6.35pm
Amid the furore over Scott Morrison’s secret ministerial powers, a precedent of the governor-general knocking back federal government appointments has raised questions about the actions of the incumbent, David Hurley.
Less than two years after Gough Whitlam was dismissed by governor-general John Kerr, the Queen’s man in Canberra made front-page headlines in The Australian Financial Review by blocking the Fraser government’s advice on who should head a newly created government department.
Reporter John Short broke the news that senior ministers had been left “unsettled” by Kerr’s move to block a submission from prime minister Malcolm Fraser that the head of the Department of Overseas Trade, Douglas Henry McKay, should also head the new Department of the Special Trade Negotiator.
Future Liberal leader John Howard had been named minister for special trade negotiations in July that year, recognition by Fraser that Australia needed top-level representation in trade negotiations with Europe.
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Australia’s most in-demand professions revealed, but migrants wary of returning
By Shane Wright
August 22, 2022 — 12.01am
Australia faces a shortfall of civil engineers, chefs and childcare workers over the next five years, the federal government fears as new research shows the nation’s tight anti-COVID immigration rules have left potential skilled workers wary of seeking to move Down Under.
Ahead of next month’s jobs and skills summit, the government says there is a looming shortage of workers across a string of key sectors, backing its plan to lift investment in the vocational education sector.
Migration and the shortage of skilled workers – with the unemployment rate at a 48-year low of 3.4 per cent – is shaping as one of the key issues at the summit.
The government says that based on the Skills Priority List, job vacancy data and projected growth in employment, demand will grow over the next five years for construction managers, early childhood teachers, registered nurses, ICT business and systems analysts and electricians.
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Overhaul needed on ministerial rules: GG’s official secretary
Jacob Greber Senior correspondent
Updated Aug 22, 2022 – 1.59pm, first published at 1.41pm
The Office of the Official Secretary to the Governor-General says there needs to be a better system of notifying the public when ministers are appointed, even as the independent body insists that ultimate responsibility for disclosure sits with the government of the day.
The startling concession comes amid growing questions about why the public disclosure of former prime minister Scott Morrison’s secretive parallel ministerial appointments were not captured by an obscure bureaucratic rule known as the “Harradine list”.
Government agencies and departments, including that of the Official Secretary Paul Singer – who does not speak for Mr Hurley – are compelled by a 1990s Senate order named after former Tasmanian independent Brian Harradine to publish a list every six months of critical files.
The Office of the Official Secretary’s record of disclosure is conspicuous in that it has not provided the Senate with any list of files since about six months after Mr Hurley was appointed to a five-year term in mid-2019.
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Crikey owner goes to war with Lachlan Murdoch
Mark Di Stefano Reporter
Aug 22, 2022 – 5.00pm
Private Media, which owns news website Crikey, has published private legal correspondence with Lachlan Murdoch and will effectively dare the media mogul to sue over an article that linked his family to the January 6 Capitol attacks.
The explosive manoeuvres from the small subscription-based outfit, which includes taking out an advertisement in the New York Times, will set up a potential blockbuster defamation battle against Mr Murdoch – whose own Fox News is the subject of a major defamation lawsuit over alleged false claims related to the 2020 US election.
“We are publishing all legal demands and accusations from your lawyer, and the replies from our lawyers, in full, so people can judge your allegations for themselves,” reads the advertisement, which is due to run in the local news section of The New York Times. “We await your writ so that we can test this important issue of public interest journalism in a courtroom.”
The challenge could also breathe new life into the Australian publishing company helmed by chairman Eric Beecher and managing editor Peter Fray, which may benefit from the global attention that comes with taking on one of the most powerful men in media.
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7.58AM 23-August 2022
Labor’s primary vote at 42pc: poll
Georgie Moore
Labor’s primary vote has risen from 33 per cent to 42 per cent since the federal election, according to a Resolve poll conducted for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.
It has the Coalition’s primary vote down from 36 to 28 per cent.
The polling shows Anthony Albanese leading Peter Dutton as preferred prime minister 55 to 17.
Of voters polled, 61 per cent thought Albanese was doing a good job. Another 22 per cent believed he was doing a poor job, leaving the PM with a net performance rating of 39 points.
Just 30 per cent of people thought Dutton was doing a good job and 38 per cent said he was doing a poor job, giving him a net approval rating of minus eight points.
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Wage growth in enterprise agreements lifts to 3.2pc
David Marin-Guzman Workplace correspondent
Aug 22, 2022 – 4.51pm
Wage growth averaged more than 3 per cent in new collective agreements lodged for approval in the first two weeks of July, almost entirely driven by non-union deals.
In the first half of July, 153 agreements were lodged for approval covering 19,132 workers, and contained an average annual pay rise of 3.2 per cent, according to the first report in a new series of fortnightly updates on enterprise agreement wage data set to be released by the Fair Work Commission.
The data comes a week ahead of the jobs summit, where the Albanese government will urge employers and unions to unite to reform the enterprise bargaining system.
The number of employees covered by enterprise agreements has plummeted to just 10 per cent of the private sector workforce.
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Albanese on track for a second term if he can cement his new support
By David Crowe
August 23, 2022 — 8.00am
A gale-force wind has just lifted Anthony Albanese to new political heights and given him a chance to turn this stunning support into a foundation for the future – and a second term.
The political storm over former prime minister Scott Morrison, including the rebukes from his colleagues about his multiple ministries, has helped Albanese convince many voters they were smart to send the former government crashing to earth with a thud.
A clear majority of Australians have decided they are satisfied with a new prime minister who has stepped easily into the job and seems comfortable in his position.
Peter Dutton not only inherits a weakened Liberal Party, courtesy of independents who gained blue-ribbon seats the Liberals need to win back, but has to bring his side together when their time in power is tarnished by Morrison’s break with convention.
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How do we come to accord on faith and secularism?
12:00AM August 23, 2022
The 2021 census showed, for the first time since Federation, fewer than 50 per cent of Australians are Christian. This is due less to the increasing number with other religious beliefs than to the increase in those holding no religious belief. By the 2026 census, the latter will almost certainly outnumber Christians.
We are becoming a post-Christian society. This increasingly will have to shape public policy. But we need to find it in ourselves to reshape public policy in rational and constructive ways, not intolerant ones.
Let’s begin with the data, familiar to some but unknown or unclear to many. In 1971, close to 90 per cent of Australians declared themselves Christian, the bulk of them Catholic or Anglican. At that time, only about 7 per cent of Australians declared no religious belief. By last year it was 44 per cent Christian, 38 per cent non-religious. The trend to no religion has accelerated since the turn of the century, especially during the past decade. This is a social revolution in the making.
In fact, the data is even more striking than it appears because many of those declaring religious belief do so only nominally. Most of them rarely or never attend religious services and a majority reject the conservative teaching of their religious authorities – bishops, mullahs and what have you – as regards sexual morality, divorce, birth control, patriarchy, marriage and divorce.
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Builders warn industry ‘marching towards a cliff’
6:39AM August 23, 2022
The number of business collapses in the construction industry remains below pre-pandemic levels despite a worsening costs squeeze that has triggered a string of high-profile failures among developers.
But peak industry groups are warning of a wave of insolvencies, as soaring prices for labour and materials mount.
Analysis of ASIC data shows the sector had an unusually low failure rate of 953 insolvencies in 2020-21, as businesses were buoyed by government pandemic stimulus packages and a more lenient treatment under Covid lockdown rules.
Insolvency numbers were also artificially lowered when the government temporarily allowed businesses to trade while insolvent as part of its suite of support measures. But as relief measures ended, the number of construction firms entering external administration jumped more than a third to 1282 in this past financial year – but still well below the 1447 failures in 2019-20.
Housing Minister Julie Collins said insolvencies were not significantly more than usual.
“This is an industry that does a high number of closures regularly, unfortunately,” she said.
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Beware ripple effects from China’s and Europe’s new crises
Reporting season has been solid, but the Continent’s deepening energy crisis and Beijing’s fresh challenges can’t be ignored by Australian investors.
Aug 23, 2022 – 10.57am
As the August reporting season hits fever pitch this week, Australian investors can be forgiven for staying focused on a pool of profit results that have so far proved much more resilient than many feared.
But the benign outlook for the Australian economy stands in stark contrast to worrying signals out of the northern hemisphere, where a combination of war, energy crises, inflationary pressures and climate disaster hangs heavy over the global outlook.
The past 24 hours have provided a chilling reminder of just how fragile the world is just now. And while fresh crises in Europe and China might seem far away, you can be sure the ripple effects will be felt in the portfolios of Australian investors.
The worrying news started on Monday afternoon as China announced it would cut a key lending rate for the second time in a week to try to support the nation’s beleaguered property sector.
