I’ll be taking part in the Political Geekfest videocast through Zoom with Peter Lewis of Essential Research and Katharine Murphy of the Guardian Australia at 1pm AEST today, which you can register for here. The subject of discussion will be this:
• The Guardian reports on another Essential Research poll focusing mostly on coronavirus, which would appear to be a weekly thing at least for the time being. The latest poll finds 59% rating the government’s response as about right, up from 46% last week and 39% in the two previous weekly polls; 13% rating it an overreaction, continuing its downward trajectory from 33% to 18% to 17%; and 29% rating it an underreaction, which bounced around over the first three weeks from 28% to 43% to 37%. Respondents were also asked to rate their state governments’ reactions, though with sample sizes too small to be of that much use at the individual level: the combined responses for very good and quite good were at 56% for New South Wales, 76% for Victoria, 52% for Queensland, 79% for Western Australia and 72% for South Australia. The poll also records a surprisingly high level of general morale, producing an average 6.7 rating on a scale of one to ten, unchanged from May last year. The full report should be published later today. UPDATE: Full report here.
• Also apparently a weekly thing is Roy Morgan’s coronavirus polling, which is being conducted online and not by SMS as I previously assumed – indeed, I believe this is the first online polling Morgan has ever published. Last week’s tranche showed a sharp rise in approval of the government’s handling of the matter from a week previous, with 21% strongly agreeing the government was handling the matter well (up twelve), 44% less strongly agreeing (up ten), 23% disagreeing (down ten) and 6% strongly disagreeing (down ten). Respondents had also become more optimistic since the previous week (59% saying the worst was yet to come, down 26 points, 33% saying the situation would remain the same, up 22 points, and 8% expecting things to improve, up four), and, contra Essential, slightly more inclined to consider the threat was being exaggerated (up five points to 20%, with disagreement down six to 75%). The poll was conducted last weekend from a sample of 987.
mundo @ #1178 Wednesday, April 15th, 2020 – 6:36 pm
You’ve got to wonder why mundo thinks,
1. Federal Opposition Labor people read PB, and
2. Why the feck they care about what mundo has to say?
The Drum had a session on water for rice.
The water ministers are due to meet in a couple of days. I assume there will be a wholesale assault on environmental water in the MDB with the food commodity trade disruptions generated by the Virus being used as an excuse.
The dismal part of the discussion is that not a single environmental expert has been allowed to take part in the ‘debate’. The reality is that there is never enough water during a drought and that waterbird numbers in the MDB in the recent drought collapsed by 90%.
NSW (Barilaro in particular) wants to dodge its signed up state responsibilities under the Plan to return water to the environment.
Threatening Australians with starvation because rice farmers can’t get their irrigation water management in order is about as low as it can get. The NFF has come out against the rice farmers’ special pleading.
The Drum discussion on the topic was far more rigorous than the recent Landline discussion which was a free run for the rice farmers.
Oakeshott Country @ #1181 Wednesday, April 15th, 2020 – 6:41 pm
You can lead the way, OC. 🙂
Don’t know why we would need a limit to posts. If anyone thinks that someone’s posting too much, just scroll over them.
Government bonds don’t have to be that anchor.
If it wants to, the central bank can buy and sell corporate bonds to set the yields on those; it can buy and sell mortgages to set interest rates on mortgages. It can do this with any asset that is denominated in its currency.
Bond issuance is a relic from the Bretton Woods era of fixed exchange rates. Back then it was used to influence the volume of sales and purchases of the nation’s currency – a government would offer a higher interest rate if it wanted to encourage purchases of the government’s currency, in response to downward pressure on the exchange rate. It would offer a lower interest rate if it wanted to discourage purchases of the government’s currency, in response to upward pressure on the exchange rate. Obviously this process is not needed when the currency floats in foreign exchange markets.
Most people think that bonds play a role in fiscal policy – that they enable the government to make payments. That is not true at all.
Steve777 @ #1200 Wednesday, April 15th, 2020 – 7:21 pm
Exactly, because the person asking for the post limit always only has one or two people in mind. One of whom is not them. 😀
What is your daily record C@t? Ever cracked the 400?
Growing rice in this dry country is insane.
That said I can see covid19 being used to undermine many environmental and democratic laws.
