Australians ripped off by their government, Reserve Bank and Regulators. Again

Posted on by December 7, 2018

Australia has often been treated abominably by its regulators, politicians and the supposed financial backstops meant to ensure good financial practice, the Reserve Bank Board. It seems to mirror the same mindset seen in the USA which has also crippled it recently but, worse than that, all the worst elements of the policy mindset that made for hardly any changes after the Global Financial Crisis still seem to be in place

Reserve Bank of Australia has form for mistakes with its interest rate policy.

Adam Creighton of the Australian summed it up in his article on 6 December Reserve Bank paves way for further cuts in official interest rates” :-

The Reserve Bank has paved the way for further cuts to the official interest rate and could even resor­t to quantitative easing — “printing money” to buy government bonds — to ward off a potenti­al downturn.
In a major speech last night, RBA deputy governor Guy Debelle ….also warned that a lending slowdown could hurt the economy, in a sign the bank is fretting about the potential fallout from an emerging slump in house prices­. “There is a risk that a reduced appetite to lend will overly curtail borrowing with consequent effects for the Australian economy,” Dr Debelle said.

Yet another negligent Reserve Bank Board has acted incompetently and will cost the Australian public (& economy dearly). In the Keating years, many of us (myself included, then having a new mortgage) blamed Keating for the horrendous rises in interest rates which crippled us but the then-Board of the Reserve Bank later took its share of the blame for also keeping to back the tunnel-vision of backing the steep rises in interest rates for far too long ,- until it crippled us in fact. Soon afterwards we had the Keating “recession we had to have”. Those mistakes cost many of us dearly and made us forever wary and to look to overall benefits and not to cripple the economy.

Now we have seen the same negligence unfold for some years, directly led by the Reserve Bank itself. This time it sunk interest rates for years to lower the exchange rate of the dollar and, time after time, as the value stayed high or barely moved, they kept doing it. The by-product of artificially low interest rates – raging speculation in the housing market – was as obvious to all as was the stress felt by self-funded retirees as their interest rates on savings plummeted.

Now the bank board is prisoner to the housing bubble created by the RB policies and the bank (& government) are scared stiff of allowing the natural correction that should occur. When you have encouraged so many people to get in on the bubble, to shove money at them and allow people with hardly any assets to own multiple homes on the basis of a capital gain in a short while, the obvious danger in this will lead to a crash in the market as they overreach. It is a natural phenomenon that the market will correct and remove that person or entity from the market by bankrupting or otherwise removing it from the now-corrupted market. Reserve Bank policy has made the housing sector and its participants virtually exempt from the normal processes of risk and bankruptcy. Seemingly without fear of failure, these participants can and do take excessive risks.

Just like the abominable Too Big to Fail politics that ruined the world at the GFC, this housing mess has been allowed to get out of hand. They won’t correct it and allow the speculators to fail, be weeded out, the normal processes of bankruptcy and creative destruction, because of the immediate damage flowing from it and the usual multiple trade jobs in the construction industry.

Just as those incompetent, Too Big to Fail banks were allowed to become Even Bigger and not go out of business to fix the market again, and lapsed into the same old practices which led to the GFC in the first place, so do our failures see their lifeline as being the policies of the Reserve Bank and government wishes of every kind. Now we see the ludicrous idea that state governments should be protected by regulators from suffering the consequences of their own policies! (See WA Treasurer calls on APRA to tailor policy to regional conditions as property woes weigh on economy).

It’s about time somebody called out the Reserve Bank and didn’t just put up with its mistakes.

Political parties struggling to hold old areas – and changing irrevocably because of it.

Posted on by December 2, 2018

The century-long static two-party system governing Australia seems under challenge with one of the two majors different from even 20 years ago and the other facing a hopeless breakup into pieces, rather than changing outward form, which had been the norm.

The stability of the parties, the Australian Labor Party, a former working class party allied with (and once only half-controlled by) organised labour against the Liberal party, a private enterprise, right-leaning party, backing business, supposedly conservative, or “classic liberal”, yet staunchly anti-communist, often anti-labour, which seemed unshakeable – until a few decades ago. It is how these parties adapted to changing demographics which has led to the fascinating experience today, where formerly safe seats of various kinds have been won by parties, something which would have been seen as impossible even a few years earlier.

Rise of the Greens and the Labor Party reaction.

The Australian Labor Party was the first to feel the effects of Green political policies. It had captured some environmental sentiment through the Franklin Dam dispute in 1982/3 and tried to keep a lock on that vote even though challenged by the Green party itself. An increasing number of Australians, particularly those of wealth and supposed “status”, started to support them at the ballot box. In fact the Green-targeted areas were inner city seats, where the Labor Party had had a virtual lock on the voters. However, as gentrification forced out the old working class core of those inner suburbs, to be replaced with the new Yuppies, supposed elites and so on, they became the residents who could afford to look after the environment. They didn’t work in any of the industries at risk, they had power and water at the flick of a switch or a turn of a tap and any personal cost increase was nothing to them.

The ALP saw the benefit of unofficially joining with the Greens in preference deals. Such deals became the norm and many times (up until today) some ALP seats were won only through Greens preferences much as the old anti-communist, Democrat Labor Party had kept the Liberals in government through the 1950’s into the 1970’s. However, after the fall of the Soviet Union when the so-called ”tree-hugging” Greens were joined by the Red/Greens – remnants of the old Stalinist era communists up to the supposed “dead” communist movement of the early 1990’s – the infiltration of the hard left, ideological greens into what was the “environmental” greens led to a direct attack on some of the old ALP industrial base, especially organised labour if not the working class itself. Those ideological shifts saw the ALP moving left to compete for the ideological green vote but it also saw the ALP hierarchy start to lose contact with their remaining working class base in the outer suburbs. It seemed as if to compete with the Greens they had to go against the direct interests – and fears – of the old working class base in the outer suburb heartland. Added to this, an influx of Muslims who were advocating policy changes to classic ALP policy on the Middle East into former safe ALP seats in the inner-west of Sydney (and the new found need to cater for them) further isolated the ALP from certain outer seats.

More and more, the ALP seemed desperate to hold onto these formerly safe, but demographically-changed seats and subsequently became more radical-left, going TO the left to match the Greens on identify politics, and the usual Social Justice Warrior concerns to the exclusion of the old working class base issues, which seemed more and ore at odd wit the new thinking. Apart from politicians such as Tony Abbott, the former PM, nobody in the Liberal Party before or since seemed capable of creating policies and appeals directly to the now-neglected ALP constituency in the outer suburbs. Once he got overthrown most of the seats reverted to the ALP and the Liberals have not seemed to show any interest in that demographic ever since. A major reason why this is so is looked at below.

