December 08, 2022 Edition
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Sadly the war in Ukraine drags on and it really seems the Allies are not trying hard enough to win as Ukraine is reduced to rubble – just horrible!
In Australia we are moving into the Summer Torpor while there are all sorts of things unresolved and we are facing some real economic issues in 2023 as well as a real energy crisis looming in the next few months….
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Major Issues.
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Victoria is Libs’ black hole, but Frydenberg may be thinking comeback
Phillip Coorey Political editor
Nov 27, 2022 – 1.11pm
The most savage indictment of the Victorian Liberals’ performance on Saturday is that they went backwards from the flogging they received four years ago.
This is despite there being a change of federal government in between, and the Andrews government, based on every metric, having the worst record by far in handling the pandemic.
Dan Andrews’ so-called “Danslide” of November 2018 was in large part driven by hostility towards the federal Liberal government which, just three months earlier, had deposed moderate and pro-climate action prime minister Malcolm Turnbull and replaced him with Scott Morrison.
The orthodox view at the time was the state election was a warm-up act for the forthcoming federal election in that the federal Coalition would be sent packing on the back of a swing of seven seats or more to Bill Shorten’s Labor.
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https://www.afr.com/politics/dan-andrews-is-still-king-liberals-are-still-losers-20221127-p5c1kt
Dan Andrews is still king, Liberals are still losers
Daniel Andrews is still the undisputed leader in Victoria despite an almost 6 per cent swing against Labor. And the Liberals are still losers. Not that much has changed.
Patrick Durkin BOSS Deputy editor
Nov 27, 2022 – 1.04pm
Updated Nov 27, 2022 – 4.48pm
Daniel Andrews is still king in Victoria. And the Victorian Liberals are still losers. They face the biggest reckoning of this election.
Despite a swing of almost 6 per cent against Labor, it failed to deliver any real pain for Andrews.
And despite the big storylines and lessons from the election, in the end, overall, not that much has changed from the 2018 “Danslide”. That is despite the pandemic, the world’s longest lockdown and a host of integrity issues plaguing the premier.
Labor looks set to reach close to the 55 seats that it held in the lower house before the election.
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https://thenewdaily.com.au/finance/2022/11/28/liberal-party-losing-alan-kohler/
6:00am, Nov 28, 2022 Updated: 7:45pm, Nov 27
Alan Kohler: Why the Liberal Party lost, and could keep losing into oblivion
The Liberal Party is faced with the classic legacy business problem. That is: How do you appeal to new customers without losing the old ones?
Organisations die when they get this transition wrong, businesses like Blockbuster Video, Borders bookstores and Kodak. The Liberal Party could easily go the same way as them.
The classic legacy challenge is newspapers and retail.
Myer has not gone broke, and has actually started to do quite well with online sales, but it was touch and go for a while and it’s not entirely out of the woods yet either. Newspapers still exist, but Fairfax has been absorbed into a TV network and no longer exists.
Curse of legacy
The political challenge of the Liberal Party is similar – they have to find a way to appeal to urban millennials while not losing their existing older conservative voters.
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‘Somebody’s watching’: Corruption body will change the public service
Tom Burton Government editor
Nov 28, 2022 – 5.00am
The new federal anti-corruption commission will change public service behaviour, with officials needing to prepare to be complained about and to defend their decisions through better record making, Prime Minister and Cabinet secretary Glyn Davis says.
“It matters that somebody’s watching. Observation changes behaviour, that’s the thing we know,” said Professor Davis, who previously held public service leadership roles in the Queensland government when a new integrity body was created.
Legislation to create a National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) next year is expected to pass the Senate this week.
“It [the NACC] will encourage public servants to reflect on what they’re doing, and to contemplate how it sits against the code of conduct,” Professor Davis told The Australian Financial Review.
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Multi-employer bargaining deal a massive Labor-union win
Senator David Pocock’s deal on multi-employer bargaining laws has done little to define its broad reach but has gifted unions a longed-for reform.
David Marin-Guzman Workplace correspondent
Nov 27, 2022 – 4.57pm
The first impression of Labor’s deal with Senator David Pocock on its Secure Job, Better Pay Bill is surprise.
This is a massive Labor win.
Just six months into its term and the Albanese government is set to pass the most ambitious industrial relations reform in more than a decade – unions’ longed-for return to a form of sector bargaining – without even taking the change to the election.
Pocock originally struck a hard line on the bill.
He ruled out horsetrading. He demanded the ill-defined “single-interest” multi-employer bargaining stream – which could cover almost any sector of the economy – be taken out for further consideration next year. Small business exemptions would not sway him.
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Aussie investors told to avoid overseas crypto exchanges after FTX collapse
Jessica Sier Journalist
Nov 28, 2022 – 3.00pm
The co-founder of the world’s most important crypto and blockchain analysis firm has warned Australian investors to avoid trusting their funds to overseas based exchanges, saying the collapse of FTX had shown the importance of having local accountability if things go wrong.
Investors around the world, including thousands of Australians, are clamouring for their money back after revelations that FTX founder and chief executive officer Sam Bankman-Fried had overseen billions of dollars of customer money being transferred to, and then lost, by another business he owned called Alameda Research.
“There’s a lot more control in markets where domestic players have licences. There are good regulated venues for this type of activity,” Jonathan Levin, co-founder and chief strategy officer at Chainalysis, said from New York City.
“While that may restrict choice in some ways, I think it’s a good idea for people to look at domestic players and understand what they are and what they can expect.”
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‘Addicted to power’: Scott Morrison attacked by closest ally
By Matthew Knott and James Massola
November 28, 2022 — 8.00pm
One of Scott Morrison’s closest political allies has launched an extraordinary broadside against the former prime minister, accusing him of becoming addicted to power and declaring he should have quit politics almost immediately after his election loss.
Morrison is set to suffer an embarrassing parliamentary rebuke this week for assuming five additional ministries without informing the public, becoming the first former prime minister in Australian history to be officially censured by the House of Representatives.
Liberal MP Alex Hawke, a key lieutenant of the former prime minister, said Morrison’s decision to travel to Hawaii for a family holiday during the 2019 bushfires was so disastrous he would have been removed as party leader by his colleagues if not for the COVID-19 pandemic.
Niki Savva, a columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, writes in her new book Bulldozed that Hawke is one of several colleagues who believe Morrison treated people badly after his 2019 victory.
“He got addicted to executive authority,” Hawke said.
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Four key reasons why Liberals lost election revealed as party fights to remain relevant
Right now, the Liberal Party is losing a major war – badly. And it’s only going to get worse for a string of “crazy” reasons.
November 28, 2022 - 7:06PM
Once upon a time, border protection was the magic ingredient of the Liberal Party’s electoral dominance.
John Howard, the Liberal Party’s second longest serving prime minister, even had a nifty little slogan that delighted the faithful and outraged his opponents.
“We decide who comes here and the circumstances in which they come,’’ he said.
The voters loved it. Not all of them, of course, but certainly enough to see John Winston Howard return again and again.
It wasn’t always pretty. But it was pretty effective.
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https://www.afr.com/chanticleer/big-house-price-falls-will-set-up-test-for-rba-20221129-p5c290
Big house price falls will set up test for RBA
ANZ says house prices will fall another 11 per cent next year as rate rises put pressure on a significant chunk of the mortgage market.
Updated Nov 29, 2022 – 4.23pm, first published at 3.32pm
For someone paid to choose his words incredibly carefully, the apology from Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe for suggesting interest rates were unlikely to rise until 2024 was incredibly clumsy.
Telling the public that you’re “certainly sorry if people listen to what we’d said and then acted on that” doesn’t highlight a great deal of faith in your communication strategy.
Nonetheless, Lowe may be required to show his remorse in a more tangible way next year when a combination of interest rate rises and falling house prices put the squeeze on the tail of the Australian housing market.
The latest forecasts for the housing market in 2023 from ANZ economists Felicity Emmett and Adelaide Timbrell points to more pain ahead, albeit at manageable levels for the majority of home owners.
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‘No longer on peacetime setting’: Conroy urges faster weapons delivery
Andrew Tillett Political correspondent
Nov 29, 2022 – 6.16pm
Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy has warned military contractors the acquisition of new weapons and equipment needs to be sped up in light of the deteriorating strategic circumstances confronting Australia.
