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It looks like Trump has underestimated what
will result in terms of change as the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement gathers
support and recognition of the real need for change. It really looks like positive
change is coming – the only questions are how much and over what period –
especially with the polls moving against Trump. The second shooting has pushed things along. Also exciting are the leaks from the Bolton tell all on the Administration and how dysfunctional it is - really fun read.
In the UK we have a very slow improvement in
the virus situation and some very gentle unlocking while everyone seems to have
forgotten that the Brexit deadlines are approaching very fast. The negotiations are slowly getting more focus.
In OZ we are having a few weeks of parliament and all sorts of issues are going on. We have a concern regarding various demonstrations and virus transmission, the winding down of various fiscal support and the risk of a ‘second wave’ while we try to unlock. Some of the numbers we are seeing this week are cause for some concern! As for the Labor branch stacking scandal is just beggars belief! There is a lot going on!
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Major Issues.
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Almost 400 anti-China attacks since pandemic began
By Max Koslowski
June 7, 2020 — 4.52pm
Asian-Australians have reported almost 400 racist attacks since the beginning of April to the country's leading survey of anti-China racism.
The figures prompted calls for the federal government to track racism better as federal MPs accused the Chinese government of spreading divisive propaganda when on Saturday it encouraged its citizens to avoid travelling to Australia due to a "significant increase" in racial discrimination amid coronavirus.
Osmond Chiu, a fellow at independent progressive thinktank Per Capita, authored the survey in collaboration with the Asian Australian Alliance and Being Asian Australian.
"There definitely has been an increase," he said, noting that compared to similar data from the United States, there have been a higher proportion of racist incidents against Asian-Australians than Asian-Americans.
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Five Eyes expanded to focus on economic pact
The Five Eyes intelligence network of Australia, the US, Britain, Canada and New Zealand has agreed to discussions about a co-ordinated strategic economic response to the COVID-19 crisis in a broadening of purpose for the world’s largest security alliance.
It is understood Australia has locked in support for an economic grouping within the key intelligence pact as Western democracies seek to forge closer alliances with economic security emerging as a key strategic threat.
It comes as Britain overnight moved to secure a Five Eyes agreement to develop “Western” alternatives to China’s Huawei 5G technology, and follows the move last week by the Morrison government to apply a national security test to foreign investment, which is now being adopted by other alliance member countries.
Josh Frydenberg is understood to have led the push for an economic dialogue and confirmed last night that he had spoken to the finance leaders of the US, UK, Canadian and New Zealand governments over the past two weeks, and had received backing for regular formal meetings.
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Revive the arts and all Australians benefit
BRETT CLEGG
Our arts and creative sectors have been affected dramatically by the COVID-19 pandemic. The job losses and wage reductions, as well as deep cost-cutting forced upon some of our brightest cultural lights, have been widely reported. With indications from the Prime Minister and Arts Minister Paul Fletcher that an assistance package is nigh, the scope and nature of this package is generating nervous speculation.
Inevitably, a discussion on public funding for any industry leads to fundamental questions of merit and purpose. Why do the arts matter? This needs to be answered both from the heart and the head.
My late grandfather, George, was an obdurate Yorkshireman with a fascinating mind, although he was denied an education by poverty and war, having served from a young age in some of the bloodiest arenas of World War II across North Africa, Italy and finally Greece, where he met my grandmother, Eleni.
He was blinded for close to three months after reconnoitring a village outside Naples, where he opened the wrong door and was greeted by a Nazi booby trap. Saved from capture and hidden by locals in a barn under a pile of rotting tomatoes, he then spent months in an army hospital not knowing if he would ever see again.
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Don't be fooled by stocks: The economy needs more help
The rally most likely is being fuelled by expectations that the US economy needs more stimulus - and it does.
Tim Duy
Jun 9, 2020 – 4.36am
The strength of the rally in equity markets the last couple of months coupled with the unexpected rebound in May jobs might make it a little too easy to conclude that the US economy doesn't need more stimulus.
It's more likely, though, that market participants assume more stimulus is coming - as it should.
The benchmark S&P 500 Index has gained 42.8 per cent from its low on March 23, leaving it down just 1.14 per cent for the year amid what the International Monetary Fund says will be the worst recession since the Great Depression.
The foundations of the rally are straightforward.
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Juukan was not alone: The true extent of WA sites sacrificed for the sake of the almighty dollar
By Dr Kathryn Przywolnik
June 9, 2020 — 8.11am
In one blast, 46,000 years of the Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura people’s cultural legacy was lost last month.
The news that the Juukan rock shelters were destroyed by Rio Tinto brought the plight of Aboriginal people wanting to see their important sites preserved for future generations to the mainstream.
But this was not an isolated incident. This is happening right across the north-west, with other ancient and significant sites destroyed in recent years and more hanging in the balance as we speak.
The Pilbara is one of the most minerally prospective regions of Australia and most Aboriginal groups in it feel the pressure and loss from the mining industry. It is a battle of attrition across the Pilbara. Sites are being lost at a rapid rate.
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JobKeeper may not be a masterpiece but it’s keeping arts in the frame
The COVID-19 pandemic has hit Australia’s arts sector very hard — venues are closed, performances have been cancelled and revenue has collapsed to near zero.
The Morrison government’s JobKeeper program is providing critical support.
Be it the Melbourne Theatre Company, the Museum of Contemporary Art or the Australian Ballet, plenty of arts organisations have called JobKeeper a lifesaver.
JobKeeper has been designed to be flexible, and targeted to those working in the most affected businesses, which have had a revenue fall of 30 per cent or more, or 15 per cent for not-for-profits. Sadly, a great many businesses in the arts sector have met that requirement.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/health-and-education/in-australia-black-lives-do-matter-20200608-p550fa
In Australia, black lives do matter
The life of David Dungay, whose last words in Sydney's Long Bay jail were "I can't breathe", encapsulates the tragedy of the black Australian experience.
Aaron Patrick Senior correspondent
Jun 10, 2020 – 12.00am
David Dungay didn't die because he was black. He died because of a biscuit.
In 2015, a couple of days before New Year's Eve, Dungay's heart gave way in Long Bay prison hospital under the weight of five prison guards. His last words were "I can't breathe."
Understandably, the 26-year-old Aborigine is now being portrayed as Australia's George Floyd — a victim before the African American's on-camera killing became the catalyst for a global outpouring of anger towards the treatment of black men.
On Saturday, Black Lives Matters protesters marched through Australian cities carrying signs emblazoned with Dungay's name. A Harvard-educated Indigenous scholar alleged institutional complicity in a cover up of his death. His mother, Leetona Dungay, appeared on the Q&A program this week and asked: when will I see justice for my son?
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Australians to get their say on the Indigenous voice this year
By David Crowe
June 9, 2020 — 10.00pm
Australians will be given a say on an Indigenous "voice" within months as the Morrison government steps up the reform to create a new mechanism for community input following the Black Lives Matter protests.
The reform plan is likely to go to public consultation from July in the hope of reaching a consensus on measures that would put Indigenous Australians "at the centre" of government decisions that affect them.
While the coronavirus crisis has stymied some of the meetings and consultations so far, Indigenous Australians Minister Ken Wyatt is promising to deliver a mechanism that empowers Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders.
"We’re confident that the Australian people will be able to have their say on an Indigenous voice this year," he said.
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Western liberalism stands firm on Christianity’s rock
The horrible death of George Floyd at the hands of a brutal policeman in Minneapolis is producing very diverse reactions. One is a wholly good sense of human solidarity across racial lines. Such a response, that race is incidental to humanity, of no consequence in determining a person’s worth, has no power to diminish human dignity, is a wonderful response, and expresses traditional liberalism. This requires the law to have no consideration for race, which means justice for every human being regardless of race. Seeking that authorities live up to this is a necessary ambition.
But a good deal of reaction is heading down the destructive road of identity politics. Identity politics attacks the universalism which is the heart of liberalism.
Rejecting this universalism for an ideology which elevates race, gender, sexual orientation or some other features into the central organising principle in politics and culture is a disastrous wrong turn.
One reason we are in danger of taking this doleful path is the decline in Christianity as the animating inspiration of public culture.
