August 19, 2021 Edition
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The biggest news
this week is clearly the collapse of the Afghan Government in the face of the
Taliban onslaught. The suffering is awful already and is only set to get worse.
World powers are just watching on and evacuating their staff and some friends. Also we know this is fraught and we can only hope the US and UK can really deliver! The earthquake in Haiti is also just horrible.
In the US we
see all eyes watching COVID19 go rampant in the South as Afghanistan collapses! It is pretty depressing.....
In the UK the economy is improving as COVID19 is controlled somewhat with 200,000 cases and 600+ deaths a week! Living with COVID?
In Australia
COVID19 is loose in NSW and the rest of the country just watches on in aghast, as we see the ACT and Victoria seemingly falling victim as well. NSW with 680 cases/day is just totally off the charts. NSW looks to be locked down until the end of the year. Gladys seems to have just plain lost it warbling on about 'living more freely in a few more weeks'! Talk about being in Fantasy Land!
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Major Issues.
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Look beyond Australia to enhance returns and diversify
Experts say ETFs are a good way to gain broad exposure to the world’s biggest economies.
Simon Evans Senior Reporter
Aug 9, 2021 – 5.00am
Investors eyeing the stellar growth of some of the world’s biggest companies including Apple, Facebook and Google owner Alphabet and wondering how to pick up a tiny slice of the action as simply as possible are increasingly using some of the more reputable exchange traded funds with a heavy offshore focus.
Chris Smith, founding partner of financial planning firm VISIS Private Wealth, says investors wanting to make direct share purchases in the big offshore companies sometimes find it frustrating, and opt for ETFs instead.
“Many investors don’t have the knowledge or time to dedicate toward trading shares in the middle of the night, managing exchange rate risk or researching thousands of stocks to build an appropriately diversified portfolio,” he says.
Smith says thought needs to be given as to whether to go for a hedged or unhedged version. The Australian dollar has been relatively volatile over the past few years.
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Dented home ownership dreams drive Millennials to ETFs
Agnes King
Aug 9, 2021 – 5.00am
In April, Olivia Schweikert bit the bullet and put $5000 into a BetaShares exchange-traded fund tracking the performance of over 8000 companies across 60 global exchanges.
A week later, the 28-year-old marketing and events professional tipped another $20,000 into an additional three ETFs giving her exposure to US technology stocks, and companies leading the way on sustainability.
“All my friends were talking about ETFs, it just kept coming up.
“I’ve always been interested in investing but found it overwhelming knowing which stocks to choose and understanding the market,” Schweikert said.
She doesn’t plan on touching her ETF for five to 10 years, it’s a bottom-drawer investment, but she doesn’t mind boasting that she’s made just over $1000 on her ETF investments to date and has every intention of expanding her portfolio into more ETF products in the future.
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Frydenberg passes sharemarket disclosure changes
Ronald Mizen Economics correspondent
Aug 9, 2021 – 10.31pm
Sharemarket disclosure laws will be permanently eased following a backflip by One Nation and a failed crossbench bid to close a loophole that allows some private companies to keep their financial affairs secret.
Passage of the reform on Monday night was a major victory for Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, who faced a bitter campaign of opposition from Labor, the Greens, plaintiff law firms and class action litigation funders.
Under the changes, corporations and directors would be liable for continuous disclosure law breaches only where they acted with “knowledge, recklessness or negligence” in market-sensitive updates.
The pre-COVID-19 rules were “strict liability” or “no fault”, meaning lawsuits only needed to prove companies and their officers failed to disclose information to the market, regardless of intention.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/nsw-generations-fund-is-a-moral-hazard-20210808-p58gwz
NSW Generations Fund is a moral hazard
This is not a rainy day fund. NSW Treasury is using the Reserve Bank’s largesse to bet that the good times will never end.
Daniel Mookhey
Aug 10, 2021 – 12.00am
There’s a fine line between fearless innovator and fiscal cowboy and I think Dominic Perrottet just crossed it.
The NSW Treasurer is using the state’s credit rating to borrow more than $10 billion to play in risky financial markets through the NSW Generations Fund. This is the most exotic public financing scheme since Rex Connor picked up the phone to Tirath Khemlani, albeit without the secrecy.
Perrottet is essentially running amok in a regulatory dead zone. Unlike the major banks, superannuation funds and insurers, no one can stop him from taking absurd risks if he so wishes. State governments answer to no prudential regulator. They decide for themselves the rules that apply to their investment funds.
For example, if the Treasurer was running a superannuation fund he wouldn’t be allowed to use debt to buy shares. That’s illegal. And, I suspect, as a private citizen if he asked his bank to let him use his home equity to bet on the stockmarket they would ask some very hard questions.
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https://www.afr.com/wealth/personal-finance/risks-loom-for-self-satisfied-investors-20210805-p58g2z
Risks loom for self-satisfied investors
Even after a great year, investors should check their allocation strategies in a world of record high sharemarkets, limited alternatives and conflicting data.
Giselle Roux Contributor
Aug 11, 2021 – 5.00am
It has been such a uniformly great time to own investment and property assets. Bar a few exceptions, returns bounced back in 2020 and, after a short rumble in February, continued their record-making march this year.
But now, a sense of self-satisfaction has set in. If one can achieve good returns from investments in troublesome times, why not ignore all the naysayers? This is exactly what many might do when reviewing their portfolios for the financial year.
In contrast to the real, or perceived, problems of today, investors have embraced stellar returns. The irony is that, if conditions were to become less favourable, many would want to react in the moment rather than in anticipation.
Financial advisors usually, for good reason, don’t want to make too many changes to a portfolio. It can crystallise taxable gains, it is costly to trade, there may be no suitable alternative for the realised funds and it could be an over-reaction to short-term noise. Certainty is in short supply.
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ADF joins new US-led missile project
7:20AM August 12, 2021
Australia has joined a US-led program to develop new land-based guided missiles capable of striking surface targets and ships at ranges of up to 500km, as part of a push to equip the ADF with modern area denial weapons.
The federal government has contributed $70m under an agreement with the US to develop the next phase of its Precision Strike Missile (PrSM) program.