Liberals changed by Greens also

It’s early days yet, but even if the Liberal Party implodes, there can be no doubt that it is facing identical challenges to those faced by the Labor Party. Its once-strongest seats are also changed by demographics favouring the Greens, especially in Melbourne, but increasingly in Sydney, even if with Sydney – in the strangest of ironies – the push to go green isn’t from official Greens, but green infiltrators into the party. Associated with a new, solid left faction in the supposed centre-right party, especially strong in the state of NSW, it is ideally placed to reap rewards of such changes.
Of course there is nothing like the self-interest involved in avoiding personal losses to get them going, and the wailing and flailing by Liberal MPs after the recent Victorian election debacle is typical of the challenge they face as well as the tunnel vision-like response to it. That is, to fight for that constituency which they might have nearly lost to the Greens. Leaving aside the obvious planned response to the savage loss of the Victorian election on 24 November, part of the reason is the bewilderment at the loss of or danger to their old safe seats (and formerly-safe constituencies) . Looking at the shrill response from various MPs, especially those who now demand that the whole party go more green, self-interest gets a good go yet again.

In the most recent federal election, 2016, the state of Victoria had a higher Green vote than in NSW (13.13% to 8.95%) and, in the seats of the rich citizens which had provided the safest Liberal seats in Melbourne, we see many reasons why the incumbents are so hysterical about green issues now. Higgins (O’Dwyer) 25.3% green, Goldstein (Wilson) 15.9% green and Kooyong (Frydenberg) 19% green.

While these major parties are struggling to compete with the Greens for these areas, there is a whole swathe of the country seemingly being ignored by the major parties. Neither of the major parties seems particularly interested in targeting their political or life needs. The arrogant political media and political class rant and attack so-called “fringe” parties such as One Nation or the Australian Conservatives, independents, supposed “populists” ( always labelling them, Alinsky-fashion ,as Hard Right, Alt Right or Far Right). Whilst they all attract hangers on of various types, the branding of the whole of these groups is usually wrong.

Fighting for the (apparently already lost) constituency seems futile. Others will fill the vacuum left in the unrepresented areas.

Victorian Liberals Election Wipe Out and the Turnbull Left is making the Most of it

Posted on by November 28, 2018

Being from New South Wales I don’t (& didn’t) follow the Victorian election campaign closely. After years of good commentary from experts such as the Quadrant Online Victorians (including Roger Franklin), I was all too aware of the wishy washy Victorian Libs from Ted Baillieu onwards, going along with Labor-Lite policies until they surrendered government without a kick in 2014.

So my initial take all along was that voters with any nous would say “why Labor Lite when you can get the real thing” (also the argument against Turnbull even if his lobbyist cabal NSW backers hadn’t been actual Labor types).
But the pile on against supposed “conservative” policies of Morrison and angst about getting rid of the Labor-Lite Turnbull were as ludicrous as they were de rigueur for the times. I smiled to myself when I saw all the usual SkyNews and newspaper columnists such as the one trying to outdo Nikki Savva in their tunnel vision.

The party now had to go left, join Labor/Greens because the “conservative policies” were failing and had failed spectacularly. Yes, you got that right, “conservative policies” they said. That was the received wisdom from the “experts” again. They must have meant their adoption of those (non-existent) conservative policies such as withdrawing from the foolish Paris agreement, backing/guaranteeing new, cheap coal fired energy for business, scrapping mandatory renewable energy targets, removing all subsidies from the supposedly “cheap” solar/wind power scams and so on. It was ludicrous, their shameless dissembling.

The usual Turnbull acolytes/puppets were very prominent. The first laughable one was Senator Scott Ryan from Victoria, gifted the highly paid position as Senate President for supporting the Turnbull coup against PM Abbott in 2015.
Ryan claimed in a TV interview and a newspaper column that ideological debates around social issues such as religious freedom and climate change had isolated that traditional base (?) which apparently wanted “climate change” and other left policies to be swallowed whole. However, Ryan went on to claim that Liberal voters were actually “conservative” in their own lives but “they’re pretty liberal in their political outlook.” He also whined about commentators with other views “I am sick of being lectured to by people who are not members of the party, by people who have never stood on polling booths about what it means to be a real Liberal.” A former conservative, but now representing a seat which is full of the semi-green doctors wives types, Tim Wilson also panicked. In the next breath, just about, Ryan admitted openly: that the Victorian Liberal organisation and campaign was “progressive”. Clear now? What is obvious is that these fair weather friends were merely using their Victorian election disaster as an excuse to publicly attack their factional enemies

Not only was this attack disingenuous – if not blatantly dishonest and pre-planned – it wasn’t as if there wasn’t plenty of evidence to show that the left-leaning Victorian Liberals ran a shocking campaign. In fact this campaign was so bad, according to experts that it is laughable to look around for other scapegoats without a loud mea culpa about it first.
The most clear cut and early expose of a pathetic campaign was given by a “consultant to the party, and former Bendigo candidate, Megan Purcell”. In the article she tore apart the organisation of the campaign. In a litany of woes, she accused it of being a ‘leadership team with “egos as big as houses but not necessarily the brains to match” and was “accusing the campaign team of extreme dysfunction”. It was an embarrassment to the professionalism she had seen elsewhere, the leader and his team were micromanaging, not focussed on the big issues etc. Planning was also terrible, she said, continual rewriting of daily campaign plans and so on.

Never let a crisis go to waste

Rahm Emmanuel made it a household political phrase from the USA when working for Obama in the 2009 administration and the left wing Labor-Lite Turnbull groupers didn’t forget it. One could winder whether it was the abject failure of the “progressive” Victorian Liberals to cut through that led them to this as a Plan B, but it gets us nowhere. Various connected Australian Liberal party members certainly were prepared to go for it big time. It was all so prepared, they were primed and ready.

Ever since Turnbull ruined his chances with a disastrous decision to have an early election in July 2016 (where he lost 14 seats and was left with a one seat majority), he was marking time, limping along on policy and losing poll after poll.
When he started trying to bring in climate and other energy policies which brought conservative opposition from within the party various conservative antennae were on alert but he was still able to ruin the energy economy by bringing in enough renewable energy mandates to leave Australia with a failing energy sector, moving from cheapest energy in the world to one of the most expensive. Luckily his multiple billions of subsidies for renewables and mandatory renewable targets made many green companies rich, just as the ordinary working class citizens were losing their power.

In brief, his “overthrow” was really Turnbull committing political hara kiri. Worried about his one seat majority, the willingness of enough conservative party members to vote against his proposed green energy scheme somehow got him to try and forestall a leadership attempt against him. He moved to catch opponents unaware and call a leadership vote, which led to him having 35 opposing votes, the death sentence for his leadership. Rather than take them on as a real leader would, Turnbull wimped out and dragged it out until there was a petition for a spill of leader position. Then rather than have the courage to bluff it out and face them down, Turnbull dogged it and left it to others to defeat his enemy, Peter Dutton.

Sore Loser? You bet

Turnbull has been the classic sore loser ever since, but, worse, he has been the classic wrecker. He and Kevin Rudd were very “unique” characters as PMs. Their childhoods affected them all their lives and each ones persona seemed forged in their perceptions of the childhood experiences. In Turnbull’s case, he has always been unable to publicly cope with defeats. Someone had to be “to blame”.

