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In the US we are finding that as the death toll passes 100,000 more and more questions are being asked of the Administration regarding how this disaster happened. Polls are suggesting Trump is losing support but his presumed opponent is so hopeless he may still win the election. It is really looking hopeless for those who seek a return to something closed to normal!
In the UK confusion reigns – really the Government is not working very well!
In China we see increasing assertiveness and some real threats to the freedoms presently enjoyed by Hong Kongers! The start of a new cold war seems an apt description. We will be collateral damage I fear.
In OZ we now know the Government can't count! Enough said.
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Major Issues.
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How Australia can manage the undiplomatic moods of Beijing
'Tremble and obey' is China's idea of diplomacy at times. Politely explaining that we will do neither is the best course.
May 17, 2020 – 12.25pm
Last week, I read and watched with interest the commentary on the latest diplomatic spat between Australia and China by former foreign ministers and current commentators. Gareth Evans ran some partisan nonsense about Australia and deputy sheriffs. Others said the Australian government shouldn’t have taken the lead in calling for an inquiry but should have left it to someone else.
Well, I’ve always been a bit heterodoxical. I thought Scott Morrison and Marise Payne did Australia proud by leading the world – including the Americans, by the way – in calling for the independent inquiry into the COVID-19 outbreak. It is obvious there should be an inquiry, and there will be. Even the Chinese themselves have conceded there will have to be one. But the important point is, the Australian government led the way. It was a most impressive performance.
The Chinese government has not only launched a rhetorical attack on the Australian government in response to its perfectly reasonable suggestion, it has also interrupted Australian exports to China. Their message is very simple: tremble and obey.
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PM is a serious man for serious times
A year after his miracle win, Scott Morrison has the chance to become a rare transforming prime minister.
May 17, 2020 – 1.32pm
Exactly a year after his surprise election victory, Scott Morrison enjoys overwhelming popular support. By acting quickly against the pandemic, his government has flattened the curve of infections. And although a second wave remains a danger, the worst of the health crisis is over.
As a result, Morrison looks like a new man. The hunched, hunted Prime Minister of last summer has been replaced by a confident and reassuring figure.
The truth is that leaders often do relish crises. Bob Hawke never felt more energised as prime minister than he was during the Gulf crisis in 1990-91. John Howard was always at his most animated when he could place himself at the centre of a high drama, whether it be during the East Timor mission in 1999 or after the Bali bombings in 2002.
Morrison now finds himself thrust into the role of a war-like leader against a virus-induced economic downturn and it has galvanised him like no other event of his 20-month tenure. The accidental prime minister has successfully projected himself as a serious leader for serious times.
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Professors who showed similarity of crises say this time is different
Simon Kennedy
Updated May 19, 2020 – 7.16am, first published at 6.56am
When Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff published their heavyweight history of financial crises in late 2009, the title was ironic. This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly reminded readers that the catastrophic 2008-09 credit crisis was far from unique. The authors became the go-to experts on the history of government defaults, recessions, bank runs, currency sell-offs, and inflationary spikes. Everything seemed to be part of a predictable pattern.
And yet a little more than a decade later, we're experiencing what appears to be a one-of-a-kind crisis. The COVID-19 pandemic has catapulted the world into its deepest recession since the Great Depression, provoking an unprecedented fiscal and monetary response. To figure out what might be next, Bloomberg Markets spoke to Reinhart, a former deputy director at the International Monetary Fund who's now a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, and Rogoff, a former IMF chief economist who's now a professor at Harvard. It turns out this time really is different.
BLOOMBERG MARKETS: How are you faring during the lockdown?
CARMEN REINHART: My husband and I are among the lucky ones because we can work from home. We came to Florida, where we've had a house for a decade. Our son lives in this area. Vincent's brother lives in this area. So we wanted to be close to family. It's a very busy period even though you're always at home.
KENNETH ROGOFF: I'm with my wife and 21-year-old daughter in our house in Cambridge, quarantining, so to speak. It's been a very intense period partly because I was teaching a lot. And there was the shift to Zoom, which created more work because you're trying to prepare differently and do your lectures differently. It's obviously a surreal experience overall.
BM: I will start with the clichéd question. Is this time different?
CR: Yes. Obviously there are a lot of references to the influenza pandemic of 1918, which, of course, was the deadliest with estimated worldwide deaths around 50 million - maybe, by some estimates, as many as 100 million. So pandemics are not new. But the policy response to pandemics that we're seeing is definitely new. If you look at the year 1918, when deaths in the US during the Spanish influenza pandemic peaked, that's 675,000. Real GDP that year grew 9 per cent. So the dominant economic model at the time was war production. You really can't use that experience as any template for this. That's one difference.
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Pandemic has thrown out the textbook approach to valuing anything
Stephen Bartholomeusz
Senior business columnist
May 19, 2020 — 12.02pm
How do you value anything in the time of the coronavirus?
Things are, of course, being valued. Shares, bonds, property and businesses are being traded despite the raft of uncertainties spawned by the coronavirus pandemic.
Whether it’s a share, a property - or a business like Virgin Australia -prospective buyers are having to think through the impacts of the pandemic on the particular asset. They know some businesses will be impacted more severely than others; that the duration of those impacts will differ from business to business and that the future trajectory of their cash flows will be dependent on the course of the pandemic.
That’s a complicated set of equations, given the understanding of even the immediate impacts of the virus on companies’ earnings and cash flows, or properties’ rental incomes, isn’t complete. Until there is more certainty about the timelines of the pandemic any attempt to assess its longer-term effects on individual companies or even sectors is essentially a guess.
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Morrison government climate action plan hot on gas, cool on coal
May 21, 2020 — 12.01am
A new wave of spending on energy projects to cut Australia's carbon emissions is on the way under a contentious federal government plan that sidelines coal but highlights gas as a key fuel for the future.
Vowing to build on more than $10 billion already spent on clean energy, the Morrison government will name electric vehicles, batteries, renewables and gas as some of the key technologies it will support.
The Technology Roadmap discussion paper raises expectations for substantial new funding in the October budget but embraces energy projects fiercely opposed by environmental groups, including gas-fired power plants as well as carbon capture and storage.
In findings that could divide the government's own ranks, the discussion paper offers no support for new "high efficiency" coal-fired power stations despite years of advocacy for the technology among Nationals and some Liberal MPs.
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Government's tech roadmap reveals its talent for wasting time
By David Crowe
May 21, 2020 — 12.01am
Scott Morrison is playing catch-up on ideas he dismissed just one year ago – and he needs to bring his divided backbenchers with him.
The Prime Minister who once ridiculed big plans for electric vehicles now embraces them as a way to reduce emissions.
"Bill Shorten wants to end the weekend when it comes to his policy on electric vehicles," Morrison said during the election campaign last April, telling voters the Labor leader was saying "see ya later" to the four-wheel drive.
Now the government's roadmap names the electric vehicle as a technology worth backing. The U-turn is no surprise. It had to happen because transport makes up a big share of Australia's greenhouse gas emissions.
But the rhetoric highlights the base politics in the climate debate and the weaknesses in the new agenda.
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Crackdown on class action funders
May 21, 2020 – 10.30pm
Wealthy litigation funders face tough new oversight rules and ASIC reporting requirements, as the Morrison government moves to crack down on costly shareholder class actions.
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg will bring litigation funders under the Corporations Act to slow Australia's booming class action industry and provide additional protections for firms and company directors, amid a threefold increase in the number of class action lawsuits over a decade.
Under the changes, litigation funders will now be required to hold an Australian Financial Services Licence, strengthening scrutiny from the corporate watchdog, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission.
Corporate litigation backers will also have to comply with Australia's managed investment scheme rules.
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Treasurer bans listed fund commissions
May 21, 2020 – 4.09pm
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has announced he is closing a loophole to prevent mis-selling of listed investment funds to retail investors, by banning sales commissions paid by fund managers to financial advisers and stockbrokers.
Following a review by Treasury and the securities regulator, Mr Frydenberg will ban conflicted remuneration including "stamping fees" for newly floated listed investment companies (LICs) and listed investment trusts (LITs).
Real estate investment trusts, hybrid securities and listed infrastructure investments will not be affected by the changes.
The decision follows a series of reports by The Australian Financial Review, including documents obtained under Freedom of Information revealing the Australian Securities and Investments Commission had confidentially advised the government the listed funds were rife with "poor performance" and the "conflicted" commissions were "hard to justify".
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On China’s bullying, we ain’t seen nothing yet
The bad news just keeps on coming during this crisis.
Our children are set to enter a very different world when they start their working lives than the one we all anticipated (and hoped for) just months ago. How Australia recovers from this health and economic crisis will define whether we remain the lucky country.
History is littered with nations that have catapulted down the international wealth index courtesy of poor decision-making.
The 20th-century example etched in my brain is that of Argentina. In his 2008 book The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World, historian Niall Ferguson details how poor choices led to Argentina’s transformation “from the world’s sixth richest country in the 1880s into the inflation-ridden basket case of the 1980s”.
Nations the world over will face important policy choices in the here and now that will determine their future, and those decisions will shape (or perhaps reshape) the world order.
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Party’s over for the bullies of Beijing
You know things must be serious when Trade Minister Simon Birmingham, usually unfailingly on message about our trusted and mutually respectful relationship with Beijing, says it is time to diversify Australia’s export markets.
There is no more urgent policy imperative for the Morrison government than to start to unpick the most damaging aspects of interdependence with the People’s Republic of China.
Frankly, this has been obvious for years. Governments of all political stripes have gone to extraordinary lengths to look the other way whenever the Chinese Communist Party’s bad behaviour — in everything from human rights abuses to industrial-scale cyber-spying and intimidating Australian-Chinese citizens — risked damaging the economic pipeline.