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Why this shocking market volatility is totally normal
The feverish coronavirus financial markets are not an aberration, but a timely reminder of the inherent risks of investing.
Aleks Vickovich Wealth editor
Jun 12, 2020 – 2.24pm
If you're struggling to keep up with the movements in financial markets during the pandemic, you'd be forgiven.
The S&P/ASX 200 plunged 36.5 per cent from late February when the public health crisis hit to mid-March, before staging an incredible recovery and surging 32 per cent. On Tuesday, it cracked the 6000 point barrier for the first time in three months, sparking a fresh batch of optimistic headlines, before dropping sharply later in the week.
There have been times in the newsroom over recent months when we haven't been sure whether we're in a bull market or a bear market — and I daresay the same has been true for some investment professionals paid to know the answer to that question.
So how are regular investors meant to make sense of the madness?
It turns out many are not taking the time to try to understand it, but are piling into the stockmarket in record numbers instead – just as many ran for the hills and crystallised losses at the beginning of the downturn.
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A note from Ross Gittins: a student of recessions
By Ross Gittins
June 12, 2020 — 10.14am
Back at the start of the global financial crisis in 2008, the veteran economist Dr Don Stammer told me you weren’t fully qualified until you’d worked through four severe recessions. He’d clocked up four, but I was only up to three – the mid-1970s, early ’80s and early ’90s. But the GFC would obviously bring me my fourth. Unfortunately for me – but fortunately for everyone else – that wasn’t to be.
As a student of recessions – what causes them, how they work and, most importantly, what we have to do to get out of them – I’ve had to wait almost 30 years for the next one. That record period between recessions was good news, of course.
Recessions are terrible things: bad for workers who lose their jobs, bad for business people whose businesses collapse, bad for many people’s mental health, often bad for marriages and particularly bad for young people whose move from education to full-time work can be significantly disrupted. As a consequence, they’re usually bad for the survival of the governments that happen to be in office at the time.
But I fear there’s a price to be paid for our success in avoiding recession for so long. A small part of the price is that so many of us have little idea of what to expect. That includes many of our politicians.
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It really is different this time, thanks to central bankers
The conniption on sharemarkets was hardly a surprise: the 12 per cent surge in the previous three weeks was wild, and if the big market low really was on March 23, that would be amazing, given that we are in the midst of a depression (NB: not recession).
Market economist forecasts for global GDP are clustering around a contraction of 5 per cent, the same as the Great Depression of the 1930s, with around 10 per cent (40 per cent annualised in the US) for the June quarter. The OECD says the 2020 contraction will be 6 per cent in what it calls a “single hit” scenario and 7.2 per cent if there’s a “double hit” (second coronavirus outbreak).
For Australia the predictions are 5 and 6.3 per cent respectively, still up there with what happened in the 1930s. The stockmarket ended up falling 80 per cent in those years, after the initial October 1929 crash and bear market rally in 1930. But it’s different this time, right?
Well, yes, it is.
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https://www.afr.com/wealth/investing/path-through-the-storm-for-investors-20200609-p5515r
Path through the storm for investors
This week's sell off will have left many feeling even more uncertain. Here's what to do depending on where you are in life and your appetite for risk.
William McInnes Reporter
Jun 13, 2020 – 12.00am
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, investors might be feeling a bit battered. Cash rates have been cut to zero, bonds across the globe are yielding next to nothing and the equity market has shown volatility not seen in years.
Early on, many panicked investors headed for the safety of cash holdings hoping to avoid what looked like being a heavy loss. Between February 10 and March 13, UniSuper members moved $1.4 billion from growth investment options into defensive assets such as cash.
In just three months, however, the market seemed to have found its feet again, rallying more than 30 per cent from its lows to just over 1000 points shy of its record high in February. But on Thursday and Friday this week, the market experienced the worst selling in months.
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https://www.afr.com/wealth/personal-finance/meet-the-sharemarket-s-corona-generation-20200610-p551dz
Meet the sharemarket’s corona generation
With a little bit of money and a lot of time, a new legion of young traders are riding the ups and downs of the fastest and fiercest bull market in history.
Young sharemarket traders have been hitting the mark at a time of volatility.
Jonathan ShapiroSenior reporter
Jun 13, 2020 – 12.01am
On Wednesday morning, moments before the market opened for trading, Will Bennett, a moderator of a popular Facebook stock trading group, made a "public service announcement".
The vast majority of the group's 23,700 members were just a few weeks into their trading careers and with SPI Futures pointing towards a 1.4 per cent fall, Bennett tried to prepare them for what he anticipated would be their first bloodbath session.
"Remember markets go up AND down," he said. "Don't make emotional decisions and DON'T PANIC SELL if selling is not part of your plan."
Not all the members of the group were worried. One trader's down day is another's top-up day and most were itching to buy more of their favourite stocks.
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Retirees warn of hit to their incomes worth tens of billions of dollars
By Shane Wright
June 13, 2020 — 11.30pm
Retirees are facing a massive hit to more than $100 billion worth of vital income streams as the coronavirus pandemic crushes their superannuation, personal savings and share dividends.
Older Australians say the retirement system is in crisis and leaving them financially vulnerable, forcing them to call on the Morrison government to consider changes in areas such as the age pension, deeming rates and access to the Commonwealth Seniors Health Card.
The Alliance for a Fairer Retirement System, representing millions of retirees and older investors, has written to key finance and welfare ministers urging reforms including to measures previously introduced to take pressure off the federal budget.
In the letter, obtained by The Sun-Herald and The Sunday Age, the alliance says the coronavirus pandemic has dramatically hit retirees dependent on investment income to such an extent it now put the nation's economic recovery at risk.
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Thousands of zombie firms set to march into September reckoning
By Shane Wright
June 13, 2020 — 4.44pm
An army of zombie businesses kept afloat by measures aimed at protecting the Australian economy from the coronavirus pandemic are poised to collapse in the second half of the year, putting people out of work and weakening the nation's financial recovery.
One of the nation's biggest credit reporting firms, CreditorWatch, says its figures show at least 600 business administrations have "gone missing" and predicts an explosion in bankruptcies in the final three months of this year when government support measures are wound back.
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has announced Australia is currently in a recession, following a period of economic blows due to bushfires and the coronavirus pandemic.
CreditorWatch chief executive officer Patrick Coghlan said thousands of firms that would ordinarily have shut their doors and been forced to pay back their creditors are still alive thanks to government support programs including changed insolvency laws.
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How to decide if you really need home and contents insurance
Jessica Irvine
Economics writer
June 13, 2020 — 11.00pm
I have received a lot of correspondence from concerned readers over the fact that I do not directly pay for any home or contents insurance.
To which I say: thank you for your concern, and also, I’m onto it.
The first thing to note about home and contents insurance is that it is equal parts very boring and very scary.
If you’re not dozing off while reading clause 12c of your Product Disclosure Statement, you’re hiding under your bed convinced a fire or flood is about to imminently destroy your home and all your possessions.
That’s how the insurance industry works, after all: it gets you really scared about all the woes that could befall you, and then stuns you into compliance with paying their premiums as they bamboozle you with the details.
OK #notallinsurers. But some. Most, even.
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Bushfire Crisis And Climate Policy
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No articles in this section
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Coronavirus And Impacts.
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My take on life in Australia during a recession
Shane Oliver
05 Jun, 2020
Going into a recession is bad news. When the economy goes backwards, spending contracts, the jobs market gets tougher, wages go down – the list goes on. This period ahead has come as a shock to many Australians, but there are some things worth noting that might make it easier to bear.
Australia has been battling through a calamitous start to 2020 so far. We kicked off the year with devastating bushfires, which were already detracting from growth in the first quarter. February saw the beginning of COVID-19 disruptions to the local economy, starting with travel bans and moving to a lockdown from mid March which meant some sectors – like retail, tourism and hospitality – had to grind to a halt.
This accounts for negative growth in the March quarter, and the worst is yet to come in the June quarter results, meaning Australia is likely in its first recession since 1991, when Bob Hawke was prime minister and Paul Keating was treasurer. Many Australians weren’t even born then, and for those who were, it’s been nearly 29 years of growth since.