When his republic referendum was soundly defeated, John Howard had to be the scapegoat, rigging the choices (false). When his own disastrous decision to go for the election in 2016 led to him nearly losing, he couldn’t face his supporters at first and then when finally being coaxed to appear, he ranted about the opposition acting “illegally” in their election slogans etc.

It was no different this time. Even when he fell on his own sword, someone had to be to blame, someone had to pay. He resigned his seat, even when he had promised prior to the contest to remain in parliament, and thus put the seat at risk. This was doubly sabotaged when he refused to campaign or even to say a word about his successor from within the party which had given him everything in politics. In addition, his son, Alex, who had (fortuitously) made money out of a renewable energy company once Turnbull mandated renewables targets, started going public asking for first money and then a vote for opposing candidates to the Liberal Party in the seat vacated by his father.

The Victorian election in context

What we have witnessed since the Victorian election must be seen in the context of the Turnbull Left, the Labor-Lite wing of the Liberal party going for broke. Splitting the party, turning it into a left party will suit the political proclivities of those pushing this line, the anti-conservative line. Therefore all the interventions, orchestrated as they are, are part of this overall plan, probably with the Turnbull hand in it through his (usual) secret, encrypted message groups).

We had Julie Bishop, suspected of many leaks against Abbott in the undermining days, let alone having her chief of staff actually being at the plotters meeting the night before the Abbott overthrow. She came straight out after the election publicly begging for the Liberals to go with the ALP and fall for the climate scam, enriching friends and fellow travellers alike. Also Bishop now being all for the anti-woman nature of the Liberals when once she wouldn’t even call herself a feminist, and always batted back any suggestions of the party being anti-woman. Kellie O’Dwyer, an incompetent minister but Turnbull stalwart, criticising the Liberals as being anti-woman, climate deniers and homophobic! No evidence ever given of such flaws. And then, on cue, a Turnbull stooge, Julia Banks from Melbourne, happens to tell cross benchers weeks ago she was leaving the party and then it’s timed to cause maximum damage to the Liberal Party. Another Turnbull pet rock Craig Laundy is no doubt lining up to make his timed withdrawal from the party also.

The Victorian election is just another post along the road of the decline and revamp/rebuild or breaking of the Liberal Party of Australia. Intrinsic to it is the Turnbull wrecking crew trying to break what Turnbull couldn’t make work. The bigger overall issue is of the future of the Liberal Party of Australia. It seems obvious it can’t be put back together too easily without wholesale removals of luke-warm MPs and bureaucrats it houses. The destructive Turnbull influence has to be universally recognised and countered or else the field vacated. But that is a narrative for another day.

Macron Verbal Aggression Belies a Weak France Desperate to Maintain its EU Privilege

Posted on by November 13, 2018

The EU has such anti-democratic flaws and is in such danger of imploding that any proper analysis would need far more space than is available to me right now. However, because the French President Emmanuel Macron has let fly in an attempt to specifically target the USA for criticism and to humiliate Donald Trump, some facts as to the weakness of Macron and France need to be stated.

His speech attempted to both differentiate ‘Patriotism” from ‘Nationalism” and then redefine “nationalism” towards “a betrayal of patriotism” He also claimed that “By saying, ‘Our interests first’ … we erase what a nation holds dearest … its moral values” but how he came to this claim is unclear, but, as the words are often considered synonyms for each other, perhaps Macron was merely being “modern” in appropriating historical words like nationalism and trying to give them a new meaning, serving the Narrative of the day. At least he didn’t seem to follow the USA hard left and media by claiming it was identical to “white nationalism” or that it equals “white supremacism”.

Today, various political groups, especially the extremes of left and right have tried to appropriate these words for their exclusive use, but only the lazy will allow them to get away with it without being called out for it. It achieved Macron his headline, made him stand out as a man making a notable statement that fuelled critics of the USA, fed the internal US opposition to Trump in media and politics, but fell short of carving a new meaning for any supposed “Trump Doctrine” definition. In fact it has merely brought the warring parties back to the barricades  and smothered the significance of the occasion. That is part the legacy of Trump and Trump hatred.

More important than all that, though, is the reality of the power relationship between the USA and Europe and this Macron grandstanding doesn’t change a thing. Macron pushing for a bigger and more powerful EU has hints of delusions of grandeur. However, it also smacks of the Macron acceptance of the dangers facing the EU entity which has been so good (and financially rewarding) for France.

From recent decades until now, France has been a close partner to Germany, the dominant EU state, running a core EU which has had all the other states as its virtual vassals/tributaries. As was shown in the lead up to the Greek financial crisis, this duumvirate of nations (dare I say “Nationalists”) got rich when the outlying states – particularly the PIIGS (Portugal, Italy, Ireland Greece and Spain) gorged themselves on debts from French and German banks whilst using it to obtain goods from Germany, sending Germany to become the top exporter in the world. When the PIIGS staggered under the weight of debt, the duumvirate of France and Germany ensured that their two nations were favoured above the others in the EU. (NOT just the PIIGS. They were favoured over ALL the other nations).

To see Macron talking as if the EU was going to be the rival power to the super powers (and this more recent material about wanting to see a Brussels-led “Empire”) gives a good indication why Macron was talking up the EU as a power with its own army. Of course when none of these major EU states even comes close to its 2% of budget going to defence, an EU army without the British would seem to be pushing it.

Macron and Germany plus the whole Brussels bureaucracy are in fear right now. Fear and arrogance in a terrible combination. One could write books on the undemocratic and anti-democratic EU, the waste and corruption, the dictatorial Troika of the European Central Bank, the European Commission and the IMF having such power to render minor EU states as vassals to its will. That the Troika-demanded the overthrow of the Italian and Greek governments in the PIIGS crisis is an example of their ruthlessness, but Gisela Stuart a former long-time British Labour Party MP gave a good summary about how the EU as an entity can and does work in its own interests.

Of course, Brexit was a huge warning to them that the gravy train was in danger. If countries could break away, there would be no more using Greek-like crises to replenish French and German banks by ordering vassals to help take over those bank debts. Britain was the canary in the coal mine on this. Thus the desperation to act against the V4, Visegrad nations (Hungary,Poland,Czech Republic and Slovakia) plus Italy and force them to obey. The EU and the shaky No2, France, cannot be expected to stand that.

There is too much to write about the EU to add it here. The corruption and dictatorial workings of this massive bureaucratic, undemocratic organisation deserves book after book devoted to it as previously mentioned.

All this is reaction to those dangers. It’s a dangerous game, as it could hasten the longed-for breakup of this undemocratic, authoritarian core group lording it over nations and their peoples. An “Empire”? They have a shoddy one now and it’s crumbling.

The rest of the EU exposure will have to wait for another day.