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Coalition gets a taste of its own medicine with Morrison inquiry
Before the Coalition starts complaining that any inquiry into Scott Morrison’s ministries would be overtly political, it need only consider its own behaviour after coming into government in 2013.
Phillip Coorey Political editor
Aug 23, 2022 – 2.31pm
As the constitutional lawyers predicted, the solicitor-general, whose own advice in March 2020 facilitated the mechanism that Scott Morrison used to duplicate five portfolios, found nothing illegal nor unconstitutional with what occurred.
But Stephen Donaghue, QC, raised sufficient concerns about the secret behaviour to enable Anthony Albanese to confirm there would be a standalone inquiry, possibly a royal commission or judicial review, into what occurred between March 2020 and May last year.
“It needs to be not a political inquiry but an inquiry with an eminent person with a legal background to consider all the implications,” Albanese said.
Morrison promised last week during his press conference to participate in any “positive process” rather than a show trial, and a properly constructed review will make it hard for him to refuse.
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How social justice became a new religion
We are becoming less religious but there is still plenty of fire and brimstone around, as politics has usurped the role that religion used to play.
Helen Lewis
Aug 24, 2022 – 8.00am
A quick question. If someone is yelling “repent” at you in the street, are they more likely to be (a) a religious preacher or (b) a left-wing activist?
The answer depends on where you are. Last October, a crowd gathered outside Netflix’s offices in Los Angeles to protest the release of Dave Chappelle’s comedy special The Closer, which contained a long riff criticising transgender activists.
Inevitably, there was a counterprotest: a lonely Chappelle fan holding a sign that read “We like Dave”. This went over badly. Someone took the sign from him and ripped it up. Someone else shouted in his face, and their word choice was notable. The man who liked Dave was urged to “repent”.
A similar sentiment surfaced last month, when students protested the decision of University College London to stop paying Stonewall, an LGBTQI charity, to audit the institution’s compliance with laws on diversity. That decision might sound dry and technical, but to the students, it showed the institution’s lack of commitment to LGBTQI rights. They held a sign that read “Rejoin Stonewall or go to hell”.
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Navy warms to $6bn proposal for new destroyers
Exclusive
10:06AM August 24, 2022
A $6bn proposal to acquire three new air warfare destroyers by the end of the decade to dramatically boost the nation’s missile firepower is gaining support in defence circles as strategists grapple with increased political tensions in the Asia-Pacific region.
The option to build three new AWDs as a means of getting new warships more quickly and cheaply is among those being examined by the defence strategic review team, headed by former defence minister Stephen Smith and former defence chief Angus Houston, which will deliver recommendations to the government by next March.
Support has grown in the navy for the proposal as its existing $45bn future frigates program faces delays creating the potential for a gap in the capacity of the nation’s naval fleet.
The push to bolster missile capacity follows the Morrison’s government’s decision last year to pursue nuclear submarines from the US and Britain in the AUKUS pact, a deal that has been endorsed by the Albanese government. Efforts to increase Australia’s defence capacity come as strategic competition intensifies between the US and China in the Asia-Pacific region, particularly over China’s military program in the South China Sea and tensions over Beijing’s plans to force reunification with Taiwan.
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https://thenewdaily.com.au/finance/2022/08/25/super-funds-housing-kohler/
6:00am, Aug 25, 2022 Updated: 6:47pm, Aug 24
Alan Kohler: Evan Thornley’s plan to get super funds into housing
This week former PM and treasurer, Paul Keating, delivered a pretty clear warning to the super funds.
“This is a society that can’t house its own children,” he said. “If super funds just think they can go buy tech stocks in America and highways in Italy, they’re going to run into trouble. Without being heavy-handed, there is a requirement of the funds to look at social opportunities.”
Keating’s remarks accompanied a statement by the current Treasurer Jim Chalmers urging super funds to invest more in housing and other “national priorities”.
Chalmers said: “We see trillions of dollars in workers’ capital, we see government budgets heaving with debt, and there are obvious needs for investment, particularly in areas like housing and energy.”
So the Keating iron fist in the Chalmers velvet glove is that if the super funds don’t invest in housing voluntarily, the Labor government will make them.
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Windfall profit tax would solve gas crisis: Grattan
Mark Ludlow Queensland bureau chief
Aug 24, 2022 – 6.20pm
The Albanese government should introduce a windfall profit tax on LNG exporters as part of its redesign of the domestic “gas trigger” to help deliver affordable gas to manufacturers and business, according to the Grattan Institute.
Amid ongoing warnings of a gas shortfall in NSW from as soon as next year, the federal government is mulling changes to the Australian Domestic Gas Security Mechanism (ADGSM), admitting it has “shortcomings” including the inability to be enacted until the following calendar year.
In its submission to the Department of Industry, Science and Resources, the Grattan Institute said the ADGSM needed to become more responsive to the issue of both gas shortfalls and high prices.
It said a windfall profit tax on the domestic sales of LNG producers, set by a reference price from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, would be the best way to ensure competitively priced gas was offered to local businesses and the manufacturing sector.
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https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/time-to-lay-the-morrison-era-ghosts-to-rest-20220823-p5bc6g
Time to lay the Morrison-era ghosts to rest
Labor should now dial down the political heat, or risk the continuing pile-on against Scott Morrison becoming a distraction from the big challenges facing the government.
Aug 24, 2022 – 5.56pm
It only took four pages into Solicitor-General Stephen Donaghue’s 29-page advice on Scott Morrison’s secret appointment to five ministries to clear the former prime minister of the most serious allegation that his actions may have broken the law. Mr Donaghue found that Mr Morrison’s authority to act in additional portfolios was constitutionally and legally valid.
But despite finding no illegality, the nation’s second-highest legal officer was rightly scathing about the way the conventions of responsible government were “fundamentally undermined”. Failing to make the “ghost” ministerial appointments public made it “impossible” for parliament and the people to properly hold executive power to account.
As well as clinging to the flawed defence that the exceptional circumstances of the pandemic justified his unprecedented actions, Mr Morrison claims that the solicitor-general’s advice shows “there was no consistent process for publication” of ministerial appointments set out in the Constitution or in legislation.
Stunning lack of insight
Seeking to justify the secrecy by blaming deficiencies in the official processes, which Mr Morrison wilfully exploited, shows a stunning lack of insight into the fundamental democratic principle at stake.
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Prime ministerial staff face calls to explain what they knew about Morrison’s secret ministries
August 24, 2022 — 6.24pm
Pressure is mounting on the powerful bureaucrats and former political advisers who worked with Scott Morrison to explain their role in the secret ministries scandal, as the Greens and independents demanded a wide-ranging inquiry into the matter.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has promised an independent probe led by a yet-to-be-chosen legal expert but key details about its scope, which witnesses will be called, and what investigative powers it will have not been finalised.
Defending his secret appointment to five departments while prime minister, Morrison last week disclosed there were “people in the department and the people in my office who were directly responsible for managing these specific things”.
In a bid to unmask those involved, key independents are pushing for the government to make clear that its investigation will go beyond Morrison’s conduct and also examine the actions of those in his department, his office, former ministers and the governor-general’s office.
Goldstein MP Zoe Daniel said it was not clear whether the government’s planned inquiry would have sufficient powers and scope.
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International students to return en masse in 2023
Julie Hare Education editor
Aug 25, 2022 – 6.18pm
International students are returning to Australian campuses en masse with early indicators revealing that 2023 could be a blockbuster year, possibly even eclipsing the 2019 record of $40 billion in export revenue.
Student recruitment firms say prospective student leads are at a 12-year high. An unexpected bullish return of students in the first half of 2022, especially since borders did not reopen until last December, is expected to flow on into record enrolments in 2023.
Andrew Barkla, chief executive of global student recruitment giant IDP Education, said he was confident that next year would be a record breaker.
“Australia will be back in 2023. It will be back and probably our largest year ever, even ahead of 2019,” Mr Barkla said.
“There is no question on the demand side. The important thing is that we remain competitive in offering post-study work rights and making sure visa processing speeds up.”
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8.47AM 26 August, 2022
US approves $2.8b potential sale of military equipment to Australia
Reuters
The US State Department approved the potential sale of military helicopters and related equipment to Australia for an estimated cost of $US1.95 billion ($2.8 billion), the Pentagon said, as Australia seeks to boost its military presence in the Indo-Pacific region.
Australia had requested to buy 40 UH-60M Black Hawk helicopters and the principal contractor will be Lockheed Martin Corp, the Pentagon said on Thursday.
Australia has been boosting its defence spending over the past few years as China looks to step up its presence in the Indo-Pacific region. Last year, Australia entered into a deal to buy nuclear submarines from the United States and Britain.
The sale also comes as governments around the world are watching Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and grow more willing to invest in weapons systems.
