July 28, 2022 Edition
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Sadly the war drags on, Biden seems to be pretty impotent on most policy fronts and the US seems to be heading into a recession. Not good,
In the UK the choosing the next PM is off and running as the country and Europe are cooling down after a heatwave (for them) of biblical proportions!
In OZ Parliament is meeting which is when the rubber will really hit the road as a new virus wave runs out of control still! We need to do more to control it as we realise just how bad long COVID is!
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Major Issues.
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How a Nobel laureate ruffled a few feathers in Australia
Ronald Mizen Economics correspondent
Jul 17, 2022 – 2.22pm
Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz has never been afraid of expressing heterodox views about economics that leave mainstream thinkers perplexed – his lecture tour of Australia is no different.
Shortly after arriving in Sydney, the Columbia University professor used an interview on the ABC’s 7.30 program to question a principal foundation of Australian monetary policy.
With the Reserve Bank pressing ahead with back-to-back interest rate rises to quell growing inflation, 7.30 host Sarah Ferguson asked if Australia’s 2 per cent to 3 per cent inflation target was too low.
“Will it require too much pain to the economy?” she asked.
Professor Stiglitz responded: “First let me say, where did that number 2 to 3 per cent come from? It was pulled out of the thin air. There was no scientific basis.
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https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/labor-learns-to-live-with-governing-20220717-p5b271
Labor learns to live with governing
Labor’s necessary backflip on COVID payments is part of learning to live with governing rather than being stuck in opposition. There will be plenty more tough decisions to come – with less leeway to change course.
Jennifer Hewett Columnist
Jul 17, 2022 – 5.40pm
Anthony Albanese’s about-turn on COVID payments is an acknowledgement of the political reality that comes with governing rather than being in opposition. Now it’s the Coalition’s turn to express outrage about treating people unfairly or being too slow to adjust.
The clamour from unions, businesses, politicians of all persuasions – and, most importantly, a lot of the voting public – left the government with little room to manoeuvre, of course.
Labor’s professed commitment to addressing a legacy of Coalition debt and deficit clashed too awkwardly with Albanese’s pledge from opposition to “leave no one behind”. It just took the prime minister a little too long to appreciate this.
Labor’s ability to blame the former government for current problems still remains relatively potent. The tactic was hardly persuasive in this instance – but neither is the opposition’s demand for an “apology” from the government for causing people stress.
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One in five government appointments given to political allies
Tom McIlroy Political reporter
Jul 17, 2022 – 9.00pm
More than one in five well-paid, prestigious or powerful federal government appointments are going to individuals with direct political connections, including dozens of jobs handed to allies of the former Morrison government over its nine years in office.
Governments around the country have been accused of ignoring and subverting proper processes in new analysis of appointments to public boards, tribunals, and statutory roles, completed by think tank the Grattan Institute.
The report shows that across all federal government positions, 7 per cent of recipients had direct political connections and experience. For positions classified as well-paid – including appointments to the powerful Administrative Appeals Tribunal – 22 per cent went to political players, the result of a “significant rise” in captain’s picks among recent appointments.
National institutions including the Australian War Memorial, the National Library of Australia and Old Parliament House are among those highlighted in the report. A full 40 per cent of War Memorial board members have links to the Coalition, including former prime minister Tony Abbott and former opposition leader and memorial director Brendan Nelson.
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New Zealand extends fuel excise cut until next year in bid to help rising cost of living
July 17, 2022 — 3.43pm
New Zealand is extending the duration of cuts in fuel excise tax, road user charges and public transport fares by five months until the end of January, as families struggle with higher living costs amid strong inflationary pressures.
New Zealand petrol prices, like elsewhere, have risen sharply since Russia’s attack on Ukraine started in February, contributing to significant inflation. Food prices rose 1.2 per cent in June, while they rose 6.6 per cent from the same month last year.
“There’s no easy fix for the cost of living, but we’re taking a range of actions to ease the pressure on families,” Finance Minister Grant Robertson said.
“We want Kiwis to have some certainty over the coming months in the face of volatile prices at the pump.”
The New Zealand government in March cut the fuel excise tax by 25 cents a litre and road user charges – a charge levied on diesel vehicle users – by as much for three months.
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Australia can safely improve its relations with China. Here’s how
Bob Carr is the longest-serving premier of NSW and a former foreign minister of Australia
July 18, 2022 — 5.00am
In 2012, the then-prime minister of Vanuatu Sato Kilman, was passing through Sydney Airport. Without warning, the Australian Federal Police swooped and arrested his Australian secretary on charges of tax evasion. Kilman was furious a staffer had been “kidnapped” and, back in Port Vila, threatened to tear up the agreement under which Australia trained his police, and invite China to take over.
As foreign minister, I was relieved when our intelligence reported the Chinese had considered this offer but declined. They had calculated Vanuatu (population 250,000) could offer China little compared with the trade and diplomatic opportunities with rich Australia, population 25 million.
Chinese wariness about offending us was vindicated in 2015 when then-prime minister Tony Abbott presided over the apogee of Australia-China relations by ratifying a free trade agreement, joining the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank and praising Xi Jinping for his reference to democracy in a speech to the Australian parliament.
Since then, China became the world’s biggest economy. It has become more authoritarian and assertive. All Western nations had to reassess their relations with Beijing. But from 2017, Australia deliberately swung behind hardening US attitudes hostile to China’s rise. Peter Dutton, defence minister in the Morrison government, even implied war was coming.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/how-should-we-judge-albanese-labor-on-the-economy-20220718-p5b2cv
How should we judge Albanese Labor on the economy?
By the next election, Australians should know whether Labor is a safe pair of hands. But what would it take to deliver a truly superior economic performance?
Richard Holden Economics professor
Jul 18, 2022 – 1.15pm
The Albanese government has enjoyed some important early successes in the international sphere. Foreign Minister Penny Wong has made important strides in repairing Australia’s relationships in the Pacific. And Anthony Albanese himself has been greeted with hugs by Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare and French President Emmanuel Macron.
He even enjoyed a bike ride around Bogor Palace with Indonesian President Joko Widodo.
It turns out that facing up to the reality of climate change and not picking senseless fights with China, New Zealand and Indonesia is a better foreign relations strategy than that of the previous government.
That’s not to say that getting this right is easy, nor that we should underappreciate its importance. But the hard truth is that Labor’s re-election prospects depend a lot more on domestic economic issues than on Australia’s position on the world stage.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/brace-for-bigger-real-wage-cuts-chalmers-warns-20220718-p5b2gn
Brace for bigger real wage cuts, Jim Chalmers warns
Ronald Mizen Economics correspondent
Jul 18, 2022 – 6.59pm
Treasurer Jim Chalmers has warned Australians to brace for bigger real wage cuts than previously flagged ahead of an economic statement to the Parliament next week he said would be confronting.
Inflation forecasts would be revised up, and economic growth would be revised down, Dr Chalmers said, and the gap between rising cost of living and people’s take home pays would widen.
“It will be in many ways confronting,” he said yesterday. “We will be revising up expectations for inflation and that will make the real wages situation worse.
“When it comes to our expectations of inflation, when it comes to the impact of interest rate rises on growth ... my job is to paint the true picture of the economy and our economic challenges and that’s what I intend to do.”
With the government under pressure to offset new spending in the budget, Dr Chalmers said there would be fresh savings in the October budget, but he played down the prospect of new cost of living measures.
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Mortgage costs to spike if rates hit 3pc, says RBA’s Michele Bullock
1:05PM July 19, 2022
Three in 10 mortgage holders will be paying 40 per cent more to service their loans by the middle of next year if rates rise by a total of 3 percentage points, Reserve Bank deputy governor Michele Bullock has revealed, as minutes from the central bank’s board meeting said the cash rate remained “well below” where it needed to be.
