RBA STANDS BY HIKES
Rising mortgage costs and high inflation could force some Australians to sell their homes, Reserve Bank governor Michele Bullock has acknowledged in a speech that’s dominating front pages this morning.
As The Sydney Morning Herald reports, Bullock “stood by the bank’s current interest rate settings, arguing that inflation pressures — particularly in home construction, insurance and the rental market — continued to be high in some parts of the economy”.
“If we don’t get inflation down, that’s bad for everyone, absolutely everyone. So that’s the job I’m focusing on. That’s the job the board is focusing on … I really think the board thinks at the moment, we’re still on that narrow path,” she said.
The Australian, which headlined its article “Attention, Treasurer Jim Chalmers!”, notes Bullock’s comments come after Chalmers “pointed the finger at the central bank for hammering growth ahead of weak GDP figures, which eked out a 1% gain over the 12 months to June, despite record government spending”.
HARRIS, TRUMP PREPARE FOR CLASH
In the US, where the presidential election campaign is heating up, Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican ex-president Donald Trump are preparing to debate each other next week.
As NBC News reports, the two sides agreed to a set of “ground rules” set by the network ABC ahead of the televised clash, including one that says “candidate microphones will be live only for the candidate whose turn it is to speak”.
A previous debate sunk President Joe Biden’s campaign for reelection, so it’s fair to say the stakes are high.
Trump’s campaign is certainly feeling the pressure — as Guardian US reports, the Republican’s path back to the White House has narrowed, with several states now out of reach.
“The Republican presidential nominee’s campaign has diverted resources away from Minnesota, Virginia and New Hampshire — states Trump was boasting he could win while Biden was the Democratic candidate — to focus instead on a small number of battleground states,” the story says.
Instead, “special attention” is being paid to Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE…
The internet — social media particularly — is, how do we put this delicately… full of jerks. Instagram influencers are a special breed, and when they’re not trying to sell you a pyramid scheme or some kind of invigorating mushroom powder, they just want to get that perfect shot of themselves in some sort of natural wonderland.
The town of Pomfret, located in the US state of Vermont, is sick of it, and has been successfully fighting back against hordes of tourists trampling all over their town in an attempt to capture the area’s particularly resplendent autumnal colour.
“[We have] experienced an unprecedented surge in Instagram and TikTok-fuelled tourist ‘influencers’… [who] have damaged roads, had accidents, required towing out of ditches, trampled gardens, defecated on private property… and verbally assaulted residents,” the town said on a GoFundMe page raising money for damages.
As a result, the town council voted to close the most popular road for leaf peeping to non-residents during the tourist season and enforce it with regular patrols. A timely reminder to always be respectful on your visits out of town so as not to ruin it for everyone else.
Say What?
This project has been pretty crazy, from beginning to the end.
Ali Abbasi
There’s a new movie about Donald Trump, set in 1980s New York and featuring stars like Succession‘s Jeremy Strong. But good luck catching it in a cinema. As the Associated Press reports, producers have had a very tough time securing proper distribution for it, partly because of opposition from Trump’s legal team. Abbasi, the director, says the project is “still not completely there,” despite a planned US premiere date for October 11.
Crikey Recap
Bob Katter is at the Kingo ordering a bag of chips to eat with his oysters. It’s the first sitting week after the parliamentary winter break and I’m in Canberra interviewing crossbenchers. When I go up to request an interview for the following day, Katter says he’s having dinner with “Monique and Allegra” in the other room, and invites me to join. So begins my evening with the Father of the House.
As it turns out, Allegra Spender is not there. He’s mixed her up with Kate Chaney, who is dining nearby. But Monique Ryan is there with her team, being regaled by Australian politics’ most colourful storyteller.
Between tales of Joh Bjelke-Petersen and egging The Beatles, Katter repeatedly asks Ryan why she and her fellow teals left high-paying jobs for politics. It doesn’t seem to occur to him that they might have done so on principle. But it speaks to a question I have for the 79-year-old, who will soon be honoured with a portrait marking 50 years in politics: Why is he still there?