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Morrison’s secret appointments are a slippery slope
Levels of political trust in Australia are among the lowest in the world and this latest saga will not help matters.
Lydia Khalil Contributor
Aug 26, 2022 – 5.00am
Revelations that former prime minister Scott Morrison appointed himself to five ministerial portfolios without the knowledge of his cabinet ministers or the public has been denounced as a strange, not exactly illegal, yet still serious breach of responsible governance.
But Morrison’s secret ministerial grab is more than strange. As his Liberal colleague, Karen Andrews, bluntly stated, “It certainly doesn’t help democracy and I am very concerned about the impacts of this going forward.”
In Rise of the Extreme Right, I examine the rise of right-wing extremism worldwide. One big contributing factor is the decline of trust in government among people in democracies and the accompanying deterioration of democratic governance. Numerous academic studies have shown consistent levels in democratic decline.
Democratic health in Australia is strong by many measures – the most recent Lowy Institute poll shows a preference for democracy has reached a record high – yet levels of political trust are among the lowest in the world and this latest saga will not help.
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Labor must focus on voters, not hounding Morrison
There is an accountability and political dividend from the three probes into the Morrison era. But the main game for voters today is the cost of living.
Phillip Coorey Political editor
Aug 25, 2022 – 8.00pm
If Anthony Albanese is true to his word, by the next election Scott Morrison will have been subjected to three inquiries, at least two of them royal commissions.
There is the impending inquiry into Morrison’s five secret ministries. Surprisingly, the details of that were not ready to go on Tuesday, when Albanese released the solicitor-general’s advice, other than to tell us it would strive to be apolitical and be conducted by an eminent legal mind.
Then, as announced on Thursday, there is the royal commission into robo-debt, the automated issuance of debt notices to welfare recipients which began in 2015 and which a recent class action found had unlawfully claimed nearly $2 billion in debts from 433,000 people, many of whom owed no debt.
As social services minister and then treasurer, Morrison had a role to play, and will be among those implicated.
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Cost of living looms as danger area for PM as concerns soar
Phillip Coorey Political editor
Aug 25, 2022 – 8.00pm
The cost of living is swamping every other issue as the key concern for voters, including climate change, COVID-19 and the state of the creaking health system, a new survey shows.
In a warning to the Albanese government to stay focused on the economic challenges facing individuals and families, the latest True Issues survey also finds voters have a dim view of how the government is handling the cost of living crisis.
Its release comes as Opposition leader Peter Dutton accused the prime minister of being too obsessed with the previous misdeeds of Scott Morrison by pursuing an inquiry into the former prime minister’s five secret ministries, and announcing on Thursday a Royal Commission into the Robodebt scandal.
Mr Dutton said double-digit inflation and energy rationing in Europe was “all coming for us”.
“The time now is for the Prime Minister to stop this witch hunt and get on with helping the Australian public, who are very worried about what they’re seeing internationally.”
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Three key risks that could change everything
A shift in the potential for conflict and fall out from rapidly increasing interest rates could leave many exposed.
Christopher Joye Columnist
Aug 26, 2022 – 10.50am
It’s worth further reflecting on some of the bigger macro risks. Let’s start with the recent remarks of CIA director William Burns on China and Taiwan, which seem to represent a shift in the CIA’s historically sanguine assessments.
Those who claim to have knowledge of the CIA’s thinking on the subject were asserting last year that the intelligence agency attributed a very low probability to the prospect of China trying to take Taiwan by force, and this then triggering a kinetic conflict between the two superpowers.
By way of contrast, senior China strategists in the US military’s Indo-Pacific command put a much higher, circa 70 per cent likelihood on major power military conflict erupting over Taiwan in the next seven or so years.
In a fireside chat with the Aspen Security Forum, Burns seemed to have hawked-up on Taiwan, stating he “wouldn’t underestimate President Xi’s determination to assert China’s control … over Taiwan”.
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‘We need to be a porcupine’: Marles says Australia must project lethal force
August 27, 2022 — 4.41am
Australia must turn itself into a “porcupine” island fortified with enough lethal weaponry to deter an attack from a hostile rival, Defence Minister Richard Marles has warned in a stark illustration of the dangerous strategic environment the nation faces.
Marles also said he was open to nations such as Japan and New Zealand joining the AUKUS partnership with the United States and United Kingdom, even though he does not envisage other nations acquiring nuclear-powered submarine technology like Australia.
“We need to make sure that our Defence Force is potent, that it is capable. We need to make Australia a difficult proposition for any adversary,” Marles said in an interview with The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
“In that context, we need to be a porcupine.”
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Timeline for Defence Force review accelerated by circumstance
7:56AM August 27, 2022
The head of the Albanese government’s strategic review has outlined an accelerated timeline for delivering its final report, dictated by the darkening circumstances Australia is confronting.
The review has the potential to transform the Australian Defence Force by recommending new capabilities it must acquire, and old capabilities that it could dispense with.
Former defence minister Stephen Smith, who is heading the review with former ADF chief Angus Houston, told a Perth security conference on Friday that he intends to deliver a big-picture interim report to the government by November 1, and their final report to Defence Minister Richard Marles by February 1.
It had previously been widely assumed that the report would not be delivered until the end of March.
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100 days in, Albanese has made a good start but there is still a lack of vision
August 27, 2022 — 6.59pm
It will be 100 days on Monday since Anthony Albanese and his ministers were swept into power, so it’s a good time to assess how the new Labor government has gone so far.
Some portfolios are easier to mark than others.
In foreign affairs and defence, they have made a good start and you can pinpoint the work that has already been done.
In areas such as the economy and cost of living, they face perilous headwinds and it is still difficult to see how they will navigate a path through.
On Indigenous affairs, they have chosen the bold course of putting up a referendum on a Voice to parliament in their first term, and everything hinges on whether it succeeds or fails.
But, apart from the Voice, the prime minister is hamstrung by the modest suite of policies he took to the election. In too many portfolios, there is a lack of vision.
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COVID-19 Information.
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11.03AM 26 August, 2022
More than 31,000 Australians missing work each day due to long COVID
Gus McCubbing
With roughly 31,000 Australians missing work each day due to long COVID-19, Treasurer Jim Chalmers says lasting the effects of the virus are having a major impact on the country’s economic recovery.
“Our labour market has been absolutely smashed by COVID and by long COVID increasingly,” Chalmers told reporters in Queensland on Friday.
“Now, we’ve released numbers that show something like 31,000 Australians are missing work each day because of the impacts of long COVID, as part of a bigger challenge that we have with managing COVID itself.
“So, whether it’s labour shortages, the impact of long Covid, concentrated disadvantage, and long-term unemployment in communities like this one, there’s no shortage of issues for us to grapple with at the local level and at the national level as well.”
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Treasurer reveals extent of long Covid among Australian workers
NCA NewsWire
2o August 26, 2022
Jim Chalmers says some 31,000 Australian workers are calling in sick every day because of long Covid-19.
The Treasurer said Australia’s skills and labour shortages were being “turbocharged” by the pandemic, including by people having to miss work as they suffer from long Covid.
Medical experts are still studying the potentially debilitating and little-understood condition, with people continuing to experience symptoms for months or even years after their initial infection with the virus.
Dr Chalmers said employers and unions had “consistently raised” with the government the effects acute and long-term cases of Covid were having on the labour force.
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Climate Change.
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https://www.afr.com/companies/energy/broad-quits-as-ceo-of-snowy-hydro-20220826-p5bd0z
Broad quits as CEO of Snowy Hydro
Angela Macdonald-Smith and Mark Ludlow
Updated Aug 26, 2022 – 1.15pm, first published at 12.40pm
Paul Broad has quit his role as chief executive of Snowy Hydro in the middle of a massive and costly expansion of the Snowy Mountains hydropower project and the development of the controversial Kurri Kurri gas-based power plant in NSW.
Mr Broad, 70, who has led the federal government-owned Snowy since 2013, “has offered his resignation,” according to a statement released on the company’s website, without giving a reason for the sudden move.
Mr Broad could not be immediately reached for comment.
A spokeswoman for federal Energy Minister Chris Bowen thanked Mr Broad for his 10 years running Snowy Hydro, but would not comment on speculation he had been sacked or had a falling-out with the new Labor government.
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Royal Commissions And The Like.
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Home care for the elderly must keep to funding rules
Editorial
12:00AM August 22, 2022
The Home Care Package scheme that enables 275,000 elderly Australians to live safely in their homes is one of the best features of the nation’s aged-care system. Packages cost taxpayers about $6.5bn a year. But they save far more on residential aged-care costs and reduce the incidence of hospital care. The most important benefit is social, allowing couples and individuals to remain in their homes, often closer to family, friends and local communities. The scheme is popular, with waiting lists of three to six months, despite successive governments increasing the number of packages. For all its benefits, however, the scheme needs a reboot, especially in accountability and administration. That is clear from problems revealed in a Department of Health review, reported on Monday’s front page.