“We need to take on greater risk. We are no longer on a peacetime setting,” Mr Conroy told a policy symposium hosted by the Australian Industry Defence Network, which represents homegrown small and medium defence contractors.
“That means being smarter about it and more open about it. We need to explain to the Australian people and industry why we are doing this.”
Defence Department secretary Greg Moriarty told the same conference the upcoming strategic review would see some projects cut back or axed, publicly confirming that the government will focus on building stockpiles of ammunition and missiles.
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Politics with Michelle Grattan: Niki Savva on her book Bulldozed, Scott Morrison and the Liberals’ woes
Published: November 29, 2022 5.08pm AEDT
Author
Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra
Six months after Scott Morrison was ousted, he remains a centre of attention, with parliament set to censure him on Wednesday over his multi-ministry power grab.
In exquisite timing, journalist Niki Savva’s book Bulldozed is released this week. It documents Morrison’s style, which eventually shocked even those closest to him in government.
“He’s a very secretive character. He’s distrustful. He’s a control freak. He’s a bully. He’s stubborn. He doesn’t listen to anyone,” Savva says.
“And he was, as Alex Hawke [former minister and a Morrison numbers man] has said on the record, addicted to executive authority. He liked to be in absolute control, taking every decision but not taking responsibility for every decision.”
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Pocock’s inclusion committee another blow to fiscal discipline
Labor’s desperate workplace bill deal with the independent senator has made a budget rod for its own back.
Robert Carling Economist
Nov 29, 2022 – 11.54am
The deal between Anthony Albanese and Senator David Pocock to get the industrial relations bill across the line raises two matters of concern.
The first is that after weeks of huffing and puffing, Pocock achieved little change in the bill from what the government wanted in the first place. He will now join the Greens in waving it through the Senate. The reasons to be concerned about the bill have been well aired on these pages and elsewhere.
The outcome is not, in any case, surprising. Pocock’s policy predilections suggested that he would be comfortable with legislation strengthening union power and with the government’s “get wages moving again” mantra.
His grandstanding on the IR bill had more to do with demonstrating to his ACT electorate that he is not just a wallflower in the Senate. As a territory senator, Pocock must face voters every time there is a House of Representatives general election, not just every six years like his state colleagues.
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Decade of disorder and danger calls for national strategy
It will be challenging for Australia to make our way in a reshaped world. The path ahead will test our statecraft as we recalibrate in new ways.
Heather Smith
Nov 29, 2022 – 6.00pm
It seems obvious to say we are living in a period of unprecedented turbulence – a confluence of events that we have not witnessed in the past three-quarters of a century.
It is this lack of historical parallels that makes the decade ahead so fraught – neither our political leaders nor their bureaucratic advisers have experience in facing any of our current challenges, let alone all of them in combination.
As the world grapples with the ongoing impact of the pandemic, Russia’s unwarranted and illegal invasion of Ukraine, high and potentially sustained inflation, a global slowdown and the breakdown of global supply chains, our regional and global order is being remade.
We are now in a world lacking in strategic trust. There is the real possibility of a splintering into democratic and authoritarian spheres of geopolitical influence.
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Threat ‘lower’ but face of domestic terror is changing
12:00AM November 30, 2022
The announcement by ASIO director-general Mike Burgess that the terrorism threat level in Australia has been lowered from “probable” to “possible” reflects the view of the National Threat Assessment Centre that a terrorist incident here is now less likely.
ASIO’s NTAC prepares assessments of the likelihood and probable nature of terrorism and protest violence, including against Australia, Australians, and Australian interests here and abroad, and against special events and international interests in Australia.
The “possible” rating does not rule out a terrorist attack, but the expectation is that it would be a low-order one, probably involving knives or a vehicle as a weapon.
A person with a knife is likely to be neutralised fairly quickly and cause few casualties, but a vehicle attack can be deadly. I recently visited the Promenade des Anglais in Nice, France, where in 2016 a large truck was used to run down and kill 86 people and injure 458 others. (The driver was a Tunisian living in France who was shot and killed by police.)
Australia has been fortunate so far to have avoided a mass casualty attack – other than by Martin Bryant in 1996 at Port Arthur that resulted in the deaths of 35 people. Bryant was not politically motivated, but the deadly outcome was similar to that from a terrorist shooting attack. Bryant’s massacre led to the gun buyback scheme that removed 700,000 firearms from private ownership – although there are now more firearms in private hands (at least 3.5 million) than before the buyback.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/false-peak-warnings-as-monthly-inflation-falls-20221130-p5c2fx
False peak warnings as monthly inflation falls
Ronald Mizen Economics correspondent
Nov 30, 2022 – 1.32pm
Annual headline inflation fell to 6.9 per cent in October, well below market expectations and all but guaranteeing a normal 0.25 percentage point interest rate rise at next week’s Reserve Bank of Australia board meeting.
Annual CPI had been expected to grow 7.6 per cent month-on-month, but a sharp fall in food prices, in particular fruit and vegetables, and holiday costs and accommodation instead led a decline.
Some economists said the result suggested “downside risk” to the RBA’s year-end forecasts of 8 per cent, while others warned of a false peak because power bills were not included in the latest figures.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers said while a slight easing was welcome, the government was expecting further prices pressure to drive inflation.
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https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/defiant-morrison-censured-for-secret-portfolios-20221130-p5c2dy
Defiant Morrison censured for secret portfolios
Phillip Coorey Political editor
Updated Nov 30, 2022 – 1.16pm, first published at 12.35pm
Scott Morrison has become the first former prime minister to be censured by the parliament, but not before stating he still believed three of his five secret portfolios were warranted, and refusing overall to apologise for doing what he thought necessary in the face of an unprecedented crisis.
Mr Morrison also claimed he would have divulged the portfolios had he been asked at the numerous press conferences he held in 2020 and 2021.
This invited scorn by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who made a last-minute decision to speak in support of the motion.
“If only he was asked! To blame the media and everyone else. Why didn’t we come in here and ask if he’d been sworn in as treasurer or finance minister?” he said.
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https://thenewdaily.com.au/finance/2022/12/01/plastic-global-solution-kohler/
6:00am, Dec 1, 2022 Updated: 1h ago
Alan Kohler: How two Australian chemists came up with a global solution for plastic
One of the more hopeful inventions for the planet has come out of the University of Sydney and is being commercialised worldwide by an Australian company that is supported by some big global packaging and chemical firms.
The company is called Licella, founded and run by an organic chemist named Dr Len Humphreys, and the process for which it has global patents turns plastic back into oil, and biomass (plant waste) into fuels.
Last week, Licella got a $12 million grant from the federal government to help build a plastic recycling plant on land owned by Dow Chemical in Altona, Victoria. It is also working on a factory in north Queensland to turn sugar cane waste into biocrude, which can be made into aviation fuel.
The first commercial plastic-to-oil plant will be in Wilton in the north of England, also in partnership with Dow. It will start operating in March next year.
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Scott Morrison ‘has a God complex’ and recited the Bible in meetings, new book claims
According to a bombshell new book, some colleagues liked Scott Morrison’s religious faith while others found it “weird”.
December 1, 2022 - 11:43AM
EXCLUSIVE
Former Prime Minister Scott Morrison had a ‘God complex’, would recite passages of the Bible during meetings and laid his hands on cabinet ministers in prayer.
According to a bombshell new book, Bulldozed by veteran political journalist Niki Savva, some colleagues liked his religious faith while others found it “weird”.
“Occasionally, during meetings with cabinet ministers, he would recite passages from the Bible he had read that morning that had inspired him,’’ she writes.
“He laid hands on colleagues in prayer. A few found it comforting; a few thought it was weird.”
In a chapter titled Bless You, former Indigenous Affairs Minister Ken Wyatt recalls being quietly approached by the Prime Minister and a cabinet minister.
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Liberals must learn that aspiration is for the young too
Jordan Peterson has no problem appealing to young people but, as demonstrated in Victoria, the Liberal Party isn’t making much headway among the under-40s.
John Roskam Columnist
Dec 1, 2022 – 4.20pm
Last Saturday night in Melbourne, at the same time as the Victorian Liberals were getting thrashed in the state election – their third defeat in a row and their fifth loss from the last six elections – Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson was speaking at an event almost literally across the road from Liberal headquarters.
