April 21 2022 Edition
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The horror of the war in Ukraine just worsens with violence and horror continuing at seemingly an increasing pace. The structure of a bipolar world becomes clearer and sadder by the day.
It can’t be
too long before the Western world loses patience and has to somehow bring the
conflict to an end, but many thousands may die in the meantime, and ending this war will not be pain free by any means....
In the UK Boris seems to be hanging on while there is a lot of pressure for him to go.
The Federal
election is now well into week 2 and soon we will start to see some clarity on
what will happen. Both sides are struggling as far as I can see! The debate showed neither were on top to any degree. Only 4 and a bit weeks to go!
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Major Issues.
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‘This election is about you and no one else’: Scott Morrison calls federal election for May 21
By David Crowe and Lisa Visentin
Updated April 10, 2022 — 12.08pmfirst published at 9.28am
Talking points
· Prime Minister Scott Morrison has called a federal election for May 21.
· Morrison visited the Governor-General at Yarralumla on Sunday morning.
· The PM released a video on Saturday night about his record in responding to natural disasters and the pandemic.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has called the federal election for May 21 with a message to Australians to back him because of his performance in the pandemic, telling voters his government is not perfect but is better than the risk of a switch to Labor.
Mr Morrison launched the six-week election campaign after visiting Governor-General David Hurley at Government House in Yarralumla to ask him to dissolve Parliament and set the date for Australians to cast their ballots.
The Prime Minister’s plan takes the election to the last possible day for votes to be cast, a strategy that extends the campaign in the hope of placing more pressure on Labor leader Anthony Albanese.
Mr Morrison held a press conference in Parliament House late on Sunday morning to outline his pitch to voters after he released a video on Saturday night about his record in responding to natural disasters and the pandemic.
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Why universities need to fully engage with the economy
Universities cannot stand back from skill shortages as if it is someone else’s business. To do so would be to let their communities and the Australian economy down.
Ian Anderson and Robert Griew
Apr 10, 2022 – 1.18pm
Australia is at the start of a fundamentally challenging decade. We face uncertainty about the course of the pandemic, the aftermath of international disruption and economic recovery without confidence in the functioning of the domestic labour market.
Over the last summer we undertook a series of interviews with leaders from across the university sector, business and government. Our purpose was to identify policy options for universities as we emerge from the pandemic. Those we interviewed expressed disappointment that the sector had not been effectively engaged by the federal government in policy conversations on how universities could contribute to addressing the challenges that make this decade so confronting.
We concluded that the university sector should rebuild its covenant with Australian communities, strengthening its alignment with societal aspirations and focusing on its contribution to economic recovery. This should focus the attention of government, and also create a path for better teaching and impactful research.
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6:00am, Apr 11, 2022 Updated: 9:20pm, Apr 10
Alan Kohler: The three challenges for whoever wins the election
Up to now the election campaign has been focusing on the top centimetre of issues while ignoring the depths.
And it will probably stay focused on cash handouts, Scott Morrison’s character, Anthony Albanese’s absence of it, and the lies both sides choose to tell about each other.
But the next Australian Parliament will actually be dominated by three things: Climate change, inequality and China.
Neither major party will campaign on these things because they don’t have any solutions for them, in turn because the solutions are complicated and unpopular. These things are to be discussed after an election, not before.
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Why this time is different for investors
Shareholders are becoming increasingly fearful that the glorious period of rising asset prices they’ve enjoyed over the past four decades is coming to an end.
Karen Maley Columnist
Apr 10, 2022 – 6.09pm
Investors’ complacency was rudely shaken last week as two key events forced them to recognise that the developed world now stands on the threshhold of a new – and much less benign – financial epoch.
The first tremor came when Lael Brainard – who has long been seen as the leader of the dovish faction on the US Federal Reserve – signalled that she now fully endorsed tighter monetary policy, saying that reducing inflation was “of paramount importance”.
Brainard, a Fed governor who is awaiting the US Senate’s confirmation to become the Fed’s next vice-chair – also argued that the US central bank needed to reduce its $US9 trillion balance sheet “at a rapid pace”.
Investors were further rattled when the minutes of the Fed’s March meeting revealed there was general support for shrinking the US central bank’s balance sheet by about $US95 billion a month.
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Albanese stumbles in an election that’s his to lose
The Labor leader showed himself ignorant of the most important, discretionary economic setting that determines Australians’ prosperity.
Aaron Patrick Senior correspondent
Apr 11, 2022 – 1.48pm
Anthony Albanese memorised the wrong prices.
“I’m happy to know that the last time I filled up, petrol was $2.20,” he said at a news conference in Launceston on Monday.
Anthony Albanese was unable to say what the unemployment rate or official interest rate was on day one of the campaign
“I know how much the price of bread is. I know how much a litre of milk is. I know about those things that affect ordinary people.”
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Albanese’s ‘insecure’ work scare just doesn’t add up
By playing along with the ACTU’s misleading ‘insecure’ work scare, Anthony Albanese has created a genuine policy difference with the Coalition.
Apr 12, 2022 – 5.00am
The Australian Financial Review has exposed the first big policy lie of the 2022 federal election campaign.
In the lead-up to the election, Anthony Albanese has repeatedly echoed the Australian Council of Trade Unions’ campaign against “insecure” work by claiming an increasingly casualised workforce has festered under nine years of Coalition rule. Yet the image conjured up of an uncontrolled expansion of workers toiling on some modern day “hungry mile” at the whim of capricious bosses is not matched by the facts.
As economics editor John Kehoe reports today, the Australian Bureau of Statistics time series that has tracked working arrangements since 1988 shows that the share of workers in casual employment has remained flat or declined slightly over the past 20 years at about one-quarter of the workforce. The ABS defines a casual worker as someone without access to paid holiday or sick leave who typically receives an additional hourly payment or leave loading as compensation.
Astonishingly, Mr Albanese yesterday was unable to correctly nominate Australia’s 4 per cent jobless rate, close to the lowest in 50 years, or the Reserve Bank of Australia’s record low 0.1 per cent cash rate. It’s a disturbing indicator of political priorities when the alternative prime minister – who has never held an economic management portfolio during his quarter of a century in parliament – is not across the basic details of the economy that is supposed to finance Labor’s big spending promises.
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Albanese could pay a staggering cost for a stupid mistake
Chief political correspondent
April 11, 2022 — 10.30pm
The way Anthony Albanese tried to control the damage from his jobs blunder on Monday said everything about the staggering cost of a stupid mistake.
There was no excuse for not knowing the unemployment rate and the Labor leader knew it.
The Labor leader didn't know the national unemployment rate or the official cash rate but says he's accepted responsibility and people make mistakes.
Scott Morrison knew it, too, and will be campaigning on Tuesday on jobs policy to keep attention on the issue – and the blunder – through to the release of the next employment figures on Thursday.
Albanese and his campaign team moved as fast as they could to explain the mistake after he was asked in Launceston to name the national unemployment rate and had to admit – “sorry, I’m not sure what it is” – that he did not know.
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How the ‘core-satellite’ approach can help handle market volatility
A well-diversified core and satellite portfolio, aligned to your risk appetite, can help you diversify.
Duncan Burns Contributor
Apr 11, 2022 – 5.00am
The first quarter of 2022 has challenged investors with plenty of market volatility, and it would be foolish to expect the rest of the year to be a smooth ride.