Morrison a Political Dead Man Walking – Along With his Party

Posted on by November 12, 2018

Conservatives in Australia and all people who want the Liberal Party, their choice of a “conservative” party to change the policies which are bringing it down, must face facts. Their Prime Minister Scott Morrison cannot do what he must to survive or to help the Liberal party survive what are horrendous polling numbers aided by internal sabotage. Quite the opposite is happening and he seems powerless to stop it.

Yes, we know (and can say) that he must strike out in positive, Abbott-like, terms differentiating him and his party from the Australian Labor Party. Leave the Paris climate agreement, subsidise/guarantee High Energy Low Emissions (HELE) coal-fired power, stop subsidising solar/wind etc. Yet he cannot carry out such policies and all the talking or browbeating in the world can’t make it happen.

He must rely on the rotten NSW State Liberal party controllers and string-pullers run by Michael Photios and his lobbyist mates (including now a large green Photios lobbying group, aided by environmental committees with Liberal Party national president Nick Greiner and other prominent left wing Liberals on them). It is in strong alliance with fellow traveller leftist Liberal Party factions from all over Australia. No, that is a brick wall holding firm against making the necessary changes to policy on climate, immigration and so on. They cut down a serving Prime Minister when they knifed Tony Abbott in 2015 and they would do it again if they needed to.

Why I never wanted Tony Abbott to come back into the leadership is the very reason Morrison is hamstrung now: he has to rely on the unreliable, lobbyist crew who brought down Abbott and who control NSW Liberals. NSW is the Morrison party base and, led by Photios, it got him into the leadership to thwart the conservative Dutton and he owes them.
This power group, led by lobbyists doing business with the government but also playing their part in selecting those Liberal Party candidates for public office who, as parliamentarians, will actually deal with the lobbyists if in government, act with ruthless effectiveness (aided by pathetic moral coward MPs bowing and scraping to Photios). Reinforced by dedicated, green energy-based lobbying vehicles to drain riches from the environmental groups which the government they control subsidise, they will always be a brick wall stopping such policies or, if those policies are brought in temporarily, will be their destroyers over time.

Perhaps this is why in the case of the NSW premier, Gladys Berejiklian, the Photios cabal have ruthlessly exercised such control. Who else would be able to keep the new MP Felicity Wilson in power, let alone have the state premier praise publicly what seems to be a person who is difficult to take seriously. Unless openly acting with the blessing of a newer, more destructive factional force, a new MP would seem to be a dangerously de-stabilising member if daring to plot the defeat of a lifetime member of their party, especially one who actually took them to government as PM for only the fourth time since the end of WWII. Plotting to defeat all opposition no matter what effect it had on the party would be bad enough even these days (and with these faction leaders), but fostering and linking to radical, hard left groups such as Getup, an overseas-funded, George Soros-aided anti-conservative political activist and astroturf group would not get much party support, one might think. Wrongly, as it turns out.

Add to that the idea that Morrison can simply announce payment for a new HELE power station. Yes, he can, as long as he can crash through that same Photios-controlled NSW opposition. Oh, and be prepared to counter the howls of rage from those pushing the Snowy 2 farce, an uneconomic mess that was just Turnbull desperately trying to do something – anything – other than get us more cheap coal-fired power. The idea of using huge energy to pump water uphill which then will provide hydro-electric power as it rushed down again is laughable and is why it has always been laughed at when proposed. The moment the government announces money or guarantees for a new HELE station, Snowy 2 is instantly uneconomic and has to be scrapped. Of course billions already spent would be wasted, a small price to pay if it actually was scrapped.

Immigration might also be a game-changer but here, too, Morrison is hamstrung and not only by the lobbyist cabal which controls the NSW party. Because Treasury sees valuable economic “growth” coming from increasing or continual immigration, that is a disincentive for Treasury to accept change when needed for other reasons, economic or otherwise. Morrison as Treasurer held out firmly against any calls for change to the immigration rate, even when the opposition Labor Party was also hinting at it (the ALP getting feedback from its old areas, once contested by liberals under Abbott, but abandoned since Abbott was overthrown). Once the ALP sees that there is no chance of an Abbott-like recontesting of these areas (when Abbott actually took seats from them) the ALP will drop off again and neglect them anew.

In the dying days of the Gillard government between the Kevin Rudd Phantom Challenge in March 2013 (after which his supporters left government in an old-fashioned Gillard-led purge), until Rudd returned as leader in June 2013, the former government ministers were in a Twilight Zone-type state, it seemed. Richard Marles, Joel Fitzgibbon, Chris Bowen and Ed Husic, in particular, appeared time and time again on TV opinion shows, cheerful, quite matter-of-fact about the doom about to hit when the election came and seemingly quite unfazed by it all, “almost as if glad that the end had come”

Going by the now-open dissent against Morrison/ nostalgia for Turnbull (who they actually helped to overthrow Abbott), the Photios-allied forces are seemingly preparing for federal opposition, ready to control completely the rump Liberal party, which would remain after that predicted wipe out and with all the promising, potential leaders also defeated and, to them, hopefully finished. A new generation of the best of the conservative newcomers, the Angus Taylor types, Andrew Hastie etc. Publicly allied with the Malcolm Turnbull (& family) public dissing of the current government, aided and abetted by the usual suspects (ABC, Fairfax, social media), the attack on party conservatives continues openly.

The ridiculous Q&A appearance by Turnbull where his bleating about being replaced after doing a Gorton and falling on his sword was met with huge sympathy from the captive “progressive” audience and praised by his media toadies, showed the divide in Australian politics. Backed up publicly by fellow faction members (and the favoured minister Christopher Pyne), the moves were there for all to see, Staying in government is secondary – if that – to protecting the (factional) furniture.

A bit of a doomsday scenario, to be sure, but the end game is here. Alex Turnbull going public is just being the foghorn to warn of the change which is coming. Alex Turnbull made investments in the Infigen Energy company (a loss-making renewables company) and the mandated renewable energy targets brought in by his father Malcolm certainly backed up his personal views. By chance it also improved the financial fortunes of Infigen Energy. How could they possibly put the pieces back together again?

You only have to be a student of history to see what happened when Menzies created the Liberal Party out of the old United Australia Party which had come to its end by 1943, said to be fatally stricken.

“UAP branches tended to become inactive between elections, and its politicians were seen as compromised by their reliance on large donations from business and financial organisations.”(Government Politics Power & Policy, Woodward et al).

As 2018 peters out, the old United Australia Party seems to be nearing its end.

Turnbull era finally over – what Liberal Party did he leave behind and does he even care?

Posted on by September 11, 2018

Malcolm Turnbull always was a celebrity fraud. An expressed youthful idea that his being the PM was everything and that the actual political “party” was irrelevant for him says everything about his path through politics. And, I think, sums up his inevitable political legacy: a fraud from start to finish.

The way he went out of office seems typical of the man and many different psychological types which might relate to his underlying persona seem to present themselves for possible correlation to his actions. The viciousness with which he spat the dummy is indicative of the person he is and probably always was, his anger, aggression, threats of law suits in his early career, all could correspond with his actions after his demise.