The Lockheed Martin missiles are due to be available from 2025, and capable of being fired from the US High Mobility Artillery Rocket System – demonstrated by the US Army in Queensland at last month’s Exercise Talisman Sabre.
The missile will improve on a less precise baseline version, with increased range and accuracy, and the ability to engage moving targets.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/disclosure-changes-raise-the-right-bar-20210811-p58hy7
Disclosure changes raise the right bar
The pendulum had swung too far against directors – and became a hair trigger for shareholder class actions on an industrial scale.
Aug 12, 2021 – 6.16pm
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s changes to the continuous disclosure regime have helped restore some balance to the legal liability of company directors to provide timely price-sensitive information to investors who own the companies. Unhappy shareholders now have to show that directors who failed to inform investors promptly are only liable if they did so with “knowledge, recklessness, or negligence”.
The old rules, which the Treasurer had suspended as an emergency relief measure for companies last year, said directors would be breaking the law for simply not disclosing something that a reasonable person might expect would move the share price. The vagueness of that definition, along with the inherent unpredictability of business life, became a hair trigger for shareholder class actions, eventually on an industrial scale. The reform reduces the cost to companies of insuring directors against shareholders effectively suing themselves and funding the payouts from which eager class action lawyers collected a very fat cut.
Mr Frydenberg’s changes put things back where they were before what were supposed to be mere housekeeping alterations to the Corporations Act in 2001. Even under the rules just changed, directors well understood that if they didn’t say something when they could have, or that broke the forward guidance or market consensus, they would be in trouble. But there are often too many known unknowns out there for many companies to sensibly say what they should have known. And that was too low a bar for the global class action industry. Now the burden is on plaintiffs to show that companies knowingly misled. It raises the bar against class actions which have exposed well-intentioned directors, as opposed to scoundrels, to well-funded lawsuits.
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Coronavirus And Impacts.
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NSW is failing the nation and jeopardising reopening
The failure of the Berejiklian government to aggressively suppress the delta outbreak in Greater Sydney places the national plan in jeopardy, and risks the health and welfare of the entire country.
Grant Wilson Contributor
Aug 8, 2021 – 11.59am
A fortnight ago we highlighted the wrenching transition that awaits Australia as it seeks to find a way to live with the virus.
This, apparently, remains a non-consensus view. The Prime Minister thinks we can be living normally by Christmas.
The Doherty Institute thinks we can limit fatalities from COVID-19 to 16 people in the six months after the 70 per cent vaccine threshold is reached.
Reserve Bank governor Phil Lowe thinks that returning to recession is “quite unlikely”. Indeed, the RBA thinks the economy will expand by 4 per cent in 2021.
To be sure, there are grounds for all of this.
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Vaccination is critical, but it will not alone unlock our freedom
Immunologist and emeritus professor of medicine
August 9, 2021 — 5.00am
High vaccination rates, combined with some curbs on our behaviour, provide our best chance to ease the worst aspects of this pandemic. But it is crucial that Australians understand that, despite much-vaunted vaccination take-up “freedom” thresholds, we will only know the actual number when the day arrives. In the meantime, we must aim for the highest possible vaccination rates – including among very young children – and start taking this lockdown more seriously.
This American summer provides a real-time cautionary tale that should prompt us not to get ahead of ourselves. Despite having only 50 per cent of the population fully vaccinated against the SARS-COV-2 virus, related restrictions were eased prematurely in the United States. On Cape Cod, hundreds crowded into the popular holiday area and the virus had a field day. Most alarmingly, 74 per cent of the infections occurred in fully vaccinated individuals. Most experienced only minor symptoms and significantly none died. But those infected were carrying very high viral loads and were, of course, infectious.
We have known for many months that vaccination does not stop one from carrying viruses in one’s respiratory secretions but this event finally persuaded the American Centres for Disease Control and Prevention to call for the vaccinated to wear masks when indoors and to maintain social distancing.
You may have followed the negative reaction from many that followed. Just when they thought vaccination would provide freedom from the scourge of COVID, they were once again told to wear masks and practise social distancing. Incredibly, some governors decided this was intolerable and actually banned mandatory mask-wearing.
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https://medicalrepublic.com.au/the-needles-not-a-silver-bullet/50496
9 August 2021
The needle’s not a silver bullet
With millions of Australians under lockdown orders, state and federal governments continue touting vaccination coverage as the only way out of this pandemic.
But recent modelling from the Doherty Institute suggests that even with high vaccination coverage, ending lockdowns prematurely could be disastrous.
Even with 80% of the eligible population vaccinated, testing, social distancing and snap lockdowns will remain critical.
This episode we are joined by TMR’s covid blogger and acclaimed science writer Bianca Nogrady, to unpack why vaccines are no longer the magic bullet.
You can listen and subscribe to the show by searching for “The Tea Room Medical Republic” in your favourite podcast player.
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Blame the lockdown on business urgers trying to wish the virus away
Economics Editor
August 8, 2021 — 1.45pm
I’ve yet to see any of the perpetrators – Liberal tribal mythmakers, industry lobby groups and business’ media cheer squad – admit to their part in the humbling of that “gold standard” virus fighter, NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian (a woman I quite like).
All those business people feeling the pain of NSW’s protracted lockdown – which seems not to be getting anywhere, with no end in sight – have no one to blame but the short-sighted, self-centred urgers on their own side.
The great “learning” from our earlier struggles to control the coronavirus – particularly Victorian premier Daniel Andrews’ struggles this time last year – was the wisdom of the medicos’ advice that the exponential nature of pandemics meant the best strategy was to go early, go hard.
The economic modelling Treasury did to accompany the Doherty Institute’s epidemiological modelling confirmed this wisdom. “Continuing to minimise the number of COVID-19 cases, by taking early and strong action in response to outbreaks of the Delta variant, is consistently more [economically] cost-effective than allowing higher levels of community transmission, which ultimately requires longer and more costly lockdowns,” Treasury concluded.
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NSW goes its own way again, and the rest of the country is not happy
Gladys Berejiklian is attempting to again bend the rules that other states follow. But her plan comes with some big political risks.
Jennifer Hewett Columnist
Aug 9, 2021 – 5.46pm
Gladys Berejiklian is clearly going to outrage at least half the population by the end of this month – which half is less clear, though.
