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For this week, after the Biden / Harris ticket is endorsed for the Democrats, we have a critique of Trump from Republicans. Just about says is all!
https://www.defendingdemocracytogether.org/national-security/
In the UK we are seeing some hints of a second wave emerging. They will need to be very careful! Brexit also appears to be a total mess with not many weeks to go.
In OZ we are seeing a spectacular amount of finger pointing and blame shifting between the Commonwealth and the States on issues like aged care. We are also seeing all sorts of little breakouts and new clusters popping up all over…a worry. Parliament has been interesting for its first week!
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Major Issues.
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Seven Australian universities in the world’s top 100
Australia’s seven highest ranking universities have held onto their prized positions in the world’s top 100 in the latest annual list from the Academic Ranking of World Universities.
And Australia’s leading institution, the University of Melbourne. rose to its highest ever position of 35th in the world in the 2020 rankings, released by the China-based ShanghaiRanking Consultancy on Saturday.
Other universities named in the world’s top 100 are the University of Queensland (54th), the Australian National University (67th), UNSW and the University of Sydney (equal 74th), and Monash University and the University of Western Australia (equal 85th).
All Australian universities in the top seven, except Monash, managed to maintain or improve on their 2019 ranking in the ARWU, which is mainly based on a university’s high level research performance in science, technology and medicine.
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Government must act on uni research shortfall
Australia needs a strong and vibrant research base, not only to stop COVID-19 rampaging around the country, but for the discoveries and innovations that will drive long-term economic recovery.
John Carroll
Aug 17, 2020 – 12.01am
COVID-19 has illuminated the fundamental flaws in how we fund and support research and discovery in Australia.
The vast majority of Australia’s research effort is undertaken in universities and specialised institutes supported by the federal government through bodies such as the Australian Research Council (ARC) and the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC). With only 8 per cent and 15 per cent of applications being successful after peer review, respectively, it is fair to say that only the very best are successful.
These outstanding research projects do not come fully funded, but the ingenuity of universities has resulted in the gap being covered, largely by international student revenue. With this revenue stream now unavailable, it has exposed the chronic underfunding of government research, so that a generation of researchers are now at risk.
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Unis demand government retreat on fee hikes and student failure crackdown
By Fergus Hunter
August 17, 2020 — 6.20pm
Universities have called on the Morrison government to retreat from key elements of its funding shake-up, including significant fee increases for students and a crackdown on academic failure rates.
Following the release of draft legislation last week, university groups have for the first time detailed their concerns about the overhaul, which seeks to fund tens of thousands more university places in the coming decade in response to growing demand.
The Innovative Research Universities, a grouping of seven institutions including La Trobe University and Western Sydney University, has urged the government to water down a central feature of the package: the steep fee rises for some courses alongside discounts for disciplines deemed "job-relevant".
Under the overhaul, humanities courses will more than double in price, with a full year of study costing $14,500. Fees for law and commerce will increase 28 per cent to $14,500. Teaching, nursing, clinical psychology, English, languages, maths and agriculture courses will drop by 46 to 62 per cent, costing $3700. Subjects will fall into four student fee clusters, from cheapest to most expensive, based on national job priorities.
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AEMO's central plan will keep lights on and power prices down
Contrary to reports, the Integrated System Plan will drive market-based investment in reliable and cheaper electricity for consumers.
Audrey Zibelman
Aug 18, 2020 – 12.14pm
Contributor Matthew Warren ('Who's in charge of keeping the lights on?') seems to misunderstand the nature and purpose of the National Electricity Market’s (NEM) Integrated System Plan (ISP), and the role of the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) more broadly.
Implicit in the question posed by Mr Warren – ‘Who is keeping the lights on?’ – were three other questions: do we need an integrated system plan? Does the ISP move the NEM away from markets and towards central planning? And is AEMO concerned with cost and consumer impacts?
The ISP is geared to managing Australia's transition to a renewables-based energy system.
By design and action, the ISP’s fundamental purpose is to identify investment choices and essential actions that optimise consumer benefits. Much like you would not build a new airport or highway system without a good demographic blueprint and economic forecast, the ISP maps least-cost pathways to replace the NEM’s ageing coal fleet, consistent with government policies.
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https://apo.org.au/node/307604
Cancelled! How ideological cleansing threatens Australia
17 Aug 2020
Publisher Centre for Independent Studies
Social outcomes Cultural diplomacy Freedom of speech Ideology Political correctness Race relations Academic freedom Australian history Australia
Resources Cancelled! How ideological cleansing threatens Australia
Description
‘Cancel culture’ campaigns in Australia are intended to erase elements of our history and to deny the record of those who helped found this country. The impulse to impose a revised interpretation of the past poses a danger that threatens to corrode civility, destroy civic trust, and fuel community discord.
The drive to eradicate offensive words, images, and opinions from the public square is rapidly displacing liberal commitments to freedom of speech. For ‘cancel campaigners’, freedom of speech is not a right; but something permissible only insofar as it conforms with conceptions of social justice regarding race, gender, sexual orientation, and ethnicity.
Black Lives Matter (BLM) campaigns emerged as protests against racial injustice. Today, racism attracts the most severe moral disapprobation. But racism is now detected in all areas of society. Those determined to expose racism stop at nothing in their efforts to attack institutions of the state, eradicate one point of view and install another in its place.
BLM and ‘cancel culture’ campaigns are forcing a dangerous orthodoxy on us which imposes heavy penalties on those who dare to dissent. Imposition of this orthodoxy threatens the fabric of social cohesion and the health of our community life. These dangers must be taken seriously. Failure to do so will only compound the harm being visited upon us in the name of progress and purity.