With household borrowing higher than ever, Ms Bullock – in a speech titled ‘How are households placed for interest rate increases?’ – said a large proportion of the hundreds of billions in additional savings accumulated through the pandemic would for many borrowers provide a significant buffer against higher interest costs.
Ms Bullock warned the impact on the one third of households with a mortgage would be “varied” – identifying those who have borrowed more recently at their limits to buy into a hot property market, particularly first-home buyers – but said “on balance, though, I would conclude that as a whole households are in a fairly good position”.
“The sector as a whole has large liquidity buffers, most households have substantial equity in their housing assets, and lending standards in recent years have been more prudent and have built in larger buffers for interest rate increases,” she said.
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Daniel Andrews told IBAC he knew of widespread Labor branch stacking
Patrick Durkin BOSS Deputy editor
Jul 20, 2022 – 9.15am
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews has admitted in secret evidence to the state’s anti-corruption watchdog that he was aware of widespread branch stacking within the Labor Party “across the board”, a two-year investigation released on Wednesday reveals.
The Premier also admitted in his secret testimony that he was aware of the scheme to use electorate staffers in the 2014 election campaign – known as the red shirts rort – which the Victorian Ombudsman later found resulted in the misuse of $388,000 in taxpayer funds.
But the Premier has denied former Labor powerbroker Adem Somyurek’s claim that he dismissed concerns about the scheme by responding: “Do you want to win an election or not?”
“I don’t believe so,” Mr Andrews said in his secret testimony. “I have a clear recollection, given the brevity of the encounter, and I’m not - that’s not language that I use.”
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Albanese goes back to the future for governing
Political historian
July 21, 2022 — 5.00am
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said this week he wants to lead “a government that does things”. COVID-19 management aside, the early signs are that he will. Australia’s international relations performance has been transformed since the election on May 21.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers and Finance Minister Katy Gallagher have set a fiscally sensible, productivity-focused economic policy tone for an October budget crafted to meet Labor’s election promises while dealing with its inherited Morrison government debt bomb.
Releasing the State of the Environment report on Tuesday, Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek demonstrated ministerial compliance with legal disclosure responsibilities, and a determination to take effective action on problems outlined which have been chronic for years.
Chalmers’ announcement on Wednesday of the details of the Reserve Bank review reinforced perceptions that this administration will be about the substance, not just the spectacle, of government. It’s refreshing to a populace tired and hungry for better outcomes from Canberra than they’ve had in recent years.
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Morrison blamed for election day asylum seeker stunt
Phillip Coorey Political editor
Jul 22, 2022 – 5.32pm
The former Morrison government has been accused of undermining the integrity of Operation Sovereign Borders after a report confirmed it instructed the Department of Home Affairs to publicise the interception of an asylum seeker boat on election day for political purposes.
A review by departmental secretary Mike Pezzullo released Friday afternoon by Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil clears the department of any wrongdoing, but fingers both then-prime minister Scott Morrison and home affairs minister Karen Andrews.
The report finds that as voters were going to the polls on May 21, the department was pressured into publicising the interception of the boat, known as SIEV915, while the mission was still underway, so Mr Morrison could talk about it at a press conference.
Soon after the statement was released, Liberal Party headquarters sent a mass robo-text message to voters telling them of the interception and urging them to stick with the Coalition and its tough border policies.
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https://www.afr.com/politics/challenges-piling-up-for-labor-20220721-p5b3dq
The challenges are piling up for Labor
Be it the economy, the budget, the energy crisis, COVID-19, China, foot and mouth disease or climate, there is no low-hanging fruit for the incoming government.
Phillip Coorey Political editor
Jul 22, 2022 – 3.01pm
“Next week will be awful.”
So said a member of the opposition frontbench on Thursday as the Coalition girded itself for next week’s first sitting of the 47th parliament and the realisation that for the first time in nine years, it would be occupying the opposition benches.
“We’ll just have to sit there and listen to them [Labor] saying how bad the previous government was and blaming us for everything.”
The last such comparable occasion was in November 2013, when the parliament first sat after the Coalition under Tony Abbott won power and ended six years of Labor government.
“Be calm, okay?” an ebullient treasurer Joe Hockey taunted a rowdy Labor opposition during the first question time of the new parliament. “I know you are excited on the first day. This is your best day in opposition, trust me,” he said. And at that, the Labor benches fell silent.
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COVID-19 Information.
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The states hit the hardest by surging sick leave wave
Natasha Boddy Work & Careers reporter
Jul 18, 2022 – 6.57pm
Employers in Victoria and Tasmania were hit the hardest by last month’s surge in COVID-19 and flu cases, as leave rates soared more than 50 per cent higher than the long-term average.
In June, Tasmanian workers took 55 per cent more personal, sick or carers leave than the seasonally adjusted average, while workers in Victoria took 54 per cent more time off.
However, the winter wave of illnesses has hit the ACT hardest since then, with absences up 48 per cent at the end of June and start of July, analysis of payroll data from MYOB reveals.
Isabella Bennetts-Roberts, director of OiOi Global, which manufactures nappy bags and pram accessories, understands first-hand just how challenging it can be for small business owners when numerous staff are away sick.
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Deaths on rise as unvaccinated, old succumb to omicron
Michael Read Reporter
Jul 22, 2022 – 5.07pm
Unvaccinated people and the elderly are dying at disproportionately high rates during the latest omicron wave, health authorities say.
COVID-19 case numbers continue to increase across Australia, with more than 324,000 new infections reported nationally over the past seven days and 450 deaths.
Average daily death numbers are yet to reach the record highs attained in late January, but COVID-19 fatalities have increased sharply over the past fortnight as Australia weathers its third omicron wave.
More than 11,000 Australians have died from COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic.
While deaths remain sharply skewed towards the elderly or people with pre-existing medical conditions, the growing wave is leading to an absenteeism crisis in an economy that is already struggling to fill jobs.
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‘I didn’t have the mental stamina to think’: Calls for long COVID-19 help
Hannah Wootton Reporter
Jul 22, 2022 – 5.12pm
Employers need to increase their understanding of long COVID-19 and support staff suffering it to get back to work, two professionals with the chronic illness have warned.
Julia van Graas, a 42-year-old business founder, predicted long COVID-19 was “a looming issue” for already overstretched workforces, while 39-year-old marketer Kellie Floyd said bosses “need to understand this is a serious illness”.
Their call comes as COVID-19 cases reported in Australia surge past 9 million, with the real number expected to be much higher. With estimates of the portion of COVID-19 cases which develop into long COVID varying from 5 to 20 per cent, that means that, even at the bottom end of that scale, it has hit at least 450,000 Australians.
Both Ms van Graas and Ms Floyd caught COVID-19 earlier in the school year from their kids – in February and March respectively – and are now among the nearly half million Australians thought to be suffering long COVID.
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https://www.afr.com/politics/australia-s-newest-pandemic-challenge-apathy-20220721-p5b3cp
Apathy is Australia’s newest pandemic challenge
Infection numbers that would once have caused widespread alarm are being met in some quarters with indifference.
Michael Read Reporter
Jul 22, 2022 – 10.40am
When Paul Kelly stepped up in the Blue Room at Parliament House on Tuesday, the country’s chief medical officer issued a warning that felt all too familiar for Australians with lives upended by COVID-19.
He told waiting journalists just what he’d told the most senior politicians in the country in the preceding few days: already soaring COVID-19 infections were set to rise, in every jurisdiction around the country, for at least another month.
Flanked by Health Minister Mark Butler, the nation’s top doctor urged eligible Australians to come forward for their third or fourth vaccine dose, to work from home where possible, and to wear a mask in crowded places.
