By Denis Bright  

Josh Frydenberg made a successful transition from a recognized tennis ace to excellence in studies in economics and law. A successful corporate career followed. He has represented the normally safe federal seat of Kooyong since 2010. Either from Opposition or in a future LNP Government, Josh Frydenberg should be a familiar face in Australian politics into the 2030s.

Josh Frydenberg’s future contribution to policy innovation could be more creative if the federal LNP followed a more flexible path in domestic and strategic policies. In an economy that is resource rich and already half the size of either France or Britain, Australia has no need to be a dependent power within new strategic alliances that stoke up international tensions and divert resources into unproductive militarism to the cheers of military industrial complexes globally.

Generations of building up DFAT expertise justify a more independent outlook on international affairs so that Australians can enjoy the benefits of new associations with rising powers in Asia without the need for intelligence clearance from deliberations of the Five Eyes Intelligence Network.

The text from the ANU Crawford Leadership Forum was a good chance to note the style of Josh Frydenberg as he handled the provocative themes of Building Resilience and the Return of Strategic Competition.

Side-stepping great issues like global warming and the COVID-19 crisis, a potential LNP future leader focused on a manufactured complaint about the consequences of a more confident and assertive China that is willing to use its growing economic weight as a source of political pressure and regional coercion against countries in the US Global Alliance including Australia.

Josh Frydenberg offered a new China Plus Strategy. Australia would be in the forefront of managing the rise of China for the mutual benefit of countries in our Indo-Pacific Region, including the USA.

DFAT summaries of existing commercial ties with China shows the difficulties of turning around the ship of state in new strategic directions. China is indeed Australia’s largest two-way trading partner in goods and services, accounting for one third (31 per cent) of our trade with the world.

Any spontaneity from the address disappeared when The Australian (6 September 2021) reported on the address in considerable detail before delivery at the ANU Crawford Leadership Forum. By that evening, the address was hardly newsworthy. The usual coverage of COVID statistics and even Scott Morrison’s attendance at the two-day National Summit on Women’s Safety had become far more significant.

In opposition or government, Josh Frydenberg would take Australia in a more conservative direction in both foreign and domestic policies. Elections with Khaki Militaristic Rhetoric have been favourable to the LNP in the past. The 1954 election assisted in the generation of 23 years of continuity to LNP government after 1949. The landslide to the LNP in 1966 offered more oxygen to the continuity before US hastily abandoned Saigon to Viet Cong forces in 1975.

Today’s LNP overstates the importance of strategic concerns about the rise of China. As warned by retired Rear Admiral Chris Barrie, Australians can and should welcome the rise of China as a stabilizing influence in the Indo-Pacific Basin. Britain made similar mistakes by mishandling the rise of Germany in the generation prior to the Great War (1914-18).

Our currently badly skewed China card can help to win elections in the short-term at a cost of financial and strategic burdens for generations ahead. President Biden is also playing a mutual China card to stoke up patriotic fervour before the US mid-term elections on 8 November 2022.

Rapprochement with China is likely to commence after that date when projections from the US Federal Reserve for the US economy are less favourable than at present.   The strategic disputes with China are probably less serious than our leaders claim. China is always in a good bargaining position because of its long-term economic strength, the diversity of its commercial outreach through Belt and Road Projects at a time when the property giant Evergrande is in financial difficulties.

Jaunts by US military vessels through the Taiwan Straits, co-exist with ferry services operating between the Chinese city of Xiamen and the Taiwanese port of Taichung with a capacity for 150 cars, 256 standard containers and 683 passengers on a six-days a week schedule. This is a luxurious ferry service which is owned jointly by investors on both sides of the Taiwan Straits.

As reported in The Taipei Times (13 July 2021), there is less polarization in public opinion within Taiwan and a willingness to embark on Win-Win Relations with China over the confrontation associated with saturation military aid to Taiwan from US Republican administrations since 2001.  Readers can easily access articles on changing public opinion within Taiwan as new public opinion soundings are communicated.

US Corporate leaders also ignore the excesses of the political rhetoric against China and foster new deals in China’s growing and diversifying economy. Despite the intensity of Trump’s rhetoric about commercial ties with China, US exports to China increased in 2020. Most US firms have a positive relationship with Chinese manufacturers for the delivery of popular American brand names and services. Extending this commercial relationship to higher level financial services is a step too far for US political leaders who do not want to be identified with the growth in the Chinese economy and its new global outreach in the current climate of public opinion in both China and the USA. In practice however, commercial relationships with China continue as the US economy needs a healthy commercial relationship with China. Just recently, US sales of microchips to Huawei’s auto component sector proceeded as usual while local conservative leaders continue talk down ties with China.

Josh Frydenberg’s New China Plus agenda is available for perusal in the ANU Crawford Policy Forum. Its macro-themes are:

• The Return of Strategic Competition
• An Australian economy that can cope with strategic competition
• An Innovative Phase of Australian high technology market ideology in association with other regional partners

There is little that is Whitlamesque in Josh Frydenberg’s address. It promotes an Australia First Strategy in the manifest destiny traditions of other countries, large and small in the US Global Alliance. When the Biden administration makes its rapprochement with China, the LNP will quickly go with the flow of world opinion particularly if the shocks of current market corrections continue to disrupt the initial post-COVID global recovery.

