December 01, 2022 Edition
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A relatively quiet week with US Thanksgiving holiday and the rest of the world relaxing a little while there seems to be a global shopping binge!
In Australia the ScoMo multiple ministry saga has been playing out with more to come I sure!
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Major Issues.
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Murdochs’ two top editorial chiefs go in dramatic 48 hours
Edmund Tadros and Mark Di Stefano
Nov 20, 2022 – 7.24pm
Rupert and Lachlan Murdochs’ newspaper empire faces its biggest editorial reshuffle in years after News Corp executives lost two of the company’s top editors in a dramatic 48-hour period last week.
News Corp Australia CEO Michael Miller sent out a memo to staff last Wednesday announcing The Australian’s editor in chief Christopher Dore would leave the company.
Despite the memo alluding to health issues, Mr Dore resigned from News Corp after allegedly making lewd comments towards a woman at an event in California last month, according to a report in The Sydney Morning Herald. Mr Dore had been at the company for 31 years.
Mr Dore’s departure came after a Tuesday morning report from news website Semafor, which revealed News Corp was planning to replace The Wall Street Journal editor in chief Matt Murray.
The report about the company’s plans to move the Journal’s editor in chief from the chair stunned the publication’s newsroom, who days later still remain in the dark about the reasons behind the popular editor’s exit, according to a person familiar with the matter.
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https://thenewdaily.com.au/finance/2022/11/21/workplace-laws-strike-kohler/
6:00am, Nov 21, 2022 Updated: 7:13pm, Nov 20
Alan Kohler: The right to strike, and recessions we have to have
So we’re having a national debate about the right to strike.
It’s ostensibly about wages growth and “multi-employer bargaining”, but really, it’s about strikes and whether, as a society, we want to go back to having them.
And the surprising legislative moderator for the debate is Harvard-educated, African-born former rugby player, Senator David Pocock.
The government says it has a mandate to “get wages moving”, but strikes weren’t mentioned in the campaign, and still aren’t, so how far that mandate goes is moot.
Employers say, in effect, that they’re happy to get wages moving as long as they do it off their own bat, and are not forced into it by their staff going on strike, invoking the grim days of the ’70s and ’80s to support their case.
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Even the best borrowers are feeling the pain of rate rises
Ayesha de Kretser Senior Reporter
Nov 21, 2022 – 5.00am
The number of young, professional and fully employed Australians reporting difficulties repaying loans has doubled compared with pre-pandemic levels in a “worrying” sign that higher mortgage rates are starting to hurt, according to credit bureau Equifax.
Mortgage stress levels already sat at double pre-COVID levels by June as the number of mortgage holders reverting to interest-only payments or entering into arrears rose sharply.
Since June, the Reserve Bank of Australia cash rate has jumped from 0.35 per cent to 2.85 per cent, the quickest pace of increases since the 1990s. This is putting pressure on household balance sheets and driving the proportion of mortgage repayments as a total of spending to near record levels.
“We haven’t seen the full impact of the interest rates, but we’ve seen 100 per cent increase in those requiring assistance,” said Equifax general manager advisory and solutions Kevin James.
The current RBA cash rate is tipped to hit 3.1 per cent in December, pushing the level of mortgage repayments as a percentage of household spending to a record.
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Coalition outspent Harvey Norman and Woolworths on advertising in final year in government
10:10PM November 20, 2022
The Morrison government increased spending on campaign advertising by 65 per cent to a record $240m during its final year in office, as the Coalition launched a media blitz about economic recovery, Covid-19 vaccinations and emissions policies ahead of the May election.
Ad Land cashed in when the planets of politics, statistics, climate and pandemic lined up and the federal government outspent the nation’s biggest private marketers such as Harvey Norman, Wesfarmers and Woolworths.
Amid calls for depoliticisation of advertising and harsh penalties for code breaches, the Albanese government has said it will ensure there is proper accountability and better value for taxpayers.
Labor promised to trim government advertising and to improve campaign vetting. It has committed to strip $570m from advertising, travel and legal expenses over four years, but has not detailed how it will do so.
Last month, Finance Minister Katy Gallagher told Senate estimates she had not reviewed the guidelines about government advertising, but said it was a priority.
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No mid-year budget update amid global deterioration
Ronald Mizen Economics correspondent
Nov 21, 2022 – 11.39am
Treasurer Jim Chalmers will not hand down a mid-year budget update next month for the first time in more than 25 years.
The Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook (MYEFO), usually released just before Christmas, was introduced in 1996-97 as a key element of former treasurer Peter Costello’s Charter of Budget Honesty.
However, the Albanese government says its October post-election budget met the requirements for a mid-year update, with key economic metrics all updated in Dr Chalmers’ first set of books.
The last time a budget was handed down in October was 2020 amid the turbulence of the coronavirus pandemic, and the Morrison government followed up with a December MYEFO.
Leading budget forecaster Chris Richardson said the economic environment meant little would be changed.
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22 Nov 2022 - 8.31AM
Recession avoidable but 2023 will be harder: NAB
Georgie Moore
National Australia bank chief executive Ross McEwan thinks Australia can avoid a recession because it’s rich in resources the world is clamouring for, but warns 2023 will be difficult year.
He told ABC RN Breakfast that Australia had an advantage over other developed nations because of its coal, gas, iron ore reserves and agriculture.
“All of these resources are required overseas at this point in time, and Australia has them and the prices are very good for these commodities,” McEwan said.
“We’re in a very good position. So I think we can avoid a recession, but it is going to get more difficult to squeeze out inflation. Prices are going up.
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Are financial conditions already tight enough to restrain inflation?
Bankers are already tightening their lending standards, which will amplify the effect of rising interest rates in curbing demand.
Karen Maley Columnist
Nov 21, 2022 – 4.55pm
James Bullard, the head of the St Louis branch of the US Federal Reserve, sent a shiver down the spines of investors last week when he argued that US interest rate rises have had “only a limited effect” on curbing inflation.
He suggested that the Fed’s target rate for official interest rates would need to rise to “a minimum level” of 5 per cent to 5.25 per cent to tame inflation. In his worst case scenario, official rates as high as 7 per cent might be needed, which is significantly higher than the Fed’s present target range of 3.75 per cent to 4 per cent.
But other economists believe that Bullard is being overly hawkish.
They point out that the Fed’s aggressive rate increases, in combination with its decision to shrink its $US9 trillion ($13.5 trillion) balance sheet by $US95 billion a month, has already resulted in a significant tightening in financial market conditions.
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Only five years left to prevent war with China: Kevin Rudd
November 21, 2022 — 6.30pm
China will be on a collision course within the next five years for war with the United States, and likely Australia, unless America and its allies can deter Beijing from launching a strike against Taiwan, former prime minister Kevin Rudd says.
While welcoming signs of stabilisation in China’s relationship with the US and Australia at last week’s G20 summit, Rudd warned that Chinese President Xi Jinping is more determined than ever to try to seize control the self-governing island of Taiwan.
“The next five years will very much shape and arguably determine the future stability of the Indo-Pacific region,” Rudd said in the JG Crawford Oration on Monday night, according to draft notes of his speech to the Australian National University.
“If we fail to navigate the next five years carefully, there is a grave risk that by the late 20s and the early 30s, we could well find ourselves on the cusp of armed conflict.”
A conflagration between China and the US over Taiwan would likely “be of an order of magnitude not seen since the Second World War”, Rudd said.
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Alison Todd and Elisa Mokany awarded in PM’s Science Prizes
9:00PM November 21, 2022
Two scientists who are leaders in the revolution in personalised medicine – tailoring drugs exactly to treat a patient’s illness – have won a prestigious award in this year’s Prime Minister’s Science Prizes.
Not only did Alison Todd and Elisa Mokany discover new ways of reading and interpreting genetic information to diagnose disease but they founded a company, SpeeDx, to develop and sell the technology which is now a successful Australian-based biotech business.
They are joint winners of the Prime Minister’s Prize for Innovation that recognises both their groundbreaking molecular diagnostic technology and their company’s successful effort to establish local high-technology manufacturing.
Professor Todd, who is chief scientific officer at SpeeDx as well as a UNSW adjunct professor, said the company’s flagship products identified bacteria behind sexually transmitted infections and also showed whether there was resistance or sensitivity to antibiotics so that doctors could choose the most effective drug.
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Defence review to park tanks in history
11:00PM November 21, 2022
The good news is, it seems the tank is gone. The interim report of the Defence Strategic Review, being conducted by Stephen Smith and Angus Houston, has been delivered to the government, which will get the final report early in February and respond to it fully by March. I hear the tank is gone.
In national security and international affairs, the Albanese government has had a whirlwind first six months. But there will hardly be anything more important than the decisions it makes next March.
The DSR will rightly recommend reduced investment in armour – tanks, infantry fighting vehicles and similar beasts – in order to focus on far more relevant and important priorities. There is no plausible scenario in which tanks, or even IFVs, could be important to Australian security. This means no more than 300 of the gargantuan-sized and largely unusable IFVs.
This is not a negative decision. It’s a reality decision. The DSR gives the government a chance to focus defence effort on capabilities relevant to our dangerous environment, in which the challenges are maritime, missile and drone.
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Top investors caught up in bitcoin miner’s near collapse
Tom Richardson Markets reporter and commentator
Updated Nov 22, 2022 – 3.31pm, first published at 1.05pm
A raft of high-profile Australian investors are caught up in a $333 million investment wipeout after the near collapse of Nasdaq-listed Australian bitcoin miner Iris Energy as a US creditor demanded it repay debts due immediately.
