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or

H. L. Mencken - "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."

Thursday, March 28, 2019

The Macro View – Economics, and Politics and the Big Picture. What I Am Watching Here And Abroad.


March 28, 2019 Edition.
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The big news this week is that the Mueller Report has been handed in in the US as the North Koreans seems to be crab-walking away from their nuclear constraint. Not a good week for Trump!
In the UK it looks like Theresa May is in real trouble  with Brexit being rejected.
In Australia we have has the Coalition returned in NSW and we await the Federal Budget and the subsequent election.
In NZ the slow healing has begun and the gun laws are changing.
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Major Issues.

Politicians should know that dog whistling has consequences

Updated Mar 17, 2019 — 7.13pm, first published at 5.53pm
By the time the final week of the 2007 election campaign rolled around, the Howard government was already finished.
What made the defeat worse for the Coalition including, some believe, John Howard losing his seat, was the Lindsay pamphlet scandal three days before polling day.
Labor sleuths caught Liberal Party members letterboxing homes in the marginal western Sydney seat with flyers that fanned hate again Muslims and Labor.
The perpetrators included the husband of retiring Liberal member for the seat Jackie Kelly and the husband of the Liberal candidate. Their flyers purported to be from a fictional "Islamic Australia Federation" and essentially accused Labor of supporting the 2002 Bali bombers and claimed the then-opposition was backing the construction of a mosque in the western suburbs.
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Christchurch: a wound on the national identity

Luke Malpass
Mar 17, 2019 — 11.45pm
It's Sunday morning in Christchurch, New Zealand. Walking past the Hagley Oval Test match cricket ground, New Zealand and Bangladeshi cricketers should be warming up for the second day of a Test match. Yet the ground is eerily silent.
That's because a few hundred metres across the other side of Hagley Park, within sight of the oval, the Al Noor Mosque is cordoned off after 50 people were gunned down in cold blood by Australian Brenton Tarrant during prayers on Friday afternoon. If the Bangladeshi cricket team bus had been five or 10 minutes earlier for afternoon prayers, they too would have been caught in the crossfire.
Instead, the ground and the park in which it sits is quiet. Police officer Dave McCarthy, one of 50-odd cops flown down from the capital Wellington on Friday afternoon, comes over and says to the onlookers, "Hey, guys, I can take anything over to the mosque?" He proceeds to make several trips over to the cordon to pick up flowers and messages and deliver them to the walls of the mosque. Police with high-powered rifles line the streets and a bomb squad sweep of Deans Avenue is under way. The crowd watches on in respectful silence. Cold, damp drizzle arrives.
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Income funds pounce on franking changes and low-rate environment

Mar 17, 2019 — 1.22pm
Investment firms are seizing upon an increased demand for alternate income streams, with an influx of credit and fixed-income funds aimed at retail investors to hit the market in the next few months.
Labor's proposed changes to franking credits and increasingly smaller returns from term deposits are pushing retirees and self-managed super funds towards higher yielding assets such as credit funds and income trusts.
"People have had cash in term deposits and cash in franked dividend yields and now the reduction in franking benefits for retirees and very low term deposits has opened up that space in the middle," Schroders Investment Management fund manager Mihkel Kase said.
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Australia has eight police forces but none are tracking hate crimes

By Nick Kaldas
March 17, 2019 — 4.45pm
The incidents in Christchurch have brought an unprecedented horror for New Zealand and shaken the civilised world. It would be impossible for any decent person not to grieve for the innocent people killed and wounded by a mad gunman who clearly planned meticulously for his evil acts.
Video captures the moment a suspect was arrested in Brougham Street after the mosque shootings in Christchurch.
Yet we must reflect on what happened and try to learn from it to prevent these attacks and protect our societies as best we can.
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Last chance for Coalition to gain franking credit from voters

By Eryk Bagshaw
March 18, 2019 — 12.01am
The next few weeks will determine whether the Coalition is finally able to capitalise on an economic gift from Labor: Its plan to abolish franking credit tax refunds.
The Coalition’s “retiree tax” campaign has the potential to convince elderly voters of the fib that Labor wasn’t only coming after wealthier investors with share-portfolios, but all retirees, and that it is a tax, when it is the opposite.
Labor handed the Coalition a sword with which it could repeatedly wound its election chances. If only the government could keep its hands on the hilt.
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New trial launched to make renewable power more reliable

By Cole Latimer
March 18, 2019 — 5.11am
A new trial has been launched to cut power prices and make wind and solar energy more predictable by letting renewable generators forecast their own electricity production.
Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) chief executive Darren Miller said with better forecasting it will ultimately lead to lower power costs by removing the unevenness in wind and solar generation.
With better weather forecasting wind farms can remove some of the variability of their generation, making them more reliable.
“Improving forecasting of wind and solar generation will better integrate variable renewable energy into the grid, reduce grid instability and reduce costs. It’s a win-win for everyone,” Mr Miller said.
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Christchurch: The 'how' is explainable. The 'why' is harder to digest

By Greg Barton
March 17, 2019 — 1.08pm
When lives are tragically cut short, it is generally easier to explain the “how” than the “why”. This dark reality is all the more felt when tragedy comes at the hands of murderous intent. Explaining how 50 people came to be killed, and almost as many badly injured, in Christchurch’s double massacre of Muslims at prayer is heartbreaking but relatively straightforward.
As with so many mass murders in recent years, the use of an assault rifle, the ubiquitous AR-15, oxymoronically referred to as “the civilian M-16”, explains how one cowardly killer could be so lethal.
It was much the same in the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, three years ago, when one gunman shot dead 49 people in a crowded space and, though the motive appears very different, the same sort of military instrument of death lies behind the 58 deaths in Las Vegas a year later. An AR-15 was used to shoot dead 11 worshippers in Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue last October and a similar weapon was used to kill six people in a Quebec City mosque in January 2017.
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Stabbing near London is far-right terrorism, police say

March 18, 2019 — 5.37am
London: British police say a stabbing west of London in which a man attacked a teenager with a baseball hat and knife while hurling racist abuse is being treated as a terrorist incident "inspired by the far-right."
A 50-year-old man from the village of Stanwell, near Heathrow Airport, was arrested Saturday on suspicion of attempted murder and racially aggravated public order offences. A 19-year-old man was taken to the hospital with non- life-threatening injuries.
Neil Basu, head of counter-terrorism policing, said Sunday that while the investigation was just beginning, the incident had "hallmarks of a terror event." He added "police are committed to tackling all forms of toxic extremist ideology."
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Alt-right extremists are not being monitored effectively

By Cameron Houston and Shane Wright
March 17, 2019 — 6.05pm
Intelligence agencies on both sides of the Tasman are scrambling to work out how accused terrorist Brenton Tarrant evaded detection while planning his massacre in Christchurch, amid concerns of further violence by far-right extremists.
And, in comments backed by Opposition Leader Bill Shorten, a former NSW deputy police commissioner has called for the creation of a national database of hate crimes, which he described as a stepping stone towards the type of mass murder that claimed 50 lives in Christchurch.
Nick Kaldas, who quit the police force in 2016 after a 35-year career, said an "all-hands-on-deck" approach was needed to deal with right-wing extremism.
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Franking credit grab will hit retailers hard

  • 6:37AM March 18, 2019
Bricks and mortar retailers that don’t sell food are set to be hit with even tougher times in Australia, facing a downturn that will lower rents and reduce the value of both small and large shopping centres.
The sharemarket has been anticipating a longer term value fall, but the downward momentum is now accelerating.
On Friday I revealed how a surprised commercial banker saw two of his retail clients negotiate lower rents from a major Australian shopping centre owner when they threatened to leave. It was unprecedented.
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AFIC survey reveals franking credits fears

  • 2 hours ago March 18, 2019
The nation’s biggest listed investment company, the $7.2 billion Australian Foundation Investment Company, says a survey of its shareholder base found more than 85 per cent of respondents declare they will be negatively impacted by the ALP’s planned elimination of excess franking credits.
In a series of information meetings across the country, AFIC also said it had posted a letter on its website for shareholders to write to their MPs, while the listed investor has engaged through various industry groups to lobby on shareholders’ behalf.
AFIC, which looks after more than $7 billion in listed equities on behalf of 130,000 shareholders, said it is also looking at further strategies to try to influence policy makers on the issue of protecting franking credits.
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An investor's guide to the federal election

Mark Draper
Updated Mar 18, 2019 — 10.58am, first published at 10.53am
As if worrying about potential changes to franking credits and capital gains tax discounts weren’t enough, there are myriad other potential changes that investors need to think about should Australia have a change of government at the next federal election, as is widely expected.
Normally politics doesn’t feature prominently with investment decisions, but we suspect that this federal election will bring politics to the top of mind for investors. Here we examine some of the sectors that are likely to be affected by the election.
Nathan Bell, a senior portfolio manager for Intelligent Investor, says: “If Labor reduce the capital gains tax discount to 25 per cent, that could drastically reduce demand for investment properties, which has already collapsed due to falling property prices and tighter lending.
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The Overton Window: how white nationalist ideas made their way into our political debate

By Jacqueline Maley
Updated March 18, 2019 — 12.17pmfirst published at 12.00pm
This time last year, Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton made it his personal mission to bring to public attention the plight of a forgotten people, a people persecuted in their own land, a people who might benefit from the compassion and humanitarian assistance of Australia.
It’s been a while since Dutton has mentioned the white South African farmers he said Australia could take in under its immigration program because they faced “in-country persecution”.
He said he would direct the Immigration Department to examine the issue. Various newspapers ran with his story.
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Sydney and Melbourne house price fall sharpest in five downturns since 1965

Updated Mar 18, 2019 — 3.53pm, first published at 3.32pm
The fall in Sydney real house prices is close to hitting its average downturn decline at only halfway through the average downturn cycle, setting it up for the sharpest drop for the city since 1965, a BIS Oxford Economics study shows.
The average downturn for Sydney house prices is 14 quarters and the average total real price decline each downturn is 21 per cent. The current downturn has progressed through six quarters to December 2018, but real median prices – taking out the effects of inflation – are already down 16 per cent.
This could mean Sydney house prices have either dropped faster than average downturn cycles – five cycles since 1965 were analysed – or it could bode tougher times ahead with more price falls to come, BIS Oxford Economics' Angie Zigomanis said.
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The cost of political abatement is coming due

