The COVID-19 pandemic is basically over in some parts of the world. COVID is now endemic and vaccines are available to prevent its worst outcomes. This is leading nations to open up and live with the virus. Singapore is an example: Singapore announced plans to ease Covid restrictions on daily life and begin slightly loosening
The latest PollBludger aggregated poll says it more eloquently than I can: Scott Morrison’s grab bag of rapists, carpetbaggers, corporate insurgents and nutbags are going to lose power. There are only three levers to pull to change this now. First, a successful transition from pandemic COVID to endemic COVID will lift some political pressure. However.
The AFR’s Joe Aston continues to shine a bright light on the widespread rorting of the Morrison Government’s JobKeeper program. The latest egregious example comes from tiny listed cleaning company Millennium Services Group, which pocketed more in JobKeeper subsidies than its entire market capitalisation: “The dinky little cleaning contractor with a market capitalisation of just
A new opinion poll from Roy Morgan has the ALP extending its election lead over the LNP, leading 54% to 46% on a two-party preferred basis – the biggest poll lead since the early 2020 bushfires: ALP support has increased to 54% (up 0.5% points since early August) cf. L-NP on 46% (down 0.5% points)
As Melburnians suffer through their 200th day of lockdown since the beginning of the pandemic, medical experts have urged the Victorian Government to rethink its ban on playgrounds, warning the negative mental health impacts outweigh the tiny risks of coronavirus transmission: Pediatrician Margie Danchin said the playground shutdown must be replaced with a nuanced plan
Debate has opened over the closure of Melbourne playgrounds to combat the coronavirus. Police began patrolling parks on Tuesday and playgrounds were taped-off. Authorities claim that 50 of Victoria’s 227 active cases yesterday involved children under 10 and that the Delta strain is more infectious for children, but deaths remain extremely rare. Victoria’s Chief Health
More wolf warrior diplomacy today at The Global Times: China’s steel shipments to Australia have dwindled by more than 50 percent in recent months, faster than the country’s overall steel export plunge, and the trend is set to further accelerate, as China takes more measures to cut output and restrict exports, industry insiders said. China’s
It’s official. As alluded to last month, the Morrison Government has launched another housing affordability inquiry – this time examining ‘supply-side impediments’. Below is the marketing spiel from Coalition committee chair Jason Falinski: “As data provided by the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA), the Treasury and the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) shows, home ownership,
Stratfor with the note: After gaining control of Kabul, the Talibanb’s desire for international legitimacy will be shaped by their willingness and capability to constrain transnational militants from using Afghanistan as a base of operations. As the Taliban enter final negotiations with representatives of the Afghan government, the group has already engaged in outreach to
Another day, another story about how the collapse in immigration is driving up wages and conditions for domestic workers that no longer have to compete for jobs with foreigners. This time the empirical evidence is from New Zealand, which in the years leading up to COVID ran a similar mass immigration policy to Australia: Skilled
Public approval for the Morrison Government’s handling of the pandemic has plunged from 56% in February to 38%, according to a new JWS Research poll. Faith in the NSW Government has also slumped from 65% to 49%, whereas the proportion that still believe that Australia has handled the pandemic well has also dived from 79%
We kicked the can in Afghanistan. It cost the US $2.2tr to occupy and try to rebuild the place. That’s more than a respectable effort, spending the equivalent of accumulated 10% of its own GDP to get it done over 20 years. This is hardly running away. It is admitting that some things can’t be
Toowoomba businessman John Wagner has called on Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce to stand firm on the proposed route for the $15 billion Inland Rail project from Melbourne to Brisbane. Wagner’s comments follow a call from Agriculture Minister David Littleproud for the route from NSW to Toowoomba to be changed, so as to appease irate
That’s what Scott Morrison would be thinking today if he didn’t have a personality disorder. Canada has creamed it on the vaccine thanks to an early and well-diversified procurement policy: Trudeau government polls have reflected this success: And today Justin Trudeau does what Scott Morrison would give his right (and left) ball to do:
No long and detailed analysis from Paul Kelly for Labor this election. Just a throwaway piece of journalism from a five-minute chat on the blower was enough for Labor’s shadow treasurer and mystery man, Jim Unchalmer, to lay out his party’s unmanifesto: “If I become the treasurer, I want it to be in a government
