November 24, 2022 Edition
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Globally the big news is the crypto chaos and the fear it may spill over to the real economy.
The ongoing and awful war being waged by Russia continues to point out just how weak the West is. This should have been stopped months ago and the pious handwringing is just pathetic. Far too many have died and death will continue without resolute action.
In the UK Rishi seems to be settling in and his Budget has been draconian to reign in debt and increase taxes.
In OZ parliament is back to wrap up the year and Albo passes 6 months in office. So far not too bad!
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Major Issues.
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Australia surges back into favour for international students
Julie Hare Education editor
Nov 13, 2022 – 1.44pm
The international education sector is surging back to life with a huge turnaround in just one year in the number of students who intend to study in Australia.
A new survey of the intentions of more than 14,000 international students in 147 countries found that one in five students had changed their minds about where they wanted to study over the past 12 months, and Australia is a winner.
Nearly one in three of those who had changed their minds did so in favour of Australia, while one in 10 said they would go to the UK. Canada, in particular, bore the brunt of the switch.
“During the pandemic many international students chose not to study in Australia as a result of closed borders and lockdown policies,” said Jake Foster, chief commercial officer with AECC Global which conducted the study.
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The evolution of Albanese: how his foreign policy ideas have changed
Once an idealistic left-wing critic of globalisation and the Iraq War, the prime minister has become a true believer in the American alliance.
James Curran and Elena Collinson
Nov 14, 2022 – 5.00am
At this week’s G20 summit in Bali, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will sit at one of the top tables in global affairs. It will be the capstone of his first six months at the helm of Australia’s foreign policy.
But it also marks the culmination of a journey from the more rebellious left wing foreign policy of his earlier period in parliament.
Mr Albanese has walked a familiar path for a 21st Century Labor leader – much like Julia Gillard. The idealistic left-wing critic of globalisation and the Iraq War has become a true believer in the American alliance.
Indeed in Albanese’s story lies the account of how Australia, since the late 1990s, has swooned into the arms of the US. Albanese’s conversion came largely through ministerial office, participation in the Australian-American leadership dialogue and powerful memories, old and new, of what happens when Labor is on the back foot on national security.
It is a fair bet, too, that past and present senior US officials, and some Labor elders, the self-appointed guardians of the party’s alliance lore, have also played a role in his conversion.
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Only one man could save Scott Morrison from himself. And he chose not to
In the first of a three-part series we examine the moment from which former prime minister Scott Morrison could never recover - and why Josh Frydenberg didn’t save their party.
By Peter Hartcher and James Massola
November 14, 2022
Scott Morrison played a central role in his own downfall. Here is how his government unravelled.
Josh Frydenberg had fantasised about becoming prime minister for 30 years but when the opportunity finally arrived he didn’t just shrink from it. When his colleagues asked him to save the Coalition government by challenging Scott Morrison for the prime ministership, Frydenberg went straight to Morrison to tell him about it.
“There’s unrest in the party room,” he warned the leader in November last year, as he later related to colleagues. He wanted Morrison to know that he was a loyal deputy: “I’ll work with you to try to turn it around.”
It was the Liberals’ last chance to ask the electorate to be forgiven for Morrison’s sins: by removing him and anointing a new leader in time for the federal election.
Frydenberg was by far the most popular government member. He drew big crowds and fat donations. Though there was no formal count, his closest supporters estimated he was within about 10 votes of a majority in the Liberal party room.
From the Black Summer to the Omicron wave, Prime Minister Scott Morrison has helmed the Coalition's third term through an extraordinary time in history.
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Why CBA is happy with the Twilight Zone economy
Commonwealth Bank CEO Matt Comyn knows something doesn’t add up about the economy right now, but his bank’s results show why he doesn’t mind.
Nov 15, 2022 – 10.23am
Commonwealth Bank chief executive knows something doesn’t quite add up about the Australian economy right now.
Interest rates have risen at the fastest pace in generations. Inflation remains rampant. Business and consumer confidence readings are in the toilet. And signs the labour market is starting to soften are emerging.
And yet the story told by CBA’s September quarter operating results is one of impressive strength.
Despite those rate rises, loan quality actually improved slightly across mortgages, business loans and personal loans. Consumer spending is holding up nicely and Comyn says CBA’s business customers are reporting strong trading conditions across the country.
“I think there are some contradictory indicators in the economy at the moment,” Comyn says with more than a hint of understatement.
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Revealed: The letter that Scott Morrison ignored that foresaw the teal wave
Thirteen moderate Liberal MPs wrote to Scott Morrison with two simple demands. Seven of them no longer sit in parliament.
By Peter Hartcher and James Massola
November 15, 2022
Scott Morrison played a central role in his own downfall. Here is how his government unravelled. See all 2 stories.
It was probably the Morrison government’s last chance to hold the Liberals’ traditional blue-ribbon seats, to forestall the teal revolution. The Glasgow climate change conference was approaching. More than a dozen moderate Liberal MPs got together to appeal to their leader to update Australia’s greenhouse emissions pledges.
First in a Zoom meeting with Morrison and later in a letter to him, the moderates told the PM that climate change was the make-or-break question for their electorates: “The message was uniform – ‘Our electorates are not interested in hearing from us unless we address this issue – they will write us off entirely and not listen to us on anything else’,” summarises the moderate who convened the group, Dave Sharma, then-Liberal MP for the Sydney seat of Wentworth, formerly held by Malcolm Turnbull. They demanded two changes. One was to pledge net zero emissions by 2050. The other was to upgrade Tony Abbott’s 2030 emissions target.
Morrison told them he was working on it. And he did deliver the first, but not the second. It was not enough.
The last-ditch letter was delivered to Morrison in October 2021, two weeks before the COP26 convention in Glasgow. It was signed by 13 Liberals. He implored them to keep it secret. They did, until today. He never wrote back – even as the Coalition’s climate deniers and coal promoters noisily banged their campaign drums and gongs to block any progress.
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Prepare ADF ‘to fight our own fights’, says Richard Marles
8:00PM November 14, 2022
Richard Marles has warned Australia can no longer rely on the US as our “security guarantor” and must get nuclear-powered submarines in the water and develop a sovereign long-distance missile capacity to “project force and power” in the Indo-Pacific.
In the first of three major speeches outlining the government’s response to the defence strategic review ahead of its release early next year, the Defence Minister on Monday night said “we have to be willing – and capable – to act on our own terms when we have to”.
Mr Marles, who received interim advice from defence strategic review co-authors Stephen Smith and Angus Houston earlier this month, said the Australian Defence Force must focus on “impactful projection” to deter military threats.
Ahead of Anthony Albanese’s meeting with Xi Jinping at the G20 summit, Mr Marles said “we must invest in targeted capabilities that enable us to hold potential adversaries’ forces at risk at a distance and increase the calculated cost of aggression against Australia and its interests”.
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It may not be a full China reset, but it’s a promising start
Anthony Albanese’s meeting with Xi Jinping is about putting a floor under the relationship. The ultimate test will be how many storeys will be on top.
Phillip Coorey Political editor
Nov 15, 2022 – 7.00pm
Anthony Albanese’s meeting with Xi Jinping was locked in for some time. How long, exactly, the prime minister and his staff wouldn’t say. Still won’t, even after it was confirmed.
So nervous was the government that the meeting would fall over, it kept shtum until Albanese announced it on the tarmac in Bali on Monday afternoon, following mutual agreement with Beijing.
Only an hour or so before, talking to journalists on his plane, the prime minister was sticking to the script that nothing had been locked in. To jeopardise any meeting would be to jeopardise the national interest, he reasoned.
On Tuesday evening in Bali, on the sidelines of the Group of 20 leaders’ summit, Albanese became the first Australian prime minister since Malcolm Turnbull in 2016 to have a formal bilateral meeting with the Chinese president.