One of the many reasons the Liberals lost is because of their lack of appeal to voters under 40, especially Generation Z (those under 25). As political consultants Redbridge Group have perceptively identified, under-40s are now 36 per cent of Victorian voters. Ten years ago, that share was 18 per cent.
An explanation for the Victorian Liberals’ promise to legislate for a more radical emissions target by 2030 than even that proposed by Anthony Albanese – not so much a “Labor-lite” policy as “Labor-heavy” – was because “young people” said “they wanted something done about climate change”.
It will be interesting to see what happens if ever enough young people say “they want something done about socialism”. Such a demand is not quite as far-fetched as it sounds. In the inner-city seat of Brunswick, the Victorian Socialists party received more than 8 per cent of first preference votes.
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Right digs deep to fund No campaign on Voice to parliament
and SARAH ISON
8:15AM December 2, 2022
The campaign to oppose an Indigenous voice to parliament has received a $1m donation and attracted more than 35,000 supporters in recent months, as the right-wing activist group Advance and the Institute of Public Affairs join forces to lead the No vote push.
The Albanese government’s decision not to fund the Yes and No campaigns is expected to open the floodgates for private donations from corporate Australia, activist groups and wealthy backers.
Legislation setting out referendum machinery provisions tabled in parliament on Thursday prohibits foreign donations over $100 for either campaigns. It also establishes a financial disclosure framework to support “transparency and accountability”.
Advance executive director Matthew Sheahan said the No campaign had received “tens of thousands of grassroots donations” and was “building the most powerful centre-right movement this country has ever seen to fight the voice referendum”.
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‘You ain’t seen nothing yet’: Why Labor is just getting started
Anthony Albanese went to the election promising “renewal not revolution” but six months in and 61 bills later, it’s starting to feel more like the latter.
Phillip Coorey Political editor
Dec 2, 2022 – 3.49pm
Given the ascendancy with which Labor finished the political year, it is easy to forget that it governs with just a two-seat majority, gained after receiving fewer than one in three primary votes at the election six months ago.
The party, however, is acutely aware and next week will embark on the process of building its numbers when Australians go to the polls in 2025.
The party’s review into the May 21 election, conducted by a panel of Labor luminaries headed by Greg Combet, will be presented to the party’s national executive on Monday. Its focus will be more on the next federal election than the last where its primary vote was a lowly 32.6 per cent.
The review estimates that strategic voting by Labor followers in the teal seats – in which they voted for teal independents to ensure the defeat of the Liberal incumbent – equated to a loss of about 2 per cent nationally to the primary vote.
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Into the great unknown: business braces for new bargaining laws
The Albanese government’s new regime could shake up wage growth and the workplace. Some who remember unions “going through the phone book” are getting worried.
David Marin-Guzman Workplace correspondent
Dec 2, 2022 – 3.00pm
″It starts with the big guys, but it always filters down to the bottom,” Eric Guilly says.
The head of a small, but growing, air conditioning installation company in southern NSW, Beaumont Air, Guilly is now reckoning with the possibility his business may be defined by one of the first, multi-employer agreements under the Albanese government’s new bargaining laws.
The laws, which passed parliament on Friday, promise a radical shake-up of the workplace and challenge contemporary ideas of bargaining and even agreements – with neither needed under the new regime.
Bargaining across employers hasn’t been done on a significant scale since the 1980s, after which the Keating government made the move to enterprise bargaining.
The laws not only significantly expand the scope for sector-wide deals but introduce strike rights across unconnected employers for the first time.
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Australia, G7 join EU on $US60 global price cap on Russian oil
Raf Casert, Fatima Hussein and David McHugh
Dec 3, 2022 – 11.19am
Washington | Australia and the Group of Seven nations have joined the European Union in adopting a $US60-per-barrel price cap on Russian oil, a key step as Western sanctions aim to reorder the global oil market to prevent price spikes and starve Russian President Vladimir Putin of funding for his war in Ukraine.
Europe needed to set the discounted price that other nations would pay by Monday, when an EU embargo on Russian oil shipped by sea and a ban on insurance for those supplies take effect. The price cap, which was led by the G7 wealthy democracies, aims to prevent a sudden loss of Russian oil to the world that could lead to a new surge in energy prices and further fuel inflation.
US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a statement that the agreement would help restrict Mr Putin’s “primary source of revenue for his illegal war in Ukraine while simultaneously preserving the stability of global energy supplies.”
The agreement came after a last-minute flurry of negotiations. Poland long held up an EU agreement, seeking to set the cap as low as possible. Following more than 24 hours of deliberations, when other EU nations had signalled they would back the deal, Warsaw finally relented late Friday.
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Here’s a map of misery in the Liberal heartland
December 3, 2022 — 5.00am
Peter Dutton doesn’t expect a challenge to his leadership of the federal Liberal Party in this term of parliament. His calculation happens to be both logical, and potentially fatal for his side of politics following its second consecutive electoral humiliation in Victoria last Saturday.
The things that shield him at the moment – the absence of a viable alternative, and a cheer squad in the conservative media who read each defeat for their cause as the fault of the Australian people – are the very factors that continue to separate the Liberals from what remains of their base in the middle-class suburbs of the nation’s capital cities.
The dilemma is highlighted by the position of Josh Frydenberg, who would have been the obvious rival to Dutton if the former treasurer hadn’t lost Robert Menzies’ old seat of Kooyong, in Melbourne’s east, to the teal wave on May 21. The eastern suburbs of Melbourne happen to be where the Victorian Liberals expected to gain seats in the state election last Saturday. They assumed regular programming would be restored once Scott Morrison was out of the picture. What they got, instead, was their worst heartland result in the party’s history.
That’s three elections out of four where Labor snared traditional Liberal seats in this affluent section of the city – at the state level in 2018 and again last Saturday, and at the federal election in May. The exception was Morrison’s so-called miracle of 2019, where the swings in the east to the Bill Shorten-led opposition fell just short of moving seats from the Liberal to Labor column.
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Yes or no, Australia? Our soul is on trial before a watching world
Journalist and author
December 3, 2022 — 5.00am
Never will I forget the experience of reporting from outside of Trump Tower on the morning after its landlord’s shock victory in the 2016 presidential election. Midtown Manhattan was unnervingly quiet. Rush-hour commuters exchanged knowing glances, as if to numbly affirm that something shocking had happened which they could not yet find words to articulate still less explain. Fifth Avenue, the very place where Donald Trump once boasted he could shoot someone with political impunity, seemed congregated by the living dead.
Flying into Britain the morning after the Brexit vote was not dissimilar. The UK was in a state of shock. Remainers had no plan in place in case they lost the referendum, while Brexiteers had no plan in place for if they won. In both instances, the rest of the world was left asking: what the hell just happened?
All this is worth bearing in mind as the debate intensifies over the referendum on the Uluru Statement from the Heart. My hope on the morning after is that we will be celebrating a milestone moment in the journey towards reconciliation, akin to the 1967 referendum. With polls suggesting a clear majority in favour of an Indigenous Voice to parliament, there is reason for optimism. But what would be the global reaction if Australia voted no? And what story would Australia tell itself?
Not since the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games has the country experienced such a nation-defining moment. Back then, the opening ceremony retold the Australian story in both a playful and profound way. There was the mountaintop experience of Cathy Freeman’s gold medal run,
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‘Quite frightened’: What’s needed to defend ourselves will shock many Australians
Columnist and communications adviser
December 3, 2022 — 5.00am
The number 9/11 has two very different meanings, depending on your country’s date convention. In the United States, 9/11 is September 11, the date in 2001 when terrorists sent planes into Manhattan’s twin towers, launching the clash of religion and values that defined the decade. Before that, the European date format 9/11 had marked November 9 – the day in 1989 when the Berlin Wall fell, completing the end of the Western-Soviet Cold War.
The fall of the wall seemed at the time to signal the triumph of liberalism, a high-point for Western self-confidence. But the attack on America brought with it ambiguity. What George W Bush hoped would be a short war in Iraq turned into a long, drawn out and often disastrous entanglement in the region, which cascaded into adjacent conflicts, including Syria. Prime Minister Tony Abbott described the Syrian conflict as one of “baddies versus baddies”, but by that stage even Westerners who had been in favour of toppling the tyrannical Iraqi regime had begun to worry, in the words of the skit, that we might be the baddies.