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'Indefensible': Labor wants $18m national security review released
By Rob Harris and Anthony Galloway
August 19, 2020 — 9.00pm
The biggest review of the nation's spy laws in 40 years won't be released until almost a year after it was handed to government, as Australia's intelligence agencies look to combat a rise in cyber crime, espionage and foreign interference.
The federal opposition is calling on the Morrison government to release former ASIO boss Dennis Richardson's review immediately, with parliament set to debate a number of significant national security reforms before the end of the year.
These include an overhaul of ASIO’s compulsory questioning powers and new cyber security laws to protect the nation’s critical infrastructure.
Mr Richardson handed in his report to the government prior to Christmas last year, and the government has been sitting on an unclassified version of the document since early June. Attorney-General Christian Porter flagged it would be released in coming months.
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Australia stumbles into an independent foreign policy
Andrew Clark Senior writer
Aug 21, 2020 – 2.13pm
Call it "new" or "independent" or even "accidental", but turmoil-2020 means Australia’s foreign policy is being cast in a new light. From hedging on America’s future to China ratcheting up tensions, the rise of a non-US-China grouping in the region, and the shape of a post-lockdown recovery, it’s a different ball game.
“What we are seeing is a freeze-frame moment,” says veteran foreign policy strategist Allan Gyngell. The result is not an independent Australian foreign policy, but a “new” policy, according to the Lowy Institute’s Richard McGregor.
For John Lee, a one-time adviser to former foreign minister Julie Bishop, Australia’s 2020 reality is more nuanced. Our foreign relations have not changed “at a policy level, but at a temperamental and diplomatic level”, largely as the result of the change of prime ministers from Malcolm Turnbull to Scott Morrison.
Just doing nuance may not, however, be enough. Bob Carr, a former Labor foreign minister, says Australia should prepare for a possible Joe Biden presidency, one where America will take seriously its “alliances, multilateralism, and, above all, climate diplomacy”. A Biden abiding world would “not just be defined by US-China competition, but elements of collaboration” between both superpowers regarding “pandemics and climate”, says Carr, who is also a former head of the Australia-China Relations Institute.
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A (not quite) sober look at China's coronavirus controls
China's confidence that it can manage the coronavirus pandemic was on full display at a seaside beer festival in Qingdao this week.
Michael Smith China correspondent
Aug 21, 2020 – 11.38am
The pavilion is packed with thousands of revellers dancing on tables and drinking frequently from huge kegs of beer.
Techno music floods the room before a rap singer belts out an ear-piercing chant in Mandarin. The crowd goes wild. The air is thick with sweat and the humidity of a Chinese summer. The portaloos outside are equipped with special buckets for anyone needing to throw up.
There was hardly a face mask in sight by 9pm at the Golden Beach Beer City in the east coast city of Qingdao last Saturday night. Social distancing had gone out the window hours earlier.
A group of drinkers dancing at the next table with their shirts off suddenly notice our group of caucasians and venture over.
"Where are you from? Welcome to China," they bellow before shaking our hands enthusiastically and even offering a hug. No sign of Sino-Australian political tensions at this party.
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Climate Policy
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New global temperature record may have been set in California's Death Valley
By Jonathan Allen and Kanishka Singh
August 18, 2020 — 4.37am
The hottest air temperature recorded anywhere on the planet in at least a century, and possibly ever, was reached in Death Valley in California's Mojave Desert on Sunday afternoon when it soared to 54.4 degrees.
An automated observation system run by the US National Weather Service at Furnace Creek reported the record at 3.41pm, local time.
It was a dry heat: humidity fell to 7 per cent. But it felt "insanely hot" all the same, according to meteorologist Daniel Berc, who is based in the NWS Las Vegas bureau and forecast that the heat wave would continue all week.
"It's literally like being in an oven," he said. "Today is another day we could take another run at 130F (54.4 degrees Celsius)."
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Coronavirus And Impacts.
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‘I will never come to Australia again’: new research reveals the suffering of temporary migrants during the COVID-19 crisis
August 17, 2020 6.14am AEST
Authors
1. Laurie Berg
In the early days of the COVID-19 lockdown in March, many temporary visa holders working in heavily casualised industries, such as hospitality and retail, lost their jobs and struggled to meet basic living expenses.
These included international students, backpackers, graduates, sponsored workers and refugees, among others.
Despite the devastating financial impact on these temporary migrants, the government excluded them from JobKeeper and JobSeeker. Instead, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said if they could not support themselves, it was time to go home.
Today, UnionsNSW is releasing the findings of a large-scale survey showing just how badly temporary migrants have suffered due to the lockdown and lack of financial support from the government. The survey of over 5,000 visa holders, conducted in late March and early April, paints a devastating picture:
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https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/the-coronavirus-end-game-is-no-clearer-20200816-p55m86
The coronavirus end game is no clearer
Victoria's numbers are coming down to general relief. But there's no agreed end game for the country when it comes to living with the virus.
Jennifer Hewett Columnist
Aug 16, 2020 – 3.54pm
The increasing optimism Victoria is slowly advancing in its battle to control the second wave of COVID-19 doesn’t answer what will count as actually winning the fight.
Victoria, NSW and the federal government still insist the official goal is suppression of the virus in a way that identifies, isolates and quickly controls any outbreaks.
The other states are really insisting the only acceptable option must be elimination of any community transmission, zero domestically acquired cases, and are strongly backed by the great majority of their voters.
That suggests state borders will stay closed indefinitely while there is even a low level of community transmission circulating in NSW and Victoria.