But after two and a half years of living through shifting health orders and multiple waves of the virus, the government is confronting a new challenge: apathy. And that means protecting Australians against the spread of this latest phase of the virus could be a much harder task this time round.
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‘Our mental health is collectively breaking’: One in five Australians had mental disorder in pandemic
By Wendy Tuohy
Updated July 22, 2022 — 2.38pmfirst published at 11.30am
Key points
· In the pandemic years 2020 and 2021, one in five Australians experienced a mental health disorder.
· Anxiety was the most common group of mental disorders. Depression and substance-use disorders were also common.
· Australians aged 16 to 24 were the most likely to be affected.
· Those who were - or had been married - were less likely to experience mental health problems than those who’d never been married.
· The figures were released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics in one of the most comprehensive snapshots to date of the nation’s mental health.
One in five Australians had a mental health disorder during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, including 3.3 million people with anxiety disorders.
Nearly two in five of those aged 16 to 24 had a mental health disorder in 2020-21, and young women had the highest incidence of any group.
The figures were released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics on Friday, in one of the most comprehensive snapshots of the mental health of Australians to date.
‘Sobering, staggering numbers’: Half a million Australians to get long COVID in coming months
July 24, 2022 — 5.00am
Australia is facing a surge in long COVID cases, say doctors at Sydney’s St Vincent’s Hospital, who warned that the burden of the protracted disease would be borne chiefly by women and the critical healthcare and education sectors where they comprise the bulk of employees.
Professor Jason Kovacic, a cardiologist and executive director at the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute, described the long COVID projections as “sobering, staggering numbers”.
Researchers investigating long COVID cases in Australia say 5 per cent of people infected with COVID-19 will develop the condition. The prevalence of long COVID before vaccinations were available was an estimated 10 per cent.
“The 55,000 people in Australia who tested positive today ... equates to 2000 to 3000 new cases of long COVID,” Kovacic said. To date, Australia has recorded almost 9 million COVID-19 cases.
Even after accounting for reinfection “we’re looking at almost half a million people who are going to be suffering long-term symptoms in the coming months”, Kovacic said.
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Climate Change.
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Environment scorecard finds Australia’s habitat ‘crumbling rapidly’
By Mike Foley
July 19, 2022 — 12.01am
Australia has suffered catastrophic losses of wildlife and habitat, according to the official five-year scorecard on the state of the environment, released on Tuesday, as leading scientists plead with the Albanese government to urgently ramp up protections to halt the escalating rate of extinction.
The latest State of the Environment report says Australia has lost the most mammals of any continent. More than 80 per cent of Australia’s nearly 400 mammal species, from furry greater gliders that fly across treetops to egg-laying, poisonous platypus, are found nowhere else. Tragically, the 39 mammal species that have disappeared since colonisation in 1788 represent 38 per cent of the world’s lost mammals.
Since 2016, when the previous State of the Environment was released, 17 mammal species were either added to the endangered list or upgraded to the critically endangered list, as well as 17 birds and 19 frogs.
The extinction risk this month for greater gliders in NSW and Victoria has been upgraded by the federal government, which now rates the species once common in eastern forests as a risk of disappearing in coming years.
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ttps://www.afr.com/policy/economy/household-energy-bills-about-to-get-much-worse-rba-20220719-p5b2t0
Household energy bills about to get much worse: RBA
Ronald Mizen Economics correspondent
Jul 19, 2022 – 4.33pm
Households must brace for electricity and gas prices to rise sharply as domestic inflation continues to build, according to the Reserve Bank.
State government subsidies and hedging by electricity companies against price rises had so far shielded families from the full increase in wholesale utility prices, but that was about to change.
“The effect of these increases on retail electricity and gas prices was expected to be evident later in the year,” the official minutes of the RBA’s July board meeting said.
Prices for wholesale power more than doubled to an unheard-of average of $323 a megawatt-hour in Queensland in the June quarter, easily the highest of any state in the past two decades, according to adviser Energy Edge.
June quarter price increases were even higher in other states, rising 293 per cent from the March quarter to $224/MWh, 247 per cent in NSW to $302/MWh; and of 260.5 per cent in South Australia to $256/MWh.
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6:00am, Jul 21, 2022 Updated: 8:17pm, Jul 20
Alan Kohler: The three things our Energy Minister must do
Continental Europe is on fire, the UK has declared a national emergency over extreme heat, Iran just had one of the hottest days ever recorded on Earth (52.2 degrees), and the Hunter Valley is cleaning up after yet another ‘one-in-a-century’ flood.
The planet is heating much faster than expected; it’s clear that net-zero emissions by 2050 is not enough, even if it’s achieved, which is looking unlikely.
The way things are going there will be net-zero hope by 2050.
Meanwhile, in Canberra, they’re arguing about whether to let big new gas projects go ahead and massively increase Australia’s carbon emissions – Scarborough in Western Australia and Beetaloo in the Northern Territory.
Stop new coal and gas
Actually, the chief economist of the Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources, Russell Campbell, has a list on his website of 45 proposed gas projects and 50 coal projects.
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IAG says disasters, inflation will push up insurance premiums
Updated July 22, 2022 — 4.29pmfirst published at 10.10am
Insurance giant IAG has signalled premiums for home and motor cover are likely to rise by between about 5 and 9 per cent over the next year, due to a wave of natural disaster claims and surging inflation.
IAG chief executive Nick Hawkins said the large number of claims from wild weather, alongside shortages of skilled workers and building materials, could also cause delays in repairing damaged properties.
Following an investor update, Hawkins said he thought the wider insurance sector would continue to face a range of inflationary forces over the next 12 to 18 months, before the pressure on prices started to ease after that.
IAG, which sells insurance under brands such as NRMA, CGU and SGIO, released its results on Friday, reporting net profit after tax of $347 million for the year to June, up from a loss last year.
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Royal Commissions And The Like.
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ScoMo speaks of ‘God’s plan’ for him, anxiety in Margaret Court church sermon
Scott Morrison has spoken about God’s plan for him in a sermon to a church founded by Margaret Court.
July 18, 2022 - 8:52AM NCA NewsWire
Scott Morrison says God has a plan for him, characterised anxiety as “Satan’s plan” and called for people to put their faith in Christ over governments in a sermon at a church founded by Margaret Court.
The former prime minister returned to Perth at the weekend to mark the 27th birthday of the controversial tennis champ’s Pentecostal Victory Life Centre church.
It’s the first time Mr Morrison has visited Western Australia since his election defeat, partly thanks to a major swing from voters in the west.
But he told the congregation his loss was all part of God’s plan for him – referencing his now infamous 2019 victory speech.
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National Budget Issues.
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https://thenewdaily.com.au/finance/2022/07/18/kohler-inequality-means-test/
Inequality has worsened and the budget is shot, so means test everything
Here’s an announcement you will not be seeing from the Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese: “Since the previous government over-compensated businesses and households for COVID when it wasn’t so bad in 2020 and 2021, and we’re now in the poo financially, you have to use the money you saved then to get through it, now that it’s really bad. There’ll be no more money from us.”
He tried on a bit of that sort of thing by refusing to reinstate the pandemic leave payments of $750 a week for those who don’t have sick leave, but the outraged pile-on was such that he had to reconsider.
Casuals with no access to sick leave obviously need to be looked after by the government, but everyone else should be told to look after themselves.
After all, unemployment is 3.5 per cent, the lowest for 48 years, so companies need to keep their staff, and $13.8 billion of the $90 billion in JobKeeper payments in 2020-21 was paid to profitable companies that didn’t need it, so they can certainly cough up.
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https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/worker-hungry-states-issue-jobs-summit-demands-20220718-p5b2bn
12.09PM
World economy difficult, if not dangerous right now, Chalmers says
Georgie Moore 18 July, 2022
High and rising inflation, slowing growth and concerns about food and energy insecurity fuelled by Russia’s war on Ukraine have helped make the world economy “a difficult, if not dangerous place right now”, Treasurer Jim Chalmers says.