Despite clear guidelines, some service providers are gaming the system to gain advantages over competitors in signing up and holding on to their vulnerable clients by helping them claim “excluded’’ items in Home Care Packages. That includes flights, holiday accommodation, fuel gift cards, entertainment, home renovations, TVs and groceries, the report notes. As a consequence, providers doing the right thing and sticking to the rules are losing out on clients to more “generous’’ providers, who approve excluded items. The problem is widespread, with more than nine out of 10 home-care providers falling short of the government’s minimum price transparency requirements. And some elderly people on government-funded packages are losing as much as 60 per cent of the value of those packages in management fees creamed off by providers.
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‘Robo-justice’: Royal commission set up to examine robo-debt scheme
Updated August 25, 2022 — 5.04pmfirst published at 11.02am
Senior public servants will front a royal commission into the robo-debt scheme as the government seeks answers about how it started and why repeated warnings it was incorrectly issuing people with welfare debt notices were ignored.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced on Thursday former Queensland Supreme Court chief justice Catherine Holmes will lead the seven-month inquiry.
The robo-debt scheme was started in 2015 when the existing income data-matching process was transformed to use an automated method that put the onus on welfare recipients to disprove alleged debts.
The system, ruled unlawful in 2019, measured a person’s average income to claim hundreds of millions of dollars from 433,000 Centrelink recipients. The Coalition government settled a class action in 2020.
Politicians and advocates heard many stories of people who had their mental health affected, were going hungry to repay their debt or feared losing their homes.
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HC judge to examine Morrison secret ministries, include role of GG
Phillip Coorey Political editor
Aug 26, 2022 – 4.40pm
Scott Morrison could be dragged before an inquiry with the same powers as a Royal Commission if he declines to co-operate with an independent probe into his five secret ministries to be led by former High Court judge Virginia Bell.
Announcing the second inquiry into the behaviour of the former government in as many days. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the Bell Inquiry would examine the role played by Governor-General David Hurley as part of its pursuit of how the ghost ministries were allowed to happen, why they were kept secret, who else knew and if there were any other implications.
“This inquiry means that it should be welcomed by all who hold our parliamentary system of democracy dear, by all who understand that we can’t take it for granted, and we need to protect it,” the Prime Minister said.
Mr Morrison declined to comment on Friday afternoon. He had yet to receive any formal notification from the government of the inquiry, or the terms of reference.
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Former High Court judge leads probe into Morrison’s ministries grab
10:33PM August 26, 2022
Former High Court judge Virginia Bell will head an independent investigation into Scott Morrison’s secret self-appointment to numerous ministries – moves that were found by the nation’s Solicitor-General this week to have undermined Australia’s system of “responsible government”.
Anthony Albanese announced the inquiry – which will have a tight three-month turnaround to report back to parliament – to “ensure this can never happen again”, with Ms Bell to decide whether there would be public hearings.
The inquiry will recommend any procedural or legislative changes to provide greater transparency around ministerial arrangements and whether there were any implications arising from Mr Morrison’s appointments to multiple ministries for statutory bodies, government enterprises and state departments.
It will also address the rules around the disclosure of ministerial appointments.
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National Budget Issues.
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https://thenewdaily.com.au/finance/2022/08/22/wages-growth-rba-economy-kohler/
6:00am, Aug 22, 2022 Updated: 3:26pm, Aug 21
Alan Kohler : Where do the RBA and economists now stand on wages growth?
It’s a pity the Jobs and Skills Summit didn’t happen a year ago.
At least then the Reserve Bank and most economists would have been on board with reforming the bargaining system and restraining immigration to get wages up.
Now the economic classes are, at best, torn between wanting to lift wages for fairness and consumption, and wanting to keep wages down to control inflation.
At the summit in two weeks, they’ll be all “on the one hand and on the other hand” because controlling inflation is now number one priority, in which case Treasurer Jim Chalmers and Employment Minister Tony Burke will have nowhere to go.
A Labor government could defy business and side with unions if the RBA and economists were onside, but it will be harder to go against the boffins as well as business: If the enterprise bargaining system is broken, as the unions claim, it will stay broken.
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Woolworths hurt by product shortages, supply chain woes
Carrie LaFrenz Senior reporter
Aug 25, 2022 – 10.05am
The nation’s largest supermarket chain Woolworths Group posted a 9.6 per cent slide in total group sales for 2022, hurt by product shortages, supply chain disruptions and staff absenteeism, while earnings fell 2.7 per cent.
Reported net profit after tax was up 282 per cent to $7.93 billion, reflecting the gain on the distribution of Endeavour Group, but on an underlying basis profits from continuing operations gained just 0.7 per cent to $1.51 billion.
The engine room of Woolworths is its Australian food business where sales increased 4.5 per cent over the year to $45.46 billion, with comparable sales for the year increasing 3.5 per cent.
After a challenging first half, earnings growth of 9.7 per cent in the second half led to a small increase of 0.3 per cent for the year.
Supermarket sales gained 1.1 per cent to $39.63 billion in the 52 weeks to June 30.
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The Australian economy is old, fat and soft - and it’s hurting wages and living standards
By Shane Wright
August 25, 2022 — 12.01am
Australian businesses are becoming older, less competitive and more willing to increase mark-ups in a development new research suggests is putting downward pressures on real wages and the nation’s living standards.
Andrew Leigh, the assistant minister for competition who is also a trained economist, will use a speech at the Australian National University on Thursday to release the research, which also shows the proportion of people staying in their jobs rather than looking for new ones.
Australia’s productivity level has fallen sharply over the past 15 years. The Productivity Commission, which is carrying out new research into policy remedies to the problem, has found Australians’ living standards have been propped up by people working longer than in other nations.
Some economists believe a global fall in competitive pressures, partly due to the emergence of large businesses dominating key sectors of the economy, has contributed to the slowdown in productivity growth.
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Health Issues.
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Butler puts cosmetic surgery regulation on health ministers’ agenda as calls for royal commission grow
By Dana Daniel
August 22, 2022 — 7.38pm
Health Minister Mark Butler says further regulation of the cosmetic surgery industry will be discussed at future health ministers’ meetings as pressure mounts for a royal commission amid fresh allegations of patient exploitation by so-called “cowboys”.
The story of a 24-year-old woman screaming in agony after a failed Brazilian Butt Lift has sparked calls for a national inquiry into a system experts say is failing to protect patients, with surgical colleges uniting to criticise the regulator.
The harrowing ordeal, during which a cosmetic surgeon gave a patient gauze to scream into as he used scissors to cut a hole into her swollen, infected buttock, was revealed by Nine’s 60 Minutes on Sunday as part of a joint investigation with The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.
Royal Australasian College of Surgeons president Dr Sally Langley said the story showed conduct that did not meet Australia’s surgical standards had been allowed to thrive and a wide-ranging, independent investigation was needed.
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‘Absolute failure’: Emergency doctors back radical healthcare reform
August 25, 2022 — 5.00am
Key points
· President of the Australian College of Emergency Medicine Dr Clare Skinner is urging the federal government to fundamentally transform primary care and redress the current healthcare funding model.
· The call for action is a clear signal that doctors on the frontlines of Australia’s overwhelmed hospital systems are backing GPs’ call for urgent reforms in primary care.
· The government’s Strengthening Medicare Taskforce, charged with ending Australia’s primary care crisis, with a budget of almost $1 billion over four years, is due to meet on Friday.
· The CEO of Australian College of Nursing Adjunct said the healthcare system could not afford to continue on its trajectory where emergency departments were overwhelmed by patients with conditions that should have been avoidable.
Emergency department doctors contending with rising numbers of deteriorating patients are backing GPs calling for a radical overhaul of Australia’s healthcare system, warning that it is no longer fit for purpose.
President of the Australasian College of Emergency Medicine Dr Clare Skinner is urging the federal government to seize the chance to fundamentally transform primary care and redress the current healthcare funding model, in which acute hospital beds were clogged with patients who should have received the care they needed in the community.
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Medical regulator ‘unaccountable to public they are meant to be protecting’
By Dana Daniel
August 25, 2022 — 5.00am
The Australian Health Practitioners Regulatory Authority has rejected allegations it has failed to protect the public from so-called “cosmetic cowboys”, amid a growing push for a royal commission into the industry.
A joint Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, 60 Minutes investigation this week revealed hundreds of cosmetic surgery patients across Australia have been left disfigured, in pain and psychologically damaged by under-regulated doctors operating with little or no oversight.