All this is Politics 101 for a potential leader with Josh Frydenberg’s academic and corporate background. However, his own electorate of Kooyong is ahead of Josh in demanding a less pedestrian stance on the great issues of our times. Perhaps changed insights will come with Josh Frydenberg’s own keep fit agendas as the wider LNP takes a skip to the right in economic and strategic policies while Scott Morrison sizes up the most opportunistic election date.

By 2353NM  

Once upon a time, the newly elected progressive Australian Government was told by their advisers that financial calamity was to sweep the world, bringing financial ruin, uncertainty and pestilence (the last one might just be made up) to humanity. The newly elected government, being of the mind that they employ specialists who have likely forgotten more about their subjects than the politicians had ever known, asked what to do. The advice was ‘to go early and go hard’. Provide short term, medium term and long-term economic stimulus to the community.

So the government wrote pretty well everyone in the country a cheque for $900, which some saved, some bought the ‘new-fangled’ wide screen TV or made repairs to their homes and others distributed to the community by consuming the products available at the local bar or pokie palace. Short term stimulus done.

The government then devised a program that would improve the living conditions of thousands of people around their fair land. They decided to support those that wanted to insulate their houses. This would ensure that energy consumption to heat or cool the populations’ homes would be lower forever more. Regrettably a small number of insulation installers lost their lives, predominately due to lax occupational health and safety standards in a number of states where those out for a quick buck cashed in on the largesse without care for the employee or customer. As it took a while for people to decide if they wanted insulation and for the material to become available – medium term stimulus, tick.

The newly elected government believed in providing educational opportunities to all. Observing that a lot of schools didn’t have appropriate facilities for indoor sport, assemblies, performance spaces or even a place to run around when it was wet outside, the government determined that its long-term stimulus would be to fund the design and construction of multi-purpose school halls. Anyone who has ever designed and built anything will know that the process can easily take two or three years. Bingo – long term stimulus.

Those that followed a more conservative ideology were aghast! Some of the $900 cheques were being spent ‘inappropriately’, including the casinos or pokie palace! Exactly said the government, that keeps the casino or pokie attendant in a job and earning money. Others claimed insulating houses would increase energy efficiency, to the detriment of the large companies that mined the coal and owned the power stations. Exactly said the government, the homeowners will reap the benefits of lower energy prices for decades while reducing carbon emissions as less power, gas and heating oil would be consumed across the country.

Those that didn’t get the economic stimulus message also asked why schools that couldn’t afford to build their own hall were being given the money to do so. The government explained that the halls increased the opportunity for all students to excel at sport or become a famous actor and if nothing else provide a play area in wet weather. Besides, the construction would employ thousands of people for years. Those employed as a result of the program would then have the confidence to buy the new wide screen TV, spend a bit on the pokies as well as continue to provide economic stimulus to the shopkeepers and construction material manufacturers of our fair land. They would also probably return a bit to the government through income and payroll taxes as well as GST.

The result – Australia was one of the few developed economies that didn’t fall into recession between 2007 and 2010.

After a few years waging war on the government’s ‘feckless’ spending, amid claims of maxing out the credit card, rorts that benefitted political friends and finding every little process and procedural failure, the conservatives were in power. There was no recognition given to the ‘go hard and go fast’ mantra’s quick implementation, leading to some finding the inevitable flaws in the process and exploiting them.

Twelve years after the financial crisis that was going to affect the entire world, a global pandemic swept the world. In early 2020, the government’s ‘fearless leader’ (so named because he stabbed his predecessor in the back for having the hide to attempt to introduce an emissions trading scheme) addressed us all one Friday afternoon and advised that financial ruin, uncertainty and pestilence (the first one might just be made up this time) were going to be experienced across our fair land. From the following Monday there were going to be some restrictions on our ability to gather together and move around, but they were only going to be introduced after he saw his favourite footy team, ‘the Sharkies’, play their first game for the new football year (and presumably attend his Pentecostal church on the Sunday).

The restrictions caused a lot of employees to either not be rostered for their casual shifts or stood down from their permanent employment. Our ‘fearless leader’ claimed there was nothing he could do, as less than a year earlier he had gone to an election claiming that the government’s budget was ‘already back in the black next year’ despite the logical tautology. You could even buy the ‘back in the black’ coffee mug from the Liberal Party online store! We had unlikely bedfellows, the Union movement and the Business Council of Australia, together with the states, imploring the Australian Government to do something to avoid widespread financial calamity and ruin across the country (maybe the first one wasn’t made up after all).

The government, still hurting from the marketing and sales disaster that was the ‘back in the black’ coffee mugs finally agreed to introduce a system where they would pay the employers of stood down staff who would in turn pay the employees a fixed sum. Despite Johnson’s UK having the skills to calculate a percentage of the normal wage payment for each employee, it was too hard for our ‘fearless leader’ to work out someone on $700 a week and someone on $1500 a week probably had different levels of financial commitment and some would struggle on a fixed payment. Always looking at the marketing hook (remember the black coffee mugs) they christened the payment JobKeeper but put conditions on the payment that it would reduce after some time and be eliminated towards the end of 2020 when the pandemic had gone away.

The states, fearing the effects of the calamity on their health systems of people infected with the pandemic coming into the country and straight out into the community volunteered to oversee the federal responsibility of mandatory quarantine of returning travellers in hotels because all but one of the government’s purpose-built quarantine facilities around the country were sold off years ago. Our ‘fearless leader’ imposed caps on the numbers of arrivals into the country. Our ‘fearless leader’ also agreed to look after the sourcing and purchasing of vaccines and to ensure that the pandemic didn’t run riot in aged care homes.