If recent fluctuations in the share market are giving you heartburn, your risk appetite and your portfolio’s asset allocation are probably misaligned and in need of attention.
Most financial headlines focus on the here and now. But for investors, attempting to make decisions based on daily developments, making frequent portfolio adjustments and trying to time the market does not help accumulate wealth over the long run. It typically has the opposite effect.
Rather, it is the asset allocation decisions you make and stick with year on year that will drive solid long-term investment outcomes.
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How to stop inflation getting away with your wealth
Market experts recommend a carefully targeted portfolio including commodities and companies with pricing power to help avoid negative returns and loss of purchasing power.
Tony Featherstone Contributor
Apr 13, 2022 – 5.00am
For central banks, raising interest rates is like opening a parachute. Pull the cord too early and the economy drifts. Pull too late and there’s a thud.
For investors, a hard landing means rapid rate rises and sharemarket losses. Or worse, inflation getting away from policymakers and recession.
Few experts believe Australia faces stagflation: high inflation and low economic growth. But investors must ensure their portfolio can withstand rising inflation and the big investment risk this decade – loss of purchasing power.
“The risks of forecasting error with inflation have never been higher,” says Christian Baylis, chief investment officer of Fortlake Asset Management, a fixed-income manager. “Australia could easily have 5 per cent inflation or more within 12-24 months.”
Headline inflation in Australia was 3.5 per cent through 2021. That’s nothing compared to the United States, where inflation over the year to March hit a 41-year high of 8.5 per cent. That has prompted talk that US inflation is hurtling towards double-digit rates, if not there already.
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Too early to call, but demographics are trending Labor’s way
You would be mad to bet against Morrison six weeks out. But a significant number of aspirational voters are sticking with Labor at the ages they normally begin to vote for the Coalition.
John Black
Apr 12, 2022 – 12.53pm
We’re now almost six weeks out from a May 21 election or four weeks out if you’re voting early. That’s a hint, folks, if you want the pain in your head to stop.
While the demographic and political cards are still stacked in support of Labor, Prime Minister Scott Morrison has already started to whittle away Labor’s early lead; from 55/45 a month ago, to 54/46 a week ago, to 53/47 on Monday. It happened in 2019 and, as I warned last column, it’s way too early to organise the sympathy cards for Morrison.
Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese is looking a little passive-aggressive on the campaign trail. Like it’s his turn to be PM because, as his Deputy Richard Marles keeps telling us, the other bloke is a shocking fibber.
Well, we all twigged to that a while back Dick. But it kind of comes with the job, and now it’s Albanese’s net satisfaction scores which are sliding back into negative territory. So, plan B may be called for some time soon here Albo, starting with learning the current economic stats.
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What happened last time house prices fell, and is this time different?
April 13, 2022 — 12.01am
Talking points
· The property market’s last significant downturn was from 2017 to 2019.
· Property values fell about 10 per cent across the capital cities, and about 15 per cent in Sydney.
· Economists expect prices to turn down again, and the size of the falls could be roughly similar.
Property listings
House prices could fall by a similar amount to their last major correction if new Reserve Bank modelling comes to pass, but interest rate rises will hit households harder than in the past, economists warn.
The central bank last week flagged that a two percentage point increase in interest rates could lower housing prices by about 15 per cent over two years.
A fall of that magnitude would be similar to what many major economists expect, as the cash rate is widely tipped to start rising as early as June, making new buyers’ mortgage repayments more expensive and reducing the amount they could borrow.
Property prices barely fell in 2020 as the coronavirus crisis hit, but their previous downturn from 2017 to 2019 came when the bank regulator made it harder to get loans for investors or interest-only borrowers.
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Welfare groups slam Labor’s lack of commitment to increase JobSeeker
6:30AM April 13, 2022
Labor has dumped plans to independently review the rate of JobSeeker payments for out-of-work Australians and will not commit to increasing unemployment benefits if Anthony Albanese wins government next month.
The policy position, revealed by assistant Treasury spokesman Andrew Leigh at an Australian Council of Social Service forum on Tuesday, left welfare groups “deeply disappointed.”
Dr Leigh told the forum that, while he accepted it would be “a challenge” to live on the Jobseeker payment of $46 a day, Labor was examining a broader range of policies to ease cost-of-living pressures for poorer Australians.
The move to dump an independent unemployment benefit review – Labor’s policy since 2019 – comes after Anthony Albanese repeatedly denounced attempts to wind down inflated JobSeeker rates during the pandemic and said recently he would consider boosting the payment in “every budget”.
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Investors increasingly fear a debt crisis in emerging markets
There are concerns that rising US interest rates with a stronger dollar, and soaring food and energy prices, could trigger trouble.
Karen Maley Columnist
Apr 13, 2022 – 5.00am
Emerging market funds are being hit with increased withdrawals as investors worry that soaring food and oil prices will fuel social and political tensions, while rising United States interest rates will make it harder for cash-strapped governments to meet hefty debt repayments.
For the past few decades, investment managers have touted the benefits of investing in emerging markets, claiming that their higher economic growth rates translate into bigger opportunities local companies, and that falling trade barriers would improve their access to developed markets.
But returns have been disappointing over the past decade. Most emerging market index-linked funds have delivered average annual returns of less than 4 per cent over the 10-year period.
But investors fear that the outlook is becoming even bleaker for emerging markets, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is propelling food and energy costs even higher, at a time when the US central bank is pushing up interest rates, which has caused global financing conditions to tighten.
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‘Better the devil you know’: Undecided voters lean towards PM
Phillip Coorey Political editor
Apr 14, 2022 – 5.00am
Australia’s undecided voters are leaning towards Scott Morrison in the belief he is the least bad option come the May 21 election.
Focus group research conducted exclusively for The Australian Financial Review finds views of Mr Morrison are largely, but not entirely negative, but Labor leader Anthony Albanese is regarded as dull, disinterested, uninspiring and too negative.
He remains dangerously ill-defined just over five weeks from polling day.
The lack of understanding about who Mr Albanese is and what he stands for, has exacerbated the damage caused by his inability on Monday to nominate the unemployment rate, the Reserve Bank of Australia cash rate and the current price of petrol.
One western Sydney voter who previously voted Labor dismissed him as “gap filler”.
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‘Two bad eggs’: Voters undecided and underwhelmed
While undecided voters may be less than fond of Morrison, they are more than underwhelmed by the Labor leader.
Phillip Coorey and Andrew Tillett
Apr 14, 2022 – 5.00am
Early into Anthony Albanese’s ill-fated press conference on Monday, the Labor leader calmed the journalists who were yelling over each other in a bid to land a question.
“I’m not Scott Morrison,” Albanese said. “I don’t run away from press conferences. Do it in order. Everyone will get one.”
About five minutes and 10 questions after this statement of virtue, there was a mushroom cloud rising above Labor’s campaign. Albanese, under repeated questioning, was unable to nominate the Reserve Bank official cash rate, the unemployment rate, or the current price of petrol.
Two days later, he began cutting his press conference short. Only on the night of May 21 will we know how damaging the economic data blunder was. If Labor loses, it will be regarded as a seminal moment in the campaign. If Labor wins, it will be about how Albanese managed to, as he has vowed, “shake it off”.