Previously, Australia had an established annual dialogue with Beijing that involved separate meetings each year between the prime minister and Xi, along with Premier Li Keqiang.
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Defining the purpose of superannuation is not that simple
The industry’s best argument for continuing generosity in the tax settings on super is one that it doesn’t make: that Australia needs savings.
Chris Richardson Economist
Nov 15, 2022 – 1.25pm
What’s our most heavily protected industry?
Sugar farmers? Banana growers? An obscure bit of manufacturing centred in a marginal electorate?
Nuh-uh. It’s superannuation.
That industry didn’t accumulate $3.4 trillion by accident. It was by design. We created a system that funnels 10.5 per cent of wages and salaries into super, with the force of law behind that funding fire hose.
So, it is entirely reasonable and long overdue to insist that superannuation has its purpose clearly legislated. If you don’t know what you’re trying to do, how can you do it?
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The Deves factor was meant to be a campaign masterstroke. It was a disaster
Even while he was upsetting the French and endorsing a polarising Katherine Deves, a window of opportunity opened for Scott Morrison. He missed it.
By Peter Hartcher and James Massola
November 16, 2022
Scott Morrison played a central role in his own downfall. Here is how his government unravelled. See all 4 stories.
Scott Morrison’s chief political adviser, Yaron Finkelstein, had a core piece of guidance for his boss. His trademark advice to the prime minister was that the government’s priority should be to “communicate values” in everything it did. Not achieve results for the country, but communicate values.
Morrison took his advice. But what if the values you’re communicating are out of step with the Australian electorate? So far out that they “made us look like weirdos”, in the words today of one of his own government, Liberal Senator Andrew Bragg.
On justice for women. On corruption. On treatment of transgender Australians.
And, of course, on climate change. Point for point, Morrison successfully communicated that his values were alien to those of most of the people he needed to win over to hold government, and sometimes flat-out hostile. Sometimes this was inadvertent, and sometimes very deliberate. Of the deliberate Morrison misadventures, the choice of Katherine Deves as a “captain’s pick” Liberal candidate was the strangest. It was no accident that the candidate for the Sydney northern beaches seat of Warringah was an activist against the transgender community. The Morrison brains trust thought it was a masterstroke.
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A third of workers ‘unable to make ends meet’
November 16, 2022
More than one third of Australian workers are barely able to get by financially, and one in two have seen their household income fall in real terms, according to a new poll that highlights how workers are struggling in the face of a global cost of living crisis.
According to Australian workers polled as part of a global survey commissioned by the International Trade Union Confederation, nine per cent said they did not have enough money for basic essentials like housing, food and electricity.
The poll found a further 29 per cent had enough for basic essentials but said they were barely getting by financially.
Forty three per cent said they had enough for basic essentials and could save a little money while 15 per cent said they could save a lot of money.
The Australian's Judith Sloan says the Labor government is blaming Australia’s cost-of-living crisis on the previous… government and the war in Ukraine. “I was talking to an expert in the electricity market - I was asking him what was Bowen's plan B and he said ‘what’s Bowen's plan More
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Wages growth highest since 2012
HAYDEN JOHNSON Nov 16, 2022
Wages rose 1.0 per cent in the September quarter and 3.1 per cent annually – slightly exceeding forecasts – according to the latest Australian Bureau of Statistics data.
The 1 per cent jump is the highest quarterly growth in hourly wages recorded since March quarter 2012, according to the ABS.
In seasonally adjusted terms, wages growth was primarily driven by a 1.2 per cent increase in wages for the private sector, which grew at twice the rate of the 0.6 per cent wages growth in the public sector.
Bloomberg's consensus forecast was for wages to lift 0.9 per cent quarter-on-quarter and 3.0 per cent year-on-year.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/foreign-affairs/china-relations-go-back-to-basics-20221115-p5bygi
China relations go back to basics
Australia and China share a region and have complementary economies. Australian prime ministers had forgotten that for the past decade.
Geoff Raby Columnist
Nov 16, 2022 – 1.19pm
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, the revolutionary founder of the Soviet Union, once said of world affairs, there are times when nothing happens for years, and then everything happens in weeks.
After six years of stasis, mutual acrimony and destruction of trust, suddenly the Australia-China relationship looks very different. Tuesday’s meeting between Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and President Xi Jinping has decisively changed the tone of the bilateral relationship. Progress on bilateral issues can now be anticipated on both sides.
The prime minister in his media briefing emphasised that he was pleased they had met, and described the meeting variously as positive, “very constructive” and warm. He said both sides wished to move forward together and, overall, it had been a “very positive” development.
He did not attempt to downplay differences, noting that Australia sought a “stable” relationship while “managing differences” through “constructive dialogue”. The contrast being drawn with the previous government’s handling of the relationship, with shrill and often bellicose rhetoric and tit-for-tat retaliation instead of “constructive” discussion, could not be greater.
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Better-off aged care and NDIS users can pay their own way
There should be less turning to the taxpayer when many receiving services could afford to pay out of their own pockets.
John Kehoe Economics editor
Nov 16, 2022 – 2.11pm
The Albanese government is considering tax increases to pay for the burgeoning costs of aged care, the National Disability Insurance Scheme and healthcare.
The public expectation for government-funded services has never been higher, according to Treasury Secretary Steven Kennedy.
The “free” money showered on people during the pandemic appears to have heightened people’s expectations of government paying for stuff.
But there is another way to mitigate the sting on taxpayers, particularly as there is a diminishing share of working-age people to pay income taxes to fund government services
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https://thenewdaily.com.au/finance/2022/11/17/labor-red-tape-alan-kohler/
6:00am, Nov 17, 2022 Updated: 8:11pm, Nov 16
Alan Kohler: It’s time for the Labor government to roll out the red tape
PM Anthony Albanese and his intrepid band of leftie ministers are soon going to have to start doing something that they appear strangely unenthusiastic about – telling companies what to do.
There are six separate industries or endeavours in which businesses need to be given new rules of the game that they won’t like, and will scream blue murder about over-regulation and red tape – they already are.
These six are: Wage bargaining, carbon emissions, cyber crime, gas, plastic and sugar.
Before we go through them one at a time, we need to ask: What is it with Labor’s reluctance to regulate? I can’t work it out, beyond the fact that laissez-faire capitalism is still the dominant economic paradigm.
It kicked off in 1681 when the French controller-general of the time asked a group of merchants how the state could best promote commerce. “Laissez-nous faire,” he was told, or “leave it to us”.
The idea that the best business regulation was none at all was moved along by, among others, Adam Smith and the “invisible hand” in the 18th century, The Economist magazine and its founder James Wilson, in the 19th century and Ayn Rand in the 20th century.
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There will be no bailout. Crypto deserves its unhappy end
By Ben Wright
November 17, 2022 — 6.56am
Well, at least some good will come out of the FTX debacle and the latest crypto collapse.
Michael Lewis, the author of The Big Short, Liar’s Poker and Flash Boys, has been shadowing Sam Bankman-Fried, the now humbled founder of the collapsed crypto exchange, for the past six months. The resultant book may now have a different ending, but it will no doubt be a better read for the drama of the last week.
Just a few short days ago, Bankman-Fried was being talked about as a modern-day JP Morgan and the king of cryptoland. FTX had stepped in to prop up a whole raft of tottering crypto-projects. As recently as June, The Economist described Bankman-Fried as “crypto’s last man standing”.
Now he’s on his knees. The exact details behind the subsequent fall from grace are still emerging, but it has been precipitous. The unravelling started when Changpeng Zhao tweeted that Binance, his own crypto exchange, would be selling its holdings of FTX’s FTT tokens “due to recent revelations”.
