After last week junking their negative gearing and capital gains tax reforms taken to the past two elections, Labor’s financial services spokesman Stephen Jones hinted that it will offer first home buyer subsidies as part of its election platform: “We took those policies [negative gearing and capital gains tax reforms] to the last two elections.
If Australians wish to avoid future lockdowns and restrictions, we need to get the nation’s full vaccination rate up to around 50% of the population, as has been achieved in the United Kingdom, Canada and several other advanced nations: As shown above, Australia is currently lagging well behind these levels with only 13.5% of the
The debate is raging. What is Delta herd immunity? Domain says: National cabinet will start creating the path out of lockdowns on Friday when the country’s leaders look at how many Australians must be vaccinated against COVID-19 in order to end economically damaging restrictions. …Premier Gladys Berejiklian has previously cited a figure of 75 to
A series of organisations with a tradition of supporting Australian workers have labeled the dramatically shrunken Albanese Labor opposition “the enemy“: The nation’s peak organisation on affordability and secure housing for Australians on low incomes has accused federal Labor of rejoining a “list of enemies” against increasing home-ownership in favour of benefiting wealthy landlords. National
Bernard Keane at Crikey took us down memory lane yesterday in useful fashion regarding Australia and China: At least Tony Abbott is prepared to admit he screwed up: what he once boasted as a “history making” trade deal with China, and one of his great achievements as prime minister, was a mistake based on “wishful thinking” and
My sources are telling me Sydney is in lockdown for another two months at least. Hence, the following is completely bonkers from the state and federal Coalition: Premier Gladys Berejiklian is refusing to publicly lobby the federal government for the return of JobKeeper despite Sydney’s lockdown being extended by four weeks and new data revealing
This may seem like a cheap shot. But optics is everything in politics. Only a day after Labor dumped the negative gearing and capital gains tax reforms taken to the past two elections, leader Anthony Albanese sold his Marrickville investment house for $2.35 million, banking a $1.2 million gross profit: From the article: [Albanese] and
The propertocracy has won another round in the policy fight. Not courtesy of the blood-sucking interests. Rather via the hand of those that set out to end it and instead succumbed to its corrupt siren song. As Labor gives up on property tax reform, any and all reform actually, the thirty-year Australian property bubble once
From the beginning of the pandemic, Morrison Government vaccine procurement policy has been written by either carpet-baggers or idiots. First, it sent Pfizer packing mid-last year. God only knows why. Perhaps because its shots were the most expensive. Second, it over-committed to Astra Zeneca, a firm that has never made vaccines before. Perhaps Morrison did
When post-truth becomes the fog of war, via Sinocism today: Global Times: ‘Political virus also needs origin tracing’ as US politicizes, stigmatizes epidemic: FM Wang Yi The coronavirus needs origins-tracing, and so does the political virus, said Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi, noting that the US has been trying to politicize the
Labor announced yesterday that it will not make changes to the stage three income tax cuts if it wins the upcoming federal election. It also abandoned the negative gearing and capital gains tax reforms taken to the past two federal elections. Shadow cabinet formally signed-off on these policy positions yesterday. Earlier this year, Labor also
The Grattan Institute has released a new report entitled “Gridlock: Removing barriers to policy reform”, which argues that Australia’s prosperity is at risk from a decade-plus of decay across our political institutions. Below is the Overview, combined with some key graphics: Australia’s governance has deteriorated over recent decades. The formal institutions and the informal norms
A new Roy Morgan poll has federal Labor’s two-party preferred lead increasing to 52.5% (up 2%) over the Coalition’s 47.5% (down 2%) following lockdowns imposed across Sydney, Victoria and South Australia: If a Federal Election were held now the ALP would be easily elected with a substantial majority similar to that won at the 2007
Nordea with the note. I agree with all of it except the Fed hikes. For me, it is still more likely that it is forced backwards not forwards: Covid or rather Delta is back in the limelight as cases surge in e.g., UK and Spain, but the most interesting thing is now to follow the
Attention Labor. That’s what a patriot sounds like. On China, at least. After years of Labor groveling to China despite all signs that it has turned fundamentally hostile to everything that Australia stands for, it was refreshing to see Trade Minister Dan Tehan offer a very plain and simple take on where things are at:
We all know that there is something terribly wrong with Scott Morrison. He’s disordered in some classically toxic way. But, sometimes, it’s better to rely upon a pearl of older wisdom. To put it bluntly, Scott Morrison is a wanker: “I’m sorry that we haven’t been able to achieve the marks that we had hoped
The personality disordered PM can’t restore order because his only way to operate is to divide when what he needs is genuine leadership to unify. This is Morrison’s personality disorder writ large for the government. His absent empathy gene is a classic symptom of toxic narcissism or similar. As such, every crisis leads to another:
News.com’s Tarric Brooker believes that soaring property prices and the locking-out of first home buyers could dent the reelection chances of the Morrison Government: In the 1970s then British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher came to the conclusion that one of the key factors in providing citizens with a stake in society was home ownership… Many
The personality disordered PM is rewriting history again. As I noted earlier this month, Australia had just passed the date at which we were originally planned to have delivered 30m vaccinations. Easily enough to provide herd immunity if we split the number into 12m fully vaccinated adults and 8m with one dose, covering the entire
Excerpted from “The Long Game: China’s Grand Strategy to Displace American Order”, provided by Sinocism and Oxford University Press. Rush Doshi is the founding director of the Brookings China Strategy Initiative and a fellow (on leave) at Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center. Previously, he was a member of the Asia policy working groups for
The question for every China apologist in Australia is which freedoms are they happy to give up to make friends with the CCP? The list is crystal clear, delivered directly from Beijing: It’s a trick question, of course, because giving into one is giving in to all. When Bejing smells blood in the water it
Former prime minister Tony Abbott has criticised the national cabinet, arguing that it is an ineffectual co-ordinating committee. Abbott contends that the national cabinet, which has met 46 times so far, is contributing to the lack of a clear delineation of responsibilities between the federal and state governments during the COVID-19 pandemic: Tony Abbott has
Pig Iron Scott’s storm troopers are upset that China is spying on Australia on the high seas, via the UK Express (there are now two spy ships): The Australian military is keeping tabs on the PLA naval surveillance ship, Tianwangxing, as it travels towards Queensland waters off the country’s north-east coast. The vessel is widely
It had to happen. During the good times, it doesn’t really matter how bad a government is. But, when it is really needed, during huge external shocks, a government must perform competently or it will pay. And now it is: The latest Newspoll has the Morrison government slumping to even on 39% on the primary
Jon-Bernard Kairouz has been predicting precisely the Sydney COVID cases all of the last week the night before their release. 109 coming today: Number Of Cases Tomorrow, Monday 19th Of July. #covidnsw #sydneylockdown #TikTokGuy pic.twitter.com/uVILiHgyaY — Jon-Bernard Kairouz (@jonbernardk) July 18, 2021 The day before: Number of Cases Tomorrow, Sunday 18th of July#nswcovid19 #SydneyLockdown pic.twitter.com/bOIYhy35ZH
Finally, the message appears to have sunk in at Labor’s headquarters that committing treason is not a great election strategy. Today the leader of the opposition, Anthony Albanese, appeared at The Australian to dramatically pivot away from China. According to Albo: Anthony Albanese says restarting dialogue with China will be a challenge no matter who
The magnificent Viktor Schvets of Macquarie with the note: No decoupling but supply chains will focus on competing blocks •In Oct ’57, Soviets surprised the world by launching the first satellite (‘Sputnik’). While the US defence secretary dismissed it as a ‘useless hunk of iron’, Edward Teller (father of the hydrogen bomb)was more prescient, describing
Greg Jericho, doyen of the fake left, has today joined the immigration debate with gusto: It is regrettably far too easy in Australia to blame migrants. From societal to educational to economic woes – migrants are the easy target. Last week the head of the Reserve Bank suggested migration could have caused lower wages growth.
Last weekend, Paul Kelly revealed that Australia’s disordered PM, Scott Morrison, recently attended the G7 meeting for one purpose only (given Australia is not in the G7). Morrison presented to the world caucus of free nations the document that China delivered Australia at the height of its recent trade war. The 14 conditions to end
The Centre for Public Integrity has compared Australia’s regulation of federal MPs with that of the UK, Canada and New Zealand, and has found it to be considerably weaker. The Centre contends this is due to the failure of Australia to adopt a parliamentary code of conduct for federal MPs. It wants Australia to implement