In June 2021, The Guardian was reporting that the management of the vaccine rollout was ‘a dog’s breakfast’. While the purchase of 1 million Pfizer COVID 19 doses from Poland, announced in August 2021 was helpful – it begs the question why a comparatively rich country such as Australia is scouring the world in the second half of 2021 looking or something it had the ability to reserve and purchase half way through 2020. Our first purchase of Pfizer was only made in November 2020 with additional purchases in February and April 2021. But there were still ‘back in the black’ coffee mugs for sale.

Aged care homes have been subject to visits by the pandemic on a number of occasions and unfortunately hundreds of residents have died ahead of their time, with little ability for their relatives to say goodbye, ensure that the resident was comfortable in their last moments on earth or, on a number of occasions, even attend the funeral. At the time of writing this, there are still significant dangers for residents of aged care homes as the staff were not vaccinated at the same time as the residents – and the staff are far more likely to pick the virus up in the community.

Some firms that received ‘JobKeeper’ funds chose to keep the funding even though they were fortunate enough to increase profit during the pandemic. For example, when Harvey Norman totted up their annual financial statements in July 2021, they found their profit increased by 116%. Did they return their $14.5million in ‘JobKeeper’ – not a chance. Who would have thought that people would be online shopping to purchase equipment for their ‘home office’ when they had been told to work from home?

The government’s response was the program was designed quickly to create the most stimulus and there was no mechanism to recover the funds from those that found out after the event they didn’t meet the criteria. Sounds like the same thing they pilloried the progressive side of politics for about a decade earlier. At the same time, the same conservative government considered chasing individuals who received JobKeeper as well as JobSeeker during the 2020/2021 Financial Year. In the government’s eyes this isn’t a correct and proper use of resources.

The story is pretty clear – the progressive political party really couldn’t market themselves out of a wet paper bag. The conservative political party is all about the marketing.

Anyone want a black coffee mug?

What do you think?

By 2353NM  

In the past year or so, most of us would have become quite familiar with the group of people that seem to front up almost daily to discuss the current state of the COVID-19 pandemic in each Australian jurisdiction. Usually there are a couple of politicians ably backed up by the experts in public health management, a high-ranking commissioned Police Officer, with a person live translating the discussion into Auslan for the benefit of those with hearing difficulties.

To some extent, they have all become minor celebrities, demonstrated by when the Queensland Government’s usual Auslan interpreter seemed to disappear from view recently, it became a news story in itself. He was ok, but quarantined.

Generally, the Chief Health Officers give background to the decisions they have recommended, with a degree of frankness that is lacking from politicians. As examples, Dr Janette Young, Dr Kerry Chant, Prof Brett Sutton and Dr Nicola Spurrier are happy to discuss their recommendations at a level where you don’t have to be a medical professional or the holder of a science-based PhD to understand. They communicate clearly and explain not only the decision but the reasons for the decision and none of them seem to be afraid to suggest that they actually don’t know all the answers. The ‘experts’ are also happy to discuss what they hope will happen if the plan works as intended.

Why do the respective governments around Australia wheel out their Chief Health Officers and similar staff when there is a crisis to address? The pattern is not a new thing. Shane Fitzsimmons is remembered by many as the ‘head’ of the New South Wales Fire Service during the 2019/2020 bushfires explaining the how and why of fire management. Various meteorologists are also given the opportunity to demonstrate their ability to explain why floods and cyclones affect some areas and not others most summers. In general, the expert information provided appears to be free of spin, marketing and point-scoring. As such, the majority of people put a great deal of trust in the provided information.

There is a lesson here for politicians and reporters, a lot of whom are sharing the stages with the various Chief Health Officers and their ilk at the moment. Frank and fearless advice generally is better accepted than incessant marketing, spin, vacuous promises and claims that cannot be either substantiated or supported. While there are certainly people who think the ‘experts’, reporters and the politicians are in cahoots to force us all into submission by the ‘lizard people’, most of us can understand frank advice and assess that we really should act upon it even if we find the actions irritating, annoying or difficult to comply with.

In contrast, Prime Minister Morrison determined that the dealings of the ‘national cabinet’ (which really are regular meetings of the Prime Minister and each state’s Premier/Chief Minister) should be secret. There has always seemed to be some ambiguity around the consensus achieved in ‘national cabinet’ meetings which suggests there isn’t always agreement. It is rare for the Premiers and Chief Ministers to be on the same stage as Morrison when the ‘national cabinet report’ is being presented.

Morrison’s justification for the secrecy is his decree that the ‘national cabinet’ was a committee of the Federal Government. It seems that others disagreed, with Senator Rex Patrick taking the government to court to gain access to ‘national cabinet’ documentation. The judge agreed with Senator Patrick that the justification for secrecy was invalid. The government had 30 days to appeal and on past history it probably will.

In comparison, the level of compliance with the patient and logical discussions by the medical experts who ‘stand up’ every day to go through the reasons for the restrictions in all our lives demonstrates that most of us can handle the truth even if it isn’t what we want to hear. It also seems that most of us can rationalise that some restrictions on our personal ‘freedoms’ help ourselves and others in our community, despite the claims of some who should know better.

A culture of secrecy does have consequences. If we don’t have the information there are a multitude of people who will make it up for a variety of reasons, including self-aggrandisement or to promote their own view of the world. Just as nature abhors a vacuum, people will fill information gaps caused by secrecy with ‘information’ that might be correct, but more than likely will not.