Even the Americans, once satirised by South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone as “world police”, now doubt themselves. The European beneficiaries of US mobilisation in World War II and the subsequent Marshall Plan that preserved a strategic – and, on 9/11/1989, historically decisive – portion of Berlin for the Western allies have never forgiven their benefactors. In the age of “self-care”, Americans concluded they had enough strife and colonial guilt to deal with at home. Donald Trump expressed the weariness of the US when he promised to end the “forever wars”. In doing so, the man often described as a right-wing populist gave voice to 20 years of largely left-liberal angst.
The question of whether the West was acting justly was always an important one. The ability to ask it sits at the heart of Western values. But asking it also erodes the belief that they are superior values, creating the moral relativism which struggles to say unequivocally that something is wrong if it is the practice of another “equally valid” culture. For instance, who are we to judge Iran for its treatment of women when we fail to take action on domestic violence at home. If that seems worth pondering, you’re both a champion and a victim of Western values.
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Finland to rely on Aussie minerals, security amid growing China concerns
By Chloe Whelan
9:28PM December 2, 2022
Finland will seek to strengthen its reliance on Australian intelligence and critical minerals, as visiting Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin set out her concerns about the dominance and aggression of China and Russia.
Finland, which shares a border with Russia, broke from its decades-long history of military neutrality with an application to join NATO earlier this year.
In the months since, Ms Marin has embarked on a global tour to solidify her government’s relationships with Western allies.
“We together must stand by our values and the rules-based international order so that it is not challenged by authoritarian regimes,” she told Anthony Albanese in Sydney on Friday.
“We have to learn from the war (in Ukraine), from the situation, not to build that kind of dependency with authoritarian countries that would crumble our societies. We need trusted partners now more than ever.”
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Secret US nuclear sub plan demands strategic rethink
12:00AM December 3, 2022
The shape of the plan by which Australia will acquire nuclear-powered submarines under the AUKUS agreement is now in place though not yet formally agreed, and it could still change substantially.
Defence Minister Richard Marles will attempt to finalise the key planks of the deal in a series of meetings overseas in the next week. He and Foreign Minister Penny Wong are travelling to the US for this year’s AUSMIN meeting with their counterparts, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin.
In America, Marles will also participate in the first AUKUS defence ministers’ meeting, which Britain’s Defence Secretary Ben Wallace will travel to the US to attend. Marles and Wong will then travel to Japan for a 2 + 2 meeting with their Japanese counterparts.
AUSMIN will have its customary big agenda, focused on the region, especially Southeast Asia. But Marles’ key mission will be the submarine plan.
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What would Menzies do? How to save the Liberal party
1:00AM December 3, 2022
In the final chapter of his latest book, John Howard gives his view on why the Morrison government lost this year’s election. Of course, there was the “it’s time” factor after nine years. But the government didn’t help itself, he said, by lacking a strong fourth-term agenda and refraining to fight on lots of issues from climate to culture. It was a clarion contribution from the greatest living Liberal and a good example of the role former leaders can have, helping to shape our party’s future direction.
This is a testing time for our party, and that’s not just because of our federal loss. It’s not just that we’re losing elections, because no political party can expect always to win, certainly not in any real democracy, but that we’re no longer quite sure what it is that Liberals believe and how that might translate into policy. At the heart of our disquiet is the current difficulty distinguishing a Liberal government from a Labor one, apart from Labor’s institutional links with the union movement and chronic tendency to entrench union prerogatives.
Despite the federal Coalition’s original objective, to end Labor’s debt and deficit disaster, the Morrison government – albeit with the pandemic as justification – ended up leaving the country with record debt levels for peacetime and no clear path back to surplus. And through the so-called national cabinet process, the Coalition became complicit in a form of health dictatorship, especially in Victoria – unprecedented even in wartime. Even if there were little alternative, it was at odds with our instinct for smaller government and greater freedom.
Then there’s the state Libs who are sometimes more keen on higher emissions targets, just as ready to see government spending as the solution to everything, and hardly less susceptible to identity politics, as the ALP.
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Dutton concedes Liberal Party in an ‘identity crisis’, willing to deal with teals
By James Massola and Anthony Galloway
December 4, 2022 — 5.00am
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton says the Liberal Party has an identity crisis and allowed itself to be defined by its opponents, including teal candidates that took many of its blue ribbon seats, at the last election.
But he is prepared to negotiate with them to form a minority government if the next election produces a hung parliament.
Dutton outlined an ambitious one-term strategy to return the Coalition to power, which included a focus on a credible path to reducing emissions and has endorsed Josh Frydenberg, a potential future leadership rival, to win back the seat of Kooyong.
The opposition leader distanced himself from his predecessor Scott Morrison, who last week became the first former prime minister to be formally censured by the parliament over the multiple ministries saga, arguing “people see very clear differences between Scott and myself”.
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‘Clear differences between Scott and myself’: Dutton’s plan for a one-term comeback
By Anthony Galloway and James Massola
December 4, 2022
Days after Scott Morrison became prime minister in 2018, he had a private conversation with Peter Dutton.
Morrison made two requests of the then-home affairs minister: cancel his weekly appearance with Ray Hadley, the king of talkback radio in Sydney, and cancel the regular lunches that conservatives had held for years in Parliament House’s Monkey Pod room, named after its distinctive wood table.
Dutton refused both requests, but remained in Morrison’s leadership group, just as he had done under Malcolm Turnbull.
The episode highlighted two points: Morrison’s paranoia about a potential leadership rival, and the fact that Dutton was still his own man, despite losing to Morrison in the leadership contest by five votes.
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COVID-19 Information.
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Lab study shows next COVID-19 mutation could be more dangerous
Antony Sguazzin
Nov 27, 2022 – 2.49pm
A South African laboratory study using COVID-19 samples from an immunosuppressed individual over six months showed that the virus evolved to become more pathogenic, indicating that a new variant could cause more illness than the current predominant omicron strain.
The study, conducted by the same laboratory that was to first test the omicron strain against vaccines last year, used samples from a person infected with HIV.
Over the six months, the virus initially caused the same level of cell fusion and death as the omicron BA.1 strain, but as it evolved those levels rose to become similar to the first version of COVID-19 identified in Wuhan in China.
The study, led by Alex Sigal at the Africa Health Research Institute in the South African city of Durban, indicates that the COVID-19 pathogen could continue to mutate and a new variant may cause more severe illness and death than the relatively mild omicron strain. The study is yet to be peer-reviewed and is based solely on laboratory work on samples from one individual.
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Why “Covid zero” is now the biggest China threat
China is stuck in the lockdown mentality because it initially worked. It’s now strangling the economy and beginning to trigger serious unrest.
Richard McGregor Columnist
Nov 27, 2022 – 2.19pm
A war over Taiwan? A clash in the South China Sea? Throw in, too, the danger of a financial crisis sparked by a property crash. There’s no shortage of catastrophes canvassed for China, which, for the moment, haven’t eventuated.
But anyone worried about risk in China should focus their attention elsewhere for the moment, on Beijing’s dogged adherence to COVID Zero – a policy that is strangling the economy and triggering serious unrest.
To take one snapshot, consider the possible flow-on effects of the now near daily riots outside the Foxconn factories that manufacture the bulk of the world’s iPhones, near Zhengzhou in central China.
The protests – triggered by workers who either fled COVID lockdowns or worried about being forced to live alongside people with the virus, or were simply angry at being underpaid – could hit everything from Apple’s share price, the availability of new phones to multiple top-level political careers in both China and Taiwan. (Foxconn is owned by a Taiwanese tycoon with political ambitions.)
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https://www.afr.com/world/asia/xi-s-covid-zero-has-china-at-breaking-point-20221128-p5c1vb
Xi’s COVID-zero has China at breaking point
Protests erupting across China over the weekend are an unprecedented challenge to Xi Jinping’s power. However, there is no guarantee the uprising will bring change.
Michael Smith North Asia correspondent
Updated Nov 28, 2022 – 4.36pm, first published at 3.56pm
Taipei | The extraordinary scenes of protests breaking out around China as Xi Jinping’s COVID policies drive 1.4 billion people to breaking point is history in the making.
It is still unclear how this collective display of public anger towards the Communist Party will play out. There have been localised and sporadic demonstrations against COVID-related issues before, and small groups have taken to the streets over everything from failed investment schemes army pensions.
However, experts agree such widespread demonstrations specifically directed at the central government is rare event indeed for China.
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Climate Change.