How this recession compares to 1991
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'Six factors in coronavirus crash will shape sharemarket's recovery'
Ben Winck
Jun 8, 2020 – 8.52am
Key Points
- Several of the factors that led equities to plummet at a record pace in February and March remain key risks to their recent upswing, Seema Shah, chief strategist at Principal Global Investors, said in a recent note.
- The coronavirus revealed unprecedented risk velocity, a term for the pace at which economic and market risks affect prices.
- While some of the lingering risk-velocity factors may now strengthen risk assets’ upswing, others still present threats to investors.
- Here are the six factors highlighted by Shah, and whether she views them as a new market boon or critical hazard.
Risk assets have nearly erased their coronavirus-induced losses, but several factors that accelerated their downfall remain.
The plunge from peak prices to bear market territory happened at record speed. The decline exhibited unprecedented risk velocity, or a heightened pace at which economic threats affect market valuations, Seema Shah, chief strategist at Principal Global Investors, said. But just as increased risk velocity drove prices lower at the start of the pandemic, the trend could drive a swift market recovery.
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New reports of family violence spike in COVID-19 lockdown, study finds
By Tammy Mills
June 8, 2020 — 12.15am
Talking points
- Monash University surveyed 166 practitioners about family violence during the COVID-19 pandemic.
- 59 per cent said the frequency of violence against women had increased.
- Half said the severity of violence increased as well.
- 42 per cent said more victims were coming forward for the first time.
- Perpetrators are using the pandemic to inflict new forms of violence and control.
More women are coming forward for the first time to report family violence, according to Victorian research that shows COVID-19 lockdowns have worsened the potential for abuse in many homes.
In what researchers believe to be Australia’s first published study measuring the early impacts of the crisis on domestic violence, Monash University surveyed 166 family violence victim support practitioners across Victoria during a four-week period from the end of April into May.
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What the COVID-19 border freeze will do to property
Australia's property sectors will be hit in varying degrees by the hit to migration. But the biggest problems will come if the slowdown is prolonged.
Michael Bleby Senior reporter
Jun 8, 2020 – 10.22am
Sydney and Melbourne will be the cities most hit by the plunge in Australia's population growth.
After all, they're more exposed to the country's dramatic migration-driven gains and have whole property economies built around the expectation of an extra 80,000 to 100,000 people a year.
It puts the two east coast capitals into a different position from others less tied into migration, such as Adelaide, or Brisbane and Perth, on an economic go-slow for some years already, and where the housing markets have little further to fall as a result of our treasured migration flows hitting a wall.
But for Sydney and Melbourne, it's a rude shock.
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https://au.news.yahoo.com/graph-shows-stunning-side-effect-of-coronavirus-distancing-100210277.html
'Incredibly surprised': Graph shows stunning side effect of coronavirus distancing
Yahoo News Australia 8 June 2020
There has been a historically low number of flu cases due to the emphasis of social distancing and good hygiene amid COVID-19, according to a graph published by The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP) .
“There were only 208 laboratory-confirmed cases of influenza in Australia last month, compared to 30,567 in May 2019 – a decrease of more than 99 per cent,” the graph, which as posted on Twitter, was captioned.
There has been a dramatic drop in cases over the last three months. In March, as Australia went into lockdown, there were 5892 confirmed flu cases. By April the number had dropped to 307, followed by 208 in May.
Dr Kerry Hancock, chair of the RACGP, told NewsGP she was “incredibly surprised” by the results and said the reduce in transmission proved the positive impact social distancing and good hygiene can have.
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Why retail investors are exposed to a second market crash
Patrick Durkin BOSS Deputy editor
Jun 9, 2020 – 12.00am
Retail investors are dangerously exposed to a second major sharemarket correction in August, after analysis revealed the current market optimism does not reflect the dire economic conditions.
EY partner Duncan Hogg, formerly managing director of Bank of America's investment banking team, said he was reluctant to step too far out of his lane to issue the warning, but was detecting alarming signs in the oddly optimistic and irrational equity market.
The ASX briefly hit 6000 on Friday after a weekly gain of 4.2 per cent and is up 32 per cent from its March 17 low, despite Australia heading into its first recession in 29 years.
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission released a report early last month which warned that COVID-19 was creating a nation of sharemarket punters that might end in tears.
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COVID has made Australia 'less safe': ASIO boss
By Anthony Galloway
June 9, 2020 — 12.01am
Australia's top spy boss has warned the coronavirus pandemic has made Australia less safe, with spies, hackers and terrorists looking to do more harm online.
In the strongest signal yet that security agencies are pushing for new powers to access end-to-end encrypted content, Mike Burgess criticised tech companies for resisting requests by police and security agencies to access information in cyberspace.
In a podcast with the Institute of Public Administration Australia, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation director-general said Australia was "sadly ... less safe", with the threats that pre-dated the pandemic "still very much with us and of course we've got the big issue of dealing with COVID itself".
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Inside the crisis that changed Australian government
As a pandemic threatened the world, a conversation in Kirribilli between a Liberal PM and Labor Premier was emblematic of the political co-operation to come.
By Rob Harris
June 9, 2020
The sun set over Sydney Harbour on a clear March evening just after 7pm. The smoke that choked the city just weeks earlier was by then a distant memory but on that evening there was another catastrophe on a global scale on the horizon.
At Kirribilli, the Prime Minister had opened up his official home, an 1850s twin-gabled Gothic mansion, to state and territory leaders for traditional drinks held the night before a Council of Australian Governments meeting. None of the participants knew that when they assembled the next day - Friday the 13th - in Parramatta, a 30-odd minute trip west depending on traffic, it would be the last ever COAG gathering.
As the premiers, chief ministers and hangers-on left for the evening, they noticed Daniel Andrews, the Victorian Premier, lingering behind.
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More jobs to go at News Corp in metro restructure
By Zoe Samios
June 9, 2020 — 3.14pm
News Corp Australia will slash dozens of roles in its metropolitan and national newsrooms as it attempts to simplify its operations to counter a slump in advertising.
Staff at The Daily Telegraph in Sydney and The Herald Sun in Melbourne were told on Tuesday that production and editorial would be syndicated across multiple newspapers, resulting in dozens of job losses. National masthead The Australian will also undergo "a small number" of redundancies in the next few weeks, but is unlikely to share its news content with the city mastheads.
The Australian is also exploring ways to pay less for contributors, according to multiple sources briefed on the plans.
The cuts, which also include commercial roles, are in addition to the hundreds of jobs axed by the Rupert Murdoch-controlled media company two weeks ago. They are a further blow to Australia's media industry, which has lost a number of newsrooms due to factors related to the coronavirus pandemic and a struggling advertising market.
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'I see the full horror show': How Australia navigated the twin crises of COVID-19
By Rob Harris
June 10, 2020
Scott Morrison sat stony faced in the cabinet room looking like he'd seen a ghost. He'd been at work almost every day since late December, when he had thrown himself into the bushfire crisis after an ill-judged holiday in Hawaii.
The nation was facing the deadliest health crisis in a century and the worst economic challenge since the Great Depression. He would say to colleagues at the time: "I see the full horror show every single hour of every single day".
On the afternoon of Thursday, March 26, Morrison summoned a handful of senior journalists, one from each mainstream outlet, to meet him in the cabinet room where he would speak frankly about the state of play. He would do this on a handful of occasions during the coming weeks. John Curtin, Labor prime minister from 1941 to 1945, did the same thing during World War II.
Curtin was a journalist. Morrison from marketing. Both knew the importance of sending a clear, calm and concise message to a worried nation. A handful of late-night, waffling press conferences had led to fierce criticism the PM's communication was missing the mark. He had some catching up to do.
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Time to dig deep for those who haven't had a good crisis
Ross Gittins
Economics Editor
June 10, 2020 — 12.01am
Do the initials EOFY mean anything to you? It’s a relatively new abbreviation, but it’s become so widely used by marketers anxious to squeeze in one last bargain sale before their books close that you probably don’t need me to tell you it stands for end of the financial year.
It’s also become a standby for our tax-deductible charities which, at this time of year, are busy mailing their supporters to subtly remind them that a generous donation or two in the next few weeks would do much to fatten the refund cheque that’s the reward awaiting us when we’ve submitted our tax return.