Jennifer Hewett Columnist
Mar 19, 2019 — 12.00am
Scott Morrison is too nervous to talk in any detail about any economic costs of the Coalition's plans for curbing greenhouse gas emissions.
Clarifying that would only cost the Coalition politically as it tries to edge away from the image of supporting more coal-fired power.
Nor does Bill Shorten want to provide too many facts and figures beyond Labor's promise of 50 per cent renewables and 45 per cent emissions reduction by 2030. It all sounds so pleasantly painless.
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It's not just a coincidence that nationalist violence is on the rise

David Leonhardt
Mar 18, 2019 — 10.51am
The President of the United States suggested last week that his political supporters might resort to violence if they didn't get their way.
The statement didn't even get that much attention. I'm guessing you heard a lot more about the college-admissions scandal than about the President's threat of extralegal violence. So let me tell you a little more about the threat.
In an Oval Office interview with writers from the right-wing news site Breitbart, President Donald Trump began complaining about Paul Ryan.
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Redneck to murderer: rise of far right new challenge for Australia

The murder of 50 people at Christchurch mosques allegedly by an Australian man has shone the spotlight on the rise of nationalists.
Andrew Tillett Political reporter
Mar 18, 2019 — 11.00pm
As a shocked world mourned the anti-Muslim massacre of 50 people in Christchurch allegedly at the hands of a NSW-born gunman, one of the poster children for Australia's far-right movement, Neil Erikson, went into damage control.
While repeatedly professing not to condone the bloody attack on two mosques, Erikson suggested it was "karma" for Muslims for "beheading, attacking, raping and pillaging white Christians across the world".
"This is what happens when you attack a people for so long. We're the sleeping dragon and we've awaken ... people have had enough," Erikson told his followers in a video recorded from the front seat of his car.
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After Christchurch universities have a responsibility: abandon Ramsay

By Nick Riemer
March 19, 2019 — 12.00am
There has been much discussion since Friday of politicians’ and parts of the media’s responsibility for promoting Islamophobia. But what of the role of institutions like universities?
Since June last year, a heated debate has been underway on whether universities should collaborate with the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation. Many academics have accused Ramsay of being the intellectual face of a Western supremacist politics, and therefore fundamentally incompatible with universities’ obligation to support multiculturalism.  After Christchurch, the urgency to accurately identify and obstruct the ideological enablers of racism in society could not be greater.
The controversy has prompted some image-management from Ramsay itself. Michael Easson, a Ramsay board member, has protested that, in fact, Ramsay does not promote any "particular ideological worldview".
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Telstra and Vodafone temporarily block websites after Christchurch attack

By Ry Crozier on Mar 19, 2019 10:01AM

Optus holds off for now.

Telstra and Vodafone have instituted temporary ISP-level blocks on websites hosting footage of last Friday’s Christchurch attacks, though Optus indicated it would not do similarly unless directed.
Both Telstra and Vodafone released similar statements as pressure mounted for action to be taken against news organisations and platforms that enabled the attack to be broadcast live or replayed.
“We've started temporarily blocking a number of sites that are hosting footage of Friday’s terrorist attack in Christchurch,” Telstra said in a statement on Twitter.
“We understand this may inconvenience some legitimate users of these sites, but these are extreme circumstances and we feel this is the right thing to do.”
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Sydney prices could fall up to 30pc

Su-Lin Tan Reporter
Updated Mar 19, 2019 — 3.50pm, first published at 3.22pm
Sydney's house prices could fall by up to 30 per cent when the downturn is over if its decline doesn't slow down by the third quarter of the year, BIS Oxford Economics warns.
In its bi-annual forecast in Sydney on Tuesday, the research group says given the negativity of the housing sector, house prices could fall between 20 to 30 per cent in nominal terms, or up to 35 per cent in real terms, especially if quarterly price falls in June and September this year remain at around 2 to 2.5 per cent or more.
The full peak to trough price fall of 25 per cent over the full downturn - with the peak in June 2017 - has been bandied about previously.
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'Very offensive': Morrison denounces Turkish president's Gallopoli warning

March 20, 2019 — 10.15am
Canberra: Prime Minister Scott Morrison has denounced comments made by Turkey's president linking the Australian suspect in the New Zealand massacre with Australia and New Zealand's role in the WWI battle of Gallopoli.
"I find it a very offensive comment...and I will be calling in the Turkish ambassador to meet with me and discuss these issues," Morrison said on an ABC radio interview.
In inflammatory comments on Monday, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan suggested that anyone who comes to Turkey with anti-Muslim sentiments would meet the same fate as ANZAC soldiers who died during the Gallipoli campaign.
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House prices tumble even faster than during the GFC, as RBA's concerns grow over jobs market

By Shane Wright
UpdatedMarch 19, 2019 — 4.02pmfirst published at 12.10pm
House prices across the country are falling even faster than they did during the Global Financial Crisis amid signs the Reserve Bank will consider an interest rate cut if the jobs market starts to deteriorate.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics on Tuesday reported house prices across the nation's capitals fell by 2.4 per cent in the December quarter to be down by 5.1 per cent through 2018.
In dollar terms, almost $270 billion has been wiped from the value of the nation's housing stock since March last year with $179 billion gone from NSW homes. Victorian home values have fallen by $104 billion.
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Why we all need Shorten in The Lodge. No, seriously

  • 12:00AM March 20, 2019
It is often said that, in a democracy, voters get the government they deserve. Tinkering with that slightly, there is also a case to be made that, from time to time, we get the government we need.
And in 2019 we both deserve and need a Shorten government.
First, some background to this astonishing statement. Australia holds the world record for the longest period of economic expansion, edging close to 30 years now. Our economic indicators point up or down in all the right ­directions: living standards up, unemployment down, disposable incomes up, consumer spending up, too. Australian banks survived the GFC in good health. The country has grown rich from mostly decent policies, a healthy dose of happenstance, plentiful underground resources, and a blessed and booming local geography.
There are warning signs, to be sure. Wages are stagnant and productivity has been flat. Young people find it hard to break into the big-city housing markets and there is rising underemployment too, meaning more people want additional working hours.But it seems that few people look at horizons and see dark clouds. No world wars for more than two generations, no depression for even longer, no millennial memory even of the last recession.
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Banks warn climate change ‘material financial risk’ to business

  • March 20, 2019
A third of the 38 largest Australian banks, insurance companies and superannuation funds believe climate change is an immediate “material financial risk” to their businesses while a further 20 companies believe it will be a risk in the future, according to the prudential regulator.
In the first survey of its kind, the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority found all of the 38 large institutions it surveyed were taking steps to understand the threat of climate change, with a majority of banks considering climate-related financial risks as part of their management frameworks.
It comes hot on the heels of a declaration last week from Reserve Bank deputy governor Guy Debelle that climate change and the conversion to a low-carbon economy or a world with more erratic weather events would have “first-order economic effects” that require an immediate but orderly transition to ensure financial stability.
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Why further financial crises are inevitable

Martin Wolf Financial Times
Mar 20, 2019 — 9.56am
We learnt this month that the US Federal Reserve had decided not to raise the countercyclical capital buffer required of banks above its current level of zero, even though the US economy is at a cyclical peak.
It also removed “qualitative” grades from its stress tests for American banks, though not for foreign ones. Finally, the Financial Stability Oversight Council, led by Steven Mnuchin, US Treasury secretary, removed the last insurer from its list of “too big to fail” institutions.
These decisions may not endanger the stability of the financial system. But they show that financial regulation is procyclical: it is loosened when it should be tightened and tightened when it should be loosened. We do, in fact, learn from history — and then we forget.
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Finding the optimum investment strategy if Labor wins

John Wasiliev
Mar 19, 2019 — 7.00pm
If it is held in mid-May as expected, the next federal election is less than two months or fewer than 60 days away. If Labor wins, as anticipated – principally because the present Coalition government is expected to lose – more than a million Australians across all income brackets who rely on share investments for the dividends they pay will be tightening their financial belts.
Why this will be so is because one certainty that will come with a Labor victory is reductions in their cash investment income that will from next year translate into income amounts that range from $50 to more than $600 a week.
This lost income will not be interest from term deposits or other income paying investments, nor will it be from property rentals or share dividends credited to their bank accounts but rather cash refund payments made each year since 2001 by the Australian Taxation Office. The refunds of share dividend tax credits where they exceed an investor's scope to offset them against tax on other investment income.
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Jerome Powell just boxed the Fed into a corner it shouldn't be in

Jacob Greber United States Correspondent
Mar 21, 2019 — 7.43am
Washington | The US economy may well be “in a good place", as Fed chairman Jerome Powell puts it. The state of monetary policy, not so much.
Cowed by the braying of his president and a self-serving financial market feedback loop, Powell’s laudable efforts to wean the world’s biggest economy off easy money have been exhausted.
Not only did Powell and his team pivot on Wednesday (Thursday AEDT) from tipping two rate hikes in 2019 to tipping none - with only one next year - they will begin halting within weeks the process of running down the gargantuan balance sheet they accumulated after the crisis.
The scale and speed of the course change has left many scratching their heads.
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Small businesses suffer under 'self-imposed credit squeeze' by banks

Duncan Hughes Reporter
Updated Mar 21, 2019 — 10.45am, first published at 9.25am
Small businesses face a worsening credit squeeze as more lenders tighten the screws on using the equity in residential properties for borrowing, by reining in loan-to-value ratios to as low as 40 per cent, and toughening up document checks.
Industry brokers and associations say small businesses are being unfairly caught in the fall-out from the banking royal commission that has resulted in more onerous checks on borrowers.
ASX-listed Adelaide Bank is the latest to toughen terms for small business borrowers that lending specialists and small business associations claim are cumulatively squeezing the life out of efforts to grow operations, increase employment, expand footprint and acquire equipment.
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$100b of lease liabilities headed for balance sheets