He has warned Australians will be presented with a “confronting” reality when parliament returns, noting rising interest rates makes it more expensive to service government debt.
“That combination of inflation and rising interest rates and slowing growth and food and energy insecurity, combined with the amount of debt that countries have racked up, is a cause for concern in the global community. And that’s why bodies like the IMF downgrading their expectations for global growth as we speak,” Chalmers told reporters at Parliament House.
These are among pressures he will outline in his ministerial statement to parliament next Thursday following its return later this month.
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Chalmers seeks bipartisan approach to imminent RBA review
By Shane Wright
July 18, 2022 — 7.00pm
The first independent review of the Reserve Bank since the early 1980s will start within days as the federal government seeks Coalition support for broad terms of reference.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers on Monday revealed he wanted the review under way before Parliament resumed next week, saying he already had firm plans for what it would canvass.
The RBA has come under fire for its handling of monetary policy before the COVID-19 pandemic, with at least one academic research paper finding up to 270,000 people spent time out of work because interest rates were held too high.
It has also been criticised for rapidly lifting interest rates since May in response to the global outbreak of inflation over recent months. Bank governor Philip Lowe, whose seven-year term is due to end next year, had said as late as November the RBA did not expect to lift interest rates until 2024.
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Wide-ranging review to scrutinise under-fire Reserve Bank
John Kehoe Economics editor
Jul 19, 2022 – 10.30pm
Treasurer Jim Chalmers has launched a major review of the Reserve Bank of Australia’s long-standing inflation target, monetary tools, board structure, accountability and culture, amid growing criticisms of the central bank’s interest rate policies.
Canadian central banker Carolyn Wilkins, Australian National University economics professor Renee Fry-McKibbin and former senior Treasury official Gordon de Brouwer will jointly conduct the first independent review of the bank since its arrangements were instituted in the early 1990s.
The broad terms of reference released by Dr Chalmers reveal the review will be charged with ensuring that monetary policy arrangements and the operations of the bank continue to support strong economic outcomes.
In case of future economic crises if interest rates are low and the RBA has limited ammunition to stimulate, the inquiry will also examine the interaction of monetary policy with the government’s fiscal policy and bank lending rules set by the prudential regulator.
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RBA governor Philip Lowe defends pandemic response as Albanese government announces review into central bank
July 20, 2022
Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe has defended the central bank’s monetary policy decisions through the pandemic, admitting the extraordinary stimulus has fuelled today’s runaway inflation but that it was necessary to take a “very strong insurance mindset” in the early, fraught days of the health crisis.
Dr Lowe’s comments on Wednesday morning came as Jim Chalmers announced the first wide-ranging review of the RBA since the start of the modern inflation-targeting monetary policy settings in the early 1990s.
In a speech to The Australian’s Strategic Business Forum in Melbourne, Dr Lowe said he “welcomed” the review, and that it was an entirely appropriate exercise in the light of the past two years, likening it to a “health check” of the central bank’s operations and conduct.
But Dr Lowe said similar reviews of overseas central had left their flexible and medium-term inflation-targeting review intact, and that in his view this approach remained “the best monetary policy set of arrangements for Australia”.
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https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/economics/rates-still-well-below-where-they-need-to-be-rba-says/news-story/22a02846f497fb39f4f16c1cc63ca54f
Mortgage costs to spike if rates hit 3pc, says RBA’s Michele Bullock
1:05PM July 19, 2022
Three in 10 mortgage holders will be paying 40 per cent more to service their loans by the middle of next year if rates rise by a total of 3 percentage points, Reserve Bank deputy governor Michele Bullock has revealed, as minutes from the central bank’s board meeting said the cash rate remained “well below” where it needed to be.
With household borrowing higher than ever, Ms Bullock – in a speech titled ‘How are households placed for interest rate increases?’ – said a large proportion of the hundreds of billions in additional savings accumulated through the pandemic would for many borrowers provide a significant buffer against higher interest costs.
Ms Bullock warned the impact on the one third of households with a mortgage would be “varied” – identifying those who have borrowed more recently at their limits to buy into a hot property market, particularly first-home buyers – but said “on balance, though, I would conclude that as a whole households are in a fairly good position”.
“The sector as a whole has large liquidity buffers, most households have substantial equity in their housing assets, and lending standards in recent years have been more prudent and have built in larger buffers for interest rate increases,” she said.
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Anthony Albanese warns of Reserve Bank ‘overreach’ on rates
6:51AM July 21, 2022
Anthony Albanese has warned the Reserve Bank against “overreach” in its race to tame surging inflation, as RBA governor Philip Lowe gave his strongest signal yet that rates would need to jump to at least 2.5 per cent over coming months.
With economists predicting rates would rise above 3 per cent, the Prime Minister said sharply higher borrowing costs would place “real pressure on people”, and while he recognised the -central bank’s independence “they need to be careful that they don’t overreach as well”.
In a speech to The Australian’s Strategic Business Forum, Dr Lowe said further rate hikes above the current 1.35 per cent would help establish a “more sustainable balance between demand and supply in the economy’’.
He said a rate of 2.5 per cent was probably the “neutral’’ cash rate but it was likely to be “higher than that if inflation expectations shift higher’’.
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RBA is blindly lifting rates ‘like an inflation nutter’
Martin Place is tying itself up in intellectual knots trying to rationalise a rate hiking cycle based on rubbery forecasts.
Christopher Joye Columnist
Jul 22, 2022 – 9.31am
The great Aussie housing crash is accelerating, and it is being driven by the fastest and largest interest rate shock households have faced in modern history. Sydney house prices have plunged almost 5 per cent since their peak only months ago, according to CoreLogic. Home values in Melbourne are not far behind.
The value of residential property in Australia’s two largest capital cities is declining rapidly, exceeding one percentage point per month, which signals double-digit losses over the next year (consistent with this column’s forecasts). There is further evidence that the Brisbane market is rolling over. Adelaide and Perth prices also look to be grinding to a halt.
If you draw a line through May 2022, when the Reserve Bank of Australia first lifted rates, you can observe a striking structural break in property prices – there was an almost immediate, and dramatic, impact on the value of bricks and mortar. After promising not to raise rates until 2024, Martin Place broke the back of the market with its decision in May and the threat of much more to come. It has not disappointed: in August the RBA will deliver an unprecedented third, back-to-back 50 basis point rate rise (and possibly more).
Yet if you read The Australian Financial Review’s John Kehoe account, or listen to the RBA, you would be forgiven for thinking there is nothing to see here. The RBA has allegedly “slapped down the pessimists who are concerned that its super-sized interest rate rises will crush the housing market and the economy”. Let me assure you, the RBA ain’t slapped down nuthin. And I deliver this message in a Connor McGregor-like lexicon.
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More money, less risk: why government bonds are beating the banks
A lost decade for fixed income means that even as interest rates go up, mum and dad investors may not be aware that their government will pay them more than the banks.
Jonathan Shapiro Senior reporter
Jul 22, 2022 – 2.06pm
It’s an investment dilemma almost everyone has faced – how to get the best possible return on money they cannot afford to put at risk.
Whether a younger person saving money to buy a house or a retiree living on savings, a bank term deposit is the go-to option if the priority is to play it safe and get some sort of return.
Now that interest rates are off their zero base and heading higher, savers are getting some relief. Someone with $100,000 who is prepared to lock it up in a three-year deposit at a major bank can expect to earn 1.75 per cent, or around $1750 of annual interest, compared to a paltry $300 at the start of the year.