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Put Great Barrier Reef on world heritage in danger list: report
6:53AM November 29, 2022
A World Heritage Centre mission has recommended that the Great Barrier Reef be inscribed on the List of World Heritage in Danger.
In a report following a visit to the reef in March 2022, the mission said over the past decades, and particularly in recent years, the reef has faced considerable pressures that threaten the Outstanding Universal Value (OUV) of the property.
These pressures are related in particular to climate change, coastal development, degrading water quality resulting from sediment and pollutant run-off from agricultural activities, and unsustainable resource use, among others.
The mission team concludes that, despite the unparalleled science and management efforts made by the State Party in recent years, the OUV of the property is significantly impacted by climate change factors.
“The resilience of the property to recover from climate change impacts is substantially compromised, in particular – but not exclusively – due to degraded water quality”, the mission report said.
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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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Let’s hope Chalmers doesn’t fall for the ‘Silence the RBA’ campaign
The treasurer may wince when he hears what Philip Lowe has to say, but he has to admit that it’s always highly intelligent, perceptive and courageous.
Karen Maley Columnist
Nov 28, 2022 – 5.00am
You’ve got to have some sympathy for Treasurer Jim Chalmers. As he discovered at last Friday’s summit of top bankers and superannuation fund bosses, solving the country’s affordable housing problem will be much more difficult than he’d thought.
And then he’s got the dilemma of how to cap gas prices without discouraging future investment in big-ticket gas projects.
Still, Chalmers should have the political nous to step back from the institutional turf war that’s now under way as Treasury tries to gag the Reserve Bank as an alternative source of economic truth.
Treasury, of course, has always believed it should have the monopoly on providing policy advice to the government.
But Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe clearly believes he has a responsibility to express the central bank’s views on matters that he thinks are of fundamental national importance.
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Reserve Bank chief Philip Low ‘sorry’ for interest rate call
Philip Lowe has made a stunning apology to those Australians who took out a mortgage after advice from the Reserve Bank.
November 28, 2022 - 10:41AM
NCA NewsWire
Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe has apologised to Australians who may regret taking out a home loan off the back of advice interest rates would remain unchanged until 2024.
Appearing before a senate estimates hearing on Monday morning, Dr Lowe said it was “regrettable” that the RBA did not communicate the “caveats” in the advice clearly enough.
“I’m sorry that people listened to what we said and then acted on that and now find themselves in a position they don’t want to be in,” he said.
“But at the time, we saw that as the right thing to do. And I think looking back, we would have chosen different language. People did not hear the caveats.
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Health Issues.
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How CSL priced the world’s most expensive drug
Yolanda Redrup Reporter
Dec 1, 2022 – 5.00am
When blood products giant CSL announced last week it had been given US regulatory approval for the world’s first gene therapy for haemophilia B, it did not expect the price of the drug to make global headlines.
But because it has an eye-watering price tag of $US3.5 million ($5 million) a dose, that’s precisely what happened, thanks to the fact its newly named therapy Hemgenix has become the most expensive treatment in the world.
While on face value the cost seems astronomical, there are many factors that go into pricing a drug, including the expected savings for the healthcare system, development costs and market size.
Speaking to The Australian Financial Review, CSL head of R&D Bill Mezzanotte said the cost of bringing a drug like Hemgenix to market exceeded $US1 billion.
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The key change cancer patients want to improve their treatment
By Stuart Layt
December 3, 2022 — 1.00am
Getting a diagnosis of breast cancer is shocking enough, but for Queensland mother Rachael Brooks-Donald it was being plunged into the whirlwind of cancer treatment that left her reeling.
Diagnosed in late 2019 with stage 1 HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer – a non-genetic but aggressive form of the disease – doctors were keen to throw the kitchen sink at the problem.
Aged just 35 when she was diagnosed, Brooks-Donald said she went through multiple rounds of chemo, as well as surgery and radiotherapy, but wonders in hindsight if she could have taken a different pathway.
“The process from diagnosis to treatment is quite quick, and it needs to be, but you do feel pulled from pillar to post, without a lot of say in what’s going to happen to you,” she said.
“In an ideal world, every cancer patient should have access to a clinical nursing coordinator who could act as the go-between and the advocate for the patient.”
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International Issues.
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https://www.afr.com/markets/currencies/crypto-s-great-reset-is-underway-20221125-p5c1dp
Crypto’s great reset is underway in the wake of FTX collapse
Vimal Gor
Nov 27, 2022 – 11.59am
Looking for some perspective on the ongoing implosion in crypto markets I’m reminded of the saying “a week is a long time in politics”.
For Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), co-founder of the crypto exchange FTX and poster child for effective altruism, it was a week for the ages.
Following a good old-fashioned bank run and liquidity crunch across his web of companies, SBF’s net wealth went from around U$15 billion ($22.2 billion) on November 8 to bankruptcy in five chaotic days.
I try to adopt a positive view on people whenever possible, but each new revelation about this guy gets me more upset.
While one of the overarching drawcards of the digital asset markets is its decentralised nature, our inbuilt human nature has us favouring simplicity over security. FTX was a centralised
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Ukraine’s bomb boats blast Russia’s sea dominance
Ukraine’s use of aerial and maritime drones is changing the balance of power in the Black Sea.
Roland Oliphant
Nov 27, 2022 – 4.27pm
It wasn’t the biggest bang of the war. But the sudden flash that briefly illuminated the Russian port of Novorossiysk on November 18 had significance that went well beyond its blast radius.
The explosion is believed to have been caused by a Ukrainian unmanned surface vehicle – maritime drones that are changing the balance of power in the Black Sea and could profoundly reshape the future of naval warfare.
The first publicised action by Ukraine’s radio-controlled bomb boats was in the early hours of October 29, when more than half a dozen of them attacked Russia’s Black Sea fleet at Sevastopol.
Footage from on-board cameras released by the Ukrainians showed black metal vessels charging at high speed across a choppy grey sea as machine gun and cannon rounds raised white plumes around them.
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Canada to bolster Pacific defence and trade to counter China
Brian Platt
Nov 28, 2022 – 9.29am
Ottawa | Canada is boosting military spending and expanding trade ties in the Indo-Pacific region as part of a “generational” shift in foreign policy aimed at building stronger ties with Asian allies and countering China’s influence.
Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly will release her government’s Indo-Pacific Strategy on Sunday (Monday AEDT), which includes nearly $2.5 billion (C$2.3 billion) in spending. That includes funding for more navy patrols in the region, intelligence and cybersecurity, and increased cooperation with regional partners in the East and South China Seas.
The 26-page document, an advance copy of which was seen by Bloomberg, includes a lengthy section on China, which it refers to as an “increasingly disruptive global power.” It cites multiple military, security and economic threats posed by the country, while acknowledging the need to work with it on issues such as climate change, global health, biodiversity and nuclear non-proliferation.
In an interview, Ms Joly said the world’s geopolitical “tectonic plates” are shifting. That’s threatening international norms that have kept the world safe since World War II, as well as creating supply chain uncertainty and inflation.
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Taiwan’s President Tsai resigns as party chair, China strategy at risk
By Eryk Bagshaw and Evelyn Yang
November 27, 2022 — 1.24pm
Taipei: Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen has resigned as chair of her party after it was routed in midterm elections by the Kuomintang (KMT), opening the door to a challenge by the KMT on the presidency in 2024 and a shift in Taipei-Beijing relations.
The DPP campaigned heavily on national security and the threat from China throughout its midterm pitch to elect mayors and county officials across the island of 25 million people, warning “the front line of democracy” was under assault from Beijing.
But that message did not resonate with voters, particularly around the capital, Taipei, where it lost neighbouring Taoyuan City, Keelung City to the KMT and Hsinchu City to the Taiwan People’s Party. The DPP, which has governed Taiwan since 2016, also failed to win Taipei City, after Tsai’s high-profile health minister was trounced by Chiang Wan-an, the 43-year-old lawyer and great-grandson of Taiwan’s nationalist generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek.
“We have done it together – this victory belongs to every citizen of Taipei. It is a win for light over darkness, for good over evil,” Chiang said before thousands of supporters on Saturday night.
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‘Gaslit’: Australian crypto traders, exchanges reel after FTX collapse
November 28, 2022 — 12.15am
Three weeks ago, on November 2, a single article from a US trade publication set off one of the largest crypto exchange collapses since the notorious fall of Mt Gox in 2014. FTX and its founder Sam Bankman-Fried – revered by traders, investors, and politicians alike – went from being worth nearly $50 billion to $0 in a matter of days.