Investors caught out by Iris’s 94.5 per cent share price fall since its November 2021 initial public offer, include Phil King’s Regal Asset Management, Platinum Asset Management, Alex Waislitz’s Thorney Opportunities, Mike Cannon-Brookes Grok Ventures, and OC Funds Management.
Shares in the green bitcoin miner founded by former Macquarie Group bankers Will and Daniel Roberts plunged 18 per cent on Monday after it spooked investors by admitting US creditors are demanding immediate repayment of $US107.8 million in loans it took to buy bitcoin mining equipment.
Iris said its wholly owned subsidiaries set up as special purpose vehicles (SPVs) would default on the debt and that creditor New York Digital Investment Group (NYDIG) had no recourse or financial claim on the Nasdaq-listed Iris parent group.
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Crypto ETFs shut down after investor demand cools
By John Collett
November 23, 2022 — 5.07am
Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that track cryptocurrencies were launched with great fanfare earlier this year, but some providers have given notice they will close as investor interest wanes amid plunging prices and multiple high-profile collapses.
Cosmos Asset Management, which offers ETFs that track the prices of bitcoin and ether, and another that tracks an index of various listed crypto mining businesses, gave notice late last month it will close all three, with the money returned to investors.
ETF units are bought and sold on sharemarkets, just like shares in listed companies, and their price rises or falls in line with the market or the price, such as the price of the digital currency it tracks, minus a management fee.
Crypto ETFs can help protect crypto investors from the largely unregulated world of digital currencies, as the ETFs are regulated by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) and by sharemarket operators.
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Retail investors, some claiming hundreds of thousands of dollars in crypto, are facing heavy losses
November 23, 2022
The multi-billion dollar global collapse of bitcoin exchange FTX is opening up new territory for administrators, with a picture emerging from the local collapse that funds sitting in trading accounts had no protections.
This gives rise to administrators from KordaMentha sifting through a large number of accounts – in this case nearly 30,000 – where the traders are now the creditors of FTX’s Australian units. In other words retail investors, some claiming they had hundreds of thousands of dollars in cryptocurrencies, are facing heavy losses.
While the risks linked to trading cryptocurrencies are high, given their extreme volatility and lack of fundamental support, this shouldn’t take away from the basic principle that badly run companies are still behind the potential losses among investors.
FTX Australia was thinly capitalised and the cash or assets sitting in trust were quickly hedged away in an offshore entity with little left over.
It employed five people in Australia and had a board of three including Bahamas-based founder Sam Bankman-Fried. It has emerged the former poster child for respectable crypto trading, barely held meetings and ran his $32bn empire in a chaotic way.
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Aussies face savings, super wipeout in Brisbane crypto freeze
Jessica Sier Journalist
Nov 23, 2022 – 10.57am
Hundreds of Australians are facing the potential loss of savings and super they had left in the safekeeping of Brisbane-based crypto exchange Digital Surge, after it froze withdrawals and backflipped on assurances that their money was safe from the collapse of global exchange FTX.
Digital Surge was the first Australian exchange to be embroiled in the contagion spreading from the bankruptcy of the world’s third-largest crypto exchange, though fellow Brisbane rival Swyftx is currently in the market looking to raise $50 million in fresh capital.
Distressed customers reached out to Digital Surge as soon as revelations surfaced that Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX may have transferred as much as $US10 billion of customer money out of the crypto exchange and into his other business called Alameda Research.
Michael Jenner, a Queensland-based investor, was worried that Digital Surge, which had marketed itself to retirees through platforms like ESuperFund, used FTX to perform trades on behalf of its investors and had lost member funds in the collapse.
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Has inflation broken the relationship between stocks and bonds?
Dismissing the value of bonds in a balanced and diversified portfolio based on an event that has historically occurred 13 per cent of the time doesn’t make sense.
Duncan Burns Contributor
Nov 23, 2022 – 5.00am
While volatility in the financial markets is nothing new, the stormy weather of 2022 has been enough to unmoor even the most seasoned of investors.
Even investing truisms like “time in the market”, or “not timing the market”, which typically help investors stay the course, are on shaky ground. One investing truism that has lost the support of many an industry commentator is “bonds provide ballast in a multi-asset portfolio”.
While the relationship between bonds and equities has traditionally been inverse (when one falls, the other tends to rise), for much of 2022 the impact of rising interest rates and inflation has created a painful anomaly where both are performing badly, at the same time.
Is it then time to dismiss bonds as effective equity market shock absorbers, and declare the 60:40 portfolio dead?
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Fallout from global shocks will push prices higher for longer
We are in a different place from the ‘great moderation’ when globalisation, demographics, and technology combined to deliver more supply and less volatility.
John Kehoe Economics editor
Nov 23, 2022 – 2.58pm
People celebrating the push for deglobalisation should be careful what they wish for.
A slowdown in global trade and more onshoring of manufacturing since COVID-19 will make the economy less flexible, increase costs for business, and push up prices for consumers.
The disruptions to global supply chains and logistics experienced during COVID-19 have caused businesses to reassess how they source goods from around the world.
A good example is the construction industry, as it moves from “just in time” to “just in case” inventory.
A senior executive in construction in Sydney says the company now has extra warehouses to store excess building materials such as steel and timber, after interruptions in sourcing goods from China during its zero-COVID strategy. The additional warehouses have increased costs for building projects.
The offices, apartments and shopping centres that are built will be more expensive, and this will flow through to leases, rents and the prices of goods.
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Could the world’s most important market crash?
Senior business columnist
November 23, 2022 — 11.52am
For much of this year, traders and market analysts have been complaining about the volatility and lack of liquidity in the world’s most important market, the $US24 trillion ($36 trillion) market for US Treasury bonds. Its fragility is seen as a threat to the stability of the US and global financial system.
If this market were to seize up, as it has briefly in 2019 and again at the onset of the pandemic in March 2020, all financial markets would be threatened because US government bonds provide the benchmark for virtually all financial asset pricing. It’s the deepest, and regarded as the safest, financial market in the world.
As the recent crisis in the British market showed, convulsions in bond markets can cause unforeseen and unpleasant consequences. That crisis, sparked by an unfunded spending spree announced by the former UK prime minister and her chancellor, almost blew up the UK pension fund sector.
Last week, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York published a paper investigating the claims of unusual illiquidity and volatility in the Treasury securities market. Its key finding – with some qualifications – was that while the market has been less liquid in 2022, it has not been unusually illiquid given the high levels of volatility.
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The economic issues the federal government cannot ignore
By Shane Wright
November 23, 2022 — 2.36pm
A decade of policy inaction, misstep and failure is coming home to roost - and Australian taxpayers are being warned the cost of that will be borne by them.
Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe, former competition tsar Rod Sims, Treasury secretary Steven Kennedy, the Parliamentary Budget office and even the OECD have recently highlighted huge issues which have been for too long been swept under the nation’s shopworn political carpet.
While the political class has driven down culture war cul-de-sacs, sated the demands of vested interests or promised easy solutions to complex problems, those whose job is to advise and deal with economic issues are now increasingly airing their exasperation.
On Tuesday, Lowe used a speech to effectively argue the past three decades of government out-sourcing economic policy to the Reserve Bank must come to an end.
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The crypto industry’s house of cards is tumbling down fast
By Matthew Lynn
November 24, 2022 — 8.20am
Where did all the money go? Why was Sam Bankman-Fried on the cover of so many magazines and newspapers? What board games were they all playing in that apartment in the Bahamas and how much partner swapping was actually going on? As the FTX scandal unravels, with billions of dollars still to be tracked down and with other cryptocurrency firms likely to follow it into oblivion, there will be plenty of questions to be answered. But perhaps the biggest one will be this: why were so many of the biggest names in business, politics and the media so willing to go along with the whole charade?
In the immediate aftermath of the collapse, we have already learnt that the respected management consultancy Bain contributed to “due diligence” on the firm before an investment by Tiger Capital; that some of the leading names in venture capital, from Sequoia to SoftBank, poured hundreds of millions into the enterprise; that major media brands such ProPublica took money from the founder along with plenty of charities; and the likes of Sir Tony Blair and Bill Clinton were happy to pontificate at its conferences.
The capital markets will recover from the collapse of FTX. So in time will most, if not all, of the individuals trading through it, even if they lose some money. But the reputations of its cheerleaders will be permanently damaged, and perhaps fatally so - they should never have lent their weight to such a flimsy enterprise.
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Rudd is right – we can’t wish away a war with China
Military leader and strategist
November 24, 2022 — 5.00am
Former prime minister Kevin Rudd this week described how the next five years will shape the long-term stability of the Indo-Pacific region and determine the success of US efforts to deter China from taking military action against Taiwan. This is an informed insight. It is not a new one.
In June, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida warned that the Russian invasion of Ukraine could be repeated in Taiwan by China in the absence of unified deterrence by the US and its allies. Then, in October, the US Chief of Naval Operations, Michael Gilday, warned that China could undertake operations to seize Taiwan before 2027, and as early as 2023. In the same month, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken described how Chinese plans for the annexation of Taiwan are on a “much faster timeline”.
In his address to the 20th Party Congress in October, President Xi Jinping described how “resolving the Taiwan question is a matter for the Chinese, a matter that must be resolved by the Chinese”. The Chinese president has offered a very clear view of his intentions about Taiwan. He has also engaged in the build-up of a technologically advanced People’s Liberation Army that is unprecedented in modern peacetime history.