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Labor’s urgent care clinics not costed by PBO, Gallagher reveals
By Dana Daniel
April 15, 2022 — 8.30am
Labor finance spokesperson Katy Gallagher has revealed Labor’s plan to trial Medicare urgent care clinics has not been costed by the Parliamentary Budget Office, contradicting leader Anthony Albanese.
Gallagher tweeted that, “for the avoidance of any confusion”, the policy had not been “formally costed by the PBO”, although Labor’s estimate that it would cost $135 million over four years was “based on work done by the PBO”.
Albanese said on Wednesday, responding to media questions about the urgent care plan’s $135 million price tag - which translates to $675,000 a year across 50 urgent care clinics open 14 hours a day: “This has been fully costed by the Parliamentary Budget Office.
“One of the things I’m being careful to do is all of the policies that we’ve put out are fully costed,” the opposition leader said.
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Economic nirvana just 0.01 per cent away, but what will it cost us?
By Shane Wright
April 14, 2022 — 4.51pm
Australian economic nirvana is within reach – 0.01 per cent to be exact.
The unemployment rate as recorded by the Australian Bureau of Statistics in March was 3.95 per cent. (Due to rounding, the official figure is 4 per cent.) If the rate had been just 0.01 per cent lower, the government and almost everyone else would be talking about the nation’s first sub-4 per cent jobless rate since the early 1970s.
The figure, the best since the bureau started collating unemployment every month, by itself is almost meaningless (although Labor leader Anthony Albanese may beg to differ).
In context, it means far more than just the 13.3 million people in work.
It represents policy success. That policy is measured in the hundreds of billions of dollars pumped into the economy by Scott Morrison’s government to deal with the COVID-19 recession.
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Digital revolution is leaving economists scratching their heads
Economics Editor
April 15, 2022 — 11.30am
There should be a law against holding election campaigns while people are trying to enjoy their Easter break. So let’s forget politics and think about the strange ways the economy is changing as the old industrial era gives way to the post-industrial, digital era.
The revolution in information and communications technology is working its way through the economy, changing the way it works. The markets for digital products now work very differently from the markets for conventional products.
So, a growing part of the economy consists of markets that don’t fit the assumptions economists make in their basic model of markets, as Diane Coyle, an economics professor at Cambridge University, explains in her book, Cogs and Monsters.
And the way we measure the industrial economy – using the “national accounts” and gross domestic product – isn’t designed to capture the new range of benefits that flow from digital markets.
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https://www.afr.com/politics/morrison-recommits-coalition-to-dumped-ir-reforms-20220416-p5adwg
Morrison recommits Coalition to dumped IR reforms
Michael Read and David Marin-Guzman
Apr 16, 2022 – 1.50pm
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has set the scene for an election fight on industrial relations, after recommitting the Coalition to its dumped push to revive the enterprise bargaining system and strike-proof major resources projects.
Mr Morrison confirmed on Saturday he was still committed to reforms in the policy areas of the government’s “omnibus” industrial relations bill that it was forced to jettison last year in the face of Labor and crossbench opposition.
The dumped changes included relaxing requirements for approving collective agreements, extending workplace deals for major projects to eight years, simplifying extra hour requirements for part-time workers and criminalising underpayments.
Asked on Saturday whether the measures in the dumped bill were still government policy, Mr Morrison said “absolutely”.
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COVID 19 Information
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Australia’s first XE infection detected in NSW as virologists keep eye on sub-variants
By Mary Ward
April 14, 2022 — 4.40pm
NSW health authorities have reported Australia’s first case of the XE coronavirus infection, however new sub-variants being detected in Africa and Europe may be a cause for greater concern when mandatory tests for international arrivals are scrapped next week.
The case of XE, which is a merging of Omicron’s BA.1 and BA.2 sub-variants known as a “recombinant”, was detected in a recently returned overseas traveller last week.
While the World Health Organisation has said XE may be 10 per cent more transmissible than the BA.2 variant, there is no evidence abroad that it has led to more severe disease. However, virologists were concerned by the development of Omicron’s BA.4 and BA.5 sub-variants, which have been reported in growing numbers in France and South Africa.
The bulk of XE infections have been reported in the UK, particularly in the south-east of England. Other cases have been detected around the globe, usually in international travellers.
A recombinant infection occurs when two separate virus strains merge, forming a new, single strain.
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Shanghai residents clash with Covid cops
6:41PM April 15, 2022
Police have clashed with residents in Shanghai as Chinese President Xi Jinping’s hardline “Covid zero” policy pushes the country’s biggest city to near breaking point.
Hordes of police in white medical uniforms tackled screaming residents after they protested against a government plan to turn part of their apartment complex into a quarantine station.
The dramatic confrontation underlined the intensely ideological environment in China today.
In one video of the skirmish, a policeman told an arrested woman that America was to blame for the violence in Shanghai, now in its third week of a severe citywide lockdown.
“The international situation has led to this!” he shouted in the video, which was soon scrubbed from China’s internet. “We will soon be at war with America! Don’t you understand? We have no option! Now only the communist party can save China!”
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Climate Change.
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6:00am, Apr 14, 2022 Updated: 1h ago
Alan Kohler: It’s not the economy, stupid, it’s climate change
Anthony Albanese would have spent the past three nights in his hotel rooms staring, red-eyed, at the Australian Bureau of Statistics website, memorising economic data; he will now presumably be a statistical encyclopedia, an economic savant.
Not knowing the unemployment rate on Monday was a genuine shocker, from which it will be hard to recover, and should be.
Moreover, by saying unemployment is 5 point um, er, 4, instead of the 4 per cent that it is, the Opposition Leader was showing that he’s been paying too much attention to the popular media, because he seems to think things are worse than they are.
The government can’t decide either, telling us how good things are while compensating us with cash and cheaper petrol for how bad things are. No wonder there’s confusion about.
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Royal Commissions And The Like.
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No entries in this category.
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National Budget Issues.
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The economy’s in astonishing shape but not all voters feel it - and neither party is confronting the deeper questions
Contributor
April 11, 2022 — 5.00am
Australians will go to the polls on May 21 with the economy in astonishingly good shape. Despite what may feel to voters like a long period of crisis and challenge, the past couple of years have left minimal economic scarring.
Growth is nearly double what it was in the three years before the pandemic, at 4.2 per cent across 2021. When pens last struck federal ballot papers in May 2019 economic growth was at 1.7 per cent. This time, the economy is roaring with a jobs-led recovery pushing unemployment to a 14-year low.
In fact, leading indicators suggest we’re about to see the lowest unemployment rate since the early 1970s, which means the healthiest job market ever for the 8.8 million voters under the age of 50.
Importantly, it is a more inclusive labour market – female unemployment is at record lows and participation rate at record highs. Youth unemployment is at the lowest level since March 2008.
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Going ahead with stage 3 tax cuts would be irresponsible
Economics Editor
April 10, 2022 — 10.00pm
Whichever side wins the election will inherit a serious budget problem, one caused to a large extent by a single, irresponsible decision: to legislate years ahead of time for hugely expensive tax cuts in July 2024. Turns out they will be “unfunded”.
No one who professes to be terribly worried about the federal government’s huge and still-growing debt is genuine in their concern unless they’re prepared to pay a price for it: forgoing the tax cut that can no longer be afforded. Allowing the cut to happen will add significantly to the budget deficit and the further growth in our debt.