As an accountant who’s highly conscious of what’s tax deductible and what’s not – and who, in earlier times, did his share of knocking on doors, selling buttons on button day and rattling a collection box at the entrance to the show, but drew the line at helping his father sell the War Cry newspaper in pubs – EOFY looms large on my to-do list in the next few weeks.
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Time's up for universities facing China risk
Jennifer Hewett Columnist
Jun 10, 2020 – 4.17pm
Australian universities complain they have become pawns in a larger political play after China warned its students about the risks of studying here. That’s true – but also entirely predictable.
The combination of COVID-19 and the escalating diplomatic friction between Australia and China has belatedly demonstrated the fractured, unstable base of the universities’ business model and their growth plans.
The sector’s sense of grievance at being abandoned by the federal government during a crisis is also understandable. Canberra loves to boast of the growth in international education as a great export success story, for example. Yet it was unwilling to provide any financial support to all those international students who had lost their casual jobs as well as their dreams of attending an Australian university campus in 2020. They were ineligible for JobKeeper or JobSeeker payments.
Instead it was left to universities and state governments to cobble together some ad hoc and limited assistance packages. Most universities were also not eligible for JobKeeper and are struggling financially themselves.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/border-wars-defy-the-ties-that-bind-20200611-p551p5
Border wars defy the ties that bind
Scott Morrison argues protest rallies against racism only jeopardise broader community support for the issue while risking a COVID-19 spike that will delay the economy opening up.
Jennifer Hewett Columnist
Jun 11, 2020 – 6.11pm
Are we there yet?
NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian insists she understands community frustrations with restrictions even as she announces further easing and with more announcements "imminent".
"The rolling easing of restrictions will continue as long as we all stick together," she says.
But with national cabinet meeting again on Friday, sticking together is becoming harder given the different versions of what COVID-19-safe really means.
The Prime Minister is increasing the pressure on premiers with their borders still firmly shut while trying – unconvincingly – not to single out the economically key state of Queensland. He argues all premiers must nominate the date that interstate travel will resume in July.
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Our economic dealings with the world have been turned on their head
Ross Gittins
Economics Editor
June 12, 2020 — 11.09am
If you know your economic onions, you know that our economy has long run a deficit in trade with the rest of the world which, when you add our net payments of interest and dividends to foreigners, means we’ve long run a deficit on the current account of our balance of payments and, as a consequence, have a huge and growing foreign debt.
Except that this familiar story has been falling apart for the past five years, and is no longer true. In that time, our economic dealings with the rest of the world have been turned on their head.
Last week the Australian Bureau of Statistics announced that we’d actually run a surplus on the current account of $8.4 billion in March quarter. Does that surprise you? It shouldn’t because it was the fourth quarterly surplus in a row.
But that should surprise you because the first of those surpluses, for the June quarter last year, was the first surplus in 44 years. And now we’ve clocked up four in a row, that’s the first 12-month surplus we’ve run since 1973.
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Job ads increase in past fortnight: SEEK
The latest data from online jobs site SEEK shows an increase in the number of jobs advertised in the fortnight ended June 7.
Australian Associated Press June 12, 20207:02am
Job advertisements have risen dramatically across Australia, with Tasmania and Queensland leading the way, indicating business confidence may be on the rise in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
New job ads posted on the employment website SEEK between May 25 and June 7 rose by 60.6 per cent.
This compares to rises of 26.8 per cent, 39.7 per cent and 49.2 per cent in previous three fortnights, SEEK said on Friday.
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https://www.afr.com/chanticleer/six-post-covid-megatrends-for-value-creation-20200611-p551lg
Six post-COVID megatrends for value creation
The coronavirus has accelerated many disruptive trends and squashed years of changes into a matter of weeks. This poses several challenges for businesses.
Jun 12, 2020 – 12.00am
Chief executives and boards are doing a disservice to their shareholders and employees if they do not regularly ask themselves a simple question: how does our business create value in the 21st century?
COVID-19 means now is the time to be thinking hard about the answers to this critical question. The virus is turbocharging the megatrends that were already forcing radical changes in corporate strategy.
Chanticleer believes COVID has elevated the following six megatrends to the forefront of any discussion about creating value in the 21st century. They ought to be considered as the environment within which business operates and evolves in response to human behaviour, government regulation and shareholder expectations.
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As economy teeters, the virus and politics die hard
Politics has returned with force to Canberra and the government is about to face a bitter truth: giving people money is a lot easier than taking it away.
Phillip Coorey Political editor
Jun 13, 2020 – 12.00am
Something snapped back this week but it wasn't the economy. It was a return to politics as usual in Canberra.
After an uneasy three months of bipartisanship forced on the major parties by the coronavirus pandemic, hostilities have reappeared as quickly as health fears have diminished.
Notwithstanding the possibility of a second wave triggered by tens of thousands of demonstrators defying public health advice to join the Black Lives Matter protests, the focus in Canberra is now firmly on the economic exit strategy.
For Labor, which is battling for relevance, it represents a chance to deal itself back in. As one frontbencher confided this week, with the health experts – upon whose every word the nation has hung – receding from the public debate, the decision-making returns to the economy and that makes it overtly political.
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Royal Commissions And The Like.
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National Budget Issues.
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Economy to blame for part of expected budget blowout
Ross Gittins
Economics Editor
June 8, 2020 — 12.00am
When you ask people who work in the House with the Flag on Top why the budget deficit has gone up or gone down, most will tell you it’s gone up because the government decided to spend more money, or it’s gone down because the government decided to spend less money.
When you live in Canberra, the budget looms large and the economy is something far distant in Melbourne or Sydney or somewhere. The budget is the steering wheel by which those in the national capital control the economy of you and me.
When you consider how close they live to all the economists in Treasury and all the distinguished economists at the Australian National University, it surprising how little so many Canberrans understand about the economy.
The truth is, the nation’s economy – almost all of which exists outside the ACT – is far bigger and more powerful than the budget of the federal government (even after you throw in the budgets of the eight states and territories).
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D-Day looms for banks over $224bn in loans
Here’s a slightly awkward fact, for which there may be a reassuring, if elusive, answer: loans deferred because of the coronavirus recession total 90 per cent of the capital of the big four banks.
The deferred loans total $224 billion from 744,904 mortgagees and businesses according to the Australian Bankers Association – $165 billion in mortgages and $101 billion in business loans (which add up to more so there must be some overlap). Total equity capital of the big four is $251.5 billion.
Here’s another awkward way of thinking about the loan deferrals: impaired loan expenses of the big four in the latest financial year totalled $3.7 billion, or an average of 0.33 per cent of loans and advances.
If the deferred loans were treated as impaired this year rather than deferred, and the big four’s share of them was the same as their 80 per cent share of total loans and advances – probably a safe assumption – impaired loan expense would be 16.6 per cent of their loans and advances and would more or less wipe out their capital.
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https://www.afr.com/property/residential/auction-rate-fall-triggers-peak-fears-20200608-p550eq
Auction rate fall triggers 'peak' fears
Nila Sweeney Reporter
Jun 8, 2020 – 4.10pm
Hopes for a V-shaped recovery in the housing market are fading as a lift in auction clearance rates after shutdown restrictions started to ease appears to be losing momentum.
Domain's senior economist Nicola Powell said while the clearance rate was holding up in the weaker economy it remains below the key 60 per cent benchmark.
"An auction clearance rate above 60 per cent is when prices start rising," Dr Powell said.
"Once the clearance rate dips below that important 60 per cent level it indicates that prices are likely to soften. And that's what we saw in May when house prices fell."
Preliminary data from Domain based on 75 per cent of total auctions showed more than half (56.3 per cent) of the 313 Sydney homes listed last Saturday were cleared - a similar result to a week ago.
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Consumer confidence back near pre-virus levels: Westpac
Consumer confidence has returned to close to pre-COVID levels, buoyed by Australia’s success in squashing the spread of the virus and the easing of restrictions.
Westpac’s consumer sentiment index lifted 6 per cent to 94 points in June, from 88 points in May, recouping all of the 20 per cent collapse when the pandemic took off in March.
Still, a reading of below 100 speaks to more pessimists than optimists among respondents, albeit only 2 per cent below the immediate period before the health crisis.
Treasury secretary Steven Kennedy on Tuesday made it clear that the return of confidence among households and businesses would be key to the economic recovery. His comments follow a historic plunge in consumption over the March quarter, which will pale into comparison with the expected hit to spending over the three months to June.