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International student flights to Australia to restart in September
By Eryk Bagshaw
August 16, 2020 — 6.10pm
International students and universities will be forced to stump up the cost of travel and quarantine as the federal government prepares for the first batch of students to arrive in Australia.
Trade Minister Simon Birmingham announced on Sunday that up to 300 students would start arriving in Adelaide as part of a pilot program to restart the international education sector which has been pummelled by the coronavirus pandemic.
Universities are bracing for a potential $3 billion hit to their budgets from the COVID-19 outbreak. The Group of Eight - including the University of Sydney and the University of Melbourne - account for 65,000 of the more than 100,000 Chinese students stranded overseas, while students from other key markets including India, Nepal and Vietnam have also been stuck at home.
The students will travel from Singapore on flights arriving by early September. The group also includes students from Hong Kong, China and Japan.
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Priority to foreign students while Aussies stranded overseas
The Australian government will prioritise international fee-paying students above thousands of Australians who remain stranded in Europe, the US and in Middle East transit points.
In a pilot scheme, 300 students from China, Hong Kong and Japan will be flown on a charter flight from Singapore to Adelaide where they will undergo quarantine for two weeks before beginning their studies.
Students or the universities will pick up the tab.
But the move has angered Australians overseas who have been repeatedly bumped off commercial flights because of the government’s unique cap on international arrivals.
International airline carriers have been demanding returning Australians pay for expensive first- and business-class fares to try to get on to the few allowed seats on one of the few flights still flying into the country. Some flights carry as few as 30 Australians. The allowable weekly cap numbers are so low, even those willing to pay inflated fare prices cannot get home for weeks or months.
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We can't cure the virus by making the economy sick
The economy is a mass activity of individuals living their lives. When it does not work properly, people also suffer and die.
Gigi Foster and Peter Godfrey-Smith
Aug 17, 2020 – 2.04pm
Last week's sudden new lockdown of Auckland, New Zealand, reminds us of the immense difficulty of protecting a general population from a highly infectious disease in the absence of a vaccine, especially a disease that has few noticeable effects on large numbers of those infected.
Wholesale lockdowns are accompanied by reports of countless small businesses closing, high levels of mental health problems, and growing alienation in school-age children.
As the costs of lockdowns become more evident, so too are we learning more about COVID-19 itself. With this emerging information, it is time to reconsider the policies followed so far in response to the pandemic, and the assumptions and habits of thought on which those policies have been based.
Every day, the reported death toll associated with COVID-19 climbs. But those numbers need to be given context. Consider the toll of COVID-19 when measured in excess deaths during a particular period – deaths over and above those seen within a similar time period during normal times. It is easy to forget that many thousands die of non-COVID-19 causes every day.
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Experts call for health overhaul to fight 'ongoing pandemic of racism'
By Stuart Layt
August 17, 2020 — 12.01am
A group of health experts have issued a scathing rebuke of federal and state governments, calling on them to do more to address racial violence in the health system.
Writing in the Medical Journal of Australia, professionals led by University of Queensland Associate Professor Chelsea Bond said many organisations and institutions had paid lip service to the Black Lives Matter movement.
Professor Bond and her colleagues said those lives, especially among Indigenous Australians, were still falling through the cracks when it came to healthcare.
"Tragically, despite the parlous state of Indigenous health, we have not been met here with the kind of urgency that the global Black Lives Matter movement has spurred elsewhere," they wrote.
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Coronavirus: We should kiss these lockdowns goodbye
We can probably excuse Henry VI for trying to ban kissing in 1439 without a serious cost-benefit analysis. The Black Death was wiping out close to a third of all people, after all, so it was natural the precautionary principle would swing into action.
But the spectacle of millions of masked-up Victorians, clinking elbows if they find someone else bold enough to have stepped outside, suggests our response is over the top, born of a mistaken belief that governments have more control over the course of events than they really do.
King Canute realised he couldn’t control the tides. Outbreaks of the coronavirus in Victoria and New Zealand should remind us that controlling the spread of an invisible, highly contagious virus is not much easier.
Much damage can be done trying though.
Doing whatever feels right because it “might” help isn’t acceptable when in one of the worst affected countries, Sweden, 99.95 per cent have survived. “Elimination” is a hubristic pipe dream.
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Lockdowns could eventually be seen as an over-reaction, says philosopher Peter Singer
One of the nation’s best known philosophers Peter Singer said the response to the coronavirus could eventually be seen as an “over-reaction” given the social and economic costs of lockdowns.
Speaking from Melbourne, Professor Singer, who is known for his books on applied ethics, said lockdowns had been implemented with “relatively unsure evidence” and that he was “a bit surprised” governments had taken such responses without presenting cost benefit analyses.
“It’s been done on the basis of relatively unsure evidence, both about the costs and the benefits … It’s a bit surprising society hasn’t had more of a debate,” he told The Australian.
His comments came as Victoria recorded 278 new cases and eight deaths on Thursday.
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Rydges, Stamford Plaza source of Victoria’s COVID-19 outbreak
· NCA NewsWire
About 90 per cent of Victoria’s COVID-19 cases are likely traceable back to Melbourne’s Rydges Hotel in Swanston St where COVID-19 travellers were quarantined, an inquiry has heard.
The remaining cases are likely connected to another quarantine hotel, the Stamford Plaza, an expert says, with 99 per cent of all cases in the state linked to the bungled hotel quarantine program.
In a statement tendered to the Melbourne hotel quarantine inquiry, epidemiologist Dr Charles Alpren said the department of health had concluded almost all cases genomically sequenced so far originated at the hotels.