Oh, and before I go watch Masterchef I’ll just let you know that I have just gotten off the phone to Westpac. There’s some serious phishing going on right now under the cover of the Coronavirus and the email that I was sent today, supposedly from Westapc, looked very convincing indeed. I only found out about its nature when I rang Westpac to ask why I couldn’t access my account directly from the email I was sent. Only to find out that my account was remotely accessed today from Great Britain, by way of an initial foray into my account to test access but thankfully not to get away with all my money, small in quantity but nevertheless important to me.
Now Westpac know and hopefully my money is safe until tomorrow when I go to the bank, take it all out and open a new account. I have changed my password until then.
For those who haven’t seen the unedited 11 minutes of Barack Obama endorsing Joe Biden, I recommend you do..
https://youtu.be/tJAPfahus_U
‘mikehilliard says:
Wednesday, April 15, 2020 at 7:29 pm
Growing rice in this dry country is insane.’
If we were to apply your logic to all other irrigated fruit and vegetables as well as to food staples other than broad acre cereals we would be importing most of our food instead of exporting two thirds of what we grow.
clem attlee:
Wednesday, April 15, 2020 at 3:46 pm
[‘Mehar baba is nothing more than a right wing shill, who naively believes that by protesting a moderate position people will not see her him for what he is… a neo liberal.’]
I wouldn’t take it that far, but MB does have a tendency to be verbose. That which can be reduced to a para or so should be. I mean, it seems that some have a compelling urge to appear intelligent.
Boerwar
I think the YUGE part of our food exports are the broad acre cereals. The rest ? not so much. Perhaps a change of diet to more ‘desert friendly’ crops might be in order.Mmmmm prickly pear, very nice as long as you know to remove the fine spines on the fruit………….like wot I didn’t do the first time 😆 Grow what the land naturally suits.
Food security is a lie. One day they are telling us we grow enough food to feed 75 million people and there is no problem (true). Next day they say they need to trash a decade of MDB reforms to give water to rice farmers. Who owns a rice farm, Angus or Barnaby?
How to repay the debt? Here is one idea Scomo never thought of. Jacinda Ardern is taking a pay cut. If this trend spread like a virus to cabinet and executive ranks of the public service, corporations and universities the debt would soon be repaid.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-04-15/new-zealand-jacinda-ardern-coronavirus-pay-cut/12150174?utm_medium=spredfast&utm_content=sf232775541&utm_campaign=abc_news&utm_source=m.facebook.com&sf232775541=1&fbclid=IwAR2VLnsUSHlRPnM9TVSiS89cK-B_5Zsusw4i6y5UrbSap6vPLqaVGqFgWmA
C@tmomma @ #1156 Wednesday, April 15th, 2020 – 3:36 pm
Whilst I personally agree with your sentiments, I would have thought in a capitalist system like ours the “dropkick’s” behaviour was exemplary; used his capital to exploit an anticipated need. Just as many legitimate businesses and shareholders do. What am I missing?
poroti says:
Wednesday, April 15, 2020 at 7:42 pm
Boerwar
I think the YUGE part of our food exports are the broad acre cereals. The rest ? not so much. Perhaps a change of diet to more ‘desert friendly’ crops might be in order.Mmmmm prickly pear, very nice as long as you know to remove the fine spines on the fruit………….like wot I didn’t do the first time Grow what the land naturally suits.
______________
You can see what an obsession with exports and profits have done to the Central Valley in California. A resource that could have fed Americans for centuries is being denuded very quickly.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/21/us/california-central-valley-tainted-water.html
Socrates
Even their equivalent to our CMO is taking a pay cut for 6 months and he is working like a blue arse fly. So his “oh but we are working hard still” doesn’t cut it. Add to that his “we are all in this together” . Oh and didn’t they recently get a noice pay increase ?
Mavis: “I wouldn’t take it that far, but MB does have a tendency to be verbose. That which can be reduced to a para or so should be. I mean, it seems that some have a compelling urge to appear intelligent.”
I agree that my posts tend to be too long. Paradoxically, it’s because I don’t have much time to post, so I don’t have time to edit them down. But I am aware of it, and apologise for it.
p
While cereals are the big export earners: Australia exports around half a million tons of fruit a year worth around $1 billion and vegies an additional third of a billion. It exports nearly
$3 billion in wine. It exports around $1 billion in nuts.
Nearly all of that would be irrigated to some extent or another.
Most domestically consumed fruit, vegies, wine and nuts, ditto.
The economics of trying to grow high quality fruit and vegies under natural rainfall is hugely chancy.
The soils in areas with more reliable rainfall are increasingly being covered in tar and cement.