Vesna Poljak Senior Markets Reporter
Mar 20, 2019 — 12.05pm
New research estimating the impact of accounting standards that require leases to be brought on balance sheet finds up to $100 billion of liabilities will be recognised for the top 100 companies, beginning this year.
The findings underscore that the effect of the new standard goes well beyond retailers.
LeaseAccelerator concludes that Woolworths, Wesfarmers, Ramsay Health Care, Commonwealth Bank of Australia and Telstra face $54.5 billion of operating lease obligations between them, based on its analysis of published financial statements and its own assumptions.
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Fed signals year-long rate pause

Jacob Greber United States Correspondent
Mar 21, 2019 — 5.04am
Washington | In a dramatic dovish tilt, the US Federal Reserve has scrapped plans for further official interest rate hikes this year and declared it would halt its balance-sheet run-off in September, shutting dead its double-barrelled tightening strategy of 2018.
After two days of meetings, policy makers lowered their forecasts for the economy and left the benchmark rate at 2.25 per cent to 2.5 per cent on Wednesday (Thursday).
In a news conference, Fed chairman Jerome Powell reiterated the Fed would continue to be "patient" on its policy path.
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Stop bagging 'fat cat' bosses; this is the national debate we need

By Jessica Irvine
March 20, 2019 — 11.31pm
Australia’s industrial relations landscape has been the scene of many a pitchfork battle between bosses and workers over the years.
But compared to both the 1970s heydays of industrial disputes and the following decades of major policy reforms to decentralise wage fixing, today’s industrial battles are, by comparison, mere skirmishes.
That's not, of course, what Labor leader Bill Shorten would have you believe, having declared the upcoming federal election a "referendum on wages".
Vote Coalition and the business 'fat cats' will keep plundering your pay rises!
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Australia's far-right moves to shadowy messaging service amid crackdown on digital giants

By Max Koslowski
March 20, 2019 — 11.45pm
Two Australian far-right ringleaders banned by Twitter have urged supporters to follow them to shadowy messaging service Gab, a "free speech" alternative notorious for its use by extremists.
Blair Cottrell and Neil Erikson, two men with criminal convictions who have preached neo-Nazi values on social media over recent years, have become markers in the debate over whether Facebook, Twitter and Google should do more to deal with extremist accounts on their platforms.
The two figures started publishing from their Gab accounts this week, and since Tuesday have urged followers through their remaining social media channels to join them.
Australia's far-right scene is facing intense scrutiny following Australian citizen Brenton Tarrant's alleged killing of 50 people at two mosques in the New Zealand city of Christchurch.
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The sudden shift that should have all of us worried about the global economy

By Stephen Bartholomeusz
March 21, 2019 — 11.29am
The markets’ responses to the latest US Federal Reserve Board’s interest rate and balance sheet decisions were telling. The immediate reaction of the share market was to mark stocks up, before a more considered assessment sent them back down. Bond rates eased and the US dollar slid against its major trading partners’ currencies.
The nature of the Fed’s announcements – a majority of the members of its Open Market Committee expect no rate increases this year and the Fed plans to end the shrinking of its balance sheet by the start of October – ought to have been positive for the stock market. Instead the Dow Jones index ended more than half a percentage point down.
It was only six months ago that a signalling by the Fed of three rate rises in 2019 and a more aggressive winding down of a balance sheet still swollen by the central bank’s response to the financial crisis helped spark a dramatic plunge in stocks.
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Jobless rate falls to eight-year low

By Shane Wright
March 21, 2019 — 11.46am
The national unemployment rate has fallen to its lowest level in eight years but signs are growing the jobs market may be easing, with large increases in jobless rates in NSW and Victoria.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics on Thursday reported the unemployment rate edged down to 4.9 per cent in February from 5 per cent. It is the lowest jobless rate since December 2010 and below market expectations of 5 per cent.
But the fall was due to a drop in the number of people looking for work.
The total number of Australians in work in February rose by just 4600. Markets had been expecting a 15,000 increase.
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Bonds headed deeper into uncharted territory

As the Federal Reserve hits the pause button on rate hikes, Australian bond rates are drifting further into unforeseen territory.
Jonathan Shapiro Senior Reporter
Mar 21, 2019 — 2.57pm

Key Statistics

  • 1.90Australian 10-year rate
  • -60 bps Gap between Australian and US rates
  • 10.7%Chance of an RBA rate cut in May
An increasingly dovish Federal Reserve has added to downward pressure on Australian bond yields as fixed income markets push interest rates towards all-time lows.
On Thursday the Australian 10-year bond rate fell below 1.9 per cent, inching closer to its lowest-ever level of 1.82 per cent reached in August 2016.
The Australian dollar rallied in response to the Fed, and again on the drop in the unemployment rate to 4.9 per cent from 5 per cent on Thursday; it is fetching US71.54¢.
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How Christchurch has changed politics

Phillip Coorey Political Editor
Mar 21, 2019 — 8.00pm
A couple of weeks ago, Mathias Cormann and Scott Morrison were linking refugees to franking credits.
Not boat people who the government classifies as illegal arrivals, but people who are legitimately granted entry under the humanitarian quota within the annual migrant intake.
In 2017, Labor pledged to increase the humanitarian intake, from 18,750 people to 27,000 people by 2025.
At its National Conference in December last year, Bill Shorten, following agitation by the Left, announced that if elected, Labor would increase the humanitarian intake again, to 32,000 from 2025 onwards.
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The fallout of falling house prices

Jennifer Hewett Columnist
Mar 21, 2019 — 7.00pm
Philip Lowe still believes the fall in house prices, especially severe in Sydney and Melbourne, is manageable for the overall economy. He is backed by the relatively low unemployment rate, re-enforced by the February unemployment figures and a headline jobless rate falling to 4.9 per cent.
True, there was an increase in unemployment rate in NSW and Victoria but at 4.3 per cent and 4.8 per cent respectively, these states remain below the national average. After all, NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian is facing an election on Saturday based on a booming economy and her exuberant promise to NSW voters that "they can have it all". If she loses, (now looking less likely thanks to some recent Labor bloopers), it will be more due to her failing political leadership style rather than a failing economy.
Yet the sense of apprehension is growing – including, it seems, at the Reserve Bank – about the potential impact of a decline in mortgage lending and in prices which shows little sign of levelling off.
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Fed's pause has implications for Australia

The RBA, like the Fed and much of the world's economics fraternity, is in wait-and-see mode to gauge if the early 2019 global softening is a temporary blip or could turn into a more prolongned slowdown.
John Kehoe Senior Reporter
Mar 21, 2019 — 5.30pm
International economic events have real consequences for Australia, so the most influential central bank tipping a pause this year on interest rates has at least two major local implications.
First, the US Federal Reserve has confirmed the world economy is slowing and the future is more uncertain than the upbeat global outlook mid-to-late last year.
The moderation in the global expansion – from China to Europe and to a lesser extent the US – is being felt in Australia and is closely watched by the Reserve Bank of Australia and Treasurer Josh Frydenberg as he prepares his first budget.
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Doomed 737 jets lacked 2 safety features company sold only as extras

Hiroko Tabuchi and David Gelles
Mar 22, 2019 — 7.49am
As the pilots of the doomed Boeing jets in Ethiopia and Indonesia fought to control their planes, they lacked two notable safety features in their cockpits.
One reason: Boeing charged extra for them.
For Boeing and other aircraft manufacturers, the practice of charging to upgrade a standard plane can be lucrative. Top airlines around the world must pay handsomely to have the jets they order fitted with customised add-ons.
Investigators who verified data extracted from the black box recorders of the Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 MAX plane have found 'clear similarities' with the Lion Air flight that crashed in October.
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Toxic tribalism and the sad, broken state of Australian conversation

By Matthew Knott
March 22, 2019 — 11.30am
Last August, at a Donald Trump rally, I got talking to a man named Fred. It was still a few hours until the President was due to appear on stage and we were queuing for hot dogs.
Fred was the archetypal Trump voter: a white, middle-aged, blue collar worker who had voted Democratic his whole life. But he felt the party had taken voters like him for granted. As we spoke in rural Pennsylvania, other people joined the conversation.
As we continued talking, the temperature of the discussion grew increasingly heated. What struck me most wasn't how much Fred and the others admired Trump but how much they hated Democrats. The conversation ended with one man saying he wished California, a Democratic-voting state of 40 million residents, would break away and fall into the sea. Fred countered that he looked forward to the day a massive earthquake hit the state.
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The future of financial advice is forked

The old model of financial advice is crumbling leaving those seeking help with two options. One of them is a robot and the other might be out of your reach.
James Frost Financial Services Writer
Mar 23, 2019 — 12.00am
When a large shipping vessel sounds a prolonged blast of its horn every two minutes it’s a signal that all other craft in the area should pay attention.
That’s what Westpac did earlier this week when it announced it would be exiting the personal advice segment for good from July 1.
Westpac’s CEO Brain Hartzer said the bank was withdrawing from advice because costs were rising and revenues were falling. Personal financial advice was a high-risk, loss-making business and Australia’s second-largest bank could no longer make it work.
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Treasuries buying wave triggers curve inversion

Emily Barrett and Katherine Greifeld
Mar 23, 2019 — 5.57am
New York | The US Treasury yield curve inverted for the first time since the last crisis, triggering the first reliable market signal of an impending recession and rate-cutting cycle.
The gap between the 3-month and 10-year yields vanished as a surge of buying pushed the latter to a 14-month low of 2.416 per cent. Inversion is considered a reliable harbinger of recession in the US, within roughly the next 18 months.
Demand for government bonds gained momentum Wednesday, when US central bank policy makers lowered both their growth projections and their interest-rate outlook. The majority of officials now envisages no hikes this year, down from a median call of two at their December meeting.
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Australia can defy economic gravity for longer

By Clara Ferreira-Marques
March 22, 2019 — 3.28pm
After nearly three decades, Australia’s gravity-defying economy is finally showing signs of bending toward the laws of physics. Growth sputtered in the fourth quarter, with house prices falling and wages only inching up. There are ways, however, to keep the momentum going.
Living up to its sobriquet, the Lucky Country has admirably navigated the Asian crisis, the global financial crisis, the end of the largest mining boom in its history and domestic political upheaval that includes six prime ministers in about a decade.
Immigration helped, but ripple effects from China's boom, and then a ballooning property market and infrastructure investment, helped more. Much of that is now coming to an end.
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A tectonic shift to the left in the Australian political landscape

