Wry & Dry: a cynical and irreverent review of the week in politics, economics and life. For intelligent Readers who disdain the trivial.
Investment Matters
Read all about:
- The first ten weeks of FY-26: robust markets, outperformance and volatility
- Interest rates
- Small gold miners
- Santos – takeover offer withdrawn
- Emeco – takeover speculation
To read Investment Matters, you can still just click on the link at the bottom of this week’s Wry & Dry. Or here.
Wry & Dry’s musings
There’s no doubt that the Brits are very good at one thing: running a fete. But it always rains. Trumpster ignored the rain, but Mrs Trumpster’s raincoat will boost Burberry’s sales. And then there was The Dinner and the table that took three days to set; even the king cannot avoid the union’s work-to-rule rules.
Meanwhile, apocalyptic fossil-fuel forecasts hit the news, believed by the ABC but no-one else. Uncle Albo left PNG with egg all over his cherubic face. And the Liberal Party ignores the polls and keeps digging, but a ray of commonsense beamed from Ms. Ley.
1. Moses Bowen
It was a parody of a duo of skits from Monty Python.
Firstly, on Monday, like Moses standing before Pharaoh and warning of the Ten Plagues of Egypt1 if he (Pharoah) didn’t let the Israelites go, Climate Change Tsar Chris Bowen portended seven climate-driven disasters to strike Australia.
He released the National Climate Risk Assessment report, which should have had an ASIC investment warning that the contents were very speculative. Good grief, the government cannot even forecast last year’s budget deficit, what hope a 30-year forecast with more uncertainties than a speech from Barnaby Joyce.
But Mr Bowen was undaunted by the fantasy forecasts, that warned that without “stronger action:”
- more Australians will die
- crop yields will decrease
- vector-borne diseases will rise
- illnesses will worsen
- productivity will drop
- supply chains will be broken
- 1.5 million more people will come under threat from rising sea levels
Warning! Warning! Danger!
Secondly, yesterday and with Bowen’s disaster warning already given, it was time to shout the benefits of Uncle Albo’s plans. He released Australia’s 2035 emissions targets. These had all the hallmarks of Wry & Dry’s New Years’ resolutions: optimistic, well-meaning, uncosted and totally unachievable.
It may be a heresy to write this, but there’s little Australia can effectively do other than appear virtuous. Y’see, Australia is ranked 17th for global CO2 emissions. Whatever Australians do is not going to much move the global needle. But, make no mistake, the government will spend billions of we-the-taxpayers dosh trying to.
For serious action, Uncle Albo should ask former flatmate Chairman Dan to get on the blower to Emperor Eleven and use his special relationship to get China’s emissions slashed.
And Uncle Albo could then call upcoming best mate Trumpster, then Guru Modi and also Ishiba-san. Calling for volunteers to lobby Tsar Vlad might not work. And after giving the local man the DCM, a call to Nuclear Ali Khamenei would certainly be fruitless.
Uncle Albo’s week of being both alarmist and Saviour will now be lost in the season of football and rugby finals and school holidays. But not on the regulators, the pencils of whom are now well sharpened.
1 Water turned to blood, frogs, gnats, flies, livestock disease, boils, hail, locusts, darkness and death of the firstborn. (Exodus chapters 7-12).
2. King Donald meets King Charles
What better way to distract from domestic trouble than to “switch to vaudeville.”2 Which is what UK PM Starmer did this week. The recent disaster-triplet of the Mandelson scandal3, Rayner’s resignation4, and the rapid rise of a new left-wing party5 meant that he welcomed Trumpster with as much pageantry (cue the King and Princess of Wales) and flattery (State Dinner, military stuff) as possible.
The irony of the involvement of Charles and Camilla in Starmer’s friendship campaign will be lost on Trumpster. Charles is a passionate environmentalist, and his consort is a feminist. On the other hand, Trumpster probably advocated ‘drill, baby, drill’ in the grounds of Buckingham Palace in an aside to the king. He also thinks that a feminist is a female communist.
But what a dinner! The hair was charmed by the heir’s wife. And doubtless the two kings, actual and wannabe, discussed the problems of former wives.
For Starmer, the pageant will pass, as all pageants do. He might soon become a husk of history. The question now in the UK is who will wield the knife?
