CHALMERS IN CHINA
Jim Chalmers will become the first Australian treasurer to visit China in seven years when he begins his two-day trip to Beijing today. The AAP reports Chalmers will meet with key Chinese counterparts during his visit and attempt to “smooth out lingering trade tensions” between the two countries.
Speaking ahead of the trip, Chalmers said: “Dialogue and engagement gives us the best chance to properly manage and maximise these important links” as restrictions remain on live lobster and two red meat exporters. Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong met with her Chinese counterpart Wang Yi in New York this week and pressed Beijing to drop the barriers against Australian rock lobster imports. AAP quotes Senator Wong as saying despite billions of dollars of Chinese trade tariffs against Australian products being removed, points of contention remain.
Chalmers highlighted the importance of China’s economy to Australia ahead of his trip, according to news.com.au. “We recognise that there’s a lot at stake and a lot to gain from a more stable economic relationship with China,” he said. “We’ve got a big opportunity to make sure that both countries benefit from the complementarity of our economies while always advancing and protecting Australia’s national interests.”
The site carries Chalmers’ announcement he met with mining companies BHP, Fortescue and Woodside, banking executives from Macquarie and HSBC, and the Business Council of Australia before his visit. Agriculture Department officials have also travelled with the treasurer to China.
AAP quotes shadow treasurer Angus Taylor as saying of the trip: “Those trade relationships are hugely important, but we should do that at the same time as putting a line in the sand on those crucial national security issues, and it’s about getting that balance right.”
As the treasurer heads abroad hoping to improve trade relations, back home the Reserve Bank of Australia will today release its financial stability review looking at the threats to the economy and how well businesses and households will be able to deal with them. The review will be published at 11.30am AEST.
NEGATIVE GEARING RESPONSE
The fallout from the claims in the Nine newspapers that the Albanese government has asked Treasury to look at potential changes to negative gearing or the capital gains tax discount continues to lead in a number of places. The AFR and The Australian (perhaps unsurprisingly) have led on the prime minister’s claim yesterday that neither he nor the treasurer had ordered the modelling and that he assumed Treasury had conducted the work without his direction.
The Australian says Anthony Albanese’s responses to questions about the reports hardened throughout the day, ending with him telling 2GB radio: “I have no plans to do it. It’s not our policy.”
The paper quotes Opposition Leader Peter Dutton as responding to the denials with: “You can’t trust him [Albanese] not to break his word”, but adds several Coalition MPs have expressed a desire for the party to consider its own changes to negative gearing.
Opposition MPs told The Australian the party was split along generational lines on the issue. “There’s a fair chunk or even a majority of those in the party room under 50 open to doing something about it,” one Coalition MP said. “The difference comes down to those under 50 and those over 50.” Another claimed the topic was “more front of mind than it’s ever been”. Having said all that, the MPs claimed there was at present “no appetite” among the party leadership to risk losing a key criticism of Labor.
Meanwhile, Labour sources told the Oz the government was “keeping the door open” on negative gearing reforms to silence the Greens, “but they can’t leave that door open much bigger than it is because otherwise a Coalition will smash the door in”.
Over at the ABC, David Speers quotes the Greens’ housing spokesman Max Chandler-Mather as declaring: “Greens pressure works” in reference to the calls from the party to make reforms to negative gearing as part of negotiations over the government’s stalled housing legislation. A Coalition MP also told Speers the government would be “fucking nuts” to try anything on negative gearing, adding: “Whatever they do, we’ll run a scare campaign saying they’re after you next”.
The Sydney Morning Herald picks up on Albanese’s claims that he would need to be convinced any changes would not result in a reduction in housing supply. “It would have to convince me, and would need to convince people, that any impact of any policy changes would not have a downward side on supply. The truth is that, at the moment, that has not been done. It’s as simple as that,” he said. The paper said eight Labor MPs had thrown their support behind looking at reforming negative gearing.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE…
Fans of the Netflix show Bridgerton have been left a tad disappointed by a ball in Detroit that rather spectacularly failed to meet expectations.
You probably already know how this goes (there was no escaping the Willy Wonka experience earlier this year). On Sunday, instead of a glamorous affair with ballroom dancing and music, those who attended the “Detroit Bridgerton Ball” said they experienced an event filled with cheap decor, undercooked food and a single dancer as entertainment, the BBC reports.
According to the ABC, the organisers promised guests an “evening of sophistication, grace, and historical charm” with tickets costing between US$150 (A$220) and US$1,000 (A$1,464). Pictures posted on social media by attendees show a sparsely decorated room with plastic flowers and “extremely tacky” backdrops, the broadcaster said, and the live music promised was a lone violin performer.
Local news station WXYZ-TV, Detroit spoke to the dancer at the event, a local circus performer named Tink, who said she was hired just three hours beforehand and asked to pole dance.
Event organisers Uncle N Me LLC told WXYZ-TV, Detroit they were working to address the concerns. The BBC said the event was not endorsed by or associated with Netflix or the Bridgerton production company Shondaland.
Say What?
This is a good result that shows we’re getting inflation under control but we’re not getting ahead of ourselves because we know it doesn’t moderate in a straight line.