To be sure, when hard decision points could no longer be avoided, Australian federal governments made the right choices to modernise our anti-espionage laws, keep “high-risk” (meaning Chinese) companies out of the 5G network and push back against Beijing’s influence, buying domestically and in the Pacific island countries.
But too often these actions were accompanied by unbelievable denials that the policy steps in question had nothing to do with China — they were “country agnostic”. This softly, softly approach has been immensely damaging for Australia’s interests. It is what made it possible for our universities, some state governments and sections of the business community to continue deepening interdependence with China without properly considering the risks of a democracy building an addictive reliance on an angry one-party state.
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World feels the chill of another cold war
Four months into the COVID-19 crisis, the world and Australia confront a worse problem — the descent into a version of cold war between the US and China, many years in the making but now apparently sealed in the great-power animosity unleashed by the virus.
The virus will be conquered by scientific, rational and logical public policy. But such elements are absent on the US-China front where Donald Trump and Xi Jinping have tipped each other into a confrontation neither seems willing to abandon, with escalation the most likely result.
The coronavirus pandemic that recognises neither nationality nor ideology should have brought the leading powers into co-operation but the opposite has happened — the threat to humanity has exposed the true descent in the US-China crisis. The warning lights are flashing on emergency.
A week ago an alarmingly erratic Trump warned he “could cut off the whole relationship” with China, saying bafflingly it would save $500bn, prompting China’s Foreign Ministry to call on the US “to abandon its Cold War and zero-sum mentality” — while Xi exploits the virus to push China’s trade and strategic interests yet engages in subtle accommodation of the “evaluation” resolution into the virus as pushed by Australia and the EU.
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Bushfire Crisis And Climate Policy
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No entries in this section.
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Coronavirus And Impacts.
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What happens if your dog gets COVID-19
May 17, 2020 – 2.17pm
As Britain prepares to train dogs to sniff out the coronavirus, some experts suggest that if the dogs catch the virus, it could affect their sense of smell.
It's now known dogs can catch the virus. It's also known losing a sense of smell is common with COVID-19 in humans.
If this happens in dogs too, it could have implications for working dogs that sniff out drugs, explosives and other illicit items.
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Winding up virus bridge would send economy off the edge
May 15, 2020 – 4.13pm
An unseen virus, about which little is known, has proved in many ways to be easier to wrangle in Australia than the economic havoc it is creating.
COVID-19 still lurks in our community, and it is not just the Chief Medical Officer, Brendan Murphy, who is kept awake at night worrying about the risk of a second wave of infections.
But the health complexities of the virus – and of the messages our politicians send out about it – appear nothing compared to what is, realistically, both managing an economy that is going to get worse, and policy responses that are only going to get more complicated.
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg updated the Parliament this week on what has happened so far in the pandemic, and what the government has tried to do to address it.
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Australian universities face an existential dilemma
Cut costs and merge or use the business growth model? This is the viability question facing universities as they stare down the coronavirus crisis.
Australian universities are seriously engaged in remapping their survival strategies.
May 17, 2020 – 2.05pm
Australian universities are "some of the most creditworthy entities in Australia and the world", ratings agency S&P Global says in a report on the effects of COVID-19 on this country's higher education.
This should put universities in a good place for what will be a punishing 12 months to come. The Group of Eight conservatively estimates a revenue downturn of $2.2 billion for 2020.
Already universities with small cash buffers, among them La Trobe University and Central Queensland University, are flagging redundancies.
S&P Global says universities have healthy balance sheets and low debt levels. But that's putting it kindly.
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Why bankers hope they'll avoid a bad debt tsunami
Economic activity has fallen off a cliff and the jobless rate has spiked. So why are bankers quietly confident they'll avoid the bad debt blowout they suffered in the early 1990s recession?
May 18, 2020 – 12.00am
There are 7.7 million Australian workers on some form of government welfare. Repayments have been frozen on 10 per cent of mortgages and 15 per cent of SME loans. Bankers have been left with about $220 billion in loans that aren't being serviced.
Little wonder then that some analysts are querying whether the $5 billion that the big four banks have set aside to cover the losses they'll sustain from the economic collapse triggered by the pandemic will be sufficient.
Now, bankers continue to emphasise that they won't know the extent of their problem loans for another month, when they start contacting the home owners and small business owners who opted to defer their loan repayments.
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Obsession with jobless offers Morrison's best chance of survival
Ross Gittins
Economics Editor
May 18, 2020 — 12.00am
As Scott Morrison contemplates returning to politics as usual, there’s something he should keep front-of-mind: governments that preside over severe recessions usually get tossed out.
Voters’ gratitude for being saved from the virus will fade, leaving them staring at that triumph’s horrendous price tag – its opportunity cost: the huge number of people still waiting to get a job back as we approach the federal election in early 2023. It follows that Morrison’s best chance of pulling off two election miracles in succession rests in doing all in his power to get the rate of unemployment back down to the 5 per cent it was at before the virus hit.
To Morrison, returning to politics as usual means returning to what he calls “ideology” and I call governing not for all Australians but for the Liberal tribe – team Lifters – the “base” and its big business donors. What he means by ideology is fighting for less government, lower taxes and the protection of tax breaks. Which, in turn, means shifting the balance in favour of the Lifters and against the rival Leaners tribe, aka Labor.
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Time to worry about a W-shaped economic slump
A cold turkey ending to JobKeeper and JobSeeker would mean a double recession. But that is a risk that the government can avoid.
May 18, 2020 – 2.51pm
As Australia endures its deepest recession since the Great Depression, the key questions troubling policymakers are how long it will last and what shape the recovery will take. We are in danger of experiencing a W-shaped recovery involving a double-dip recession.
Economic models are constructed, by assumption, to forecast a V-shaped recovery – a bounce back soon after the bottom is reached. Other economists worry about a U-shaped recovery, as the economy bumps along the bottom before eventually taking off again. Pessimists contemplate an L shape: down and out indefinitely. New York University Professor Nouriel Roubini, who predicted the global financial crisis, fears an I-shaped trajectory for the US to a “Greater Depression”. But nobody talks about a W-shaped recovery which, the way the economy and public policy are playing out, looks the most likely of all at this stage.
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Why JobKeeper can't be for keeps
The bottom line is that restoring the COVID-19 hit to prosperity means the nation simply cannot afford to keep on paying people to sit at home and not produce.
May 19, 2020 – 11.48am
Last week the Australian Bureau of Statistics reported that Australia had a 6.2 per cent unemployment rate. Based on the collapse in hours worked, however, I guesstimate the jobless rate is closer to 9 per cent. An increase from 5.2 per cent unemployment to almost 9 per cent in just one month is a catastrophe.
To be fair, things could be worse. The federal government has committed to borrow an eye-watering sum of money and is subsidising businesses to maintain employees on their payroll. Right now a lot of people are still receiving an income, despite not actually working.
JobKeeper is not the most finely calibrated assistance package an Australian government has ever produced. But given the circumstances and the radical uncertainty government faced in the early days of the COVID pandemic, it is a pretty good effort. In principle, it could be fine-tuned, but that would be mean-spirited. Promises were made and promises should be kept.
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What the RBA is thinking about property prices
May 19, 2020 – 4.49pm
The Reserve Bank is watching closely how property prices may change if more people move back home or form larger households because of financial stress, board meeting minutes reveal.
On Tuesday, the central bank's 5000 word-long minutes document showed how it was gauging the different effects of lower population growth, interest rate deferrals and higher unemployment on both residential and commercial property markets.
The Reserve Bank is weighing up the effects of unemployment, lower population growth and interest rate deferrals on property prices.
"Contacts in the liaison program had reported that demand for both new and established housing had fallen," the minutes for the May 5 board meeting said.
"Lower incomes and confidence, as well as lower expected population growth, were expected to affect demand for new housing for an extended period."
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'Enormous' challenges getting Australians back to work
May 19, 2020 – 6.37pm
The federal government's suite of employment assistance programs is being reviewed as the nation faces "enormous" challenges getting unemployed, underemployed and disengaged workers back into jobs.
Education, Skills and Employment Department secretary Michele Bruniges told a Senate committee reviewing the government's coronavirus spending on Tuesday that reviews of the existing Jobactive program and other job placement services were under way, to ensure they returned potential employees to the workforce as quickly as possible.
Ms Bruniges conceded the federal government faced an "enormous task" – days after Australia's unemployment rate jumped to 6.2 per cent as the economy shed 594,300 jobs last month.
"We've started doing some work looking at and stocktaking what types of programs that we have in place [and] how we might provide advice to government on whether or not they continue to support the characteristics of the population of people who are now unemployed," she said.
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Coronavirus inquiry resolution adopted at World Health Assembly as China signs on
By Anthony Galloway and Eryk Bagshaw
Updated May 19, 2020 — 10.38pmfirst published at 10.08pm
A historic motion led by the European Union and Australia to establish an independent review of the coronavirus has passed the World Health Assembly.
The unanimous vote was carried without objection just before 10pm on Tuesday night. The decision will see an inquiry into the origins and international response to the coronavirus established at the earliest possible opportunity.
The review will identify the source of the virus and the route of introduction from other animals to the human population, as well as consider lessons learned from the WHO-coordinated international health response to COVID-19.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus welcomed the resolution and said he would enact the inquiry at the appropriate time.
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Joblessness hasn't been worse in our lifetimes - nor more hidden
Ross Gittins
Economics Editor
May 20, 2020 — 12.01am
Voters have highly stereotyped views about which side of politics is better at handling which of our problems. So it’s no surprise that the party of the bosses is seen as better at managing the economy, the budget and interest rates, whereas the party of the workers is regarded as better at industrial relations and anything that involves the government spending money.
These stereotypes aren’t necessarily right, but they’re deeply engrained in our thinking. What keeps politics interesting, however, is that voters’ list of our most pressing problems keeps changing with our circumstances. Sometimes Liberal strongpoints are at the top; sometimes Labor strongpoints.