The extraordinary collapse, which has many months to play out, has left a trail of destruction in its wake and has affected thousands of Australian customers who are owed millions of dollars by the failed exchange’s local operations.
One of these customers is Drew*, a consultant who once visited FTX’s Hong Kong offices and admits they were entranced by Bankman-Fried’s supposed entrepreneurial brilliance.
“You hear about these entrepreneurs who have this reality distortion field effect when you’re around them, and Sam’s definitely one of those people,” they said. “He was sleeping in the office, there was this whole vibe that, in hindsight, was kind of cult-y but at the time seemed so amazing.”
Drew says FTX employees were encouraged to indiscriminately order UberEats to their office on the company dime, so much so that they recall wading through a “sea” of UberEats bags upon entering the building.
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A real-time test of war
While Moscow clings to long-range bombardment, the swift and smart innovation of Kyiv’s weaponry is setting the blueprint for modern warfare.
By Roger Boyes
From The Times
November 27, 2022
From HG Wells’s War of the Worlds to the Terminator film franchise, the future of war has been fertile territory for the sci-fi genre. And the technology imagined by writers and popularised by Hollywood has become an inspiration for forward-looking military boffins: a world of laser rays, robots and artificial intelligence. But for science fact rather than science fiction it is enough to study the nine months of combat between Russia and Ukraine. Vladimir Putin’s invasion is revolutionising war fighting, pitting drone against drone, weaponising consumer tech, and creating start-up companies that adapt arms and kit for the changing battlefield.
Everyone is watching this very public, very bloody road test under way in eastern Europe. There’s China, which hasn’t fought a pitched battle since its war against Vietnam in 1979; and there’s Taiwan, which is rethinking quickly how to resist the forthcoming Chinese assault on the island. On a recent visit to Taiwan a military engineering lecturer proudly showed me an automatic rifle that had been constructed by 3D printing: part of the future, he said, if China blocks arms shipments from abroad.
There’s Iran, which is becoming a major drone producer to feed Russia’s dwindling fleet of unmanned aircraft. Tehran’s military is now adjusting its approach to fighting Israel and wondering how its proxies could close in on Saudi oil installations. Israel, which has pioneered drone research, has just developed a micro-drone weighing barely 1.5kg that enters buildings in urban areas, passes back tactical information to the operator and then releases a lethal charge equivalent to a grenade blast. It has a flying time of only seven minutes but can return to a mother ship to recharge.
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Australia is a key plank in Xi Jinping’s global fence mending
Anthony Albanese’s economic realism and mild-mannered diplomacy suits a moment when China and the rest of the world are downplaying the tensions between them.
James Curran Historian
Nov 28, 2022 – 12.16pm
As the dust settles on the first meeting between an Australian prime minister and the Chinese President since 2017, some trends emerging from Bali beg definition.
Two clear points emerge. One, that China continues to place a high premium on the stable supply of Australian resources. Following the encounter, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese emphasised that the two countries had “highly complementary economies”.
He reminded Australians of a home truth: that China is Australia’s largest trading partner, “worth more than Japan, the US and the Republic of Korea combined”.
This language of mutual economic benefit had been given its quietus over the preceding years, lost amidst the shouting of the Morrison government and the gratuitous hectoring by Beijing’s wolf warriors.
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Cryptocurrency will survive. But will there be any point to it?
Digital currencies will get over Sam Bankman-Fried. But it may be at the cost of the anonymity that makes them so useful to many of their most devoted users.
Kenneth Rogoff Columnist
Nov 28, 2022 – 12.51pm
The epic collapse of wunderkind Sam Bankman-Fried’s $US32 billion ($48 billion) crypto empire, FTX, looks set to go down as one of the great financial debacles of all time.
With a storyline full of celebrities, politicians, sex and drugs, the future looks bright for producers of feature films and documentaries. But, to paraphrase Mark Twain, rumours of the death of crypto itself have been much exaggerated.
True, the loss of confidence in “exchanges” such as FTX – essentially crypto financial intermediaries – almost surely means a sustained steep drop in prices for the underlying assets.
The vast majority of bitcoin transactions are done “off-chain” in exchanges, not in the bitcoin blockchain itself. These financial intermediaries are vastly more convenient, require much less sophistication to use, and do not waste nearly so much energy.
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Xi Jinping’s pandemic triumphalism returns to haunt him
Repression may well work in China. But the carefully constructed myth of the leader’s wisdom and power cannot survive the collapse of his zero-COVID policies.
Gideon Rachman Columnist
Nov 29, 2022 – 7.13am
In his 2021 New Year’s address, Xi Jinping boasted of the success of China’s zero-COVID policy. While millions had died in the outside world, China had “put people and their lives first ... With solidarity and resilience, we wrote the epic of our fight against the pandemic.”
Almost two years later, Xi’s campaign to portray China’s handling of the pandemic as a personal and systemic triumph is collapsing. Mounting demonstrations against his zero-COVID policies represent a massive loss of face for the Chinese leader. They look like the most serious challenge to his leadership since he took power a decade ago.
Some protests against China’s unending lockdowns have taken aim at Xi personally. In the city of Chengdu, demonstrators have chanted: “We don’t want a leader for life political system. We don’t want an emperor.”
These chants highlight the most sensitive political issue in modern China – Xi’s efforts to create a personality cult. Since the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, the Chinese Communist Party has avoided creating a new Mao, a single all-powerful leader, who dominates the political system and the country and who never leaves power.
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Crypto lender BlockFi files for bankruptcy as FTX contagion spreads
Hannah Lang, Niket Nishant and Manya Saini
Nov 29, 2022 – 7.52am
Cryptocurrency lender BlockFi has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, the latest crypto casualty following the spectacular collapse of the FTX exchange this month.
The filing in a New Jersey court comes as crypto prices plummet. The price of bitcoin, the largest digital currency by far, is down more than 70 per cent from a 2021 peak.
“BlockFi’s Chapter 11 restructuring underscores significant asset contagion risks associated with the crypto ecosystem,” said Monsur Hussain, senior director at Fitch Ratings.
BlockFi, founded by Zac Prince, said in a bankruptcy filing that its substantial exposure to FTX created a liquidity crisis. FTX filed for protection in the United States earlier in November after traders pulled $US6 billion ($9 billion) from the platform in three days and rival exchange Binance abandoned a rescue deal.
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Three ways Xi could respond to the loudest wave of protests since 1989
By Eryk Bagshaw
November 28, 2022 — 3.57pm
Singapore: The middle-aged woman in a street in Shanxi accuses the Chinese government of hypocrisy. The students at Tsinghua university tell each other not to be afraid. In Beijing, a man screams Shakespeare quotes “so long as men can breathe, or eyes can see” as he is surrounded by police.
For two days and nights, China’s cities have been hit by waves of protests on a scale not seen since 1989. They started in response to COVID-19 but are now transforming into an indictment of the party-state and its Orwellian grip on speech, movement and assembly. Dozens have been arrested, including BBC journalist Edward Lawrence, who spent Sunday night reporting on protesters in Shanghai holding up blank pieces of paper and laying flowers for what they say are victims of the country’s COVID-zero policy.
BBC journalist Ed Lawrence was arrested during COVID protests in Shanghai.
“One man has just approached me to say his flowers were confiscated by police,” Lawrence tweeted on Sunday afternoon.
“As he tells me this, two cops come over to listen to our conversation.”
Eight hours later Lawrence was arrested.
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Clamp down or loosen up? Protests put Xi Jinping in a bind
Lingling Wei
Dow Jones
10:52AM November 29, 2022
President Xi Jinping faces a difficult choice between loosening China’s zero-tolerance Covid-19 policy or doubling down on restrictions that have locked down neighbourhoods and stifled the country’s economy over the past three years.
Neither option is a good one for a regime focused on stability. Stock markets around the globe and oil prices declined Monday as protests in China fuelled worries among investors about the outlook for the world’s second-largest economy.
“Xi’s leadership is in a bind,” said Yuen Yuen Ang, a political scientist focused on China at the University of Michigan. “If they compromise and relax zero-Covid, they fear it will encourage mass protests. If they repress more, it will create wider and deeper grievances.” Protesters across China have directly challenged the authority of the Chinese leader and the Communist Party in scenes unthinkable just a month ago, when Mr. Xi secured a third term in power.