Will she outrage those who remain committed to the zero-COVID-19 strategy and perhaps even tougher restrictions?
Or will it be those arguing for a broader release from the state’s indefinite lockdown?
That is because the NSW Premier has been constantly hinting that she will ease some COVID-19 restrictions once the state reaches 6 million jabs – or when 50 per cent of the people have had at least one jab – by August 28. This is not only much lower than the 70 per cent to 80 per cent fully vaccinated figure agreed on by the national cabinet for a substantial easing of the restrictions and the threat of regular lockdowns. It is also different to the state government’s initial intention of getting case numbers in the community as close as possible to zero before any easing.
As the relentlessly grim daily case numbers reinforce, that prospect is now impossible in a society where community spread of such a highly transmissible disease is so entrenched. There’s never any good news from Berejiklian’s media conferences. Yet for weeks, she has maintained – despite increasing public scepticism – that August 28 remains the date for reconsidering the lockdown.
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The nets are starting to close on the $2.6 trillion crypto industry
Senior business columnist
August 10, 2021 — 11.59am
The regulatory and tax nets are starting to close on the $US1.9 trillion ($2.6 trillion) cryptocurrencies market.
On Monday in the US the Biden administration’s $US1 trillion infrastructure bill, which has sufficient bipartisan support to pass, was held up by a wrangle over the tax reporting requirements for cryptocurrencies.
After a weekend of intense negotiations over competing amendments to the bill, the effort to include the changes in legislation failed amidst a broader debate about whether amendments to the overall package should be allowed.
The weekend negotiations were over which participants in the cryptocurrencies sector should be exempt from the bill’s tax-reporting requirements, which impose an obligation on cryptocurrency brokers, and potentially others, to report transactions to the Internal Revenue Service. The IRS taxes profits on trading of crypto assets (those reported to it) as capital gains.
The Biden administration says the measures, which sparked a frenzy of lobbying from the crypto industry, will raise $US28 billion over a decade. That’s probably conservative.
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NSW is almost certainly on the precipice of a massive deterioration
By A western Sydney doctor
August 10, 2021 — 12.02pm
As an experienced respiratory physician at a major western Sydney hospital, I am gravely concerned about the NSW government’s ineffective response to the Delta outbreak. As it has overseas, the pandemic is disproportionately affecting low-income migrant populations with insecure jobs.
NSW is almost certainly on the precipice of a massive deterioration. Contact tracers are overwhelmed, with reporting of infection hot spots lagging by days. The whole strategy of relying on contact tracing for infection control is failing, or indeed has failed.
Australia’s Chief Medical Officer, Professor Paul Kelly, emphasises the federal government’s overall aim is to eliminate the virus until adequate vaccination rates are achieved. However, the NSW government appears to have abandoned the first part of this strategy. Worryingly, it is now relying on achieving sufficient vaccination rates to allow society to progressively reopen.
This will take time. As a result, overseas evidence strongly indicates the Delta variant will continue to wreak havoc with untold numbers of infections, hospitalisations, ICU admissions and death. This is already happening now. No responsible individual has ever advocated for COVID elimination to be pursued indefinitely. However, it is critical until herd immunity is achieved.
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The medical regulatory complex has failed us
The buck stops with the PM. But the TGA and ATAGI deserve a great deal of blame for the go-slow vaccine rollout.
Steven Hamilton and Richard Holden
Updated Aug 10, 2021 – 3.25pm, first published at 1.24pm
In the multipronged clustercuss that is our vaccine rollout, there’s ample blame to go around. While the buck may stop with the Prime Minister, it’s not clear how much difference an alternative Prime Minister would have made given the myriad systemic failures that have occurred.
Indeed, in the stampede to pin the blame on Scott Morrison, many others deserving of their fair share have slipped by unscathed.
A hallmark of pandemic management under every Australian government has been to delegate unprecedented authority to medical decision makers. It was seemingly NSW Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant who advised the delayed lockdown in the state, not Premier Gladys Berejiklian. And it was Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy who coined the phrase “it’s not a race”, championing a go-slow approach to our vaccine rollout, not Scott Morrison.
We rely on our regulatory state to ensure all manner of important things – such as clean air and clean water. In many instances it’s very effective. But, in a range of areas our regulators haven’t lived up to expectations.
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https://www.afr.com/world/europe/delta-has-wrecked-any-chance-of-herd-immunity-20210811-p58htl
‘Delta has wrecked any chance of herd immunity’
Sarah Knapton
Aug 11, 2021 – 12.50pm
London | The delta variant of COVID-19 has wrecked any chance of herd immunity, a panel of experts including the head of the Oxford vaccine team has said, as they called for an end to mass testing so that Britain can start to live with the virus.
Scientists said it was time to accept that there is no way of stopping the virus spreading through the entire population, and monitoring people with mild symptoms was no longer helpful.
Professor Sir Andrew Pollard, who led the Oxford vaccine team, said it was clear that the delta variant can still infect people who have been vaccinated, which made herd immunity impossible to reach, even with the UK’s high uptake.
The Department of Health confirmed on Tuesday that more than three quarters of adults had received both jabs, and calculated that 60,000 deaths and 66,900 hospitalisations have been prevented by the vaccines.
However, experts said it would never be enough to stop the virus spreading.
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Berejiklian’s way out of COVID-19 for NSW
Finbar O'Mallon and Tom McIlroy
Updated Aug 11, 2021 – 6.59pm, first published at 12.39pm
Gladys Berejiklian is seeking to lead Australia out of the pandemic by driving up COVID-19 vaccination rates, so NSW can emerge from its extended lockdown by October even without fully suppressing the state’s growing number of infections.
The NSW Premier has promised a limited reopening at the end of the month of low-risk services for people who are vaccinated, while indicating parts of the Sydney with low cases and high vaccination rates would emerge from lockdown sooner.
NSW is on track to have 70 per cent of its population vaccinated by the end of October and 80 per cent by mid-November. Reaching both goals would mean significant freedoms for NSW, the Premier said.
Ms Berejiklian said this was “completely different” from the limited freedoms she had promised at the end of August once 6 million vaccine doses had been administered.