Reserve bank and Treasury Secretary to brief National Cabinet today on the impact COVID-19 is having on the economy.
The new problem for Scott Morrison is that though the Libs are seen as best at managing the economy and the budget, when the economy falls into recession, voters’ focus shifts to the massive unemployment.
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Backtrack on social distance rules for lifts
May 20, 2020 – 2.44pm
Stringent rules on social distancing within building lifts have been eased, clearing a major choke point for returning office workers which could have added hours to their journey.
Safe Work Australia guidelines, updated on Wednesday, state that there is "no requirement to provide four square metres of space per person in lifts".
"You must still ensure, as far as you reasonably can, that people maintain physical distancing in lifts and lift waiting areas," the revised rules state.
The updated Safe Work rules have effectively dropped a previous requirement that workers maintain 1.5 metres apart when travelling in lifts, where possible.
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Coronavirus: Why Australia’s banks are frightened
Australian banks are seeing a very different future to that envisaged by the sharemarket. And it’s a similar situation in the US where after vaccine euphoria faded American investors began selling bank stocks as they focused attention on the world of banking in a pandemic.
And Australia is a classic illustration of the difficulties in today’s banking world.
Australian banks are forecasting that house prices will fall 10 per cent in the next year and, according to Australia’s largest home lender – Commonwealth Bank – that fall could extend to over 30 per cent if the downturn continues into 2022.
So far, although residential property volumes are way down and prices are off the top, there is no widespread sustained residential property price fall.
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Virus shock is a chance to fix universities for good
Forget the hand-wringing over foreign students. The first priority is to make post-school education work better for Australia.
May 20, 2020 – 1.30pm
COVID-19 is forcing many parts of the economy to consider their future and make governments agonise in turn over their role in that sector's reform process.
One area that needs much self-reflection and reform is the post-school education sector, particularly universities.
There is considerable post-virus discussion about the future demand for higher education. However, the collapse of demand from international students is a second-order issue. The first-order issue is the demand from domestic students, where the situation is far more complex.
Clearly, not everybody needs nor wants a university education. However, Australia should provide an opportunity for all Australians to complete a post-secondary education program.
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Is 'made in Australia' just misguided nationalism?
The pandemic has revived the arguments over the future of Australian manufacturing and self sufficiency. But some warn it can't degenerate into a rationale for costly protectionism.
Jennifer Hewett Columnist
May 20, 2020 – 5.26pm
The notion of economic sovereignty has become the new economic black. It’s reviving dreams of rebuilding a vibrant Australian manufacturing sector after years of decline.
Business leaders like Andrew Liveris, former head of Dow Chemicals, are promoting long held but largely ignored views about the need for Australia to focus its economic attention on manufacturing.
The model of exporting commodities while importing finished goods is “old and broken”, according to Liveris – if not the national trade figures.
But given he is also advising the Prime Minister’s COVID-19 business taskforce on the future of the economy, his arguments are attracting more attention.
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The RBA misread the economic upheaval of the 1970s, and I fear it is again
Columnist and former Liberal opposition leader
May 21, 2020 — 12.00am
I have an unnerving feeling of deja vu. I'm thinking of a time when Reserve Bank modelling and resultant forecasts were completely inadequate in the unfolding circumstances, such that it missed the significance of important structural shifts in economic and social relationships. In short, it resulted in it completely misreading the situation, and thereby misinforming the policy process.
It was early 1974. I had just returned from the IMF, where I had worked extensively on reform of the global financial system, and in the very early stages of what has become world economic forecasting. I had accepted the position of visiting economist at the RBA. Then deputy governor Harold Knight asked that, initially for his eyes only, I assess the economic forecasts and analysis of the bank’s research department.
The late 60s and early 70s had been a tumultuous time – with, to use today’s in-word, "unprecedented" disruption in economic and social behaviour. Richard Nixon had broken the fixed link between the US dollar and gold; the stability and discipline of the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates had broken down, and the world was moving rapidly to floating exchange rates and the deregulation and globalisation of financial systems; OPEC had quadrupled the oil price; the post-World War II stability of reasonable growth with low unemployment and inflation had been broken; and the 1960s had seen tremendous social upheavals with student unrest, the civil rights movement, and Vietnam.
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Global coronavirus cases surpass five million, with Latin America leading
By Lisa Shumaker and Cate Cadell
Updated May 21, 2020 — 8.50amfirst published at 6.46am
London: Global coronavirus cases have surpassed five million, with Latin America overtaking the United States and Europe in the past week to report the largest portion of new daily cases globally, a Reuters tally shows.
It represents a new phase in the virus' spread, which initially peaked in China in February, before large-scale outbreaks followed in Europe and the United States.
Latin America accounted for around a third of the 91,000 cases reported earlier this week. Europe and the United States each accounted for just over 20 per cent.
A large number of those new cases came from Brazil, which recently surpassed Germany, France and the United Kingdom to become the third-largest outbreak in the world, behind the United States and Russia.
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Job ads start to lift but CBDs could take six years to fill again
By Shane Wright
May 21, 2020 — 12.01am
Businesses are starting to advertise for staff despite new warnings the nation's central business districts will shed more than 100,000 workers and take up to six years to recover their pre-coronavirus strength.
As new figures showed the single largest collapse in retail sales on record, data collated by SEEK revealed the gradual re-opening of parts of the economy has given some firms the confidence to look for new workers.
The national workforce shed almost 600,000 jobs through April as businesses shuttered due to coronavirus-related social distancing laws. Job ads, a key leading indicator of employment, fell 50 per cent through the month.
But SEEK's data, to be released on Thursday, shows through the fortnight to May 17, ads were 26.8 per cent up on the April average.
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Retirees facing financial as well as health risks in coronavirus pandemic
May 21, 2020
Spare a thought for self-funded retirees in these difficult times. Not only are they in the age bracket most at risk from the virus, but their financial wellbeing in retirement is being put at substantial risk.
The collapse in the stock market, including among most blue chip stocks, is just the start of their financial pain. These big businesses, even if they survive, aren’t likely to pay out the dividends they once did for years to come, if ever.
The financial plans of self-funded retirees are built around dividend projections which therefore no longer apply, and with interest rates so low its not as though they can simply transfer their saving into cash accounts and do any better.
The RBA cash rate is at a record low.
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11.45am 21 May, 2020
May PMI weakness astonishing: CBA
Australia’s private sector experienced a further substantial decline in business activity in May, described by Commonwealth Bank as “astonishing”.
The bank’s read on May PMI shows output fell to 26.4, from 21.7 in April – where any read below 50 suggests contraction.
“Another incredibly weak result that indicates the contraction in activity observed in April intensified over May,” head of Australian economics Gareth Aird writes.
“Two consecutive reads in the 20s is simply astonishing as well as concerning. It is likely that only a manufactured slowdown due to imposed restrictions could produce such results.”
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APRA boss says banks should dip into capital buffers
James Frost
APRA chairman Wayne Byres reiterated the point that capital levels were economic shock absorbers by saying the whole point of pursuing "unquestionably strong" capital ratios of 10.5 per cent of CET1 by January 2020 was for a “rainy day” like the one foisted upon us by COVID-19.
Mr Byres said we should expect bank capital ratios to fall below 10 per cent over the course of the year but it was important to keep things in perspective because “less than three years ago the average CET1 ratio of the banks had never been above 10 per cent.
Mr Bryes also sought to explain the prudential regulator’s position in dividends saying it was not a decision it took lightly.
He said the prudential regulator’s preference was for capital to be deployed to sustain and grow businesses over the payment of dividends to shareholders.
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Pandemic 'hugely negative' for Australian savers, says Blackstone boss
Giving early access to superannuation makes sense but there is a price to pay in the long term, says a Wall Street student of Australia's super system.
May 22, 2020 – 7.53am
Washington | Tony James, vice chairman of Wall Street private equity giant Blackstone and a Joe Biden donor, has questioned Australia's decision to give early access to superannuation accounts and warned it was one of several consequences of the pandemic response that will lead to "a price to pay in the long term".
Mr James, who commended Australia's ability to always "make the right political decision quicker than we do", said there was a "real dichotomy" between buoyant global financial markets and what he predicts will be a "very slow" real world economic recovery that may last until 2023 and leave some sectors "damaged forever".
"What's propping up the markets is this massive stimulus, essentially the lowest interest rates that the US has ever seen, and that's inflating the value of financial assets almost disconnected from the fundamental of the economy," Mr James said.
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$20,000 scam exposes serious flaws in government's super access scheme
Jack Derwin
May 22, 2020 – 9.17am
Key Points
- Australians are being targeted by scammers using the federal government’s early access to super scheme to get their hands on up to $10,000 of retirement savings per victim.
- At least 150 cases of identity fraud are being investigated by the Australian Federal Police and the Australian Tax Office has taken steps to try to secure the scheme.
- A couple subject to the scam, Ange and Ben from Perth, spoke to Business Insider Australia about how they were targeted, how they identified the scam, and how their experience suggests other big flaws in the scheme.
When the federal government announced its scheme to allow people to crack open their superannuation accounts, it was met with understandable scepticism.
But while concerns abounded that out-of-work Australians might be inadvertently kneecapping their retirement fund, few expected the scheme could become a honey pot for criminals. However, that is exactly what has transpired with “sophisticated” and possibly offshore syndicates preying on Australians, according to Australian Federal Police (AFP) Commissioner Reece Kershaw.
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Government 'needs a plan to catch up' on elective surgery as wait lists balloon
By Dana McCauley and Aisha Dow
May 22, 2020 — 12.00am
Patient advocates and doctors are urging governments to devise a plan to catch up on elective surgery after the coronavirus shutdown added an estimated 400,000 people to hospital waiting lists.
State governments have given hospitals in NSW and Victoria the green light to increase elective surgery from 25 per cent of pre-pandemic levels – the limit imposed when the ban on most non-essential surgeries was partially lifted in late April – to 50 per cent by May 31, then 75 per cent by June 30.