Open and honest communication demonstrates there is nothing to hide. It’s about time our politicians and reporters tried it. After all, they know the process works as they have been nearby spectators as it is demonstrated almost every day for over a year by the specialist staff employed to maintain public health.

What do you think?

By Matthew Reddin  

For weeks, Gladys Berejiklian has warned that things will get worse. She just announced that she won’t be doing daily press conferences.

There’s this ongoing trend that echoed throughout the online world during the Trump presidency: Imagine if Obama said (or did) this? Imagine the outrage, the scorn, the villagers with torches and pitchforks if he did/said this. But the thing is, you couldn’t imagine it, because he’d never say or do anything as remotely objectionable, crazy or flat-out offensive as Trump would. But a different standard was applied to Trump than was Obama, for whatever reason. There are volumes of books to be written on it and what’s behind it (spoiler alert: it has something to do with pigment).

This is what occurred to me, as a Victorian, as an Australian, as a sentient human this morning upon hearing that Gladys Berejiklian, presiding over a monumental failure to act, a failure of procedure and oversight, the consequences of which have stretched up, down and across the eastern seaboard, has decided that as of Monday, her daily press briefings will be done online, by some low-level bureaucrat, until such time as she has something to say.

Which could be never, let’s be frank about it.

I mean, FUCKING IMAGINE IF DAN ANDREWS HAD DONE THE SAME THING. Truth be told, you can’t, because he actually showed up and did his job, and would have known that there are consequences for not doing his job; Gladys is of the political stripe where there simply aren’t consequences for her doing anything, ever – nor for her federal counterpart.

Gladys announced 1,542 cases (double the highest number of cases Victoria ever recorded during the 2020 outbreak) and basically said her work here was done. “Can’t someone else do it?” she asked someone, probably, in between being insanely corrupt and blithely contemptuous.

Samantha Maiden from News.com.au called it as she saw it. I’m guessing she’ll be fairly alone in that stable for criticizing the NSW leader.

Hiding while your citizens die.

It’s not leadership. But sure looks like cowardice https://t.co/afAEu09Tjy

— Samantha Maiden (@samanthamaiden) September 10, 2021

The ABC’s Patricia Karvelas was also less than impressed.

To abandon the daily accountability opportunity for journalists to ask questions when deaths and cases are rising is one of the most disturbing decisions I’ve seen. The bushfire is raging and we will get videos? #Covidnsw

— Patricia Karvelas (@PatsKarvelas) September 10, 2021

Katherine Murphy from The Guardian did the Twitter equivalent of a spit take.

I hoped I'd missed something in translation. Apparently not. This is an absolute disgrace. This outbreak is not over. The mission is not accomplished. In a democracy, political leaders are accountable to the public. Front up. That's the job #auspol

— Katharine Murphy (@murpharoo) September 10, 2021

And while some in the press are going to laud the decision (laughable), it’s a pretty good shibboleth for who among them we all should ignore from here on in. The Andrews press conferences in 2020 were keeping the state informed; at a time when information was vital for our emotional and psychological wellbeing. Those pressers were sustaining, if difficult to endure once the floor opened to pernicious and stupid questions from the likes of The Australian’s Rachel Baxendale and Sky News’ Gabriella Power.

Berejiklian, on the other hand, seems to have accepted the fact that she’s royally fucked up, can’t think of any way around it, and wants to hide under the bedding until such a time as she can come out. At the point, she’ll emerge dole out some PR-spun horseshit about 70% double dosing and freedoms and picnics and how we all did this together.

Yet, Berejiklian has been foreshadowing the pandemic in NSW was going to get to its worst, its toughest; that the hospital system would be stretched to its elastic limit in October, based on modelling the NSW Health Department had prepared. Modelling, by the way, she’s not been very forthcoming with. So, knowing that the state is headed for a cliff, she’s essentially jumped out of the driver’s seat to get a better view of the spectacle.

“I’ll turn up when I need to,” are words that emerged from her sneering maw today.

We should have seen this coming. It was all there: first, they stopped their Covid hotspots announcements. Then, they essentially abandoned contract tracing. Reports started emerging of people dying at home. And all that deeply, deeply offensive talk of “underlying health conditions” (which, for the record aren’t what killed them; the disease did – John F. Kennedy had crippling back pain and irritable bowel syndrome, but you didn’t read the Warren Commission mention any “underlying health conditions” when talking about how he died). Then there are people not going to the hospital and dying in their homes. There’s talk of the health system collapsing, meaning if the emergency wards are too full of Covid patients, you’d best not have a heart attack, or have a car accident, or slip on the pavement, or get hit by a bolt of lightning. Because Gladys has all but runs away from the slightest hint of public accountability.

It would be totally fine for the NSW opposition leader to hold alternative press conferences at 11.00 am instead. They could stand there, read out the laundry list of the Berejiklian government’s abject, morbidly offensive shortcomings and failures, and the media would – by and large – show up and cover it. They have to cover something. (Phil Coorey may give it a swerve, having already penned the vomit-inducing Financial Review magazine cover story, ‘The Woman Who Saved Australia’).

The Labor opposition could front up on a daily basis with representatives of the state’s front-line workers, like nurses, teachers, and everyone else who is essential, advocating for those who seem to have been abandoned by this government, such as Aboriginal & disability communities, or GPs for that matter, as well as mental health experts. They could be the ones that convey the hard data, the facts we need to hear, the insights as to what’s happening in circles of power, and what the road forward looks like.