People who own a business that’s running at a loss, so to speak, shouldn’t be awarding themselves a pay rise that adds to the annual loss.
Putting it more formally, it was fully justified for the Rudd government to borrow heavily to cover the temporary measures that kept us out of the global financial crisis, just as it was fully justified for the Morrison government to borrow heavily to cover the temporary measures that saved life and limb during the worst of the pandemic.
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Health Issues.
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Reform is a must for health system: AMA
12:40AM April 11, 2022
In a move aimed at pushing health issues to the forefront of the election, the Australian Medical Association has delivered a list of urgent policy demands to Scott Morrison and Anthony Albanese, warning both that their promises will be “score-carded” at the end of the campaign.
In a blueprint sent to both leaders on Friday, the AMA sets out the areas of the health system it says must be reformed “for Australia to maintain its standing as a provider of world-class healthcare”.
AMA president Omar Khorshid said he was effectively giving notice to the Prime Minister and the Opposition Leader of what the AMA would be campaigning for throughout the term of the new government.
“What’s different this year is we’ve just been through a pandemic where Australians have become very aware of the state of our public health system and just how precarious it is. But we’re in this very strange situation where neither party wants to talk about health, despite it being very high in the minds of average Australians,” he said.
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Mushrooms’ magic compound latest hope to relieve depression
By Rhys Blakely
The Times
April 12, 2022
A psychedelic compound found in mushrooms could “rewire” the brain to treat depression more effectively than conventional drugs, a study has suggested.
Its results show how psilocybin, a hallucinogen largely shunned by mainstream researchers since the 1960s, creates new connections between brain regions. This appears to allow patients to snap out of a pattern of brain activity associated with negative thoughts.
Increases in connectivity, revealed by MRI scans, were seen in people who underwent therapy sessions that included doses of synthetic psilocybin that caused intense but carefully monitored “trips”.
While each trip lasted for a matter of hours, changes in brain configuration endured for weeks and psilocybin was found to be significantly more effective in reducing depressive symptoms than escitalopram, a widely used antidepressant.
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Election 2022: Doctors slam health plan as super clinics lite
7:46PM April 13, 2022
Labor’s first major health announcement of the campaign has been slammed by the peak medical body and other experts, who want more “broad reform” rather than a policy reminiscent of Kevin Rudd’s failed “super clinics”.
Anthony Albanese in Melbourne said Labor would trial 50 urgent care clinics that would run seven days a week from 8am to 10pm and offer bulk-billed treatments for non-life threatening conditions at a cost of $135m over four years.
Just over 67.6 per cent of patients had all GP visits bulk-billed in 2020-21, according to the Productivity Commission’s Report on Government Services 2022.
It follows Mr Rudd taking a similar policy to the 2007 election for 32 General Practice Super Clinics, with another 33 clinics announced over the next three years, aiming to bring together GPs, nurses, psychologists and other specialists into one location.
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The true toll on Australia’s stroke sufferers revealed
By Stuart Layt
April 15, 2022 — 1.01am
More needs to be done to support people in the wake of a stroke, experts say, as new research reveals two-thirds of acute stroke patients don’t live for more than a decade after their first occurrence.
Researchers from the University of Queensland analysed the data of every stroke patient admitted to hospital in Australia and New Zealand between 2008 and 2017, a cohort of more than 300,000 patients.
A disturbing trend emerged – study leader, UQ epidemiologist Dr Yang Peng, said only 36.4 per cent of patients survived beyond 10 years of their initial stroke.
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PM locks in post-election team, puts Anne Ruston in Health
Phillip Coorey Political editor
Apr 17, 2022 – 8.48am
Scott Morrison has locked in his key post-election ministerial positions by announcing South Australian Senator Anne Ruston will replace Greg Hunt as the Minister for Aged Care and Health.
Senator Ruston, who has been the Minister for Families and Social Services since 2019, will be the first senator to hold the Health portfolio since Kay Patterson 20 years ago during the Howard government.
Her appointment enables Mr Morrison to continue the remaining five weeks of the election campaign without having to deal with questions about Mr Hunt’s replacement when the country is yet to emerge fully from the coronavirus pandemic.
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International Issues.
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https://www.afr.com/world/asia/fallout-from-ukraine-threatens-the-g20-s-future-20220410-p5acea
Fallout from Ukraine threatens the G20’s future
If the group becomes impotent, Washington urgently needs to find other ways to engage with emerging market players.
Gillian Tett Contributor
Apr 10, 2022 – 1.46pm
In the last decade, the geopolitical club known as the Group of 20 (G20) has seemed like an idea that is worthy — but dull.
During the 2008 financial crisis, the doughty group (which represents 80 per cent of the global economy) briefly found fame and relevance by forging a collective response to quell the crisis. Since then, it has championed sensible reforms in areas such as financial regulation.
But the club is so big and consensus-driven that it has become unwieldy. And its meetings — and communiqués — tend to be achingly bland, particularly when the finance ministers get involved.
This is no longer the case, though. Later this month, on April 20, G20 finance ministers are supposed to meet in Washington. However, a spicy drama is currently erupting of the type that might more normally be found in a high school canteen.
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Globalisation is over. The global culture wars have begun
Instead of the world converging around Western democratic values, it’s now diverging as more nations seek to make their countries great again in their own way.
David Brooks
Apr 10, 2022 – 2.05pm
I’m from a fortunate generation. I can remember a time – about a quarter-century ago – when the world seemed to be coming together. The great Cold War contest between communism and capitalism appeared to be over. Democracy was still spreading. Nations were becoming more economically interdependent. The internet seemed ready to foster worldwide communications.
It seemed as if there would be a global convergence around a set of universal values – freedom, equality, personal dignity, pluralism, human rights.
We called this process of convergence globalisation. It was, first of all, an economic and technological process – about growing trade and investment between nations and the spread of technologies that put, say, Wikipedia instantly at our fingertips. But globalisation was also a political, social and moral process.
In the 1990s, British sociologist Anthony Giddens argued that globalisation is “a shift in our very life circumstances. It is the way we now live.” It involves “the intensification of worldwide social relations”. Globalisation was about the integration of world views, products, ideas and culture.
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https://www.afr.com/world/europe/russia-masses-force-for-new-attack-civilians-flee-20220411-p5acit
Putin names ‘brutal’ new general to lead the war
Updated Apr 11, 2022 – 10.01am, first published at 8.44am
Russia has tapped a new Ukraine war commander to take centralised control of the next phase of battle after its costly failures in the opening campaign and carnage for Ukrainian civilians. US officials don’t see one man making a difference in Moscow’s prospects.
President Vladimir Putin turned to General Alexander Dvornikov, 60, one of Russia’s most experienced military officers and – according to US officials – a general with a record of brutality against civilians in Syria and other war theatres. Up to now, Russia had no central war commander on the ground.
The general’s appointment was confirmed by a senior US official who was not authorised to be identified and spoke on condition of anonymity.
But White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said, “no appointment of any general can erase the fact that Russia has already faced a strategic failure in Ukraine”.
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https://www.afr.com/world/europe/russia-masses-force-for-new-attack-civilians-flee-20220411-p5acit
Ukraine’s economy to halve, Russia’s to shrink, thanks to war
Bloomberg
President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine will cause that country’s economy to contract by almost half -- or 45.1% -- this year, while Russia’s will shrink by 11.2%, according to the World Bank.