There are myriad studies in the US examining potential conflicts with China over Taiwan. Recent reports from the American Enterprise Institute and the Centre for Strategic and International Studies highlight the catastrophic clash of arms that would result, and the need to invest in military, economic and diplomatic measures to dissuade China from initiating a seizure of Taiwan.
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RBA boss Philip Lowe out of touch or teller of hard truths
6:33PM November 23, 2022
In what could be his last 10 months of his time in the top job, Reserve Bank boss Philip Lowe is setting himself up as an enthusiastic teller of inconvenient truths.
Lowe has received barely lukewarm support from his Treasurer amid the brickbats thrown at him over his misguided promise-not-promise last year to keep rates at zero until 2024, and Lowe would not fancy his chances for an extension to his seven-year term come September.
Copping a high-profile root-and-branch review into the central bank’s performance, governance and mandate would also not add to Lowe’s confidence about his job prospects. If Jim Chalmers decided new blood was necessary, Lowe would be the first governor since Bernie Fraser in 1996 to not get another three years.
With this context, it’s less surprising that the soft-spoken Lowe, over the course of an hour at a CEDA dinner in chilly Melbourne, dented or demolished a parade of Labor and union talking points.
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As in the ’70s, inflation dragon can only be slayed on the supply side
Rather than taking on vested interests to advance the public good, Labor is proposing the opposite – starting with attempting to re-rig labour markets.
Nov 24, 2022 – 1.04pm
Supply side reform is the only sustainable salve for the inflationary dragon set to singe us all.
The past 30 years will be remembered as the Goldilocks era: a rare moment of relative peace and prosperity coupled with tax cuts and increased government responsibility.
But unlike a comparable era that ended with the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, this one is more reminiscent of the cash-laden wheelbarrows of Weimar.
Despite the excuse of COVID-19, many of the underlying factors that have led to inflation already existed, and until they’re properly understood, slaying it won’t be as easy as increasing the cash rate.
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Online battle gets serious as Amazon shifts gear
The online behemoth’s launch in Australia five years ago was underwhelming, but the holiday may be over for local retailers as it moves into a new growth phase.
Sue Mitchell Columnist
Nov 24, 2022 – 2.00pm
Australia’s retail chiefs would never admit it publicly, but they should be thanking Amazon for entering the local market five years ago.
After lagging most of the developed world on e-commerce, Amazon’s arrival forced retailers to invest billions of dollars into online platforms and marketplaces, automated distribution centres, delivery and fulfilment capacity, data analytics, digital marketing and prices.
Without this investment, retailers would have been caught dangerously short by the shift in consumer spending from bricks and mortar stores to online, particularly during the pandemic.
Online spending reached more than 15 per cent of total retail sales (and 25.5 per cent of non-food spending) at the height of the pandemic, up from 6.6 per cent pre-pandemic and just 4 per cent before Amazon’s arrival.
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‘Extreme overreach’: Frydenberg felt betrayed by Morrison’s secret appointment
By Niki Savva
November 24, 2022
If any further proof was needed that Scott Morrison had lost touch with reality, not only while he was prime minister, but that his malady had lingered for months after, it came during his first conversation with Josh Frydenberg after Anthony Albanese revealed that Treasury was one of the former prime minister’s secret ministries.
Almost immediately after Albanese’s stunning announcement, Morrison tried to contact Frydenberg, ostensibly to apologise to his former deputy. Frydenberg ignored Morrison’s first few attempts, not trusting himself to speak to him, then finally responded. Frydenberg can’t actually remember Morrison using the ‘s’ word - sorry.
What really stuck in Frydenberg’s mind, and his craw, was Morrison’s response in that initial conversation when a profoundly disappointed Frydenberg put it to him that: ‘You wouldn’t do it again if you had your time over!’ Morrison replied: ‘Yes I would.’
Frydenberg was staggered. When he asked him why he had done it, Morrison had no coherent explanation, except to say that ‘No one understands what it was like’ - a theme he would reprise at his press conference afterwards, the one where he also insisted that he and Frydenberg remained ‘the best of friends’.
Frydenberg was incredulous. After a few days, Morrison rang Frydenberg again. He told him he had been thinking about their conversation. On reflection, he said, no, he would probably not take Treasury if he had his time over. Note, he only referred to Treasury. And there was still no apology.
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Why we should just let the crypto industry burn
By Ben Wright
November 25, 2022 — 8.10am
The bankruptcy of the energy trading company Enron in 2001 has long been a byword for staggering financial chicanery and breathtaking mismanagement. So when the guy who was sent to clean up that mess says he is now knee-deep in an even bigger corporate shambles, it’s worth taking note.
John Ray III is the insolvency professional who probably assumed he had ascended his professional Everest 20 years ago. But now he’s rummaging through every spreadsheet at the cryptocurrency exchange FTX trying to figure out where as much as $US8 billion ($11.9 billion) has upped and disappeared to. When he says he’s seen nothing like it before, you can be pretty sure it’s bad.
The downfall of Sam Bankman-Fried, who was able to combine youth, intelligence, arcane expertise, do-gooding and scruffiness in just the right blend to convince celebrities and ageing politicians that he was the next big thing while appearing to have used FTX as his own personal plaything, could very end up being the morality tale of our lifetimes.
But amid the dazzling fortunes, Bahamian mansions, partner swapping and effective altruism lies a central mystery that is in danger of being brushed over: why do cryptocurrency exchanges even exist?
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Critical Minerals Summit: Rare earths gateway to next boom, Jim Chalmers says
November 25, 2022
Jim Chalmers has outlined his vision for a foreign investment boom in critical mineral industries to seize the “opportunity of the century” and prevent Beijing from controlling the global tech supply chains of the future.
Speaking at The Australian-PwC critical minerals summit in Sydney on Friday, the Treasurer warned that Australia must be “clear-eyed about the fact that more and more critical minerals will become a locus of geo-economic competition”.
Dr Chalmers says that countries must avoid the pitfalls of a concentrated global market.
China currently dominates the mining of rare earths, tech supply chains from start to finish and the processing of lithium, despite Australia being the world’s largest producer of the mineral.
“In 2022, you don’t need to look that far back or that far forward to appreciate the challenges and risks that such concentration can pose,” Dr Chalmers said. “This kind of concentration creates supply chains that are especially vulnerable to disruption – with economic consequences that are far-reaching and deeply-felt.
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25 Nov 2022 2.47pm
Scott Morrison responds to secret ministries report
By Nigel Gladstone
Scott Morrison has “welcomed” the recommendations of the inquiry into his secret ministries conducted by Virginia Bell in a statement this afternoon.
“I was pleased to assist the inquiry with six separate and comprehensive responses to matters raised with me and my legal representatives by Hon. Virginia Bell,” Morrison wrote in a Facebook post.
“This engagement was done via correspondence as was the practice with other respondents to The Inquiry and accepted by Hon. Virginia Bell,” he wrote.
“In relation to the broader matters that were subject of The Inquiry I note that at all times as Prime Minister I sought to exercise my responsibilities in a manner that would best advance and protect Australia’s national interests and the welfare of the Australian people.
“This was done during a time of significant challenge not seen since the Second World War and the Great Depression. I am pleased that through these efforts and so many others that Australia was able to emerge from this period of significant crisis in a safer and more prosperous position than almost any other country in the world. This was our objective.
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Bewilderment, betrayal, anger: the week Morrison’s legacy was trashed
Former prime minister Scott Morrison went behind the backs of his ministers and the public, and appointed himself to five ministries. This week, his colleagues and opponents found out.
Phillip Coorey Political editor
Aug 19, 2022 – 4.28pm
There are at least three reasons why Scott Morrison will not accept the free advice currently on offer and quit politics.
First, the Liberal Party can ill afford a byelection right now. Morrison’s NSW division is gearing up for a state election in March, the coffers are bare after the federal election, and there is a risk, albeit slight, the party could lose Morrison’s Sutherland Shire seat of Cook if there were a byelection any time soon.
Second, Morrison, along with Malcolm Turnbull, is unique among former prime ministers in that he is not entitled to a parliamentary pension once retired. Under the changes forced in by John Howard and Mark Latham, anyone elected from 2004 onwards does not qualify for the old, generous pension.
While Turnbull is independently wealthy, Morrison, elected in 2007 and aged in his mid-50s, still has a mortgage, and kids at school. If he retires from politics, he receives an office, car and phone like all former PMs, but no salary. Until he can establish a post-political career, he won’t be leaving.
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Morrison’s multiple ministries fated to remain a mystery
It’s now even harder to fathom why Scott Morrison thought this was a good idea. But the tactical gift to Labor is clear enough.
Laura Tingle Columnist
Nov 25, 2022 – 4.26pm
“Meep, meep, meep!” exclaimed a Labor MP this week cheerily as he anticipated the release of the Bell inquiry into Scott Morrison’s multiple ministries.
“That, of course, is the sound of a truck reversing over a rotting carcass”.
Pragmatic politics was hardly the chief reason the prime minister commissioned former High Court judge Virginia Bell to conduct an inquiry into the bizarre episode of Scott Morrison appointing himself to multiple ministries without telling any of his colleagues.
It’s hard to find anyone involved in the law or federal politics who can quite wrap their heads around either why the former prime minister would have thought this was a good idea politically, or administratively, to act as he did.