By Tom Switzer
March 23, 2019 — 12.00am
Australia is entering a new political era. Unless conservatives and genuine liberals make persuasive counter-arguments, we could be in the midst of a fundamental realignment in the Australian cultural landscape that entrenches progressive shibboleths for a generation.
It’s a far cry from the Howard years (1996-2007). In those days, it was those on the ideological left who were in a despondent mood, because conservatives increasingly represented the political mainstream.
For a man routinely described as lacking charisma, John Howard managed to hit just the right tone. He showed that integration was the key to social cohesion. Citizenship tests were born. The republic was passe.
Ably supported by Philip Ruddock, Howard showed that controlled border protection benefits nobody more than the immigrants who come here fairly and legally. As a result, it helped damp down the fires of racism and xenophobia. (Just look at Europe today.)
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Unintended consequences put squeeze on economy

  • 12:00AM March 23, 2019
The Australian economy is being hammered by a double dose of ­responsibility: responsible lending and responsible budgets.
Oh, the irony.
We have a credit squeeze and fiscal tightening at the wrong time — that is, into the teeth of a cyclical property downturn — because banks and governments were irresponsible for too long, and are now trying to atone for their sins by being responsible.
More broadly, Australia is reaping the result of having an economy based on real estate, ­resource exports and immigration, excluding manufacturing and ideas.
The nation’s economic health is hostage to the banks and China and there is an also a productivity-sapping infrastructure deficit that can’t be made up because state stamp duty revenues are now collapsing.
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Tougher scrutiny of far-right extremists after NZ mosque massacre

Andrew Tillett Federal Political Correspondent
Mar 22, 2019 — 5.01pm
Security agencies are stepping monitoring of far-right extremists in the wake of last week's Christchurch mosque massacres that left 50 dead allegedly at the hands of an Australian-born white supremacist shooter.
Home Affairs Department secretary Michael Pezzullo warned on Friday that extremists had nowhere to hide.
"The department has rededicated itself to standing resolutely against the extremist ideology of white supremacy and its adherents to whom I say: 'You are on our radar and you will not be able to incite the racial strife that you seek'," Mr Pezzullo told Senate estimates.
"The scrutiny and pressure you are under will only intensify."
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NSW Election 2019: Coalition set to be returned

Updated Mar 24, 2019 — 12.46am, first published at Mar 22, 2019 — 11.00pm
NSW Premier Gladys Berejikilan's government will be returned to power after the Labor opposition was only able to secure a modest swing in an election campaign fought over how to spend the state's huge tax revenues.
With half the votes counted, the Coalition had secured about 45 seats in the 93-seat parliament. Early counting estimated there was a swing to the Labor Party of 1.5 per cent, far short of the 3.2 per cent uniform shift needed to take out the government's parliamentary majority.
In a state where a Coalition government hasn't won a third term since the 1970s, Labor's primary vote was down 1.1 per cent, delivering a huge blow to its hopes of snatching power from the Liberals and Nationals, or at least forcing them into minority government.
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Donations 'more influential' than polls in Australian politics

By Caitlin Fitzsimmons
March 17, 2019 — 12.00am
Donations are a bigger influence on Australian politics than polls and the major parties have a history of ignoring mainstream voter opinion, social researcher Rebecca Huntley says.
Dr Huntley’s forthcoming Quarterly Essay, Australia Fair, argues that polls are often used as a short-term weapon by political rivals but do not truly influence policy and politics.
“If only research was as influential as donations!” she told The Sun-Herald.
"It doesn't matter how many times you show a political party that not only your constituents believe something but the swinging voters do too, the ideology of the party, who is in the parliament and more importantly who pays money to political parties overwhelms what the information might be telling them.”
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Budget 2019: $600m boost to target corporate misconduct

  • 12:00AM March 23, 2019
A new criminal division of the Federal Court will be established to try cases exclusively against banking executives and institutional misconduct as part of a $600 million funding boost to regulators in response to recommendations of the banking royal commission.
In a move to expedite prosecutions currently brought in state jurisdictions, the Morrison government plans to expand the reach of the Federal Court from hearing civil cases to include criminal prosecutions of the corporate sector.
With an expected spike in the number of charges to flow from the findings of the Hayne royal commission, Josh Frydenberg said it was the only way to ensure justice was delivered “swiftly”.
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Royal Commissions And Similar.

Banks' big retreat may go too far, warn corporate advisers Luminis

Mar 18, 2019 — 12.15am
Australia's big banks are in the middle of a giant retreat, selling and spinning off businesses worth billions of dollars in an effort to simplify and re-focus on their core purpose of writing loans and banking deposits – but they'd better be careful not to go too far.
That's the view of some of Australia's most senior corporate advisers, the partners at boutique firm Luminis Partners, who are watching with interest the fallout from the banking royal commission and strategy shifts at the big four banks and other financial services companies.
"In 10 years' time, people will look back and say 'why did they exit some of these businesses' and I wouldn't be surprised if in 10 years' time the cycle returns and they go back into some of these businesses," says Luminis Partners co-executive chairman and 30-plus year investment banker Simon Mordant.
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'I felt blackmailed': heavy-handed tactics in the aged care industry

By Harriet Alexander
March 18, 2019 — 4.21pm
An aged care provider attempted to "blackmail" the family of a woman who had to go to hospital during a period of respite care, saying it would not take her back unless the family committed her to a permanent place.
Raelene Ellis put her mother into short-term care at an Opal Aged Care facility in October last year to get some respite from the demands of caring for a woman with advanced dementia, but during her stay the septegenarian fell ill with pneumonia and spent 40-hours in hospital hooked up to intravenous antibiotics.
"Of course what happens is once mum went to hospital the respite place ceased," Ms Ellis told the royal commission into aged care quality and safety on Monday.
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Banking Royal Commission - Key lessons for company directors

The Commission conducted seven rounds of public hearings totalling 68 days, heard from 130 witnesses and reviewed over 10,000 submissions. At the completion of this comprehensive review, the message delivered to the industry in the Commissioner’s Final Report was clear and simple. The Report identified six basic norms of behaviour that those the subject of the inquiry had failed to embody:
  • obey the law;
  • do not mislead or deceive;
  • act fairly;
  • provide services that are fit for purpose
  • deliver services with reasonable care and skill; and
  • when acting for another, act in the best interests of that other.
From a governance perspective, three key lessons emerged from the Commissioner’s Report for company directors.
1. Get your priorities right
The Commissioner lamented that too often the priority of entities in the financial services industry was the pursuit of profit above all else, including the interests of customers and compliance with the law. The Report emphasised that culture and governance practices must focus on non-financial risk, as well as financial risk.
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Property downturn could affect aged care costs

  • By John Rawling
  • 12:00AM March 22, 2019
As the aged care royal commission rolls on across the country, the troubled sector has received a rare positive signal. The unmistakeable trend of falling property prices, which are down 10-20 per cent Australia-wide, is set to affect costs in aged care.
Many people have to sell their family home to pay the infamous Refundable Accommodation Deposits, so it stands to reason that if the family home is worth 20 per cent less than it was last year, RADs become commensurately more expensive.
The range of RADs is enormous, varying between different facilities, aged-care providers, locations, even between different rooms within the same facility. So far, RADs have not changed to reflect falling house prices, but we can expect changes soon.
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National Budget Issues.

Bringing forward tax cuts just not enough: Deloitte Access

By Shane Wright
March 18, 2019 — 12.01am
Early tax cuts aimed at wooing voters back to the Morrison government could undermine the budget and deliver virtually nothing to low-income earners, according to new analysis which predicts Treasurer Josh Frydenberg is on track to deliver the first surplus in a decade.
Deloitte Access Economics, in its annual preview of the budget, said the government is benefiting from surging tax revenues from the company sector and ordinary workers despite growing signs the economy is struggling.
The budget is pivotal to the government's re-election plans with extra tax cuts expected to be provided on top of $9.2 billion worth of handouts that were contained in the mid-year budget update but have yet to be made public.
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A budget of tough choices facing Josh Frydenberg

By Shane Wright
March 18, 2019 — 4.00pm
As the knight guarding the Holy Grail in the third Indiana Jones film understood, making the correct choice can be the difference between life and death.
Politically, budgets - for all the Hollywood special effects sometimes pumped into them - are also about choices.
A tax cut here, special expenditure there. Combined, budgets give voters an idea of what a government is about.
Sometimes, the choices don't even have to be large to deliver a significant benefit. In his last budget, for instance, Peter Costello gave the tax office $20 million to go down the path of pre-filling tax returns in a simple move that to this day is saving ordinary people time and effort.
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Reserve Bank cites uncertainties over outlook

  • An hour ago March 19, 2019
The Reserve Bank is counting on economic growth rising to 3 per cent this year and the jobless rate coming down to 4.75 per cent to return inflation to its target band.
The bank remains confident in the outlook for employment but minutes of its February board meeting highlight concern that weak household consumption may sap the economy’s momentum.
The bank highlights that indicators of future trends in the labour market, such as the number of job vacancies and surveys of business hiring intentions, suggested further growth in employment over the short term, while firms were reporting difficulty in hiring suitable labour.
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Australia could be ‘first domino to fall’ in next GFC

A collapse in the housing market could spill into the banking sector and send “shockwaves” through the global economy, experts have warned.
news.com.au March 19, 20194:01pm
Australia could be the “first domino to fall” in a global economic crisis for the first time in its 200-year history.
That’s according to economist John Adams, Digital Finance Analytics founder Martin North and Irish financial adviser Eddie Hobbs, who argue Australia’s economy is looking increasingly similar to Ireland’s prior to the 2007 housing collapse.
For nearly three years, Mr Adams has been predicting a looming “economic Armageddon” in which a vulnerable Australia is overwhelmed by an overseas financial crisis due to property, household debt and net foreign debt bubbles.
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RBA downplays credit crunch risk

  • March 20, 2019
Reserve Bank assistant governor Michele Bullock has downplayed the risk of a credit crunch in Australia, while cautioning that the apartment market in Sydney is “quite soft”.
While the risks from a slowdown in Australia’s housing and credit markets amid high household debt are “a little more heightened” than six months ago, there are no significant implications for financial stability at this stage, she told the Urban Development Institute Australia in Perth.
In a speech titled “Property, Debt and Financial Stability”, Ms Bullock noted that the RBA said six months ago in its financial stability review that global economic and financial conditions were generally positive and that the Australian economy was improving, but house prices were falling.
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Health Issues.

