Wry & Dry: a cynical and irreverent review of the week in politics, economics and life. For intelligent Readers who disdain the trivial.
But first, a snapshot of this week’s Investment Matters:
- Weight loss drugs – an update
Generative AI – the move to Applied AI
- Aurelia Metals – research update
To read Investment Matters, just click on the link at the bottom of this week’s Wry & Dry. Or here.
1. Stupidity
Your political party had been in opposition for a decade. Then an opinion poll shows you leading 51-49 against a tired incumbent. Government beckons. What could possibly go wrong?
Enter a hilarious exemplar of Keystone Cops (“inept and bumbling individuals or groups who exhibit incompetence while energetically pushing failure”): a cohort of ambitious right-wing Victorian Liberal MPs who thought that it would be a fine idea to give the DCM to leader John Pesutto.
But the wannabe rebels still have not decided who amongst them they wished to put up to challenge Pesutto. Consider three key Keystone cops…
Kim Wells, who entered parliament in 1992 and is a sprightly 66-year-old (just the age to capture Gen Z and Millennial voters?), said that he had been approached by colleagues to run for the top job. Which is code for he is actually approaching them for their support for his leadership bid.
The hapless Chris Crewther, who has just entered parliament with an 8% negative swing and turned a safe seat into the most marginal Liberal seat, also wants the top job. Crewther’s ambition has always been an exponential multiple of his ability and work ethic.
The veteran MP, Bev McArthur, born in 1949, apparently the coup leader, sees herself as the defender of those immediate post-war values. As recently as May 2023, she said Indigenous people should be grateful for the “wonderful things that have been enabled via colonisation such as hospitals, running water and electricity.” Surprising, isn’t it? The First Fleet brought electricity to this land. Really.
Unless a bout of commonsense breaks out, Readers can expect a ‘spill motion’ to be put to the parliamentary party on Tuesday. There goes the 51/49 poll lead.
2. Morality
Anniversaries tend to be celebrations of happy events: of births, of marriages and of other joyful occasions.
But there is something sinister about people celebrating the anniversary of what Hamas attackers did one year ago. The celebrations in the streets of Melbourne and Sydney were of murder, maiming, kidnapping and sexual abuse of any Israeli whom Hamas’ terrorists could grasp, without any goal, any story, other than to destroy the Jewish state.
Justifying the celebration as a lament for Israel’s response in Gaza is an ignorant and shocking equivalence.
The disturbing question is not the why of the celebrations, rather why are so many silent in the face of this overt and increasingly tolerated anti-Semitism? Where is the strong leadership?
Since 7 October last year, Australia’s dissembling leader has hoist himself on the fulcrum of a seesaw, seeking to balance his (Australia’s?) sense of morality at one end with his desire to remain in government at the other. As one end goes down, the other goes up – and he hurriedly shuffles to the higher end to redress the imbalance. And so the shuffle continues.
His equivocation has opened a can of multiplying worms.
Much of any prime minister’s role is management. But there are times when strong leadership is required. Equivocation is not in the job description of a strong leader.
3. Calamity
David Cameron was the last UK PM to understand the importance of a person termed ‘chief-of-staff’. Perhaps appointing a decent person to the role was the only good decision he made. Readers will recall that he approved two divisive referenda: Scottish independence and Brexit.
Without a decent chief-of-staff government’s good policies and projects will come to nowt. As May, Johnson, Truss and Sunak all discovered. Mind you, that suggests that the quartet of prime ministerial incompetence had good policies.
The UK’s newbie Prime Minister has just the importance of a capable chief-of-staff. This week Sir Keir Starmer, after just 100 days in office, gave the DCM to Sue Gray, a woman he hired from the civil service 18 months ago to be his right-hand person. She made enemies faster than Voldemort at a garden party.
That’s the eighth chief-of-staff to spin through 10 Downing Street in five years. Starmer’s awful start to the job, significantly because of undeclared donations of expensive clothing to he and his wife, would have been less so had a decent chief-of-staff been at his side.