And it’s even harder to find anyone who can quite fathom all the implications for the way we “think” our government works for the fact he did so. Or in how it was allowed to happen by the bureaucrats and advisers surrounding the prime minister or the governor-general.
Which is why the Bell inquiry is so important. Yet even such an extensive inquiry is unable to really reveal just what was going on in the former prime minister’s head that made him think it was okay to be sworn to be responsible for effectively running half the government – to be able to overrule three of his ministers on major policy decisions – yet not tell anyone.
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Fifty worst cases in 10 days: how the Family Court fixed itself
The court was dealing with entrenched conflicts lasting up to six years. Then judges were flown in with a mission to sort them out.
Michael Pelly Legal editor
Nov 25, 2022 – 12.45pm
Early last month, the Family Court listed 50 of “the worst” cases it could find; conflicts over custody and property that had been dragging on for up to six years.
Chief Justice Will Alstergren and five other judges – two from interstate – gathered at the federal law courts in Parramatta, a place Alstergren calls “the heartland of family law”, with the aim of clearing every case over 10 hearing days.
“They’d been in the system for years,” Alstergren tells AFR Weekend. “Not going to settle, hard to get the parties organised to get on [to a hearing]; substance abuse, family abuse, the whole bit.
“They’d had a life of their own.”
The chief justice had given the job of preparing the list to family law veteran Grant Riethmuller, after he was promoted to division one of the merged Federal Circuit and Family Court in October last year. Riethmuller had been a Melbourne-based circuit court judge for 17 years, but Alstergren wanted him to move to Sydney.
“I said to him: ‘You’re going out to Parramatta,’” he says. “We grabbed 50 of the worst cases we could find; people with really entrenched differences that were going nowhere; legacy cases that were just sitting there. Riethmuller got them organised for us.”
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Interest rate shock just around the corner
One-third of borrowers will see their spare cash shrink by more than 40-100 per cent over the next year.
Christopher Joye Columnist
Nov 25, 2022 – 1.09pm
The Reserve Bank of Australia has a massive trick up its sleeve. The potency of this gambit is still very much underappreciated. In its latest financial stability review, the RBA published a chart on the share of fixed-rate mortgages in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the UK and the US.
NZ and the US are sitting at or above 90 per cent of all home loans. The UK is north of 80 per cent. Canada is just shy of 70 per cent. The construction of the Aussie mortgage market is, by way of contrast, radically different. Historically, less than 20 per cent of all loans have been fixed.
As a result of the RBA generously lending $188 billion of three-year fixed-rate loans to the banking system at an annual cost of between 0.1 and 0.25 per cent during the pandemic, the share of fixed-rate mortgages surged to almost 40 per cent of the stock.
The RBA estimates that around 23 per cent of all Aussie home loans – worth almost $500 billion worth – are fixed rate and will switch to variable rate by the end of 2023.
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Momentum has shifted in Australia’s financial pecking order
Chanticleer is Australia's pre-eminent business column.
Nov 25, 2022 – 7.06pm
When Treasurer Jim Chalmers called together the leaders of Australia’s most influential financial institutions to the Treasury offices in Sydney on Friday it was manifestly clear who owned the room.
The bastions of capitalism – the five big banks and some wealth management companies – found themselves outnumbered by big super and the Future Fund.
Here in one room was Australia’s new financial pecking order as viewed through the eyes of the Albanese government.
The major banks, which control trillions of dollars in loan assets, mostly in mortgages, were alongside half a dozen of the largest pension funds in the world.
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Labor’s fraying ties with business an ominous sign
The relationship between Labor and business has hit a string of potholes. It’s a sign of a government not yet focused on what really counts.
Nov 25, 2022 – 6.28pm
Leading Labor commentators once mocked the Coalition for its heavy-handed approach to business, implying that the party of the workers could be trusted to take a more rational and mature approach to big employers.
No more taxing banks “because nobody likes you”, or the populist “big stick” for the energy companies, which more than matched Labor’s pre-2019 “big end of town” rhetoric. No more surprises or shocks.
Yet eight months after Anthony Albanese’s pre-election charm offensive – well-paid workers with profitable employers, the candidate prime minister stressed at The Australian Financial Review Business Summit in March – the government-business relationship is showing signs of fraying over industrial relations, energy policy and, once again, the banks.
On Thursday, the government was forced into a backflip upon a backflip. After frantic lobbying by the banks, it has held back new Financial Accountability Regime (FAR) legislation containing a Greens demand to add million-dollar fines for erring individual bankers, in exchange for Greens support to pass a string of other financial services bills without debate.
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The compelling case for parliament to condemn Scott Morrison
Chief political correspondent
Updated November 25, 2022 — 4.19pmfirst published at 4.10pm
The damning report into Scott Morrison and his multiple ministries sets up a compelling case for a vote in parliament to condemn his conduct.
There are no doubts about the damage caused by his decision as prime minister to be sworn into other portfolios without telling the ministers, the parliament or the people.
Former High Court judge Virginia Bell sets out the harm: undermining confidence in government; creating confusion over responsibilities; avoiding accountability.
The outcome, she concluded, was “corrosive” to trust in government.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will accept Bell’s call to change the law to make sure the secret appointments cannot be repeated. Fixing the problem is the priority.
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Former PM’s accounts of his decisions ‘difficult to reconcile’: Bell
By Shane Wright
November 25, 2022 — 6.38pm
Former High Court justice Virginia Bell described as “improbable” and “difficult to reconcile” some of Scott Morrison’s versions of the secrecy around his multiple ministries as she sought and failed to get a face-to-face meeting with the former prime minister.
A press conference and two Facebook posts by Morrison formed the bulk of his assistance to the inquiry despite Bell offering him a three-week window in which to talk directly to her, either in Sydney or his Canberra office.
Instead, Morrison relied on a solicitor to respond to Bell’s queries, including through a letter this week that warned Bell she would be unable to make any “inferences or conclusions” around national security issues because she would have to rely on incomplete information.
The review by Bell was ordered by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese after it was revealed in August that Morrison had himself secretly sworn in to administer the departments of treasury, home affairs, health, finance, and industry, science, energy and resources during his last term in government.
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New finds point to ‘entirely different story’ of Aboriginal past
From ‘industrial scale’ mining to permanent settlements and an Indigenous Silk Road, eye-opening archaeological discoveries are changing what we know about how early Aborigines lived.
By Jamie Walker
November 25, 2022
Michael Westaway is treading warily given the ground here is treacherous. For the past five years, the Brisbane-based archaeologist and his team have quietly been digging into the chameleonic Mithaka country of southwest Queensland, piecing together what life must have been like for the original settlers.
We’re talking of the very First Australians, not the graziers and colonial police who confronted and bloodily subjugated the Indigenous population during the second half of the 19th century in this far-flung corner of the continent.
Westaway’s findings are eye-opening and represent an important advance in our understanding of how Aborigines not only survived in an unyielding environment but thrived prior to contact.
The Mithaka people had lived simply in squat, igloo-like gunyahs, sometimes grouped in sizeable settlements, presiding over a vibrant trading system reaching from red-rock Flinders Ranges in South Australia to Top End savannahs lapped by the warm waters of the Gulf of Carpentaria.
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Morrison’s ignominious legacy
Editorial
11:00PM November 25, 2022
Scott Morrison’s achievements as prime minister were considerable. They included bringing the nation through the pandemic better than most of the world, AUKUS, good economic management under the expert hand of Josh Frydenberg and steadying the ship of state as the first prime minister since John Howard to complete a full term. As a result of his bad judgment, however, Mr Morrison’s legacy will remain tainted by his inexcusable, extraordinary decision to have himself sworn into the portfolios of health, home affairs, Treasury, finance and industry, science, energy and resources. It is almost incomprehensible that Mr Morrison kept his actions secret, not only from the public but from cabinet and the relevant ministers. That included his treasurer and deputy Liberal leader, Mr Frydenberg, who lived at The Lodge during the ACT lockdown.
As former High Court judge Virginia Bell said in her report into the matter, released on Friday, the appointments to administer the departments of health and finance in March 2020 – first revealed in this newspaper in August this year – were made under the extreme pressure of responding to the onset of Covid. But they were unnecessary. If Greg Hunt or Mathias Cormann had become incapacitated “and it was desired to have a senior minister exercise the health minister’s expansive human biosecurity emergency powers or the finance minister’s significant financial authorities, Mr Morrison could have been authorised to act as minister for health or minister for finance in a matter of minutes”. The other appointments, the inquiry concluded, “had little if any connection to the pandemic’’. The secrecy was “corrosive of trust” in government.
Mr Morrison’s bizarre conduct, which the report sheets home to him alone, not to Governor-General David Hurley or to Phil Gaetjens, then head of Mr Morrison’s department, remains a gift horse for Anthony Albanese when his government is under pressure over industrial relations. Mr Albanese will implement the report’s six recommendations and move legislation to require the appointment of a minister be made public. Peter Dutton and the opposition can only agree and move on.
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https://www.afr.com/politics/labor-daniel-andrews-to-win-historic-third-term-20221126-p5c1it
Andrews claims historic Labor victory
Patrick Durkin BOSS Deputy editor
Nov 26, 2022 – 9.47pm
The Labor Party has won a historic third term in Victoria after the Liberal Party failed to make any inroads in Melbourne’s east or key suburban seats, despite a swing against the Daniel Andrews-led Labor.