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Prime Minister Scott Morrison a cranky man in need of a plan
Award-winning political commentator and author
August 12, 2021 — 5.00am
When Scott Morrison finally announced to the media the last iteration of the JobSaver package to help NSW workers facing ruin because of the lockdown, he was asked if the NSW Treasurer, Dominic Perrottet, was right to claim responsibility for securing it.
After the journalist quoted Perrottet referring to himself as a pain in the arse pushing for the extra help for the beleaguered state, Morrison unfurled a riposte from his back pocket designed to elevate himself to the higher ground.
Morrison loftily quoted Ronald Reagan as saying “you get a lot more done if you don’t care who takes the credit”.
Then added tetchily: “Whoever wants to take the credit for the payment, knock yourself out, OK. I’m just happy we’re getting payments to people.”
Next morning, July 29, interviewed by Laura Jayes on Sky, Perrottet said the two governments had worked constructively together. He agreed it was a partnership, he agreed with Morrison’s sentiment about who cares who takes credit.
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Covid NSW: Record vaccination day as ICU filled with unvaccinated patients
NCA NewsWire
August 12, 2021
Almost all of the 62 people who require intensive care treatment in NSW after contracting Covid-19 have not been vaccinated, NSW Health has confirmed.
It comes after a new vaccination record was set in NSW on Wednesday, with 106,000 people receiving jabs, a figure Premier Gladys Berejiklian said gave her “hope”.
On Thursday it was announced another 345 cases of community transmission had been recorded in the state overnight.
Two more people, both men in their 90s, died in the 24 hours to 8pm on Wednesday night.
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https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/victoria-s-exposure-list-nears-460-20210814-p58ip5
NSW in snap lockdown from 5pm
NSW will enter a statewide lockdown from 5pm, the government has confirmed. The stay-at-home retrictions apply to all of regional NSW from 5pm Saturday for at least seven days.
There will be a ‘grace period’ for weddings and funerals in the regional areas, the government tweeted.
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Berejiklian has failed to contain delta to Greater Sydney
Aaron Patrick Senior correspondent
Aug 13, 2021 – 5.42pm
Every story needs villains, and 6 million NSW residents under lockdown have theirs: 52-year-old Zoran Radovanovic and his 19-year-old son, Kristian.
The pair were accused of sneaking out of Sydney’s eastern suburbs for the unusually quiet beaches and bars of Byron Bay late last month.
Radovanovic snr’s friends insist he’s a lovely guy. His somewhat stained professional record – convictions for fraud, burglary, and theft – in coming months may include the year’s signature crime: failing to check into the government’s movements database using a quick response or QR code.
Infected with COVID-19 and outed in the tabloids, the men are being held responsible for endangering the citizens of Byron – and the anti-vaccination towns in the hinterland behind it – and potentially spreading the disease beyond Greater Sydney, which was banned from travel seven weeks ago precisely to preserve life-as-normal in country NSW.
Radovanovic even got a cameo mention at Friday’s national cabinet meeting.
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Coronavirus: ‘overlooked’ autistic children sitting ducks for Delta outbreak
10:21AM August 14, 2021
The Covid-19 outbreak at a Sydney special needs school that sent hundreds of students, staff and relatives into isolation could have been prevented if the federal government had managed its vaccine rollout effectively, disability advocates say.
On August 5, Giant Steps, a special education school in Gladesville, on the lower north shore, closed after a staff member tested positive for Covid-19.
Two days later a student tested positive and on Thursday it was revealed a total of 18 cases had been linked to the school.
“The community was just sitting waiting for this to happen and hoping that it didn’t – but of course it did,” said Autism Awareness Australia chief executive Nicole Rogerson.
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Climate Change.
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Thousands evacuated from island as fires choke Greece
Marco Trujillo
Aug 8, 2021 – 6.26pm
Psaropouli, Greece | Hundreds of firefighters in Greece, backed by planes, helicopters and reinforcements from other countries, battled massive wildfires that continued burning on Sunday, fuelled by bone-dry conditions after the country’s worst heatwave in decades.
Thousands have fled their homes on the island of Evia as wildfires burned uncontrolled for a sixth day, and ferries were on standby for more evacuations after taking many to safety by sea.
Three large wildfires churned across the country, with one cutting a line across Evia. Others engulfed forested mountainsides and skirted ancient sites, leaving a trail of destruction that one official described as “a biblical catastrophe”.
In the United States, fires across the west coast are burning forests used by governments and global corporations to offset their carbon emissions in a double blow to tackling climate change.
The US is on track for a record-breaking wildfire season, with 100 large blazes burning in 14 states. One of the largest is the Bootleg Fire in southern Oregon, which has destroyed more than 162,000 hectares since it began in early July. The flames are thought to have burnt at least a fifth of the forests that had been set aside for carbon offsets in the region, including a sizeable portion of Microsoft’s carbon removal portfolio for the year.
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Nations face fierce headwinds in adapting to extreme weather
Policymakers must help communities become resilient to events such as floods, fires and storms, at the same time as working to dramatically reduce emissions.
Camilla Hodgson
Aug 10, 2021 – 9.40am
Living in a world that is 1.5C warmer in two decades than it was 200 years ago means a heatwave that would previously have occurred once in 50 years is likely to occur nine times.
In the more serious instance of 2C of warming, the odds are worse still — sweltering conditions would be suffered 14 times, or every three and a half years.
The landmark report by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on Monday lays bare the urgent need to prepare for changes that are already under way at 1.1C of warming so far, and will only get worse at every increment.
The comprehensive scientific analysis, accepted by 195 governments, clearly outlines how weather events that are “unprecedented” in human history will become more common, and was hailed by the Quebec-born contributor Corinne Le Quéré as “one of the most important scientific reports ever published.”
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Australia’s climate policies falling short of United Nations’ global goals
By Mike Foley, Miki Perkins and Peter Hannam
August 10, 2021 — 11.57am
Australia’s state and federal governments climate policies are not reducing emissions as quickly as the United Nations says it must be achieved to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees and avoid the worst impacts of climate change.
A landmark study by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the sixth and most comprehensive of its kind and was compiled by 234 international scientists. It said rapid emissions reductions are required over the next decade to avoid the worst impacts of climate change that come with more than 1.5 degrees of warming.