Cost of x-rays and ultrasounds to drop under Coalition pledge to increase Medicare rebates

All ultrasound and diagnostic radiology services to be cheaper under plan
Australian Associated Press
Patients who need x-rays and ultrasounds will end up paying less under a new Morrison government pledge to reduce out-of-pocket expenses for the services.
The health minister, Greg Hunt, announced on Sunday the government would expand indexation of Medicare payments to all ultrasound and diagnostic radiology services over three years from 1 July 2020 – for the first time in 20 years.
The promise means Medicare rebates for about 90% of diagnostic imaging services will increase regularly at a cost to the commonwealth of almost $200m.
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Billion-dollar boost for hospital upgrades promised by ALP

By Shane Wright
March 18, 2019 — 12.01am
States and territories would share $1 billion to upgrade key parts of the nation's hospitals from emergency departments to mental health facilities under a plan by Labor to ramp up the health issue ahead of the May election.
The plan is to be announced by Opposition Leader Bill Shorten on Monday and would see $1 billion for capital investments drawn from Labor's $2.8 billion hospitals proposal.
Each state or territory will be able to gain cash which must be spent on capital works. Either the entire tab for a project will be picked up by Canberra or it would strike a deal to contribute towards some of the overall cost.
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Shorten to pledge $1bn for hospital upgrades

  • 12:00AM March 18, 2019
Bill Shorten will today announce $1 billion for capital works to upgrade Australia’s public hospitals, including the delivery of new wards, refurbished emergency departments and new palliative care and mental health facilities.
The Opposition Leader will make the announcement in the Royal Perth Hospital as he kicks off a week of campaigning in Western Australia in a bid to refocus the political message.
Mr Shorten has already announced that Labor, if elected, will establish a $2.8bn Better Hospitals Fund to bolster health services over 2019-25. Today’s announcement will provide clarity over how at least $1bn in the new hospitals fund will be directed if Mr Shorten wins office.
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Bupa’s Australian defence force contract under scrutiny amid nursing home scares

Healthcare company dismisses concerns after damning reports of poor performance
Concerns are growing that Bupa might not be up to the job of providing quality healthcare to serving Australian defence force personnel amid damning reports of poor performance at the company’s nursing homes.
The defence minister, Christopher Pyne, announced in January that Bupa would replace Medibank as the Australian defence force’s healthcare contractor from 1 July.
Bupa, a health, insurance and nursing home business which is headquartered in London, is expected to be in the firing line of the royal commission into the aged care sector.
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How I became a fan of primary health networks

And no, it's not just because I'm a member of a PHN board
Professor Simon Willcock
20th March 2019
Aside from Labor’s effective (but inaccurate) ‘Mediscare’ campaign in the run-up to the last federal election, recent polls have been largely devoid of discussions around health policy.
The recent history of both Coalition and Labor governments — in terms of what they delivered rather than what they promised — shows that neither did much beyond containing costs by capping Medicare payments.
And any hope that the MBS Review Taskforce, which has been in motion since the last election, would come up with some real answers is increasingly doubtful.
Like most national health systems, ours has some uniquely quirky features. We have a universal Medicare insurance program committed to a general practice gatekeeper. But we are progressively starving those gatekeepers.
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Australia a big drag on full-year profits says Bupa

Carrie LaFrenz Reporter
Mar 20, 2019 — 5.49pm
London-based healthcare group Bupa has warned that conditions will continue to be “challenging” in some of its key markets, including Australia where profits fell 9 per cent last year.
Bupa is the largest aged care provider in Australia and a top health-insurance player, with insurance comprising the majority of its local earnings. Both units were under pressure in 2018, and 2019 is not looking any better as it faces a royal commission into aged care and a pending federal election.
The Australian and New Zealand business makes up almost 40 per cent of Bupa's group revenue, which was flat for the year at £11.9 billion ($22.8 billion). Underlying profit was down 12 per cent.
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If you don't know what you want from aged care, you'll pay

Louise Biti
Mar 21, 2019 — 10.47am
Aged care is shaping up to be one of this year's hot topics, as a royal commission has begun into aged care quality and safety as we head towards a federal election.
Medical and dietary advancements are enabling us to live longer, which is good news, but living longer also increases the chances that we will live through periods of frailty, either physical or mental, and require care to help with our day-to-day life.
In 2017, 3.8 million Australians were over the age of 65, representing about 15 per cent of the population. By 2057, 22 per cent of the population of Australia is expected to be over the age of 65.
Of this age group, just over 1 million people accessed a government subsidised aged care service either at home or in a residential care service during 2016-17.  Usage  increases with age, as 70 per cent of people aged 85 and over access subsidised care services.
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End-of-life inquiry lays out safeguards for voluntary euthanasia

By Katie Burgess
March 21, 2019 — 7.31pm
A parliamentary committee has laid out safeguards for voluntary euthanasia in the ACT, should federal laws be changed to allow territories to legalise it in future.
But the end-of-life choices inquiry made no explicit recommendation to introduce assisted dying, in recognition that the territory has no legal power to enact a scheme.
The inquiry - which received 488 submissions, held 10 hearings and listened to 87 witnesses over the past 16 months - was tasked with looking at the options currently available to dying Canberrans and to consider what an assisted dying scheme in the ACT would look like.
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Do what it takes to enjoy old age

  • 12:00AM March 22, 2019
Everyone is growing older but, for those fortunate enough to make it to old age, the experience of being old differs from person to person. Quality of later life is far from universal.
According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, men aged 65 in 2015 could expect to live an additional nine years free of disability and about 10 years with some level of disability, including three years with severe or profound core activity limitation. For women the same age, the expectation was for another 10 years free of disability, about 12 years with some disability, including six years with severe or profound core activity limitation.
For both sexes, that means a touch over half of retirement spent with a disability, although with women obviously still living longer than men. Of course, a lot depends on how well people spend their earlier years and, often times, their access to quality healthcare. Bad habits, unnecessary risk-taking and neglected problems have a tendency to mount up, coming to a head when you are least prepared to respond.
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Labor’s health hit on 65,000 families

  • 12:00AM March 22, 2019
Up to 65,000 families in regional areas are the most likely to be targete­d under Labor’s plans to scrap private health insurance rebates for so-called “junk” policies.
In figures released to The Aust­ralian last night, Labor’s health spokeswoman, Catherine King, said Labor’s plans would affect 65,000 families, with a saving to the budget of $80 million.
Health Minister Greg Hunt accused Labor of planning to force millions of Australians out of private health insurance, and of presiding over a policy that was now in chaos.
 “It’s reprehensible that the people mostly likely to be hit by Labor’s private health insurance policy are elderly people in regiona­l communities,” Mr Hunt said. “This is complete policy chaos — Labor can’t be trusted.”
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Lyrica, Pfizer, and how big pharma gets what it wants

By Liam Mannix
March 23, 2019 — 8.04pm
In 2011, few had heard of Pfizer’s nerve-pain pill Lyrica. It was mostly confined to specialist pain clinics, doses kept low to minimise nasty side-effects.
Eight years later, it is one of Australia’s most prescribed drugs. More than 4 million scripts for pregabalin, the drug’s generic name, were written in 2017-18, costing government and consumers more than $171 million.
That’s come with a huge toll. An investigation by The Age revealed Pfizer’s ‘safe, non-addictive’ nerve-pain pill was highly addictive, dangerous when taken with other drugs, and came with a range of nasty side-effects - including suicidal thoughts.
The drug has been linked to more than 250 drug overdose deaths and six suicides. More than 85,000 Australians are abusing pregabalin, according to one study. Concerned doctors are scrambling to deal with the fallout.
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No clear plan to fix mental health system crisis, says report

By Adam Carey
March 21, 2019 — 5.24pm
Mentally ill Victorians are being let down by an acute care system starved of funding, short of staff and operating in constant crisis mode, Victoria’s Auditor-General says.
In a scathing report, Auditor-General Andrew Greaves also says the Department of Health and Human Services understands the extent of the problem but has no clear plan to fix it.
“Until the system has the capacity to operate in more than just crisis mode, DHHS cannot expect to be able to make meaningful improvements to clinical care models or the mental health of the Victorian population,” Mr Greaves says.
The Andrews government should not wait for its Royal Commission into Mental Health to conclude before taking steps to repair the mental health system, he writes in a report tabled in State Parliament on Thursday.
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International Issues.