But what if there was a way to boost that annual income to $3300 without taking more credit risk? It might seem like an impossible pitch, likely to come from the legion of spruikers the corporate regulator has tried to silence. But few young couples, retirees and the broad sweep of savers across the nation may be aware that the government that backs the banks will actually pay a far better rate than the banks.
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Health Issues.
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https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/who-chief-declares-monkeypox-a-global-emergency-20220724-p5b40w
7.25AM 24 July 2022
WHO chief declares monkeypox a global emergency
Bloomberg
The monkeypox outbreak is a public health emergency of international concern, the head of the World Health Organisation said, overruling a divided expert panel to issue the group’s highest alert.
The declaration paves the way for stepped-up global cooperation to stop the virus, which has spread to dozens of countries. The last time the WHO made a similar declaration was during the early stages of the Covid-19 outbreak in January 2020.
Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus personally intervened after nine members of the expert committee were against declaring the monkeypox outbreak an emergency, while six were in favour. Tedros and the health organisation had faced criticism in some quarters that they acted too slowly to ratchet up the alarms on Covid.
“We have an outbreak that has spread around the world rapidly through new modes of transmission,” he said during a press briefing in Geneva on Saturday.
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International Issues.
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Kremlin unshackles troops after Ukraine gets precision rockets
Andrew E. Kramer and Steven Erlanger
Jul 17, 2022 – 3.05pm
Kyiv, Ukraine | Russia’s defence minister on Saturday (Sunday AEST) ordered his forces to intensify attacks “in all operational sectors” of the war in Ukraine, an indication that Russian forces were ending what they called an operational pause in their invasion.
As the Ukrainian government disclosed modest new ground attacks by Russian forces, as the Russian defence ministry said in a statement that minister Sergei Shoigu had instructed that combat be intensified to stop Ukraine from shelling civilian areas in Russian-occupied territory.
After deadly Russian missile strikes across Ukraine in recent days killed civilians, the statement was a new signal from Moscow that its invasion may be entering a more aggressive phase.
Mr Shoigu’s statement appeared to be a response to Ukraine’s new ability to hit Russian targets in occupied areas due to more advanced, longer-range Western weapons, including American HIMARS precision-guided rocket systems and the French Caesar artillery pieces.
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Zelensky fires top officials over agency collaboration with Russians
By Tom Balmforth and Max Hunder
Updated July 18, 2022 — 6.56amfirst published at 6.01am
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky issued executive orders overnight sacking the head of Ukraine’s powerful domestic security agency, the SBU, and the prosecutor general.
The orders dismissing SBU chief Ivan Bakanov, a childhood friend of Zelensky, and Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova, who led the effort to prosecute Russian war crimes in Ukraine, were published on the president’s official website. In a separate Telegram post, Zelensky said he had fired the top officials because many cases had come to light of members of their agencies collaborating with Russia.
He said 651 treason and collaboration cases had been opened against prosecutorial and law enforcement officials, and that over 60 officials from Bakanov and Venediktova’s agencies were now working against Ukraine in Russian-occupied territories.
“Such an array of crimes against the foundations of the national security of the state ... pose very serious questions to the relevant leaders,” Zelensky said. “Each of these questions will receive a proper answer.”
Zelensky appointed Oleksiy Symonenko as the new prosecutor general in a separate executive order that was also published on the president’s site.
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Zelensky Removes Ukraine’s general prosecutor, head of Secret Service
By Brett Forrest
Dow Jones
July 18, 2022
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky removed Ukraine’s general prosecutor and the head of the Security Service of Ukraine late Sunday amid allegations that their offices were riddled with officials who were collaborating with Russia.
While the dismissal of the prosecutor, Iryna Venediktova, surprised some analysts, the ouster of the security chief, Ivan Bakanov, had been forecast for some time. The Security Service of Ukraine, or SBU, has for years faced allegations that its ranks are infiltrated by Russian assets, claims bolstered by two recent high-profile arrests. The SBU is Ukraine’s main security and intelligence agency. It is separate from the GUR military-intelligence agency that plays the primary role in the war with Russia.
Posting on social media Sunday night, Mr. Zelensky said that 651 treason cases had been registered concerning workers in Ukrainian law-enforcement and the prosecutor’s office. He said that more than 60 employees of the SBU and prosecutor’s office were working for Russia in occupied areas of Ukraine.
“Such an array of crimes against the foundations of the national security of the state and the connections that have been recorded between the employees of the security forces of Ukraine and the special services of Russia pose very serious questions to the relevant leaders,” Mr. Zelensky wrote. “Each of these questions will receive a proper answer.” Neither Mr. Bakanov nor Ms. Venediktova could be reached for comment.
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As Ireland grows less benighted, America turns cruel for women
New York Times columnist
July 17, 2022 — 7.30pm
I came to Ireland four years ago to cover the searing story of the Scarlet Letter in the Emerald Isle.
Back then, Ireland had a harsh abortion law, shaped by the views of the Catholic Church. The 8th Amendment to the Irish Constitution, added in 1983, gave fetuses rights equal to the mother’s, ensuring abortion would be illegal, even in cases of rape or incest. Anyone getting the procedure or buying abortion pills online faced up to 14 years in prison. Women were forced to sneak out of the country and go to London if they wanted abortions. Some women went to loan sharks to get the money to travel.
In 2018, a referendum on repealing the 8th Amendment roiled Ireland with turbulent arguments on a subject that had been subterranean for eons. Edna O’Brien captured the tortured drama in her novel Down by the River, based on the sensational 1992 case of a 14-year-old who was raped by a friend’s father and became suicidal when she was barred from leaving the country to get an abortion. She later miscarried.
There was also the heart-wrenching 2012 story of Savita Halappanavar, who rushed to a Galway hospital in distress the day after her baby shower. She was told that her 17-week-old fetus was going to die. As she went into septic shock, she begged the medical team to remove the fetus and save her life. One midwife coldly reminded her that she was in “a Catholic country”. She died after her stillborn infant. The horror of that case galvanised the nation.
I felt grateful as I covered the referendum, which passed resoundingly, that I lived in a more enlightened America, which had long had the protection of Roe.
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Russian gas cuts threaten to shutter Germany industry
Joe Miller and Guy Chazan
Jul 19, 2022 – 9.32am
Frankfurt | Petr Cingr is in no doubt about the fate that awaits his chemicals company if Russia cuts off all gas supplies to Germany.
“We have to stop [production] immediately, from 100 to zero,” said the chief executive of SKW Stickstoffwerke Piesteritz, the country’s largest ammonia producer and a key European supplier of fertilisers and exhaust fluids for diesel engines.
Amid rising tensions between Moscow and the West over Russia’s war on Ukraine, Russia has drastically cut its exports of gas to Europe’s largest economy. Berlin now fears a winter gas crisis that could paralyse industry and leave millions freezing in their homes.
All eyes are on Nord Stream 1, the pipeline linking Russia directly to Europe via the Baltic Sea. Gazprom, Russia’s state-controlled gas giant, reduced NS1’s capacity by 60 per cent in June, and last Monday shut it down completely for routine maintenance. In normal circumstances, this lasts just 10 days. But the fear in Berlin is that NS1 will not come back into operation as scheduled this Thursday (Friday AEST).
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Collateral damage: China, Sri Lanka and a developing debt crisis
Political and international editor
July 19, 2022 — 5.00am
There is nothing new about nations collapsing under the weight of their debts. But Sri Lanka’s awful predicament highlights three new aspects of our world.
It’s a sign of our times, first, because Sri Lanka’s debt crisis is not a one-off but likely the first in a new wave of national sovereign debt disasters.
Second, while China has been the biggest lender to many poor countries for years now, this is the first major, uncontrolled collapse where China is a dominant lender.
This throws open big questions about how it handles its new power over the fates of nations when they’re at their most vulnerable.