Take irrigation out of our food production and we would increasingly be relying on food imports, other than broad acre cereals. The other rude shock for Inner Urbs peeps who decry irrigation: we would be paying a lot, lot more for our food than we do now.
Brian_Boru
And he created ‘work’ by getting others to do the buying. He deserves a medal or at least free Liberal party membership for a year.
VP
“ The “design flaw ” of the JobKeeper program is that employees need to be paid before the ATO pays the employer in arrears ( 4 weeks ). Hearing of plenty of business’ that are refusing to sign up as they just don’t have any cash flow to cover this.”
That’s not the only design flaw but it’s the worst one. Our company has a full time accountant and a full time CEO and we still are really struggling with it. Smaller places would be giving up. The idea sounded good when Morrison explained it but it’s implementation is terrible.
Is there a map or a list of where covid19 has been detected in Tasmania? And when maybe?
‘Socrates says:
Wednesday, April 15, 2020 at 7:44 pm
Food security is a lie. One day they are telling us we grow enough food to feed 75 million people and there is no problem (true). Next day they say they need to trash a decade of MDB reforms to give water to rice farmers. Who owns a rice farm, Angus or Barnaby?’
The rice growers. On top of that, they have created a bit of a rod for their own backs by communally building rice milling and a rice sales brand. I assume that in the next couple of days we are going to see yet another burst of rural socialism in the rice space.
C@tmomma @ #1201 Wednesday, April 15th, 2020 – 7:17 pm
It amuses me that you clearly care so much. Why not just block him, as you (very loudly and very often) claim to do for so many others?
It makes me wonder if mundo has a point, so I read all his posts carefully. And thanks for that, because I find I agree with him quite a lot.
This CNN article explains how ‘wet markets’ as a whole have been unfairly demonised and the real problem is the minority that trade in live exotic animals.
rel=”nofollow”>https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/14/asia/china-wet-market-coronavirus-intl-hnk/index.html
I think this is the point made by WHO that many people in the world rely on wet markets for their vegetable and meat supplies, so that their closure would create immense difficulties for consumers.
Presumably Sydney’s fish market and Paddy’s market would be classed as wet markets, where the floor may be hosed or scrubbed at the end of the day. Popular farmers’ markets in Australia could also be classified as wet markets.
Boerwar
“ If we were to apply your logic to all other irrigated fruit and vegetables as well as to food staples other than broad acre cereals we would be importing most of our food instead of exporting two thirds of what we grow.”
The data does not bear that out. Rice is a terribly inefficient crop in terms of the water needed to grow each kilo. The same water can grow at least 4 times as much vegetables or fruit. The worst offenders for water consumption are chocolate, beef and dairy production, then rice. If we made rice farmers pay the true cost of the water they use they would go broke. Which is why they always demand special treatment. See
https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2013/jan/10/how-much-water-food-production-waste
Does Walker SC specialise in running commissions where no one will appear as a witness?
I would really like to know the number of times the name “Kevin Rudd” has been mentioned in the world’s highest government offices recently.
Australia was at the forefront of successful GFC response in the years 2008-2010.
Although many critics pooh-poohed Australia’s national GFC strategy (including home-grown critics, for the basest of political reasons), I suspect note was taken of it’s obvious success.
The world seems to have learned its lesson, and Australian Labor should be proud it showed the way a decade ago.
citizen
I have been a mildly irritated by ignorant but nevertheless omniscient western commentators who have never been in a wet market in their lives and who are absolutely clueless about their critical function in food distribution in many asian countries.
If they want to talk about the live wildlife food trade then that is what they should call it.
Some wet markets have live wildlife food as a component. Others do not.
Boerwar @ #1211 Wednesday, April 15th, 2020 – 7:37 pm
How about “growing rice for export in a dry country is insane”?
BTW, while i am often accused of being a “neo-liberal”, I still don’t really understand what it means.
I see myself as both a libertarian – which is the basis for my enthusiasm for free market economics – and an environmentalist. But, despite being a libertarian, I am a strong supporter of an effective system of social welfare, and the provision of high quality public health services: both in the interest of furthering social justice.
That’s why the Hawke-Keating governments were my idea of political nirvana: making the market work properly; good on the environment (or, at least, better than anything we’d had before); committed to reforming and strengthening the welfare system, establishing Medicare, etc.
Gee that was a time of good government. Apart from brief moments of clarity under Howard and Gillard, everything since then has been a bit of a joke.
meher baba
On the plus side they are reasoned and have a logic, it’s just a shame how often they are wRONg 🙂 On a more serious note , being a bit more expansive means that one of the probs with compact online comments, being misinterpreted, is not such a risk. Anyway , carry on, we’re all in this together one way or another.