Perhaps a repeat of his (to him) terribly depressing childhood with a single parent father bringing him up in luxury in a large eastern suburbs home, education at the prestigious Sydney Grammar, university law degree and a life of relative luxury from start to finish. The loss of a mother early in life is a huge blow to children, especially if she deserted the child, but not many have the “compensations” enjoyed by the young Malcolm. The rest of the Turnbull narrative is that he was a keen lawyer, the famous Spycatcher case where he took on the British Government, the time as the Kerry Packer representative, the massive wealth earned when he was part of the Australian internet email pioneer Ozemail. Touted as a Lion of Business and a merchant banker, this investor and deal-maker rightfully basked as a self-made multi-millionaire, associate of the rich and wealthy in politics and business. He deserves that to be recognised.

However, the real political history of Turnbull will be repeated now and that, too, deserves to be recognised. How he got into politics by branch-stacking and bringing hundreds of new members/mates in (as they famously do in the ALP – but Liberal factions do now also). Another Turnbull trait – repeated with Brendan Nelson and who knows how many others – was evident here also: abusive verbal exchanges with the man he replaced Peter King.

Cutting down Brendan Nelson as leader of the Liberal Party after the defeat of the Howard government, he was a serial leaker and underminer of Nelson until he became leader in his place. Pushing the party too far in his insistence on electoral suicide by going for the disastrous carbon tax scheme of the Labor party, he was overthrown himself and Tony Abbott became leader. Of course the undermining started again and remained constant even as Abbott cut down and destroyed the Labor leader Kevin Rudd and later Julia Gillard. Even the landslide victory gained by Abbott in 2013 didn’t stop the Turnbull sabotage in the slightest, aided at that time by others also influenced by the factions he cultivated and to which he bowed low.

Once he gained the leadership again, he did it “his way”. Super confident, he did nothing but undertake (& tried to take credit for) policies created by the Abbott team and when the many false starts (”everything is on the table” until it wasn’t at all, state taxes/no state taxes) meant that “do nothing” status became public, the open antagonism against Tony Abbott began again. A smear a few months after he took over claimed that lack of action on tax reform was because the Abbott team “had left us with nothing” done in preparation, although many voices showed clearly that, literally “tens of thousands of hours” had been prepared by the Abbott government and that a white paper was ready for presentation for a week after the overthrow

Thanks to the large majority in parliament inherited from the work by Tony Abbott, Turnbull approached the elections of 2016 super-confidently. His true policy inclinations (generally green, renewable energy, gay marriage, the ABC-set and, always, opposition to any hard-conservative policies on energy, boats or immigration) were kept in check due to the promises he had to make to the National Party and others to retain the Abbott policies on immigration and energy. He approached the forthcoming elections with what seemed to be his plan to assert control.

Calling a double dissolution on the defeated Abbott policy of a re-creation of the Australian Building and Construction Commission to rein in illegal union industrial disruption, once the election was called he never relied upon it. Creating a group and a logo entitled the “Turnbull Coalition Team”, with no “Liberal Party” wording in sight, his campaigning was lethargic, to say the least. Against all advice it was a 2 month campaign, one of the longest ever, and he worked half a day at a time, if that, breaking for lunch and calling it a day after that.

He studiously and deliberately never campaigned on the winning stopping boats, immigration or cheaper energy policies which Abbott had used to destroy the opposition. They were forgotten completely. He never even campaigned on the cause for which the election was called, the ABCC until, at the last, when the forthcoming disaster was communicated to him.

And so it came about that the huge majority was reduced to only one seat and then Turnbull was reduced to doing things against his personal will – even more subservience to policies he genuinely hated and which, in my opinion he was eager to dump if only his election plan had succeeded. Of course if he had won comfortably, he could have claimed (with some credibility) that he owed the time-honoured Liberal Party polices “nothing” and was free to go on his own from then on. The horror was that the opposite had happened. He couldn’t even claim that the old policies were rejected, simply because they hadn’t even been a part of the campaign!

Incidentally, a good insight into the personality of Turnbull was when the extent of the defeat was known he could hardly be persuaded to appear before his supporters as was traditional and, when he did so, he only expressed anger, claimed illegal activity and expressed no regret for the loss of so many MPs who had been relying on him.

Once in government again he was constrained by the low majority and reliance on keeping every single MP onside and thus could not branch out with policies of his own. He was extremely frustrated by Tony Abbott, though, because as an ex-Prime Minister on the back bench, Tony Abbott was not the type of person who would allow the regular anonymous smears (obviously sourced from a small group of factional allies of Turnbull which everyone in Australia seemed to know) to go unanswered. He would call out where they came from too. He also went public in speeches laying out policy achievements of “his” government and differing views on policy directions which the Turnbull groupers would often denounce through their media mouthpieces. The polls remained universally bad for Turnbull and the rumblings about ousting Abbott remained just that. They probably knew that a second million votes would go and join the first one which Turnbull had already lost.

Reliant on a fractured party, he was a fish out of water. To hear him raising “clean coal” or criticising excessive wind power or to hear him say “Islamism” or other change of view pass his lips would lead to a Private Eye moment of pass the sick bag. This from the man who made his progressive political reputation on always sabotaging his party on behalf of climate alarmism and took a whole day before he would brand it as “terrorism” when a local Islamist terrorist assassinated CHEN outside police HQ in Parramatta in broad daylight

Of course he crashed and burned and then had to stagger on with fraud after fraud as to what his beliefs were until, at the end, he saw doom approaching and pushed just that close to locking that party in to take its policy suicide pill, that some realists ensured that his career came to its inevitable end.

By Turnbull trashing all his colleagues by resigning and Turnbull creatures in the party and media helping him try and sabotage the new government, we can see that the Turnbull persona is still going strong as we always knew that it would.

It’s future as a party far from secure, the Liberal Party itself is in danger of collapse, with two forces pulling it in directly opposite directions. However, with the insertion of a Malcolm Turnbull into that fading and rotting structure the existential crisis of the Liberal Party went into top gear. Turnbull could have been the catalyst for its creative destruction. Time will tell.

Another convenient snapshot into Australian Politics as at 28 July 2018: “A plague o’ both your houses”.

Posted on by August 2, 2018

Last Saturday the 28 July five by-elections for vacant parliamentary seats (some very marginal) were held and from opposite ends of the country. The ruling Liberal Party was thrashed in that in two of its former seats where polls and circumstance seemed to favour it were both lost decisively. The overall vote was pathetic and a mere continuation of the declining trends shown in the earlier summary on this voting preference issue. As former ALP leader – and absolute Outsider for all the major parties – Mark Lathan summed up, the voting results for the major parties was completely toxic going on Australian standards.

That was the major conclusion to be drawn from the results. The political, Insider and media class can cling onto their power, but a move is taking place which might mirror some of the characteristics of overseas trends seen in the USA, Brexit Britain and Europe.