However, the authority’s chief executive Martin Fletcher declined an interview request about the latest revelations, deferring to a spokeswoman who rejected the allegation of a conflict of interest because it received funding from the industry it is responsible for overseeing.
AHPRA’s annual report shows it receives $222 million in registration and application fees in 2021, with medical practitioners each paying about $780 a year.
The authority, a statutory body set up by state and federal health departments, is not funded by government but received some pandemic-related Commonwealth grants.
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Changing the rules to save men’s lives
An urgent push is on to update testing guidelines for the most commonly diagnosed form of cancer: “If your doctor is not doing this test, then they’re taking away your right to know — and potentially live.’
August 27, 2022
When Chris Morley hears public health experts pronounce that most men die with prostate cancer rather than from it, it infuriates him. The 51-year-old former truck driver has metastatic prostate cancer and at best has only a few years to live.
Although it’s true that some men live long lives with prostate cancer they never knew they had, for the men whose cancers have already spread beyond the prostate by the time they are detected it is a devastating diagnosis and an exceptionally cruel disease.
“If my cancer had been detected earlier I would at least be in a better position than I am now,” Morley says. “If your doctor is not doing PSA tests then they’re actually taking away your right to know and potentially your right to life.”
Saving the lives of men such as Morley – more than 3,507 men like him die from prostate cancer every year – is the mission of the Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia, which is leading work to update national clinical practice guidelines on prostate-specific antigen testing that date from 2016.
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Cosmetic cowboys facing the knife after minister’s pledge to act
By Adele Ferguson and Naomi Shivaraman
August 28, 2022 — 5.00am
Health Minister Mark Butler has vowed to take urgent action to clean up the out-of-control cosmetic surgery industry and clamp down on doctors who call themselves cosmetic surgeons but don’t have proper surgical training.
In an interview with The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and 60 Minutes, Butler said he was “appalled” by a video of TikTok star Dr Daniel Aronov slicing a woman’s abdomen while she was awake, then holding up a giant flap of skin like a trophy.
“This is an industry that needs to be cleaned up,” he said. “It started to resemble the wild west with these cowboys prancing around, pumped up with their own sense of celebrity on social media, wreaking havoc on patients who frankly have been misled about their qualifications.”
The Labor Party, Coalition and regulators have known about these so-called cosmetic cowboys for years but have failed to act. Over the past 10 months, this masthead has received hundreds of emails and calls from patients of cosmetic surgeons sharing stories of punctured lungs, nerve damage, chronic pain, hospitalisation and psychological damage. Some almost died.
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International Issues.
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As attacks mount in Crimea, Kremlin faces rising domestic pressures
Anton Troianovski, Marc Santora and Dan Bilefsky
Aug 21, 2022 – 3.56pm
Kyiv | Nearly six months into the war in Ukraine, the Kremlin still refers to its invasion as a “special military operation” while trying to maintain a sense of normalcy at home.
But a series of Ukrainian attacks in Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula that President Vladimir Putin illegally annexed from Ukraine in 2014, is puncturing that narrative.
And as Ukrainian attacks mount in the strategically and symbolically important territory, the damage is beginning to put domestic political pressure on the Kremlin, with criticism and debate about the war increasingly being unleashed on social media and underscoring that even what the Russian government considers to be Russian territory is not safe.
On Saturday, a drone slammed into the headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet in Crimea, sending a plume of smoke over the port city of Sevastopol. Separately, in western Crimea, Russian troops launched anti-aircraft fire at unidentified targets, the region’s Russian governor said.
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US Senate’s Republican mid-terms ‘red wave’ shrinks to ripple
August 22, 2022
The Democrats’ feared ‘red wave’, a Republican landslide in November elections that sees the GOP retake control of Congress, may amount to a ripple, as support for Democrats and President Biden grows amid a new FBI investigation into former president Donald Trump.
After 18 months in which everything seemed to go wrong politically for the Democrats – an unpopular withdrawal from Afghanistan, rising inflation and crime, failure to “shut down” Covid, and Mr Biden’s underwhelming performance – pundits and punters expect the ruling party to maintain control of the Senate.
For the last three weeks, and for the first time since the 2020 presidential election, bookies have the Democrats as the favourite to maintain control of the critical chamber after November’s poll, when American voters elect their Congressional representatives.
“We are having a comeback,” said Congressman Sean Maloney on Sunday (Monday AEST), pointing to Democrats’ recent passage of the Inflation Reduction Act – which includes popular electric car subsidies and pharmaceutical price caps – and allegedly unpopular Republican calls to “to defund the FBI and ignore [Mr Trump’s latest] serious threat to our national security”.
“We had a summer of strength and we‘re going to buck history,” Mr Maloney, also chairman of the party’s campaign committee, added, speaking on NBC’s Meet the Press.
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Interview
Lawrence Freedman: ‘Autocracies tend to make catastrophic decisions. That’s the case with Putin’
The military strategy expert and author of a new book on conflict says the flawed thinking behind Russia’s invasion stems from the inability of those at the top to take responsibility for mistakes
Sun 21 Aug 2022 16.03 AEST
Russia’s war against Ukraine has been hampered by failings experienced by autocratic states during conflict, according to a far-reaching new study of command in war by one of the UK’s most prominent academics in the field.
Command, a wide-ranging analysis of post-second world war conflicts by the leading strategic studies expert Lawrence Freedman, examines a series of well-known conflicts, from the Cuban missile crisis to the French defeat at the hands of the Viet Minh at Dien Bien Phu, through to the Falklands war and Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, up to the present war in Ukraine.
“The big theme,” said Freedman, emeritus professor of war studies at King’s College London, “is that autocracies are very bad at this. A lot of most catastrophic decisions come from autocratic decision-making. That is certainly the case with Vladimir Putin but also Saddam Hussein and even [the Argentine military dictator Leopoldo] Galtieri during the Falklands war.”
But he adds: “It’s not that democracies always make better decisions.”
As Freedman’s book sets out to show, in key interactions between military and political leaders – which even in the best circumstances can be characterised by tensions and personal conflicts – it is the lack of open and often critical feedback that leads to bad decision-making.
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China cuts rates for the second time to stave off housing crisis
Michael Smith North Asia correspondent
Aug 22, 2022 – 12.52pm
Tokyo | China’s central bank has cut a key lending rate for the second time in a week as the country’s policymakers seek to revive credit demand and head off a housing crisis, as property owners refuse to pay loans on unfinished apartments.
The People’s Bank of China on Monday lowered the one-year loan prime rate by 0.05 of a percentage point to 3.65 per cent from 3.7 per cent, while the five-year rate was cut by 0.15 percentage points to 4.30 per cent from 4.45 per cent.
The latest cut builds on a reduction in two key lending rates a week earlier, amid calls from economists for more stimulus to head off a housing crisis.
China is cutting lending rates in an effort to boost its slowing economy at a time when the rest of the world is raising interest rates to tame soaring inflation. Economists last week slashed GDP growth forecasts for the world’s second-largest economy, which has been hit with COVID-19 lockdowns and a slowdown in its debt-laden property sector.
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Jerome Powell could blow up the markets this week
Senior business columnist
August 22, 2022 — 11.44am
When Jerome Powell speaks at the annual Jackson Hole gathering of central bankers, economists, academics and other policy wonks in Wyoming on Friday there is a realistic prospect that he is going to blow up financial markets, or at least shake the confidence within markets that have regained their optimism in recent months.
Over the past two months sharemarkets have rebounded even as US bond yields have risen with investors apparently convinced that the end of the Federal Reserve Board’s current rates-hiking cycle is in sight. The S&P 500 has bounced more than 15 per cent of its June lows and the Nasdaq index, with a big exposure to technology stocks, has rebounded more than 19 per cent.
Both equity and bond markets are pricing in a belief that US rates will peak in the first half of next year and then start to fall in the December half.
That’s an expectation fuelled by signs that US inflation may have peaked and by mixed signals coming from the Fed
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https://www.afr.com/world/europe/russian-dissidents-aren-t-in-france-for-the-food-20220822-p5bbr2
Russian dissidents aren’t in France for the food
Lionel Laurent Bloomberg Opinion Columnist
Aug 22, 2022 – 2.54pm
“Unbearable.” That’s how a member of Finland’s parliament describes the sight of Russian tourists pouring across the border, stocking up on souvenirs while Vladimir Putin’s army bombs Ukraine.
Worse, the fact that some of the tourists travel on into the European Union’s visa-free Schengen zone seems to undermine a sanctions net that’s closed in on oligarch superyachts, golden passports and flights from Russia. Data from insurer Rosgosstrakh PJSC show EU destinations accounted for 25 per cent of their online travel insurance contracts in June and July, with Spain and Italy in the top three, according to Russian Travel Digest.