Depending on the number of COVID-19 cases as social-distancing restrictions ease, elective surgery could be restored to 100 per cent capacity at the end of July, but there is no definite plan to increase this to the 110 per cent needed to start clearing the backlog.
Australian Medical Association president Tony Bartone said he feared patients facing additional delays after waiting for surgery in the public system would be left in pain or suffering potentially deadly complications.
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Australia-first study finds low transmission of COVID-19 in children
By Melissa Cunningham
May 22, 2020 — 12.01am
An Australian-first study examining hundreds of children who were tested for COVID-19 after presenting to hospital with symptoms of the deadly disease has found less than 1 per cent of them had the virus.
Four-year-old Aisling Smith was one of more than 400 children with symptoms tested for COVID-19 at the Royal Children’s Hospital recently. The study found less than one percent of them had the virus.
Only four of the 434 children tested by the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne at the height of the coronavirus pandemic between March 21 and April 19 were diagnosed with COVID-19, researchers at the Murdoch Children's Research Institute have found.
Of the tiny number infected, none required hospitalisation and all recovered within two weeks.
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A chance for the states to do something really unprecedented
Peter Hartcher
Political and international editor for The Sydney Morning Herald
May 23, 2020 — 12.00am
Australia is fractured. Its constitution says that trade between the states shall be "absolutely free". Yet most internal borders are closed, cutting the continent into isolated zones to protect against infectious disease.
And state governments are locked in ugly arguments about who is right to be open and who closed. In this pandemic, where the word "unprecedented" has been invoked at an unprecedented rate, surely this is another unprecedented state of affairs?
Home Affairs Minister claims September re-opening date was 'plucked out of the air' as Annastacia Palaszczuk refuses to reopen Queensland's borders.
Absolutely not. When the Spanish flu pandemic hit Australia in 1919, the states slammed their borders closed against each other, warred against each other with such bitterness that the fledgling Commonwealth almost blew apart. Even though Australia was braced and waiting for the disease and checking every ship that arrived. Even though all governments had an agreement on just how to handle it.
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Coronavirus: pandemic will put human development ‘into reverse’
· The Times
The coronavirus pandemic will trigger the first decline in human development since records began, the UN has warned.
Education, health and living standards improved year-on-year for the majority of the world’s population since the UN Development Program began measuring them in 1990. This year, however, for the first time in four decades, that trend will reverse, widening inequality globally.
The UN program described a “triple hit to health, education and income” that will cause global per-capita income to fall by 4 per cent this year. “The combined impact of these shocks could signify the largest reversal in human development on record,” it said.
One of the starkest measurements is the blow the virus has struck to education, leaving 60 per cent of the world’s children without access to learning. Such figures have not been seen since the 1980s. Even that deprivation, however, is uneven and highlights a “digital divide” that handicaps the poorest.
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No one knows when this will end
I was contacted this week by the owner of a small business in regional Australia, who wanted to tell me I’d got it all wrong about the JobKeeper payments.
I had said that if the 6 million people covered by JobKeeper (revised down on Friday to 3 million) plus the 1.6 million getting JobSeeker had been counted as unemployed by the ABS last week, the unemployment rate would not be 6.2 per cent, but 58 per cent — more than double what it got to in the Great Depression in the 1930s.
All wrong, said my correspondent (who asked not to be quoted). His business had qualified for JobKeeper because turnover had fallen more than 30 per cent, but he had not been planning to sack anyone: “In my case there are ZERO unemployed people but they are all effectively receiving JobKeeper.”
So I rang him up. Would he have been able to keep them employed without JobKeeper? That hadn’t come up, he said. A lot of his revenue comes from a contract with the state government, and even though he hasn’t been doing that work, the money kept coming, in accordance with the contract. Staff employed on non-government work that has disappeared are supported by JobKeeper, and in fact some of them have had a pay rise because they were getting less than $1500 a fortnight, which is what they get now.
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‘This virus doesn’t want to kill us’
If we are in an enviable position in the war against COVID-19, it’s in part due to the Doherty Institute. This is the inside story of how Australian scientists got the jump on the world.
By Ricky French
· From The Weekend Australian Magazine
May 23, 2020
“This virus doesn’t want to kill us. It has no brain, no will. It just wants to grow and reproduce, to obey the laws of evolution and natural selection.” So says Professor Peter Doherty, a man who knows a thing or two about unpicking a virus. If the virus that causes COVID-19 did have a brain it would probably avoid coming up against the 79-year-old, Brisbane-raised, Nobel prize-winning immunologist who in the mid-1990s unlocked the secret of how our body’s immune system gives viruses a good kicking. His name has suddenly been thrust into the spotlight again as patron of the research and public health organisation that bears his name, the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity. No organisation in Australia has been more prominent in tackling COVID-19, not only in the lab but in shaping government policy through the findings of its public health scenario modellings. “I’d just written my retirement book,” Doherty laughs down the phone from his home in Melbourne, where his age means he’s under strict isolation. “I thought I was fading into the distance and now suddenly I’m back as a talking head.”
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Federal ministers flooded with unprecedented level of anti-vaccination mail
By Max Koslowski
May 24, 2020 — 12.00am
Vaccination opponents have flooded senior government ministers with unprecedented levels of correspondence, as experts warn a new wave of sceptics anxious about a potential coronavirus vaccine are reinvigorating the movement.
Health Minister Greg Hunt's office and the federal Department of Health have received more than 1500 items of anti-vaxxer correspondence since April 1. Social Services Minister Anne Ruston's office has received at least 600 hard-copy letters on the subject this month.
Experts warn that anxieties caused by the coronavirus crisis and associated economic downturn, as well as prolonged discussions about a potential coronavirus vaccine, have revitalised an anti-vaccination movement turbocharged by star power and social media.
This month, a small group of NRL players resisted a code-mandated influenza vaccine and celebrity chef Pete Evans repeatedly backed the anti-vaccination movement on social media after he was sacked by Seven West Media.
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Migration 'reset' looms in budget as government eyes super-skilled talent
By Michael Koziol
May 23, 2020 — 11.59pm
The Morrison government will "reset" the permanent migration program in its October budget, which could involve an unusual change to the mix between skilled and family reunion migrants as it tries to restart the economy.
It comes as the country's foremost former public servants weigh in to the post-pandemic migration debate, with former Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet boss Martin Parkinson urging the government to "go for broke" on skilled migration.
Acting Immigration Minister Alan Tudge said it was "too early to speculate" about the migration program's future, but changes to the composition might have to be made.
"Once you get into next year, we'll have to reset what the permanent migration caps look like," he told The Sun-Herald and The Sunday Age.
"We simply haven't set what our cap will be for permanent migrants and what the distribution of that will be yet. That will be something for cabinet closer to the budget. The default setting is to maintain the two-thirds, one-third split [between the skill stream and the family stream]."
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Royal Commissions And The Like.
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There are no entries in this section.
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National Budget Issues.
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Pass the Jaffas: what will the post-pandemic economy look like?
By Shane Wright
May 15, 2020 — 4.00pm
Jaffas. Fantales. Milo. The last time Australia endured a depression the nation suffered enormous levels of unemployment, mass business collapses and even a fall in the number of babies born.
But the Great Depression also led to cultural touchstones that remain with us today. Fantales were released by James Stedman-Henderson's Sweets in Sydney in 1930 which followed up a year later with Jaffas.
Milo made its first appearance, marketed as a drink to help provide calories and vitamins to under-nourished children, in 1934.
In the dire economic situation of the 1930s, the nation's first milk bar named The Black And White appeared in Sydney's Martin Place while Heinz started its first Australian production plant in the Melbourne suburb of Richmond. The first tins of baked beans in tomato sauce would soon follow.
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Welcome to the first global economic depression of our lifetimes
TIME - 16 May 2020
By: Ian Bremmer
Another week, another grisly job reports for the US. The data is still streaming in, but it's time to start calling this what it is—a global economic depression.
Why it matters:
Technically, there's no official definition of the term “depression.” But compared to a “recession” (defined as two consecutive quarters of contracting economic growth), there are some general rules we can apply—depressions are global, much worse than typical recessions, and their impact on both the economy and society last far longer. It's this latter point why we still call 2008 the “Great Recession.” For all the drama and chaos, outside the banking industry those handful of months in 2008/2009 didn't irrevocably alter our society and/or economic system. Awareness about inequality was raised by movements like “Occupy Wall Street,” but the underlying issue went largely unaddressed for more than a decade because large swaths of society could effectively ignore it. Given the coronavirus's damage to our global economy, they won't have the luxury of ignoring it any longer. Especially not in the US, where the US Fed released a survey this week pointing out that 39% of households making under $40,000 a year lost at least one job in March alone.
What happens next:
And that's the US, still the world's largest economy and one with ostensibly the most resources to combat both coronavirus and its worst economic effects. In the early days of the pandemic, the US government sprung into action with the idea to provide support to workers and keep businesses afloat with credit lines and other financial instruments, all with the idea of building a bridge till the time when the economy was turned back on. The Federal Reserve joined in with unprecedented support to ensure markets continued to function. In other words, policymakers were aiming for a “V” shaped recovery, one where the economy was shut off for a short period of time and would then immediately snap back to pre-pandemic levels of economic activity (or close to it). Given the scope and scale of the economic carnage, it's clear we aren't getting that V-recovery. Recent economic data out of China reinforces that point.
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Why it matters:
Technically, there's no official definition of the term “depression.” But compared to a “recession” (defined as two consecutive quarters of contracting economic growth), there are some general rules we can apply—depressions are global, much worse than typical recessions, and their impact on both the economy and society last far longer. It's this latter point why we still call 2008 the “Great Recession.” For all the drama and chaos, outside the banking industry those handful of months in 2008/2009 didn't irrevocably alter our society and/or economic system. Awareness about inequality was raised by movements like “Occupy Wall Street,” but the underlying issue went largely unaddressed for more than a decade because large swaths of society could effectively ignore it. Given the coronavirus's damage to our global economy, they won't have the luxury of ignoring it any longer. Especially not in the US, where the US Fed released a survey this week pointing out that 39% of households making under $40,000 a year lost at least one job in March alone.