Emerging market and developing economies in Europe and Central Asia are projected to decline by a combined 4.1% this year, twice the drop triggered by the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, the World Bank said in its spring forecasts published on Sunday. It said the estimates are subject to considerable uncertainty.
“This is the second major shock to hit the regional economy in two years and comes at a very precarious time for the region, as many economies were still struggling to recover from the pandemic,” World Bank Regional Vice President Anna Bjerde said on a conference call.
Aside from emerging Europe, the war is reverberating through commodity and financial markets, as well as trade and migration links, adding to concerns of a sharp global economic slowdown, spiralling inflation, and growing debt, the World Bank said.
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Macron faces the fight of his life to win French election
A Le Pen victory would plunge the 27-nation EU into turmoil just when the US and its allies are locked in a struggle over Ukraine.
Tony Barber Contributor
Apr 11, 2022 – 9.44am
In Révolution, a book he published six months before winning France’s 2017 presidential election, Emmanuel Macron wrote that if the French people did not pull themselves together, the far right would be in power in five or 10 years’ time.
This alarming prospect, though not the most likely outcome of the 2022 election, now appears closer to becoming reality than at any point in the Fifth Republic’s 64-year history.
After the election’s first round on Sunday, Macron and the far-right Marine Le Pen will meet in the April 24 knockout contest. The same pair fought it out in 2017. But all opinion polls point to a much closer contest than the crushing 66 to 34 per cent triumph that Macron achieved five years ago.
A victory for Le Pen would have repercussions far beyond France. It would be a shattering blow to liberal democracy in the Western world and plunge the 27-nation EU into turmoil just when the US and its allies are locked in a struggle over Ukraine with President Vladimir Putin’s nationalist, authoritarian Russia.
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Ukraine invasion, China make new Cold War a far more chilling nuclear scenario
12:00AM April 11, 2022
Since the end of the Cold War 30 years ago, we have become used to the idea that nuclear war is no longer a credible risk. Now, because of Russia’s outright war on Ukraine and Beijing’s rapid development of its military capabilities to be the second-strongest military force in the world, many commentators are talking about the onset of a second Cold War.
But the current era promises to be less predictable even than the Cold War. This is because – unlike in the Cold War – the Americans and the Russians have almost completely stopped talking to each other about nuclear arms control agreements and nuclear confidence-building measures.
These days, America and Russia do not have the same web of highly detailed arms control agreements, the use of hotlines by the leaders to respond to emergencies, frequent meetings at the highest levels of their military and intelligence experts, as well as a set of comprehensive ways of signalling dangerous no-go zones to each other.
In my experience, Pine Gap played a critical role in providing Washington with highly classified intelligence about the Soviet Union’s nuclear forces and their compliance with US-Russia arms control agreements.
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NATO rises to Australia’s Asia-Pacific challenge with more co-operation
5:38PM April 8, 2022
NATO has agreed to an Australian request to step up co-operation in the Asia-Pacific region, including in areas of maritime security, noting that China’s unwillingness to condemn Russia’s aggression in Ukraine poses “a serious challenge”.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said the alliance would provide further support to its partners Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea in critical areas such as cyber and new technology, as well as countering disinformation.
“We will also work more closely together in other areas such as maritime security, climate change, and resilience,’’ he said.
Mr Stoltenberg included the Asia-Pacific concerns high in his closing remarks after two days of meetings at NATO headquarters in Brussels, which included a bilateral meeting with Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne on Wednesday and a NATO foreign ministers meeting on Thursday attended by Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba.
Mr Stoltenberg also said that the increasing co-operation in the Asia-Pacific was needed because what is happening in Ukraine is being closely watched around the world.
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Putin jails spy chief for leaking war plans
The Telegraph UK
Moscow | Vladimir Putin has thrown a top spy chief in prison amid concern over apparent leaks to the US about Russia’s plans in Ukraine, according to reports.
A report on Monday suggested that Colonel General Sergei Beseda, head of the FSB’s foreign intelligence unit, has been taken to Moscow’s high-security Lefortovo prison, typically used for those suspected of treason.
In the weeks preceding the invasion, US media repeatedly quoted intelligence sources that seemed to have particular insights into the Kremlin’s preparations for the upcoming war.
Andrei Soldatov, a well-respected journalist and author known for his work covering Russian intelligence, quoted several unnamed sources who said Mr Beseda, 68, had been transferred to Lefortovo after he was detained and placed under house arrest last month on suspicion of embezzlement.
While the charges against Mr Beseda are unknown, Mr Soldatov quoted sources in Russian intelligence as saying that the case was initially handled by the internal security service before it was taken over by Russia’s military counter-intelligence. “The only thing they deal with is looking for spies,” Mr Soldatov said yesterday.
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Ukraine war marks start of battle for world order: Ray Dalio
Timothy Moore
In a new LinkedIn post, billionaire hedge fund manager Ray Dalio said he views the battle for control of Ukraine as “the first battle in what will be a long war for control of the world order”.
Dalio earlier wrote a book - Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order - to argue his view of what’s happening globally.
It’s not yet clear what the outcome of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will be, however, Dalio details what a win and a loss would look like, potentially, for Vladimir Putin and Russia.
“If Putin and Russia a) get tangible assurances that Ukraine is incapable of being a threat to Russia along with the de facto independence of or Russian control over the eastern provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk, with b) sanctions on Russia that are tolerable, and c) Putin remains in power, then he will have gotten what he wanted at an acceptable cost, and hence it should be scored as his win.
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Money mirage: Russia’s rouble rebound is not quite what it seems
By Reuters
April 12, 2022 — 5.00am
Six weeks after Russia sent troops into Ukraine, the rouble has staged an apparently extraordinary recovery, but all is not what it seems and the exchange rate used in everyday transactions is sometimes very different to the official one.
The rouble’s swift rebound on the Moscow Exchange to levels seen before February 24 is being touted in state media and by some government officials as evidence that authorities have got a firm grip on the country’s finances despite being battered by the toughest Western sanctions ever.
“Our economy appears to be resilient to Western sanctions, the rouble is firming visibly,” a state TV presenter said on Friday.
The rouble rallied past 72 to the dollar on Friday , its strongest level so far this year, heading away from a record low of 121.52 it hit on March 10. Analysts polled by Reuters in late March expected the rouble to trade at 97.50 to the greenback in 12 months’ time.
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Putin fan club ascendant in three European elections: why the West should worry
Political and international editor
April 12, 2022 — 5.00am
What do the prominent far-right politicians Marine Le Pen of France, Viktor Orban of Hungary and Aleksandar Vucic of Serbia have in common? All three have fought elections this month, and all three have done better than they did in their previous election contests.
Two of them, the incumbent leaders Orban and Vucic, were returned to power with increased shares of the vote. The third, Le Pen, won an enlarged share of the vote in the first round of the French presidential election on the weekend compared with her first-round performance five years earlier, and now confronts Emmanuel Macron in the run-off for the presidency on April 24.
One of the world’s most notorious xenophobes, Le Pen now is closer to the presidency than she ever has been. With 96 per cent of the votes counted, she had 24 per cent and Macron 27.4. The run-off is projected to be tight. Note that this is now a contest between the French right and the far right.