Now that some time has passed to allow for the political class to attack each other and, with their media friends analyse-to-death the result, it should be noted that in the two of the seats mentioned above (Longman in Queensland and Braddon in Tasmania) the two major parties spent a lot of time and money campaigning and they were also ones where polls and media commentary indicated that the Liberal Party government could capture the both of them.

In Braddon in Tasmania the former member was standing again for the Liberal Party and when he lost it narrowly in July 2016, Getup, the political action group for Greens and the Labor party founded by former operatives for the America left group Move-On. org, had spent a lot of time and money specifically targeting Braddon and some other seats in that State. Without that extra effort this time, perhaps it levelled the playing field a bit. In Longman in Queensland, a long-time Liberal party seat, very narrowly lost in 2016 when it had a member who seemed to spend much time out of the area.
Peculiar characteristics of this multiple seat campaign were notable. The major 3rd party candidate for Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party had a late setback when Pauline Hanson herself, the major drawcard, absented herself in the last week and went on a pre-paid/pre-arranged cruise in the Irish Sea. On top of that (& the usual political media attack on her and her party over it), the media also well-publicised the fact that a former official was convicted of a rape from some time before. It was very well timed and so much stress was placed on those setbacks it could have affected the turnout for the One Nation party.

A stage was set where the series of opinion polls about leadership, policy and voting preference could be tested by actual votes (and from areas scattered all over the country).

The results were interesting to say the least. The Liberal party wasn’t even standing in some of the other seats (the two seats in Western Australian didn’t even have a Pauline Hanson party candidate) yet it resulted in comfortable ALP wins but the vote numbers showed over 30% did not vote (in a compulsory voting system) did not vote. The only signposted voting trend was a larger than normal shunning of major party candidates. In South Australia an independent went up against a Liberal party candidate and won by a landslide. There were a lot of ALP votes for her I suspect, seeing the ALP primary vote was below 10%.

The results for the Liberal National Party were stark. They were rejected by the public. The ALP leader Shorten was in Longman a lot, and there was a strong union effort on its behalf as usual, but it in no way could the ALP victory be attributed to their presence although it obviously helped. No, it’s quite clear that whatever that left effort was, with the usual Getup and union tactics of medi scare (again), the fact that Bill Shorten is the nationally most unpopular leader of an opposition on record didn’t hold the party back and it took the seat comfortably in the end.
The biggest factor in the loss, without any doubt, was the 15% vote gained by the much-attacked Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party candidate. The votes were taken from the LNP and half of their preferences went straight to the ALP, even though Pauline Hanson herself had often said to put the ALP last. After many months of constant media attacks on the Hanson party (including during the campaign) and universal hared of it expressed by every party hack from the ALP or Greens and including their stooges, the vote obtained in Queensland alone was startling. All parties know that if maintained, a constant representation of two Senators from Queensland is assured for the party. In Braddon it was the same story but without the One Nation excuse. Another independent candidate (who was attacked by the Liberal party) gained nearly 11% of the vote and his preferences went to Labor.

RESULTS INDICATE AGAIN THAT MALCOLM TURNBULL IS A POOR CAMPAIGNER.

The biggest takeout is that the 37 polls lost in a row by Malcolm Turnbull is no blip in figures to be changed when a “real election” comes about. This was it. It also shows the lie pushed by the supine political media when they slavishly boost Turnbull in every poll loss and rant about the “popularity for PM” difference between Turnbull and Shorten when these by-elections showed that these differences are meaningless if the policy is terrible. The media know this, of course, but you can see them do it time after time to cover for their favourite Turnbull and to help stop their deadly enemy, Tony Abbott, getting any encouragement by indicating the stark facts of a losing poll number.

Malcolm Turnbull is the dud candidate from hell. He has zero political instinct and when there is a lapse and he goes the wrong way, makes the wrong call it just reiterates his weakness. In the July 2016 election campaign, it was widely noted that he was a lazy campaigner (or non-campaigner) usually working at one event for a few hours in the morning and then calling a halt for the day. The problem was, again, his usual lack of cut-through on policy. In 2016 it was his nothing mantra of “jobs and growth” yet ignoring the industrial relations campaign his double dissolution was about, and ignoring completely the stopping the boats and carbon tax issues which were so damaging when Tony Abbott was campaigning in 2013.

This time the energy issue was also on the table but Turnbull couldn’t campaign on the factor of coal fired power because he was stuck on his terrible National Energy Guarantee policy which will mandate continuation of huge subsidies for renewables at the expense of coal power. Not only that but it allows (as Tony Abbott has pointed out) that the acceptance of the policy is dictated by the veto power of the state ALP governments.

Multiple Political Problems, Multiple Voices are Analysing Them

Posted on by July 25, 2018

During an enforced hiatus of this site so much has been happening in Australia and the world that it will take some time and multiple posts to present some analysis of it to anyone who wants to see another view rather than the mainstream media outlook from the self-appointed gatekeepers. As will be generally known and as I intend to point out in forthcoming posts, these gatekeepers can be totally off centre, not only about Australian attitudes but, woefully so, also about America, Brexit, and the EU.

There is a long and complex history of decline of our democracies, mainly due to the entrenchment of a political class that operates regardless of the will of the people expressed at elections. In fact, the arrogance of that class is such that it seems increasingly obvious that the presence of voters is a nuisance to them and that over decades they have grown determined to rule without the voters being too involved.

Detailed analysis of this new Ruling Class will be made in forthcoming posts, but reading of the superb 2010 work by Angelo Codevilla about it is a perfect place to start. There is a very necessary urgency to discuss what is happening in the US and Australia because our very future as a democratic country is at stake unless the increasing concentration of power in the hands of a few is not exposed, understood and challenged in a meaningful way.

There are commonalities in these changes to the political rule of many countries and these countries are all in a dangerous period of their history. Australia is not least at risk, with two often-lookalike major parties, a supine, monolithic political media producing a single-Narrative. More worrying is that there are current (and increasing) attempts to censor opposing views, even by utilising government powers to do so. Only a relative few columnists and social media voices provide alternatives to the prevailing narratives.

So far the internet has allowed independent voices and investigators to break free from the information straight jacket which organised legacy media and the political class have deemed necessary for us. However, as many now know and can see, the political forces behind the major media utilities, Google, Facebook, Youtube etc are under pressure from an uneasy political class to see the internet made to conform to the old legacy media model which they have controlled for decades. Recent moves to cramp the freedom on the internet, whether it be by straight censorship of social media voices, to denying publication to “non-permitted” narratives or having a media braying the same political message in unison risk recreating new versions of the rigid ”gatekeepers” they once were.

Never was the shallow response more obvious than with respect to all things Trump.

Nothing like this has been happening in the United States, not just in our lifetimes, but for over 100 years. Not seen since the first “Progressive” era (culminating in the Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson presidencies) turned US politics upside down, has its elitist core modern day twin become wedded to the progressive idea of superior classes. Seemingly anchored in the early 20th century version of “populism” the elitism of that day did not cause anything like the massive upheaval we see today. We have – thankfully – not seen the blatant “superior races” theme common in those days (The KKK factor in Democratic Party politics and American culture – the Birth of a Nation aka The Clansman era or the re-segregation of the US civil service).