2 As the modest former Australian PM Paul Keating oft said.
3 Lord Mandelson, the UK’s ambassador to the US, got the DCM for his past relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.
4 Angela Rayner, the Deputy PM of the UK, got the DCM for tax evasion.
5Jeremy ‘Jezza’ Corbyn, Leader of the Labour Party when Labour lost 59 seats to Borisconi, has launched a new far-left party, in the interim called “Your Party.” The party already has signed up 650,000 supporters. It is likely to form a loose alliance with the increasing left-wing Greens, which has elected a new radical, anti-austerity and anti-establishment leader.,
3. Liberals move closer to new zero. Their own.
A wise Australian politician6 once mused that politics was for “the looney, the lonely and the ambitious.” Which describes the current members of the federal Liberal Party.
It is entirely possible that putative Opposition Leader Andrew Hastie is the most ambitious politician since Julius Caesar. And Readers will know how that ended.7
Y’see, Hastie, instead of massaging whatever methods work best within a party room, has taken to the media to prosecute his case for ‘Net Zero’. Well, that’s how it appears to political neophytes.
The reality is that it’s not just about Net Zero. Hastie wants the party to give Sussan Ley the DCM and elect himself. He wants the world to brand him a right-wing slayer of left-wing dragons.
His online tribute to slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk was understandable to a point. But then this: a radio commentator questioned Kirk’s extreme right-wing views (misogyny, homophobia, racism, etc). Hastie’s riposte was: “The next leg of the journey won’t be for the fainthearted, mate. Glad you’re tapping out now.”
Whew. JD Vance Downunder?
The only refreshing item for the party was Leaders Ley’s speech to CEDA, where she said that the mindset of government dependency or the notion of universal free everything needs to be broken.
Sadly, they’re concepts that too many Australians no longer understand. If they ever did.
6 Jim Carlton, former Liberal minister, widely respected for his principled, reformist approach to politics and his dry wit. He was a key figure in shifting the Liberal Party toward free-market economics, helping to found the “dry” movement alongside John Hyde and Peter Shack.
7 Badly.
4. Meanwhile in the Pacific
There are no Louis Vuitton, Fendi or Burberry shops in Port Moresby. Which probably explains why former Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop made only three trips there in her five years as Foreign Minister. Arguably, Papua New Guinea is Australia’s most important military relationship outside that of the US.
She preferred the shopping diplomatic destinations of London, New York, Paris and Washington.
Whilst she was shopping in the northern hemisphere, Emperor Eleven and his cronies were quietly waving mega quantities of dollar bills around the southern hemisphere. Especially in Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and PNG.
And PNG signed up to China’s Belt & Road Initiative in 2018, just as Ms Bishop flew overhead, on her way north.
Ms. Bishop’s indolence about the South Pacific and ignorance of China’s infiltration also reflected that of her three bosses: Cardinal Abbott, Croesus Turnbull and Miracle Morrison.
In view of Australia’s indifference, it’s not difficult to see why China’s silent and camouflaged munificence has been welcomed in the South Pacific.
Which brings Wry & Dry to Uncle Albo’s recent duet of embarrassments. Readers know that Solomon Islands has already become an outpost of Emperor Eleven’s empire. Manadarin will become its lingua franca. And events last week suggest that Vanuatu, which declined to sign Uncle Albo’s $500m bilateral security deal, will be in the same canoe.
And on Wednesday, Papua New Guinea declined to sign Uncle Albo’s defence pact. Much egg-on-face for both him and his defence minister.
Perhaps Uncle Albo’s $600m (over 10 years, really?) grant to PNG for its rugby team might have been better spent on some homework on how politics in PNG really works.
In the meantime, the Chinese Embassy in Port Moresby is loading the carrots and sticks for local delivery.
5. The trillion dollar man
Elon Musk likes dealing in big numbers, presenting ambitious targets and making himself wealthy. So it was inevitable that some people and the pope got grumpy over his proposed $1 trillion compensation package.
Pope Leo, brought up in Chicago so he should understand how capitalism works, said that “the news that Elon Musk is going to be the first trillionaire in the world was a sign of the inequitable times.” Your Holiness, your sentiments are understood, but there have always been inequitable times.
He, and they, missed the point that the Tesla CEO will only get richer if workers and shareholders also get richer.