COVID apartheid is here. What does it mean? Chaos: On the first full day of the complete NSW lockdown – a step Greater Sydney’s closure was designed to avoid – Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant pleaded with the state’s residents to take COVID-19 seriously. “We are at a fork in the road and we have
Australia is set to resume negotiations with India with regard to a free-trade agreement (FTA). The two nations had initially commenced discussions on a trade deal in 2011, but the negotiations stalled in 2015. Trade Minister Dan Tehan has advised that India’s Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal has agreed to resume negotiations after a recent meeting with
The answer is yes. Here’s her Swiss cheese LGA lockdown map: Here’s the LGA map electorate and party: The overlap is remarkable. There’s hardly an LNP electorate locked down. But just about every Labor electorate is. Now, correlation is not causation. And it is also clear that Labor areas have had more virus. That is
The Grattan Institute’s Transport and Cities Program Director, Marion Terrill, has lashed the Dan Andrews Victorian Government’s botched West Gate Tunnel Project. She also suggests that Victoria is the national leader in infrastructure waste and mismanegement: “The West Gate Tunnel project has blown out by a further $3.3 billion, and we taxpayers are being asked
Gladys Berejiklian is about to become the most hated person in Australia. Her failure to contain the Delta COVID strain, which looks kind of deliberate given her half-arsed lockdowns, is running headlong into everyday Australian’s deepest expectations for their governments, to be protected from the virus. This expectation has been stoked ceaselessly by all levels
From The Guardian comes some sort of sense: Former Australian prime ministers Malcolm Turnbull and Kevin Rudd have urged the federal government not to ramp up rhetoric against China for domestic political purposes, arguing it could harm social cohesion. Turnbull said he worried “that some of the political rhetoric, if played for the local rightwing
In 2017, Daniel Andrews’ Victorian Government agreed to an unsolicited bid from toll giant Transurban to build the West Gate Tunnel Project – a four kilometre toll road currently under construction in Melbourne to link the West Gate Freeway at Yarraville with the Port of Melbourne and CityLink at Docklands. Under the project’s terms, Transurban
Legislation to enact new COVID-19 financial support payments for workers and businesses will go back before the Senate on 9 August. Independent senator Rex Patrick had amended the government’s original legislation so that details of big businesses who had received JobKeeper or who will get payments under the new scheme would be made public. However,
Since late 2019, the question dogging Canberra politics is whether or not Australians prefer Prime Minister Morrison go away to Hawaii during moments of national crisis and leadership, or to keep him at the helm. Now we have the answer. The Coalition and Labor are on a dead heat on primary support: Labor’s TTP lead
Bravo Marise Payne, Minister for Foreign Affairs: “We have been advised by China that they will only engage in high-level dialogue if we meet certain conditions. Australia places no conditions on dialogue,” she told the Australia China Business Council’s annual Canberra gathering. “We can’t meet the conditions, such as the now well-known list of 14
This is from Peta Incredlin though I could have picked any number of Murdoch dills: Do you ever wonder, as I do, how on earth we have come to this: with free speech under constant attack; mums being denied their biological breastfeeding reality; the American Medical Association recommending the removal of the sex designation from
The Australian Labor Party (ALP) is enjoying its biggest two-party preferred polling lead over the Coalition since the January 2020 bushfires, according to Roy Morgan Research: ALP support has increased to 53.5% (up 1% point since mid-July) cf. L-NP on 46.5% (down 1% points) on a two-party preferred basis after Sydney’s month-long lockdown was extended
Why would he? In war it’s just shoot ’em up. But in vaccine rollouts, one has to be careful what one says. From the top, the rollout is still leading the Third World: The media is doing its best to motivate with fear. Here’s a couple of X-Rays floating about showing the difference between being
Fairfax’s senior economics writer, Jessica Irvine, wants another housing affordability inquiry chaired by former Treasury secretary Ken Henry: [We need] a high-level Treasury review, of the ilk of the Ken Henry tax review… So, I texted Henry to see if he’s up for it. He replied: “Jess. Sure. I’d chair such a review. The question
Via the RBNZ this morning: The Reserve Bank of New Zealand – Te Pūtea Matua – will soon begin consulting on ways to tighten mortgage lending standards, Deputy Governor and General Manager for Financial Stability Geoff Bascand says. The action follows the signing of an updated Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on macro-prudential policy with the Minister