And people would watch. It’d get coverage, and in the absence of anything else, it would paint Berejiklian and her government in a bad light, and negative publicity is kryptonite to her. It’s further proof that all of these decisions, from both Berejiklian and Morrison alike, from lockdowns to vaccines and everything else, has been about polls and vanity from day one. It’s pathetic. They’re pathetic. Elections have consequences.

Sick of watching the COVID-19 pressers? Simple, don't watch them. But they need to happen. It doesn't have to be the NSW premier every day, but the government needs to be accountable as COVID-19 cases, hospitalisations and deaths peak.

— Benita Kolovos (@benitakolovos) September 10, 2021

This article was originally published on The Big Smoke.

This week marks 1000 days since the Prime Minister Scott Morrison promised Australians an integrity commission.

In that time, the Prime Minister has done almost nothing to live up to his word. The truth is, this Government does not want an integrity commission before the next election. Especially one as robust as mine.

There are no two ways about it – the Prime Minister has broken a key election promise. Government officials themselves have even admitted it in Senate Estimates.

Thanks to you, we’ve shone a light on this Government’s unacceptable inaction on integrity. The thousands of letters, phone calls, social media posts and petition signatures from you have kept the heat on the Prime Minister. I’ve seen it up close myself in Canberra.

Without you, the Government would never have even revealed the details of their dud model for an integrity commission, which would investigate politicians and over 80 per cent of Government officials in secret away from the public eye. There’s a reason experts call it “the nation’s weakest watchdog”.

There is only one way we can have a robust integrity commission before the next election. We need to tell the Prime Minister to let Parliament do its job, and vote on my gold-standard Australian Federal Integrity Commission bill at the next sitting in October.

I know getting the Prime Minister to act on my bill sounds like a tall order. But we’ve forced his hand before. And we can do it again.

You can start putting the pressure on him today by sharing my op-ed on social media, and telling your networks to do the same.

Australians have put a whole lot of faith in this Government during this pandemic. It’s time for the Prime Minister to live up to his side of the bargain, and restore our faith in Government. No more rorts, no more lies.

The next election could be called any day now and is set to be extremely tight.

If the Government thinks it can count on crossbench support in a hung parliament, then they need to demonstrate they’re serious about legislating a strong integrity commission like mine. That goes for the Opposition too. How they act now on this issue will have consequences in the 47th Parliament.

Thanks for your support. I can’t do it without you.

Helen Haines MP

By Peter Wicks  

Craig Kelly’s claim of 30,000 new members has many wondering if his counting ability is any more reliable than his Covid treatments.

The fastest growing political party on earth.

That’s what Clive Palmer and Craig Kelly would like us to think the United Australia Party has achieved. This however, appears to be smoke and mirrors.

Some of you may have seen the full page advert in the press over the weekend bragging about achieving 30,000 new members in 10 days.

I thought I’d reach out to some of them to see what was attracting them to the party of Covid denial and crackpot theories.

Fortunately I was able to reach several of them on the same number. I spoke to a lovely lady whose UAP membership recognises as Usad Dickface. So impressed with the sound policies and professional medical opinions of Craig Kelly was young Ms Dickface that she thought she’d sign up a few memberships for some of her imaginary friends as well.

It’s not just the expert advice on Covid treatments attracting members like Dickface however, Mr Kelly is known to have active members of staff such as Frank Zumbo, who is widely regarded as one of the most ‘hands-on’ staffers around. For all the wrong reasons.

Another new member of UAP that I spoke with was surprised when his membership details including his membership number appeared in his inbox. It was a surprise to him as he would rather inject bleach into his own head than join the party that likely thinks this is a legitimate Covid treatment.

Given there is no cost involved in joining, Grant assumed that someone was having a bit of a joke at his expense.

Craig Kelly and Frank Zumbo (Image from the ABC)

The United Australia Party seems more intent on creating an impression rather than building a legitimate party. It is a plan as pathetic as a Senator buying Twitter followers, but arguably even less convincing.

The UAP membership page has such a low standard of authentication checking that many would assume that it has been designed to allow people to sign up anyone or anything they like. I sure as hell do.

Here’s how it all works.

I was fortunate to have an IT expert, Michelle Stevens, helping me out. Her speciality is search algorithms, and how government and private enterprise use algorithms for personalisation.

The authentication system used by Palmer on the UAP site, a Zoho Webform site is substandard. It will allow you to put anything in and will still accept your membership.

For example, here’s one we did for the Hulk, Mr Louis Ferrigno. His federal electorate is Cork in Ireland but he lives in Queensland with a postcode that doesn’t exist.

Here’s UAP’s membership form accepting the data.

Here’s Australia Post confirming the postcode doesn’t exist.

Here is the confirmation of UAP accepting the application.

Note that the email address matches the one on the membership form

It is important to note that the major parties have a proper authentication system that would never allow this to happen. They want real members, not fake members.

Even if you scrape the bottom of the barrel, you’ll find One Nation have better authentication.

It is also important to note that most parties have a membership fee. Most people are less inclined to set up 100 fake memberships for Ronald McDonald etc if there’s a cost involved. Clive and Craig don’t care.

Recently there has been an increase in burst blood vessels in peoples temples as phone owners nationwide are bombarded by unwanted texts from Mr 5G himself, Craig Kelly.

People have been understandably furious that he has obtained their phone number without their permission. Well I’ll let you in on a little secret. He hasn’t.