This prompted what was effectively a run on FTX with a stampede of investors following Binance’s lead.
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https://www.afr.com/wealth/personal-finance/the-super-tax-breaks-in-the-firing-line-20221114-p5bxyo
The super tax breaks in the firing line
With tax concessions totalling more than $40 billion last year, which areas are likely to be targeted?
Michael Read Reporter
Nov 18, 2022 – 5.00am
Superannuation tax concessions are back in the firing line. Speaking at The Australian Financial Review Super & Wealth Summit last week, Financial Services Minister Stephen Jones revealed Labor was gearing up for a debate on concessions once it had defined the purpose of super in legislation.
Curtailing the tax concessions paid to Australia’s wealthiest superannuants would raise billions of dollars annually and help repair the cash-strapped federal budget.
Another possibility for Labor is lowering the division 293 tax threshold to $200,000 from $250,000, subjecting an extra 230,000 savers to an additional 15¢ in the dollar tax on their super contributions. Simon Letch
With super tax concessions totalling more than $40 billion last year, Labor has plenty of options to choose from.
But the government will be wary about going too far. Changes to concessions could cost affected savers dearly in retirement, and Labor will be conscious it didn’t take any of these policies to the May election.
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https://www.afr.com/wealth/personal-finance/crypto-crash-has-further-to-go-20221115-p5bykr
Crypto crash has further to go
Bitcoin may not be the seizure-resistant store of wealth many assume.
Christopher Joye Columnist
Nov 18, 2022 – 1.28pm
The crypto crash has been fascinating to watch and bears the hallmarks of a standard non-bank financial crisis that inevitably arises every time there is a liquidity shock. Unfortunately, it is likely to get worse.
For years this column resisted the temptation to write about the crypto craze. There is no point expressing opinions on things you don’t understand. The spell was broken last December around bitcoin’s $US69,000 peak with a warning of an impending implosion triggered by much bigger interest rate increases than the market was expecting. The warning was reiterated with gusto in January when this column argued that crypto would become the next tulip bulb bubble to burst.
This negativity was founded on several observations. The first was that crypto is just a form of non-bank finance situated outside the regulated world. A “stablecoin”, for example, takes in your savings, pretends it is riskless and then invests that money in risky assets (eg, other cryptocurrencies), earning a return on those assets. That is a classic banking activity. Indeed, crypto was conceived as an alternative to the traditional banking system that it explicitly sought to disintermediate.
I knew loads of super-smart folks who were crypto junkies, some of whom had deep financial expertise. But I could not find anyone who really believed in crypto and who was an expert on banking systems, their history, and the web of explicit and implicit government guarantees and central bank liquidity support that ensure banks (as opposed to non-banks) can survive economic and liquidity shocks.
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Lack of controls worse than Enron: FTX’s new chief
Jessica Sier Journalist
Updated Nov 18, 2022 – 11.36am, first published at 4.29am
FTX suffered a “complete failure of corporate controls”, according to a damning bankruptcy report by new chief executive John J Ray III, who has revealed FTX funds were used to buy homes for employees and advisers alongside a raft of stunning mis-uses.
Mr Ray, who is noted for his involvement in the Enron investigation and was installed after FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried resigned last week – reported on Friday the internals of the exchange that once boasted a $32 billion valuation was among the worst he’d ever seen.
“Never in my career have I seen such a complete failure of corporate controls and such a complete absence of trustworthy financial information as occurred here,” Mr Ray says.
“From compromised systems integrity and faulty regulatory oversight abroad, to the concentration of control in the hands of a very small group of inexperienced, unsophisticated and potentially compromised individuals, this situation is unprecedented.”
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Australia deals itself back into the diplomacy game
Penny Wong and Anthony Albanese have quickly moved Australia from outlier to foreign policy activist.
Laura Tingle Columnist
Nov 18, 2022 – 4.37pm
Dialogue, Anthony Albanese observed this week, is always a good thing. And as many people observed after his talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday, the most important thing to be said about the meeting was that it took place at all.
Six years is a long time between drinks for national leaders to meet, especially when you are talking about the leader of the country that accounts for nearly a third of our trade and whose rise agitates so much of our national policy discussion.
There was an unbecoming rush by journalists to know what would immediately materialise from this meeting: Would there be ministerial visits right away? Would two imprisoned Australians be released? Would trade embargoes be lifted?
All fair enough questions. But it is worth reflecting – if just for a moment – on the value of dialogue for its own sake, before racing ahead to the next thing.
The talk from the prime minister – and Foreign Minister Penny Wong – was all about “stabilisation” of the relationship, no more. “There are many steps yet to take. We will co-operate where we can, disagree where we must, and engage in our national interest,” Albanese said.
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Freelancers shed light on Bruce Pascoe’s claims in Dark Emu
12:00AM November 19, 2022
It took seven years for Australia’s anthropologists and archaeologists to test the claims in one of the most popular books ever published about First Nations people – the best-selling Dark Emu: Aboriginal Australia and the Birth of Agriculture, by Bruce Pascoe.
And it’s telling that Peter Sutton and Keryn Walshe, who somewhat reluctantly took on the task of challenging Pascoe’s thesis that pre-colonial Aboriginal people were agriculturalists who built stone houses and cultivated the land, are freelancers who work outside the academy.
Their book, Farmers or Hunter-Gatherers? The Dark Emu Debate, published last year, has been short-listed for the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards, in the running for the $80,000 top prize in the history section when winners are announced on December 13.
They were late to the fray, partly because they didn’t take Pascoe’s 2014 book very seriously and were busy with other work, but Sutton thinks the silence from the universities stemmed from fear.
“You can lose a job (if you challenge an Indigenous issue),” Sutton tells Inquirer from his home in South Australia. “You can be vilified in public or in social media. It’s notable that both (of us) are retired. Most people didn’t have the stomach for the fight because you are cancelled if you have a view that’s not liked by certain people, you are cancelled simply on the basis of being white.”
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Sohn Hearts & Minds Investment Leaders Conference live coverage
3:22PM November 17, 2022
All the coverage from the first in-person Sohn Hearts & Minds Investment Leaders Conference since the Covid-19 pandemic, with top stock picks and market insights from leading fund managers.
Anthony Aboud, Perpetual
Mr Aboud has named French lottery business Française des Jeux as his stock pick.
Comparing FDJ to ASX-listed The Lottery Corp, Mr Aboud said buying the French company today “is like buying the Lottery Corp in 2017”.
The appeal is specifically in growth of the online business. Online in Australia’s lottery business has gone from 15 per cent distribution to 38 per cent in recent years. France’s FDJ hasn’t yet had this uplift.
FDJ was formerly government owned and was privatised in November 2019. The French lottery is the 4th largest in the world, Mr Aboud said.
Its online penetration is much more immature than other markets, including Australia’s, he said.
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Four healthcare stocks ready to rebound
By Rudi Filapek-Vandyck
2:38PM November 18, 2022
As the wider world reopens post-Covid it highlights the potential for investors in healthcare: Four stocks worth looking are Ramsay, Resmed, CSL and ProMedicus.
Those who’ve been following private hospital operator Ramsay Health Care know the business has been struggling to keep operational momentum positive since 2016 when, not by coincidence, the share price peaked well above $80.
The latest trading update Ramsay might well prove important on multiple levels.
As far as Ramsay’s Australian business is concerned, the reopening momentum is strong. On the other hand, the business continues to struggle with multiple headwinds in Europe.
And while many a stock picker has nominated the shares for a post-Covid opportunity, it has been a two steps forward, one step backwards trajectory for the company over the past two years.
Analysts are divided about Ramsay’s future return profile: should one emphasise the positives locally or worry about the ongoing headwinds internationally?