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Staunch allies: Iran’s supreme leader backs Putin’s war in Ukraine
Anton Troianovski and Farnaz Fassihi
Jul 20, 2022 – 9.48am
Moscow | As Russian President Vladimir Putin seeks to counter the West’s attempt to isolate him, he received a full-throated endorsement of his war in Ukraine on Tuesday (Wednesday AEST) from Iran’s supreme leader, who went even further than other Russian allies in backing Mr Putin’s actions.
Meeting with Mr Putin during a rare international trip by the Russian leader to Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei repeated Mr Putin’s argument that the United States and its allies in Europe had left the Kremlin no choice but to invade Ukraine.
“War is a violent and difficult endeavour, and the Islamic Republic is not at all happy that people are caught up in war,” Ayatollah Khamenei told Mr Putin, according to his office, in a meeting that itself was seen as an honour in Iran. “But in the case of Ukraine, if you had not taken the helm, the other side would have done so and initiated a war.”
Ayatollah Khamenei’s public proclamation on war appeared to go beyond the much more cautious support offered by another key Russian ally, China.
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A ‘just war’: West has a moral obligation to help defeat Russia
Military leader and strategist
July 19, 2022 — 7.45pm
Last Friday, I had the pleasure of catching up for lunch with a colleague who also happens to be an ethicist. While our lunchtime chat was broad ranging, we kept returning to the notion of good and evil and the idea of “just wars”, particularly in Ukraine.
At almost the same time we were discussing the ethics of war, the Organization for Security and Cooperation and Europe released its latest report that examined Russian atrocities in Ukraine. It makes for grim reading and surpasses the OSCE earlier report delivered in April this year for the quantity of horrific acts attributed to the Russian army and its proxies in Ukraine.
The report notes that “some of the most serious violations encompass targeted killing of civilians, including journalists, human rights defenders, or local mayors; unlawful detentions, abductions and enforced disappearances of the same categories of persons; large-scale deportations of Ukrainian civilians to Russia; various forms of mistreatment, including torture, inflicted on detained civilians and prisoners of war”.
Any of these allegations is serious and would indicate institutional failures in the military force responsible. Taken together, they indicate a systemic approach to the brutalisation of the Ukrainian people and a callous disregard for international law and laws of war.
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Why this bond market guru is looking at fixed interest markets
T Rowe Price’s Arif Husain isn’t sure inflation and yields have peaked, but he thinks it’s time for investors to enter fixed interest markets in a sensible way.
Jul 20, 2022 – 2.10pm
Britain might be sweltering through its hottest day ever, but bond market guru Arif Husain can still see the funny side of things.
“We are literally making hay while the sun shines here,” he tells this column from his London home.
Husain is the head of the international fixed income division and co-chief investment officer for fixed income at funds management giant T Rowe Price, which has $US1.4 trillion ($2 trillion) in funds under management. And his Dynamic Global Bond Strategy (with $US10.9 billion) has indeed been making hay, producing a year-to-date return of 4.5 per cent (4.4 per cent above its benchmark), making it one of the few bond funds to produce a positive return amid a huge sell-off in fixed interest markets.
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https://www.afr.com/world/europe/western-democracies-have-a-talent-problem-20220720-p5b31w
Western democracies have a talent problem
Able people of sensible views don’t go into politics. The results are all around us.
Janan Ganesh Contributor
Jul 20, 2022 – 10.22am
Britain’s Rishi Sunak does politics as though he is just back from a residential course called How to Do Politics. There is something rote-learnt about the gestures of hand and speech. There is something formulaic about the tactics: now woo the right, now pivot.
In a thriving democracy, he would be a good Downing Street chief of staff with a hawk’s eye for a vacant parliamentary seat.
As it is, the former UK chancellor is plainly the best candidate for prime minister in a dire Conservative field. By all means, deplore the lack of competition in Westminster as he rose in recent years.
But don’t assume that it would have been much stiffer elsewhere. In the US, the two most senior Democrats are a pensioner and his maladroit vice-president. The last German election pitted Olaf Scholz against Armin Laschet in a pageant of nondescriptness.
None of the last six Australian PMs have impressed enough to log four years in office. For the second time in a decade, Italy has a globocrat called Mario corralling a domestic political class that lacks stature.
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Putin signals gas pipeline will restart, but with conditions
Lyubov Pronina and Anna Shiryaevskaya
Jul 20, 2022 – 6.16pm
Moscow | Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday (Wednesday AEST) that natural gas flows to Europe via the Nord Stream pipeline could be curbed when the link resumes operation this week, in the clearest signal yet that Moscow plans to restart at least some shipments.
The pipeline may work at about 20 per cent of capacity, about half of the volume it sent before being taken offline for planned maintenance this month, unless parts that have been delayed by sanctions are returned to Russia, Mr Putin told journalists after a summit in Iran.
The European Union was set on Wednesday to propose a voluntary 15 per cent cut in gas use by member states starting next month on concern Russia may halt supplies altogether. An IMF working paper warned that a cutoff of Russian gas could result in a hit of as much as 2.7 per cent to the EU’s economy.
No gas is currently flowing through the biggest pipeline to Europe because of maintenance, just as the continent is trying to refill its storage for winter. Before maintenance, gas was flowing at about 40 per cent of capacity.
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https://www.afr.com/world/europe/tories-must-decide-between-thatcher-and-reagan-20220720-p5b37l
Tories must decide between Thatcher and Reagan
Nicole Torres
Jul 20, 2022 – 4.25pm
Can “Thatcherite candidate” Rishi Sunak win the contest for Tory leadership? Or will his party plump for a rival who follows in the footsteps of the Iron Lady’s great ally, Ronald Reagan? This is not just a question of style or positioning: herein lies the wider economic choice facing the UK in the years to come.
In their hearts, many Conservatives, especially on the right, want a prime minister who copies Reagan’s optimistic, free-spending ways, not an austere Margaret Thatcher-style leader.
Yet Sunak, who was UK chancellor of the exchequer until his resignation precipitated Boris Johnson’s downfall, has led the field in ballots of Conservative MPs and is now the “establishment candidate”. Nigel Lawson, for many years Thatcher’s ideological soul mate and chancellor, has given him his blessing.
But his chances are dwindling. While most of his rivals have promised tax cuts by the tens of billions, Sunak, a chip off the old Thatcher block, has spurned tax giveaways and warned of the dangers of an inflationary wage-price spiral. Today, many Tory MPs hope that immediate tax cuts will stave off recession and ease their path to victory in the next general election, even if the price is a yawning deficit.
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Ukraine: we now want a bigger slice, says Lavrov
By Marc Bennetts
The Times
July 21, 2022
Russia’s military ambitions in Ukraine have expanded beyond the eastern Donbas region and it is seeking to seize additional territory, the country’s foreign minister said.
Sergey Lavrov said that realities on the ground had changed since Russian and Ukrainian negotiators failed to achieve a breakthrough at peace talks in Turkey in March.
At the time, Moscow would have accepted Ukrainian recognition of Russian rule in the Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic (DPR and LPR) as grounds to halt its invasion, Lavrov said yesterday.
“Now the geography is different, it’s far from being just the DPR and LPR, it’s also Kherson and Zaporizhzhya regions and a number of other territories,” he told Russian state media. Moscow could widen further its aims to take in additional towns and cities.
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Sunak, Truss ready for battle to be Britain’s next PM
By Agencies
AFP
6:57AM July 21, 2022
Conservative rivals Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss, offering competing answers to Britain’s multiple crises, will duel in the coming weeks to become the next prime minister after the party’s lawmakers held a concluding vote overnight (AEST).
Former finance minister Sunak, a centrist offering fiscal rectitude alongside promises of renewed integrity following outgoing leader Boris Johnson’s scandal-tarred tenure, again led the field with 137 votes in Tory MPs’ fifth and final ballot.