What happens next:
And that's the US, still the world's largest economy and one with ostensibly the most resources to combat both coronavirus and its worst economic effects. In the early days of the pandemic, the US government sprung into action with the idea to provide support to workers and keep businesses afloat with credit lines and other financial instruments, all with the idea of building a bridge till the time when the economy was turned back on. The Federal Reserve joined in with unprecedented support to ensure markets continued to function. In other words, policymakers were aiming for a “V” shaped recovery, one where the economy was shut off for a short period of time and would then immediately snap back to pre-pandemic levels of economic activity (or close to it). Given the scope and scale of the economic carnage, it's clear we aren't getting that V-recovery. Recent economic data out of China reinforces that point.
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Fragile economy cannot cope with early end to government support
Andrew Charlton
Founder of AlphaBeta and economic adviser to the Prime Minister during the global financial crisis in 2008-2009.
May 18, 2020 — 12.05am
Infection rates are down, spending is up. Time to wind back the generous government support programs, right? Wrong. The economy is in a fragile state and premature withdrawal of government support could tip it into a negative spiral that would destroy jobs and damage public finances.
The government injected a massive amount of money into the economy over the past two months. The stimulus payments to 6 million people kickstarted much-needed activity.
The coronavirus supplement has boosted the spending of about 1 million recipients of unemployment benefits and other government payments.
Real-time data from illion and AlphaBeta (part of Accenture) show how important this support has been to the economy. The data shows that the spending of people who didn’t receive these payments remains low and hasn’t improved in weeks.
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Spending would collapse without crisis payments to households
By Matt Wade
May 18, 2020 — 12.06am
Spending would plummet if not for federal payments to workers and households introduced since the coronavirus crisis, underscoring the political and economic risks for the Morrison government when temporary income support programs are wound back.
The Coronavirus Supplement, paid to those on the JobSeeker unemployment benefit and some other government allowances, the JobKeeper wage subsidy scheme and a one-off stimulus payment to social security recipients have played a fundamental role underpinning consumer demand, according to a real-time spending tracker developed by AlphaBeta, a part of Accenture, and credit bureau illion.
The analysis shows those receiving both the Coronavirus Supplement and the government's one-off $750 stimulus payment distributed last month spent 39 per cent more than normal last week and those receiving neither payment spent 18 per cent less than normal.
At least 1.6 million people are now receiving the Coronavirus Supplement, which effectively doubles the JobSeeker payment to $1100 a fortnight. Another 6 million are receiving the JobKeeper wage subsidy of $1500 a fortnight. The supplement and JobKeeper will be paid for six months but the government will review the JobKeeper program next month.
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Coronavirus shutdown: did it go 'too far'?
The key decisions were, understandably, made in the ‘fog of war’, but considering the huge economic costs, it’s vital to see where we got it right and wrong.
May 19, 2020 – 12.01am
When the national cabinet was presented with “theoretical” epidemiological modelling on the coronavirus in early March, the nation’s most senior politicians were terrified by scenarios showing that intensive care units at hospitals could be overwhelmed and tens of thousands of Australians could die.
Australia, they were advised by epidemiologists at the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity, was on an early virus trajectory similar to the widespread outbreaks devastating parts of China, Europe and the United States.
The initial modelling based on limited available international data suggested daily demand at its peak for intensive care beds could hit almost 5000, 17,000 or 35,000, depending on how hard governments locked down.
The projections swamped the 2200 ICU beds available at hospitals.
Ultimately, the ICU daily occupancy for COVID-19 patients peaked at below 100 in early April.
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China pulls the trigger on 80pc Australian barley tariffs
May 18, 2020 – 9.55pm
Shanghai/Perth | China has followed through on its threat to impose crippling tariffs on Australian barley from Tuesday in a move which has angered farmers and will inflame trade tensions between the two countries.
China's Commerce Ministry confirmed on Monday night it would impose anti-dumping and anti-subsidy duties totalling 80.5 per cent on Australian barley imports following an 18-month investigation.
The announcement came as China's president Xi Jinping said he backed a World Health Organisation (WHO) review into the coronavirus outbreak once the pandemic was over. Australia and the European Union have led the push for an independent investigation into the origins of COVID-19, angering Beijing.
The Australian barley industry said it was deeply disappointed with China's "punitive tariffs" and called on the Morrison government to immediately take the matter to the WHO.
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Payroll data shows job losses slowing
May 19, 2020 – 11.58am
The rate of jobs being lost in the COVID-19 hit economy is slowing, while earlier estimates of job losses have also been revised down.
The latest payroll data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics and Australian Tax Office shows that over the seven weeks from mid-March to early May, total jobs fell by 7.3 per cent.
Based on the 13 million employed in March that 7.3 per cent fall equates to 950,000 jobs lost in the seven weeks.
ABS Head of Labour Statistics Bjorn Jarvis said the week-to-week changes are now much smaller than they were early in the COVID-19 period.
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University staff feel pain of plummet in overseas students
A vote on Wednesday proposes cutting university staff pay to try to save jobs. But even if it passes, universities have to urgently remake their business models.
May 19, 2020 – 7.19pm
The university world has shrunk back into its domestic shell as the COVID-19 crisis removes the key financial strut of international students paying high fees. The pain level is rapidly intensifying.
A vote to be held on Wednesday will help decide how many university staff will hope to keep their jobs – particularly in the absence of federal government support such as JobKeeper payments.
The Australian university sector has been particularly savaged by COVID-19, not least because of its ever increasing addiction to foreign student income.
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Landlords hit by rising vacancies, falling prices
John Collett
Personal finance editor
May 19, 2020 — 11.08pm
Property prices don't necessarily always fall during recessions but this time you would have to think that prices will tumble significantly, given the speed and depth of the COVID-19 economic shock.
Even those sober economists at the big banks are forecasting price falls of up to 32 per cent over the next couple of years – though the banks' "base" cases, or most likely scenarios, are for price declines in the order of 10 per cent.
A lot of homeowners are ahead on their mortgage repayments and have a nice buffer in case they have to drop their payments to the required minimum, and history shows most people can hold on without becoming forced sellers.
That's also likely to be the case this time, given the level of government support through JobKeeper and JobSeeker and lenders' granting of repayment deferrals to their home loan customers affected by the financial fallout of the pandemic.
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RBA’s Philip Lowe calls on banks to increase their coronavirus lending to support the economy
Reserve Bank of Australia governor Philip Lowe has called on the banks to increase their lending to support the economy during the coronavirus pandemic, while again stating that negative interest rates remain “extraordinarily unlikely” in Australia.
Appearing alongside fellow Council of Financial Regulators members Australian Prudential Regulation Authority chair Wayne Byers and Australian Securities & Investments Commission chair James Shipton on a Financial Services Institute of Australasia webcast, Dr Lowe said the nation’s financial system is “resilient and is well placed to deal with COVID-19”.
“The system is in this strong position partly because over the past decade APRA has worked with financial institutions to boost their capital and to reduce their liquidity risks,” he said, adding that banks are “also profitable and they have had low levels of problem loans”.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/the-plan-to-rebuild-australia-s-shattered-economy-20200520-p54urn
The plan to rebuild Australia's shattered economy
The lifting of restrictions alone won't bring the economy back. It's a confidence game.
May 23, 2020 – 12.00am
Weaning the economy off the extraordinary taxpayer support deployed in response to the coronavirus-induced economic crisis will be a monumental test for the Morrison government in the months and years ahead.
The government's top economic adviser, Treasury Secretary Steven Kennedy, this week revealed parts of the recovery plan to steer the economy out of the deepest recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Kennedy has among the most important jobs in Australia rebuilding the shattered economy, so his prescription for the long climb out is valuable to understand.
His list is: focus on getting Australians back into jobs, shore up confidence among households and business, support the economy probably for years as monetary policy is out of ammunition and don't overly worry about the rising budget debt in the short term.
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As budget bungles go, this will be hard to beat
Yet, there is no denying that discovering that the budget has $60 billion that was believed spent, is very, very good news.
May 22, 2020 – 5.17pm
As far as budget cock-ups go, this will be hard to beat. Ever.
"This is a mistake you could have seen from space,'' Anthony Albanese observed.
Yet, there is no denying that discovering there are three million fewer workers in distress than previously thought, and the budget has $60 billion that was believed spent, is very, very good news.
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JobKeeper error sparks fight over $60b
May 22, 2020 – 3.03pm
The federal government’s JobKeeper scheme will cost $60 billion less than forecast as the economy reopens faster than anticipated, triggering a fight between the Coalition and Labor over whether the borrowed money should be saved or spent on casual workers.
The record-breaking costing error is mainly due to the fall in COVID-19 case numbers and social distancing rules being relaxed sooner, enabling business activity to resume and bolstering the economy's resilience more than forecast by Treasury when unemployment queues surged in March.
At the time, the government was planning for a six-month ‘‘hibernation’’ of the economy.
The Australian Taxation Office discovered this week that about 3 million fewer workers than previously advised were receiving the wage subsidies, after about 1000 businesses accidentally inflated the number of their enrolled employees.
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Agency puts Australia on notice amid concerns about household debt
By Shane Wright
May 22, 2020 — 4.05pm
Another ratings agency has put Australia's triple A credit rating on negative outlook, raising fears about the size of household and government debt as signs grow the federal budget deficit will approach $75 billion.
Fitch Ratings joined S&P Global in warning of the growing risks to the nation's credit rating, saying it expects Australian GDP to contract by 5 per cent this year before rebounding by 4.8 per cent in 2021.