Like Kamala Kamala’s choice of running mate, Starmer’s choice of Sue Grey showed childlike people judgement. He has five years to redress the bad decision. She has three weeks.
4. Paucity
Who will count the bean-counters. The number of US accounting graduates has fallen to its lowest level in 15 years…
One solution to the upcoming shortage, made moreso by some 75% of CPAs being at or near retirement, would be to make the US tax code simpler.
Slash its 6,871 pages back to the number it was in 1913: four pages.
5. Quantity
Kamala Kamala has raised more than $1 billion in less than three months of campaigning. The Trumpster’s total is about $853 million.
Each will have the best policies that money can buy.
6. Annuity
Former Qantas CEO Alan Joyce and his husband will be able to fly first class at the shareholders’ expense for the next 22 years, according to Qantas’ renumeration report.
They get four long haul flights and 12 short haul flight each year until 2046. That’s about $2m (today’s value) tax-free.
Companies often reward executives and directors with perks relating to the type of business.
Had Joyce been working for, say, Fosters, how many cans would $2m buy?
7. Vanity
What is it about some politicians and their need for recognition by forming their own party?
Readers will fondly remember Glenn Lazarus Team (founded by Glenn Lazarus), Nick Xenophon Team (Nick Xenophon), Family First (Steve Fielding), Australian Conservatives (Cory Bernardi), and Motoring Enthusiasts Party (Ricky Muir). And can still feel the influence of the incumbent and eponymous Palmer United Party (Clive Palmer), Jacqui Lambie Network (Jacqui Lambie), and Katter’s Australia Party (Bob Katter).
Readers can now excitedly follow the fortunes of two Senate Quislings1: Fatima Payman (ex-Labor) and Gerald Rennick (ex-Liberal).
The former gave herself the DCM from the Labor Party (over its Gaza policy), but not from the Senate. She is guaranteed $200,000+ p.a. until the election after next. The latter (anti-abortion and pro-Putin) was given the DCM for spreading conspiracy stories about, inter alia, covid vaccines. He keeps his senatorial stipend only until the next election.
Each Quisling has started their own political party. Payman’s (Australia’s Voice – hmm, that rings a bell) to, primarily, support Palestinians; Rennick (People First) to, primarily, push his plethora of idiocies, such as that gravity is an ignored cause of climate change.
Psephologists muse that Payman should book an appointment at Centrelink in 2028. Queensland, being a breeding ground for nutters, might reward Rennick with the 6th Senate spot in 2025. Sigh.
1 Quisling: a traitor, named for Vidkun Quisling, a Norwegian military officer, politician and Nazi collaborator.
8. Futility
In a fit of weirdness that so often happens to a government under pressure, on Wednesday, the government introduced a bill into parliament to prevent the NBN from ever being sold.
It’s weird for a number of reasons.
Firstly, when the Ruddster launched the NBN in 2005 he said that it would be built with public funds and then sold off five years after it was complete. Waiting, waiting.
Secondly, in June 2020, the Parliamentary Budget Office valued the NBN at $8.7 billion. More recently, it has been valued at $20 billion. Trouble is we-the-taxpayer have spent $51 billion on it. It loses about $1.1 billion annually. Get the picture?
The picture is that no-one will buy it.
An internet user can get an average of 100 Mbps and up to 300 Mbps using Starlink (data from Ookla) for about $139 per month (plus about $900 hardware). Starlink is significantly better than NBN-by-satellite. And is only a little more expensive than NBN-by-cable.
So, since the NBN was effectively completed (2020), Australians have had about four years of high-speed internet for $51 billion. Today, the government could pay every Australian household (9.8 million of them) the hardware costs of Starlink (say, $9 billion in total) and save we-the taxpayer $42 billion.