Ramsay’s market update highlighted once again how selected areas of the healthcare sector on the ASX are benefiting as society reopens now beneficiaries – a fact the sharemarket seems to have all but forgotten about when short-term momentum is all about banks, financials, cyclicals and commodities. Ramsay is trading near $62.
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Morrison government’s electoral changes worst-ranked piece of legislation: report
By Shane Wright
November 18, 2022 — 6.00pm
The Morrison, Perrottet and Andrews governments all delivered laws over the past year that followed “unacceptable” practices and helped undermine confidence in how legislation is put together, an independent analysis has found.
A report produced for the Evidence-Based Policy Research Project found laws that changed everything from the number of people a party needed to become registered to a crackdown on protesters failed to be properly debated, opened to scrutiny and considered against other options.
Every year, the research project uses a left- and right-leaning think tank to assess the creation, debate and passage of laws passed over the previous 12 months at the federal level and across NSW, Queensland and Victoria.
Experts from the left’s Per Capita Australia and the right’s Blueprint Institute benchmarked 20 pieces of legislation against 10 separate criteria.
They included whether there was a need for the law, its objectives, alternative options, how it would work, if a government considered all the pros and cons, parliamentary debate and the consultation process.
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COVID-19 Information.
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Covid waves to continue for a ‘decade’ amid fourth wave fears
5:19PM November 13, 2022
Epidemiologists say new waves of Covid-19 infections will continue for up to a decade, as case numbers increase sharply across the country.
Health authorities say a potent combination of new variants – including the BA.5, XBB, BQ.1 and fast-growing BA.2.75 strains – is driving the latest wave because of their ability to “escape” existing immunity.
NSW recorded 19,800 cases last week, marking an increase of 37 per cent, and Victoria recorded 16,636 cases, an increase of 62 per cent, health department data shows.
There has also been a small jump in hospitalisations and deaths, with 975 people in hospital, including 32 in ICU, and 22 deaths in NSW and 274 hospitalisations including 11 in ICU and 41 deaths in Victoria.
Cases have also increased in South Australia, where 6867 infections were recorded last week; Queensland, where 5828 cases were recorded; and Western Australia, which reported 8029 infections.
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Covid-19 cases rise across the country as ATAGI updates vaccine recommendations
NCA NewsWire
November 15, 2022
Australians will not be asked to roll up their sleeves for a fifth Covid-19 vaccine, Health Minister Mark Butler says
On the backdrop of a spike in cases across the country, Mr Butler said ATAGI had considered international evidence, as well as local data, and “decided not to recommend” the third booster at this point in time.
That advice comes as Australians aged over 18 are able to access a Pfizer bivalent vaccine, which targets the Omicron sub-variants.
Mr Butler said ATAGI is likely to implement new booster recommendations in early 2023 in preparation for winter.
“ATAGI reiterated that they are continuing to actively review the role of booster doses,” Mr Butler said.
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Half a million Aussies to have long Covid symptoms by early December: report
1:14PM November 17, 2022
Expert modelling suggests up to 500,000 Australians will be experiencing long Covid symptoms in early December, as researchers call for greater effort to track the disorder and support sufferers.
Detailed number crunching by research institutes at the universities of Tasmania and Deakin estimates at least 160,000 Australians will be suffering full-blown long Covid early next month, while at least 35,000 will find their daily lives “significantly impacted”.
Conservative modelling suggested at least 8000 would be unable to work due to their symptoms but that this number could be as high as 40,000.
The modelling found it was “very likely” an even greater number of Australians – more than 500,000 – would have some long Covid symptoms, with more than 110,000 suffering “significant impacts”.
The researchers, at UTAS’s Menzies Institute for Medical Research and Deakin’s Institute for Health Transformation, called for a major effort to better document, track and respond to the disturbing illness.
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Climate Change.
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King puts gas retailers under microscope after 95pc price rise
Jacob Greber and Michael Smith
Nov 16, 2022 – 6.08pm
Labor is moving to force energy retailers to justify price hikes after the sector was outed by the competition watchdog as key culprits for surging bills in a report that undermines claims the nation’s gas producers are war profiteering.
In findings that blunt manufacturing industry accusations of gouging by big producers, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission found the average agreed-upon down-stream retailers’ price for gas to be delivered in 2023 jumped at almost nine times the pace of producers’ rates.
The average price paid to gas producers between March and August rose 11 per cent to $12.38 per gigajoule from $11.15 per gigajoule in the equivalent period last year, the ACCC report showed.
By contrast, the average price paid to gas retailers by households and businesses leapt 95 per cent from $9 per gigajoule to $17.51 per gigajoule.
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Royal Commissions And The Like.
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https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/robo-debt-a-significant-fail-campbell-admits-20221111-p5bxfj
Secretary in charge of robodebt admits ‘significant failure’
Tom Burton Government editor
Nov 13, 2022 – 1.19pm
The key official who led the implementation of the robodebt program, former Human Services secretary Katherine Campbell, has admitted the scheme was a significant failure of public administration.
Ms Campbell’s comments to the royal commission investigating the automated debt recovery program on Friday came as ambiguity over which federal department was responsible for ensuring the lawfulness of the program has emerged as a key reason for the scheme being rolled out, despite earlier advice it would need legislative change.
Former federal secretary for the then department of Human Services Kathryn Campbell said she relied on legal advice the robo-debt scheme was lawful if it was used as a last resort.
Most of the focus of the royal commission over the previous week had been on the lack of legality of the scheme, after it emerged the Social Services department in 2014 had been given legal advice two times, which said the use of annual income data to automatically raise a welfare debt notice was unlawful.
The Department of Human Services (DHS) was the delivery agency for Commonwealth welfare payments and was part of the Social Services portfolio led by the Department of Social Services (DSS). Social Services provided broad policy and legal advice to the Human Services delivery agency, now called Services Australia. But DHS retained service delivery policy.
“I understood that DSS had advised us that legislative change will be required,” Ms Campbell told the commission.
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National Budget Issues.
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RBA signals pause in punishing rate hike cycle
November 15, 2022
The Reserve Bank has signalled a pause in this year’s punishing hiking cycle may be on hand, with minutes from the Melbourne Cup day meeting no longer explicitly stating that further rate rises would be needed in the months ahead.
The RBA lifted its key cash rate target from 2.6 per cent to 2.85 per cent at its most recent meeting on November 1. Board members considered the case for a second straight 0.25 percentage point increase, versus a larger 0.5ppt move.
“The arguments for a 25 basis point increase rested largely on the fact that the cash rate had been increased materially in a short period of time and that there were lags in the operation of policy,” the minutes noted.
The RBA board minutes emphasised that the bank’s future monetary policy decisions would be determined by the data, and that there was no “preset path”.
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RBA’s big move after ‘extensive criticism’ of governor Philip Lowe
NCA NewsWire
November 15, 2022
The Reserve Bank of Australia is likely to stop disclosing its predictions for future interest rates after noting the “extensive criticism” it received over its governor’s error.
The central bank on Tuesday released the minutes from its November board meeting, which examined the findings of an internal RBA review of its so-called forward guidance during the Covid-19 pandemic.
RBA governor Philip Lowe had flagged the review in May after he admitted the central bank’s pandemic guidance that interest rates would not rise until 2024 was a mistake.
The cash rate had been set at a historic low of 0.10 per cent in November 2020 in a bid to ease the economic crunch of the Covid-19 pandemic and associated lockdowns and job losses.
Mr Lowe said late last year that rates would remain low until 2024.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/rba-confesses-to-2024-interest-rate-rise-mistake-20221115-p5byhh
RBA confesses to mistake on 2024 interest rate rise tip
Philip Lowe has conceded the obvious lesson that using a crystal ball to prognosticate on interest rates beyond the immediate future was a bad idea.
