Yesterday the competition regulator said: Recommendations to address price concerns The ACCC recommends the extension of the existing Commonwealth Government’s Heads of Agreement with LNG producers, due to expire at the end of 2020, because of the demonstrated capacity of LNG producers to supply additional gas into the domestic market when needed. “As well as
Bravo QLD! Via ABC comes the complete absurdity of the Morrison Government’s economic unplan: The Queensland Premier says the state’s border restrictions will not be relaxed until there are no cases of community transmission in New South Wales and Victoria. Annastacia Palaszczuk said she was putting the health of Queenslanders first. “We do not have
Via The Guardian: Fewer than 250 people have applied for the Morrison government’s homebuilder scheme, officials have revealed, despite the hype from an industry association that it was the “most effective stimulus in decades”. The federal government announced the $688m scheme just over two months ago, offering homeowners up to $25,000 to either build a new home or
Via The Australian: Health Minister Greg Hunt says he is “genuinely optimistic” a COVID-19 vaccine will be internationally available by next year, declaring the nation is close to reaching a deal to produce it in Australia. Mr Hunt said he had been cautious in the past to say that a vaccine would become available but
A big coming out for the excellent Salvatore Babones at The National Interest: The parallels between 1930s Germany and 2010s China are profound. The free world’s failure to contain the Nazi evil in Germany led directly to World War II. China may not be plotting a third world war, but the need to contain its
Conservative political organs representing vested interests dialed the whaaambulance on the weekend. The AFR led them: Amid the chaos that has supplanted the once-co-ordinated national approach to responding to the coronavirus pandemic, the federal government is trying to stick with the original plan. As state and territory leaders spent the week freelancing over border closures
During yesterday’s parliamentary inquiry, Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews explicitly denied that the Australian Defence Force (ADF) was offered for use in the state’s hotel quarantine program (watch video below): Liberal MP: “So my question is: Why did you choose to use private security guards rather than police or ADF?: Dan Andrews: “I’m glad you mentioned
The Morrison Government continues to cling to an election winning lead, according to the latest Newspoll: The Coalition is leading Labor 52% to 48% on a two-party preferred basis. The Coalition’s primary vote is way ahead, 43% to 33%: Whereas Scott Morrison’s approval rating is a whopping 60% vs Anthony Albanese’s 25%: Anthony Albanese is
Centre Alliance Senator Rex Patrick has quit the party claiming it will fail to win a single seat at the next election. The South Australian senator will run as an independent to ensure the state maintains a “strong and independent” voice in the Senate. Senator Rex Patrick has often been a lone voice of reason
Via a brown-nosing Australian: Morrison wants to keep public faith in the system, to avoid partisan clashes within the collective state and federal leadership of the national cabinet and criticism of those leaders, as well as drive home the point that the commonwealth “has come to the rescue” of the states, particularly Victoria. He also
Yeh, let it spread because Scummo says we should. Via The Lancet: Abstract Background Increasing evidence supported the possible neuro-invasion potential of SARS-CoV-2. However, no studies were conducted to explore the existence of the micro-structural changes in the central nervous system after infection. We aimed to identify the existence of potential brain micro-structural changes related
Wow. How underhanded is this? On the one hand, UNSW is busy apologising to Australians for being a CCP-Nazi apologist: The University of NSW has apologised after tweets about the Hong Kong-China situation, featuring a leading human rights expert, were deleted after an online campaign from Chinese students and media. UNSW found itself at the
Let’s put aside the debate about whether or not Victoria should or shouldn’t crush the virus. Instead, let’s focus on where it is actually going right now. Victoria’s lockdown is backsliding already, under assault from rent-seekers that long ago put aside doing business for lobbying. At rentier headquarters, the AFR: The Victorian Andrews government has
This is incendiary stuff from Coalition stalwart, David Kemp, at the AFR: Slowing the spread of the virus was the policy announced by the Prime Minister and that Australians supported, on the basis that it was the policy of the so-called national cabinet. Unfortunately, some states opted for a political strategy of heightening community fears
Via Scummo: Combined with the damage of the stage three lockdown, it will cost the nation $10 to $12bn overall. “This is a heavy blow, a heavy blow: 80 per cent of this economic cost is expected to be in the affected areas of Victoria, of around $6 billion to $7 billion in that state,”