National visa curbs are being rolled out in response. But as pressure builds for a pan-EU ban on visas for Russian citizens – backed by the Czech Republic, current holder of the EU’s rotating presidency – we should ask how effective or “smart” that penalty would be.
None of this disruption is comparable to the plight of Ukrainian refugees and relatives burying their dead, obviously. But it would be a step backward.
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Vladimir Putin is losing the battle of wills against the Ukrainians
By Mark Galeotti
August 23, 2022 — 8.00am
London: The bomb that tore through the car driven by Darya Dugina, the daughter of nationalist ideologue Alexander Dugin, also blew apart the complacency of Moscow’s cheerleaders for the war.
It seems unlikely (if not impossible) that it was the Ukrainians who were responsible, but it certainly adds to a growing Russian paranoia which, in turn, highlights an increasing insecurity in the Kremlin.
That’s because the bomb came in the context of other important developments. Kyiv has declared open season on the Crimean peninsula, attacking supply lines and depots and even sending a drone against the headquarters of the Black Sea Fleet. It is part of a deliberate strategy to escalate the war, both on the battlefield and in the minds of Kremlin operators.
Militarily, Putin once proudly boasted that Russia has “made a fortress out of Crimea, as much from the sea as from the land”, but it is increasingly hard for him to sustain that claim.
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Daughter of Putin ally killed in Moscow blast
Anton Troianovski, Ivan Nechepurenko and Jeffrey Gettleman
Aug 22, 2022 – 7.03am
Moscow | A car bomb in a Moscow suburb killed the adult daughter of a Russian ultranationalist who helped lay the ideological foundation for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, a brazen attack that injected new uncertainty into the nearly six-month war.
Russian authorities said Sunday (Monday AEST) that they had opened a murder investigation into the death a night earlier of Daria Dugina, 29, after the Toyota Land Cruiser she was driving exploded on a highway 32 kilometres west of Moscow and burst into flames, scattering pieces across the road.
Ms Dugina was the daughter of Alexander Dugin — a self-educated philosopher and long a leading proponent of an aggressive, imperialist Russia who has been urging the Kremlin to escalate its assault on Ukraine.
Russian state television described the powerful explosion that shattered the windows of nearby homes as a “terrorist act” that had targeted Mr Dugin and ended up killing his daughter because he took a different car at the last minute.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the incident.
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A second Trump term would imperil the republic
American conservatism has become a radical nationalist movement loyal to the truths invented by one man and dedicated to the overthrow of the ‘Deep State’, by which is meant their own government.
Martin Wolf Columnist
Aug 24, 2022 – 7.50am
Last week the US took another step on its journey towards autocracy, as Liz Cheney lost the Republican primary for her Wyoming district. Her father is former vice-president Dick Cheney, who masterminded the Iraq war under George W Bush.
She is also unimpeachably conservative. Yet she has become anathema to Republicans. Her crime? She believes that accepting the outcome of fair elections is a higher duty than promoting the lies of their “great leader”.
The Republican Party has adopted the Führerprinzip (“leadership principle”) of the Germans in the 1930s. This is the notion that loyalty to a leader who defines what is true and right is the overriding obligation. The Republicans’ embrace of Trump’s Big Lie that he won the last presidential election is a perfect instance of this principle.
Here, moreover, it is directly set against a core value of liberal democracy, that of fair elections. Ten years ago, most of us would have thought such a development inconceivable in the US. But with the ascent of Donald Trump it became likely. Now, the reaction not so much of Trump to his defeat as of his party to his lies provides another decisive moment.
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Xi and Putin trade surpluses a sign of weakness, not strength
Exporting more than you’re importing doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re winning. But don’t expect anyone to tell the Chinese and Russian leaders.
Paul Krugman
Aug 24, 2022 – 8.00am
According to a new NBC News poll, US voters now consider “threats to democracy” the most important issue facing the nation, which is both disturbing and a welcome sign that people are paying attention.
It’s also worth noting that this isn’t just an American issue. Democracy is eroding worldwide; according to the latest survey from the Economist Intelligence Unit, there are now 59 fully authoritarian regimes out there, home to 37 per cent of the world’s population.
Of these 59 regimes, however, only two – China and Russia – are powerful enough to pose major challenges to the international order.
The two nations are, of course, very different. China is a bona fide superpower, whose economy has by some measures overtaken the United States’. Russia is a third-rate power in economic terms, and events since February 24 suggest that its military was and is weaker than most observers imagined. It does, however, have nukes.
Six months after Putin’s invasion, what has this war taught the West?
Mick Ryan
Military leader and strategist
August 24, 2022 — 5.00am
August 24 is the day Ukrainians celebrate their independence. It commemorates the re-establishment of Ukraine’s independence in 1991 after the breakdown of the Soviet Union. This year’s 31st anniversary marks a less cheery milestone – it will be six months since the beginning of the Russian invasion.
While making future projections for this war is perilous, there remains much that Western governments and military institutions can learn from the past six months.
Perhaps the most important lesson is that there are still those who believe war is the best way to get what they want. This is an old idea, as ancient as the existence of human societies. There are always those who want what others have. So, too, it goes with nations and their leaders.
For Russian President Vladimir Putin, Ukraine is a non-state, one that “was entirely created by Russia” and “an inalienable part of our own history, culture and spiritual space.” Such justifications, which have parallels with China’s claim on Taiwan, represent the thin veneer of “legitimacy” employed by authoritarians seeking to squelch out democratic exemplars on their borders. Such claims demand increased Western investment in the diplomatic, informational, economic and military aspects of national power to deter further aggression in the future.
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Six months on, Ukraine is losing the war with Russia
Updated August 23, 2022 — 5.08pmfirst published at 2.49pm
Every week, I look at a map of Ukraine showing areas now controlled by Russia. There are roads and towns in the eastern Donbas region where I was able to freely walk and drive around two months ago that are now under Russian occupation.
It’s the easiest way to confirm that Ukraine is losing the war.
You may read regularly about some new shipment of weapons which will help Ukraine turn the tide in the east, or mount a major counter-offensive in the south. But it hasn’t happened yet.
Sometimes it feels like the West is giving Ukraine just enough weaponry to hang on, rather than to win, even if it has made some interesting recent moves in striking at Russia’s naval bases in Crimea.
It is true that Russian troops have made no significant territorial gains since they took the eastern city of Lysychansk on July 2, two weeks after I was in the city.
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Europe is in trouble as economic skies darken
Senior business columnist
August 24, 2022 — 11.59am
The eurozone is in trouble and conditions are worsening as the fallout from the Russian invasion of Ukraine and Europe’s own economic challenges coincide.
This week the euro fell to its weakest levels against the US dollar in more than 20 years, breaking parity for the second time this year. While the first time it dipped below parity, in July, was momentary, this time it looks the euro appears likely to remain depressed for a protracted period.
The immediate cause for the slump in the euro was the announcement by Russia’s Gazprom that it would shut down the Nord Stream pipeline, already operating at only 20 per cent of capacity, for three days of what it described as “routine” maintenance.
That sent European gas price soaring, again, with benchmark prices – already in unprecedented territory – hitting record levels.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/weak-data-suggests-us-eurozone-in-recession-20220824-p5bc9i
Weak data suggests US, eurozone in recession
Alex Gluyas Markets reporter
Updated Aug 24, 2022 – 1.23pm, first published at 12.43pm
Evidence of softening economic activity across Asia, Europe and the US this month has intensified concerns that soaring consumer prices and aggressive tightening by central banks will tip the world into recession.
The flash composite purchasing managers’ index surveys, or PMIs, fell in all the advanced economies where data was reported overnight. And excluding the UK, all countries reported PMIs below the 50-point level, which separates expansion and contraction.
The S&P Global flash PMI composite output index for the US registered 45, down from 47.7 in July, and marking the weakest reading since May 2020.
Apart from the contraction in the early stages of the pandemic, the August print was the weakest outcome since 2009.
Based on the historical relationship between PMIs and output, Capital Economics said the reading suggested gross domestic product in the world’s largest economy should be contracting at an annualised pace of 3 per cent.
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China adds warships to rival US navy
By Didi Tang
The Times
August 25, 2022
China is producing at least six more advanced guided-missile destroyers as part of its plan to build a navy rivalling that of the United States, new evidence suggests.
Citing a picture posted on the Chinese microblogging site Weibo, Naval News, a Paris-based defence news site, reported that five hulls of the Type 052D Luyang III-class destroyer were being built at the Dalian shipyard in the country’s northeast.
Another Type 052D destroyer is being built at the Jiangnan-Changxing shipyard northeast of Shanghai, according to Naval News.
All six, armed with guided tactical missiles and advanced radar systems, look set to join an existing fleet of 25 Type 052D destroyers in the world’s largest navy, after eight were built last year.