Much richer. His stock compensation won’t be fully his unless:
- he increases the market value of Tesla shares to $8.5 trillion (currently $1.3 trillion)
- he achieves $400 billion in annual earnings (only $16.6 billion last year)
- the company has put one million robotaxis in operation (only 30 so far)
- the company delivers 20 million electric vehicles (it’s delivered only eight million in 22 years)
- the company delivers one million robots (aims to deploy 1,000 this year)
This isn’t a Moonshot. Or even a Mars-shot. This is a Jupitershot in every sense of the word.
6. Depreciation
The Australian Financial Review reported on Wednesday that the CFMEU Victorian branch received $27m in 2022 in grants from the building union’s redundancy fund. The grants were to build a training and ‘well-being’ facility.
The CFMEU has written-down the value of the building to $8m.
Nice work. If you can get it.
7. Trumpster “talk to the hand”
It remains a mystery why Trumpster has turned his back on three vital and possibly former allies in Asia. And did he really expect these countries not to get grumpy?
Consider that Trumpster hit Japan with 15% tariffs and then ‘told’ them to invest 4550bn into the US economy. Then the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement raided a Hyundai factory in Georgia.
And then there is India. Over the last decade, the US and Europe have put considerable effort to get India out of Russia’s orbit. Trumpster turned pear-shaped that objective with an impulsive hit of 50% tariffs. And then told the world that India “had been lost to deepest darkest China.”
India is now a (very small) participant in this week’s joint military exercise of Russia and Belarus, just over the border from Poland. And it determinedly will keep on buying Tsar Vlad’s oil.
Go figure.
Snippets from all over
1. ANZ fined a record sum
Australian bank ANZ has been hit with a record A$240mn (US$160mn) penalty by the country’s corporate watchdog for a range of issues including its handling of a government bond sale and failing to refund fees charged against the accounts of deceased customers. (Financial Times)
Wry & Dry comments: Lucky to get just that.
2. Google hits $3 trillion
Market capitalisation of Alphabet, the parent company of Google, reached $3trn for the first time. Only three other companies—Apple, Microsoft and Nvidia—are worth more. (Economist)
Wry & Dry comments: Google’s P/E is about 26. Apple’s P/E is about 32, Microsoft’s is 32 and Nvidia’s is 52.
3. Mexico tariffs China
The Mexican government announced plans to raise import taxes to 50% on 1,400 products – including automobiles – imported primarily from China, India, and South Korea. Beijing, viewing this as a pro-American manoeuvre, threatened retaliation. (Le Monde)
Wry & Dry comments: Mexico’s Economy Secretary specifically cited “cars from Asia, particularly from China, as their average price indicates a market-share strategy that disadvantages the Mexican industry.”
4. Pro-Palestinian demonstrators wreck race
The Vuelta a España, Spain’s most important cycling race, was cancelled as it reached its climax on Sunday when thousands of pro-Palestinian demonstrators invaded the finish point in central Madrid during clashes with police. (The Times)
Wry & Dry comments: Clearly not the sporting types.
5. New French PM unscraps two scrapped public holidays
France’s new prime minister has overturned a plan by his predecessor to scrap two public holidays following mass strikes. (Uk Telegraph)
Wry & Dry comments: Err, it moved the needle the other way. The new PM, M Lecornu is even more unpopular than his predecessor.
It figures
- 4.2%: Australia. Unemployment rate in August, unchanged.
- 0.25% points: USA. The cut in official interest rates, to 4%, by the US central bank.
- 3.4%: China. Retail sales increase in year to August, down from 3.7%.
- 5.2%: China. Industrial production increase in year to August, down from 5.7%
And to soothe your troubled mind…
“It’s ambitious for a prosperous future that places Australia’s people and Australia’s industries in the driver’s seat on the global push to protect our planet.”
Matt Kean, Chair of the Climate Change Authority, spruiking Uncle Albo’s emissions’ targets.
Wry & Dry comments: Australia in the driver’s seat? Which go-kart?
Next week…
…Wry & Dry will be participating in Victoria’s salute to public holidays, the AFL Grand Final Eve holiday, by working in Mrs Wry & Dry’s garden.
Wry & Dry will return on Friday 3 October.
Disclaimer
The comments in Wry & Dry do not necessarily reflect those of First Samuel, its Directors or Associates.
Cheers!