The agency expects gross general government debt, currently at 41.9 per cent of GDP, to climb to 58.2 per cent of GDP or more than $1.1 trillion.
Total deficits run by federal and state governments are expected to reach 6.9 per cent of GDP, or $130 billion, this financial year before climbing to 9 per cent of GDP or $171 billion next year.
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Retail's new malaise: What happens when the lights are switched back on
By Sarah Danckert and Dominic Powell
May 23, 2020 — 12.00am
Across Australia retailers are nervously awaiting a fast-approaching second wave of economic stress.
After weathering the first stage of the COVID-19-induced shutdowns, largely through generous government and banking sector relief, the retail sector is now facing a new hit when restrictions are lifted.
There are fears that the end of government relief packages such as JobKeeper and the winding down of loan repayment moratoriums by the banks as well as rent relief (in some circumstances), likely in September, will pitch more and more businesses into insolvency.
"I can't see any particularly good news in bricks and mortar retail. A great majority of them are going to have a very difficult time in the next 12 months," says former Myer boss Bernie Brookes who ran the department store from 2006 to 2015 and now chairs toy wholesaler Funtastic while working as an adviser to the sector.
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Survey: Australians underestimate arts workforce compared with coalmining
Most people wrongly assume that coalmining employs more people than the creative sector, says a report by the Australia Institute
May 23, 2020
Most Australians incorrectly believe that coal mining is a bigger employer than the creative arts, leading to a misunderstanding of the arts sector’s contribution to the economy, according to a new study.
The Australia Institute says that 68 per cent of survey respondents wrongly assumed that more people worked in coalmining, when the arts sector is the bigger employer.
According to figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, quoted by the Australia Institute, the creative arts employ 193,000 people and coal mining 49,000 people.
The misapprehension about the size of the arts workforce compared with coal’s was largely consistent across respondents’ political preferences.
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Health Issues.
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18 May 2020 
Loneliness most common stressor during COVID-19
Loneliness was the most widely reported source of personal stress for Australians during April, according to the third ABS Household Impacts of COVID-19 Survey.
ABS Program Manager for Household Surveys, Michelle Marquardt, said loneliness affected more women (28 per cent) than men (16 per cent).
“Around one in five people (19 per cent) also reported that they were experiencing difficulties maintaining a healthy lifestyle, which was more of a problem for those aged 18 to 64 years (22 per cent) than those aged 65 years and over (9 per cent),” added Ms Marquardt.
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ABS Program Manager for Household Surveys, Michelle Marquardt, said loneliness affected more women (28 per cent) than men (16 per cent).
“Around one in five people (19 per cent) also reported that they were experiencing difficulties maintaining a healthy lifestyle, which was more of a problem for those aged 18 to 64 years (22 per cent) than those aged 65 years and over (9 per cent),” added Ms Marquardt.
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Almost 10,000 Australians drop private health insurance during pandemic
By Dana McCauley
May 19, 2020 — 6.24pm
Private health funds are urging Australians to keep their cover after a fall in membership during the coronavirus pandemic, with job losses and elective surgery restrictions hitting insurers' bottom lines as experts predict even sharper falls.
The latest data from the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority, released on Tuesday, shows 9760 fewer Australians had private health insurance by the end of March compared with three months earlier. The largest fall was among members aged between 30 and 34.
The drop in membership cost health funds $100 million in premiums and came as Australia went into the early stages of social distancing restrictions, including the ban on non-essential elective surgery and the closure of thousands of businesses.
Grattan Institute health economist Stephen Duckett said the membership decline was consistent with previous quarters, but predicted a larger fall in the June quarter as the pandemic's true impact on private health insurance - taking into account the loss of at least 600,000 jobs - became clear.
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Insurers back plan for private health plans to cover kids up to age 30
By Dana McCauley
May 20, 2020 — 10.35pm
The Morrison government is considering a proposal to allow young Australians to stay on their parents' private health insurance plans until the age of 30, backed by health funds desperate to slow a fall in membership due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Catholic Health Australia, a major private hospital operator, wants the rules changed so that family cover can be used beyond the current age cut-off of 25, as thousands of young people ditch their health insurance amid rising unemployment.
Chief executive Pat Garcia said the measure would help stem the youth exodus from private healthcare by keeping young Australians in the system until they were in a better financial position.
"If we want to start plugging the holes in the private health insurance system we need to let young Australians stay on the family plan for longer," Mr Garcia said.
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Pathology groups threatened COVID-19 test ban at height of pandemic
By Chip Le Grand
May 20, 2020 — 11.45pm
Private pathology companies threatened to refuse COVID-19 testing at the height of the pandemic, forcing the federal government to increase by four-fold its payment for each test.
The hard-nosed negotiations, which resulted in an increase of the COVID-19 test subsidy from $24.40 to $100, has produced what one company chief executive described as a "COVID-led recovery" for pathologists confronting an exodus of patients from other services.
The peak body for private pathology companies, Australian Pathology, is pushing for an extension of the increased fee beyond the cut-off date of September 30. In the meantime, the value of Australia’s mass testing program, which is currently open to anyone who feels unwell, is being questioned by those conducting the tests.
Australia this week recorded its 1 millionth COVID-19 test since the onset of the pandemic in a testing surge primarily driven by Victoria and NSW.
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Young adults are also affected by Kawasaki-like disease linked to coronavirus, US doctors say
By Ariana Eunjung Cha and Chelsea Janes
May 22, 2020 — 3.17am
Recent public health warnings about a severe and puzzling inflammatory syndrome linked to COVID-19 have focused on children. But now, some US doctors say they are seeing the illness, similar to Kawasaki disease, in young adults, too.
A 20-year-old is being treated at Rady Children's Hospital in San Diego; a 25-year-old has been diagnosed at Northwell Health's Long Island Jewish Medical Centre, and several patients in their early 20s are hospitalised with the syndrome at New York University's Langone Health in New York City.
Deputy CMO Dr Nick Coatsworth has assured parents the probability of a child suffering from COVID-19 of contracting a disease like Kawasaki disease is rare.
Jennifer Lighter, a paediatric infectious-diseases doctor at NYU Langone, said younger children with the condition seemed to have symptoms that looked more like traditional Kawasaki, which is characterised by inflammation of the blood vessels. But teens and young adults had more of an "overwhelming" response involving the heart and other organs.
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International Issues.
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Powell cautions US recovery could stretch through end of 2021
Alister Bull
May 18, 2020 – 9.49am
The US economy will recover from the coronavirus pandemic, but the process could stretch through until the end of next year and depend on the delivery of a vaccine, said Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell.
"I think you'll see the economy recover steadily through the second half of this year," the US central bank chief said in an excerpt of an interview conducted Wednesday and aired on Sunday on CBS's "Face the Nation" show.
"For the economy to fully recover people will have to be fully confident, and that may have to await the arrival of a vaccine," he said.
More than 36 million Americans have lost their jobs since February as the economy shuttered to limit virus spread. Countless companies, especially small businesses, are hurtling toward bankruptcy, while states and cities are confronting gaping budget shortfalls that could provoke a massive second wave of layoffs from the public sector.
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https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/china-risk-is-growing-for-australian-businesses-20200517-p54tok
China risk is growing for Australian businesses
Tom McIlroy Political reporter
May 17, 2020 – 11.31am
China's growing trade aggression is making the nation's biggest export market increasingly risky for Australian businesses, the Morrison government has warned.
Trade Minister Simon Birmingham has demanded his Chinese counterpart return urgent calls about the country's threats to impose tariffs on Australian barley, amid deteriorating relations in the wake of the Coalition's push for an independent investigation into the origins of the deadly coronavirus.
Senator Birmingham said on Sunday Beijing's unpredictable moves were making it a riskier export market for Australian businesses, restating plans to start a World Trade Organisation dispute if China follows through on 80 per cent tariffs on barley.
His request for urgent talks on the dispute and restrictions on beef imports from Australia have so far been rebuffed by China's commerce minister, Zhong Shan.
“The call ought to be returned," Senator Birmingham told ABC TV.
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Trump shrinks power of the US presidency in response to pandemic
By Ashley Parker and Philip Rucker
May 18, 2020 — 8.52am
Washington: US President Donald Trump has proclaimed the latest phase of pandemic response the "transition to greatness". But Trump appears poised to preside over the eventual transition more as a salesman and marketer than a decider.
Many consequential actions are being done by others. The nation's governors are overseeing their states' plans to reopen their economies. Business leaders are making their own choices about how their employees can safely and responsibly return to work.
Treasury officials are negotiating with Congress the details of financial stimulus packages. And scientists and public health officials are leading the race for a vaccine.
The United States under Trump has also retreated from its historic position of global leadership, declining, for instance, to participate in a coronavirus summit with other nations earlier this month.
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Japan's first quarter GDP shrinks 3.4pc, slides into recession
May 18, 2020 – 10.16am
Japan's economy contracted at an annualised rate of 3.4 per cent in January-March, government data showed on Monday, marking the second straight quarter of contraction and meeting the technical definition of recession, due to the coronavirus pandemic.
It marked the first recession since the second half of 2015.
The preliminary reading for first-quarter gross domestic product (GDP) compared with economists' median estimate of a 4.6 per cent decline in a Reuters poll, the Cabinet Office data showed.
It followed a revised 7.3 per cent contraction in October-December.
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China's top medical adviser warns of second wave
May 18, 2020 – 4.37pm
Shanghai | The Chinese government's top medical adviser has warned the country faces a possible second coronavirus outbreak as authorities place several cities back into lockdown and test millions of people as small clusters of new cases emerge.
Zhong Nanshan, the high-profile scientist leading a government panel overseeing the pandemic, said in an interview with American broadcaster CNN that a lack of immunity among the population was a serious concern.
China is battling fresh clusters that have appeared in the north-eastern provinces of Heilongjiang and Jilin and the central Chinese city of Wuhan where the outbreak started. Shanghai also on Monday reported one new domestic case.