Australia’s emissions reduction commitment is consistent with global action that would deliver between 2 and 3 degrees of warming, which the IPCC said was likely to cause cascading natural disasters in extreme weather such as droughts, bushfires, floods and cyclones.
The federal government has not set a deadline to reach net zero but says it will get there “preferably” by 2050 and has committed to make at least a 26 per cent cut by 2030 - based on 2005 levels.
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Pacific neighbours need us to lead on climate as they fight multiple crises
Political and international editor
August 10, 2021 — 5.00am
The annual summit of Pacific Islands leaders rarely gets much media attention in the wider world, but Scott Morrison managed to give it a major boost on Friday. Not in a way he would have wanted.
Australia is the superpower of the Pacific Islands Forum. So it didn’t go down well when Morrison was spotted eating his breakfast as Tuvalu’s Prime Minister addressed the opening session.
“Australian PM eats during Pacific leaders’ summit, draws scorn” headlined the Samoa Observer. It was “an act widely viewed as disrespectful” during the virtual summit, according to the newspaper.
A Twitter chorus demanded to know whether Morrison would eat his morning toast during a summit with European or APEC leaders?
None of the other leaders complained, however. Perhaps because they are wearily accustomed to being overlooked and underappreciated.
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Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change AP6 report: No doubt humans warmed world
6:00PM August 9, 2021
The world’s leading climate scientists have warned that the prospect of limiting global warming to 1.5C will be out of reach within 12 years at current rates of greenhouse gas emissions, in a report that finds it is now “unequivocal’’ that human activity is heating the planet.
A landmark report for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found human ¬activity had already warmed the planet by 1.07C since the industrial revolution and in a regional update says Australian land areas have warmed by about 1.4C, higher than the global average.
Annual temperature changes had emerged above natural variability in all land regions of the Australian continent while New Zealand temperatures had risen by 1.1C between 1910 and 2020.
Scientific certainty had increased from the previous study in 2014 that human-caused warming was now affecting many weather and climate extremes in every region across the globe.
The IPCC report found there was high confidence that heat extremes had increased, cold -extremes had decreased, and these trends were projected to continue.
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https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/scott-morrison-ties-climate-wars-to-mortgages-20210810-p58hj6
Scott Morrison ties climate wars to mortgages
Jacob Greber Senior correspondent
Aug 10, 2021 – 3.42pm
Scott Morrison has admitted for the first time that Australian companies and mortgage lenders could struggle to access global financial markets as big capital ramps up its push to decarbonise the global economy.
Speaking a day after the world’s top scientists warned time is running short to avoid widespread and devastating climate change, the Prime Minister pressed the world’s biggest polluters led by China to adopt technologies that drive down emissions and insisted Australia was doing its fair share.
Mr Morrison also indicated the government may be on the cusp – in time for November’s UN climate summit in Glasgow – of upgrading Australia’s Paris Agreement commitment to lower emissions by between 26 per cent and 28 per cent on 2005 levels.
“We are very aware of the risks that are set out in the IPCC (the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report,” Mr Morrison said on Tuesday.
“But I’m also very aware of the significant changes that are happening in the global economy. I mean, financiers are already making decisions regardless of governments about this.”
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Global warming presents a clear economic choice
Pradeep Philip and Claire Ibrahim
3:23PM August 10, 2021
The deadly summer of bushfires in Australia last year, the extreme weather events in Europe, North America and Asia in recent times are no fluke and they are set to grow in frequency and intensity.
The IPCC’s latest report is another wake-up call for all of us, especially business and government, in the countdown to COP26.
The world is running out of time and the Paris goals are at risk, according to the latest assessment of the IPCC.
The report draws some confronting conclusions for Australia but gives an insight into the solution at the same time.
First, much of the warming of the planet is human-induced. Which means we control stopping it.
Second, the planet has already warmed about 1.1C over pre-industrial levels and exceeding a 1.5C limit is likely. This means we know what we are working towards avoiding.
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https://www.afr.com/chanticleer/cyclone-threat-forces-insurance-upheaval-20210813-p58ig9
Cyclone threat forces insurance upheaval
At the same time as the federal government drags the chain on carbon reduction targets it is recognising the financial impact of global warming.
Aug 13, 2021 – 7.33pm
Australia’s highly competitive general insurance market is about to welcome a new player with very deep pockets and a genuine commitment to helping consumers.
What’s intriguing about this new player is that it is not concerned about making a profit. Instead, it is primarily interested in acting for the social good as the increasing intensity and frequency of natural perils forces worrying levels of underinsurance in Northern Australia.
What makes the move by the new player even more intriguing is the fact it has the power, but not the inclination, to do much about mitigating against the impact of climate change.
Enough of the suspense. The new player is, of course, the federal government, which is co-ordinating the establishment of a $10 billion reinsurance pool to cover the risk of property damage caused by cyclones and cyclone-related flood damage.
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July 2021 was Earth’s hottest month ever recorded
By Kasha Patel
Updated August 14, 2021 — 11.16amfirst published at 11.14am
Washington: People in the Northern Hemisphere thought this July was just toasty. They probably didn’t realise they were living through the hottest month in modern history.
On Friday (Saturday AEST), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the US declared July 2021 the world’s hottest month in 142 years of records.
“In this case, first place is the worst place to be,” NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad said in a statement. “This new record adds to the disturbing and disruptive path that climate change has set for the globe.”
The combined land and ocean-surface temperature this July was 1.67 degrees Fahrenheit (0.93 of a degree Celsius) above the 20th-century average, NOAA found. This was 0.01C higher than the previous record tied in July 2016, July 2019 and July 2020. The agency said 2021 will likely rank among the top 10 warmest years on record.
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Royal Commissions And The Like.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/health-and-education/ndis-not-doing-the-job-20210808-p58gua
NDIS not doing the job
The latest data on NDIS use puts the pressure back on the states to support changes needed to not only limit its growth, but also to better support those disabled Australians most in need.
Aug 9, 2021 – 5.00am
As we report today, the cost of the National Disability Insurance Scheme is not only spiralling towards unsustainability. What was supposed to be an insurance scheme that paid for itself, also is not doing its intended job.