Labor appears to have suffered a swing of more than 5 per cent against it across the state, with gains made by teal independents and the Greens. The minor party are set to gain the inner-city seat of Richmond and are in the hunt for Northcote, after also challenging Labor in Albert Park, Pascoe Vale, Footscray and Preston.
Liberal leader Matthew Guy waited until shortly before 11pm to call the premier to concede defeat, with Mr Andrews telling a packed crowd in his seat of Mulgrave that “hope always defeats hate”.
“Labor icon Paul Keating once said to me, ‘son, leadership is not about doing what is popular, leadership is about doing what is right’,” he said to cheers.
“That is exactly what the people of this great state have endorsed today, in resoundingly re-electing our strong, stable, majority Labor government.”
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Victorian Election 2022: Crushing win for Labor as Daniel Andrews brings Liberals to their knees
10:12PM November 26, 2022
This is a momentous result for Labor and a catastrophic outcome for the Liberal Party.
Labor’s statewide primary vote has fallen significantly but it has held on in the grumpy western suburbs and made further inroads in the former Liberal heartland in the east.
The swings that have been largest against the government have occurred in safe seats, chiefly in Melbourne’s west.
Several once safe or notional heartland Liberal seats are likely to have fallen once early votes are counted.
There have been huge swings in Melbourne’s east, with the Liberals down 12.1 points in Ringwood, 15 points in Bayswater and 8.2 points in Glen Waverley.
The Greens and the Nationals appear to have been significant beneficiaries of community angst in the inner city and regions.
Outgoing Victorian Labor MP Lisa Neville says this is "a Labor victory” and “an extraordinary win” for Victoria’s… Premier Daniel Andrews in the state election. “I think he’s an extraordinary leader, I’ve had the privilege of knowing him for a very long time and he’s pulled off something More
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Army in line of fire as sweeping defence review homes in on cuts
November 27, 2022 — 5.00am
The Australian Army’s helicopter fleet is being closely examined for cuts alongside planned purchases of tanks and infantry fighting vehicles in a sweeping federal government review aimed at preparing Australia for a potential war with China within 10 years.
Sources familiar with the government’s Defence Strategic Review said the army has been a particular focus for potential cuts compared to Australia’s navy and air force.
Former defence minister Stephen Smith and former defence force chief Angus Houston are leading the review, established to reconfigure the Australian Defence Force (ADF) for the next decade of strategic threats.
Smith and Houston handed an interim copy of their report to Defence Minister Richard Marles earlier this month and will deliver a final report by March.
Aware the defence budget is under intense pressure, the reviewers are said to have been casting a close eye over tens of billions of dollars worth of planned purchases of army helicopters, tanks and other infantry vehicles as the government seeks to bolster Australia’s air and maritime capabilities.
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COVID-19 Information.
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Covid-19: Hundreds unable to be admitted at ICUs during pandemic
9:30PM November 24, 2022
Intensive care units across the country were unable to admit hundreds of referred patients because of inadequate resources during the Covid-19 pandemic, with doctors and nurses forced to care for some patients who needed critical care on wards.
Those who could not get beds in ICU included patients suffering health emergencies, those with deteriorating conditions and those recovering from serious elective surgery, while scheduled surgeries of the highest urgency that required post-operative care in ICU were also cancelled in hundreds of cases.
While health ministers insisted throughout the pandemic that hospitals did not get to the point of being overwhelmed, a new report has revealed that, despite being bolstered with extra beds and ventilators, intensive care units were under so much stress that they could not accept patient referrals in one out of every 50 cases nationwide in 2021.
The revelations are contained in the Australasian Clinical Indicator Report 2014-2021, published by the Australian Council on Healthcare Standards.
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Climate Change.
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Australia’s ‘cleaner coal’ is a systematic export scam, Wilkie to tell parliament
November 21, 2022 — 5.02am
Australian coal exporters have been falsifying data to suggest their coal is cleaner than it is in order to increase its export price in a scam involving two testing laboratories, major accountancy firms and an investment bank, federal MP Andrew Wilkie is expected to tell parliament on Monday.
Wilkie says he has been provided with thousands of pages of documents by an industry whistleblower and will call for a parliamentary inquiry into the allegations, days after the corporate watchdog decided against taking action against one of the laboratory companies.
“The fraud is environmental vandalism and makes all the talk of net zero emissions by 2050 a fiction,” says a draft of the speech, seen by this masthead.
“It could also be criminal, trashing corporate reputations as well as our national reputation.”
According to the whistleblower and the documents he has provided, coal testing laboratories that certify the quality of coal shipments leaving Australia have been falsifying data to suggest the coal is of higher quality than their tests show.
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Energy prices to ‘hollow out’ manufacturing within two years: Chalmers
By Mike Foley
November 21, 2022 — 10.30pm
Australia’s manufacturing sector will be crippled by soaring energy prices within two years unless the government acts to bring down costs, Treasurer Jim Chalmers says as he prepares to announce what would be an unprecedented market intervention.
Chalmers told manufacturing and business leaders on Monday he was preparing to announce “temporary, meaningful, sensible” regulations to ease the crisis.
“We don’t want to get 12 or 24 months down the road and have industry hollowed out by a war in Ukraine,” he told the 75 executives at a lunch in Parliament House.
An international energy crunch is driving international demand, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the federal Treasury forecast that gas prices would rise a further 20 per cent next year, and electricity prices 30 per cent.
The Albanese government is under pressure to relieve the pressure of energy costs on households and industry, following its election promise to revitalise manufacturing and cut power bills by $275 by 2025.
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World in ‘largest energy crisis since the 1970s’, says OECD
Ronald Mizen Economics correspondent
Nov 22, 2022 – 9.00pm
The global energy price crisis is as bad as the 1970s, the OECD says, with spending on electricity, natural gas and coal forecast to double year-on-year to the highest level in more than four decades.
Soaring energy prices mean global economic growth is forecast to slow to just 2.2 per cent in 2023, according to the latest economic outlook from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
OECD chief economist Alvaro Santos Pereira said periods of high energy expenditure were often associated with a recession.
“The energy shock has pushed up inflation to levels not seen for many decades and is lowering economic growth all around the world,” he said.
“If inflation is not contained, these problems will only become worse. Thus, fighting inflation has to be our top policy priority right now.”
Spending among OECD nations on electricity, natural gas, oil and coal soared to almost 18 per cent of GDP this year, up from about 10 per cent in 2021, with major leaps across all energy categories.
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Future shock: more heat, more bushfires, more droughts, say BoM and CSIRO
11:01PM November 22, 2022
The global decline in fossil fuel consumption during the Covid-19 pandemic will have a “negligible” impact on climate change, with Australians facing a future of hotter summers, longer bushfire seasons, less rain and more droughts.
A report released by the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO showed Australia’s climate has warmed by 1.47C since 1910, with sea temperatures increasing by 1.05C.
“The decline in global fossil fuel emissions of CO2 in 2020 associated with the Covid-19 pandemic will have a negligible impact on climate change,” the report says.
“Atmospheric CO2 concentrations continue to rise, and fossil fuel CO2 emissions, the principal driver of this growth, were back to near pre-pandemic levels in 2021.”
Under the Paris Agreement, governments are trying to keep global warming to 1.5C of pre-industrial levels, with average global air temperature increasing by about 1C since 1850.
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https://thenewdaily.com.au/finance/2022/11/24/climate-change-action-kohler/
6:00am, Nov 24, 2022 Updated: 8:44pm, Nov 23
Alan Kohler: It’s national suicide by politics, it’s death by degrees
Far from implementing the vision of COP26 in Glasgow, as intended, COP27 in Egypt signed the death warrant for 1.5°C.
That number was the ambition of COP21 in Paris: Keeping warming to 2°C above pre-industrial age global mean temperatures, and preferably 1.5°C.
Over the seven years since then, the world’s politicians and business leaders have been quietly slinking away from that while saying the opposite. It’s suicide by politics.
That has been exposed in Egypt with a deal on cash bribes to poor countries, but little else.
Keeping warming to 1.5°C now looks impossible, and according to David Karoly, one of Australia’s leading climate scientists, there’s an 80 per cent chance of 2°C, while 3°C is 50/50.
What’s more, says Karoly, given that the sea is cooler than the land, a global mean temperature rise of 2°C means at least 3°C on the land, where we all live. And 3°C global mean equals an unliveable 4°C on land.
Last year the Australian Academy of Science published a report co-authored by David Karoly, titled: Risks to Australia of a 3°C Warmer World.
It makes confronting reading, especially considering this is now a 50 per cent likelihood.
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Royal Commissions And The Like.
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No entries in this categoty.
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National Budget Issues.
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Reserve Bank forecasts see-sawing interest rates as economy worsens
By Shane Wright
November 22, 2022 — 9.00pm
Interest rates will swing up and down more often to deal with increasingly erratic inflation over coming years, with Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe warning climate change, an ageing population, the breakdown of supply chains and the overhaul of the energy grid will all put upward pressure on prices.
As the OECD forecast Australia’s growth rate to more than halve over the next two years due to the turmoil unleashed by the war in Ukraine, Lowe said the federal budget bottom line would have to sharply improve to ensure the country could move swiftly to deal with the economic challenges ahead.
The Reserve Bank is expected to lift interest rates to a 10-year high of 3.1 per cent at its December meeting as it seeks to rein in inflation, forecast to reach 8 per cent by year’s end.