It doesn’t seem, at least to this correspondent, that long since Bill Shorten arrived in Canberra, wearing the tag “future prime minister” that had been draped over him ever since the Beaconsfield mine disaster gave him a national platform to display his excellent media training. In fact it’s been 17 years, 18 by the time he quits in February, and two failed attempts to become prime minister, and two ministerial stints focused on what will surely be his enduring legacy, the National Disability Insurance Scheme.
It was Shorten who as a parliamentary secretary in the Rudd government not merely lifted the profile of Australians with disabilities and the need for the country to do better by them, but championed disability services reform, beginning Labor’s trajectory toward the establishment of the NDIS. Under Julia Gillard, Shorten had carriage of the Future of Financial Advice (FOFA) reforms, not to mention the minor issue of industrial relations.
Just like anything that involves even semi-direct contact with actual humans, politicians engaging in a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” (AMA) can be fraught. Even if you avoid any major blunders or controversies, you risk revealing that you are just profoundly dull. Dull is not something we’d call newly independent Senator Gerard Rennick, but he did experience the other side of the process: getting a fairly savage down-voting and some pretty hostile questioning about his views on COVID-19 and climate change. But what really caught our attention was Rennick’s username, the absolutely weapons-grade handle “Cool_Revolution_4559“.
We asked Rennick where he came up with the account name, and alas, it wasn’t his idea. “I had to create an account and that’s the name they gave me — no planning on my part” Rennick, who recently ditched the Liberals to form the People First Party, told Crikey over text. But he obviously quite liked it, saying: “Maybe I should have used that for the party name,” followed by the cry-laughing emoji.
READ ALL ABOUT IT
A 14-year-old student fatally shot four people in a rampage at a Georgia high school, officials say (Associated Press)
Israel kills 18 in Gaza as Hamas urges pressure on Netanyahu for ceasefire (al-Jazeera)
Daughter of South Africa’s ex-President Jacob Zuma to wed Eswatini king ‘for love’ (BBC)
China’s Xi promises $50 billion for Africa over next three years (AFP)
Court blocks move by Argentina’s Milei to privatise football (DW)
Judge, attorneys in Trump’s Jan. 6 case spar over what happens next, and when (The Washington Post) ($)
Ukraine army chief reveals the strategy behind Kursk incursion (CNN)
‘Regrets, I’ve had a few’: The best of the worst of Shorten’s zingers (SMH) ($)
THE COMMENTARIAT
Shorten didn’t give Labor a parting shot, he gave it a parting gift — David Crowe (The Sydney Morning Herald): Bill Shorten leaves the federal government with a huge gap to fill, a solid legacy to build upon and an astute message about how Labor can win the next election. He declares total confidence in the government’s fortunes, of course, but he offers some words to remember about the practice of politics.
“Labor is at its best when we know what we stand for — and we will fight for things,” he said at the press conference on Thursday morning to announce his departure from federal cabinet next year. He said this when asked about previous elections, rather than the one to come, but his advice comes without an expiration date. And it is exactly what his colleagues need to be told.
These 12 Pennsylvania voters could decide the election. They aren’t thrilled about it — Patrick Healy, Kristen Soltis Anderson and Adrian J. Rivera (The New York Times): No state is more coveted by Donald Trump and Kamala Harris than Pennsylvania, since their best strategies for an electoral college victory hinge on winning it. With polls showing a tied race there, we spoke with 12 Pennsylvanians for our new Times opinion focus group: voters who supported Joe Biden or Trump in 2020 and are not hard-core partisans.
While the group leaned toward Harris, her support was pretty soft. Few of the participants could articulate a strong argument to vote for her on her merits. They are eager for a candidate to rally behind, given their worries about the country, especially the economy, but they haven’t heard enough specifics from her about how she would lower costs.