German bank merger should send shudders through global markets

By Stephen Bartholomeusz
March 18, 2019 — 2.03pm
Deutsche Bank has been designated as a "G-SIB" and Commerzbank a "D-SIB" by the international banking regulators. The mooted merger of the two struggling German banks ought, therefore, to send shudders through financial markets and the regulatory bodies.
A G-SIB is a global systemically important institution. A D-SIB is one of domestic systemic importance. That means they are regarded as too big to fail. Put them together and they would create an institution of even greater global and domestic significance and threat.
Both banks have spent the past decade struggling to cope with the legacies of the financial crisis and making little progress. And now they want to merge?
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Brexit bombshell: May denied third last-gasp vote on EU divorce deal

By Nick Miller
March 19, 2019 — 4.08am
London: The Speaker of the UK Parliament, John Bercow, has thrown a bombshell into the Brexit crisis, ruling that Prime Minister Theresa May cannot have a third vote on her Brexit divorce deal unless it gets “substantially” changed.
The ruling has provoked fury in the government, with one government minister reportedly accusing Bercow of breaking the country’s constitution.
The British government must submit a different proposition to parliament to the one it lost last week if it wants to hold another vote on its Brexit plans, said the parliament's speaker, John Bercow.
It almost guarantees that May must seek a long delay to Brexit, which is due in 11 days. Any delay must be agreed by the heads of the other 27 EU countries, who are meeting this week in Brussels.
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Let's delay EU exit, May to tell Brussels

Hans van Leeuwen Europe correspondent
Mar 20, 2019 — 4.52am
London | British Prime Minister Theresa May will head to Brussels on Thursday to ask the 27 European Union leaders for a delay to Britain's imminent departure, at a summit that could jolt the whole Brexit process onto a new trajectory.
With the Brexit D-day looming on March 29, Mrs May will reportedly write to European Council President Donald Tusk on Wednesday (AEDT) seeking a long or short 'Brextension' - or possibly the option of choosing either.
Her spokesman said early on Wednesday that Mrs May's prediction of a political crisis "had now come to pass".
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Australian coal in the firing line of Chinese 'environmental' crackdown

By Kirsty Needham
Updated March 20, 2019 — 12.58amfirst published March 19, 2019 — 6.53pm
Beijing: China's crackdown on coal imports has become significantly harsher, with Australian and Mongolian coal being particularly targeted for inspection on "environmental" grounds.
Inspectors recently rejected 182 trucks carrying 19,540 tons of Mongolian coal, the biggest coal turn-back in years.
And Australian coal continues to suffer long delays at Chinese ports, with coal industry analysts who spoke to The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald saying environmental inspections had been significantly stepped up this year.
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'Matter of great personal regret': May asks Brussels for Brexit delay

By Nick Miller
March 21, 2019 — 9.32am
London: UK Prime Minister Theresa May has sought to place the blame for her country’s Brexit political stalemate and constitutional crisis squarely on the nation’s parliament.
On Wednesday night she addressed the nation accusing members of parliament of playing “political games” and holding “arcane procedural rows”.
She was seeking to explain her decision to ask Brussels for a short delay to Brexit past its March 29 deadline – a deadline she had insisted she would meet 108 times in parliament, one Conservative MP pointed out.
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Trump's man in the Fed helps explain its dovish turn

Jacob Greber United States Correspondent
Mar 21, 2019 — 12.02pm
Washington | Donald Trump's most recent pick for the Federal Reserve has been instrumental in driving the central bank's sharply dovish direction and countering the influence of others who want more rate hikes to head off inflation, says economist Nouriel Roubini.
Richard Clarida, an economist and former Pimco managing director, was appointed vice-chairman of the Fed Open Market Committee in October at the height of Mr Trump's attacks on chairman Jerome Powell's rate hikes in 2018. These, he said,  were his "greatest threat" and a sign that policy makers were "crazy".
Since taking up the post, investors and analysts have speculated about Mr Clarida's apparent rapid and rising influence within the Fed, which on Wednesday (Thursday AEDT) abruptly signalled it has shelved all plans for interest rate hikes in 2019.
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Crimea: Enduring five years in a human rights black hole

By Dr. Mykola Kulinich
March 22, 2019 — 12.00am
This month marks five years since Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula was invaded and subsequently occupied by Russia. The occupiers who came from across the border would come to be known as “Putin’s little green men” — Russian troops with their military insignias hidden.
Russian President Volodymyr Putin at first brazenly denied his country’s involvement, then later admitted that it was an under-cover operation by Russian special forces.
The Kremlin held a sham referendum and installed a puppet government. These events shocked the world community and created the dangerous precedent which undermined the law-based world order. On March 27, 2014, the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 68/262 “Territorial integrity of Ukraine” condemned occupation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula and all western democracies including Australia imposed
sanctions on Russia.
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EU allows Britain a delay on Brexit date

By Nick Miller
March 22, 2019 — 11.10am
London: The UK has been given a reprieve of at least a fortnight to try and work out what it wants from Brexit.
The announcement comes as local media revealed that Britain's military is planning for a no-deal Brexit from a nuclear bunker below its government headquarters.
Brexit had been due to happen on March 29 – next Friday – but after a marathon session in Brussels on Thursday evening EU national leaders agreed to grant British Prime Minister Theresa May’s request for a delay.
Until April 12 “all options will remain open and the cliff edge date will be delayed,” European Council president Donald Tusk said. “The UK government will still have a choice of [May’s] deal, no deal, a long extension or revoking [Brexit].”
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Is the Risk of Ethnic Conflict Growing in Ukraine?

New Laws Could Create Dangerous Divisions

The Ukrainian presidential election is only weeks away, and its outcome is highly uncertain. President Petro Poroshenko is lagging in the polls behind Volodymyr Zelensky, a television actor whose only political experience consists of playing the president of Ukraine in a sitcom. The country will head to the polls while still at war in its eastern region of Donbas, where in 2014, local separatists forcibly seized government buildings and declared people’s republics in the cities of Donetsk and Luhansk. Since then, the conflict has taken on elements of both a civil war and an interstate conflict, with Russia arming separatist combatants and sponsoring the breakaway regions. Violence is muted but steady: the number of deaths recently reached 13,000, one-quarter of them civilian.
Unsurprisingly, Ukraine’s leading presidential candidates are all running on platforms resisting Russia. The choice is logical given popular anger over President Vladimir Putin’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and continued interference in Donbas. But Poroshenko differs from other candidates in that he couches his anti-Russian message in a national identity incorporating elements of Ukrainian ethnicity. Whereas his campaign slogan in 2014 was “A New Way of Living,” his current slogan is “Army! Language! Faith!”
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Mueller delivers final report to AG with no further charges

Jacob Greber United States Correspondent
Mar 23, 2019 — 8.21am
Washington | Special Counsel Robert Mueller's long-anticipated report into whether Donald Trump or those around him conspired in Russia's interference in the 2016 election has recommended no new charges in what is shaping up as a significant victory for the President and his family.
Pushing the Washington pundit machine into overdrive late on Friday (Saturday AEDT) Attorney-General William Barr confirmed receipt of the Mr Mueller's report.
Seperately, Department of Justice sources told reporters that the report delivers no additional indictments, confounding the expectations of many Democrats and judicial experts that there would be more allegations against the president.
America now waits in suspense on the contents of the report from Mr Mueller's investigation which has cast a shadow over the entire Trump administration almost since day one.
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Mueller probe is over, but will Trump emerge vindicated or condemned?

By Matthew Knott
March 23, 2019 — 11.25am
New York: The end of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation represents a defining moment of Donald Trump's presidency.
For almost two years, the investigation has loomed over Trump like a terrifying shadow, distracting and tormenting him.
Special counsel Robert Mueller has closed his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 US election.
Meanwhile, millions of Democrats have invested enormous hope in the idea that Mueller will unearth something devastating about Trump – something capable, perhaps, of ending his presidency prematurely.
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Turn in your smartphones: How Mueller kept a lid on Trump-Russia probe

By Karen Freifeld and Nathan Layne
March 23, 2019 — 2.45am
Washington: When members of special counsel Robert Mueller's team investigating Russia's role in the 2016 US election arrived for work each day, they placed their mobile phones in a locker outside of their office suite before entering.
Operating in secrecy in a nondescript glass-and-concrete office, the team of prosecutors and investigators since May 2017 has unearthed secrets that have led to bombshell charges against several of President Donald Trump's aides, including his former national security adviser, campaign chairman and personal lawyer, who have pleaded guilty or been convicted by a jury.
On Friday, Mueller submitted his final report to Attorney General William Barr, closing his 22-month investigation.
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Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner cooperating with US House probe: source

March 23, 2019 — 11.25pm
President Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner is cooperating with a wide-ranging probe by the US House Judiciary Committee into Trump and possible obstruction of justice and abuse of power, a person knowledgeable about the matter said on Friday.
Just hours earlier, a lawyer for Trump adviser Roger Stone said in a letter seen by Reuters that Stone was not cooperating with the same committee and cited his right to avoid self-incrimination under the Fifth Amendment of the US Constitution.
Special counsel Robert Mueller has closed his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 US election.
The contrasting responses to Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler's probe targeting 81 individuals and groups came on the same day the Justice Department announced the completion of a report by Special Counsel Robert Mueller into Trump and Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.
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Jacinda-isms: some lessons for leaders in how to 'Ardern' up

By Helen Pitt
March 24, 2019 — 12.00am
From the two minutes' silence across her nation on Friday to the gunman who shall not be named, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern showed us this past week that leadership is as much what you don’t say as what you do.
Our own Prime Minister Scott Morrison, despite loosening his tie and sitting down for a television interview with commentator Waleed Aly, could have taken some lessons out of the Ardern playbook. Not long before his interview on The Project, which can only be described as awkward and at times aggressive, the New Zealand first family had some news of their own.
It was delivered in their trademark don’t-tell-me-show-me style, which has become synonymous with the social media stream of this former DJ PM and her TV star partner, Clarke Gayford, host of Fish of the Day and stay-at-home father.
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I look forward to comments on all this!
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David.

This Is An Excellent Summary Of How Electronic Health Records Have Let Us Down.

This radio show aired in the US last week:

Why The Promise Of Electronic Health Records Has Gone Unfulfilled

March 18, 20193:15 PM ET
The reality of electronic medical records has yet to live up to the promise.
A decade ago, the U.S. government claimed that ditching paper medical charts for electronic records would make health care better, safer and cheaper.
Ten years and $36 billion later, the digital revolution has gone awry, an investigation by Kaiser Health News and Fortune magazine has found.
Veteran reporters Fred Schulte of KHN and Erika Fry of Fortune spent months digging into what has happened as a result. (You can read the cover story here.)
Here are five takeaways from the investigation.
Patient harm: Electronic health records have created a host of risks to patient safety. Alarming reports of deaths, serious injuries and near misses — thousands of them — tied to software glitches, user errors or other system flaws have piled up for years in government and private repositories. Yet no central database exists to compile and study these incidents to improve safety.
Signs of fraud: Federal officials say the software can be misused to overcharge, a practice known as "upcoding." And some doctors and health systems are alleged to have overstated their use of the new technology, a potentially enormous fraud against Medicare and Medicaid likely to take years to unravel. Two software-makers have paid a total of more than $200 million to settle fraud allegations.
Gaps in interoperability: Proponents of electronic health records expected a seamless system so patients could share computerized medical histories in a flash with doctors and hospitals anywhere in the United States. That has yet to materialize, largely because officials allowed hundreds of competing firms to sell medical-records software unable to exchange information among one another.
Doctor burnout: Many doctors say they spend half their day or more clicking pull-down menus and typing rather than interacting with patients. An emergency room doctor can be saddled with making up to 4,000 mouse clicks per shift. This has fueled concerns about doctor burnout, which a January report by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, the Massachusetts Medical Society and two other organizations called a "public health crisis."
Web of secrets: Entrenched policies continue to keep software failures out of public view. Vendors of electronic health records have imposed contractual "gag clauses" that discourage buyers from speaking out about safety issues and disastrous software installations — and some hospitals fight to withhold records from injured patients or their families.
Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent news service supported by the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation. KHN is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
Here is the link:
This audio is linked to the All Things Considered Heard On, is only 4 mins and is well worth a listen.
This is important stuff and change needs to happen and reasonably quickly. The #myHR is a block to progress not a help.
David.