The crucial race for second place was narrowly won by Foreign Secretary Truss, on 113 votes, against 105 for trade minister Penny Mordaunt.
Sunak and Truss now take their case to Conservative party members, who will decide the new leader and prime minister after a dozen nationwide hustings and several televised debates over the next six weeks.
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Britain still can’t look beyond Oxford for its leader
Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss depart from the white male prime minister tradition, yet they both possess an educational credential that keeps them in the UK political mainstream.
John Authers
Jul 21, 2022 – 1.07pm
Britain, and particularly its ruling Conservative party, is growing more diverse. Of that there is no question. But regardless of gender or ethnicity, an aspiring prime minister still must clear certain educational hurdles.
The crowded field of 11 who threw their hats into the ring when Boris Johnson announced his resignation earlier this month included more women than men, and a range of ethnicities – among them, they could claim Indian, Iraqi, Nigerian and Pakistani ancestry.
And indeed, now that Conservative MPs have whittled the choice down to two, no white man is left standing. The recently resigned chancellor Rishi Sunak, who is of Indian ancestry, will take on Foreign Secretary Liz Truss in a ballot of all the party’s some 160,00 members. This looks like a breakthrough for a more diverse and multicultural Britain – except that both Sunak and Truss did the same course at the same university.
The course is Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE), and it’s been offered for about 100 years by the University of Oxford. It was designed unapologetically to help train the country’s future leaders, and it appears to have succeeded all too well.
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https://www.afr.com/world/europe/economic-stormclouds-mass-over-europe-20220721-p5b3nc
Economic storm clouds gather over Europe
Hans van Leeuwen Europe correspondent
Updated Jul 22, 2022 – 2.46am, first published at Jul 21, 2022 – 11.55pm
London | Economic storm clouds were massing over Europe on Thursday, as Mario Draghi quit as Italian prime minister, the European Central Bank jacked up interest rates by an unexpectedly hawkish 0.5 percentage points, and traders sold off Italian bonds.
The ECB has been forced to throw the monetary-policy fire blanket over the continent’s inflation flare-up, but its unexpectedly swift action may exacerbate the uncertainty and threat surrounding Italy, the 19-country eurozone’s third-largest economy.
The bank’s first interest rate increase in 11 years has taken the benchmark rate to zero. The ECB admitted in a statement that it was “front-loading” the eurozone’s exit from negative interest rates after eight years, as it looks to get on top of inflation.
That came as Italian President Sergio Mattarella dissolved parliament following Mr Draghi’s resignation, paving the way for an election in late September that could bring a coalition of the centre-right and far-right to power.
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‘I fear that for a third time in history a nuclear bomb might be used’
Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has revived the prospect of a Cold War nuclear nightmare for the first time in decades. The few living survivors of the Hiroshima atomic bombing worry history may repeat itself.
Michael Smith North Asia correspondent
Jul 22, 2022 – 5.00am
Hiroshima, Japan | Keiko Ogura was eight years old when the atomic bomb was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.
She was standing outside her home 2.4 kilometres from the centre of the world’s first nuclear attack. The blast blew her over and knocked her out. When Ogura regained consciousness, she woke up in a nightmare.
The houses around her were damaged and on fire. Miraculously, she was burnt but not seriously hurt. In the days that followed she watched hundreds of maimed and disfigured people die. Some were so badly burnt it was impossible to tell if they were male or female; eyeballs had melted for those looking directly at the atomic flash and the skin peeled off like gloves from the arms of many when rescuers tried to pull them up off the ground.
Ogura, now 84, is one of a dwindling number of living witnesses to the human suffering that took place after the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the centre of the city on the morning of August 6, 1945. A second bomb fell on the city of Nagasaki three days later.
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AUKUS ‘much more than subs’: ex-US security chief Mike Rogers
July 22, 2022
The AUKUS agreement could transform Australian hi-tech and defence technology but nuclear-powered submarines may take longer than expected to produce, former US National Security Agency chief Mike Rogers says.
The retired admiral and senior US intelligence figure – who is visiting Australia this week – suggests Canberra may need to look at interim capabilities before the nuclear subs arrive.
“I think the acquisition of nuclear submarines is powerful, both in its war-fighting capability and in the signals it sends,” Admiral Rogers told The Australian in an exclusive interview. “I applaud Australia’s willingness to make that sort of commitment and to speak about it so frankly.”
However: “Nuclear submarines are incredibly complex platforms. We’re talking about a unit that’s configured for Australia’s needs, it’s not like we’ll just pull a Virginia (class sub) off the production line. Our experience with nuclear-powered submarines is they’re not inexpensive, and often they take longer than you expect. So we must aggressively ask: How can we accelerate this?
“If (you Australians) see the units will arrive late, creating an unacceptable risk, you have to engage the question: Are there alternatives in the interim?”
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https://www.afr.com/policy/foreign-affairs/time-to-double-down-on-russian-sanctions-20220721-p5b3lq
Time to double down on Russian sanctions
Europe is risking the worst of all worlds if it lets Russia disrupt its energy without stopping Moscow’s illegal war on Ukraine.
Mohamed El-Erian Contributor
Jul 22, 2022 – 12.21pm
It has been five months since Europe and the United States imposed tough economic and financial sanctions on Russia, a G20 country that was the world’s 11th-largest economy on the eve of its invasion of Ukraine.
While the sanctions have been gradually strengthened in the intervening months, debate rages about their effectiveness, the war’s broader implications for markets and the global economy, and what the West’s next steps should be.
On the first question, although the sanctions have been less effective than Europe and the US had hoped, they also are proving more onerous than the Kremlin claims. Russia’s central bank expects GDP to contract by 8-10 per cent this year, while other forecasters expect a larger fall, together with longer-lasting damage to growth potential.
Imports and exports have been severely disrupted, and inflows of foreign investment have essentially stopped. Shortages are multiplying, pushing inflation higher. At this point, the country no longer has a properly functioning foreign-exchange market.
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https://aeon.co/essays/the-soviet-union-never-really-solved-russian-nationalism
The discontent of Russia
Lenin envisioned Soviet unity. Stalin called Russia ‘first among equals’. Yet Russian nationalism never went away
is a writer and historian of Russia and Eastern Europe. A former reporter in Moscow, her writing has appeared in publications including The New York Times, Foreign Policy, The Washington Post, and The Atlantic, among others.
July, 2022
On 19 November 1990, Boris Yeltsin gave a speech in Kyiv to announce that, after more than 300 years of rule by the Russian tsars and the Soviet ‘totalitarian regime’ in Moscow, Ukraine was free at last. Russia, he said, did not want any special role in dictating Ukraine’s future, nor did it aim to be at the centre of any future empire. Five months earlier, in June 1990, inspired by independence movements in the Baltics and the Caucasus, Yeltsin had passed a declaration of Russian sovereignty that served as a model for those of several other Soviet republics, including Ukraine. While they stopped short of demanding full separation, such statements asserted that the USSR would have only as much power as its republics were willing to give.
Russian imperial ambitions can appear to be age-old and constant. Even relatively sophisticated media often present a Kremlin drive to dominate its neighbours that seems to have passed from the tsars to Stalin, and from Stalin to Putin. So it is worth remembering that, not long ago, Russia turned away from empire. In fact, in 1990-91, it was Russian secessionism – together with separatist movements in the republics – that brought down the USSR. To defeat the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s attempt at preserving the union, Yeltsin fused the concerns of Russia’s liberal democrats and conservative nationalists into an awkward alliance. Like Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again or Boris Johnson’s Brexit, Yeltsin insisted that Russians, the Soviet Union’s dominant group, were oppressed. He called for separation from burdensome others to bring Russian renewal.