At the time of the Rydges outbreak, there were very few other cases of COVID-19 in Victoria. Early outbreaks died out by May 30, Mr Alpren said.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/reconstruction-can-blow-post-virus-dog-days-away-20200818-p55mp8
Reconstruction can blow post-virus dog days away
If Australia breaks sharply with pre-COVID-19 politics and policy, the economy can snap back better from the most severe downturn since the 1930s.
Ross Garnaut Contributor
Aug 18, 2020 – 2.17pm
Whatever else happens with COVID-19 from now on, it will leave us with by far the most severe economic problems since the Great Depression. The most severe for Australia, and for the world. How long will it last, how deep will it go and how will it affect long-term prosperity political systems and international order? A great deal. Whether partly for good or entirely for ill depends on receptivity to knowledge, and our political system’s capacity to act decisively in the national interest in response to knowledge.
It is impossible to snap back to what we had last year. Nor should we want to snap back. Australia’s economy performed badly for most of its citizens in the seven years between the China resources boom and the pandemic – the dog days. Unemployment and underemployment in the later dog days remained well above developed countries that suffered much greater damage from the GFC. Real household income per person and real wages stagnated. Growth of productivity and output per person were lower than in the developed world as a whole, the US and even Japan.
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Why aged care was never going to cope with COVID-19
Jill Margo Health editor
Aug 19, 2020 – 7.42am
The way the aged care sector has been pilloried during the coronavirus pandemic was appalling because it was unreasonable to expect more from a largely unskilled, low-paid workforce.
That is the view of Steve Macfarlane, a leading expert in old age psychiatry.
Nearly 70 per cent of Australia’s coronavirus deaths are linked to aged care facilities
“We seem to be pillorying aged care for perceived failures when it was not reasonable for them ever to have been expected to succeed,” he said.
Associate Professor Macfarlane, chairman of the Faculty of Old Age Psychiatry of the Royal Australian and NZ College of Psychiatry, said staff and residents had limited ability to practice proper infection control to protect themselves from COVID-19.
“For a start, a basic aged care qualification gives very little, if any, infection control training. The education requirements to get an aged care certificate are very low.
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Why bankers find it harder to second-guess this recession
Karen Maley Columnist
Aug 19, 2020 – 12.01am
One of the bitter lessons that bankers have learnt from past economic downturns is that when the economy enters a recession, you can be sure that it will be the banks' exposure to commercial property loan books that causes the worst grief.
So it's come as something as a surprise to bankers to discover that isn't the case in the coronavirus pandemic-induced recession. Instead, it's now firms exposed to the tourism, accommodation and hospitality sectors that are doing it toughest.
In its third-quarter update released on Tuesday, Westpac provided a detailed break-down of the support it's providing to small businesses, which demonstrates the different pattern of the bank's problem loans in this recession compared with past downturns.
According to the release, the Sydney-based bank said it has granted loan repayment holidays to more than 31,000 small and medium-sized business customers, with loans up to $10 million. Altogether, these deferred business loans totalled more than $9 billion, or 14 per cent of the bank's total business lending book.
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Our narrow virus focus is costing lives elsewhere
COVID-19 deaths are immediate and tangible. The other diabolical costs of lockdown imposed on millions are more complex and long term, when politicians will no longer be facing re-election.
John Kehoe Senior writer
Aug 19, 2020 – 12.01am
The reality dawning on doctors that hundreds more cancer and chronic disease sufferers will probably die as a result of Melbourne's stage four lockdown scaring people from taking medical tests could prove to be a tipping point to scrutinise the trade-offs of the policy responses to COVID-19.
Non-COVID-19 "excess deaths" facts such as this, revealed by The Australian Financial Review last week, have scantly been acknowledged.
The direct and indirect long-term health, social and economic consequences of the rolling lockdowns are staggering.
Most politicians and media focus squarely on the daily "COVID-19 scoreboard" – the shock and awe of case numbers and deaths linked to the virus.
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Free dose for every Aussie: Agreement to buy Oxford vaccine if it works
By Rob Harris
Every Australian will get a free coronavirus vaccine dose as the Morrison government confirms on Wednesday an agreement to secure at least 25 million doses with a British pharmaceutical giant if trials prove successful.
The deal with AstraZeneca, valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars, will ensure Australians will be among the first in the world to receive the Oxford University COVID-19 vaccine if human trials are judged as successful, safe and effective.
The government will on Wednesday also release its multibillion-dollar vaccine strategy, to be led by Department of Health secretary Brendan Murphy. It includes a $24.7 million deal with American medical technology giant Becton Dickinson to secure 100 million needles and syringes.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said under the deal, every Australian would be able to receive the Oxford University vaccine free. Priority candidates for the first doses will probably include over-60s and Australians with co-morbidities such as asthma, heart disease, transplant recipients and cancer patients.
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Why the vaccine may not be the end of the virus
Jill Margo Health editor
Aug 20, 2020 – 12.00am
While the country celebrates the Morrison government's new COVID-19 vaccine plan, it is unlikely to return Australia to the old normal of 2019.
Some experts say although the vaccine the government has selected is a leading one, it might turn out to be more like an influenza vaccine than one for measles, which confers lifelong immunity.
While it might well protect people from serious illness and death, they say it may not protect them against being carriers of the virus.
This means they could still get infected and still be able to pass the virus onto others.
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How COVID-19 stigma is turning Victorians away from testing
By Henrietta Cook and Aisha Dow
August 19, 2020 — 11.30pm
The stigma of having COVID-19 is deterring some Victorians from getting tested and preventing others from accessing help.
As the state government raised concerns about a 17 per cent drop in testing rates over the past week, Royal Australian College of General Practitioners board member Lara Roeske said some patients were sitting on symptoms for days because they were fearful of what a positive test might mean.