Wednesday, March 27, 2019

From The Country That Gave Us The ADHA CEO Comes A Stern Warning About Health Information Protection And Use.

This appeared last week:

Lack of clarity around data sharing risks ‘irreparable mistrust’, NHS Digital chief warns

Absolute clarity is needed around how the NHS will use patient data or we risk “deep and almost irreparable mistrust”, the NHS Digital chief has said.
15 March 2019
Sarah Wilkinson said the NHS needs to formalise its position on the secondary use of patient data in order to fully benefit from the insights already available within the national data set.
Speaking at a Kings Fund and IBM Watson event on artificial intelligence in healthcare on Tuesday, Wilkinson said we need to “directly address people’s concerns by laying out our ethical approach to dealing with data and providing absolutely clarity on how we intend to use health data”.
She warned that “political interest” could interfere while there is no clear guidance.
“Today the legislation that governs the use of health and care data in the system allows for multiple interpretations,” she told the audience in London.
“There’s a danger that judgements are made about health and care data that don’t accord with the innate understanding of how the NHS will use their data, and I think if we get that wrong there will be a deep and almost irreparable mistrust.
“I believe we need a much more open debate about balancing the risks and opportunities associated with different uses of this data and we need to formalise our position on acceptable uses so that we can be really clear with citizens.”
Ms Wilkinson said the lack of clarity around the use of data was “slowing us down” and that mistrust in the system could have a “dramatic impacts” on quality of research.
More here:
This barely needs comment. The zeitgeist has changed since the Cambridge Analytica saga and other major data abuses. I believe the fact that 2.5 million people opted-out of the #myHealthRecord tells you all you need to know about public attitudes in regard to security and privacy of personal health information.
The bureaucrats and other secret information sharers in Government need to take careful note in regard to openness and transparency and the acquisition of proper consent. The backlash will be violent and brutal if they don’t!
David.

Tuesday, March 26, 2019

Commentators and Journalists Weigh In On Digital Health And Related Privacy And Security Matters. Lots Of Interesting Perspectives - Week 36.

Note: I have excluded (or marked out) any commentary taking significant  funding from the Agency or the Department of Health on all this to avoid what amounts to paid propaganda. (e.g. CHF, RACGP, AMA, National Rural Health Alliance etc. where they were simply putting the ADHA line – viz. that the myHR is a wonderfully useful clinical development that will save huge numbers of lives at no risk to anyone – which is plainly untrue) (This signifies probable ADHA Propaganda)
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Note: I have also broadened this section to try to cover all the privacy and security compromising and impacting announcements in the week – along with the myHR. It never seems to stop! Sadly social media platforms get a large run this week.
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Connected care: protecting patient privacy and security

Eve Maler | 21 Mar 2019
After a delay to strengthen privacy and security protections, the expansion of the government’s centralised digital medical records system is complete. The rollout of My Health Record reflects a significant shift towards the digitisation of healthcare and Australia’s vision to make patient records more accessible. 
This has resulted in the creation of new opportunities to improve care across a range of health services. 
The possibilities, while endless, also open up a range of challenges regarding privacy and consent – challenges which nearly 300,000 Australians aren’t prepared to face, having opted out of the system by November 2018.
Connected but secure
Using digitised services ranging from online health records to remote monitoring tools such as wearables or apps, organisations are seeking to improve patient outcomes. 
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Europe takes lead on big tech

The Economist
  • 12:00AM March 23, 2019
 “The birthday of a new world is at hand.” Ever since Thomas Paine penned those words in 1776, America has seen itself as the land of the new — and Europe as a continent stuck in the past.
Nowhere is that truer than in the tech industry. America is home to 15 of the world’s 20 most valuable tech firms, Europe has one.
Silicon Valley is where the brainiest ideas meet the smartest money. America is also where the debate rages loudly over how to tame the tech giants, so that they act in the public interest. Tech tycoons face roastings by congress for their firms’ privacy lapses. Elizabeth Warren, a senator who is running for president in 2020, wants Facebook to be broken up.
Yet if you want to understand where the world’s most powerful industry is heading, look not to Washington and California, but to Brussels and Berlin. In an inversion of the rule of thumb, while America dithers the European Union is acting.
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Social media giants face regulation as publishers, not just postmen

The big stick of regulation on tech seems to be building up steam.
Max Mason Media & Marketing Editor
Mar 22, 2019 — 12.02pm
As vision of the New Zealand Prime Minister consoling members of the Islamic community and showing her country’s support and sorrow for the victims of the Christchurch terrorist attack was broadcast around the work last week, the 38-year old was already being mocked and slandered on social media.
As a sign of respect and unity, Jacinda Ardern wore a black headscarf as she visited the families of the victims of last Friday’s attack by an Australian white supremacist that killed 50 people at two New Zealand mosques.
On YouTube, people peppered a video of Ardern bringing what she described as a “message of love and support and grief of the people of New Zealand” with sexist and xenophobic comments.
Switch to Twitter and the New Zealand leader was described as "disgusting, fraudulent and nasty" – and that's one of the tamer of the misogynistic attacks on the politician who identifies as religiously agnostic.
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Privacy and Security

A study finds that 79 percent of medication-related Android apps share user data, most commonly their device information, browsing history, and email address. Four apps were found to share medical conditions and six sent the user’s drug list. Recipients include social media companies and two private equity firms. The study notes that HealthEngine, Australia’s most popular medical appointment scheduling app, shares user information with personal injury law firms without providing an opt-out option.
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ASX 200 not prepared for attacks

  • 12:57PM March 21, 2019
In a worrying sign of Australia’s cyber security preparedness, new research shows more than two thirds of ASX 200 companies have weak or non-existent anti-phishing email defences.
The research, from NASDAQ-listed security automation provider Rapid7, found that even the most mature and well-resourced ASX 200 organisations have trouble sufficiently deploying cybersecurity basics.
It found, on average, ASX 200 organisations expose a public attack surface of 29 servers or devices, with many companies exposing 200 or more.
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21 March 2019

The data downside of those medical apps

Patients Technology
Posted by Penny Durham
Before you use a medical app or recommend one to a patient, consider that you are probably the product and not the consumer.
A study published in the British Medical Journal has found that popular health apps routinely share personal and medical information with third parties, and are hiding that activity from users.
An international team funded by the Sydney Policy Lab at the University of Sydney in partnership with the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network, collected a sample of 24 top-rated or recommended medicines-related apps.
They simulated real-world use from an Australian perspective using dummy profiles, and used a tool designed to detect privacy leaks in Android apps that have been disguised through encryption or encoding.
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Data sharing by popular health apps found to be ‘routine’

It is the type of information a doctor might need: Your age, sex, medical conditions, current symptoms, and a list of any drugs you take.
That is according to a new study, published on Thursday in the British Medical Journal, which found the sharing of user data from health-related mobile apps on the Android platform was routine and yet far from transparent.
Lead author Dr Quinn Grundy said health apps were a “booming market”, but one with many privacy failings.
The study follows a recent report from the Wall Street Journal which found several apps, including period tracker Flo Health, were sending sensitive user data – including weight, blood pressure and ovulation status – to Facebook.
“I think many of us would expect that this kind of data should be treated differently,” said Dr Grundy, an assistant professor at the University of Toronto.
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My Health Record: One-on-one information sessions

17 April 2019 ADHA Propaganda
Learn how to link and navigate your My Health Record in this free, one-on-one session.
You are invited to attend a FREE one on one, 20-minute consultation to learn how to use your My Health Record with My Health Record Community Engagement Officer Kirsten Beckingham. Learn how to link and navigate your My Health Record.
Sessions will be running between 9am and 12pm. Bookings are essential, view sessions times and reserve a place online.
Please note, for confidentiality reasons we cannot sign you up to a myGov account or handle your personal information.
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Google fined €1.49 billion for search ad blocks in third EU sanction

Search giant slapped with third fine
Reuters (Computerworld) 21 March, 2019 08:59
Google has been fined 1.49 billion euros (US$1.7 billion), its third large European Union antitrust penalty in two years marking the company's decade-long regulatory battle in Europe.
The EU antitrust chief, however, gave a cautious welcome to Google's measures to boost competition and give Android users a choice of browsers and search apps, suggesting the company's regulatory woes may be coming to an end.
The European Commission, which said the fine amounted to 1.29 percent of Google's turnover in 2018, said that the case focused on the company's illegal practises in search advertising brokering from 2006 to 2016.
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Understanding My Health Record and Mental Health

ADHA Propaganda
North Coast Primary Health Network invites you to a dinner event for all health professionals who wish to understand how the My Health Record system is used in the sensitive area of mental health.
Mr Jamie Marshall, Clinical Psychologist, will show you how to save time and streamline business processes while improving continuous care for clients. The session will explain what it means for mental health providers to access client information and maintain and protect patient privacy.
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Diagnostic information in the my health record

Australian Digital Health Agency, Brisbane, Qld, Australia
A design for including diagnostic reports (pathology and diagnostic imaging) in the My Health Record (MHR) was agreed in 2014 by representatives of key Australian medical colleges and peak organisations. A PDF generated by the diagnostic provider, based on the report that the diagnostic provider produces for the requester of the service is required. An accompanying HL7 Clinical Document Architecture (CDA) document is generated by the diagnostic provider, which contains the structured and coded information required for the PDF to be indexed within the MHR1 for subsequent search and retrieval.
Communication of an instruction to not upload reports to MHR was an important part of the model to support circumstances where the patient or requesting clinician did not want information shared with MHR. ‘Do not send reports to My Health Record’ with a check box was agreed to be printed on request forms by requesting software. In 2017 HL7 Australia published a draft HL7 V2 messaging standard2 to include MHR consent within diagnostic order messages.
As at Nov 2018, 171 pathology laboratories (96 private) had connected with MHR with >180,000/week report uploads.3
Samples from three labs indicated the rate of requests to not upload reports as: 434/108,345 (0.4%); 2/9093 (0.02%); and 415/84,718 (0.5%).
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The government wants to free up your bank data. Here's what that means for you