The roots of nationalist discontent lay in Russia’s peculiar status within the Soviet Union. After the Bolsheviks took control over much of the tsarist empire’s former territory, Lenin declared ‘war to the death on Great Russian chauvinism’ and proposed to uplift the ‘oppressed nations’ on its peripheries. To combat imperial inequality, Lenin called for unity, creating a federation of republics divided by nationality. The republics forfeited political sovereignty in exchange for territorial integrity, educational and cultural institutions in their own languages, and the elevation of the local ‘titular’ nationality into positions of power. Soviet policy, following Lenin, conceived of the republics as homelands for their respective nationalities (with autonomous regions and districts for smaller nationalities nested within them). The exception was the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, or RSFSR, which remained an administrative territory not associated with any ethnic or historic ‘Russia’.
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Ukraine, Russia sign deal to reopen grain export ports as war rages on
Ezgi Erkoyun, Ece Toksabay and Max Hunder
Jul 23, 2022 – 5.18am
Istanbul, Kyiv | Russia and Ukraine signed a landmark deal on Friday to reopen Ukrainian Black Sea ports for grain exports, raising hopes that an international food crisis aggravated by the Russian invasion can be eased.
The accord crowned two months of talks brokered by the United Nations and Turkey, a NATO member that has good relations with both Russia and Ukraine and controls the straits leading into the Black Sea.
Speaking at the signing ceremony in Istanbul, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said the deal opens the way to significant volumes of commercial food exports from three key Ukrainian ports – Odesa, Chernomorsk and Yuzhny.
“Today, there is a beacon on the Black Sea. A beacon of hope..., possibility...and relief in a world that needs it more than ever,” Guterres told the gathering.
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‘He refused to defend our nation’: Committee told Trump watched violent mob attack the Capitol
Updated July 22, 2022 — 2.04pmfirst published at 12.29pm
Donald Trump was repeatedly urged by his aides and family members to call off the violent mob that attacked the US Capitol, but instead sat back in his private dining room at the White House and watched the rampage for hours, a congressional probe has found.
After seven hearings detailing how the former president and key allies tried to overturn the 2020 election, the January 6 committee put its focus on Trump’s conduct on the day of the riot and accused him of a dereliction of duty for repeatedly failing to call off the violence.
In a prime-time hearing on Thursday night (US time) the committee outlined how Trump did nothing for 187 minutes - spanning from the moment he ended a speech in which he told supporters to “fight like hell” to stop the election results from being certified, to the moment he finally told rioters to go home through a video tweet.
“Donald Trump would not get on the phone and order the military or law enforcement agencies to help,” said Republican and committee vice chair Liz Cheney.
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‘Russia can be defeated’: Ukraine tries to make the case that it can win the war
By Andrew E. Kramer
July 22, 2022 — 8.50am
Kyiv: Just weeks ago, Ukraine’s military was being pummeled relentlessly in the east, taking heavy casualties as it slowly gave ground to the Russian advance. Western support appeared to be softening amid scepticism that Ukraine could win a war of attrition or that an influx of sophisticated weapons would turn the tide.
Through it all, the Ukrainians’ message to the world did not change: We can win. Our strategy is working, if slowly. Just keep the weapons coming.
No one can say yet whether Ukraine might prevail against an invading Russian military with superior numbers and weaponry — or even what winning might look like. And Ukraine’s pleas for weapons have become such a constant refrain that some in the West have tuned it out as unrealistic background noise.
But this week, as it employs new long-range rocket systems to destroy Russian infrastructure, Ukraine is again trying to make its case to the world that it can defeat the Russians. And it is citing evidence.
Straight-talking Kissinger has some advice for Australia
In his famously forthright fashion, US statesman Henry Kissinger tells it like it is on Australia’s China dilemma, when the Ukraine war is likely to end and names the two historical leaders we most need today.
July 23, 2022
Henry Kissinger was an academic theorist and geopolitical strategist who became synonymous with high-level summitry and shuttle diplomacy, a counsellor to successive US presidents, lauded by many as a statesman and Nobel prize-winner yet loathed by others for his realpolitik approach to global affairs.
In a wide-ranging interview, the nonagenarian former US national security adviser and secretary of state to Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford discusses his new book profiling six world leaders alongside his formative years, academic career, White House tenure, and thoughts on Russia-Ukraine, China’s ambitions, US divisions and Australia’s position in the fracturing world order.
Kissinger’s life has been interlinked with critical world events from the coming to power of Adolf Hitler in Germany, World War II and the Holocaust, the Cold War and fear of nuclear armageddon, to the struggle for peace in the Middle East, the Vietnam War, detente with the Soviet Union, the opening to China and its superpower rivalry with the US.
It is this intersection with history that makes Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy such a compelling book. He combines personal encounters with historical analysis to vividly chronicle the lives of Konrad Adenauer, Charles de Gaulle, Richard Nixon, Anwar Sadat, Lee Kuan Yew and Margaret Thatcher.
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West’s leadership crisis is about to get worse
The Times
11:14AM July 22, 2022
There’s no more predictable trope of political punditry than the loud, extended complaint about the quality of contemporary leadership. To every generation of commentators the current crop of statesmen are always a shadow of those who went before. Supposedly dispassionate observations about our fallen state are all tinted by an unwitting nostalgia, the tendency to view the past in sepia, the present in garish Technicolor.
Meanwhile the accelerating rush to judgment of modern media compels only scorn. If Twitter had been around in the more challenging years of Napoleonic France we can guess what the early 19th-century versions of today’s blue-check comedy writers would be tweeting: “How much longer do we have to put up with this preening little megalomaniac? He’s no Robespierre, is he?”
In late second-century Rome there would have been clever pundits in togas telling their followers that Marcus Aurelius made Nero look like Caesar Augustus. Just because we compare today’s leaders unfavourably with those of the past doesn’t mean the current lot are not, in fact, objectively terrible. Like the stopped clock, the perennially negative critique must be right some of the time.
Which brings us to the present. The Tory party may be about to produce a 21st-century version of Winston Churchill, though signs are not encouraging. More likely it seems it will be yet another figure to keep good company with the B-list of the wider West’s current leadership.
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China needs to ‘pay a price’ if it doesn’t change: ex US spy chief
Andrew Tillett Political correspondent
Jul 22, 2022 – 4.51pm
China should not be treated as an adversary, but Western nations need to convince Beijing it will feel a “measure of pain” to remind the Communist Party regime it needs to change its behaviour and stop trying to undermine the international order, a former top US intelligence official says.
Former National Security Agency chief Michael Rogers also wants the AUKUS pact to be a catalyst for sharing a wider range of sensitive defence equipment, given the precedent set by the US and Britain’s willingness to help Australia acquire nuclear submarines, regarded as the most secret of technologies.
In a wide-ranging address to the National Press Club on Friday, Mr Rogers said WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange should face a US court, despite pressure from Australian MPs for the charges against him to be dropped and the Albanese government saying the case needed to be resolved.
Mr Rogers, a 37-year navy veteran, was head of the NSA between 2014 and 2018, serving under presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump, and now works as an adviser to a number of cybersecurity firms.
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Russian strikes on Odessa port cast doubt over grain deal
AFP
July 24, 2022
Russian missiles hit Ukraine's port of Odessa Saturday, in what Kyiv called a "spit in the face" of a day-old deal between the warring sides to resume cereal exports blocked by the conflict.
The Ukrainian military said its air defences had shot down two cruise missiles but two more hit the port, threatening the landmark agreement hammered out over months of negotiations aimed at relieving a global food crisis.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed the strikes on Odessa showed Moscow could not keep its promises.
Odessa is one of three export hubs designated in the agreement and Ukrainian officials said grain was being stored in the port at the time of the strike, although the food stocks did not appear to have been hit.
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I look forward to comments on all this!
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David.