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https://www.afr.com/property/residential/home-loans-fall-at-fastest-rate-in-5-years-20200609-p5510o
Home loans fall at fastest rate in five years
Michael Bleby Senior reporter
Jun 10, 2020 – 1.07pm
New home loans contracted in April at their fastest rate in almost five years as both owner-occupiers and investor borrowers pulled back.
The 4.8 per cent decline in new housing loan commitments was the biggest month-on-month contraction since May 2015, when the total fell 7.4 per cent, and pulled the monthly total to a seasonally adjusted $18.6 billion, Australian Bureau of Statistics figures on Wednesday showed.
New loans to owner-occupiers fell 5 per cent – the biggest drop in that measure also since May 2015's 6.1 per cent drop – and lending commitments to investor borrowers declined 4.2 per cent, the biggest dip in 17 months.
Lending to first home buyers slipped 1.9 per cent from March.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/australia-leads-on-economic-recovery-oecd-20200610-p5514b
Australia leads on economic recovery: OECD
Matthew Cranston and John Kehoe
Jun 10, 2020 – 6.41pm
Australia is leading the developed world out of the pandemic-induced recession but governments must reform labour markets, tax, regulation and competition to ensure a sustained recovery, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development says.
In a warning to the Morrison government not to withdraw its emergency spending too quickly in September, the OECD also advised Australia to consider further stimulus to boost incomes and reduce unemployment.
The OECD issued fresh forecasts on Wednesday night showing Australia's recession would see economic output contract 5 per cent in 2020 and consumption to plunge 7.6 per cent – trailing only South Korea, China and Indonesia in terms of economic resilience.
The local economy is tipped to rebound 4.1 per cent in 2021 if the coronavirus is kept under control and a "second wave" is avoided.
World GDP is expected to fall 6 per cent this year – the largest ever projected in the 60 years of the OECD, while the loss of income will exceed that of any previous world recession over the last 100 years except during times of war.
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Watchdog prepares for recession reality
· Australian Associated Press
The head of Australia's corporate watchdog has warned some businesses could go under when the economy hits the so-called financial cliff in September as stimulus measures are unwound.
Some people could also lose their homes as the first recession in nearly 30 years takes its toll.
Chair of the Australian Securities and Investment Commission James Shipton says while the financial system is preparing for any eventuality as the country works its way through the coronavirus pandemic, there will be casualties.
"The reality is that some Australians are going to be caught on the wrong side of this," Mr Shipton told ABC radio on Thursday.
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Health Issues.
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Health funds back move to stop public hospitals 'double dipping'
Carrie LaFrenz Senior reporter
Jun 8, 2020 – 3.43pm
The growing treatment of privately insured patients in public hospitals will be addressed by the Independent Hospital Pricing Authority, leaving health funds optimistic about shelling out less to public hospitals, which may leave their members better off.
By admitting private patients, public hospitals are able to secure extra cash flow, as it gives the hospital money from private health insurers, on top of the subsidy they get from the government through Medicare. All Australians are covered by Medicare.
The Australian Private Hospitals Association flagged on May 29 that the new National Health Reform Agreement signed by federal and state governments included a "commitment to remove any financial benefit accruing to public hospitals for treating private patients".
Funding for private patients in public hospitals comes from Commonwealth and state money, private health insurance payments to hospitals, and Medical Benefits Schedule payments to clinicians.
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There will be another pandemic, so let's be ready, say GPs
By Kate Aubusson
June 9, 2020 — 12.00am
GPs are demanding a permanent seat at the table of national advisers guiding Australia's COVID-19 response, and full access to government modelling, in preparation for a potential second wave or the next pandemic.
The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners has warned Australia must learn from mistakes in its response to the COVID-19 disease (which is caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus) to guard against the next pandemic.
"There will be a SARS-CoV-3. Let's be ready for it," the College president Dr Harry Nespolon said.
In a submission to the Senate inquiry investigating the government's response to the COVID-19 crisis, the College has outlined a series of failings in Australia's pandemic defences, including the nation's unreliable supply of protective equipment, confusing public health messages and the dangerous proliferation of fake cures and conspiracy theories.
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Suicide prevention experts may have got it 'horribly wrong'
The authors of a new study question the risks of prescribing antidepressants to young people.
Jill Margo Health editor
Jun 9, 2020 – 12.01am
The use of antidepressant drugs in young Australians has been robustly challenged by a new study.
There has been a per capita increase of 49 per cent in suicide rates and an estimated 66 per cent increase in antidepressant dispensing rates among young Australians in the decade from 2009, says Dr Melissa Raven.
It highlights a correlation between rising rates of prescribing the drugs to young people and rising rates of youth suicide.
While correlation does not equal cause, the authors say it does raise questions about the veracity of advice from Australian suicide prevention experts.
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'Dangerous': Researchers note 'massive uptick' in anti-vaccination activity
By Wendy Tuohy
June 14, 2020 — 12.00am
A "massive uptick" in May of reporting of anti-vaccination activity in Australia has coincided with a drop in routine vaccination rates.
Leading immunisation researcher Associate Professor Margie Danchin said a 900 per cent increase in media reporting of anti-vaccination activity was evidence of a dangerous increase in the campaign against vaccine science.
"We have a drop in routine vaccination coverage; we don't necessarily know if it's related to anti-vaccination activity. We think it definitely looks like it [routine vaccination uptake] has dropped," she said, though this may be due to fear of attending clinics or other pandemic disruption.
Anti-vaccinators were using paranoia about the pandemic to their advantage, she said.
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https://ajp.com.au/news/60-day-dispensing-dollar-discount-gone-in-the-agreement/
60-day dispensing, dollar discount ‘gone in the Agreement’
Guild reveals controversial 60-day dispensing proposal and optional $1 discount are not written into the newly announced 7CPA – though the latter continues indefinitely despite low uptake
The Covid-19 pandemic played a “critical” role in changing the government’s position on 60-day dispensing, Pharmacy Guild national president George Tambassis told the media on Friday.
On Thursday, the Seventh Community Pharmacy Agreement (7CPA) was signed by the Guild, Minister for Health Greg Hunt and the PSA.
However the controversial proposal for extended dispensing lobbied for heavily by groups such as the RACGP and Consumers Health Forum is now off the table completely, Mr Tambassis confirmed.
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International Issues.
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'Dangerous for our country': Bush's Secretary of State calls Trump a liar
By Carol Morello and Laurie McGinley
June 8, 2020 — 5.38am
Washington: Colin Powell, a former secretary of state and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Sunday that he would vote for Joe Biden in November because President Donald Trump has "drifted away" from the Constitution, is a chronic liar and is "dangerous to our country".
In a blistering interview with Jake Tapper on CNN's State of the Union, Powell added his voice to a string of retired generals, admirals and Pentagon chiefs who have denounced Trump since his threats to use troops to break up nationwide protests over the killing of George Floyd at the hands of police in Minneapolis.
"We have a constitution," Powell said. "And we have to follow that constitution. And the president has drifted away from it. I'm so proud of what these generals and admirals have done, and others have done."
The former secretary of state called Trump a liar who has harmed America's moral authority.
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https://www.afr.com/world/north-america/we-can-t-take-much-more-protests-swell-20200607-p5507z
'Black Lives Matter' protests go global
Nandita Bose and Lucas Jackson
Updated Jun 7, 2020 – 10.18am, first published at 9.57am
Washington | Demonstrators filled the streets in cities around the world Saturday, staging some of the largest and most peaceful protests against racism since a 46-year-old black man, George Floyd, was killed on Memorial Day after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck.
People marched in Washington, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, London, Berlin, Paris, Sydney and elsewhere, with turnout reaching the tens of thousands in some cities. Washington alone hosted a dozen different rallies. In Chicago, there were at least five and in New York City, protesters turned out to dozens of events in all five boroughs.
Australians defied warnings from the prime minister and health experts about the coronavirus risk to turn out in force to protest against racism and Aboriginal deaths in custody.
Sydney had the largest crowd, with 20,000 people marching from Town Hall to Belmore Park after the Court of Appeal declared the protest a legal assembly at the eleventh hour.