“We are dealing with a disease that engenders a great deal of fear and anxiety,” the Melbourne GP said.
Dr Roeske said the shame of spluttering in public had led to patients seeking help for coughs associated with other underlying medical conditions.
“They say, ‘People stare at me, move away or mumble under their breath’,” she said.
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Australians to be $2850 a year worse off without quick vaccine: KPMG
By Jennifer Duke
August 21, 2020 — 12.00am
Tough travel restrictions could shave $117 billion off the economy over the next decade, leaving each Australian $2850 a year worse off, unless a vaccine is found and widely distributed within two years.
KPMG analysts forecast Australia's population to be 1.1 million below pre-pandemic estimates of 29.1 million by 2029-30 if a vaccine isn't approved quickly and international border constraints remain, dragging down economic growth.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison this week signed a letter of intent with UK drug company AstraZeneca to manufacture 25 million doses of Oxford University's COVID-19 vaccine for Australians if trials prove successful. If approved, Mr Morrison has indicated the vaccine may be available as soon as early 2021.
"The challenge for government is: How are we going to come out of this without a significant fall in living standards?" KPMG chief economist Brendan Rynne said. "The longer [the virus] runs, the more there's an impact on the psyche and there is missing confidence."
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France records more than 4700 virus infections in post-lockdown daily record
August 21, 2020 — 4.18am
The French health ministry reported 4711 new coronavirus infections over the past 24 hours, a new post-lockdown record and a level last seen during the height of the epidemic in France.
During lockdown, France saw a peak of 7578 infections per day on March 31, but since then, there have been only a few days with the number of new infections per day rising above 4500.
The infection rate has been soaring in the past few days, but the number of people in hospital with COVID-19 has been relatively stable and the numbers of new deaths per day have also been stable in the low double digits. Twelve new deaths were reported on Thursday.
French President Emmanuel Macron discussed the escalating coronavirus crisis with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday as Europe struggles with a resurgence of the disease that threatens its recovery.
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https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/the-race-for-a-vaccine-started-with-disease-x-20200820-p55np4
The race for a vaccine started with Disease X
News that a 'vaccine' might be available in Australia as early as the start of 2021 caused a wave of excitement this week. But don't go booking your overseas travel just yet.
Ronald Mizen Reporter
Aug 22, 2020 – 12.00am
The development of the Oxford University coronavirus vaccine – which offers Australia's best hope of returning to a level of normality – began long before anyone had heard of COVID-19. It started with Disease X.
In 2017, a coalition of governments, universities, research institutions and philanthropic organisations formed the view that a major global pandemic was a matter of when, not if, and they wanted to be prepared.
Showing a level of prescience that perhaps explains his tenure atop the list of the world's richest people, Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates poured $US100 million into the group known as the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and issued a stern warning.
"We ignore the link between health security and international security at our peril," Gates said during a speech at the Munich Security Conference in February 2017. He added that "the preventive capacity of a vaccine won't help if a pathogen has already spread out of control".
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Coronavirus: Things are getting better but no one really knows why
· The Times
At the beginning, when beds were full and deaths common, doctors were still trying to understand the best treatment for coronavirus. “In March, if you came in and had trouble breathing, you’d be put straight on a ventilator,” says Alison Pittard, dean of the Faculty of Intensive Care Medicine.
This was what, in frantic Zoom calls to Italy and China, they had been told was the best approach. The learning curve since then has been steep.
These days, Dr Pittard and her colleagues are more careful about who is put on ventilators, lest invasive treatment causes more problems. They also have a drug, dexamethasone, that can significantly improve survival among those who do reach ventilators.
It would be easy to claim that we are seeing the results of this. In Britain, even as recorded cases rise, deaths are not following. In the western world daily deaths and death rates are falling.
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Royal Commissions And The Like.
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Australia's aged care disaster: fixing a broken system
There is hope the aged care crisis during the pandemic could be the spark for meaningful reform across the sector.
Tom McIlroy Political reporter
Aug 22, 2020 – 12.00am
A small group of armed police huddled at the back of Parliament House is a sure sign the Prime Minister is at work.
Amid the chaos of coronavirus, the officers monitor movement around the ministerial wing entrance, working earlier and earlier across dark winter mornings.
Inside — first thing each day — Scott Morrison gathers health chiefs and senior ministers to track the spread of COVID-19 among the most vulnerable demographic: Australia's elderly.
Such is the scale of death and infection in the nation's aged care homes, industry players and advocates for older Australians say the pandemic must be the spark for meaningful reform of the sector — worth the equivalent of 1.1 per cent of GDP.
Nearly 300 residents have died so far, mostly in Victoria, and already-acute workforce shortages are compounded by more than 1000 infections among staff. Divided accountability between state and federal governments and a sector splintered among private, public and non-profit operators is struggling to cope.
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Toothless: staff at aged care regulator claim they lack resources and power
By Julie Power
August 21, 2020 — 12.00am
Federal officials investigating whether Australia's 2632 aged care facilities meet quality and safety standards claim they are unable to spot gaps that may put residents at risk because the regulator is toothless, under resourced and understaffed.
Complaints have skyrocketed during COVID - particularly about infection control - and response times have blown out to more than 190 days in many cases, according to the union representing staff at the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission (ACQSC).
In a submission to the aged care royal commission in June, the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) said morale among union members and other staff at the regulator has been "incredibly low".
This claim was disputed by the regulator's commissioner, Janet Anderson, who said staff feedback during COVID-19 had been positive.
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National Budget Issues.
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Unemployment: not the Reserve Bank’s highest priority?
In his opening statement to the House Standing Committee on Economics on Friday, RBA Governor Philip Lowe said that addressing unemployment “should be high on our list of national priorities”.