The NDIS quarterly report for June shows a massive $6.6 billion or 33 per cent cost blowout compared to the same quarter last year. The report also shows that participants are becoming less functional overtime and more dependent on support. It also finds that those in higher socio-economic areas receive more generous support than in poorer areas.
Spiralling spending appears not to be achieving the NDIS’ original purpose of improving quality of life for the most profoundly disabled and excluded Australians. It is more evidence that the failure to strictly target NDIS eligibility at the start means the scheme has grown too big, too fast into a broader welfare entitlement.
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National Budget Issues.
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APRA warned banks of risky lending as housing market boomed
9:04AM August 9, 2021
The banking regulator became increasing worried about the frenzied pace of mortgage lending in April and put the nation’s banks on notice not to relax standards and to ensure borrowers weren’t taking on excessive debt in the face of ultra-low interest rates, according to new internal documents.
The letter from the head of the Australian Prudential and Regulation Commission sent to the boards of the biggest banks warns lenders to be “especially vigilant in managing the risks within their residential mortgage portfolios in the current environment”.
The letter, released under freedom of information rules, also gave bank boards just weeks to sign off on assurances that lending growth across the sector wasn’t reckless. The last time it asked banks to give such assurances was in 2018 when the market remained heated even after a period of lending restriction put in place.
While housing finance commitments fell 1.6 per cent month-on-month in June they are up a hefty 83 per cent over the past year.
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Health Issues.
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Testing times: inside the crisis at Laverty Pathology
August 9, 2021 — 11.59am
In the frenetic days of the COVID-19 outbreak in Avalon, people coming for testing at Laverty’s North Ryde drive-through clinic might have been swabbed by a man who resembled the BFG.
He was so tall that he had to kneel on the ground to reach the nostrils of a woman who arrived in a Mazda MX5.
That would have been Malcolm Parmenter, the chief executive of Healius, which is the parent company of Laverty Pathology and holds the second-largest share of the pathology market in Australia.
Not for the first time, the company had surged its workforce for a sudden doubling in demand. People from the imaging business were collecting pathology specimens. The bigwigs were rolling up their sleeves.
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CSL’s planned mRNA factories would produce 50 million doses in four months
By David Crowe
August 14, 2021 — 5.00am
Australia could make enough mRNA vaccines to protect the entire population at short notice under plans by biotech giant CSL to build two new facilities to fight future waves of coronavirus.
The facilities are being designed to produce at least 50 million doses within 16 weeks once construction is finished, in a pitch to the federal government to develop a sovereign capacity to respond to new variants of COVID-19 and other pathogens.
Melbourne would host both new centres in a two-stage proposal that starts with an mRNA research and production facility near the city centre and leads to an “industrial scale” manufacturing hub near Tullamarine.
CSL, an Australian company that posted global sales of $12 billion last year, has told the federal government the first local facility could produce mRNA doses within 18 months, a timeframe in line with other countries.
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International Issues.
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Why Australia should be worried about China Evergrande’s fate
Australian iron ore producers would do well to keep a close eye on the woes of the Chinese property development giant, whose bonds dropped to record lows last week.
Karen Maley Columnist
Aug 9, 2021 – 5.00am
It’s the nail-biter that has investors watching on with a mixture of fascination and trepidation: will Beijing come to the rescue of giant debt-laden Chinese property developer, China Evergrande?
It’s a question that has serious implications for Australian investors after the near-30 per cent slump in the price of iron ore since the May peak.
There are fears that a collapse of Evergrande - which would send tremors through the Chinese real estate market, making it more difficult and expensive for Chinese property developers to raise debt - would further reduce demand for iron ore, given that China’s construction industry accounts for more than half of the steel used in the country.
And that, in turn, could spark a further steep fall in the price of Australia’s largest source of export revenue.
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How the Fed’s digital currency could displace crypto
The Boston Fed and MIT are building a central bank digital currency that aims to usurp existing tokens.
Gillian Tett Contributor
Aug 8, 2021 – 3.24pm
When the Federal Reserve holds its Jackson Hole meeting later this month, economists will need to discuss one big experiment: can Fed officials prepare markets for a “taper” of loose monetary policy, without sparking a shock?
This matters deeply in the short term. But there is a second, longer-term debate which investors should also watch: how soon can the Fed create an effective central bank digital currency (CBDC)?
Last year the Boston Fed asked researchers at MIT to embark on a project to build and test “with boldness [and] ingenuity” the computing systems needed to support a US-backed digital currency.
That is scheduled to deliver two policy papers next month: one covering the CBDC coding challenges; the second on economic and design choices, such as what putative digital dollars might mean for commercial banks.
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Space lasers and the new battlefield emerging under China’s anti-satellite tactics
August 9, 2021 — 8.11am
Space lasers are a real thing, even if they’re not generally made to blow up passing satellites.
Designed to damage or disable sensor equipment on orbiting satellites, ground-based lasers can help hide a nation’s activities. Photography from satellites, for example, has been key in helping reveal the extent of Beijing’s detention of Muslim Uighurs in western China.
Weeks before the Federation of American Scientists produced analysis showing missile silos being built in western China, US-based analysts – drawing attention to anti-satellite lasers in Xinjiang – warned that US satellites, the kind that could keep an eye on China’s military, were “increasingly vulnerable to China’s ground-based lasers”.
Sydney-based space analyst Chris Flaherty said that when it came to lasers, “dazzling”, or interfering with a satellite’s camera, and “blinding”, permanently damaging a satellite, “are the prime technologies that are deployable right now”.
The technology gives a country the power “to deny a satellite’s ability to operate, to shut it down or to damage it – without creating space debris”.
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The Taliban advance escalates in Afghanistan
The Wall St Journal Editorial Board
The Wall Street Journal
August 9, 2021
Biden Administration officials continue to insist that diplomacy is the only solution in Afghanistan. The Taliban has other ideas as its military advance continues over ever more Afghan territory and targets government officials who worked with the US
The group’s “martyrdom battalion” launched an elaborate suicide attack on the Afghan defence minister’s home last week, killing eight and wounding 20. Gen. Bismillah Khan Mohammadi and his family weren’t harmed during the attack, which was followed by gunfights on the streets of downtown Kabul.