UAP will have been using a random number generator which will take the first two numbers as 04 and then just pump out texts to randomly generated numbers. This is why texts have been received on different days, it’s the cycle of the generator rather than an uploaded list of numbers. Unfortunately however, Clive and Craig may know yours is a legitimate number if you respond with warm wishes, as I’m sure many have.

Screenshot from a random number generator

Some minor parties have been doing membership drives in a struggle to reach the new minimum membership threshold. Many have been vocal about having to find 1500 members in a country of over 25 Million.

A few things to remember, we all struggle with the road-map sized Senate ballot, those complaining are seeking to make it bigger still. Taxpayers foot the bill for this enormous ballot paper, the smaller the ballot, the lower the cost to the taxpayer. If a party can’t rally 1500 members then it’s time to form a knitting circle or something.

I have had many people contact me recently about the process of resigning from a minor party.

If you have joined a party and wish to leave you just need to cancel your membership in writing to the Party’s head office. The AEC will be doing random checks from membership lists provided by the parties, if they contact you, simply say you are no longer a member.

If a party claims a member that has left or doesn’t exist here’s what the AEC confirmed with me today;

“…from an electoral law perspective is that the AEC being advised that people on the membership have never been, or are no longer, a member could result in a party being deregistered.”

With 30,000 new members of the calibre of our big green friend Louis Ferrigno, I reckon someone in Craig Kelly’s office has a big job in front of them.

Don’t call me a fake member

By Ad astra  

This is a short piece. There is no need for lots of words. Images are sufficient.

Have you noticed the cluster of loud-mouthed men that has appeared recently on our Melbourne streets, fists raised, shouting messages of defiance directed at our those in authority?

Who are they? What is their agenda?

Image from theage.com.au (Photo by Justin McManus)

Ostensibly, they are protesting at the lockdowns initiated by the Victorian government to limit the spread of COVID-19. But do take a few minutes to look at the men in the images in this link from the Melbourne Age. No amount of words, no amount of colourful rhetoric, could ever describe what these images portray.

Image from theage.com.au (Photo by Chris Hopkins)

Do these men come across to you as responsible citizens concerned about the psychological effects on the populace of a pandemic-inspired lockdown designed on the advice of medical experts and epidemiologists to limit the spread of a lethal virus? Is there any hint of professionalism in the actions of these men? You know the answer.

Image from theage.com.au (Photo by Justin McManus)

The thesis of this piece is that these protesters are simply opportunists purporting to be concerned citizens while advancing their real agenda, which is to implant extreme right-wing views among the local population.

Image from theage.com.au (Photo by Chris Hopkins)

It’s so easy to be deluded about them, about who they really are. It’s so easy to sit back in our comfortable living rooms, never suspecting that in our society there are such people with such radical agendas. When such naïveté exists, they are able to hoodwink us while we drowse in front of our TV screens watching the Paralympics or Bachelor.

Image from theage.com.au (Photo by Chris Hopkins)

Beware! Be very afraid.

By Denis Bright  

After years of commitment to market ideology by both sides of US politics, President Biden is offering some progressive changes in sustainable economic policies. This impending change was covered by my article for The AIM Network just over a year ago when Kamala Harris became Biden’s candidate for Vice President with charismatic endorsement from Michelle Obama (19 August 2020).

Ironically, the Trump administration gave the green light to record levels of federal US deficits to cope with the pandemic recession and its associated public health crises. The Biden administration has cautiously moved public spending from opportunistic deficits of the Trump era towards some cautious progressive agendas for government intervention in the US economy. The Democratic Party has not really followed this path since Franklin Roosevelt’s (FDR) New Deal Programme (1932-45).

In contrast, the hopes generated by the election of John Kennedy and Barack Obama were squandered by new phases of military adventurism.

In President John Kennedy’s short administration (1961-63), opportunities for improved relations with the Soviet Union to repair tensions created by the shooting down of the U-2 spy plane over the Ural Mountains on 1 May 1960 were dashed by the installation of medium range nuclear missiles in both Italy and Turkey (Map Image: CIA). The Soviet Union retaliated by the construction of its own nuclear missile sites in Cuba after the CIA’s own attempts to overthrow the legitimate government of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs landings (17-19 April 1961).

Barack Obama made the mistake of following military advice favouring a troop surge into Afghanistan in 2013 with support from most NATO countries and Australia as an associate member of NATO.

To his credit, Joe Biden has honoured a commitment to end direct military involvement in Afghanistan despite a wave of nostalgia for continued military commitment from the Murdoch press.

Biden’s domestic economic policies can be developed without the distractions imposed by new military commitments. The financial burden of US military spending remains a real barrier to Biden’s domestic economic agendas (Data-Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, 26 April 2021):

Strong increase in US military spending continues in 2020

In 2020 US military expenditure reached an estimated $778 billion, representing an increase of 4.4 per cent over 2019. As the world’s largest military spender, the USA accounted for 39 per cent of total military expenditure in 2020. This was the third consecutive year of growth in US military spending, following seven years of continuous reductions.

‘The recent increases in US military spending can be primarily attributed to heavy investment in research and development, and several long-term projects such as modernizing the US nuclear arsenal and large-scale arms procurement,’ said Alexandra Marksteiner, a researcher with SIPRI’s Arms and Military Expenditure Programme. ‘This reflects growing concerns over perceived threats from strategic competitors such as China and Russia, as well as the Trump administration’s drive to bolster what it saw as a depleted US military.’