Just high? Not highest? What could possibly be higher at the moment than unemployment?
That unremarked doozy left the Governor’s lips after he said the RBA expects unemployment to be 10 per cent later this year and still be above 7 per cent in “a few years’ time”, and also that the “true unemployment rate is higher than the published measure”.
A quick check of the “objectives of monetary policy” on the RBA website reveals that “the maintenance of full employment in Australia”, is, indeed, not the highest priority – it’s at point B. Point A is “the stability of the currency of Australia”; point C is “the economic prosperity and welfare of the people of Australia”.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/health-and-education/why-childcare-must-be-made-free-20200817-p55mce
Why childcare must be made free
Expensive childcare is an unfair levy on jobs. And free child care hours will improve life chances all round.
Sam Crosby Contributor
Aug 17, 2020 – 12.10pm
To make sense of Australia’s childcare system in 2020, consider the laryngeal nerve of the giraffe.
Like all vertebrates, a giraffe’s voice box is connected to its brain via two nerves. One of them, the superior laryngeal, takes a five-centimetre direct route. The other, the recurrent laryngeal, takes a bizarre five-metre detour, shooting past the voice box all the way down to a main artery near the heart, where it does a U-turn and returns back up the other side of the neck.
Why? Because when these nerves first evolved in our fish ancestors, it made abundant sense to go via the heart given fish have no necks. As the transition to mammals occurred over millions of years the nerve just kept adapting and stretching in convoluted ways. Particularly so for giraffes.
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Coronavirus: Lack of skilled workers threatens Australia’s infrastructure-led recovery
A looming skills shortage in the civil construction sector is a “severe risk” to the federal and state governments’ infrastructure-led post-COVID recovery plan, a leading industry body has warned.
Civil Contractors Forum chief executive Chris Melham said there was an urgent need for such skills as bridge, road and tunnel constructors, civil plant operators, pipe layers and line markers to be added to the National Skills Commission’s Skills Needs List.
Mr Melham said this would allow employers, apprentices and education providers to gain access to a range of government incentives to help drive new entrants into industry roles.
“This will ensure employers have enough apprentices coming through to build the roads, the bridges, the pipelines that all the state premiers have been announcing for the past six months,” he told The Australian.
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Coronavirus: Foreign students ‘could fill population shortfall’
Unless a vaccine for the coronavirus is found within two years the nation’s population will fall more than one million people short of expectations by 2030 — and annual national income will slump $117bn — according to new analysis by KPMG.
The massive hit to overseas migration from international travel restrictions — which the consulting giant expects to last four or five years without a vaccine — will see the national population rise to 28 million rather than 29 million by 2030, according to KPMG chief economist Brendan Rynne.
“Even in a case there they find a vaccine within 12 months we see GDP being $45.3bn lower in 2030 and the population 420,000 smaller,” he said, urging the government to relax full-time work restrictions on foreign students in order to make up some of the population shortfall.
“This would kill two birds with one stone. You’ll be getting more people and also more skilled people, who ultimately will help lift productivity and living standards,” he said.
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Leasing code warning as Scentre Group boards up Mosaic Brands’ stores
The powerful property industry has warned that an extension of the Morrison government’s leasing code for small tenants until March next year could see the overall cost of the scheme blow out to about $15bn.
The caution comes as Scentre Group, owner of the local Westfield empire, this week boarded up about 129 stores run by Mosaic Brands, owner of the Noni B, Millers, Rivers, Katies, Crossroads and EziBuy brands, that sit outside the code.
The parties declined to comment but the dispute escalated from Tuesday when Scentre demanded payment of outstanding rent and the chain was locked out of 24 stores, with the remainder also temporarily closed on Wednesday night.
The stand-off between the chain and shopping centre owner demonstrates both sides are taking hard-line approaches as landlords try to prevent chains from locking in more permanent shifts to turnover based rental structures.
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It may be a terrible recession, but it could have been worse
Ross Gittins
Economics Editor
August 21, 2020 — 3.00pm
In economics, everything is relative. Relative to you, the coronacession is likely to be the worst economic disaster you’ll experience in your lifetime. Relative to Australia, it is – as the media (including yours truly) keep telling us – the worst recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
But, as a report published this week by the Lowy Institute reminds us, there’s another side of the story. Relative to what we were expecting initially, the recession isn’t as bad as feared. And relative to many other developed economies, we’ve got off lightly.
The report is by Dr John Edwards, a former member of the Reserve Bank board. Perhaps in reaction to his former career as a journalist, Edwards has a penchant for highlighting the aspects of an economic story his former colleagues have tended to gloss over. Which means he finds the not-so-bad bits – and so is always worth hearing from.
How badly a country is suffering economically is largely a function of how well it responded to the pandemic. Those that followed the medicos' injunction to "go early, go hard" have done better than those that procrastinated. Fortunately, and thanks in large part to Scott Morrison’s leadership, we’re in the former group.
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Coronavirus: RBA governor Phillip Lowe calls on states to spend extra $40bn
The states and territories need to inject another $40bn into job-creating infrastructure after being told by Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe they must muscle up to help the national economic recovery.
In a briefing to national cabinet on Friday, Dr Lowe told the states to effectively double their stimulus spending after last week accusing them of preserving their credit ratings at the expense of rolling out stimulus measures that would create jobs.
The premiers and chief ministers endorsed Dr Lowe’s calls to spend more on major infrastructure projects and job programs after a similar appeal from Scott Morrison two weeks ago, who said the federal government had done the heavy lifting.
