STATEMENT OF EXPECTATIONS
A revamped mandate for Australia’s $230 billion sovereign wealth fund is leading the way on almost every publication this morning as the government sets out the first statement of expectations for the independently managed Future Fund in 15 years.
AAP reports investments that help boost housing supply and accelerate the clean energy transition will be prioritised under the changes.
Finance Minister Katy Gallagher and Treasurer Jim Chalmers said in a joint statement of the new mandate: “This will mean more investment where we need it most but not at the expense of returns.
“The new investment mandate will require the fund to consider Australia’s national priorities in its investment decisions, where possible, appropriate and consistent with strong returns.”
The ABC reports the move has been welcomed by the fund’s board of guardians, with Guardian Australia flagging the board’s chair Greg Combet saying a new executive director responsible for the energy transition will be appointed in response to the changes.
“We have also long recognised the importance of environmental, social and governance issues in our investment process and will add resources in this area,” he is quoted as saying.
The Australian Financial Review highlights Chalmers’ insistence that the Albanese government remains “committed to the fund’s independence and commercial focus”, adding: “Its primary objective will continue to be to maximise returns … and there will be no change to the expected risk profile.” The Australian meanwhile reckons the move will “see the role of the ‘independent’ Future Fund become an election issue”.
Chalmers has pledged the government won’t start any drawdowns from the fund until at least 2032-33, “providing the fund the certainty it needs to continue to build its portfolio”, Guardian Australia highlights.
Elsewhere in the endless stream of maneuvers and announcements during the final two sitting weeks of the year, the government’s plan to ban children under 16 from using social media is set to be introduced into Parliament today, AAP flags. Minister for Communications Michelle Rowland has claimed the reforms are about “protecting young people and letting parents know we’ve got their backs”.
The newswire reports that under the much-discussed laws, social media platforms would be required to take reasonable steps to stop those under 16 from having an account. Platforms that continually breach the proposed legislation could face penalties of up to $50 million.
The Associated Press reminds readers the age-verification technology trials connected to the plans will report back to the government “by the end of June next year”.
Someone who won’t be around in Parliament next year, regardless of who wins the looming federal election, is former Labor leader Bill Shorten who is retiring from politics in February. In an interview with the Nine newspapers, Shorten said he picked his next gig, vice-chancellor of the University of Canberra, rather than a cushy foreign posting because: “I didn’t want to go overseas. I wanted to be my own boss.”
“I didn’t want to be a corporate door-opener, although that’s fine — no judgment about that — but I’m interested in the national interest. Perhaps I’m evolving from the day-to-day bickering.”
Finally, AAP flags it’s Coles’ turn to face the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission inquiry into the nation’s supermarkets today after Woolworths executives were grilled at the start of the week.
UKRAINE USES UK MISSILES
Following the firing of US-supplied long-range missiles, Ukraine is reported to have now fired UK-made long-range missiles at a target inside Russia for the first time.
The Guardian said multiple sources had told the newspaper that “Storm Shadow” missiles were fired by Ukraine on Wednesday. The UK government is not commenting on the reports, the BBC says, with Defence Secretary John Healey telling MPs earlier “Ukraine’s action on the battlefield speaks for itself”.
Healey told the House of Commons he had spoken to his Ukrainian counterpart on Tuesday and discussed Ukraine’s “robust response” to recent escalation by Russia, the broadcaster reports. “At this point I’m not able to get into any further operational details,” he added.
Earlier in the week, Kyiv launched US-supplied long-range missiles into the Bryansk region bordering Ukraine. The New York Times previously reported the decision by outgoing US President Joe Biden to allow the use of the weaponry was in part to help shore up Ukraine’s defences after Russia recruited North Korean troops to assist its fighters. The Guardian reports the UK’s decision to allow the use of Storm Shadow missiles was also made in response to the deployment of more than 10,000 North Korean troops. UK and US officials have called the deployment a significant escalation in the conflict, the paper said.
In other developments, Biden has also agreed to give Ukraine anti-personnel land mines, a US defence official told the BBC, and the US embassy in Kyiv has been temporarily closed following “specific information of a potential significant air attack on 20 November”.
The Guardian recalls how Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned the use of US and UK-made missiles inside Russia would be akin to NATO entering into a direct conflict with Moscow. Following Putin signing a revised nuclear doctrine (see yesterday’s Worm), the newspaper flags Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh saying: “We’re going to continue to monitor, but we don’t have any indications that Russia is preparing to use a nuclear weapon within Ukraine.”
Elsewhere, the Associated Press flags US President-elect Donald Trump has chosen former acting Attorney-General Matt Whitaker to serve as US ambassador to NATO. The newswire said the pick was “an unusual one, given his background is in law enforcement and not in foreign policy”.
Finally, as COP29 enters its final stages, negotiations over how much money to raise for climate action in developing countries, and how to raise it, remain stalled, Semafor reports. Juan Carlos Monterrey-Gomez, Panama’s special representative for climate change, told the site: “It’s not going well. After more than two years of technical negotiations and every kind of convening you can think of, we haven’t really advanced much.” He added there was “definitely a risk” the summit could end without a deal.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE…
A 35,000-year-old saber-toothed cub has been discovered in the permafrost of Siberia.