This inheritance of continued record levels of military spending is at least being offset by new domestic US economic agendas despite fierce opposition from Republicans and moderate Democrats (Politico News Network, 30 August 2021):

President Joe Biden’s defense budget may be headed for another defeat at the hands of Democrats on Capitol Hill.

The House Armed Services Committee will weigh in on Biden’s $715 billion Pentagon budget proposal on Wednesday when it debates annual defense policy legislation. The debate has split Democrats, but party leaders may not be able to hold back an emerging bipartisan drive to boost defense spending.

Republicans have for months said Biden’s budget is too small to adequately deter China and Russia, while many progressive Democrats see a Pentagon budget in need of steep cuts as the U.S. winds down a two decades-long war in Afghanistan. Centrist Democrats say they would consider proposals to increase the defense budget.

Commitment to more defence spending erodes the traction for Biden’s Green New Deal and risks unsustainable levels of national budget deficits which have been summarized by the Congressional Budget Office (9 August 2021):

However, the outreach of Biden’s deficit spending extends across the spectrum of government responsibilities from defence and aerospace industries to infrastructure, jobs and family welfare. The focus is on rebuilding a social market as noted in the details of job creation and family support packages to assist with recovery from the COVID-crisis.

Promoting the current New Green Deal agendas can become a mainstream response that appeals to voters in rustbelt states and depressed cities where constituents were once attracted to Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) rhetoric.

Steven Greenhouse of The Guardian (2 May 2021) correctly identifies Joe Biden as the most distinguished pro-union President in recent US history:

Unions have also suffered notable setbacks in recent years, mostly recently failing to get the votes to unionize at an Amazon warehouse in Alabama. None of this has dampened Biden’s ardor for organized labor, or Republican opposition to it.

Last Monday, Biden issued an executive order establishing the White House Task Force on Worker Organizing and Empowerment, a move that aims to help unions expand their ranks. On Tuesday, Biden named Celeste Drake, to head his new “Made in America” program, which is designed to steer more federal money to US manufacturers. Drake is long-time trade expert at AFL-CIO, the US’s largest union federation.

Also last week, the White House issued a fact sheet saying that Biden’s proposed $2.3tn infrastructure plan would create many union jobs in construction, clean energy and other fields – by, for instance, requiring companies that receive money under the legislation not to oppose unionization efforts.

Events in Afghanistan may have distracted mainstream news services from Biden’s less newsworthy domestic agendas. The largely Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal of the Biden administration has been summarized on the White House site (11 August 2021):

• Makes the largest federal investment in public transit ever
• Makes the largest federal investment in passenger rail since the creation of Amtrak
• Makes the single largest dedicated bridge investment since the construction of the interstate highway system
• Makes the largest investment in clean drinking water and waste-water infrastructure in American history, delivering clean water to millions of families
• Ensures every American has access to reliable high-speed internet
• Helps us tackle the climate crisis by making the largest investment in clean energy transmission and EV infrastructure in history; electrifying thousands of school and transit buses across the country; and creating a new Grid Deployment Authority to build a clean, 21^stcentury electric grid

Biden has inherited an economy that had rebounded from the COVID-19 recession in the September Quarter of 2020.

The Medium Term Investment Prospects

The Biden administration of course plans to ease back on deficit spending during the 2020s by expanding a global investment hub through the Quad Group of countries (US, Australia, Japan and India). However, data from the United Nations Centre for Trade and Development (UNCTAD) shows that the investment outreach of the Quad countries is quite weak and negatively affected by the effects of the COVID pandemic in 2020.

Striving to outmanoeuvre China comes at great expense to the flow of  investment capital as measured by Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) capital outflows. The strategy is a variation of Make America Great Again (MAGA) agendas to re-industrialize the US economy.

Since the election of President Biden, outstanding if still conservative minds, are being allowed to share critical perspectives on the way forward for the global economy which is increasingly dominated by the fortunes being build-up through the new speculative financialization.

The participants at this European Central Bank (ECB) Podcast would have been ridiculed by President Trump as opponents of his MAGA agendas.

In a recent episode of #TheECBPodcast with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and host Katie Ranger, Christine Lagarde (President of the ECB) spoke about the risk of the pandemic dialling back progress on female economic empowerment.

This discussion is a long way from the generation of new solutions but at least Dr Janet Yellen has been rewarded with the cabinet position of Treasury Secretary in the Biden administration.

Each participant is also fully aware of the complexity of the new financialization where hard won capital inflows from domestic and overseas corporate profits are being lost to the deserts of financial speculation.

The forte of the US economy has long moved onto high technology manufacturing and financial services. There is a very high degree of financial speculation in the outreach of contemporary investment. Risk taking is highly protected by contemporary financial practices which drive market indicators to new record levels before the need for a major correction somewhere in the future.

While the investment outreach of the US was in retreat on indicators for Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) during 2020, most financial market indicators continued in record territory into 2021.

The US economy is artificially strengthened by capital inflows into the new financialization which generates a vast share of US corporate profits through financial speculative financial outsourcing through trade, commodity production, real bricks and mortar investment or accessible commercial services.

Some US FDI inflows do find their way into real investment and into state of the art industries such as aerospace, defence, robotics or social media networks.

However, capital flows into the new financialization from within the US and beyond are more likely to generate instant returns to financial speculators.

Capital flows into the US economy dwarf real investment as measured by FDI inflows.

Trading Economics that net capital inflows into the US were actually in excess of $US 300 billion in just the month of March 2020 and almost $US150 billion in March 2021.