Announcing the lifting of pandemic spending on the crisis-stricken aged-care sector to more than $1bn, the Prime Minister also brokered an agreement over the borders impasse between the states. The nation’s chief health advisers have been tasked with defining COVID-19 hotspots on medical grounds rather than arbitrary declarations by the states.
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Health Issues.
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Coronavirus: Private health woes ‘hit hospital system’
Health insurers have backed reform calls issued by the Australian Medical Association to counter a critical decline in the numbers of young people holding private insurance.
The AMA has warned the decline in private health insurance membership is “threatening the delicate balance” of Australia’s combined public and private hospital capacity, with the risk taxpayers will ultimately foot the bill as previously privately insured patients flood public hospitals.
The medical body is calling for urgent budgetary reform aimed at increasing the Medicare Levy Surcharge for high-income earners who do not take out health insurance, increasing the private health insurance rebate, reviewing the lifetime health cover loading, and increasing the discounts available to young people taking out insurance.
The AMA also wants to see legislation that would require health funds to pay out 90 per cent of their premium revenue in benefits to members.
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'No jab, no play' the wrong approach to COVID-19 vaccine, doctors warn
By Dana McCauley
August 23, 2020 — 12.06am
Doctors are urging governments not to compel Australians to get a COVID-19 vaccine, warning the fast-tracked approval process could create a risk of harmful side effects.
Australian Medical Association President Omar Khorshid said while the peak body was "very supportive of vaccination generally because of its extensive science behind the safety, it's not going to be the case for a COVID vaccine, at least initially."
Dr Khorshid said tying vaccination to access to services such as childcare, school or social security payments, as state and federal governments do with paediatric vaccines under 'no jab, no play' and 'no jab, no pay' laws, could not be justified with a brand new COVID-19 vaccine.
"We have to acknowledge it is a rushed approval process and even if the phase three trials on this Oxford vaccine go really well, it's still not absolutely proven that it is safe, not as proven as is normally the case," he said.
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International Issues.
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Japan's economy shrinks at record pace
By Leika Kihara and Tetsushi Kajimoto
August 17, 2020 — 10.29am
Japan suffered its biggest economic contraction on record in the second quarter as the coronavirus pandemic crushed business and consumer spending, keeping policymakers under pressure for bolder action to prevent the recession deepening.
While the economy is emerging from the doldrums after lockdowns were lifted in late May, many analysts expect any rebound in July-September growth to be modest as a renewed rise in infections keep consumers' purse-strings tight.
Gross domestic product (GDP) shrank an annualised 27.8 per cent in April-June, government data showed on Monday, marking the biggest decline since comparable data became available in 1980.
It was the third straight quarter of contraction and a bigger decline than a median market forecast for a 27.2 per cent drop.
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US Post Office chief backs down on service cuts after Democrat outrage
Jacob Greber United States correspondent
Updated Aug 19, 2020 – 7.48am, first published at 6.36am
Washington | The great post office election scandal of 2020 has taken a pause. For now.
After weeks of growing alarm among Democrats over US Postmaster General Louis DeJoy's plans for cost-cutting service changes, the national carrier appears to have backed down.
Mr DeJoy, a political ally and big political donor of Donald Trump appointed in June, said on Tuesday (Wednesday AEST) that there would be no alterations to the way the post office operated until after the November 3 elections.
Critics of the changes say they threaten to slow mail delivery just as Americans prepare to cast what many believe will be a record number of postal ballots because of fears of contracting COVID-19 at polling booths.
The overhaul proposed by Mr DeJoy includes cuts to overtime, limits on additional mail transport trips, and new mail and delivery policies. There have also been claims the Post Office has been removing mail-sorting machines and letter boxes.
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Gun deaths soar as Americans pull trigger to settle arguments
Will Pavia, New York
Wednesday August 19 2020, 12.01am BST, The Times
On a recent Sunday afternoon Major Greg Volker of the Kansas City Police Department arrived at a petrol station in the southern suburbs of the city, where the body of a young man lay on the ground beneath a sheet.
Jayvon McCray, 28, had gone to the petrol station with his girlfriend to buy a beer. From what Major Volker’s detectives could piece together, another man had looked at him “in a funny or strange way”. The two had faced off, “nose to nose” in the shop. Stepping outside, Mr McCray had drawn a gun and the two men fought over it, the weapon pointed skyward until Mr McCray’s girlfriend made a grab for it and knocked it to the ground.
The other man, who was there with his wife and five small children, then got a gun from his car and shot Mr McCray several times. He was dead before the paramedics arrived.
“There’s family members outside the crime scene that are crying,” Major Volker said. “You are trying to explain to them why a crime occurred, with you not understanding in the first place. People have arguments all the time.”
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China’s Xi Jinping tightens grip on domestic security forces in first broad purge
A senior ally of Chinese leader Xi Jinping called for a Mao-style purge of China’s domestic-security apparatus last month, saying it was time to “turn the blade inwards and scrape the poison off the bone.”
The cleansing commenced swiftly.
Within the first week after the call to action, Communist Party enforcers had launched investigations into at least 21 police and judicial officials, according to a media tally cited by the party’s top law-enforcement commission. Dozens more have since been taken down, including the police chief of Shanghai, the most senior target thus far, and cadres who have won awards for good performance.
The rash of investigations marks the first time that Mr. Xi has unleashed a sweeping and systematic clean-up of the country’s powerful domestic-security apparatus. His push to forge police, prosecutors and judges who are “absolutely loyal, absolutely pure and absolutely reliable” — as officials running the campaign have demanded — points to thorny concerns that Mr. Xi faces at home even as he seeks to slow a downward spiral in relations with the U.S.
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Populism is back in the US election, but not as you know it
It's not Donald Trump's campaign but Joe Biden's economic agenda that is being shaped by the much maligned movement.