"The majority of Chinese at the moment are still susceptible of the COVID-19 infection, because [of] a lack of immunity," Dr Zhong said in a transcript of the interview. "We are facing [a] big challenge; it's not better than the foreign countries I think at the moment."
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Voters who can't work at home will decide this US election
The resentment of workers unable to comfortably shelter from COVID-19 can put Donald Trump back in the White House.
May 18, 2020 – 1.08pm
In February 2016, Peggy Noonan wrote a prescient column in The Wall Street Journal in which she made the distinction between two classes of people: the "protected" – that is, the well-off, the connected, the comfortably insulated – and the "unprotected" – everyone else.
"The protected make public policy," she wrote. "The unprotected live in it. The unprotected are starting to push back, powerfully." Her larger point, unfathomable to so many people at the time (including me), was that Donald Trump was going to win.
Updated for the pandemic, another word for protected might be "remote". A recent study by Jonathan Dingel and Brent Neiman of the University of Chicago found that 37 per cent of jobs in the US can be performed from home. The remote are, disproportionately, knowledge workers, mostly well-educated, generally well-paid. Their professional networks, and many of their personal ones, too, are with people who also work remotely.
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Merkel, Macron join forces in blueprint to repair EU's fissures
Hans van Leeuwen Europe correspondent
May 19, 2020 – 5.02am
London | German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron have sought to retake the wheel of the listing European Union, issuing a joint plan to create a Continent-wide medical capability and to bail out stricken countries.
The pair called for a €500 billion ($843 billion) bailout fund for the likes of Italy and Spain, a strategic EU medical stockpile and vaccine procurement process, and a new regime to buttress European companies against global competition and takeover.
The blueprint, released at a joint press conference on Monday (Tuesday AEST) seeks to regain a coherent direction for the 27-member bloc, which has been at loggerheads over issues of mercantilism, medical supply chains and economic rescue packages.
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IMF chief warns full global economic recovery 'will take much longer' than first thought
By Andrea Shalal
May 19, 2020 — 5.18am
The global economy will take much longer to recover fully from the shock caused by the new coronavirus than initially expected, the head of the International Monetary Fund said, and she stressed the danger of protectionism.
Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said the Fund was likely to revise downward its forecast for a 3 per cent contraction in GDP in 2020, but gave no details. That would likely also trigger changes in the Fund's forecast of a partial recovery of 5.8 per cent in 2021.
In an interview with Reuters, she said data from around the world was worse than expected. "Obviously that means it will take us much longer to have a full recovery from this crisis," Georgieva said in an interview. She gave no specific target date for the rebound.
In April, the global lender forecast that business closures and lockdowns to slow the spread of the virus would throw the world into the deepest recession since the 1930s Great Depression. But data reported since then points to "more bad news," Georgieva said earlier this month.
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Trump is threatening the global financial system as he looks to punish China
Stephen Bartholomeusz
Senior business columnist
May 18, 2020 — 12.00pm
As the Trump administration seeks to hold China responsible for the spread of the coronavirus and deflect attention from its own shortcomings, it is widening its search for sanctions and adding financial dimensions to the retribution it is pursuing.
If Trump’s protectionist trade policies risked dividing the world into two trading blocs, there is a very real risk that adding a financial facet would cement that outcome, severing the most globalised aspect of the global economy - the global financial system.
The administration took a small step along that path last week when the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board, a $US600 billion ($932 billion) pension fund for past and present US federal government employees, froze plans to shift some of its investments into stocks included in a new international shares index.
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Xi Jinping backs 'comprehensive review' of COVID-19
By Eryk Bagshaw and Latika Bourke
May 18, 2020 — 10.31pm
China's President Xi Jinping has backed a comprehensive review of the global response to the coronavirus, but has stopped short of endorsing an independent probe advocated for by Australia and the European Union.
In a highly anticipated speech to the World Health Assembly on Monday evening, Xi said any review should be conducted by the World Health Organisation and only after the pandemic had passed.
The announcement came less than an hour before China's Ministry of Commerce announced it would hit up to $1 billion worth of Australian barley exports with a tariff of up to 80 per cent over technical infringements. The move, which was first threatened last week, effectively wipes out Australian barley trade with China and follows weeks of high-profile lobbying from Australia over the coronavirus inquiry.
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Swedish model trades more disease for less economic damage
Peter Coy and Charles Daly
May 20, 2020 – 8.55am
Swedish state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell gave an interview via Zoom from a parked car on May 8. The hot pink cord of the earbuds plugged into his phone flapped distractingly in the foreground.
Before this year, it would’ve been hard to scare up 10 journalists to listen to him or any other epidemiologist, but Tegnell drew 450 reporters and other curious people from 60 countries. An additional 10,000 have since listened to the recording of the colloquy with Joyce Barnathan, president of the International Centre for Journalists.
The next few weeks or months will tell whether Tegnell’s strategy is brilliant or – as many experts outside of Sweden believe – benighted.
The Swedish government has deferred to him and his fellow scientists to set the rules for a relaxed semi-shutdown of Swedish society in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Why inflation might follow the pandemic
Governments should finance all their debt at today’s ultra-cheap rates with the longest possible maturities.
May 20, 2020 – 10.54am
The pandemic has been likened to a war, though one against a disease, not other humans. Like a war, it is reshaping economies and demanding huge increases in public spending and monetary support. It will certainly bequeath far bigger public debt and central bank balance sheets.
Does this mean the question of whether this long debt cycle must end in inflation has to be answered in the affirmative? No, but this is possible. After World War I, Germany inflated away its domestic war debt in the hyperinflation of 1923. After World War II, the UK emerged with fiscal debt of 250 per cent of gross domestic product. Modest inflation helped erode a part of it.
So what might happen now? We need to start from initial conditions. We entered this crisis with high levels of private debt, low interest rates and persistently low inflation. In the Group of Seven leading high-income countries, none has debt close to that of the UK in 1945. But Japan’s net debt was 154 per cent of GDP and Italy’s 121 per cent pre-crisis.
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Trump delayed critical medical supplies bound for Australia
May 21, 2020 – 12.00am
The US government detained critical medical supplies bound for Australia under sweeping powers invoked by President Donald Trump.
On April 7 medical supplies loaded aboard a Qantas flight were temporarily detained under the US Defence Production Act and were allowed to leave the country only after intervention from Australian diplomats.
The episode illustrates Australia’s vulnerability to overseas supply chains, even in friendly nations, which was exposed at the height of Australia’s COVID-19 pandemic.
A spokesperson for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said "Australian and US officials in Washington resolved the issue", and "the Australian government is working closely with the US administration to ensure sufficient medical supplies in both our countries".
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Fed debates longer term crisis fighting plan
Howard Schneider and Lindsay Dunsmuir
May 21, 2020 – 7.16am
Federal Reserve policymakers, still working to fully roll out a multi-trillion-dollar effort to shore up financial markets and an economy cratered by the coronavirus pandemic, last month dove into a new debate: how best to support the economy during a recovery they now agree could be slower and more fraught than initially thought.
Among ideas US central bankers discussed at April's policy-setting meeting, according to minutes released Wednesday: more detailed guidance for the path of short-term interest rates, and capping long-term interest rates.
The Fed used the former in the last crisis; the latter would be a first for the Fed.
There was no discussion of negative interest rates, a controversial approach to policy supported by US President Donald Trump and in use in Europe and Japan, but seen by US central bankers as risky and ineffective.
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'We stand with Australia': Mike Pompeo hits out at China threats
By Matthew Knott
May 21, 2020 — 7.43am
Washington: US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has blasted the Chinese Communist Party for threatening economic retaliation against Australia, declaring the Trump administration fully backs the Morrison government's push for an independent investigation into the origins of the coronavirus.
A motion led by the European Union and Australia to establish an independent review of the coronavirus passed the World Health Assembly by a unanimous vote this week, a day after China hit Australian barley producers with tariffs of up to 80 per cent.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says he is 'looking forward' to seeing China 'fulfil' their pledge of $US2 billion over the next two years to help deal with COVID-19, especially in developing countries.
"The Chinese Communist Party chose to threaten Australia with economic retribution for the simple act of asking for an independent inquiry into the origins of the virus," Pompeo said at a media briefing in Washington on Wednesday (Thursday AEST).
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Coronavirus: Scales have fallen from Five Eyes partners over China
Scott Morrison faces two wicked policy problems. One is the coronavirus, the other China. The second problem is far more intractable and challenging over the longer term. This is because Beijing is becoming more aggressive across every area of international power, while we have foolishly allowed ourselves to become uniquely dependent on China.
This dependence is sketched in an important new report by British think-tank the Henry Jackson Society. Entitled Breaking the China Supply Chain: How the Five Eyes can Decouple from Strategic Dependency, it makes sober reading for any Australian.
It does not analyse all forms of national power — defence capabilities, alliances, soft power, economic size et cetera. Instead, it examines trade dependence in strategic areas of each of the Five Eyes’ intelligence partners — Australia, the US, the UK, Canada and New Zealand.
The Five Eyes nations, the report notes, have been the most important international advocates of hyper-globalisation since World War II. This has led, paradoxically, to an international system that has disproportionately benefited China.
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Ray Dalio plots China rise as US power begins decline
Nathan Crooks
May 22, 2020 – 6.53am
"The United States is now the most powerful empire by not much, it is in relative decline, Chinese power is rapidly rising, and no other powers come close," billionaire investor Ray Dalio wrote Thursday in the latest installment of his series on the changing world order.
In the the 10,000-word essay that explores the rises and declines of the Dutch, British and American empires and their reserve currencies, the founder of Bridgewater Associates says that empires - just like humans - have a typical life cycle that ultimately come to an end.
"No two are exactly the same but most are similar," Dalio wrote, noting that the U.S. and China are approaching a point of comparability when "the risks of wars of one type or another are greater than when the leading powers are earlier in the cycle."