Trump, as we all thought we knew him, is not the ideal person we could ever see taking over as a US president. Not just that he was a person from business who had a mixed-success personal and business life (and that’s a polite way of putting it), but also because he would be the only person ever to achieve the presidency without ever having held public office or to be a senior military officer.

What with Hillary Clinton being the other candidate, the “choice” seemed terrible to non-partisans. The rough diamond newcomer with a chequered personal and business life, making sometimes outlandish claims against both his Republican opponents and the Democratic Party opposition, making edgy statements about immigration which bordered on prejudicial in that they made sweeping claims about them as a class. The only saving grace was the idea amongst some that they were for effect during the campaign and that they would never be carried out in practice.

Then there was Hillary Clinton, a severely-polarising figure anyway but, with husband Bill, had been accused of every sort of financial wrong doing from their days in Arkansas and the Bill Clinton stint in the white house, campaign cash allegations etc. Hillary had become a polarising figure, a hero to many women and had the strength of the Clinton political machine and its control over the Democratic Party behind her, but a target of seemingly each and every Republican. With her stint at the State Department and allegations of conflict between her role there and Bill Clinton’s highly-paid speeches amongst the countries the US was dealing with, it was bound to lead to severe political attacks. The farce about the disaster at Benghazi where Ambassador Stevens and three other Americans were killed and a video was blamed, caused severe polarisation but when it was also found that she had, for years, been using an unauthorised computer server while  Secretary of State, all hell broke loose. Much more to be said on that 2015/6 electoral race.

Taking a snapshot of today, the mass Trump-based hysteria of the political classes in the United States, mirrored in Australia and Europe/UK, is a matter of huge seriousness, with Trump as the target of many who have the loudest voices. After wall-to-wall allegations of Russia collusion and an attack on the American democratic processes and institutions to “stop Trump” was first aired, the Russia Collusion narrative is now faltering. As news fades, the angst and fear of the perpetrators of the opposition to Trump becomes more loud, even shrill, as time goes by.

The depths of this conflict and the reasons for it will be explored in later posts. Suffice it to say that the closer it all comes to total exposure, it seems to some that the very future of the constitutional republic known as the USA is at risk.
Serious future topics will include the following:-

* American and Australian media and their interpretation of all things Trump.
* Does Trump have reason to doubt the 2016 Campaign integrity of his intelligence services or the FBI?
* Was the Alexander Downer involvement by chance or does it carry any implication of similarity to the now-suspected involvement of British security services? Was Downer the only Australian government official involved in the anti-Trump investigation and was the Australian government at all times unknowing of his involvement?
* The Clinton family and its Clinton Foundation’s connection to the Australian political class and the continual transfers of multiple $millions of Australian taxpayers money to sometimes questionable Clinton-linked campaigns.

New media resources of value are also necessary for study and analysis of US Politics

Posted on by December 7, 2018

For the existence of this blog in its role in studying and analyzing US Politics and media, we recognise that too much has changed in the past 30 years to ever consider relying exclusively on the legacy media as some form of reliable Gatekeeper of worthwhile political news and analysis. If anyone still thought that the “traditional” media comprised all the possible information sources deemed necessary to know what was happening in politics and the flow-on effects, think again.

If any proof of this was wanted in the study of US politics, just wait for a little while until the report of the US Department of Justice Inspector General’s Report into the Dept of Justice and FBI is published. Originally requested by Democrats, the various releases of information during the compilation of the report has been the material which has opened up the top echelon of the FBI to immense scrutiny. It has been the catalyst for the move or reassignment of most of the top people involved in the actions to investigate Hillary Clinton emails and also investigate candidate Trump. This included obtaining the FISA warrant and dealing with the opposition research company FusionGPS. It has culminated with the dismissal of the FBI No2 being based on discoveries of the IG investigation and the recommendation of the FBI’s own Office of Professional Responsibility. If the US media is still deserving of any shred of balance, then we will see voluminous and fair reporting based on the findings of this independent report.

Don’t hold your breath though. Unless I am mistaken, there will be a media response along the same lines which have been followed from the time Trump first got elected: publishing The Narrative and censoring out the opposite view, trashing informants and not following old-fashioned investigative journalism techniques of actual research, credibility of informants  and corroboration of information.

Since at least the beginning of the Bush dynasty in 1988, through the advent of the Clinton political machine to the Obama era (and now Trump), any rose-colored glasses view of the media as honest brokers for political integrity in reporting should be treated with caution now.

Competition from the newer cable news channels, the internet and mass circulation syndicated political radio broadcasters, vastly extended the reach and broadened the variety of sources for political news. Conservative Talk radio host Rush Limbaugh went national with his talk show from New York in 1988.  Cable news channel CNN had been in operation since 1980 as the only 24-hour news channel but it took the advent of Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News Channel, created by Roger Ailes as a conservative 24-hour news channel in 1996 for the political media landscape to take a radically different turn.

By targeting a conservative audience demographic, it discovered what Charles Krauthammer once said was “a niche market in American broadcasting — half the American people”.

From the political polarisation of the Bill and Hillary Clinton presidential era to the huge political fight-to- the-death over the 2000 election and the “hanging chads”, what was left of the old decorum in political discourse was dead. Every step of the way the political media came along and fully participated. Come 911, the War on Terror and the invasion of Iraq a Rubicon seemed to have been crossed and the old media would never be the same again.

The Obama area started badly, with an email list of journalists getting together to try and control the Narrative during the 2008 campaign as it related to Barrack Obama (the JournOlist ), interfering with bad news and boosting Obama, diminishing Hillary Clinton etc. The Obama era did not exactly see anything like robust criticism of his mistakes. In fact the media were able to be treated with contempt, Obama aide Ben Rhodes made quite clear his views about the American political media.

Later, with the whole 2016 campaign and abuse of the institutions of state, where a candidate was spied upon in controversial circumstances, when a series of anti-terrorist measures were used to unmask and note the conversations of virtually a whole campaign team, only the claimed “Russia Collusion” itself could ever excuse it. If collusion died there was nothing left.

If not, a political scandal of even greater scale than Watergate was possibly uncovered. If so, it can be argued that unless the IG Report gains fair coverage, the traditional hope that in a crisis of US institutions, politicians and media would all come together to reset the institutions back on an even keel, will have been dashed.

Why new media?