Strong domestic demand, loose monetary policy settings earlier in the year, government spending and handouts have combined with the spike in global energy prices and supply chain issues to push inflation well above the RBA’s 2-3 per cent inflation target.
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Health Issues.
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Australian award-winning scientist develops new biotechnology to repair damaged hearts
November 21, 2022
Australia’s most prestigious science award is to return to Parliament House on Monday for the first time since the pandemic.
The 2021 winner of the Prime Minister’s Prize for Innovation, University of Sydney professor Anthony Weiss, has used the past year since taking out the prestigious award to develop and commercialise synthetic tropoelastin-based biomaterials that improve and repair damaged tissue.
“It certainly has been impressive, inspirational – it’s a pinnacle type of award and I’ve swept all the major innovation awards, but I put this one at the top of the list,” Professor Weiss said.
“This technology has substantially improved the way in which we’ve been able to repair skin, you know, everything ranging from small scars to larger wounds.”
The Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre's Professor Sherene Loi has been awarded a Prime Minister’s Prize for… Science for her research into innovative treatments to improve the survival of breast cancer patients. The Prime Ministers' Prizes for Science are Australia's most prestigious awards for outstanding achievements in research, research-based More
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Australians forced to skip medical check ups as costs rise, study shows
7:10PM November 20, 2022
Australians are being forced to skip GP appointments as the cost of healthcare services rise, according to research by the Australian Patients’ Association and HealthEngine.
New data from the Australian Healthcare Index found 53 per cent of respondents chose to forego regular medical check-ups due to rising out-of-pocket expenses – with 10 per cent of respondents saying they had to find a new GP clinic.
“The impacts of the decline of bulk-billing practices and GP shortages on the wider healthcare system is translating into greater strain on our medical professionals, resources and hospitals, in addition to the overall health and wellbeing of patients,” Dr Marcus Tan, CEO and founder of HealthEngine and GP said.
“Patients going less often for care will end up in emergency rooms putting more pressure and demand on our already buckling emergency department, including ambulance and nursing staff.”
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Medical complaints increase as patients hold doctors to account
November 24, 2022 — 5.00am
Complaints to Australia’s health practitioner watchdogs are rising and doctors account for the bulk of the almost 19,000 grievances, with the majority lodged by patients and their loved ones.
The Australian Health Practitioner Regulatory Agency (AHPRA) and co-regulators in NSW and Queensland received 18,710 complaints about 14,313 health practitioners in Australia (about 1.7 per cent of the entire registered workforce) in the 2021/2022 financial year.
APHRA alone received 10,803 complaints about 8380 practitioners – a 6.5 per cent increase on the previous year, the agency’s latest annual report shows.
The agency oversees the registration and accreditation of Australia’s more than 852,000 health practitioners across 16 professions, including doctors, nurses, physiotherapists, psychologists, paramedics, optometrists and Chinese Medicine practitioners.
Doctors overwhelmingly received the bulk of complaints, with 8146 medical practitioners (6.2 per cent of all 131,953 doctors registered nationally) accounting for 10,873 complaints to AHPRA, NSW’s Health Professional Councils Authority, or Queensland’s Office of the Health Ombudsman.
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International Issues.
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Wall Street rebuffs soft landing dream as bets on stagflation rise
Denitsa Tsekova
Nov 20, 2022 – 3.05pm
On the most optimistic corners of Wall Street, promising inflation data over the past week or so suggest the Federal Reserve may accomplish a soft landing after all.
Yet no such belief prevails among the big money managers, who are betting that an economic downturn riddled with still-hot price pressures will define trading next year.
With a closely watched section of the Treasury yield curve sending fresh recession signals, stagflation is the consensus viewpoint among a whopping 92 per cent of respondents in Bank of America’s latest fund manager survey.
At the same time, Citigroup is painting a scenario of the “Powell Push” in which the Fed will be compelled to lift rates even if growth plunges, while BlackRock sees no prospect of a soft landing either in the US or Europe.
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The global system is creaking under the weight of a rising China
The international rules-based order defines China as a developing country. That fiction is hard to sustain and could hobble the likes of COP and the WTO.
Hans van Leeuwen Europe correspondent
Nov 20, 2022 – 9.03am
Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt | There was a mind-numbing amount of speechifying during the late-night sessions of the COP27 climate summit’s final days, as 190-plus nations worked to land a deal. But among the most potentially significant might be a fleeting statement from China’s climate envoy Xie Zhenhua.
It was a cursory two-minute intervention, and he did not seem to say much. It sounded like a standard helping of diplomatic word salad, served lukewarm.
He said it was important to defend the 1992 climate convention that set up the COP process, and the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement. This included the need for climate finance to flow from advanced economies to the developing world.
“This is the time that we should implement the Paris Agreement. It is not a time to rewrite and revise the Paris Agreement and revise the convention ... it should not be the time [for it] to be diminished,” he said.
“It is very important to remember that it is public finance from developed countries, that is what we are talking about.”
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Tokyo’s radical defence step-up a timely blueprint
11:00PM November 20, 2022
Japan finds itself today at the dangerous frontline of China, Russia, and the Korean peninsula. It faces such dangerous nearby flashpoints as the Senkaku Islands, Taiwan and the South China Sea, as well as North Korea.
Japan’s Prime Minister, Fumio Kishida, has recently stated that his strong sense is that “Ukraine today may be East Asia tomorrow”.
Kishida observes that the security environment is rapidly becoming increasingly severe in the areas surrounding Japan and that to defend Japan resolutely and fully “reinforcing our deterrence and response capabilities is a mission of the highest priority”.
In a key policy speech on October 3, he called for the fundamental reinforcement of Japan’s defence capabilities within the next five years. He went on to stress that Japan will accelerate its realistic consideration of all options, “without excluding any possibilities of what is necessary to protect the public, including so-called counterstrike capabilities”.
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Playing on ‘cheat mode’, Sam Bankman-Fried’s Alameda still lost billions
Jessica Sier Journalist
Nov 21, 2022 – 1.58pm
There’s a video of Alameda’s chief executive officer Caroline Ellison - an earnest, bespectacled woman with a ringing Californian accent - telling an audience she thinks ‘stop losses’ are kind of stupid.
“I just don’t think they’re an effective risk management tool,” the 28-year-old says into the microphone, before declining to describe some of her worst trades.
“I don’t see the point of sharing that kind of information,” she laughs.
Every trader I speak to is stunned by Alameda’s collapse. Not because FTX was found to be shovelling customer money over to Alameda - though that’s sickening enough - but because Alameda actually lost it in the market.
The hardened crypto traders who chug Red Bull, crunch Adderall, and remain glued to four blinking screens for hours at a time are shocked.
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Crypto sceptics are reading the wrong lesson from FTX
Greed and poor governance, not tech flaws or liberal use of emojis, caused the shocking downfall of the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency exchange.
Aleks Vickovich Wealth editor
Nov 21, 2022 – 2.19pm
“I told you so” – no four words seemingly give the critic more satisfaction.
And, boy, have we heard some satisfied gloating from pundits since the collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX this month and fall from grace of its scruffy-haired Millennial founder Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF).
The collective schadenfreude from sceptics in the traditional finance world and media has been almost unparalleled since SBF and his gang of hoodie-wearing cronies filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, leaving their much-hyped exchange and trading businesses worthless.
It would be wrong to read the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX as an indictment of the underlying technology.
To be clear, the management of FTX – which the administrator has called the worst case of “corporate failure” he has witnessed in his career, just days into the task – deserves to be held to account. Hopefully, justice for aggrieved investors and customers will ultimately be determined by the courts.
But much of the glee over the FTX collapse jumps to the wrong conclusion – excitedly penning premature obituaries for the digital assets market rather than calling FTX what it was: a failure of governance, ethics and basic regulation.
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Bonds signal impending US recession on hawkish Fed talk
Cecile Lefort Markets reporter
Nov 21, 2022 – 3.50pm
US bond yields rose, and the Australian dollar receded from a two-month top on speculation the Federal Reserve will push through higher interest rates and plunge the world’s largest economy into recession.
Illustrating concerns that tighter monetary conditions will cool economic activity too far, the gap between US 2-year and 10-year Treasury yields widened on Friday to 71 basis points, the deepest level since at least 2000.
When short-term borrowing rates are higher than long-term ones, it indicates the economy will tip into recession in the next year or two. US 2-year yields rose to 4.53 per cent, against 3.82 per cent paid on the 10-year bonds.
On Friday, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston president Susan Collins said the central bank has more work to do, echoing views of her peers. She suggested that with little evidence prices were cooling, another 0.75 percentage point increase was on the table and expressed confidence that policymakers can tame inflation without doing too much damage to employment.
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China tensions could lead to war in Indo-Pacific in five years: Rudd
Andrew Tillett Political correspondent
Nov 21, 2022 – 6.20pm
The Indo-Pacific region could be on the cusp of armed conflict within five years if the West and China fail to manage growing strategic tensions, former prime minister Kevin Rudd has warned.
Delivering the JG Crawford Oration at the Australian National University on Monday night, Dr Rudd said Chinese President Xi Jinping was putting his country on a war footing and would be in a position to take action against Taiwan in the late 2020s or in the 2030s.
While China and the US had begun to put in place strategic guardrails to manage competition in the name of stability at last week’s G20 leaders’ summit in Bali, Dr Rudd said it was uncertain whether this would succeed.