China’s defence ministry has not confirmed the report, nor has it officially announced such construction plans, but unnamed Chinese analysts told The Global Times, a Communist Party newspaper, that it is “not unexpected if China is indeed building more advanced warships, particularly amid the current turbulent global security situation”.
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Don’t leave Xi Jinping guessing on backing for Taiwan: John Bolton
August 25, 2022
Taiwan needs to be treated as an independent country and the notion of strategic ambiguity in relation to defending it should be abandoned, Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, John Bolton, says.
In a sharp warning to both sides of Australian politics, Bolton said any future Republican president, other than Trump, could be expected to change American policy and recognise Taiwan – a stance in conflict with both the Albanese government and Dutton opposition, and guaranteed to create serious problems for Australia.
Bolton said the key to Taiwan’s future was to “enmesh” the island in collective security arrangements that would deter Chinese President Xi Jinping from a military solution since any failure would also threaten his own regime – another shock to Australian thinking.
Repudiating critics who assert the US is no longer a reliable military partner because of a crisis within its democracy, Bolton branded such thinking as “woefully ill-informed” and said there was no challenge to US democracy or its constitutional system “in any way, shape or form”.
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Half a year on, here are 10 key takeaways on the war in Ukraine
Six months on, swaths of the country lie in ruins, thousands are dead and millions displaced. But with Western military and economic aid, the nation fights on.
Jeremy Cliffe
Aug 26, 2022 – 5.00am
It feels like an eternity ago, that grim wintry pre-dawn of Thursday, February 24. A time before the place names Bucha and Irpin, Kramatorsk and Mariupol became bywords for the bloodiest war in Europe since 1945; before the letter Z became emblematic of a new fascism; before a new Iron Curtain fell over the Continent; before it became impossible to describe the COVID-19 pandemic as a “once in a decade” shock to the global system.
A time when a British prime minister could, as Boris Johnson had done in November, blithely declare that “the old concepts of fighting big tank battles on the European landmass are over”.
The final act of that pre-invasion era was at one with the dark poetry of the moment. In a 10-minute video address issued in the early hours of February 24, after months of Russian troop build-ups on the Ukrainian border and increasingly deranged rhetoric from Moscow, Volodymyr Zelensky made a last-ditch plea for peace.
Ukraine’s president appealed directly to Russian citizens in their own language: “The people of Ukraine want peace,” he said, but warned that the country would defend itself: “While attacking, you will see our faces. Not our backs. Our faces.” Then, just before 5am local time, Vladimir Putin announced a “special military operation”. Within minutes, air-raid sirens and the first explosions were heard in cities across the country.
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‘The Godfather’ insight: It is becoming clear what is driving our sharemarkets
By John Authers
August 26, 2022 — 7.07am
The Godfather has a quote for everything. Maybe, just maybe, it was Putin all along. Or perhaps its was Nikolai Kondratiev.
Just as Vito Corleone realised too late which rival don was pulling the strings against him, it looks ever more as though the oil price has been driving markets all along. It shouldn’t be this way. The global economy is far less oil-intense than it was in the 1970s, meaning that fuel accounts for a smaller percentage of gross domestic product. An information and services-based economy shouldn’t be so dependent on burning fossil fuels. But once the oil price rises above a certain level, investors behave as though it is. And it’s hard to read the events of the last few months any other way.
The peak and subsequent steady decline in the oil price appears to have been the critical development in turning the market. Looking instead at equity volatility, this screenshot shows the VIX 10-day moving average, in pink, against the yellow Brent crude price. Volatility has twice subsided once oil appears to have declined:
On inflation, the critical issue of the time, break-evens peaked with the first spike in the oil price after the Ukraine invasion, and started a steady decline after oil put in a further decline in mid-June. Current oil prices should have no impact on likely inflation over the next five years, but it evidently doesn’t work that way in markets:
In currency markets, oil’s impact has been strange. For many years, the dollar and the oil price had an inverse relationship — a rising oil price would mean a falling dollar compared to the euro. Thanks to the way the high oil prices now do far more economic damage in Europe than in the US, that relationship has turned on its head; rising oil has meant a weakening euro:
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Powell says Fed will ‘keep at it until the job is done’
Matthew Cranston United States correspondent
Aug 27, 2022 – 12.37am
Washington | US sharemarkets fell after Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell made a fresh commitment to maintain the current pace of interest rate increases to stamp out inflation, and warned the Fed was unlikely to reverse course next year.
“Restoring price stability will likely require maintaining a restrictive policy stance for some time,” Powell told the Kansas City Fed’s annual policy forum in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. “The historical record cautions strongly against prematurely loosening policy.”
Following Powell’s speech, financial markets priced in a slightly higher chance of a 75 basis point rate rise at the Fed’s September 20-21 meeting. Before Powell’s comments the market had a 50/50 chance of either a 75 basis point or a 50 basis point rate rise.
Mr Powell also indicated that cutting rates next year was unlikely.
“In current circumstances, with inflation running far above 2 per cent and the labor market extremely tight estimates of longer run neutral are not a place to pause or stop.”
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Six months on, Ukraine and Russia are reshaped by war
Ukrainians are creeping back to a sense of normality after the shock of the winter invasion. In Russia, independent voices have been drowned out by hardline nationalists.
Anton Troianovski, Andrew E. Kramer and Steven Erlanger
Aug 26, 2022 – 9.00am
For six months, a major land war has sown horror in Europe. It is a war in which violence and normality coexist – death and destruction at the 2400-kilometre front and packed cafés in Kyiv, just a few hundred kilometres to the west.
It is a war fought in trenches and artillery duels, but defined in great part by the political whims of Americans and Europeans, whose willingness to endure inflation and energy shortages could shape the next stage of the conflict.
And it is a war of imagery and messaging, fought between two countries whose deep family ties have helped turn social media into a battlefield of its own.
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UK set for more inflation pain as energy prices bite
Cecile Lefort Markets reporter
Aug 26, 2022 – 2.42pm
A stratospheric increase in European gas prices has stoked speculation more rapid-fire interest rate increases will be required by the Bank of England, challenging the dovish mood that swept markets ahead of the annual Jackson Hole symposium.
Markets were counting on US Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell to deliver a decisive account of inflation, the economy, and how much higher interest rates will need to go, due midnight Friday (AEST).
In the meantime, the UK national energy regulator will reveal an expected 80 per cent jump in its price cap, it was widely reported.
The Bank of England’s early August forecasts assumed annual household fuel bills rising by around 75 per cent, which was already around three times higher than a year ago.
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https://www.afr.com/world/asia/in-xi-s-china-dogma-trumps-everything-20220825-p5bcpr
In Xi’s China, dogma trumps everything
The country’s economic slowdown is not just a natural plateau, or the unwinding of massive debt. It’s a deliberate choice to put ideology ahead of even economic growth.
Stephen Roach Economist
Aug 26, 2022 – 12.18pm
Since the days of Deng Xiaoping, economic growth has mattered more than anything for China’s leaders. The 10 per cent annualised hyper-growth from 1980 to 2010 was widely seen as the antidote to the relative stasis of the Mao era, when the economy grew by only about 6 per cent.
But under President Xi Jinping, the pendulum has swung back, with 6.6 per cent average growth from 2013 to 2021, much closer to the trajectory under Mao than under Deng.
Some of the slowdown was inevitable, partly reflecting the law of large numbers: small economies are better able to sustain rapid growth rates. As China’s economy grew – from 2 per cent of world GDP in 1980 at the time of the Deng take-off to 15 per cent when Xi assumed power in 2012 – an arithmetic slowdown became only a matter of time. The surprise was that it took so long.
It is possible to quantify the foregone Chinese output from the slowdown. Had annual real GDP growth remained on the 10 per cent trajectory under Xi, rather than slowing by nearly 3.5 percentage points since 2012, the Chinese economy would be a little more than 40 per cent larger than it is.
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https://www.afr.com/world/asia/china-s-historic-drought-forces-a-return-to-coal-20220826-p5bczt
China’s historic drought forces a return to coal
Michael Smith North Asia correspondent
Aug 26, 2022 – 1.16pm
Tokyo | Faced with crippling power cuts and the worst drought in modern history, China is shelving plans to reduce its reliance on coal, as cities and factories around the country struggle to keep the lights on and stay open.
Record-high temperatures have dried up reservoirs and crippled the energy-generating capacity of giant hydropower schemes such as the Three Gorges Dam this week, throwing the focus back onto coal despite Beijing’s commitment to slash greenhouse gas emissions.
Images of mountain bushfires on the outskirts of the giant south-western city of Chongqing, dried-up riverbeds, parched crops and office workers using huge blocks of ice to stay cool have flooded Chinese social media this week. To add to the frustration, residents in many cities are still being forced to queue outside in searing heat for mandatory COVID-19 tests.