That’s the picture. Fixed line technology was dying when NBN was conceived and died before it was completed. The bottom line is now: NBN will never be sold. No-one will buy it.
So why is the government faffing around with this? A distraction, perhaps.
9. Fatuity
Yet another meaningless survey has been released. In an effort to distract Readers from more worldly matters, Wry & Dry brings Readers the events the Brits thought were most significant over the past 20 years.
Imagine if there were no royal family. What would keep Brits entertained?
10. Toxicity
Transition team; it’s a great concept. Get elected as POTUS2 on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November every four years dating from 1788. Then you’ve got until 20 January 2025 to get some 4,000 key people in place before taking office.
So, the new POTUS will need a transition team to select acolytes to run the senior executive of government and about 100 federal agencies. The TT also determines a set of legislative, executive and agency proposals based on the campaign platform.
The Trumpster has appointed Howard Lutnick, head of investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald3 as co-chair of his TT.
The co-chairship will need a big chair. Linda McMahon, the Trumpster’s former head of the Small Business Administration is a co-chair. So are JD Vance (Veep nominee), Donald Trump Jnr (son), Eric Trump (son), Robert F. Kennedy (former wannabe POTUS with Democrat political ancestry), and Tulsi Gabbard (former Democrat). They are the sept-chairs.
Purely coincidentally, Lutnick has given $10mn to Trump’s campaign and another $0.5mn for TT costs.
2 President of the United States
3 The company lost 658 employees in the 11 September terrorist attack, including Lutnick’s brother.
Snippets from all over
1. Illegal immigrants in hotels
New York City is seeking 14,000 hotel rooms to shelter illegal immigrants throughout 2025 at a cost of $352 per room per night. (UK Telegraph)
Wry & Dry comments: Most illegal immigrants got to New York from the Texan border with Mexico. The Texas governor simply bussed them to New York.
2. A million refugees
The United Nations warned that nearly a million Lebanese had fled the spreading war between Israel and Iranian-backed groups in the Middle East. (New York Times)
Wry & Dry comments: That’s about 20% of the country’s population.
3. Sleepy Joe on the blower
Joe Biden and Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, spoke by telephone, their first meeting since August. (Financial Times)
Wry & Dry comments: Binny would have told Sleepy Joe what to say.
4. Emperor Eleven’s passport collection drive
Chinese authorities are demanding that a growing number of school teachers and other public sector employees hand in their passports as President Xi Jinping tightens his grip on society. (Financial Times)
Wry & Dry comments: Just cannot risk those impressionable schoolteachers being exposed to concepts such as freedom, free movement, etc.
5. End of Schengen
Germany’s move to impose controls on all its land borders risks setting off a domino effect that could badly weaken the Schengen system of frictionless travel, an arrangement seen as one of the EU’s greatest achievements. (Economist)
Wry & Dry comments: The first role of government is the security of its citizens. Germany’s citizens are, well, German. This very concept was lost on former Chancellor Angela Merkel, who opened Germany’s doors to over one million immigrants in 2015. France’s new PM has now said it will follow Germany’s lead.
It figures
- 2.4%: US – inflation for the year to end September
And to soothe your troubled mind…
“After a few hundred pages, the book starts to feel less “Unleashed” than unhinged and, worse, uninteresting.”
Excerpt of a review of Unleashed, Borisconi’s autobiography, in the Economist.
Wry & Dry comments: It’s quite a delightful review. Consider some more:
“For the past 30 years, first as a journalist, then as editor (of the Spectator), then mayor (of London) then prime minister (of Britain), Mr Johnson had a ringside seat at some of the world’s most notable events, from the late queen’s final months, to Brexit, covid-19 and the war in Ukraine. Moreover, at his best, Boris…is a gifted rhetorician. This book should have been brilliant… But, much like the man himself, it is not.”
Disclaimer
The comments in Wry & Dry do not necessarily reflect those of First Samuel, its Directors or Associates.
Cheers!