While the balance of military power was moving in China’s favour, Dr Rudd – who is being touted as a potential ambassador to the US – believed neither side was prepared to roll the dice over the future of Taiwan.
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Crypto crisis: Bitcoin slumps as bankruptcy rumours hit digital exchange Genesis
By Sunil Jagtiani
November 22, 2022 — 9.17am
Digital-asset brokerage Genesis is struggling to raise fresh cash for its lending unit, and it’s warning potential investors that it may need to file for bankruptcy if its efforts fail, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
The news accelerated losses for cryptocurrency prices that have been already falling due to the ongoing crisis sparked by the downfall of Sam Bankman-Fried’s once-powerful FTX empire.
The largest token Bitcoin has shed as much as 4.7 per cent to $US15,485 ($23,993), the least since November 2020. Second-ranked Ether is roughly 5 per cent lower. Meme token Dogecoin – a gauge of the most speculative sentiment in an already racy digital playground – is down about 12 per cent over the past two days.
Administrators are picking over the wreckage of the FTX bankruptcy, discovering that $US3.1 billion is owed to top creditors. The scope of the money outstanding is stoking worries that more digital-asset outfits will topple.
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Trump White House run highlights danger of democratic recession
11:00PM November 20, 2022
The possibility of a second Trump presidency is raising questions about the future of US democracy. Donald Trump’s last term saw public institutions struggle to maintain their integrity and independence, and it is not clear they will succeed again.
Bodies that oversee government and run its elections depend on people who adhere to principles of good governance. The fear is that Trump will fill these posts with people whose fealty to him takes precedence over everything else.
Democracies around the world have long operated on the assumption that the separation of powers, an independent judiciary, bills of rights, representative democracy and other checks and balances are sufficient to keep politicians in line.
These though are not ordinary times, and such assumptions can no longer safely be made. Recent experience demonstrates that the world is not on a trajectory of democratic expansion. Instead, we have entered a period of democratic recession, with one study identifying 16 countries suffering “democratic backsliding”.
This is true even in nations that have been bastions of democracy. Britain is an example of where attacks on judges and their independence have been ferocious. In one case, three judges of the High Court of England and Wales held that the nation’s exit from the EU required parliamentary consent. The Daily Mail ran a front-page headline, “Enemies of the People”, complete with blown-up photographs of the judges. They were accused of having “declared war on democracy”.
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The market can deliver the green transition — just not fast enough
Policymakers and governments need to work out how to accelerate the process.
Martin Wolf Columnist
Nov 23, 2022 – 9.53am
Whatever else may be wrong with economics, its starting point is correct: people do indeed respond to incentives.
Suppose renewables provided the dominant technologies for energy supply; suppose, in short, that it was more profitable to use solar, wind or other renewable sources of energy than fossil fuels. Market forces would then drive the transformation of economies in a climate-protecting direction on their own.
It might still be necessary to reduce the costs of capital in emerging and developing countries. It might still be necessary to accelerate the transfer of technology. But the wind of profit would be at their back. Is this the world we live in? If not, how might we create it?
Start with a simple proposition: if something is profitable, it will be done. Asset managers may dispose of shares in fossil-fuel businesses and banks may refuse to finance them. Some investors might refuse to own or fund companies that do things they consider wicked. But my fellow columnist, Stuart Kirk, is correct that someone else will then own and finance them, provided they are profitable.
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Howard Marks’ 10 key elements for investing
Howard Marks says macro events, short-term performance and even volatility shouldn’t matter to most investors. Here’s his list of what does.
James Thomson Columnist
Nov 23, 2022 – 2.42pm
In late 2017, with the US economy finally starting to recover from the GFC, legendary Wall Street titan Howard Marks kept being asked the same question, over and over again: when will interest rates finally start to rise?
The founder of alternative investing giant Oaktree Capital was typically blunt in his response.
“Why do you care?” he said. “If I say ‘February’, what will you do? And if I later change my mind and say ‘May’, what will you do differently? If everyone knows rates are about to rise, what difference does it make which month the process starts?”
No one ever offered a convincing answer, Marks says in his latest memo.
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RBNZ forecasts 2023 recession, raises rates 0.75pc
Emma Rapaport Markets reporter
Nov 23, 2022 – 4.10pm
New Zealand’s central bank has warned the country faces a recession in 2023 as it lifted the pace of its interest rate increase cycle with an unprecedented 0.75 percentage point move on Wednesday.
Governor Adrian Orr signalled more rate increases ahead and cautioned the economy will contract for four straight quarters during a “shallow recession” from the middle of an election year in 2023.
“Core consumer price inflation is too high, employment is beyond its maximum sustainable level, and near-term inflation expectations have risen,” the bank said.
The nation heads to the voting booths next year, with Labour Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern seeking a third term in office.
“The RBNZ sees inflation as deeply embedded,” said Westpac’s New Zealand chief economist, Michael Gordon. “It now believes that a recession will be needed to bring inflation back within the 1-3 per cent target range.”
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Why Joe Biden shouldn’t run for a second term
The US President has a chance to earn history’s affection and his country’s respect by avoiding what would surely be a painful second term.
Edward Luce Columnist
Nov 24, 2022 – 8.54am
When he heard George Washington would step down as America’s first president, King George III said: “If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world.” To be fair, Washington was much younger than Joe Biden today and could have continued for as long as he wanted.
Biden nevertheless has a chance to earn history’s affection and his country’s respect by avoiding what would surely be a painful second term. All political careers end in failure, someone said. The exception would be those that end at a moment of their choosing.
The time for such a self-denying declaration by Biden is so good that it is almost certain not to happen. It is hard to think of a presidential year since the mid-1980s that has gone as well as 2022 has for Biden.
He began it on a slow funeral march. Insiders had written off his chances of passing meaningful legislation. His foreign policy was in disarray after the previous summer’s botched Afghanistan withdrawal. And a midterm election wipeout for Democrats was taken as read.
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Sunak’s Britain is starting to have second thoughts about Brexit
Facing a prolonged recession and years of higher taxes, Britain is rethinking its split from the European Union more than six years after voting to leave.
Ellen Milligan, Alex Wickham and Philip Aldrick
Nov 24, 2022 – 8.00am
Even after years of division and vitriol, it seems like Britain still needs to talk about Brexit.
More than six years after voting to leave the European Union, the UK is facing a prolonged recession and a deep cost-of-living crisis. Last week’s Autumn Statement heralded years of higher taxes and cuts to public spending.
The gloomy prognosis has reopened the debate over Brexit, previously the deadly third rail of Conservative Party politics, which many thought ended for good with the signing of a free-trade deal at Christmas 2020.
Days after being forced to accept sweeping changes in fiscal policy, Brexiters were last weekend confronted with a Sunday Times story that said senior figures in Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s government were seeking a closer “Swiss-style relationship” with the European Union.
The language angered hardliners who oppose anything that trades away Britain’s newly won regulatory freedoms. Yet, the very fact that the possibility was broached in public – and attributed to a senior government source – is a departure from the bombastic “have cake and eat it” era of Boris Johnson or the short-lived low-tax vision of his successor, Liz Truss.
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‘Bregret’: Britons are showing signs of Brexit buyer’s remorse
By Mark Landler
November 23, 2022 — 1.06pm
London: Six and a half years after voting to leave the European Union, three years after the formal departure, two years after signing a post-Brexit trade deal with Brussels and one month after installing its fourth prime minister since the 2016 referendum, Britain is caught in – what else? – another debate over Brexit.
Brexit may be in the history books, but “Bregret”, as the British newspapers have called it, is back in the air.
The cause of the remorse is clear: Britain’s economic crisis, which is the gravest in a generation and worse than those of its European neighbours. Not all — or even most — of the problems are because of Brexit, but Britain’s vexed trade relationship with the rest of Europe indisputably plays a role. That makes it a ripe target for an anxious public casting about for something to blame.
The latest eruption of this never-ending drama began last week with an opinion poll that showed support for Brexit had fallen to its lowest level yet. Only 32 per cent of those surveyed in the poll, by the firm YouGov, said that they thought leaving the EU was a good idea; 56 per cent said it was a mistake.
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Non, merci. Put un sock in it please, Mr Macron
In just two brief statements, Emmanuel Macron delivered four political sleights of hand designed to undermine Australia’s nuclear submarine plan. And China’s propaganda machine is relishing every word.
From Commentary
24 Nov, 2022
Emmanuel Macron’s G20 outbursts last week over Australia’s nuclear submarine ambitions should highlight for Anthony Albanese the fickle nature of international political friendships. The Prime Minister has enough self-awareness to realise the French President’s embrace is the Gallic version of a hug from the Solomons’ Manasseh Sogavare: not something to relish.
I count four sleights of hand from Macron, impressive in two brief statements. His comments aren’t pure deceptions, more just political flimflam from a leader still smarting from Scott Morrison’s decision to walk away from the French-designed submarine program in 2021.
One assertion is that France had been helping Australia achieve “freedom and sovereignty” through the submarine deal, because Australia would have the ability to “produce and maintain” the boats in-country.
This is apart from the fact the design and technology were French, the weapons American and that at best 40 per cent of the equipment would come from overseas. France was not beneficently handing us autonomy. The intention was to build a strategic partnership that would last half a century or longer.
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Some more equal than others? NZ has more in common with Orwell than the Magna Carta
Two new bills take the integration of Māori custom into the NZ legal system to a new level; a dramatic step toward an entity that expressly negates equality before the law.