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Politics & Policy
2020 Is Not 1968. It May Be Worse.
Social unrest helped doom Lyndon Johnson's presidency. It may end up saving Trump's.
By Niall FergusonJune 7, 2020, 10:00 PM GMT+10
Niall Ferguson is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He was previously a professor of history at Harvard, New York University and Oxford. He is the founder and managing director of Greenmantle LLC, a New York-based advisory firm.
The American death toll is rising. An unpopular president fears for his re-election chances. The U.S. sends men into space. Down on Earth, the economy is in trouble. Racial tensions boil over into rallies, looting and violent confrontations with police in cities across the nation, intensifying political polarization and widening the generational divide. The president considers invoking the 1807 Insurrection Act, which empowers a president to deploy the armed forces and National Guard in any state.
Yes, as writers across the political spectrum such as David Frum, James Fallows, Max Boot, Julian Zelizer and Zachary Karabell have pointed out, 2020 is looking a lot like 1968. For Vietnam, read Covid-19. For Lyndon B. Johnson, read Donald J. Trump. For Apollo 8’s successful orbit of the moon, read the docking of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon with the Space Station. And for Washington, Chicago and many other cities in 1968, read Minneapolis, Atlanta and many other cities in the last few weeks.
Ah yes, interjected Boston Globe columnist Michael Cohen, but today we are dealing with a pandemic. Actually, they had one in 1968 as well: the Hong Kong flu, caused by the influenza virus A/H3N2, which was ultimately responsible for more than 100,000 excess deaths in the U.S. and a million around the world. It’s easy to forget that Woodstock, the following year, was a super-spreader event.
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Doubts remain over true scale of US jobless crisis
Were Friday's official labour market data out of the US too good to be true? Officials are struggling to gather reliable statistics during the coronavirus pandemic.
James Politi
Jun 8, 2020 – 11.14am
Washington | The US government agency responsible for publishing labour market statistics is struggling to pin down the actual unemployment rate in the world’s largest economy.
The problem is due to “misclassification” of workers in a key survey, struggles with data collection during the pandemic, and massive flows in and out of jobs.
On Friday (Saturday AEST), the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), a unit of the US labour department, released its latest report on the jobs market, showing unemployment dropping from 14.7 per cent in April to 13.3 per cent in May, an unexpected improvement.
But the data came with a caveat: the agency acknowledged that some furloughed employees had been labelled as working but absent, when they should have been classified as temporarily laid off. If not for that mistake, the unemployment rate would have been 3 percentage points higher.
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Warning signs: Racial unrest, virus force Trump camp to recalibrate
By Jon Lemire and Zeke Miller
June 8, 2020 — 4.13pm
Washington: Less than five months before Americans will decide his fate, President Donald Trump is confronting a vastly different political reality than he once envisioned. For starters, if the election were held today, he'd likely lose.
The President, West Wing advisers and campaign aides have grown increasingly concerned about his reelection chances as they've watched Trump's standing take a pummelling first on his handling of the coronavirus pandemic and now during a nationwide wave of protests against racial injustice. His allies worry that the President has achieved something that his November foe had so far been unable to do: igniting enthusiasm in a Democratic Party base that has been lukewarm to former vice-president Joe Biden.
Trump was facing tougher political prospects even before the death of George Floyd, the black man who died after a white Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee for almost nine minutes into his neck last week.
COVID-19's mounting human and economic tolls — and Trump's defiant response — has cost him support among constituencies his campaign believes are key to victory in November. His signature rallies have been frozen for months, and his cash advantage over Biden, while vast, isn't growing as quickly as hoped because the pandemic put a halt to high-dollar fundraisers.
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No quick fix as Australia's relations with China sink to new low
There are fears China's moves on tourism, beef and barley could just be the opening shots in a prolonged trade war.
Michael Smith China correspondent
Jun 8, 2020 – 3.32pm
Shanghai | The timing of China's travel warning for Australia leaves no doubt that Beijing has a clear message for the Morrison government.
Tourism is the latest sector being targeted in the Chinese government's unofficial campaign of economic coercion to punish Australia for trying to rally international support for a probe into the coronavirus pandemic.
While the level of trade between the two countries is at a record high, the political relationship between Australia and its biggest trading partner is an at all-time low. Few in Canberra or Beijing can see a way forward.
Beijing is incensed at the Morrison government's public push for an international probe into what happened in those early weeks of the pandemic, widely believed to have started in the central Chinese city of Wuhan.
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Chinese investment in Australia lowest in 10 years, super funds urged to spend
By Jennifer Duke
June 9, 2020 — 12.00am
Chinese investment in Australia has fallen to its lowest level in a decade as political tension rises between the two major trading partners, but Labor says superannuation funds could take the place of foreign investors.
There was a 58.4 per cent drop in Chinese investment in local businesses last year, bringing the total spend down to US$2.4 billion ($3.4 billion). This is the lowest level of investment since 2007, a new report released by KPMG and the University of Sydney on Tuesday shows, and about $1.5 billion of this total investment was through the sale of Tasmanian infant formula producer Bellamy's Australia to Inner Mongolia's China Mengniu Dairy Company.
The highest level of Chinese investment in Australia was in 2008 when US$16.2 billion was invested in Australian businesses, followed by 2016 at US$11.54 billion.
Chinese foreign investment helped boost Australia's post-global financial crisis recovery, the report said, but the total spend is tipped to fall further due to the coronavirus pandemic as governments tighten up their rules to protect critical industries and prevent the "opportunistic acquisitions of companies at undervalued prices".
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'Far from over': WHO head urges vigilance as pandemic grows
By Stephanie Nebehay and Emma Farge
June 9, 2020 — 7.41am
Geneva: The World Health Organisation urged countries on Monday to press on with efforts to contain the novel coronavirus, noting the pandemic was worsening globally and had not peaked in central America.
More than 136,000 cases were reported worldwide on Sunday, "the most in a single day so far", WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
"More than six months into the pandemic, this is not the time for any country to take its foot off the pedal," he told an online briefing.
In response to a question on China, WHO's top emergencies expert, Dr Mike Ryan, said retrospective studies of how the outbreak has been addressed could wait, adding: "We need to focus now on what we are doing today to prevent second peaks."
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Chinese investment slows to a trickle
Chinese investment in Australia plummeted by more than 60 per cent last year to $3.4bn, as Beijing shifted capital towards developing nations that have signed up to Xi Jinping’s signature Belt and Road Initiative.
A new report reveals that despite record trade between the two countries, Chinese investment in Australia in 2019 was at its lowest annual level since its 2010 fall from boomtime heights, two years after Chinese minerals and energy sector deals brought in more than $20bn.
The investment dive is part of a broader trend of falling Chinese investment in Western countries such as the US and Canada, as Beijing directs capital flows to reinforce its strategic interests elsewhere in the world.
It came amid stricter Chinese government controls over outward investment, and tougher treatment by Australia’s Foreign Investment Review Board of bids by Chinese companies, particularly state-owned enterprises.
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Crunch time for our universities as foreign students dry up
The Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism has clearly discovered what our universities are also seeing: large numbers of Chinese international students are straining at the leash to come to Australia to study in 2021 or earlier.
Chinese students are now reluctant to go to the US and expose themselves to American turmoil, and in both the US and Britain there are high risks of COVID-19 infection.
So, at the moment, we have the best story in town.
The Chinese government in claiming that there is racial discrimination and violence against Chinese in Australia which threatens both our student education and tourism, two major Australian export industries. We are being punished for a number of sins, including 12 years of lecturing the Middle Kingdom on how it should be governed.
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https://www.afr.com/world/asia/a-new-global-crisis-is-looming-in-east-asia-20200609-p550qe
A new global crisis is looming in east Asia
The fact that China is the rising power of the 21st century means Beijing’s actions now have global implications. Countries around the world watch the wolf-warrior diplomacy — and wonder if they might be next in line for coercion.
Gideon Rachman Columnist
Jun 9, 2020 – 11.15am
What is China up to? From Hong Kong to Taiwan and from the South China Sea to the Indian border, the Chinese government, led by President Xi Jinping, is pursuing more aggressive policies.
There is growing concern about Beijing’s behaviour, not just in Washington but in Delhi, London, Tokyo and Canberra.