The New York Times said prospectors were looking for mammoth tusks when they found a bundle of fur sticking out of a bank of the Badyarikha River.
The paper reports researchers at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow were delighted when the discovery was handed to them as it turned out to be the first-ever mummy of a saber-toothed cat.
Details of the finding were published in the journal Scientific Reports last week. Manuel J. Salesa, from the Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales in Madrid, who was not involved in the study, is quoted by the NYT as saying: “Many paleontologists working with felids, including myself, have been hoping for decades to see a frozen saber-tooth felid from the permafrost. This amazing find is one of the most exciting moments of my career.”
NPR reports the study found the cat was just three weeks old when it died. Its cause of death is unknown.
The mummified kitten still had its whiskers and claws intact and was covered in a coat of “short, thick, soft, dark brown fur”, the broadcaster said.
Say What?
It really entered the mainstream this year, with Olympians, Paralympians, singers, and other influential people all attributing their success to manifestation.
The Cambridge Dictionary
In a press release revealing it had picked “manifest” as its word of 2024, the Cambridge Dictionary attributed the increased usage to sports stars and celebrities claiming their success this year was due to the way they had visualised it beforehand. Elsewhere, the Australian National University’s word of the year is “Colesworth”.
CRIKEY RECAP
It seems foreign students are not merely criminals but many are also wealthy criminals. Wealthy criminals who Dutton wants to continue to flow into Australia, given he will block the government’s foreign student cap legislation. Challenged on why he wouldn’t let what he says is Labor’s unworkable bill through and bring in his own, allegedly better, legislation when the Coalition wins the election early next year, Dutton’s only response was “this problem can be solved with a change of government at the next election… This can be solved by voting in a competent government.”
Just how competent the Coalition, and Dutton in particular, were on foreign students, and on preventing abuses of the visa system generally, was demonstrated in the savage Nixon review. But there’s still a long way to go before the next election. And it seems the path to it will feature more lies, hypocrisy and smears on migration from Dutton.
It appears Rowland was speaking about a 2022 paper published in Nature Communications called “Windows of developmental sensitivity to social media“, though she did not mention it by name.
One of the paper’s co-authors, University of Oxford professor of human behaviour and technology Andrew Przybylski, said he was unaware this work was being used in support of the policy and that its findings do not support a teen social media ban.
“I do not agree that it provides the justification for this policy. I think they have misunderstood the purpose and findings of our research,” he said in an email to Crikey.”
Rowland told Crikey that the government has taken a “pragmatic approach”.
It was quite the scene: a scowling, tracksuit-clad Alan Jones being hounded by media as he exited a Sydney police station on Monday, hours after being arrested and charged with 24 offences against eight alleged victims (on Tuesday two more charges were laid and the number of alleged victims rose to nine).
The former “king” of talkback radio was uncharacteristically silent as he was peppered with questions, including “Are you a sexual predator?”, “Will you be defending the charges?” and “Did you do it?”
Jones will reportedly be defending the charges. But it is nevertheless a spectacular downfall for a man once believed to be untouchable — a powerful demagogue who had the ear of prime ministers, as well as those of his loyal listeners.
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Ford to cut 4,000 jobs in Europe (The Financial Times) ($)
One Direction stars mourn Liam Payne at funeral (BBC)
How Google spent 15 Years creating a culture of concealment (The New York Times) ($)
Trump’s turn to bask in Musk’s reflected glory (CNN)
Anyone can buy data tracking US soldiers and spies to nuclear vaults and brothels in Germany (WIRED)
UK inflation rises to 2.3%, increasing pressure to delay interest rate cut (The Guardian)
THE COMMENTARIAT
From Xi Jinping’s power moves to Anthony Albanese’s trade goals: Global leaders were jockeying for influence at the G20 — Brett Worthington (ABC): US President Biden’s looming departure from the world stage seemingly brought with it a heightened sense of the jockeying between leaders, some of whom like China’s President Xi, and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, have spent a week in South America for summits.
The summits have had a 215-pound (97kg), fake-tanned elephant hanging over them.
While Donald Trump might have fudged his weight when he surrendered to the Fulton County Jail in Georgia last year, his threats of kicking off a trade war with China and winding back action on climate change are being treated far more seriously.
So much so that the Chinese leader found himself without any irony calling on an Australian prime minister to advocate for free trade and oppose protectionism when they met this week.
Sneaky, excessive and unjustified: Why Labor’s electoral reforms are vulnerable to constitutional challenge — Anne Twomey (Guardian Australia): Justice Michael McHugh observed that one cannot seek to justify a law as levelling the playing field if it “favours the sitting members and their political parties at the expense of the views of those who do not hold political power”. The same can be said of the current bill. Expenditure rules seem to favour parties and much of the public funding is calculated by reference to success at the previous election or focused upon funding parties, rather than independents.
The level of public funding, particularly in relation to the “administration” of parties, appears to be excessive and unjustified. Yet we are to have no committee inquiry to investigate any of these issues. The Albanese government, having reached an agreement with the opposition, seems unwilling to have its bill scrutinised or to countenance amendments. It looks likely that the high court will end up doing the job instead.