John Kehoe Economics editor
Nov 15, 2022 – 5.11pm
Governor Philip Lowe has conceded the obvious lesson that using a crystal ball to prognosticate on interest rates beyond the immediate future was a bad idea and is unlikely to be resorted to again.
The mea culpa over the self-described “considerable reputational damage” suffered from the Reserve Bank of Australia’s mistaken 2024 interest rate rise guidance will be of little comfort to the millions of variable rate borrowers who have experienced an almost 3 percentage point increase in their mortgage rates since May and are bracing for further increases.
The financial pain will be delayed for about half of borrowers who took out multi-year fixed rate loans at rates as cheap as 2 per cent or less. But the approximately $500 billion worth of fixed loans are now gradually expiring and converting to higher-interest loans.
Lowe’s self-reflection was contained in the RBA’s internal review of its “Approach to Forward Guidance” published on Tuesday.
“In late 2020 and for much of 2021, the board indicated that the first interest rate increase was not expected for ‘at least three years’, and then not until ’2024 or later’,” the RBA review said.
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Crackdown on franking credits loophole for corporates coming
By Rachel Clun
November 17, 2022 — 5.00am
A $200 million tax loophole that allows companies to buy back shares at a discount using franking credits will be closed, but the Assistant Treasurer says ordinary investors will still get their dividends as the government works to strengthen the current system.
Stephen Jones said the change was not about getting rid of franking credits but would end the “unintended incentive” which sees companies go off-market to buy back shares, rather than on market.
“Franking credits will stay – end of story, full stop,” he will say in a speech to the Institute of Public Accountants on Thursday, an early copy of which has been seen by this masthead.
“Ordinary mum and dad investors will continue to receive their franked dividends, and they can still participate in and benefit from share buybacks.
“Our change is only to align the corporate tax treatment of on-market and off-market trades. That is fair and as it should be.
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Health Issues.
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Pharmacists to prescribe contraceptives, antibiotics under health shake-up
By Megan Gorrey
November 13, 2022 — 1.26pm
Pharmacists will be able to prescribe medications including the contraceptive pill and antibiotics for ear infections, scrapping the need for a GP visit, under major reforms to ease pressure on NSW’s health system.
Premier Dominic Perrottet on Sunday said the shake-up to expand the role of local pharmacists across the state meant they would be able to administer a wider range of public health and travel vaccinations from Monday.
The government will fund a 12-month trial to allow pharmacists to prescribe medication such as antibiotics to treat uncomplicated urinary tract infections (UTIs), mirroring a similar trial run in regional Queensland.
A statewide pilot program would enable appropriately trained pharmacists to prescribe hormonal contraception and medications for certain conditions such as skin ailments and ear infections.
Perrottet argued the federal government should provide more support for GPs and more bulk-billing services, but said the NSW Coalition couldn’t “sit around and wait for them to catch up and meet the growing demand”.
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https://www.ausdoc.com.au/news/pollies-and-the-no-risk-politics-of-pharmacist-prescribing/
Pollies and the no-risk politics of pharmacist prescribing
The NSW trial is still in planning stages, but the Minister for Health is already 'absolutely convinced' it will be successful
15 November 2022
Doctors sounding alarm bells over threats to patient safety are normally taken seriously.
But when it comes to pharmacy prescribing, the pollies sometimes experience slight deafness, with mild cognitive impairment.
This weekend, the NSW Government announced out of the blue it wanted to follow in the footsteps of Queensland by allowing pharmacists diagnose and treat medical conditions.
What those medical conditions and treatments are is slightly unclear, but they will certainly include treating UTIs with antibiotics, and possibly minor infections and skin ailments, with new powers to issue repeat scripts.
The NSW Minister for Health, Brad Hazzard, responded quickly to the alarm expressed by GPs, instructing them to “settle down, relax and let the trial and the pilot take place”.
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ABC admits Norman Swan breached editorial standards over Shane Warne, Kimberley Kitching remarks
7:12AM November 17, 2022
The ABC has admitted Dr Norman Swan’s comments linking the heart attack deaths of cricketer Shane Warne and Labor senator Kimberley Kitching to COVID-19 breached its editorial standards.
But the broadcaster, in a statement, said it had discussed the matter with its health expert and referred to his apology for the remarks.
Warne’s former manager ridiculed Swan for his “absurd” on-air claim that the sudden death of the cricketer in March was linked to an earlier Covid infection.
On Tuesday morning, Dr Swan told ABC News it was “too much of a coincidence” that both Warne and Victorian senator Kimberley Kitching (who had a fatal heart attack earlier this year, also aged 52) had died not long after having Covid.
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Gene breakthrough may lead to treatment for Alzheimer’s
By Rhys Blakely
The Times
November 17, 2022
Scientists believe they have solved the mystery of how a gene increases the risk of Alzheimer’s disease, a breakthrough that could lead to new treatments.
All of us carry in our DNA a gene known as APOE, but it comes in different versions. The most common, APOE3, has no effect on the likelihood of developing Alzheimer’s.
However, a rarer variant – APOE4 – is the strongest genetic risk factor for the disease. The research, published in Nature, offers the best explanation yet for why this should be and also suggests that drugs might be found that help.
Inheriting APOE4 from a parent does not mean a person will definitely develop Alzheimer’s, but for the 25 per cent of the population who carry one copy it more than doubles the risk. For the 2-3 per cent who have two copies, the risk increases about tenfold.
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Antibiotics overuse drives fatal attraction
5:49PM November 18, 2022
Overuse of antibiotics and antivirals is driving an alarming decline in human resistance to superbugs and other infections, say the country’s leading antimicrobial experts, who warn that increased resistance to prescription medicines stands to undermine Australia’s healthcare systems.
John Turnidge said Australia was caught in a “downward spiral of antibiotic resistance” that threatened to become a leading cause in deaths, despite a gradual decline in prescription medicines.
Professor Turnidge, an adviser to the commission on safety and quality in healthcare, told The Weekend Australian that GPs were trapped in a “vicious historical cycle” in which you were labelled a “bad doctor” if you denied patients antibiotic treatment.
“When penicillin first came out, it was branded very strongly by governments and the media as a miracle. And the average citizen came to expect that if I’ve got an infection, I need a miracle. And so this high level of usage became almost part of the culture,” he said.
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Life before modern anaesthesia, antiseptics and antibiotics
1:00PM November 18, 2022
The history of medicine is a vast and fascinating topic, and it is a credit to the depth of the State Library of NSW’s collection that it is able to mount a survey as extensive as this. But it is at the same time a reminder that while a state library has a special responsibility for collecting material relevant to the history of that state, it also has a broader duty to acquire works that set the local material in perspective; otherwise it risks being no more than a bigger version of a local historical society, lost in the undergrowth of parochial preoccupations.
What perspective means is limited only by the intellectual ambition of the institution; for a library in NSW, it means first the history of Australia, then that of Britain, but more broadly of Europe, which in turn takes us, on the vertical axis of history, back to antiquity, and on the horizontal axis of geography across all the civilisations of the Eurasian continent.
A great library should build as comprehensive a collection as possible of the literature of humanity, but perhaps particularly of the most important books that have been published in the past five centuries, since the invention of printing. These are works that first revolutionised the dissemination of existing knowledge and then became the vehicles of the new discoveries and ideas that produced the world we live in today.
One such book is Vesalius’s extraordinary De Humani corporis fabrica, published in 1543. Vesalius was a brilliant young Fleming who began with the idea of editing a new edition of the canonic Greek author Galen and ended up producing the first great atlas of human anatomy, a direct heir to the anatomical research of artists like Leonardo. This is a book currently represented in the exhibition by a facsimile, but soon to be replaced with a fine copy of the original.
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International Issues.