Jim Chalmers
The treasurer welcomed the annual rate of headline inflation falling to 2.7% in August (down from 3.5% in July), but many were keen to point out the rate of underlying inflation came in at 3.4%.
CRIKEY RECAP
Greens Treasury spokesman Nick McKim has doubled down on his suggestion that Labor force the Reserve Bank to cut interest rates, saying those who don’t agree with him have had their minds consumed by “neoliberal brain worms”.
On Sunday, McKim said the Greens wouldn’t support the government’s overhaul of the Reserve Bank — including creating a specialist board that would decide monetary policy — until interest rates were cut. One way to do that, McKim said, would be for the government to become the first to ever use Section 11 of the Reserve Bank Act, allowing the treasurer to override the bank’s decisions.
The proposal was widely panned, including by Finance Minister Katy Gallagher, who called it “crazy”, “a bit unseemly”, and “out of control”. Guardian Australia economics correspondent Peter Hannam called it “Trumpist”, and two economists whom Crikey spoke to said overriding the Reserve Bank would be something that typically happens in authoritarian countries.
Crikey spoke to McKim on Wednesday morning, following the Reserve Bank’s decision the previous afternoon to leave the cash rate target unchanged at 4.35%.
Again, though, the hypocrisy isn’t the point. The question we should be asking is why. Is this disjuncture between good intentions and bad actions inevitably inherent in the nature of the corporate beast?
The good news is that the answer is no. Amorality is a choice. It is true that the less competition a company faces, the more likely it is that it will engage in monopolistic behaviour to the detriment of its competitors, customers and community. That doesn’t mean its guiding minds have no agency in doing so.
Investing corporations with their own legal identity was a mistake, because it implies they have a soul (they don’t). This provides a too-ready excuse for the humans who populate them to evade personal responsibility for their choices.
Which points to a solution. Coles and Woolies will cop a plea deal, no doubt, and pay penalties in the millions. That will not change their behaviour, because they can’t behave (or misbehave).
If we want the people who run corporations to make better choices, they need to face personal consequences when they choose to make their employer do harm. Otherwise, prepare to rinse and repeat.
How did we get here, some of us cry to the skies? For my generation/cohort, older Gen X/very late boomer, this is bitter bread indeed. We got an actual leftist in power, or so it said on the tin. And what was he and his government’s main claim to preferment? That they were a safer pair of hands to do the selling out.
Yes, yes, yes. This government has done hundreds of good things, small, and somewhat larger among all the compromises, and someone needs to do the much less fun to write article listing them.
But what really galls is that the sell-outs were so momentous, and so early, and they’re still losing to the damn right. A “left” government has laced us into US forward defence for a war in their interests we don’t need to fight, while offering nothing by way of a really situation-altering housing or cost of living plan, and abandoning net zero.
And. It. Is. Still. Losing.
Or neck and neck.
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Israel preparing for possible ground offensive in Lebanon, military chief says (The Guardian)
Yevgeny Prigozhin secretly used JPMorgan and HSBC for Wagner payments (The Financial Times) ($)
Earth to briefly gain second ‘moon’, scientists say (BBC)
Leadership, but no clear leader, failed at tragic Trump rally (The New York Times) ($)
In duelling speeches, Harris is to make her capitalist pitch while Trump pushes deeper into populism (Associated Press)
Discovery of massive black hole jets is causing astronomers to rethink structure of the universe (CNN)
THE COMMENTARIAT
Why Labor seems to be flirting with housing tax breaks again — Jennifer Hewett (AFR): “Treasury looks at all kinds of policy options all of the time,” Chalmers said airily. “It’s not unusual for the public service … to examine issues that are being speculated about in the public or the Parliament.”
Oh sure.
The real story is that the Albanese government is desperately looking for a way out of the political dead end that has stalled any momentum in its drive to an election. It urgently wants some good news and some big policies to try to convince the public Labor is making a difference to the cost of living pressures that are so angering voters.
That annual headline inflation at 2.7% and underlying inflation at 3.4% last month are both at the lowest level in 2½ years certainly helps sell that message. Not so the inconvenient timing of Bullock’s warning on Tuesday rejecting any notion that the Reserve Bank’s thinking on rate cuts would be influenced by a “temporary” fall in headline inflation, largely driven by government energy rebates.
Labor’s coalmine expansion approvals undermine its credibility on the global stage — Adam Morton (Guardian Australia): The government knows approving coalmines is a bad look. Plibersek puts out a media release when she blocks a coalmine or greenlights a renewable energy development. As we have noted before, the approval of fossil fuel developments tends to get a different treatment. No media release is issued, and the decisions come in a group to minimise the number of negative stories.
Addressing the climate crisis is challenging and complicated. The government sometimes gets frustrated with what it sees as a simplistic public debate about it. It thinks its opponents get an easy ride from the media and aren’t held properly accountable for what they say. Sometimes it has a point.
But it is the government. When it approves thermal coal mine developments of this size it should be frustrated — or more — with itself. It is undermining its own case that it is serious about the problem.
Before the election in 2022, Albanese declared he wanted climate action to be his legacy. It seems unlikely this is what he meant.