This contrasts with FDI inflows of $US 156 billion in 2020 and an FDI Outflow of $US83 billion for an entire year.

This makes the US a net importer of real FDI while financial markets are awash with fluctuating levels of capital flows to support the new financialization. The long-term future of US capital markets is a matter for speculation and seems to be highly motivated by rent seeking investment.

Is Long-Term Reform of the US Financial Sector a Serious Possibility for Citizen Joe Biden?

The FDI graphs show that the investment outreach of the US and Japan have been in decline during the recent COVID-crisis. The ideal that Quad investment will carry developing countries like PNG and Timor out of their underdevelopment is an exercise in fantasy.

Rather than offering net FDI exports to the world, the US financial sector thrives on attracting capital inflows to finance the budget deficit and for speculative gains by financial operatives.

The late Professor Peter Gowan (1946-2009) of London University provided a synopsis of this subterranean financial sector that had maintained the new financialization through shadow banks and rampant tax evasion through global tax havens and interchange of transactions across borders as hallmarks financial leadership by stalwarts of neoliberalism.

Contemporary data updates might be available at a price through specialized financial networks which are usually by-passed in mainstream news reporting:

Academics Megan Neely from the Copenhagen Business School and Donna Carmichael from the London School of Economics offer a new documentation of the speculative financial sector in the US economy in a peer reviewed article in American Behavioural Scientist can assist in unravelling the puzzles presented by financialization (24 March 2021), “Profiting on Crisis: How Predatory Financial Investors Have Worsened Inequality in the Coronavirus Crisis.” The article is quite easy to read despite the saturation coverage of reference acknowledgments in the original text. I have relied on a block quote to share the wisdom of the authors. Welcome to the world of speculative financialization which generates at around half of all corporate profits in US economy:

This boom in market activity captures how a small group of investors is profiting from the crisis, while the majority of people face unprecedented health and economic hardships. This gap is indicative of widening inequality over the past four decades.

Since the late 1970s, deregulation of the U.S. financial sector has allowed finance to expand in leaps and bounds—and become increasingly risky, opaque, and complex. Finance’s share of corporate profits tripled over the past 60 years, averaging 15% in the post-war era then peaking at 45% before the 2008 financial crisis. During this same period, however, finance’s share of employment only increased from about 4% in 1950 to just over 7% in 2001. Thus, a smaller share of workers reaps the rewards of growth in the financial sector than did in the manufacturing sector’s heyday. The ability of financial actors to influence politics to favor deregulation, leverage bargaining power, and stimulate market demand has transferred large amounts of income to this sector.

As finance expanded its influence to other sectors of the economy, it brought about a widespread shift in corporate governance, called the shareholder value revolution. Before 1980, corporate management focused on reinvesting earnings to develop the company’s workers and products. After 1980, the dominant model of corporate governance understood the corporation’s primary purpose as promoting the interest of its shareholders, including executives, by maximizing profits. To maximize profits, financial investors have pressured companies to downsize, de-unionize, outsource, and computerize jobs. Rather than cutting costs, this focus on shareholder profit served to redistribute earnings from workers to managers, executives, and investors. Overall, this financial restructuring of the corporation resulted in less negotiating power, fewer protections, and greater insecurity for workers.

The expanding size and power of finance has increased the concentration of capital into the hands of a select few and driven widening economic inequality. First, the shareholder value revolution has allowed finance to extract resources from the economy and weakened labor’s bargaining power relative to executives and financial investors. Second, financial professionals in the financial and nonfinancial sectors have devised new investment products that yield enormous profits. These products have further weakened the demand for and power of other workers. Last, disparities in household lending allow the middle and upper class to leverage debt with low interest rates, while the working class, especially those who are families of color, struggle to obtain credit with higher interest rates and fees. Average households and workers struggle to make ends meet, while CEOs and Wall Street reap escalating top incomes, setting the stage for how each group has fared during the coronavirus pandemic. Neoliberal policy regimes have been a primary driver in relaxing financial regulations and the subsequent rise of financial capitalism. Neoliberalism refers to a set of economic policies and practices guided by a market ideology that believes that markets have an internal stabilizing logic and less regulated, competitive markets will reach equilibrium.

Incorporating these reduced global capital flows into productive investment for humanity through real investment in environmental renewal, infrastructure, health and community development is one of the great challenges for today’s generation of financial and political leaders.

A progressive government in Australia should welcome the opportunities presented by the arrival of Citizen Joe Biden to the White House. Forthcoming elections in NATO countries like Norway and Germany do suggest a cautious mood towards progressive change is developing in some European electorates. This polling data for both Germany and Norway is updated every few days and the new trends can be looked at by readers.

Expect the federal LNP to strive for an opportunistic pre-Christmas election before the hopeful voices of change start to become mainstream across the countries of the US Global Alliance.

Eighty years ago, Prime Minister John Curtin called for strategic assistance from the Roosevelt administration during the War in the Pacific with Japan. Time travel might invite a similar address to the nation in Christmas 2021 should Anthony Albanese win an early election on the back of currently favourable polling trends with swings to Labor in all states and territories on the latest Morgan and Resolve soundings of public opinion:

Without any inhibitions of any kind, I make it quite clear that Australia looks to President Joe Biden’s administration  to deliver new sustainable economic agendas because the old policies based on market  ideology and strategic regime change in foreign policies have taken the countries of the US Global Alliance into the wilderness. Our incoming Labor government is ready to implement a New Green Deal for Australians in the new social market traditions of President Joe Biden.