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https://thenewdaily.com.au/finance/2022/11/14/crypto-revolution-alan-kohler/
6:00am, Nov 14, 2022 Updated: 7:31pm, Nov 13
Alan Kohler: Crypto and the end of the beginning
On Friday, a day after Elon Musk warned that bankruptcy was not out of the question for Twitter, Sam (‘SBF’) Bankman-Fried’s FTX actually did go into Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
Never heard of FTX or SBF? That’s understandable.
FTX is, or was, a crypto exchange, buying and selling cryptocurrencies, and 14 years and one month after the invention of Bitcoin, crypto remains in the shadows of finance.
When FTX ran out of money a couple of weeks ago, SBF had to turn to his competitor, Changpeng Zhao, founder of Binance (and known as CZ of course), because there was no appetite among mainstream financiers to bail out a crypto exchange.
Last week, CZ walked away. SBF tried to raise $US8 billion but failed because no one outside crypto-land wanted to touch it. So he put the company into Chapter 11, quit as CEO, called in the guy who handled the Enron collapse, and said goodbye to his own $US24 billion personal (paper) fortune. It’s probably the largest money bonfire in history.
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Untold story of midterms: Immoral Democrat ploy threatens democracy
Rhodes Scholar
November 13, 2022 — 5.00am
With the economy in the tank, inflation soaring, and President Joe Biden unpopular, many pundits expected a Republican red wave in the US midterms. But it’s clear that this did not materialise, with Democrats outperforming pollsters’ expectations.
Democrats are likely to lose control of the House. Control of the Senate may go down to a runoff in Georgia. But regardless of the final count, Democrats will claim this as a victory. Republicans are now questioning whether Donald Trump has lost his political mojo; this will strengthen the hand of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who is likely to run for the Republican ticket in 2024 after a thumping win.
An untold story of the midterms, though, is the irresponsible political tactics deployed by the Democrats. In Republican primaries around the country, Democrats poured tens of millions of dollars into supporting pro-MAGA, Trump-aligned candidates over more moderate, establishment conservatives, hoping that the extreme views of Trump’s allies would give Democratic candidates a better chance.
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‘Tired of losing’: Republicans want Trump to drop re-election bid
Patrick Marley, Amy B Wang and Steven Zeitchik
Nov 14, 2022 – 12.13pm
Washington | Donald Trump’s Republican critics renewed their push on Sunday (Monday AEDT) to steer the party away from the former president, warning that he could hurt Republican chances of winning the Senate run-off in Georgia next month if he announces plans for another White House bid on Tuesday.
“It’s basically the third election in a row that Donald Trump has cost us the race,” the Republican governor of Maryland, Larry Hogan, said on CNN’s State of the Union. “And it’s like, three strikes, you’re out.”
Mr Hogan said it would be a mistake to nominate Mr Trump again as the party’s 2024 presidential candidate after Republicans failed to take control of the Senate and made far fewer gains in the House than predicted in the midterm elections.
“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result,” he added. “Donald Trump kept saying ‘we’re gonna be winning so much we’re gonna get tired of winning’. I’m tired of losing. That’s all he’s done.”
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‘World at crossroads’ as Xi and Biden meet at G20
Emma Connors South-East Asia correspondent
Nov 14, 2022 – 11.31pm
Bali | In an historic meeting, Xi Jinping and Joe Biden laid down rules of engagement such as non-negotiable positions on Taiwan and North Korea, while vowing to improve the China-US relationship.
“The world has come to a crossroads. Where to go from here,” said Xi at the start of the meeting on the sidelines of the G20 Summit. “This is a question that is not only on our mind but also on the mind of all countries. The world expects that China and the United States will properly handle the relationship.”
The last time the two leaders met face to face was in 2017, before Mr Biden was elected president in November 2020.
President Biden said the two leaders had a shared responsibility to “show that China and the United States can manage our differences, prevent competition from becoming anything ever near conflict, and to find ways to work together on urgent global issues that require our mutual cooperation”.
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At least 30,000 Australians trying to claw back FTX losses
Jessica Sier Journalist
Nov 14, 2022 – 4.44pm
The local administrators picking through the carnage left behind by the collapse of global bitcoin exchange FTX have identified almost 30,000 Australian investors who are looking to recoup losses, and believe they will be able to salvage fiat currency from the rubble.
KordaMentha administrators expect to claw back some Australian dollars from the complex web of FTX accounts, working with their US-counterparts who are untangling the books of 132 companies related to Sam Bankman-Fried’s collapsed empire.
FTX Australia and its wholly owned subsidiary FTX Express were launched in March this year, and received an Australian Financial Services License after acquiring a local business called IFS Markets.
Australian investors who signed up to trade derivatives and other financial products were routed through FTX Australia, those who traded fiat-to-crypto where routed through FTX Express.
Any crypto-to-crypto trades were routed through the Antiga-based FTX Trading business.
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https://www.afr.com/technology/crypto-com-withdrawals-accelerate-after-ftx-collapse-20221114-p5by0d
Crypto contagion spreads after FTX collapse
Jessica Sier Journalist
Nov 14, 2022 – 4.18pm
Investors began pulling funds from Singapore-based Crypto.com on Monday, questioning the exchange’s handling of a $US400 million ($600 million) transfer, in a sign that the dramatic collapse of FTX.com last week is sparking contagion among more digital asset exchanges.
Australian investors confirmed they were withdrawing money from the Crypto.com exchange on Monday afternoon, pointing to widespread concern over the reliability of centralised exchanges.
Revelations that FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried had withdrawn $US10 billion from the FTX balance sheet to plug a hole in his sister quant trading firm Alameda Research has sparked widespread instability within crypto markets.
Bitcoin and ether prices have fallen sharply along with most other major cryptocurrencies, exacerbating a “crypto winter” where rising interest rates have driven investors to sell risk assets throughout most of the year.
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China calls for improved Australia relations
WILL GLASGOW 15 Nov, 2022
Beijing says the “international community” wants to see China improve its relationship with Australia, in comments made hours before Anthony Albanese meets Xi Jinping in Bali on Tuesday.
In the final Chinese government comments before the two leaders meet, China’s Foreign Ministry said Beijing hoped Canberra would make “efforts … to rebuild trust” in the frayed relationship.
“Improving China-Australia relations is in the fundamental interest of both sides,” said China’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning late on Monday.
"It is also the expectation of the people of China and Australia and the international community," she said.
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World population passes eight billion milestone
By Will Pavia
The Times
November 15, 2022
Some time today Earth’s population is expected to pass eight billion, according to the United Nations, which will announce the milestone in events staged in New York and at the COP27 climate conference in Egypt.
The figure, according to projections by the UN Population Fund, has come thanks to longer lifespans and the rapid growth of some nations in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.
It came only 11 years after the figure hit seven billion, but amid projections that this “unprecedented growth” was now slowing. There will not be nine billion people until 2037, according to the UN.
Its officials sought to cast it as a cause for celebration while at the same time issuing warnings of the challenges that lie ahead as humanity reaches a predicted peak population of about 10.4 billion sometime in the 2080s.
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So this is what capitulation by a great power looks like
And this is what resistance by a middle power looks like.
Political and international editor
November 15, 2022 — 9.56pm
So this is what capitulation by a great power looks like.
After all the rants and insults, the political freeze and the trade bans, the president of China brought his intimidation campaign of Australia to a politely meek end.
Xi Jinping hosted the prime minister of Australia for a friendly chat. Three years after imposing a total ban on political contact with Australia, it was China that instituted the rapprochement.
Remember how the AUKUS security agreement was “destabilising” and a reckless act of nuclear proliferation, according to Beijing? Xi made no mention of it, according to Anthony Albanese.