In Shanghai over the weekend, protesters used call-and-response chanting to demand political change. In Beijing, crowds shouted “Freedom.” In other large cities, demonstrators marched holding blank sheets of paper — a swipe at government censorship.
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Biden rolls out the red carpet for Macron in first state visit
By Charles Bremner
The Times
10:00AM November 30, 2022
France and the United States will celebrate 250 years as allies when President Macron begins a visit to Washington today that will enshrine his place as the pivotal player for the Biden administration’s touchy relationship with Europe.
Honouring Macron with the first state visit of his 22-month-old administration, President Biden is pulling out the stops to rekindle fraternity after a toxic spell last year following the secret negotiation of an “Anglo-Saxon” security pact in the Pacific that killed an Australian order for French submarines.
With Macron seething over what he called a treacherous breach of trust by Canberra, Washington and London, Biden acknowledged “clumsiness” in how the Aukus alliance had been handled and, unlike the UK and Australia, moved to soothe French feelings with goodwill gestures.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine boosted the Franco-US reconciliation with the renaissance of the US-led Nato alliance, but new transatlantic tensions are brewing over American trade protection, attitudes to China and the fallout of the Ukraine war. Macron has positioned himself as Europe’s front man on all three, making him an essential broker, according to French and US officials.
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Deutsche Bank tips a jump in unemployment and 25 per cent falls in major stockmarkets
By David Rogers
7:56PM November 29, 2022
A global recession will be hard to avoid as central banks battle inflation, according to Deutsche Bank.
If central banks follow through on their missions to lower inflation as they’ve indicated, the economic cost will be lower than if they were to ease policy as soon as recession hits. But history suggests that successful disinflation doesn’t come cheap.
The economists see a jump in unemployment rates and 25 per cent falls in major stockmarkets.
“It generally comes at a substantial cost in terms of jobs lost and output foregone,” wrote the bank’s chief economist, David Folkerts-Landau, and head of economic research Peter Hooper.
In their world economic outlook for 2023, the economists looked at all episodes in the US, Germany, Britain and Canada since the 1960s in which “disinflations” – peak-to-trough declines in a two-year trend or moving average of core inflation – of at least two percentage points occurred.
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Solving our energy and inflation crises needs broad thinking
In our interactive world, we can no longer put problems into convenient intellectual silos.
Martin Wolf Columnist
Nov 30, 2022 – 10.44am
Welcome to the “polycrisis” – a world in which, as historian Adam Tooze says, “economic and non-economic shocks” are entangled “all the way down”.
We have an inflation shock that emanates from the disruptions caused by a pandemic, the policy responses to that pandemic and an energy shock caused by a war.
That war in turn is related to the breakdown in relations among great powers. Slow growth, rising inequality and over-reliance on credit have undermined political stability in many high-income democracies.
The credit boom led to a great financial crisis whose outcome included a decade of ultra-low interest rates and so even more financial fragility worldwide. Adding to these stresses is the threat of climate change.
It is indeed convenient to think about the world in intellectual silos, focusing in turn on macroeconomics, finance, politics, social change, politics, disease and the environment, to the exclusion of the others. In a reasonably stable world, this may even work well. The alternative of thinking about the interactions among these aspects of experience is also too hard. But sometimes, as now, it becomes inescapable.
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Putin will carpet bomb Ukraine unless the West acts
Giving the Ukrainians more tools to close their own skies will be the key to forcing the Russians to the negotiating table.
James Stavridis
Dec 1, 2022 – 8.00am
The strategically vital city of Kherson is back in the hands of Ukrainians, albeit under threat of Russian shelling and attacks on its electricity supply.
But as combatants on both sides of an increasingly static firing line prepare for winter war, there are effectively two separate conflicts emerging: one on the land, the other in the air.
What can the West do to help Ukraine meet the immediate tactical challenges, and ultimately seize the longer-term advantage?
On land, the arrival of a wet, rainy autumn and a harsh winter will lead to a decrease in operations. Both Russia and Ukraine need to rest and reinforce their troops, as well as repair equipment. A return to full-blown combat operations isn’t likely until late winter when the ground freezes, presenting a better opportunity for the heaviest equipment.
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A massive show of force by China’s police for anti-lockdown protesters, silence from Xi Jinping
December 1, 2022 — 8.03am
Key points
· A massive show of force by the security services on Wednesday sought to deter further protests.
· Hundreds of police vehicles were parked on city streets; authorities conducted random ID checks and searched people’s phones.
· Images of protests online are being scrubbed by government censors and ignored entirely by state media.
· National news is dominated by the death of former president Jiang Zemin, who ruled during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.
· Current leader Xi Jinping, who seeks regime stability above all, is facing his biggest public challenge yet.
Beijing: China’s ruling Communist Party has vowed to “resolutely crack down on infiltration and sabotage activities by hostile forces,” following the largest street demonstrations in decades by citizens fed up with strict anti-virus restrictions.
A massive show of force by the security services on Wednesday sought to deter further protests.
The statement from the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission released late on Tuesday followed protests that broke out over the weekend in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and several other cities.
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https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/japan-seeks-up-to-500-tomahawk-missiles-20221201-p5c2q6.html
Japan seeks to buy up to 500 Tomahawk missiles
December 1, 2022 — 8.36am
Tokyo: Japan’s Defence Ministry is considering purchases of up to 500 US-made Tomahawk cruise missiles by fiscal 2027 as it seeks to accelerate preparations for the possession of counterattack capabilities, sources said.
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida confirmed the plan to advance purchase negotiations during a summit with US President Joe Biden on November 13, according to several US and Japanese government sources.
The Liberal Democratic Party and its junior ruling coalition partner Komeito have agreed on Japan possessing counterattack capabilities that could destroy an enemy’s missile launch sites and other targets for self-defence purposes.
They are in the process of finalising the National Security Strategy which is to be revised by the end of the year and is expected to clearly stipulate the possession of weapons such as these missiles.
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US gun death rate nears three-decade high
By Dominique Mosbergen
3:30PM November 30, 2022
The rate of gun deaths in the US reached a 28-year high in 2021 after sharp increases in homicides of African-American men and suicides among white men, an analysis of federal data shows.
A total of 48,953 deaths in the US, or about 15 fatalities per 100,000 people, were caused by guns last year, said the analysis published in the journal JAMA Network Open. Gun deaths declined in the 1990s, but have been rising steadily over the past decade and skyrocketed during the Covid-19 pandemic, said researchers who conducted the analysis.
Gun-related deaths of women and children have risen, the analysis said, but men remain far more likely to die from guns.
“The disparities are so marked,” said Chris Rees, a co-author of the study and an assistant professor of paediatrics and emergency medicine at Emory University School of Medicine.
Dr Rees and his colleagues analysed US firearm fatality rates from 1990 to 2021 using data from the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. More than 1.1 million people in the US have died from guns since 1990, the analysis showed.
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Leaked Kremlin polls reveal crumbling support for Ukraine war
By Marc Bennetts
The Times
11:00AM December 1, 2022
The number of Russians in favour of continuing the war in Ukraine has fallen dramatically, with just one in four now supporting the conflict, according to leaked Kremlin opinion polls.
In July, 57 per cent of respondents said they wanted to see Russian troops remain in Ukraine. That figure has now fallen to 25 per cent. Support for negotiations to end the nine-month conflict has risen from 32 per cent to 55 per cent.
The results of the polls, which were carried out by the Kremlin’s Federal Guard Service, were obtained by Meduza, a Russian opposition website. The presidential administration regularly carries out research into public opinion for the exclusive use of President Putin and other senior officials.
The slump in support for what Putin calls a “special military operation” in Ukraine comes after a wildly unpopular draft, massive military casualties and series of humiliating setbacks on the battlefield. Suspected Ukrainian shelling has also killed a number of people in Russian border towns, according to pro-Kremlin officials.
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Why Blackstone’s real estate redemption shock will reverberate
That a Blackstone real estate trust has hit its redemption limit shows how the investment landscape for private capital is changing.
Dec 2, 2022 – 10.34am
One of the most fascinating aspects of the news that Blackstone will limit redemptions on its big real estate fund focused on wealthy individuals is the returns the fund has managed to generate.