Old-fashioned principles of caution, research, checking and credibility of sources used must be attached to anything seen purporting to “report” on these political actions and actors. With the increasing polarisation of the people and legacy media itself, the growth of the internet was the catalyst for new media, blogs etc offering alternate sources of information. Over the years they have had either missed it or had, but declined to recognise (or even to suppress it) as in Lewinsky, Dan Rather forgery etc. However, innate caution must be used as there are now so many social media investigative claims, some purporting to be “citizen journalists” that, luckily, we can see by the often-conflicting declarations of “fact” that this caution is never misplaced – ever. To see groups and sites getting many things right (and often main stream reports follow these revelations completely) but then going on to claim that Susan Rice is/isn’t cooperating with Trump, that Mueller is the “creature of the Deep State” or a “white hat” busily preparing to bury the anti-Trump “conspirators and so on.

Media of particular value.

Post the Trump election and the collapse of certain media into part of the #Resist movement, other media which have kept some balance have come to the fore. Outside of the usual lists of mass media which can be said to be firmly in one camp or another and about which their facts seem to include some points of view and ignore others completely, a phrase such as “liberal-leaning” or “conservative-leaning” shouldn’t exclude any such media from consideration. By using rational powers of observation, and looking for corroboration and verification of some seemingly extreme view of Trump or the FBI leadership means that we can build up a picture of the credibility of the reporters and even the channel itself.

This blog reads widely from sources and mentions some not-so-well-known media which deserve further views. Value has been found in using some quality investigative blogs and web sites, and two in particular have been prominent in investigating and breaking news of importance. In each of the Conservative Tree House and True Pundit  web sites, when mainstream media outlets pick up on their research breakthroughs, their work has been given a boost for being of merit. As always, those “checks and balances” should be uppermost in minds before reliance on their work.

Web sites with quality investigative blogs

TheLastRefuge     (“Sundance”) @TheLastRefuge2

web site:                    theconservativetreehouse.com

True Pundit              @true_pundit                      )

Thomas Paine         @Thomas1774Paine          )

web site:                    truepundit.com                   )

Trump Tariff increases – Time for some clear thinking and less panic

Posted on by December 7, 2018

The Australian political and media class were panicking about the Trump steel and aluminium tariff announcement, so it seemed time that somebody else laid out some ideas about what Trump is doing, who he is doing it with and why. Ongoing trade tensions related to the differential levying of tariffs and other costs on American goods and services are all part of the world trade tensions Trump seeks to alter. Anti-dumping actions plus the transshipping of products and raw materials from country to country to avoid trade rules are in particular focus.

Donald Trump announced on 2 March, his long-foreshadowed plans to impose tariffs on certain named “unfair” competitors by declaring a 25% tariff on steel and 10% on aluminium products.

Mexico and Canada are the two US partners of the US in the North American Free Trade Area, and associated with the Trump tariff push, NAFTA plays into the mix. NAFTA was long on the Trump radar for either radical reform or destruction and it is inextricably linked to the Trump plan to deal with the tariff issue. Only by taking account of NAFTA and the way Mexico and Canada can be bases for manufacture of goods which then enter the United States duty-free, can a proper understanding be had of the complementary nature of the tariff and NAFTA-Reform moves.

Australian media response was uniformly negative from political editors proclaiming on tariffs such as Paul Kelly of the Australian This is Trump’s Most Dangerous Step Yet to first rate economic journalists such as Adam Creighton having a go Donald Trump’s Trade War will Make America Poor Again and ending up being uniformly negative also.

I could argue the points of Adam Creighton as they relate to what others have shown to be the implications from various tariff regimes, but suffice it for this post to limit my response to what was my purpose for thinking that such an article as this was necessary (and overdue).

While there was gnashing of Australian teeth at first, the Trump announcement was followed by political euphoria once Trump moved to the next stage of granting exemptions for special trade partners (which included Australia). Leaving aside the political backslapping by PM Turnbull and his team, some truths about what really matters to Trump and his team about the whole unfinished tariff and NAFTA issues are important in order to predict the future for these decisions.

It is a fact that whilever Trump is the sole concentration of all media and political response, the quality and input of his advisers seem to be overlooked. Many people were seemingly ignorant of the position held by Gary Cohn in the administration as the globalist, Jared and Ivanka friend, Pro-Paris Agreement, Goldman Sacks man in the administration. They seemed to think that he was a solid, “mainstay” of the teams rather than a part, often at odds with those who were totally different financial voices in the administration. Because most administration staff are incessantly the butt of rumours of being ousted or resigning from the administration, there was no excuse to see the Cohn departure as a huge moment.

This was also overlooked, at the time, by American media, where initial reports seemed to sow (or be meant to sow) discord by claiming that Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross were against the tariff decision also. Not only was this not the case, but it showed how out of touch were the commentators playing this decision as some crude Trumpish way of bludgeoning through a disastrous policy which had not been thought through. This led to claims that panicked congressmen were to pass bills to override the Trump decision. Only Senator Jeff Flake, an avowed Trump, opponent has done so.

We shall see how it all plays out but it is a good idea that everyone who is not blinded by some anti-Trump malaise should spend some little time examining what the advisers (and Trump himself) have actually said about it, about what they are trying to do. Disagree or not, at least those who have done so would have fulfilled more of what the media usually claim they set out to do: see the argument for the other side.

EARLY in 2018 the Trump administration had announced tariffs on imported washing machines (20%) and solar panels (30%). It affected some NAFTA partners also and caused various mutterings about payback, trade wars and so on. However, the World Economic Forum  was meeting at Davos in Switzerland that month and the American President Donald trump had decided to attend.

A convenient start to disabusing someone of thinking the steel and aluminum tariff rises was a rushed, necessarily ill-thought out decision, some in-depth analysis shown by the Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross at Davos is a good starting point. In a discussion with a number of others zeroing-in on US trade policy post washing machine/solar panels tariffs, the hour is dominated by Ross.

All of the Wilbur Ross contribution is very important to understand what Trump is doing. Ross is quite clear on a number of points and gets no disagreement from the group. Specifically, China is superb at free trade rhetoric and equally superb in protectionist behavior; China is directly targeted as a US objection to the practice of forcing foreign companies to manufacture locally, force a joint venture and the joint venture partner then forces technology transfer.

Real bite in the talk comes in the Q and A session when Ross lays it out that China is flooding the world with steel, using subsidies to export its oversupply unemployment problem to be an unemployment problem for other countries, particularly the USA.

Most importantly, the issue of countries using transshipping to move products to 3rd countries and then to enter the US or other trading nations via trade agreements with those 3rd countries is seen as a subterfuge to avoid trade rules. Blanket tariffs were a method to block rogue nations and companies moving manufacture around from country to country outpacing trade actions against them. It was to stop that that blanket tariffs were put onto washing machines and that is a template for other failures in the dumping rules.

ONE FINAL POINT when calling for some caution in analysing these moves, there is a persistent media and political drum beat that this is all a shock from both an “incompetent” Trump or his advisers. While we would hope that careful observers would listen and read to what people like Ross and Mnuchin actually say and believe, Donald Trump isn’t exactly an unknown quantity. A speech by Trump in Las Vegas in April, 2011 is worthwhile viewing.

It has a lot in it, including China, tariffs unfair competition, coal, the media and a prediction – in April 2011 – that Iran would dominate Iraq.