And the bans on more than $20 billion worth of Australian products, a blatant act of economic coercion? Some have been quietly relaxed over the months as China discovered that it needed Australian coal and wheat to warm and feed its people more than it wanted to hurt Australia.
We can now expect the remaining boycotts to drop away over the months ahead. “I put forward Australia’s position on trade blockages,” Albanese told reporters.
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Xi Jinping is re-engineering China’s approach to Australia
By Eryk Bagshaw
November 15, 2022 — 8.44pm
An hour into Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s meeting with US President Joe Biden in Bali, China’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning rose to the lectern in Beijing.
“Improving relations is in the fundamental interest of both sides,” she said.
It is “also the expectation of the people” and “the international community”.
Mao was not talking about America, she was talking about Australia.
Within 24 hours, the same phrases have been applied to Washington and Canberra. Inextricably linked by three years of volatile relations with Beijing, the fate of both appears to be tied together in the Chinese cycle of punishment and absolution.
On Tuesday, it was Anthony Albanese’s turn.
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FTX’s spectacular collapse shows crypto will never be the ‘future of money’
Money contributor
November 16, 2022 — 5.15am
Dubbed the ‘Lehman Brothers’ moment for crypto, last week the second-largest exchange, FTX, spectacularly imploded as investors realised putting their hard-earned money into an unregulated and highly speculative ‘asset’ probably wasn’t the wisest idea.
While it will be a financially ruinous lesson for some, FTX’s implosion serves as a validation of what many of us have been saying for a long time: cryptocurrency is just one large Ponzi scheme, a house of cards ready to crumble at the whim of an unverified tweet or stroke of a government pen.
And while the saga likely still has a long way to roll, the events of last week read like the script of a Netflix drama.
Officially headquartered in the Bahamas and led by chief executive Sam Bankman-Fried, FTX is (or was), a cryptocurrency ‘exchange’ that facilitated the buying and selling of cryptocurrencies, similar to the role that a broker performs for us Luddites who prefer to invest in real companies. FTX had also created its own currency ‘FTT’ (because that’s a normal thing these days).
The dominoes started falling last Monday when rumours spread Bankman-Fried’s hedge fund Alameda Research held billions of dollars worth of FTT which it used as collateral for loans in other risky investments. This meant any fall in the value of FTT could expose both the hedge fund and FTX to enormous losses. More news came that FTX lost over $US10 billion ($15 billion) in customer money trying to fund other risky bets, among them putting client funds towards the Democratic party ahead of the midterm elections.
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‘Crisis situation’: Poland calls emergency meeting after reports of Russian missiles strikes
By Anthony Galloway and Rob Harris
Updated November 16, 2022 — 10.30amfirst published at 2.40am
Key points
· Polish media reported that two people died after two suspected Russian rockets hit Przewodow, north of Lviv.
· Washington DC and Warsaw have not yet confirmed exactly what happened.
· The explosions occurred during Moscow’s biggest barrage of missiles aimed at Ukraine yet.
· It would be the first time a Russian attack on Ukraine has killed someone inside neighbouring NATO territory since the start of the war.
· NATO ambassadors are expected talk on Wednesday morning (local time), with diplomats briefing media outlets said the alliance would “act cautiously”.
Warsaw/Kyiv: Russia has been blamed for a rogue missile strike on a Polish border town which has killed two people in an escalation of the war in Ukraine that now threatens to drag NATO into direct conflict with Moscow.
Poland’s prime minister called an urgent meeting of his national security committee amid reports that stray Russian strikes hit a farm in Przewodow, a village about six kilometres from the border, as more than 100 missiles were fired at Ukraine in the most intense raids since the invasion of February 24.
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Donald Trump’s Presidential Rerun
The Wall Street Journal
7:19AM November 16, 2022
Donald Trump seems to be barreling ahead with an announcement Tuesday night that he plans to run for President again. The irony is that more Democrats than Republicans will be elated because they see him as the easiest candidate to beat one more time.
Mr. Trump’s advisers urged him to hold off at least until the Dec. 6 Senate runoff in Georgia. But Mr. Trump is announcing now, long before he needs to, for two reasons. The first is to try to clear the Republican field of potential competitors, especially Govs. Ron DeSantis and Glenn Youngkin, who have shown they can win in competitive states.
Mr. Trump also wants to get ahead of a possible Justice Department indictment. If Mr. Trump is already announced as a candidate seeking President Biden’s job, he figures he can portray an indictment by Attorney General Merrick Garland as political and rally Republicans to his side. Herschel Walker’s fate is incidental to Mr. Trump’s ambition.
Former US president Donald Trump may announce another run for the White House today. Mr Trump said he had… a "very big announcement" to make during a rally in Ohio last week and is set to speak from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. However, voter support for Mr More
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Why the West won’t want Poland strike to trigger a wider war
Military leader and strategist
November 16, 2022 — 11.59am
One of the great ironies of the war in Ukraine is that despite Western fears of escalation over provision of certain weapon systems – such as fighter aircraft and tactical missiles – it has been the Russians who have constantly undertaken actions to escalate the stakes in this conflict.
The Russian invasion of February 2022, the targeting of cities, the torture and murder of civilians, partial mobilisation, and the annexation of five Ukrainian provinces have all been escalatory in nature. At the same time, despite massive military, intelligence, economic and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine, the United States and other Western nations have largely pulled their punches in response to Russia’s behaviour.
Therefore, the reaction to the missile strikes in the Polish town of Przewodow bears close watching. Early on Wednesday morning, Australian time, two missiles – most likely Russian-made – of a type yet to be determined slammed into this country town about 10 kilometres from the Ukrainian border.
At the time, the Russians had been executing a large missile attack on multiple cities across Ukraine, including the western city of Lviv. This was an entirely expected missile barrage following the humiliating Russian defeat and withdrawal from western Kherson, and the address by Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky to the G20 (or G19 as he calls it, the obvious omission being Russia).
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https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/this-was-the-year-liberal-democracy-fought-back-20221116-p5byvj
This was the year liberal democracy fought back
Populists have lost elections and autocrats have lost the aura of competence.
Janan Ganesh Contributor
Nov 16, 2022 – 5.13pm
Just don’t call it an annus mirabilis. There has been too much suffering in Ukraine for that.
What is in good taste – and crucial to do – is to name the many ways in which the West has rallied this year.
Autocrats are good at fitting individual setbacks for the US and its friends, such as the withdrawal from Afghanistan, into a story of inexorable decline. So when events go the other way, liberals should bang their own drum. The year has spoilt them for examples.
Emmanuel Macron became the first president of France to win re-election since 2002. He retired Marine Le Pen in the process. The most successful electoral politician in the west is a Molière-quoting centrist and former banker. Imagine being told that amid the populist pomp of 2016.
The UK began the year with Boris Johnson as prime minister and ends it with Rishi Sunak, which is a moral upgrade if nothing else. Even Liz Truss, in a short stint that was still too long, did some perverse good for the nation’s governing institutions.
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https://www.afr.com/world/north-america/democrats-beware-trumpism-is-here-to-stay-20221117-p5bz0l
Democrats beware, Trumpism is here to stay
Donald Trump may not become the next US president, but his rivals will need to lead the MAGA movement he created to win.
Edward Luce Columnist
Nov 17, 2022 – 9.24am
Saying the quiet bit out loud is rarely a good idea. Yet after last week’s midterm success, Democrats cannot help themselves. The gist is that they would love Donald Trump to be the 2024 presidential nominee because his name would all but ensure another Republican defeat.
They are probably right about that. Whether MAGA Trumpism would do better without its author is a tougher one to answer.
The prospect of Trump riding the Mar-a-Lago train all the way to its next wreck – even if he is not indicted in the meantime – offers a tantalising fix for the Democratic party.