We begin, as always, with Labor and the once hawkish Richard Marles, at Domain: Opposition defence spokesman Richard Marles says a Labor government would not let backbenchers lead the debate on China, accusing the Morrison government of letting “fringe dwellers” damage Australia’s relationship with its biggest trading partner. Mr Marles hit out at government MPs
Victoria’s Health Minister, Jenny Mikakos, avoided seven questions on Melbourne’s Hotel Quarantine debacle at Tuesday’s Legislative Council question time by saying she would provide a written response the following day. These questions included topics like: When the government first became aware of problems around quarantine? Who made the decision to outsource to private contractors? Will
The Morrison Government should do a major volte-face on its virus suppression strategy. There are three reasons. First and most important, elimination is the best way forward. Virus-free New Zealand is tracking for far better economic, lifestyle and health outcomes than Australia is. Second, governments in the virus-free states of WA, SA, QLD, TAS, ACT
With three epidemiologists and genomic sequencing experts scheduled to appear today, the judicial inquiry into Melbourne’s botched hotel quarantine disaster was conveniently delayed by six weeks: The inquiry into what went wrong in Victoria’s hotel quarantine program has been delayed due to the state’s coronavirus crisis. The board of inquiry, headed by former Family Court
In other countries, this is called corruption. In Australia, it is the natural course of a political career. Via the AFR: It wasn’t until several hours after the state government brought down the shutters on retail and construction in Victoria that the Australian Banking Association was able to breathe a sigh of relief. With the
Great stuff by The Australian: Australian university lecturers are being cowed into lowering their academic standards by “highly organised” networks of international students making co-ordinated attacks against any staff members whose assignments and examinations prove too difficult to pass. …Academics are concerned the lowering of standards for overseas students means Australian students’ education is also
Herein lies the problem with virus suppression: BREAKING: Queensland borders will close to New South Wales & the Australian Capital Territory from 1am Saturday, August 8. All visitors will be denied entry except for rare exemptions & returning Queenslanders will have to pay for 14 days mandatory hotel quarantine.#COVID19au pic.twitter.com/Yc7BxKJ3GW — Annastacia Palaszczuk (@AnnastaciaMP)
Via The Guardian comes Tony Blakely, professor of epidemiology at the University of Melbourne.: Is elimination even achievable now? It is not a hard argument to run that the virus has got its hooks into too many nooks and crannies in Victoria to easily dislodge. True, it is not going to be easy. But we
Who knows what drives this bloke. At the AFR: Former federal Treasury boss and bank chairman Ken Henry says Australia’s “stupidity” and economically “illiterate” failure to tax the mining boom properly has cost the country dearly and prevented a badly needed cut to the 30 per cent company rate to boost investment and worker wages.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom: On Friday, the Emergency Committee on COVID-19 met and reviewed the current pandemic. It was a sobering moment coming six months on from when the Committee advised, and I agreed, that the outbreak constituted a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. At the time, 30 January, there were fewer than 100
Actually, it should be into the international students trade in its entirety but I’ll settle for China links. Why? When your universities are capable of this: BREAKING: UQ have OVERTURNED my election to the Senate to replace me with a pro-CCP candidate who ran a Chinese social media campaign attacking me as a “Hong Kong
Yes, it’s back to the good old days when railway gauges were different widths in different states. Via Crikey: Did Dan Andrews really want to put Victoria into a brutal stage four lockdown? While he retains the rusted-on support of many on the left (as Donald Trump does from the right), it feels like the
For months I’ve not addressed Adam Creighton’s virus tirade demanding more people die to save business. It’s obvious that this is a false binary. The virus crushes economies whether governments step in to address it or not. Instead, I’ll just leave this here to let you take the measure of the man: Shameful what’s occurring
Oh dear: HAHAHA, UQ is distributing this standard response sheet to all staff at Open Day tomorrow. Which means it was promptly leaked to me by dozens of sympathetic staff. What absolute geniuses. How much more humiliating can this get? pic.twitter.com/byDHK3z2kQ — Drew Pavlou 柏乐志 (@DrewPavlou) August 1, 2020 In short, if someone mentions China,
I wish it were hard to believe that just last week Josh Depressionberg announced a major tightening of fiscal support, the RBA put the stimulus cue in the rack, and the Morrison Government tried to bulldoze state quarantine borders in preparation for a rushed international opening to renew mass immigration and his favoured house price