ABC Science
By technology reporter Ariel Bogle
20 March, 2019
Every click, scroll and purchase you make creates data. This information, which often has little physical presence beyond the hum of warehouse data centres, is increasingly valuable.
You're the reason it exists, so shouldn't you control it?
The Consumer Data Right (CDR), which begins to come online mid-year, aims to give Australians more agency to access and control parts of their personal information.
The government calls it a "game changer", but critics fear that without careful consideration, it could have serious privacy implications, among other concerns.
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Telcos block sites in wake of NZ government plea

Telstra, Vodafone, Optus block sites hosting Christchurch attack footage
George Nott (CIO) 19 March, 2019 15:57
Australia’s major telcos have temporarily blocked a number of sites hosting footage of Friday’s terror attack in Christchurch.
The action follows a plea from New Zealand’s Department of Internal Affairs for help in stopping the spread of the footage online.
Telstra announced the action on Twitter yesterday evening, adding: “We understand this may inconvenience some legitimate users of these sites, but these are extreme circumstances and we feel this is the right thing to do.”
Vodafone confirmed it had taken similar steps yesterday, with the block involving “dozens of sites known to be still actively hosting footage”. It, too, apologised for any inconvenience but added “we believe it’s the right thing to do in these extreme circumstances to help stop the further distribution of this video”.
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Facebook says no one who watched Christchurch attack livestream reported it

By Ry Crozier on Mar 19, 2019 4:22PM

Says multiple techniques used to weed out copies.

Facebook says that none of the up to 200 people that viewed a live stream of the Christchurch attack on the social media platform reported it.
The social media company, which is under pressure to change its live streaming practices in the wake of last Friday’s attack, also says it is using several techniques to keep the video off its platform now.
Facebook - and other social media operators - have faced stern criticism and political pressure over the past few days to prevent access to first-person video of the attack on two mosques in the New Zealand city.
The company said yesterday it had either deleted or killed upon upload about 1.5 million copies of the offending video.
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My Health Record update

18 March 2019 ADHA Propaganda
9 out of 10 Australians have a My Health Record and we are seeing a trend of increased usage and adoption from healthcare providers.
We’ve also seen a considerable increase in requests from health professionals who are eager to learn more about the system. The My Health Record Expansion team has been visiting general practices, medical specialists, allied health professionals and pharmacies to ensure providers have the knowledge and resources they need to make use of the numerous benefits the system offers, including improvements in patient outcomes and avoided duplication of services.
We have held and are continuing to hold free workshops which are planned until end June to help practices in our region be ready. We send out My Health Record eNewsletter updates monthly, of which links to previous ones can be found on our website. If you or any providers you work with have any questions regarding My Health Record, please contact the team via myhealthrecord@cesphn.com.au.
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Government turns to UK example for data sharing principles

Releases guidelines based on UK’s ‘Five Safes’ while work continues on a legislative data sharing framework
Rohan Pearce (Computerworld) 19 March, 2019 11:28
A collection of five principles will guide the sharing and release of data held by public sector agencies while a new legislative framework is developed.
The government today released ‘Sharing Data Safely’: A set of guidelines created by the Office of the National Data Commissioner (ONDC) in collaboration with the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
“There is a growing imperative for public sector data to be used more effectively to improve government service delivery and solve complex policy issues that can’t be addressed when data remains in siloes across government,” a best practice guide (PDF) to applying the principles states. “However, for many data custodians, there may be barriers to sharing data easily.”
Those barriers can include concerns around heightened scrutiny or a decision to apply “unnecessary protections to the data” that may reduce its usefulness.
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Govt embraces Five Safes in new data sharing guidance

By Justin Hendry on Mar 19, 2019 11:17AM

Tries to improve public trust.

The federal government has released new guidance to agencies on how to use and share personal data while protecting the privacy of Australian citizens.
The Data Sharing Safely [pdf] guidelines, published on Tuesday, are intended to help data custodians navigate through the minefield of data sharing risks before releasing government data.
They are aimed at building community trust around government’s handling of data at a time when public scepticism is at an all-time high due in part to the Cambridge Analytica data harvesting scandal.
The guidelines also serve as a stopgap while the government continues to develop sweeping new data sharing laws, which propose making far more public data available for sharing and release.
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ACMA to probe murder footage broadcast on Australian TV

The Australian Communications and Media Authority says it is investigating whether broadcasters breached the rules by some of the material they put to air about the massacre of Muslims in New Zealand on Friday.
The regulator said in a statement that it would look at any content from the streaming video that the killer had put online that was broadcast by Australian TV stations.
Fifty-one worshippers were gunned down in cold blood as they attended the main prayer session of the week at two mosques in Christchurch. A single man, Australian Brenton Tarrant, is charged with the murders.
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Better connections: Your health, your say

The Australian Digital Health Agency is facilitating a national conversation to develop a blueprint for a more modern, digitally connected health system.

A national discussion and collaboration

To enable the vision of a better-connected healthcare system, the Australian Digital Health Agency is facilitating a conversation with industry and jurisdictions to produce a shared vision and standards for long term interoperability in healthcare.

This will result in an agreed series of coordinated standards across jurisdictions and industry to improve workflow, accessibility and outcomes within the healthcare sector.
This will result in an agreed series of coordinated standards across jurisdictions and industry to improve workflow, accessibility and outcomes within the healthcare sector.
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Cover Story: In the rush to lead the world, Australia’s data sharing frameworks are creating more risks

The Australian Government says the national value of open data could be as high as $25 billion per year. Globally, McKinsey puts the value at $3 trillion. It’s little wonder stakeholders are clamouring for their share, attempting to devise systems which enable the transfer and reuse of that data. 
However, data sharing is fraught with a risk that varies depending on use cases, content and the interpretation of privacy. That much has been underscored by a series of private sector scandals and failed government data initiatives which, without the necessary checks and balances, have eroded public confidence in institutions’ ability to safely share information whilst maintaining users privacy.
But a cohort of Australian public and private sector stakeholders led by the NSW State Government and the Australian Computer Society has developed an initial a framework for the safe sharing of data among government agencies, researchers and industry in controlled environments, with the expectation it could be developed for broader use cases.
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The appalling power of social media

Mar 17, 2019 — 6.33pm
I don't want to ever watch those minutes of terror and death but I know millions have and millions more will. This is social media at its most vile and virulent. It allows the instant, global spread of the most appalling deeds and thoughts. It desensitises us to the most grotesque violence and malevolence, first of imagination and then of action.
Brenton Tarrant was a small-town Australian boy who became rightly confident of his ability to ensure everyone around the world would have to pay attention to his views as well as the atrocity in murdering people innocently at worship. That his rambling manifesto on Twitter would become part of the mainstream, that the video of his killings would go viral from the GoPro camera attached to his helmet.
The choreography of this happening in Christchurch in a relatively safe and peaceful New Zealand is the perfect counterpoint to the global reach of the internet into every aspect of our lives. There is no sanctuary possible anywhere, no haven into which it's possible to withdraw.
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Attacks unmask dark sites below the radar

Tim Bradshaw, Martin Coulter and David Bond
Updated Mar 17, 2019 — 7.40pm, first published at 7.10pm
Politicians around the world have once again seized on the failings of big tech companies such as Facebook and YouTube over their inability to contain video footage of Friday’s terror attacks.
Facebook has repeatedly been criticised for Facebook Live, its online broadcasting tool, which has been used to stream live graphic and uncensored footage of police shootings and suicides. YouTube has also been scrutinised for its apparent inability to prevent its own algorithms — that recommend content to users — from bringing to the surface extremist videos and other disturbing content.
The suspected Christchurch shooter broadcast what appeared to be live footage of the attack using Facebook. After initially removing the footage, both Facebook and YouTube moderators battled throughout the day to stop users uploading thousands of copies online.
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Ardern wants to discuss live streaming with Facebook after 1.5m massacre videos removed

By Staff Writer on Mar 18, 2019 6:58AM

Has had contact from Sheryl Sandberg.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has said she will take issues surrounding how live streaming on social media is controlled to the top of Facebook as the platform disclosed it had pulled more than a million videos of the deadly mosque attack.
"This is an issue that I will look to be discussing directly with Facebook," Ardern said, adding Sandberg has shared condolences over the shootings in Christchurch on Friday.
The death toll from the Christchurch mass shooting, allegedly carried out by Australian Brenton Tarrant who has now been charged with murder, reached 50 people on Sunday.
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A mass murder of, and for, the Internet

Kevin Roose
Mar 16, 2019 — 8.33pm
Before entering a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, the site of one of the deadliest mass murders in the country's history, a gunman paused to endorse a YouTube star in a video that appeared to capture the shooting.
"Remember, lads, subscribe to PewDiePie," he said.
To an untrained eye, this would have seemed like a bizarre detour.
But the people watching the video stream recognized it as something entirely different: a meme.
Like many of the things done before the attack Friday — like the posting of a 74-page manifesto that named a specific internet figure — the PewDiePie endorsement served two purposes.
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PM calls for Facebook, Google, Twitter to suspend live streaming

Updated Mar 17, 2019 — 3.11pm, first published at 2.58pm
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has called for live-streaming to be suspended on social media after Facebook was used to live-stream a disturbing a terrorist attack on a mosque in New Zealand on Friday and new versions of the video and the shooter's manifesto spread across Twitter and YouTube.
Facebook, Google – which owns YouTube – and Twitter have been heavily criticised and have struggled over the weekend to deal with the footage and the terrorist's manifesto being repeatedly reposted.
Facebook was used to live-stream the attack, which was quickly uploaded to YouTube and the gunman's manifesto was put up on Twitter.
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Comments welcome!
David.