One other striking factor that the trio have in common: all are long-standing admirers of Russian President Vladimir Putin. And the feeling is mutual.
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Putin sacks spies and jails head of Ukraine agents
By Tom Ball
The Times
April 12, 2022
A Stalinist purge of Russian secret intelligence is under way after more than 100 agents were sacked and the head of the department responsible for Ukraine was jailed.
In a sign of President Putin’s fury over the failures of the invasion, about 150 Federal Security Bureau (FSB) officers have been dismissed and some have been arrested.
All of those ousted were employees of the Fifth Service, a division set up in 1998, when Putin was director of the FSB, to carry out operations in countries of the former Soviet Union to keep them within Russia’s orbit.
Sergei Beseda, 68, the service’s former chief, has been sent to Lefortovo prison in Moscow, having been placed under house arrest last month. The prison was used by the NKVD, the KGB’s predecessor, for torture during Stalin’s Great Purge of the 1930s.
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Nordic states set to join NATO as soon as June
By Bruno Waterfield And Charlie Parker
The Times
12:32PM April 11, 2022
Russia has made a “massive strategic blunder” as Finland and Sweden look poised to join NATO as early as June, according to officials.
Washington is banking on the move that will stretch Russia’s military and enlarge the western alliance from 30 to 32 members as a direct consequence of President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
US officials said NATO membership for both Nordic countries was “a topic of conversation and multiple sessions” during talks between the alliance’s foreign ministers last week attended by Sweden and Finland. “How can this be anything but a massive strategic blunder for Putin?,” one senior American official said.
Finland’s application is expected in June, with Sweden expected to follow.
Finish Prime Minister Sanna Marin said it was time for Finland seriously to reconsider its stance on NATO. “Russia is not the neighbour we thought it was,” she said at the weekend, urging the decision to be taken “thoroughly but quickly”.
She added: “I think we will have very careful discussions, but we are also not taking any more time than we have to in this process, because the situation is, of course, very severe.”
Sweden is carrying out a security policy review that will finish by the end of next month, mirroring the Finnish timetable. “I do not exclude NATO membership in any way,” Magdalena Andersson, the Swedish Prime Minister, said two weeks ago.
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https://www.afr.com/world/europe/peace-talks-with-ukraine-are-at-a-dead-end-putin-20220413-p5ad2g
Peace talks with Ukraine are at ‘a dead end’: Putin
Anton Troianovski
Apr 13, 2022 – 3.15am
President Vladimir Putin said peace talks with Ukraine had reached a “dead end” and called the evidence of Russian atrocities in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha “fake”, using his first extended remarks about the war in nearly a month to insist that Russia would persist with its invasion.
Speaking at a news conference at a spaceport in Russia’s Far East, Putin said that Ukraine had changed its position after the round of peace talks held in Istanbul on March 29 to one that was no longer acceptable to the Kremlin.
While there were indications that Ukraine had this week again adopted a more constructive stance, Putin said, Russia’s “military operation will continue until its full completion” and its goals are met.
Those goals, he said, centred on the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine, where Ukrainian and Western officials expect that Russia will soon mount an intense offensive.
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What China is learning from the Russo-Ukraine war and what it means for the West
Military leader and strategist
April 13, 2022 — 5.00am
The reunification of Taiwan with mainland China has been a feature of many speeches made by President Xi Jinping of China. Indeed, in his 2022 New Year speech he noted “the complete reunification of our motherland is an aspiration shared by people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. I sincerely hope that all the sons and daughters of the Chinese nation will join forces to create a brighter future for our nation.”
The past 47 days will have been a profound learning opportunity for Xi and the People’s Liberation Army in their quest to return what they view as a rebellious province. It is important to understand the nature of the lesson that the Chinese Communist Party leadership might take from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Of course, caveats apply to such observations. Our Western orientation often means we project our own thoughts and preferences onto those we don’t understand. Noting that danger, we should at least attempt to divine what lessons Xi might take from Ukraine. Because in appreciating where the Chinese may learn and adapt, we also inform our national security strategies and military modernisation programs.
While there are many military lessons from Ukraine, the key ones for Xi will be political.
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US inflation at its highest since 1981
6:46AM April 13, 2022
US inflation has climbed to 8.5 per cent, the highest level since 1981, worsening an already major political problem for Joe Biden and paving the way for a double whammy interest rate increase by the Federal Reserve within weeks.
A near 20 per cent jump in the price of petrol in March, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine pushed the global oil price well above $US130 a barrel, saw consumer prices rise 1.2 per cent in March, among the sharpest monthly rates of increase in decades.
“The Russia-Ukraine war has added further fuel to the blazing rate of inflation via higher energy, food, and commodity prices that are turbo charged by a worsening in supply chain problems,” said Kathy Bostjancic, chief US economist for Oxford Economics.
The annual rate of US inflation has been above 5 per cent every month since May last year, rising to a peak of 7.9 per cent in February, ahead of the latest March record, as price increases spread across a greater range of goods and services, creating a political and economic crisis.
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West failing in its bid to stop Vladimir Putin’s Ukraine savagery
6:20PM April 12, 2022
If it is confirmed that Russian forces have used chemical weapons in Ukraine, this represents a radical new threshold for Vladimir Putin.
It is a complete defiance of basic international norms.
It means the West has failed again to deter Putin.
More than a month of escalating Western sanctions against Russia, plus humiliation for Russian forces in Ukraine, enabled in part by increasing flows of Western weaponry, has not deterred Putin from escalating violence in eastern Ukraine, even as Russian forces pull back from Kyiv.
It may well be the worst is yet to come in this vicious war.
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https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/russia-black-sea-flagship-burns-ukraine-missile-strike-xp5lfxk6c
Russia’s Black Sea flagship burns ‘after missile strike’
Thursday April 14 2022, 12.01am BST, The Times
The flagship of Russia’s Black Sea fleet was hit and seriously damaged by two Ukrainian missiles, officials in Odesa claimed last night.
The Moskva, a Slava-class cruiser with approximately 510 crew, was said to be on fire and in danger of sinking.
It was understood to have been hit by two Neptune anti-ship missiles launched by Ukrainian naval forces. The battery was hidden in or around the Ukrainian port city.
Stormy conditions apparently prevented Russian rescue boats from helping it as it burnt.
Maksym Marchenko, the regional governor in Odesa, said in a statement on the Telegram messaging service: “It has been confirmed that the missile cruiser Moskva today went exactly where it was sent by our border guards on Snake Island! Neptune missiles guarding the Black Sea caused very serious damage to the Russian ship. Glory to Ukraine!”
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https://www.economist.com/europe/2022/04/14/ukraine-claims-to-have-sunk-a-russian-warship
Ukraine claims to have sunk a Russian warship
It is the biggest naval loss since the second world war
Apr 14th 2022
KYIV AND LONDON
THREE YEARS ago The Economist’s defence correspondent was sailing back to Odessa on the Hetman Sahaidachny, then the flagship of Ukraine’s navy. A plaque in its wardroom honoured its former captains. Two names were scratched out—they had defected to Russia when it seized Crimea in 2014. In late February this year, as Russian forces approached once more, the Hetman Sahaidachny was scuttled in Mykolaiv, complete with its 1943-vintage gun.