November 24, 2022
There was a time, not so long ago, when countries in the common law tradition had comparable legal systems. Yes, there had always been differences between, say, the law of the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Still, their basic approaches to legal matters were similar.
New Zealand was also a member of this family of common law jurisdictions. In one respect, that is by not having a written constitution, New Zealand was actually quite like Britain, the historic source of the common law.
But times are changing, and in few places are they changing as rapidly as in New Zealand. Something radically different is emerging in New Zealand’s legal system. It may still be rooted in the common law, but it is increasingly incorporating traditional Māori concepts.
This is a recent development, albeit one with a long prehistory. For one and a half centuries, New Zealand law and Māori custom (tikanga) have sat side by side. But their interactions were limited, and the only laws enforceable were those laws passed by Parliament and made by judges. State-made law was dominant over tribal rules.
Over the past few decades, Australia and New Zealand have witnessed the gradual recognition of customary title. In Australia, the landmark case was Mabo. In New Zealand, the establishment of the Waitangi Tribunal was the primary step to consider historic grievances over breach of the 1840 Treaty.
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AUKUS a threat to world peace, Beijing warns
4:22PM November 23, 2022
Beijing has called AUKUS a “threat” to Australia’s relationship with China and a danger to “world peace”, as it elevates opposition to the nuclear submarine plan days after Xi Jinping met with Anthony Albanese.
Despite personally overseeing a 15-month campaign against the advanced weapons agreement, the Chinese President did not once mention AUKUS during his half-hour meeting in Bali with the Prime Minister.
Mr Xi’s propaganda machine has since warned Canberra not to misinterpret that silence. “It may have gone unmentioned due to a tight schedule or simply to facilitate a friendlier atmosphere … the Australian PM cannot and should not take it as signs that China is not concerned about the pact,” the Global Times said in an editorial.
“If Canberra chooses to ignore Beijing’s concerns over AUKUS, the pact will remain a thorn in the side of China-Australia relations.”
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Putin ‘living in fear for his life’ as Russian army retreats
The liberation of Kherson was a serious blow for Putin and could signal the end of his reign, a key military adviser believes.
By Marc Bennetts
From The Times
November 23, 2022
The liberation of Kherson from Russian occupation was a serious psychological blow for President Putin that has left him fearing for his life, a senior military adviser in President Zelensky’s office has said.
Last week’s surrender of Kherson, the only regional capital that Putin’s army had captured, triggered shock and despair among hardliners in Moscow, including state television presenters.
“[Putin] is very afraid because there is no forgiveness in Russia for tsars who lose wars,” Oleksiy Arestovich, an adviser to the Ukrainian president’s chief of staff, said. “He is fighting for his life now. If he loses the war, at least in the minds of the Russians, it means the end. The end of him as a political figure. And possibly in the physical sense.”
Kherson was Ukraine’s biggest victory on the battlefield and came after a series of humiliating retreats by Russia’s army in the Kharkiv and Donbas regions. “This has forced even people who are very loyal to Putin to doubt that they can win this war,” Arestovich, 47, said.
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Riksbank lifts key rate by 0.75pc as Ingves era ends
Niclas Rolander
Nov 25, 2022 – 3.01am
Stockholm | The Riksbank raised borrowing costs by 0.75 points and signalled more tightening is needed to tame inflation even as it predicted a worsening slump for Sweden’s economy.
In his final decision as central-bank governor, Stefan Ingves and his colleagues lifted the key interest rate to 2.5 per cent, the highest since 2008. Most economists anticipated the move. Officials raised their projection for consumer prices next year and slashed their outlook for output.
“The forecast shows that the policy rate will probably be raised further at the beginning of next year and then be just below 3 per cent,” the Riksbank said in a statement. The risk that “current high inflation will become entrenched is still substantial, and it is very important that monetary policy acts to ensure inflation falls back”.
The increase follows data that showed a wide range of goods and services becoming costlier, at a faster pace than expected. It also makes plain the amount of economic pain Swedish officials are openly willing to countenance even as they anticipate further tightening.
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BoE officials signal further rate increases regardless of pain
Philip Aldrick
Nov 25, 2022 – 3.43am
London | The Bank of England must continue raising interest rates to bring inflation back to 2 per cent despite the economic hardship facing households, two policymakers said.
Citing worries about the tight labour market and high inflation expectations, deputy governor Dave Ramsden said his bias was for further tightening. Those concerns were echoed by fellow rate setter Catherine Mann, who said there is little monetary policy can do to help households struggling with soaring energy and food prices.
The BoE has raised rates eight times since December to a 13-year high of 3 per cent, and markets expect another half-point increase next month. Mr Ramsden and Ms Mann are among the most hawkish members of the nine-member Monetary Policy Committee, having consistently made the case for more aggressive moves.
Inflation is at 11.1 per cent, more than five times the target level. However, the MPC is split over how much more tightening is needed, given the dampening effect on demand of a looming recession.
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New Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim takes on Malaysia’s demons
Emma Connors South-East Asia correspondent
Nov 24, 2022 – 11.07pm
Singapore | In recent days, more than one observer of the messy outcome of Malaysia’s general election has quoted Lee Kuan Yew’s unhappy prediction for the country. In his book One Man’s View of the World, LKY, the man who built Singapore into a nation after it split from Malaysia wrote “Malaysia is unlikely to change. Even if it succeeds, everything will return to the original point because the issue of racial conflicts cannot be resolved.”
The racial conflicts he referred to are those between ethnic Malays, who believe in a nation where their interests come first, and those who back a pluralist society where Malaysia’s other ethnic groups, predominately Indian and Chinese, have equal rights.
Saturday’s election revealed a nation still divided on race, more so than many thought. Anwar’s coalition, Pakatan Harapan, won 82 of the 220 seats in the lower house. It includes a party, DAP, viewed by many Malays as pro-Chinese. Muhyiddin Yassin’s coalition, Perikatan Nasional (PN), won 73 seats. Most of these were landed by PAS, a pro-Islamic party.
The rise of PAS was Saturday’s big reveal. While plenty of urban voters think it’s time for a more pluralist, meritocratic Malaysia, a vision that Anwar campaigned on, plenty of other voters are just as sure that’s not what they want. And they especially don’t want a government that includes DAP.
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‘Critically ill’ Vladimir Putin filmed gasping for air during meeting with soldiers’ mothers
There are major concerns for the Russian leader after he was filmed breathless and gasping during tea with mums whose children died in Ukraine.
Henry Holloway and Will Stewart – The Sun
November 26, 2022 - 9:21AM
Anger and concern has been building among families in Russia for months since President Vladimir Putin announced a military draft for Ukraine, spurring anecdotes of poorly trained and under-equipped conscripts dying on the front. In Moscow, the mothers and wives of Russian soldiers challenge Putin to stick to his promises of solid training and adequate equipment.
This is the moment Vladimir Putin appears to wheeze and gasp through a meeting with grieving mums whose children were killed in Ukraine.
Russia’s president – who is reportedly “critically ill” – met with a carefully selected group of parents as he sat down with them to have tea, cakes and fresh berries.
Putin appeared physically uncomfortable and breathless as he spoke – stopping to clear his throat on multiple occasions and struggling with his words.
“I would like you to know that, that I personally, and the whole leadership of the country – we share your pain,” Putin told the women in at a meeting at his official residence.
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China recovery set back by record Covid numbers
China records its highest daily number of infections since the pandemic started despite strict lockdowns and mass testing, dimming the prospects for world economic growth.
By Jason Douglas
From Dow Jones
November 25, 2022
Widespread lockdowns imposed across China as authorities there struggled this week to contain the country’s largest Covid-19 outbreak threaten to again create uncertainty in global supply chains and dim the prospects for world economic growth.
Beijing’s battle to contain the virus - including sharp restrictions on everyday life and commerce in cities from the major port city of Tianjin in the north to Guangzhou in the south - comes as economies elsewhere lose speed as central banks raise interest rates to beat back inflation.
The heavy-handed and widely applied steps send a strong signal that the country and its leaders aren’t ready for a sustained reopening almost three years after the start of the pandemic and long after other major economies have dismantled almost all Covid controls.
Beijing’s continued zero-tolerance approach to Covid likely means the world can’t rely on China to be a locomotive of growth as the U.S. and European economies slow. Many economists expect the U.S. to tip into recession sometime in the next 12 months.
“There has been some anticipation that as the world slows down, China picks up,” said Shuang Ding, chief economist for Greater China and North Asia at Standard Chartered in Hong Kong. That is now unlikely to happen in the first half of next year, he said.
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The Republicans who want Donald Trump out of the race
By Frankie Taggart
AFP
4:36PM November 25, 2022
A small group of Republicans never supported Donald Trump, but in post-election America the group has grown to include those who see him as unable to steer the party back to election victories.
These Republicans initially backed Trump, turning a blind eye to his antics as long as he cut taxes, appointed conservative judges and, most importantly, won elections.
But the Republican Party seriously underperformed in midterm elections this month, and more Republican politicians are laying the blame at Trump’s feet.
Anti-Trump Republicans once called themselves Never Trumpers. The newer, broader group has embraced the name Never Again Trumpers, and they may have considerable clout.
-----David.
2 comments:
One for the good guys - Mater hospitals targeted in cyber attack
Major private hospital network Mater has confirmed an attempted cyber attack on its IT systems.
Well done Mater Health.
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