Rather good interview with Rudd tonight on 7:30
Kevin doesn’t have much time for Comrade Morrison’s handling of the crisis.
Note to Gentle Jim and Albo, it’s ok to be critical where it’s warranted.
citizen @ #1226 Wednesday, April 15th, 2020 – 7:54 pm
Yes. This point was made in The Guardian live blog today. It is not “wet markets” that need to be banned, it is the sale of specific species (or classes of species).
The problem with wet markets is when they keep wild animals alive on top of each other and then eat them.
Soc
There are two broad approaches here. One is to run a water market and let that decide where, when and how irrigation water is allocated.
The second is to run a top down Gosplan according to the sort of framework you seem to be advocating.
When governments start micromanaging farms in order to ‘improve’ productivity or to generate national objectives of one sort or another, productivity goes out the window.
poroti:
“On the plus side they are reasoned and have a logic, it’s just a shame how often they are wRONg On a more serious note , being a bit more expansive means that one of the probs with compact online comments, being misinterpreted, is not such a risk. Anyway , carry on, we’re all in this together one way or another.”
Thanks, I think…
Did someone mention the Ruddster? Never short of an opinion..
https://youtu.be/qSyvU9oMs5Q
Diogenes @ #1222 Wednesday, April 15th, 2020 – 7:53 pm
Does Smoko have any other sort of good idea?
meher baba
I was wondering if I should have added “By the way this is a compliment” . Guess I should have 🙂
Dio
The other design flaw seems to be that many businesses during the Great Hibernation don’t have a cash flow. If they want to access Jobkeeper on behalf of their staff, they have to increase their borrowings.
Newsflash: Oil has hit a new 18-year low.
The IEA’s warning that global demand will fall to its lowest since 1995 in April has added to the gloom in the market – sending US crude reeling to just $19.20.
That’s its lowest level since 2002, and show Opec’s attempt to prop the price up is failing.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/coronavirus-updates-live-global-covid-19-cases-surpass-1-9-million-australian-death-toll-stands-at-62-as-unemployment-rate-tipped-to-grow-20200414-p54jr4.html#p50bb6
Includes WHO lockdown lifting advice.
Player One: “How about “growing rice for export in a dry country is insane”?
If irrigation water is managed properly, rice and cotton – whether for internal consumption or export – are easily the best crops to grow in a dry country. Fruit is the second worst thing, and irrigated grass for dairy is the worst by a country mile.
The beauty of rice and cotton is that, if there’s no irrigation water available for a year or two, there are no permanent plantings that will die for want of water.
The problem at the moment is unlikely to be anything to do with the unsuitability of particular crops. It’s more likely to be caused by excessive greed. If you just say no to irrigation water for rice and cotton growers, they can then run cattle and sheep on their properties until the water becomes available again. They’re unlikely to go broke in the interim.
However, there’s been a lot of rain over the past few months, so I don’t really understand why there isn’t at least some water available for the rice growers. But I haven’t been following it all as closely as I used to do.
Also from above column
Sdney Uni interactive guide to NSW hotspots.
https://covid19-data.sydney.edu.au/
Holdenhillbilly
Stand by for either a) Financial Megadeath for USAian Frackers or b) The most amazing financial magical tricks to make them ‘all good’ .
Boerwar
I am not in favour of Gosplan. But either way (gosplan or market) you would nevre grow the amount of rice we grow on the MDB given sane, non-corrupt government.
I agree that next the cotton farmers will play the community card. Its true too. But it completely glosses over all the other communities downstream that have seen their livelihoods crushed by cotton growers upstream taking the water that once naturally flowed to them.
poroti: “I was wondering if I should have added “By the way this is a compliment” . Guess I should have ”
Thanks, I’ll cherish it. I don’t get that many on here.
‘Holdenhillbilly says:
Wednesday, April 15, 2020 at 8:06 pm
Newsflash: Oil has hit a new 18-year low.
The IEA’s warning that global demand will fall to its lowest since 1995 in April has added to the gloom in the market – sending US crude reeling to just $19.20.
That’s its lowest level since 2002, and show Opec’s attempt to prop the price up is failing.’
Possibly too soon to say but likely to be right, anyway. They promised to cut production by 10 million bbl a day. Current reduction in consumption is a bit more than 20 million bbl a day.