The Taliban said Wednesday that the latest bombing would be the first of many “retaliatory operations against key figures and leaders of the Kabul administration.” On Friday it assassinated Dawa Khan Menapal, the government’s chief media officer who helped local and foreign press. A Taliban spokesman took credit for what he called a “special attack” to punish Menapal “for his actions,” according to Reuters.
Kabul isn’t on the brink of collapse, but it will be increasingly dangerous for civilians, government officials and foreigners. Expect more violence in the capital as the US withdraws and only a few hundred American troops remain to guard facilities like the US Embassy. On Saturday the Embassy advised all Americans to leave the country on the first available commercial flight.
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China’s tech tycoons lose $118b of wealth after Beijing crackdown
Hudson Lockett
Aug 9, 2021 – 2.01pm
Hong Kong | Beijing’s regulatory assault on China’s technology industry has lopped $US87 billion ($118.3 billion) off the net worth of the sector’s wealthiest tycoons since the start of July, hitting the fortunes of magnates such as Tencent’s Pony Ma and Pinduoduo’s Colin Huang.
The combined net worth of the two dozen Chinese billionaires in tech and biotechnology whose holdings are tracked by Bloomberg has dropped by 16 per cent since ride-hailing platform Didi Chuxing went public in the US at the end of June, according to Financial Times calculations.
The $US4.4 billion listing, which the company launched despite private warnings from Chinese authorities to delay it due to data security concerns, has been followed by a regulatory firestorm. Beijing has sought to tighten its grip on an industry that has helped transform the world’s second-biggest economy, prompting a plunge in the share prices of China’s largest tech groups.
Mr Huang, founder of e-commerce site Pinduoduo, has been the worst affected with paper losses of $US15.6 billion, or a third of his wealth. Pony Ma, founder of internet group Tencent, has lost more than $US12 billion, or 22 per cent of his wealth.
He is now ranked as China’s third-richest man behind Jack Ma, founder of rival company Alibaba.
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https://www.afr.com/world/north-america/why-joe-biden-is-on-the-right-track-20210809-p58h98
Why Joe Biden is on the right track
David Brooks Contributor
Aug 9, 2021 – 4.26pm
If Joe Biden stands for one idea, it is that America’s system can work. We live in a big, diverse country, but good leaders can bring people together across difference to do big things. In essence, Biden is defending liberal democracy, and the notion that you can’t govern a nation based on the premise that the other half of the country is irredeemably awful.
The progressive wing of the Democratic Party is sceptical: The Republican Party has gone authoritarian. Mitch McConnell is obstructionist. Big money pulls the strings. The system is broken. The only way to bring change is to mobilise the Democratic base and push partisan transformation.
If all you knew about politics is what goes on in the media circus, you’d have to say the progressives have the better argument. Donald Trump, Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene – healthy bipartisan compromise seems completely hopeless with this crew.
But underneath that circus, there has always been another layer of politics – led by people who are not as ratings-driven, but are more governance-driven. So over the past 20 years or so, while the circus has been at full roar, Congress has continued to pass bipartisan legislation: the Every Student Succeeds rewrite of federal K-12 education policy, the Obama budget compromise of 2013, the Trump criminal justice reform law of 2018, the FAST infrastructure act, the Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2020, the Trump-era ban on surprise billing in healthcare. In June, the Senate passed, 68-32, the US Innovation and Competition Act of 2021, which would devote roughly $US250 billion ($340 billion) to scientific projects.
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New man in Tehran aims for supreme power
Rodger Shanahan
7:54PM August 9, 2021
A new Iranian president was inaugurated last week. The conservative Ebrahim Raisi comes into office with a less than powerful popular mandate. Having received just 38 per cent of the vote in his failed 2017 election run, the most notable statistic from his comprehensive victory in an uninspiring field of candidates was not his share of the votes, but the fact that only 48 per cent of Iranian voters cast votes. It was the lowest turnout ever in a presidential election in Iran.
The challenges facing Raisi in his new role are immense.
While the supreme leader is the real centre of power in the Islamic Republic, the president retains responsibility for the day-to-day running of domestic political issues such as the economy, health and resources. And each of those areas present enormous challenges.
Iran has suffered more than 90,000 deaths from Covid-19 and last Monday it recorded a new record of more than 37,000 new cases in a single day. According to the World Bank the Iranian economy contracted by 12 per cent in the past two years and the official unemployment rate is just below 10 per cent. Youth unemployment is several orders of magnitude higher. Iran is also suffering from a drought and longer-term concerns over water availability have led to riots in some provinces in which a number of people were killed.
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Australia ‘within Chinese PLA strike range’
8:57AM August 11, 2021
Australia can no longer rely on isolation as protection from a military attack, with the nation now within striking range of Chinese bombers and ballistic missiles.
A new analysis says while the prospect of Chinese military action against Australia remains remote, its long-range strike capabilities “present a grave possibility of military coercion” by the People’s Liberation Army.
“Absent assistance from allies and partners, China already possesses the capability to strike Australia from existing bases with bomber aircraft and long-range missiles,” the Lowy Institute paper says
“The expected introduction of additional PLA air and naval capabilities over time will worsen this asymmetry.”
The paper, by Centre for a New American Security adjunct senior fellow Thomas Shugart, says China’s newest H-6N bomber armed with air-launched ballistic missiles could hit targets across Australia flying from mainland China.
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The world is watching as China’s Delta outbreak hits an already vulnerable economy
Senior business columnist
August 11, 2021 — 11.59am
The Delta variant of the coronavirus has dashed hopes of a smooth recovery in global growth with China, first in and first out of the plunge in economic growth last year, now facing new threats as outbreaks of the virus hit an economy with pre-existing challenges.
There has been a new wave of infections across China since last month’s outbreak in Nanjing – they are now at seven-month highs – which the authorities have responded to with lockdowns, travel restrictions and limits on entertainment and large gatherings.
A number of conferences and other major events have been cancelled – the 2021 Beijing Cyber Security Conference (for which tens of thousands of attendees were expected) and the annual World 5G Conference among them – as the authorities roll out the draconian playbook they so successfully used to get last year’s outbreak under control.
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China hits out at Lithuania after it allows a de facto Taiwan embassy
By Daphne Psaledakis
August 11, 2021 — 7.54am
Washington: China has demanded that Lithuania withdraw its ambassador in Beijing and said it would recall China’s envoy to Vilnius in a fresh diplomatic row.