The Chinese government may feel that coronavirus makes this a good time to act, while the world is looking away. The turmoil on the streets of America has further divided and distracted the West.
But democracies cannot afford to lose focus on east Asia. A new global crisis could easily break out there, with even graver long-term consequences than the pandemic.
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History has stepped on the accelerator and is taking Australia along for the ride
Peter Hartcher
Political and international editor for The Sydney Morning Herald
June 9, 2020 — 12.01am
Vladimir Lenin once remarked that "there are decades where nothing happens and there are weeks when decades happen". As the leader of the Russian revolution, he was a bit of an expert on sudden upheavals following long stasis. We are living through such weeks now.
In the past week, three important developments continued to accelerate the change to Australia's place in the world. First, the Chinese government told Chinese citizens: "Do not travel to Australia." It's unsafe in Australia because of racist violence against Chinese people, according to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism.
At the moment it's academic – the border is closed. But it's smarter for Beijing to do it this way. Let the tension build. Now the announcement has been made, the fear in the affected industries will mount in anticipation. The tourism and university sectors will pressure the Morrison government to crack.
The travel threat is the third instalment in this year's program of economic coercion against Australia. The others were actions against Australia's barley exports to China, then beef. Beijing is trying to build a constituency of Australian economic interests, one after another, that will clamour for Canberra to capitulate and give China whatever it wants.
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China urges students to rethink Australia plans
Michael Smith China correspondent
Updated Jun 9, 2020 – 7.11pm, first published at 5.08pm
Shanghai | China is warning its students to reconsider plans to study in Australia due to an increase in racist attacks as it steps up a campaign to punish Australia economically for supporting an international probe into coronavirus.
The travel warning on Tuesday follows last week's advice for Chinese tourists to stay away from Australia and is a potential blow for the university sector which was already expected to lose $12 billion in revenue from Chinese students this year.
The trade threat against Australia’s third-biggest export income earner comes on top of restrictions on Australian barley and beef since the Morrison government angered Beijing by calling for an international investigation into the global pandemic.
The official advice issued by China’s Ministry of Education came as university campuses prepare to reopen in July although students currently in China would not be allowed to travel overseas anyway under existing restrictions. It was not as strongly worded as last week's warning for tourists to stay away but still directed students to reconsider their plans.
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China warns students about travelling to Australia
By Eryk Bagshaw
June 9, 2020 — 6.28pm
China has issued a warning for students travelling to Australia, delivering another blow to a key Australian export industry as relations between the two countries deteriorate further.
University leaders in the $19-billion sector were on Tuesday night scrambling to respond to the intervention. The education sector is heavily exposed to the Chinese market as its largest source of international students.
The Australian dollar fell by more than 1 per cent after the statement was published by the Chinese Ministry of Education late on Tuesday afternoon. In its first warning for students travelling to any other country since the outbreak began, it urged students to do a risk assessment and to be cautious in choosing to return to Australia in July.
"The spread of the new global COVID-19 outbreak has not been effectively controlled, and there are risks in international travel and open campuses," the ministry said in a statement. "During the epidemic, there were multiple discriminatory incidents against Asians in Australia."
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Sharemarkets have been pocketing a recovery that does not yet exist
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
June 10, 2020 — 10.35am
Markets have been celebrating $US9 trillion ($12.9 trillion) of stimulus across the world but have turned a collective blind eye to the other side of the equation.
They have either forgotten why authorities are having to take wartime counter measures, or are ignoring that a V-shaped economic recovery is not in fact happening anywhere - including China where stress is mounting in the lending markets.
Friedmanites say money creation on a grand scale - central banks are financing the entire budget deficits of the US, eurozone, UK and Japan - must mechanically lead to an explosive surge of asset prices over the next two or three years. Consumer price inflation would follow with a lag.
The figures are certainly eye-watering. The M3 money supply has been rising at a 60 per cent rate in the US over the last three months (on an annualised basis), 20 per cent in the eurozone and 14 per cent in the UK. Monetarists argue that the stock of excess M3 will catch fire once people start spending again and "velocity" returns to normal. M3 is a measure of the entire money supply within an economy, including cash, savings deposits but also money in less-liquid financial products.
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Coronavirus: Singapore PM Lee Hsien Loong warns of trouble brewing
Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has kicked off an unofficial election campaign with a national address highlighting his efforts to help the nation survive in a “less prosperous, more troubled” and dangerous post-COVID-19 world.
Describing the pandemic as “the crisis of a generation”, the 68-year-old outlined a “difficult and disruptive” short-term future in which Singapore’s reputation for political stability and “playing by the rules” with investors would give it a critical advantage in its economic recovery.
“Countries will have less stake in each other’s wellbeing and will fight more over how the pie is shared rather than work together to enlarge the pie for all. It will be a less prosperous world and also a more troubled one,” Mr Lee said during his Sunday night televised speech.
While such developments would hit Singapore hard, “our strong and trusted international reputation will help us greatly”, he added.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/covid-19-will-hit-developing-countries-hard-20200610-p5516r
COVID-19 will hit developing countries hard
We know that we are in the midst of an extraordinary global economic contraction. We do not know how deep and persistent it will be, nor how long its adverse effects will last.
Martin Wolf Columnist
Jun 10, 2020 – 12.10pm
“COVID-19 is the most adverse peacetime shock to the global economy in a century.” Moreover, this recession “is the first since 1870 to be triggered solely by a pandemic”.
Both observations come from the World Bank’s excellent new Global Economic Prospects. They illuminate the scale of the damage. Never can there have been a greater need for an ambitious and co-operative response. Alas, not for a long time have these qualities been so absent.
One of the report’s salient conclusions is the scale of uncertainty about what lies ahead. We know that we are in the midst of an extraordinary global economic contraction. We do not know how deep and persistent it will be, nor how long its adverse effects will last.
We are, after all, at an early stage in managing the disease. That is particularly true for emerging and developing countries, where COVID-19 is still taking off. Measures to contain it are especially hard to implement there, given the dependence of so many on work in the informal sector and the limited health and fiscal capacities of governments.
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Economic distancing from China would be a catastrophe
Reminding China of how much it owes to the rules-based global trading system is a lot smarter than trying to shun it.
Shiro Armstrong Contributor
Jun 10, 2020 – 12.55pm
The health and economic crises from the novel coronavirus are unlike anything the world has experienced since the Great Depression and World War II. The global community is at risk of repeating the mistakes of the 1930s and undoing the foundations of lasting peace and prosperity that were forged in the ashes of the war.
The world needs more globalisation to overcome the COVID-19 crises, not less. There’s little doubt that developing a vaccine and eradicating the virus will require a global effort in co-operation, collaboration and co-ordination, even if those qualities now seem to be in short supply. This effort is the key to economic recovery, too.
Two related forces gathering momentum in many countries will make the world poorer, weaker and less secure.
One is economic nationalism: to bolster onshore production, put up barriers to foreign investment and shorten supply chains to the point that they avoid crossing borders. That’s the North Korean model of eliminating risk in international economic engagement.
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Powell says Fed 'not even thinking about thinking' about rate hikes
Jacob Greber United States correspondent
Jun 11, 2020 – 5.43am
Washington | Free money as far as the horizon.
That's the bottom-line message from Jerome Powell after the Federal Reserve left its benchmark rate steady at zero to 0.25 per cent and signalled there's no internal board consensus on hiking before 2023 at the earliest.
"We're not thinking about raising rates," Mr Powell told reporters on Wednesday (Thursday AEST). "We're not even thinking about thinking about raising rates."
Committing to use the full range of monetary policy tools available to the central bank for as long as it takes, the Fed chairman warned that in spite of last week's surprise jobs report for May - which showed an unexpected fall in unemployment - many Americans are set to be out of work potentially for years.
Mr Powell dampened expectations for a rapid rebound in the world's most important economy after the coronavirus pandemic forced shutdowns that took the country from the lowest unemployment in 50 years to the highest in 90 years in the space of just two months.
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'Chinese students will not go there': Beijing education agents warn Australia
By Eryk Bagshaw, Fergus Hunter and Sanghee Liu
June 10, 2020 — 10.30pm
Chinese education agents say they will not recommend studying in Australia and have threatened to divert thousands of students to the UK as the sector reels from a dispute between Australia and its largest trading partner.