While Dalio's latest chapter focuses on the past instead of predicting the future, he says both the US and China are leading the way in a new period of "of great inventiveness due to advanced information/data management and artificial intelligence supplementing human intelligence."
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China proposes Hong Kong security laws to clampdown on protests
Michael Smith China correspondent
May 22, 2020 – 12.53am
Beijing | China has proposed new national security laws aimed at quashing anti-government protests in Hong Kong in its most blatant breach yet of agreements it made with Britain to maintain the city's autonomy until 2047.
By drafting its own laws on Hong Kong, China has effectively bypassed Hong Kong's parliament in a move pro-democracy figures said was the end of the territory's "One Country Two Systems" model and would undermine its status as a regional financial centre.
The move, announced in a draft proposal tabled with China's National People's Congress ahead of the parliament's opening session on Friday, comes after earlier failed attempts by Beijing to get national security laws passed by the Hong Kong authorities.
It also coincides with the extension of social distancing rules which ban large gatherings until June 4, which make it easier for the police to stop the mass protests which rocked the city for the second half of last year.
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'A downturn without modern precedent': Fed chair paints a grim economic picture
By Martin Crutsinger
May 22, 2020 — 6.43am
Efforts to forecast the US economy's path to recovery from the current deep downturn face "a whole new level of uncertainty," Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said on Thursday (US time).
Not only is there the difficulty predicting how the coronavirus pandemic will play out, it is also unclear how American workers and consumers will react as lockdowns aimed at limiting the spread of the virus are lifted, Powell said in an address to a virtual Fed conference.
Successfully restarting the economy will depend in large part on the public's confidence that the loosening of the stay-at-home orders will not trigger a resurgence of the virus, he said.
"The pain of this downturn is compounded by the upending of normal life, along with great uncertainty about the future," he said. "All of us have our own decisions to make ... and those decisions will depend on public confidence that it is again safe to undertake various activities."
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The economic recovery is doomed before it even begins
By Daniel Moss
May 22, 2020 — 10.10am
The coronavirus recovery is in trouble before it even begins. As swiftly as the lockdowns across Asia were imposed, the process of lifting them will be slow and uneven. That means the region is months, if not years, away from any semblance of normal.
Plans for full and partial reopenings in Australia, Singapore and Thailand sound reasonable in theory, but they won't deliver the hoped-for economic bounce. These countries, deeply reliant on trade and tourism, remain largely closed to the outside world. Domestic consumers, buffeted by layoffs and wage cuts, are in poor shape to pick up the slack. Bankruptcies in Singapore were climbing even before the most stringent virus-suppression efforts.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison says a new challenge for Australia is to 'reset' the economy for growth.
In Australia, social engagements can resume and businesses can open their doors. Yet the country is bereft of foreign tourists, new international students and immigrants - and it was workers from abroad who helped drive the 28-year boom that preceded the pandemic. The lockdown has essentially set Australia back four decades, just before Paul Hogan starred in the Crocodile Dundee movies, as Bloomberg News's Michael Heath wrote. That era saw a boost in tourism and freer capital markets, with moves to float the local dollar and lower tariffs.
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China scraps GDP target for 2020
China has abandoned an economic growth target for 2020, as the country’s leaders concede they face “challenges like never before”.
Premier Li Keqiang revealed the news - a remarkable development in its highly centralised political system - while delivering China’s “Work Report”, a state of the nation document, in front of the elite of the Chinese Community Party in Beijing.
“We have not set a specific target for economic growth this year. This is because our country will face factors that are difficult to predict,” Premier Li said in the Great Hall of the People.
Premier Li’s delivery of the Work Report - a dry policy document, which he reads out in full over almost two hours - came on the first day of the National People’s Congress, the biggest political gathering in the Chinese governing system.
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Trump's 'China hate' ploy entangles Australia
The China-US great game could create more opportunities than downside for Australia. But the dance is only becoming more difficult for Scott Morrison's government.
May 23, 2020 – 12.00am
Deep in Alabama – home to what may be the world’s greatest barbecue culture and the butt of every redneck and hillbilly joke the rest of America can dream up – Jeff Sessions is a man in trouble.
The urbane conservative establishment warrior and former US attorney-general, who was hounded mercilessly by Donald Trump for not recusing himself from the Russia investigation, is struggling to win the Republican nomination for Alabama’s US Senate race in November.
With less than two months to go before the July 14 Republican runoff (part of America’s equivalent to preselection), he’s found himself trailing his rival – former university head football coach Tommy Tuberville – by more than 20 percentage points.
In a desperate bid to close the gap, 73-year-old Sessions has taken to lashing Tuberville for being “clueless” about US-Chinese relations.
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China's Hong Kong move sparks international fury
May 22, 2020 – 6.00pm
Beijing | China wants to bypass Hong Kong's legislature by imposing its own national security law on the former British colony, in a move that spooked markets on Friday and would be a blow for the hundreds of Australian companies based in the Asian financial hub.
In the most emboldened of a series of aggressive foreign policy moves since the coronavirus outbreak, China outlined a draft law which would allow it to set up "agencies" to safeguard national security in the city that is supposed to retain its autonomy until 2047.
Pro-democracy lawmakers said the move was a gross breach of Beijing's commitments to Britain when the city was handed over to China in 1997 and threatened Hong Kong's future as a regional financial centre.
Fearing a loss of independence, there were calls for protesters to return to Hong Kong's streets on Friday night.
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China’s choice: prosperity or regression
There are three key questions about China's future role in the world. Of these, perhaps the most important is who exactly is Xi Jinping?
May 22, 2020 – 12.40pm
There are only three important questions in financial markets right now. In fact, one could argue that these are the most serious questions confronting humanity today. If you don’t have an informed sense of the distribution of possible futures that flow from them, you risk being wiped out. Perhaps both financially and physically.
It sounds alarming but anyone who understands the situation knows that there are truly catastrophic, low probability possibilities that include global kinetic conflict.
The first question is who is China’s brilliant leader for life, Xi Jinping? It sounds simple, but in an incredibly opaque, one party – and increasingly one person – political system designed to maximise the Communist Party of China’s (CPC) control while minimising information leakages, it is devilishly difficult for even “deep” China watchers to obtain durable insights. As one expert remarks, “they are much better at keeping secrets than we are”.
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Beware the bully who is supposed to be watching Australia's back
George Megalogenis
Columnist
May 23, 2020 — 12.00am
Scott Morrison might owe Donald Trump a strategic apology. Australia's success in suppressing the first wave of the coronavirus doesn't sit well with the US President's latest attempt to avoid responsibility for the American death toll now approaching 100,000.
Because if Trump is to be believed, no one could have stopped the plague. How else should the Prime Minister read the tweet Trump sent on Wednesday, directed at "some whacko in China" who was "blaming everybody other than China for the Virus which has now killed hundreds of thousands of people"?
"Please explain to this dope that it was the 'incompetence of China', and nothing else, that did this mass Worldwide killing!" the President tweeted.
By that reckoning, the roll call of nations that have avoided the worst of the pandemic so far, including Australia and New Zealand in the Asia Pacific, South Korea and Taiwan in Asia, and Denmark and Greece in Europe, must have been lucky. All were in the direct line of transmission from Wuhan, but somehow the plague didn't bother knocking on their door.
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China's 'Wolf Warriors' abandon diplomatic niceties
Increasingly aggressive diplomacy could just be a display of the true face of China to the world – a superpower determined to get its way.
May 23, 2020 – 12.00am
For a supposed "Wolf Warrior", Chinese diplomat Cheng Jingye is wearing sheep's clothing.
Softly-spoken, with thinning hair and glasses, China's ambassador to Australia comes across more like a suburban accountant than uber-patriot.
A career diplomat, Cheng, 61, has spent much of his time in the foreign ministry working in roles with a focus on multilateralism, spending significant stints at China's United Nations missions in New York, Geneva and Vienna.
Since Cheng's posting to Australia as ambassador in mid-2016, the local embassy and consulates have taken on a much higher public profile and engagement with the media, coinciding with China's growing assertiveness on the global stage.
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Chris Patten says Britain has a duty to stand up for Hong Kong against China
· The Times
Chris Patten had to wipe away the tears as the Last Post sounded and the Union Jack was lowered to signal the handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997.
The last British governor of Hong Kong admits that it was a “wrench” to leave the city that he and his family loved and had made their home for five years.
But, as he sailed away with the Prince of Wales aboard the royal yacht he believed that the “one country, two systems” principle that had been enshrined in the Joint Declaration, an international treaty logged at the UN, would be enough to protect Hong Kong’s capitalist economy and its way of life.
In recent days that hope evaporated and his sorrow turned to anger as he saw the Chinese government sidestep the Hong Kong legislature to force through a national security law that would allow it to shut down political opposition.
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UK rethinks stance on Huawei as it bares its teeth at China
Updated May 24, 2020 – 10.03am, first published at 8.53am
London | Britain looks to be taking a tougher line against China, as Prime Minister Boris Johnson's government joined a strongly-worded statement on Hong Kong with Australia and reportedly began planning to push Chinese telco giant Huawei into the cold.
Downing Street had been relatively quiet during the push last week by Australia, the US and the European Union to shine a light on China's conduct in the early stages of the COVID-19 outbreak.
But suddenly the ground appears to be shifting. Britain is always more ready to confront China over Hong Kong - and on Friday (Saturday AEST) Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab joined his Australian counterpart Marise Payne and Canadian Foreign Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne in a statement of "deep concern" at China's proposed national security law for the autonomous region.
"Making such a law on Hong Kong’s behalf without the direct participation of its people, legislature or judiciary would clearly undermine the principle of ‘One Country, Two Systems’, under which Hong Kong is guaranteed a high degree of autonomy,” the three ministers' statement said.
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I look forward to comments on all this!
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David.