Now Ukraine seems to have had its revenge. On April 14th Ukrainian officials said they had used Neptune anti-ship missiles to hit the Moskva, a 10,000-tonne Slava-class cruiser which was 60-65 nautical miles (111-120km) south of Odessa. The Moskva, commissioned in 1982, is—or, perhaps, was—the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, which has its headquarters in occupied Crimea. It was a “venerable, battle hardened, major surface combatant” which participated in Russian wars in Georgia in 2008 and Syria in 2015, notes Alessio Patalano, a naval expert at King’s College London. “This is one of the most severe naval losses since the Falklands war” of 1982, he adds.
Russia’s defence ministry first acknowledged that the Moskva was “seriously damaged”, claiming that a fire had caused ammunition to detonate, but that the ship stayed afloat—a fact corroborated by the Pentagon. But magazine explosions tend to be devastating. Later it admitted that the Moskva had sunk. A Western official was unable to corroborate Ukraine’s claim, but described it as credible: “I am not aware previously of a fire on board a capital warship, which would lead to the ammunition magazine exploding.”
The strike is
rich with symbolism. The ship was built in Mykolaiv, then a Soviet city but now
a Ukrainian one which has repelled Russian ground assaults over the past month.
It was also one of two warships that attacked Snake Island, west of Crimea, on
February 24th, the first day of the war. When it ordered the tiny garrison
there to surrender, the alleged reply—“Russian warship, go fuck
yourself”—became an icon of national resistance, emblazoned on everything from
T-shirts to postage stamps. The Moskva’s apparent loss was “a massively
important military event”, said Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to Volodymyr
Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, on social media. He cast it as the Russian
navy’s biggest defeat since the second world war.
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Flagship missile cruiser Moskva has sunk, Russia confirms
By Adam Schreck
April 15, 2022 — 6.13am
Kyiv: Russia’s Defence Ministry says the flagship of its Black Sea fleet sank while being towed to a port after being badly damaged.
Russian news agencies reported that the Moskva sank on Thursday, Moscow time, in a storm after being gutted by fire. The ministry previously said that the fire on the warship set off some of its weapons and forced the crew to evacuate.
Ukrainian officials said that the warship was hit by Ukrainian missiles late Wednesday off the Black Sea port of Odessa.
The warship named for the Russian capital was 60 to 65 nautical miles (110 to 120 km) south of the Ukrainian port when the fire ignited, and the vessel was still battling flames hours later while heading east, according to a Pentagon official.
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Germany’s addiction to Russian gas could make it a global pariah
By Ben Wright
April 15, 2022 — 8.05am
The German president is not welcome in Kyiv. Frank-Walter Steinmeier had been due to travel to the war-torn city yesterday but Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, told him not to bother.
This is partly personal. Steinmeier, who used to be his country’s foreign minister, has long advocated for Western rapprochement with Russia and was one of the main champions of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project. He’s also a friend of Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister. Enough said.
But it’s partly political. Germany is coming under increasing pressure from both Ukraine and the global community to go further in its sanctions against Russia. Zelensky has repeatedly singled out Berlin as one of his least reliable allies. Perhaps fear of a frosty reception is one reason why Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, has not yet travelled to Ukraine. The EU’s largest economy is fast losing moral authority.
Germany has come up with a flurry of reasons why an embargo of Russian oil and gas is a bad idea. Very few of them hold much water. The first is that it won’t end the war (no one is saying it will; the possibility of shortening it would be reason enough). The second is that Russia will simply sell its hydrocarbons to other willing customers (which is actually much harder than it sounds).
Putin has breathed new life into the Western alliance
12:00AM April 14, 2022
Traditional Russian humour is a very effective means of dealing with adversity, particularly the abuses and absurdities inherent in what passes for governments in that benighted country.
One classic joke from the Soviet era tells a tale requiring no elaboration. Two dedicated communists are having an earnest discussion. One is worried about the future and asks his colleague, “Comrade, is it true we are standing in an abyss?” His colleague tries to be reassuring. “No, comrade. We were standing on the edge of an abyss, but then we took a great step forward.”
There are no jokes about the war in Ukraine. The Russian dead are already many and the horror of the war crimes committed by Vladimir Putin’s troops – orcs, as the Ukrainians call them – is only slowly emerging.
Australia is absolutely right to stand firmly and openly with Ukraine, and Bushmaster vehicles are impressive capability. Twenty Bushmasters have been specified to date and some have been dispatched, but a better and more symbolic place to start would be 38, representing a protected vehicle for every Australian citizen and resident murdered by the Kremlin’s drunken thugs when they shot down Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in 2014. This would not only be appropriate but it also would serve to bind more closely the Ukrainian people with Australians.
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Sinking of Moskva leaves the Russian navy far more exposed
By Dr Sidharth Kaushal
April 15, 2022 — 11.41am
London: The sinking of the Moskva, which is the Russian navy Black Sea fleet’s flagship, has both symbolic and operational significance.
The ship sank on Thursday, Moscow time, while being towed after being badly damaged. Russia claims a fire onboard caused some weapons to fire and damaged the vessel, Ukraine says it hit it with missiles off the port of Odesa on Wednesday.
Beyond its symbolic role as the biggest naval combat loss in 40 years, the Moskva was the sole vessel in the fleet equipped with wide-area air defences.
These defences have allowed the Moskva, which was built in Ukraine during the Soviet era, to provide air cover to Russian other vessels during their operations, such as coastal bombardments and amphibious landings.
Without the Moskva, the fleet lacks vessels with a comparable air defence suite, and will find it riskier to conduct similar operations.
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US stocks lower, bond yields surge on rising rate bets
Timothy Moore Online editor
Apr 15, 2022 – 5.23am
Information technology and communication services paced broad losses in the S&P 500, as bond yields soared, amid an ever widening consensus among policymakers for a 50-basis-point rate increase in May.
In an interview with Bloomberg, New York Fed boss John Williams said a half-point move “a reasonable option for us because the federal funds rate is very low. We do need to move policy back to more neutral levels”.
· On Wall St: Dow -0.3% S&P 500 -1.2% Nasdaq -2.1%
· In New York: BHP +0.03% Rio +0.1% Atlassian -5.3%
· Tesla -3.7% Apple -3% Amazon -2.5% Microsoft -2.7%
The yield on the US 10-year note leapt 13 basis points to 2.83 per cent at 1.59pm in New York. The two year was at 2.45 per cent and the five year at 2.79 per cent. The US bond market closed early for the Easter break.
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Moskva sinking is ‘strategically important’: former US general
Timothy Moore Online editor
Apr 16, 2022 – 8.06am
The sinking of Russia’s Black Sea flagship, the Moskva, is “strategically important” and adds to the widening Russian military failures within Ukraine, according to Mark Hertling.
Hertling, a retired US Army Lieutenant General and former commanding general of the US Army in Europe, said Russia was planning on having the Moskva play a key role in its pivot to southern and eastern Ukraine after having abandoned its effort to capture Kyiv.
It will be more difficult for Russia to move forward given the Moskva was “tasked to provide overall Fleet C2 (command and control), Air Defence (it is filled with different ADA systems), and it would have discharged Naval Infantry (Marines) during a planned amphib assault on the shores near Odesa”, Hertling said in a series of 14 tweets.