According to the website for the $US69 billion ($101 billion) Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust, the fund’s unlisted class one shares delivered a net return of 9.3 per cent for the year to October, with one-year returns running at 13 per cent, and three-year annualised returns at 15.5 per cent.
You could understand a spike in redemptions occurring in a time of bad returns on high stress, but in the context of the ugly returns from equity and credit markets this year, many investors would be thrilled with the returns the BREIT is producing.
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https://www.afr.com/world/asia/mass-lockdowns-or-mass-deaths-xi-s-covid-dilemma-20221201-p5c2xf
Mass lockdowns or mass deaths: Xi’s COVID dilemma
Following a week of extraordinary protests, China has reached the point of no return. How Xi manages the road out from his COVID zero policy will reverberate around the world.
Michael Smith North Asia correspondent
Dec 2, 2022 – 10.25am
The first protest videos started circulating on Chinese social media late last Friday night.
Hundreds of people were marching through the streets of the far western Chinese city of Urumqi, pumping their fists into the air and demanding an end to a lockdown which had confined millions of residents to their homes for 100 days.
Footage showed demonstrators breaking through a barrier and confronting government officials wearing hazmat suits. Some sang lines from China’s national anthem, “Rise up, those who don’t want to be slaves”, a tactic used by people in Shanghai complaining online about a lockdown there months earlier.
The extraordinary protests are taking place after almost three years of the world’s toughest anti COVID-19 policies and China appears to have reached the point of no return when it comes to COVID. The virus is spreading at a rate of about 40000 cases a day, making it almost impossible to go back to a COVID-19 zero policy without locking down much of the country. President Xi Jinping now has no good options and is caught in an inevitable trap between mass lockdowns and mass deaths.
Add to that the possibility that the disparate protests seen this week turn into a mass uprising and Xi’s personal brand will take a hit. How he handles the transition to living with COVID-19 - one that has already claimed numerous political leaders in other countries - matters beyond China too. Politicians and investors around the world are watching, and few countries have more at stake than Australia.
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https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/xi-jinping-has-betrayed-china-s-grand-bargain-20221130-p5c2hp.html
Xi Jinping has betrayed China’s grand bargain
By Eryk Bagshaw
November 30, 2022 — 3.57pm
Singapore: For as long as the economy was growing, food was on the table and their children had greater opportunities than they had, many of China’s citizens were happy with the grand bargain they had struck with the Communist Party.
They traded human rights and freedom of speech for economic growth and stability. That deal is no longer guaranteed.
The protests that have rocked the country this week are, at their core, a response to its economic woes and the draconian zero-COVID policy that has hobbled the country for the past year. They are led by its youth, fully vaccinated and frustrated by a system that has seen them lose their jobs and businesses to protect a party that is reluctant to give up control and an elderly population that is unwilling to get vaccinated.
One in five young Chinese in the major cities is now unemployed, the highest level of youth unemployment since records began. Caixin’s Purchasing Manager’s Index – a key measure of economic activity and business conditions – has plummeted in both the services and manufacturing sectors. The index falls with each surge of new cases and as restrictions tighten, businesses close and more workers lose their jobs.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/foreign-affairs/why-the-russian-empire-must-die-20221130-p5c2ij
Why the Russian empire must die
A better future requires Vladimir Putin’s defeat in Ukraine – and the end to imperial aspirations.
Anne Applebaum
Dec 2, 2022 – 5.00am
During the quarter-century of its formal existence, the Moscow School of Civic Education did not have a campus, a syllabus, or professors. The school instead ran seminars for politicians and journalists, led by other politicians and journalists, from Russia and around the world.
It operated out of the Moscow apartment of its founders, Lena Nemirovskaya and Yuri Senokosov. They had met in the 1970s while working on a Soviet philosophy journal, and shared a hatred of the violent, arbitrary politics that had shaped most of their lives. Nemirovskaya’s father was a Gulag prisoner. Senokosov once told me he could not eat Russian black bread because the taste reminded him of the poverty and tragedy of his Soviet childhood.
Both also believed that Russia could change. Maybe not change very much, maybe not very dramatically, but change nevertheless. Nemirovskaya once told me that her great ambition was just to make Russia “a little bit more civilised” through the exposure of people to new ideas. Their school, an extension of conversations held in their kitchen, was designed to achieve that single, non-revolutionary goal.
For a long time it flourished. From 1992 to 2021, Nemirovskaya reckons, more than 30,000 people – parliamentarians, city council members, businesspeople, journalists – attended their seminars around the country on law, elections, and media. British editors, Polish ministers and American governors came to speak; they got financial support from an equally wide range of European, American, and Russian foundations and philanthropists. I attended perhaps a dozen seminars, mostly to speak about journalism.
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US economy adds 263,000 jobs, keeping pressure on Fed
Reade Pickert
Dec 3, 2022 – 5.01am
Washington | US employers added more jobs than forecast and wages surged by the most in nearly a year, pointing to enduring inflation pressures that boost chances of higher interest rates from the Federal Reserve.
Nonfarm payrolls increased 263,000 in November after an upwardly revised 284,000 gain in October, a Labor department report showed early Saturday AEDT.
The unemployment rate held at 3.7 per cent as participation eased. Average hourly earnings rose twice as much as forecast after an upward revision to the prior month.
The median estimates in a Bloomberg survey of economists called for a 200,000 advance in payrolls and for the unemployment rate to hold at 3.7 per cent.
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Finland’s PM warns Putin’s ‘dark agenda’ a threat to Australia
By David Crowe
December 3, 2022 — 5.00am
Australia is exposed to the same “dark agenda” now haunting Europe after the Russian invasion of Ukraine unleashed war and a global energy crisis, Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin has warned during a visit to the region to shore up defence and trade ties.
In a call for stronger links between Australia and Europe, she declared liberal democracies had to increase spending on defence and do “whatever it takes” including imposing tougher sanctions and providing more financial support to ensure Russia lost the war.
Marin also cited the growing influence of China as a reason to be wary of its technology, a key issue in Australia because of its ban on Chinese technology company Huawei from supplying the National Broadband Network and 5G mobile systems.
With the war in Ukraine now in its 10th month, the Finnish leader said other countries could be “tempted by the same dark agenda” if they saw Russian President Vladimir Putin succeed.
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How Xi Jinping made the ‘Chinese dream’ a nightmare for the next generation
By Tom Rees
December 2, 2022 — 8.16am
A leafy oasis in the sprawling megacity Beijing, Tsinghua University has been dubbed China’s “power factory” for producing a long line of leaders.
Perhaps the university’s most powerful alumnus, Xi Jinping, will be concerned at what has been bubbling up on his old campus in recent weeks. Crowds of students holding blank pieces of paper - a symbol of rebellion - have made the university one of the hotbeds for the anti-government protests ripping through the country.
Frustration at Xi’s perseverance with his tough zero-COVID stance has ignited the protests but experts believe the deteriorating prospects for young people has added more fuel to the fire.
George Magnus, associate at the China Centre at Oxford University, says: “[The protests] might mark an awakening of young people’s political consciousness, seeing the Communist Party for what it is and because aspirations economically are not as good as they used to be. That’s an important part of the backdrop.
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https://www.smh.com.au/business/markets/how-china-lost-the-covid-19-war-20221129-p5c26c.html
How China lost the COVID-19 war
By Paul Krugman
November 29, 2022 — 5.39pm
Do you remember when COVID-19 was going to establish China as the world’s dominant power? As late as mid-2021, my inbox was full of assertions that China’s apparent success in containing the coronavirus showed the superiority of the Chinese system over Western societies that, as one commentator put it, “did not have the ability to quickly organise every citizen around a single goal.”
At this point, however, China is flailing even as other nations are more or less getting back to normal life. It’s still pursuing its zero-COVID policy, enforcing draconian restrictions on everyday activities every time new cases emerge. This is creating immense personal hardship and cramping the economy; cities under lockdown account for almost 60 per cent of China’s gross domestic product.
In early November, many workers reportedly fled the giant Foxconn plant that produces iPhones, fearing not just that they would be locked in but that they would go hungry. And in the past few days many Chinese, in cities across the nation, have braved harsh repression to demonstrate against government policies.
I’m not a China expert, and I have no idea where this is going. As far as I can tell, actual China experts don’t know, either. But I think it’s worth asking what lessons we can draw from China’s journey from would-be role model to debacle.
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David.