With Trump, Democrats would win so much people would get tired of winning (to borrow a phrase). Should Democrats retain the White House, that would mean they would have governed America for all but four of the 20 years since the 2008 financial meltdown.
It would also prove that Trump’s single term was indeed an “aberration”, as Joe Biden put it.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/foreign-affairs/why-aukus-should-really-become-jaukus-20221116-p5byqn
Why AUKUS should really become JAUKUS
Forget the Quad or the G20 – if Japan were to join AUKUS it would create a geopolitical grouping with an outsized influence on the region over the next decade.
Michael Auslin
Nov 17, 2022 – 8.00am
A new quad is coalescing in the Indo-Pacific – a grouping that brings together Australia, India, Japan, and the United States – and it is likely to have an even greater impact than the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue.
The new alignment is coming about as Australia, Britain, Japan and the United States increasingly align their security interests against the growth of China’s influence and power.
The prospect of adding Japan to the Australia-United Kingdom-United States defence co-operation pact, established in 2021 and known as AUKUS – which would turn the group into JAUKUS – could transform security co-operation among liberal democracies in the Indo-Pacific like no other previous alliance or quasi-alliance has managed.
Such a partnership was not preordained. Indeed, reports earlier this year that Japan was quietly being asked about joining AUKUS were quickly denied by Tokyo; then-White House press secretary Jen Psaki also dismissed the idea. But Japan looks to be aligning itself with the trio nonetheless, part of a strategic revolution that has not only transformed Tokyo’s security posture but turned it into an increasingly important actor in the Indo-Pacific.
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Pelosi’s tenure as House Speaker is unlikely to be surpassed
She asserted an iron will as Democrats’ longest-serving leader and never lost her grip on the party.
Edward Luce Columnist
Nov 18, 2022 – 9.46am
One of the most striking images of Nancy Pelosi’s storied career was when Hank Paulson, the Republican Treasury secretary, went down on bended knee in the White House to beg her to save the US economy.
The fact that it was Pelosi, a Democratic Speaker, to whom George W. Bush’s henchman turned to bail out the US in the midst of the 2008 financial meltdown will not be lost on history.
John Boehner, the Republican House leader, had no control of his caucus. Pelosi, who led a far more fractious party, never lost her grip on hers. The detail hardly matters (the bailout was the $US700 billion ($1 trillion) troubled asset relief programme); with Pelosi it was about execution.
She may be the last Speaker from either party to assert such iron will.
Pelosi’s retirement as the Democratic Party’s longest-serving leader – spanning 18 of the most turbulent years in America’s political history – highlights two aspects of today’s Washington.
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UK outlines billions in tax increases and spending cuts
Mark Landler
Nov 18, 2022 – 3.18am
London | Seeking to restore Britain’s fiscal credibility after a calamitous foray into trickle-down economics, the British government announced tens of billions of pounds of tax increases and spending cuts that officials promised would plug a gaping hole in the nation’s public finances.
The chancellor of the Exchequer, Jeremy Hunt, detailed a raft of higher taxes, worth £25 billion ($44 billion), and cuts to government programs, saving £30 billion. Together, it amounted to one of the most austere budgets ever imposed on Britain, a country that is already in a recession.
The plan’s immediate goal was to reduce a public deficit swollen by vast payouts during the coronavirus pandemic and the energy crisis. But the budget was also an act of fiscal penitence after the sweeping tax cuts rolled out in September by the last prime minister, Liz Truss. Those proposals roiled the markets, caused the pound to crash and cost Truss her job a few weeks later.
The remedy prescribed by Hunt and his boss, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, will be economically and politically painful, although many of the spending cuts do not kick in for two years.
It will raise taxes on tens of millions of Britons, who will suddenly find themselves in a higher tax bracket, and effectively cut funding for the Defence Ministry, foreign aid and cultural institutions in London.
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Economy in free fall: Britain hikes taxes to save sinking economy
By Rob Harris
November 18, 2022 — 3.58pm
Key points
· Biggest tax rises and spending cuts in more than a decade.
· Living standards are projected to fall by the most in six decades.
· Britain is in recession, says budget office, as it warns of eight lost years.
In a remarkable shift from a mini-budget that just two months ago promised extensive tax cuts, the British government will now impose the highest level of taxation on its citizens since World War II.
New Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt announced £25 billion ($44.3 billion) worth of tax rises, including a five-year freeze in income thresholds that will mean nearly six million people are dragged into higher tax rates.
He also announced that the 45 per cent income tax threshold would be lowered from £150,000 to £125,000, dragging a quarter of a million people into the higher tax bracket.
The government will also target oil, gas and power generation companies with a windfall tax as it seeks to address its spiralling debt, turbulent financial markets and restore confidence in its floundering economy.
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The five core principles for dealing with China under Xi
Former Australian prime minister
November 20, 2022 — 5.00am
Next month marks 50 years since the Whitlam government established diplomatic relations with Beijing – a momentous decision rooted in Gough’s visit to China as opposition leader the previous year.
Whitlam had been roundly attacked by Billy McMahon’s government, which claimed the Communists “played him like a trout”. McMahon was later humiliated by revelations that Henry Kissinger secretly visited China that same year, ahead of Nixon’s path-breaking visit that launched the next chapter of Chinese engagement with the world.
The Australia-China relationship has ebbed and flowed over five decades, but it has grown gradually closer. China became our biggest trading partner by the 2000s as trade flows shot through the roof and Chinese students flocked to our universities.
The darkest days came in 1989 amid Australian and global outrage at the massacre of students at Tiananmen Square. I recall being in the square in the weeks leading up to June 4 – an ugly chapter that Chinese textbooks still brush over as a “foreign-inspired, counter-revolutionary incident”.
China has also changed internally. Hu Jintao’s term saw increasingly assertive behaviour in the South China Sea – actions that were expressly identified in Australia’s 2009 Defence White Paper and influenced the decision then to double our submarine fleet and increase the surface fleet by a third.
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As China tensions linger, Australia’s ties with world’s fifth-largest economy are flying high
By Matt Wade
November 20, 2022 — 6.00am
The handshake was polite and the language cautious when Anthony Albanese met Xi Jinping at the G20 Summit in Bali on Tuesday.
The encounter was an “important step towards the stabilisation of the Australia-China relationship”, Albanese said. It was the first meeting between an Australian prime minister and the Chinese president for six years.
The contrast when Albanese met India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi a day later was striking. The handshake was effusive, the pair laughed and joked.
“So wonderful to see my friend @narendramodi and to celebrate the rich connections between our two countries and our people,” Albanese later tweeted.
The warmth of that interaction reflects the state of relations between Australia and India. While tensions with China have grabbed headlines, ties with India have been improving at surprising speed.
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Russian missile strikes black out Ukraine
By Ania Tsoukanova
AFP
6:01PM November 18, 2022
Fresh Russian strikes hit cities across Ukraine on Thursday in the latest wave of attacks that have crippled the country’s energy infrastructure and left millions without power as winter sets in and snow falls.
Repeated barrages have disrupted electricity and water supplies but the Kremlin blamed civilians’ suffering on Kyiv’s refusal to negotiate, rather than on Russian attacks.
The latest strikes coincided with the first snow this season, after officials in Kyiv warned of “difficult” days ahead.
“Four missiles and five Shahed drones were shot down over Kyiv,” the capital’s regional administration said, referring to Iranian-made suicide drones Moscow has been deploying in swarms against Ukraine targets.
The salvos also came as Moscow and Kyiv confirmed the extension of a deal allowing Ukraine to export grain through the Black Sea, which aims to help ease pressure on the global supply of food.
Ukraine has faced a series of strikes against its power grid following battlefield victories against Russia, the latest being Moscow’s retreat from the southern city of Kherson two weeks ago.
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I look forward to comments on all this!
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David.
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