The loss of the ship, Hertling said, follows the destruction of the Russian Parachute Regiment (the famed “palace guard” VDV/Spetznaz) north of Kyiv during the first week of the war, and the loss of at least seven generals and an unlimited number of other senior officers.
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https://www.afr.com/world/europe/russia-warns-us-to-stop-sending-arms-to-ukraine-20220416-p5aduj
Russia warns US to stop sending arms to Ukraine
David E. Sanger
Apr 16, 2022 – 5.10am
Washington | Russia has sent a series of warnings to the Biden administration, including a formal diplomatic protest this week, demanding that it halt shipment of advanced weapons to Ukraine that could strike into Russian territory, or risk unspecified “unpredictable consequences”.
The diplomatic note, called a démarche, was sent through normal channels, two administration officials said, and was not signed by President Vladimir Putin or other senior Russian officials. But it was an indicator, one administration official said, that the weapons sent by the United States so far were having an effect.
It also suggested that the Russians were concerned about the new tranche of more sophisticated offensive weaponry, part of an $US800 million ($1.1 billion) package that President Joe Biden announced the day after the démarche was delivered by the Russian Embassy in Washington.
US officials said the tone of the note was consistent with a series of public Russian threats, including to target deliveries of weapons as they moved across Ukrainian territory.
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https://www.afr.com/world/europe/russia-may-be-in-default-says-moody-s-20220415-p5adti
Russia may be in default, says Moody’s
Guy Faulconbridge
Apr 15, 2022 – 7.36pm
London | Moody’s said Russia may be in default because it tried to service its dollar bonds in roubles, which would be one of the starkest consequences to date of Moscow’s exclusion from the Western financial system since President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
If Moscow is declared in default, it would mark Russia’s first major default on foreign bonds since the years following the 1917 Bolshevik revolution, though the Kremlin says the West is forcing a default by imposing crippling sanctions.
Russia made a payment due on April 4 on two sovereign bonds - maturing in 2022 and 2042 - in roubles rather than the dollars it was mandated to pay under the terms of the securities.
Russia “therefore may be considered a default under Moody’s definition if not cured by 4 May, which is the end of the grace period,” Moody’s said in a statement on Thursday.
“The bond contracts have no provision for repayment in any other currency other than dollars.”
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South Africans search for survivors in ruins of floods that killed hundreds
By Rogan Ward
April 16, 2022 — 3.10am
Durban: South Africans were searching for survivors on Friday of floods that killed almost 400 people, according to the latest tally, washing away homes and roads and leaving thousands without shelter, water and power.
The floods in Kwazulu-Natal Province have knocked out power lines, shut down water services and disrupted operations at one of Africa’s busiest ports. The death toll rose to 395 on Friday from an earlier estimate of 341.
Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana told TV station Newsroom Afrika that an initial 1 billion rand ($92.3 million) for emergency relief was available for immediate use, after the province was declared a disaster area.
Local authorities have estimated the damage at several billion rand and reported sporadic looting - in a city still recovering from a catastrophic outbreak of rioting and looting last July. Many of the worst-affected are in poor, unplanned, informal settlements vulnerable to flooding.
Authorities said about 13,600 people had been made homeless by the floods.
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Kremlin supporters claim WWIII has been triggered by the sinking warship as brutal revenge is launched
Russians have claimed World War III has been triggered by the sinking of its Black Sea warship as it launches brutal revenge for the Ukrainian victory.
Will Stewart and Jerome Starkey and The Sun
April 16, 2022 - 11:17AM
Russian state TV propagandists outrageously claimed World War III had begun as they ranted at the West after the sinking of prized warship Moskva.
Hundreds of sailors were believed to have died after 12,500-ton Moskva was hit by a devastating missile strike, The Sun reported.
There were rumours the missiles were provided by NATO supporters of Ukraine, and Britain has sent anti-ship weapons.
But sources insisted the Slava-class cruiser was sunk by Ukraine-made Neptune missiles after its radar was distracted by a Turkish-made Byraktar drone.
A Pentagon official briefing reporters said Ukraine had hit the Moskva with two Neptunes — contradicting Russia’s claim that the ship lost balance in rough seas as it was towed to port after ammunition exploded.
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Putin’s hateful war has revitalised the global liberal order
Amid reports of Russian preparations for a renewed offensive under the command of the butcher of Aleppo, the West has shown it is still able to hold the line against totalitarianism.
By Paul Monk
April 16, 2022
The horrors of what Putin’s invasion is inflicting on Ukraine, including mass atrocities around Kyiv and in the assault on Mariupol, are the daily fare of news updates and satellite imagery. Now there are reports of Russian use of chemical weapons and preparations for a renewed offensive, under the command of the butcher of Aleppo, Aleksandr Dvornikov.
After seven weeks, the war has yet, it seems, to peak and Putin is not for turning.
We should not, however, lose sight of the fact that the reaction of the liberal democracies to these unfolding events has been in many ways exemplary. It is vital that they dig in now and see this through to the defeat of Putin. But the initial response has been reassuring and has a number of important strategic implications.
To begin with, Joe Biden has exhibited a quality of leadership that his critics would not have expected. He has listened to expert advisers, co-ordinated quietly and effectively with key allies, made clear that, because of the existence of massive American and Russian nuclear arsenals, there will not be a war over Ukraine between the United States and Russia; and yet has brought to bear on the Putin regime massive economic, diplomatic and soft power pressure. It must be sustained and deepened.
Secondly, the NATO states have responded with both grave concern for a non-NATO neighbour wantonly and brutally invaded, but have reacted in a measured and consultative manner, not by mobilising for war, 1914-style. Germany, whose military capabilities were seriously run down under long-time chancellor Angela Merkel, have now been declared an urgent priority – by a green/left government, no less. German arms are being funnelled to the resistance fighters in Ukraine.
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Christianity’s power lights way in war-torn Ukraine
In a time of darkness, the teachings of Jesus still offer a vision of hope amid the despair.
April 16, 2022
This may be a wicked age, but your lives should redeem it.
– Paul, in his Letter to the Ephesians
At this Easter time, we cannot get the images of Ukraine out of our minds. One in particular stays with me. A big man, strong, lean, tall, is led to the passenger seat of a car. He sits there and weeps uncontrollably, unable to stop the tears, left alone as his friends presumably must attend some other urgent need.
I don’t know what grief the man was trying to absorb. Perhaps his family had been killed. Who knows, but for that moment, with the camera intrusively recording his distress, that man, accustomed perhaps to providing for his family, to protecting them, had lost all agency. There is nothing now for him to do but weep.
The lessons of Ukraine are many and terrible. They demonstrate the changeless essence of human nature – people are called to glory and yet every one of us is capable of monstrous evil. The Russian government is behaving exactly as the Roman Empire did in the time of Jesus, seeking conquest and subjugation with methods of remorseless brutality. We thought we had abolished that, in Europe at least.
If you want to see what Christian hope looks like, google Ukrainians singing hymns. See the solace and courage and inspiration there. Christianity is also evident in Poland’s generosity to Ukrainians fleeing the terror of the Russian military. Poles and Ukrainians don’t have an untroubled past, or an untroubled relationship generally. They are not, typically, best friends. Yet Poland, even today not an especially rich country, has taken in more than two million Ukrainians so far and the efforts of individual Poles in this crisis are magnificent.
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I look forward to comments on all this!
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David.