Experts blame climate change for exacerbating the drought in the world’s most populous country, which now faces a severe energy shortage and decimated crops on top of existing economic hurdles, including COVID-19 lockdowns and a collapsing property market.
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Why a president in cognitive decline is still the Democrats’ least worst option
Journalist and author
August 27, 2022 — 5.00am
Maybe it is because his 79 years have traversed so much US history, but few sitting presidents have been compared with so many of their predecessors as Joe Biden. In keeping with the journalistic tradition of assigning each new occupant of the White House a presidential soulmate from the past, commentators initially likened him to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the Democrat he so desperately yearns to emulate. Like FDR, Biden took his oath of office at a moment of national peril, and proposed an ambitious legislative program to alleviate the crisis – in Roosevelt’s case poverty, in Biden’s the pandemic.
This historical honeymoon phase, however, did not last long. By the end of his first summer in the White House, much of his legislative program was stalled in Congress, while the botched withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan accentuated the sense of America’s 21st century decline. As his approval ratings plummeted, and inflation started to soar, the 47th president was paired with the 39th, the one-term Democrat Jimmy Carter.
Since then, Biden has been likened to Gerald Ford, another president who tried to repair American democracy after it had been attacked by a flagrantly criminal predecessor, Richard Nixon. Most recently, after a string of successes in Congress, he has been cast as the new LBJ. Not since Lyndon Johnson, the argument plausibly goes, has a president amassed such a record of legislative accomplishment: a $1.9 trillion stimulus package (the American Rescue Plan), the Inflation Reduction Act (which will shore up Obamacare and curb greenhouse emissions), an infrastructure act, a much-needed boost for the US semiconductor industry, and the most significant gun control legislation in nearly thirty years. Compiling his own list of presidential antecedents, the White House chief of staff Ron Klain recently boasted that Biden had passed the biggest economic recovery plan since Roosevelt, the largest infrastructure plan since Eisenhower, confirmed the most judges since Kennedy and delivered the second-biggest healthcare bill since Johnson.
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Lowest in 157 years: Weather deals China’s fragile economy another blow
By Bloomberg News
August 26, 2022 — 8.10am
Wan Jinjun, a 62-year-old retiree who has swum the Yangtze River almost every day for the past decade in Wuhan, said he’s never seen a drought like this before.
An extreme summer has taken a toll on Asia’s longest river, which flows about 6,300 kilometres through China and feeds farms that provide much of the country’s food and massive hydroelectric stations, including the Three Gorges Dam — the world’s biggest power plant. A year ago, water lapped almost as high as the riverbank where Wan swims. Now, the level is at the lowest for this time of year since records began in 1865, exposing swathes of sand, rock and oozing brown mud that reeks of rotting fish.
“And it keeps going down,” said Wan, who last week needed to descend almost 100 steps — usually hidden beneath the water-line — to cool off on a sweltering 40-degree-Celsius day.
Yangtze’s retreating water levels have snarled electricity generation at many key hydropower plants, sparking energy chaos across parts of the country. Mega cities including Shanghai are turning off lights, escalators and cutting back on air conditioning. Tesla has warned of disruptions in the supply chain for its Shanghai plant, and others such as Toyota and Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., the world’s top maker of batteries for electric vehicles, have shuttered factories.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle targeted by string of deadly car bomb attacks
Members of Vladimir Putin’s inner circle are being brutally killed one by one – and the slayings have revealed a growing crisis for the leader.
August 27, 2022 - 9:06AM
At least four members of Vladimir Putin’s inner circle have been assassinated in recent weeks, and now, attention is turning to who could be next on the bloody hit list.
Last weekend, Darya Dugina – the 29-year-old daughter of Putin’s so-called “spiritual guide” Alexander Dugin – died in a fiery car bomb in Moscow which many believe was intended for her ultranationalist father, described as a mastermind of the Ukraine invasion.
Days after the young journalist’s death, the Russian leader publicly declared it to be a “vile, cruel crime” against a “patriot of Russia”, and rumours began swirling that Ukraine had orchestrated the blast – a claim furiously denied by Kyiv.
Then, just days later, a top pro-Putin official was killed in another car bomb.
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https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/europe-makes-case-for-major-rate-increases-20220828-p5bda0
7.18AM 28 August, 2022
ECB policymakers make the case for a big rate increase
Reuters
Jackson Hole | European Central Bank policymakers made the case for a large interest rate hike next month as inflation remains uncomfortably high and the public may be losing trust in the bank’s inflation-fighting credentials.
The ECB raised rates by 50 basis points to zero last month and a similar or even bigger move is now expected on September 8, partly on sky-high inflation and partly because the US Federal Reserve is also moving in exceptionally large steps.
Speaking at Fed’s annual Jackson Hole Economic Symposium, ECB board member Isabel Schnabel, French Central Bank chief Francois Villeroy de Galhau and Latvian central bank governor Martins Kazaks all argued for forceful or significant policy action.
“Both the likelihood and the cost of current high inflation becoming entrenched in expectations are uncomfortably high,” Schnabel said. “In this environment, central banks need to act forcefully.”
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Powell’s eight-minute speech wipes $112b from richest Americans
Brian Chappatta
Aug 27, 2022 – 8.18am
In the span of just eight minutes, Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell sparked a market rout that slashed the fortunes of America’s richest people by $78 billion ($112 billion).
Elon Musk’s saw $US5.5 billion erased from his wealth. Jeff Bezos lost $US6.8 billion, the most of anyone on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The fortunes of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett declined by $US2.2 billion and $US2.7 billion, respectively, while Sergey Brin’s was knocked below $US100 billion.
Powell used his speech at the Kansas City Fed’s annual policy forum in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, to reiterate that the US central bank will keep raising interest rates and probably leave them elevated for a while to reduce inflation.
He was seen as pushing back on a recent rally in US stocks that was fuelled by speculation that policy makers would soon reverse course from their aggressive monetary tightening.
The S&P 500 tumbled 3.4 per cent, its worst day since mid-June. The tech-heavy Nasdaq 100, which counts Microsoft, Amazon.com, Tesla and Alphabet among its biggest components, plunged more than 4 per cent.
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Extreme China heatwave could lead to global chaos and food shortages
China is experiencing a never seen before event and the impact will reach far across the globe – causing potential chaos and food shortages.
August 28, 2022 - 6:57AM
Cars. Batteries. Solar panels. Food. Global shortages and soaring prices are almost certain as China’s seemingly never-ending heatwave sears on.
It’s the most extreme heat event ever recorded in world history. For more than 70 days, the intense heat has blasted China’s population, factories and fields. Lakes and rivers have dried up. Crops have been killed. Factories have been closed.
More than 900 million people across 17 Chinese provinces are subjected to record-breaking conditions. From Sichuan in the southwest to Shanghai in the east, temperatures have been topping 40C.
In the Sichuan city of Dazhou, an air raid shelter has been converted into a heat refuge. In Chongqing, subway stations are opening to offer subterranean recovery stops.
But the extreme heat and dry weather are having far-reaching effects.
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Cost of British power now five times that Down Under
5:44PM August 26, 2022
British households have been hit with a fearsome 80 per cent increase in the prices of electricity and gas, after the regulator Ofgem released a new price cap on Friday.
The incoming prime minister, either Foreign Secretary Liz Truss or former chancellor of the exchequer Rishi Sunak, will be pressured to implement immediate steps to quell the fear and anger of people who have already cut back usage to minimal levels.
Businesses, which fall outside of the cap, are already under enormous stress and some small companies had begun limiting opening hours to try to deal with the energy hike.
Previously announced rebates to households of £400 ($678) will be swallowed up in just a few weeks of the new prices, which come into effect in October.
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Gas prices at record high in Europe as Vladimir Putin burns $US10m gas a day in energy war
By Tracey Boles And Tom Parfitt
The Times
11:58PM August 27, 2022
European gas prices have hit a record high of more than 343 euros ($494) per megawatt-hour as Russia just burns off fuel, sparking accusations of stoking tensions with Europe.
The commodity is in short supply since Russia slashed exports to Europe via the key Nord Stream 1 pipeline in June and industry may face rationing once the weather turns cold. Prices are more than 10 times the level of those in America as traders and utilities scramble to secure supplies before then.
Fertilizers Europe, the industry association, has said that 70 per cent of production on the Continent had been curtailed by high gas prices, underscoring that the energy crisis is starting to spread across industries and to threaten sectors as diverse as glassmaking and food production.
Fertiliser companies including Yara, a Norwegian company, and BASF, based in Germany, have begun to shut down facilities.
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I look forward to comments on all this!
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David.
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