The comments are the first sign that a warning delivered by China's Ministry of Education on Tuesday will trickle down to consumers, as education agents accuse Australia of discriminating against their students and using them as a cash cow.
China is the largest source of overseas students at Australian universities and any decline would put at risk an estimated $3.1 billion of revenue paid by Chinese nationals to the Group of Eight elite research universities alongside RMIT and the University of Technology Sydney.
Austlink chairwoman Amy Mo, a Beijing education agent who has operated in the Australian market for 15 years, said the deteriorating relationship would bring "immeasurable economic losses to Australia".
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'Great uncertainty about the future': Fed predicts years of high unemployment, vows to keep rates low
By Jeanna Smialek
June 11, 2020 — 5.23am
Washington: The Federal Reserve left interest rates unchanged and near zero at its meeting Wednesday as the central bank projected high unemployment for several years and a long slog back from the pandemic-induced recession.
In their first economic projections this year, Fed officials indicated that they expect the unemployment rate to end 2020 at 9.3 per cent and remain elevated for years, coming in at 5.5 per cent in 2022. That would be well above the level they expect to prevail over the longer run in a healthy economy.
"Many millions have lost their jobs," Fed Chairman Jerome H. Powell said at a news conference following the Fed's two-day policy meeting. "There is great uncertainty about the future."
The Fed is projecting a particularly sharp hit in 2020, with officials expecting output to contract by 6.5 per cent at the end of this year compared to the final quarter of 2019, before rebounding by 5 per cent in 2021.
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China is infiltrating Australia on multiple fronts, from politics to business, via its powerful and covert United Front agency
A secretive arm of China’s Communist Party is working to influence every aspect of Aussie life, from politics to business, a shock report reveals.
news.com.au June 11, 20209:53am
Operatives from a secretive arm of the Chinese Communist Party are on a mission to infiltrate and influence almost every aspect of Australian life, from politics and business to the media.
That’s the conclusion of a shocking new report about the work of agents and their recruits, whose goals range from the commercial to the downright sinister.
Analysis from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) examined the operation of the United Front, which Chinese President Xi Jinping once described as his “magic weapon”, whose tentacles already spread through our universities, corporations and parliaments.
“United Front(’s) work encompasses a broad spectrum of activity, from espionage to foreign interference, influence and engagement,” ASPI report author Alex Joske said.
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How George Floyd's death changed the US culture wars
By Matthew Knott
June 12, 2020 — 10.21am
Washington: When NFL star football player Colin Kaepernick began kneeling during the national anthem in 2016 as a protest against police brutality, most Americans were not on his side. A YouGov poll taken at the time showed that 57 per cent disapproved of his decision to take a knee compared to 32 per cent who approved.
When YouGov asked a near identical question this week the results were reversed. A majority of respondents, 52 per cent, said they believed it was ok for NFL players to kneel during the national compared to 36 per cent opposed.
The turnaround reflects a broader racial and cultural reckoning that is underway in America following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, especially among white Americans.
Books aimed at educating white Americans about racism are flying off the shelves. The top five titles on the New York Times non-fiction bestseller list are currently: White Fragility, So You Want to Talk About Race, How to be an Antiracist, Me and White Supremacy and The New Jim Crow.
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Reality bites as investors wake in fright to what's ahead
Lulled by a willing Fed, investors have been far too credulous about the pandemic, the economy and the 2020 presidential race.
Jacob Greber United States correspondent
Updated Jun 12, 2020 – 12.38pm, first published at 11.08am
Donald Trump’s favourite fall guy – the ever compliant market darling Jay Powell – is accustomed to the President’s wrath.
Since early March the Federal Reserve chairman has been basking in Trump’s good books. Having yanked every tool he had at his disposal, as well as some that people didn’t know even existed, to flood markets with unprecedented liquidity and stimulus, Powell was even nominated last month by President Trump as his administration’s “most improved player”.
Those happy days look to be over with the mood again souring in the Oval Office.
As US stocks cratered on Thursday (Friday AEST), halting and paring an eye-popping 48 per cent leap in the Dow Jones Industrial Average in the 11 weeks through last Tuesday, Trump lashed Powell for this week issuing an outlook on the US economy that the President considered overly bleak.
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https://www.afr.com/wealth/personal-finance/what-to-make-of-wall-st-s-savage-slump-20200611-p551tp
What to make of Wall St's savage slump
While the claimed catalyst was a second wave of infections in the US, these are unlikely in areas that have embraced proper containment.
Christopher Joye Columnist
Jun 12, 2020 – 10.39am
Many investors who exited assets in March, or who felt they profited from the catastrophic price falls in the first few weeks of that month, have expressed surprise about the sharp recovery over April, May and June. In April almost every smart investor I talked to spoke sceptically of a “bear market rally” and seemed to be sitting on the sidelines.
Of course, the enormous rebound came to a halt on Thursday night when US shares plummeted 6 to 7 per cent (depending on the measure) on the back of fears of a “second wave” of COVID-19 infections, which I will return to later.
The mid-March bears – who went to cash, remained under-invested, and/or held their shorts for too long – have obviously underperformed during the upswing over the last three months. A common refrain has been that they cannot fathom the price action, which appears divorced from fundamentals when the world is experiencing the worst recession since the great depression.
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Fed meeting shows all that's wrong with central banking
David Bassanese Columnist
Jun 12, 2020 – 11.08am
This week’s United States Federal Reserve policy meeting encapsulates all that is wrong with modern day central banking.
Central banks today are like overly-protective parents too scared to let their children learn to walk on their own. As a result, we’re breeding a bunch of investors who rely on central banks rather than their own due diligence to protect them from risk.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind extreme policy measures in times of a crisis. Investors would be even more upset if economies were left to crash.
But my concern is that central banks have, and will likely continue to find it hard, to withdraw extreme policy measures which is leaving gross distortions in the financial system.
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'Absurd and shameful': Winston Churchill statue sealed in steel ahead of protests
By Bevan Shields
June 13, 2020 — 5.37am
London: A statue of Winston Churchill has been sealed inside a protective steel barrier ahead of a massive London race protest which Prime Minister Boris Johnson says has been "hijacked" by extremists.
Construction workers boarded up the heritage-listed 3.5-metre tall bronze monument to the former prime minister overnight amid fears it could be torn down or become a flashpoint for clashes between rival protesters this weekend.
The extraordinary sight has shocked Britain. London mayor Sadiq Khan also ordered another eight statues to be covered by protective casing while tensions are high. Those statues include tributes to Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, George Washington, and the cenotaph near Downing Street.
In his strongest comments yet on the wave of demonstrations sweeping Britain in the wake of the death of African American George Floyd in police custody in Minnesota, a furious Johnson lashed the growing campaign to tear down statues of historic figures with links to racism or slavery.
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Coronavirus Australia live updates: Map shows countries where virus cases are rising or falling
Australia's borders could be shut for a very long time, with a new map showing the coronavirus crisis is only just beginning in some countries.
news.com.au June 13, 2020 9:36AM AEST
Australia has flattened its coronavirus curve - but the global epidemic is far from over.
Across the world, some countries are only just beginning to see an uptick in their coronavirus cases with South American nations hardest hit.
A new map from the New York Times shows which countries are now seeing a rise in cases and which places are seeing less cases every day.
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Coronavirus: Crematorium data prove China was lying about COVID-19
On January 25, something strange started happening in China’s crematoriums – proving Beijing wasn’t telling the truth about the nation’s virus cases.
news.com.au June 14, 202012:18am
Discrepancies in Beijing’s COVID-19 reporting have been raising suspicions since January. Now a new study of Chinese medical, media and bureaucratic reports points to a massive cover-up of the outbreak’s severity.
A new study accuses Beijing’s reported number of infections and deaths from the pandemic of lacking any credibility. And that will have had a severe impact on how the world responded to the outbreak.
The preprint study, which is yet to undergo the scientific quality-control process of peer review, was published on the medRxiv early release service.
The first official recognition of the virus outbreak was from Wuhan city in early January. But news of the strange new pneumonia-like disease began to appear on Chinese medical forums in late December. Beijing immediately cracked-down on the discussion and moved to silence the doctors involved.
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I look forward to comments on all this!
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David.