Beijing is angry with the Baltic nation for allowing Taiwan to open a de facto embassy there using its own name.
China considers democratically governed Taiwan to be its most sensitive territorial issue as part of “one China”, and is regularly angered by any moves which suggest the island is a separate country.
Taiwan announced the new mission last month, saying it would be called the Taiwanese Representative Office in Lithuania, the first time the island’s name has been used for one of its offices in Europe, as normally only “Taipei” is used.
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https://www.afr.com/world/asia/the-us-is-simply-delusional-on-afghanistan-20210813-p58iha
The US is simply delusional on Afghanistan
Washington insists that there is no military solution to the conflict. But nobody has told the surging Taliban.
Max Boot
Aug 13, 2021 – 11.39am
The situation in Afghanistan is going from bad to worse. The Taliban has captured nine provincial capitals, including seven in northern Afghanistan – making it more unlikely that its adversaries can regroup in that region, as they did in the 1990s.
The Long War Journal reports that the Taliban already controls 57 per cent of the country’s districts, compared with only 16 per cent for the government. (The rest are contested.) The Taliban is now besieging major cities, including Mazar-e Sharif, Herat and Kandahar, and US military officials are now reportedly warning that Kabul could fall in 30 to 90 days.
Taliban terrorists have attacked the guesthouse of Afghanistan’s acting defence minister and killed the director of the government’s media centre in Kabul. The US embassy is urging all US citizens to leave the country “immediately” and reportedly preparing to evacuate some of its staff. The advancing Taliban is executing “detained soldiers, police, and civilians with alleged ties to the Afghan government,” Human Rights Watch reports. Civilian casualties are hitting record levels, and hundreds of thousands of Afghans have become refugees because of the recent fighting.
President Richard Nixon and national security adviser Henry Kissinger hoped that the North Vietnamese would at least give the United States a “decent interval” between the pullout of US forces and the conquest of South Vietnam. The Taliban is not giving the Biden administration even that much. US troops are barely out the door, and the Taliban is already well on its way to conquering the whole country. Afghan government forces appear to be collapsing as rapidly today as Taliban forces collapsed in the fall of 2001.
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How Biden used his old Washington tricks to win over Republicans
The US President called on 48 years of experience in federal politics to guide a $1.6 trillion infrastructure package through a political minefield.
Matthew Cranston United States correspondent
Updated Aug 12, 2021 – 1.53pm, first published at 1.49pm
Washington | When you are on the greatest political stage in the modern era it pays to have had almost half a century getting to know the audience and fellow actors.
President Joe Biden came to Congress in 1973 and has since finely tuned his ability to deal with recalcitrant actors, method thespians, divas, drama queens and those simply going off-script.
When the US Senate this week agreed to a $US1.2 trillion ($1.6 trillion) infrastructure spending package – the biggest approved by the upper house for decades, according to analysis from the Brookings Institution – Biden thought he should remind people that old-fashioned negotiations and tactics still worked.
“I know a lot of people . . . didn’t think this could happen; that bipartisanship was a thing of the past. It was characterised as a relic of an earlier age. I never believed that. I still don’t,” he said.
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US, UK send troops to evacuate embassies as Taliban circle Kabul
Tameem Akhgar and Rahim Faiez
Updated Aug 13, 2021 – 5.14pm, first published at 8.26am
Kabul/Istanbul | The United States and Britain will send thousands of troops to Afghanistan to help evacuate civilians after the Taliban captured the country’s second- and third-largest cities and moved closer to its goal of circling the capital Kabul.
The seizure of Kandahar and Herat marks the biggest prizes yet for the Taliban, who have taken 13 of Afghanistan’s 34 provincial capitals as part of a week-long blitz.
They also captured the strategic provincial capital of Ghazni, cutting off a crucial highway linking Kabul with the country’s southern provinces, and were reported to have control of Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand.
While Kabul is not yet directly under threat, the losses and the battles elsewhere further tighten the grip of a resurgent Taliban, who are estimated to now hold over two-thirds of Afghanistan and continue to press their offensive.
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‘Global embarrassment’: Afghanistan withdrawal resembles surrender
August 14, 2021 — 10.15am
Washington: When Joe Biden appeared at the White House last month to explain his decision to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan, he insisted that a Taliban takeover of the country was not inevitable.
The Afghan army, Biden said, had 300,000 troops compared to 75,000 for the Taliban. And he claimed that the Afghan government troops were as “well-equipped as any army in the world”.
While few things in life are inevitable, a speedy Taliban takeover following America’s withdrawal looked highly possible even then.
Now, with the Taliban gaining control of provincial capitals at stunning speed, it looks extremely probable.
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Afghan President vows to stop bloodshed as Taliban close on Kabul
AFP
1:58AM August 15, 2021
RAAF planes are expected to arrive in Kabul as early as this week to begin an evacuation by Australia of hundreds of people, which would be coordinated with the arrival of US and British security forces, the ABC reported.
The ABC said on Saturday a hastily organised “air bridge” mission will also likely involve Australian customs and immigration personnel, as well as consular and foreign service officers.
Among those to be evacuated would be Afghan interpreters and contractors who served alongside Australian Defence Force troops, it said.
Afghanistan’s beleaguered President vowed on Saturday to prevent further bloodshed, as Taliban fighters closed in on Kabul after routing his armed forces over the past 10 days.
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Record 90,000 flee Hong Kong after Beijing crackdown
By Didi Tang
The Times
August 15, 2021
Hong Kong is experiencing its largest exodus since records began as Beijing’s crackdown on freedoms forces thousands into exile.
In the year since China imposed its repressive national security law, effectively banning protest and dissent, 87,100 residents have left the former British colony, according to official statistics on Friday.
The population now stands at 7.39 million, down 1.2 per cent from the same time last year.
Many have fled to Britain, taking advantage of the visa program for residents with British National (Overseas) status (BNO), allowing them to work and study and offering a path to citizenship.
About 5.4 million Hong Kong residents could be eligible for the scheme, and tens of thousands are believed to have applied. Other countries such as Canada and the US have also offered favourable immigration policies.
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I look forward to comments on all this!
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David.