Andrew Clark Senior writer
Aug 21, 2020 – 12.00am
Populism, a serially abused movement, is making a comeback. As the US staggers under a record level of COVID-19 deaths and the weird verbal meanderings of President Donald Trump, a uniquely American form of democratic radicalism known as populism is re-emerging during the 10-week run-up to the November 3 presidential election.
It’s not the same populism that has become just about the most popular term of abuse and is used to describe slick left-wing movements that peddle glib answers or proto-fascist governments in countries like Hungary and Poland, with echoes in Trump’s America. "New populism" is more the inheritor of a radical democratic movement that swept the great plains in US states like Kansas, Nebraska and Minnesota in the 1890s.
Like a meteor, populism soared across the American firmament, threatening to upend the US two-party system. But it crashed in a ball of political flame just five years later. More strangely, some of its leading adherents who advocated a radical and inclusive re-ordering of American society, later re-emerged as obscurantists and nativists, opposing the teaching of evolution, or as prominent members of the Ku Klux Klan.
However, the issues that gave populism its raison d’etre back in the 1890s, like inequality, malfunctioning financial markets, and monopoly corporate power, resonate today. They show up in calls for US government intervention in health care, Wall Street, American workplace relations, gender and minority rights, and curbing the power of the FAANG (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google) companies. Collectively, these demands amount to a radical reset of what populists vaguely refer to as “economic rights”.
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Turning a blind eye: Trump missed the chance to make the economy great
By Jim Tankersley
August 21, 2020 — 8.10am
On a warm day in North Carolina last month, President Donald Trump warmed up a crowd with familiar boasts about the American economy in the time before the pandemic. "We made and brought this country to the greatest point in its history," he said. "We never had an economy like we had. . . . We never had numbers like it. We are going to have them again. And everyone knows I'm going to rebuild it." This is a familiar talking point for Trump, who returns often to the theme of how much he juiced "the greatest economy that we've had in our history, the best."
None of those historical claims are true. In his first three years, he wrought slightly less employment growth than his predecessor did, the same gross domestic product growth, slightly better stockmarket growth and the same wage growth. Before the pandemic, Trump's economic record was unremarkable for a 21st-century president, even though he was able to enact a large amount of the agenda he ran on in 2016, and even though he enjoyed what by one measure was more supportive policy from Congress and the Federal Reserve than any president in a generation.
But Trump could have produced the stellar figures he pretends to have scored. The president inherited a growing economy with low unemployment,which was primed for the sort of middle-class surge that the country last enjoyed in the late 1990s. If he had heeded the lessons of the last multi-decade middle-class boom, which followed World War II, he could have uncorked a new wave of shared prosperity that would have pulled millions of workers into the economic stability that we have come to call the American Dream.
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The real state of China's economy remains a mystery
By Anjani Trivedi
August 21, 2020 — 10.58am
One of the most severe floods in decades is ravaging the industrial heartland, just as China struggles to shake off the impact of COVID-19. The Yangtze River's inundation has so far caused direct economic losses of 178.9 billion yuan ($35.9 billion), including collapsed buildings, flooded factory floors and homes and livelihoods lost for millions of people. Average rainfall for June and July surpassed previous years; fixing the damage has barely begun.
The latest disaster feeds into a picture of an uneven turnaround as China picks itself up from the pandemic. Beijing has pumped in trillions of yuan in stimulus and relief, and there are signs of upticks in activity. But it's getting harder to say what the true state of the Chinese economy is. The numbers are all over the place. For investors buying into a cyclical rebound, it may be worth a deeper look.
Parsing through more granular data shows that heavy trucks are selling like hotcakes – up 89 per cent last month from a year earlier. Excavator sales rose almost 30 per cent. Demand for automation machinery has picked up, as has movement of goods across the country. Machine use hours fell 3 per cent overall, and were flat in flood-stricken southern China. Monthly electricity generation is down, and cement inventory levels are higher than in previous years. Government spending on fixed assets is rising strongly, but industrial production and manufacturing investment are sagging.
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Trump accuses 'deep state' of delaying coronavirus vaccine until after US election
August 23, 2020 — 2.49am
Washington: US President Donald Trump on Saturday accused members of the "deep state" at the Food and Drug Administration, without providing evidence, of working to slow testing of COVID-19 vaccines until after the November presidential election.
In a Twitter post, Trump said the deep state "or whoever" at the FDA was making it very difficult for drug companies to enroll people in clinical trials to test vaccines and therapies for the novel coronavirus.
US President Donald Trump has described the Democratic convention as ‘gloomy’, suggesting Joe Biden sees American ‘darkness’.
The comment came after Reuters exclusively reported on Thursday that a top FDA official said he would resign if the Trump administration approved a vaccine before it was shown to be safe and effective.
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2020 race: Joe Biden to America: ‘I’ll lead you out of the dark’
It was the moment Joe Biden has dreamed since he was a young senator in the early 1970s. Yet it took almost half a century, two failed presidential bids and untold family tragedy before the now 77-year-old former vice-president finally won the right to accept the Democratic nomination for president.
Mr Biden — a poor orator at the best of times — surprised his detractors on Thursday night (Friday AEST) by giving what may have been the best speech of his long political life to the Democratic National Convention.
Standing in front of American flags in his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware, Mr Biden pledged to lead the US through its “season of darkness” by bringing a divided nation together to restore jobs, dignity and respect with a dramatically different style of presidency.
In a crisp and often emotional speech to accept his nomination, he laid out a vision of an America that he said would be “generous and strong, selfless and humble”.
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I look forward to comments on all this!
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David.
