Emperor Eleven’s hobby. Uncle Albo’s brain fade. Nato family photo.
Wry & Dry: a cynical and irreverent review of the week in politics, economics and life. For intelligent Readers who disdain the trivial.
Investment Matters
This week Craig moves off the beaten track to dive deeply into ‘vertical fiscal imbalance.’ And why Victoria will forever be playing catch-up with its infrastructure spending. And Western Australia is already ahead. It’s thoughtful and fascinating article.
Read this weeks’ Investment Matters here.
Wry & Dry’s ponderings…
It was a week of brain fades: Uncle Albo, Liberal Sarah Henderson and Reform Nigel Farage head the list. Emperor Eleven lobbed a missile far into the sun-drenched and hitherto tranquil waters of the Pacific. Nato’s family photo told a bigger story. If the plane went down with the Prince of Wales and his children, Prince Harry would be next in line for the top gig – now there’s a worry. Canada abandons net zero.
1. Emperor Eleven’s hobby
One wonders why Emperor Eleven, presiding over a slowing economy, a property sector still smoldering, and a restless army of unemployed graduates, finds the time to lob military kit at a patch of empty ocean 8,000km from home. Apparently governing 1.4 billion people leaves a man with hobbies.
As with all Emperor Eleven’s actions, there is a message: I can reach you, anywhere, any time, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Chilling, isn’t it. Still a missile is cheaper than an army of 50,000 invading between the flags.
Emperor Eleven was courteous enough to provide advance warning that a dummy-warheaded missile was to be lobbed neatly inside the Pacific Nuclear Free Zone, a treaty Beijing itself signed in 1987.
Nuclear-free, evidently, is a flexible concept when you’re the one holding the missile.
The timing was, as ever, exquisite: the same day Uncle Albo signed a mutual defence treaty with Fiji, on top of the Pukpuk Treaty already inked with PNG.
Each now promises to rush to the other’s aid if attacked. So heart-warming for Australia: a fearsome patrol boat floated all the way from Fiji, or a platoon of PNG’s muscular military dressed as rugby players canoed across Torres Strait. Both just in time. And all with a stern press release.
None of this troubles the PLA Rocket Force. What it does do is settle the AUKUS argument, again. Submarines look less like an expense, and more like a deterrent.
We just need to get them built before the Greens bribe Uncle Albo into cancelling AUKUS as the price for the Senate passing one of Grim Jim’s crazier tax deals.
2. Deep Bush, shallow judgement
Uncle Albo, six months married, appeared on a podcast called “Bush Deep” and was asked the classic parlour game: shag, marry, date. He picked Kylie Minogue for all three. Apparently he then confirmed his marriage was still producing enthusiasm, “after the footy.” Wry & Dry is confused as to what that means.
Had any Coalition frontbencher played the parlour game, the ABC would have run a Four Corners special and the sisterhood would have marched on said frontbencher’s office by lunchtime. Uncle Albo’s acolytes meekly pronounce that it was merely “disrespectful.” And the problem is fixed with an “unequivocal” apology.
In an actual workplace, this is an HR file. In the Lodge, it’s Monday.
The real error isn’t the smut; it’s the delusion. Albo isn’t a larrikin millennial charmer; he’s a suburban union man who got old before he got interesting.
Authenticity was his brand. He just traded it for a bogan laugh-line, and it took the shine off two decent Pacific treaties in the process.
3. A happy family photo
Credit: Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images
Nato’s “family photo” told the story better than the communiqué. Meloni and Merz, banished to the second row, out of arm’s reach. Starmer, front row, standing right next to Trump — and entirely ignored, a snub with added sting given this was his last summit before resigning.
The verbal seating chart was worse, and none of it new. Consider Trumpster’s throw aways: Carney (Canada): “Not so grateful.” Merz (Germany): “doing a terrible job.” Sánchez (Spain): “a wasted cause.” Frederiksen (Denmark): “Nasty and inappropriate.” Starmer (UK): “He’s no Winston Churchill.” Macron (France, wearing aviators): “His wife treats him extremely badly.” Meloni (Italy): “Restraining order needed.”
Only Rama (Albania, wearing the white trainers): “Highly respected” and Erdoğan (Turkey and host nation): “He’s a hell of a leader” were smiled upon.
Oh, and the Nato summit outcome? Ignoring Trumpster’s what-was-he-thinking outbursts, better than expected. And more kit, or rather, blueprints for kit, for Ukraine.
4. Another royal begging bowl
Prince Harry sued1 the Daily Mail (a UK tabloid that gave tabloids a bad name) for breach of privacy. On Wednesday, in the UK High Court, Mr Justice Nicklin dismissed all 97 allegations, called Prince Harry’s evidence a mess, and left Harry facing a share of a £50m legal bill.
In the witness box, Harry wept about his “commercialised” life and Meghan’s misery; testimony the judgment politely eviscerated.
Harry’s churlish response to the judgment, “a complete and obvious whitewash,” suggested not only discourtesy, but also that he failed to understand the finer, indeed any, points of the UK judicial system. This comment, in the very remote chance of him having to lead that system,2 would further suggest a reading by him (perhaps a video would suffice) of King John’s battle with barons. And how the Magna Carta came about.
Like his Uncle Andrew, who found £12m for Virginia Giuffre via a benefactor-relative rather than from his own pocket, Harry will likely find a late relative’s munificence covers the legal-costs’ shortfall. Meghan’s As Ever jam empire, alas, isn’t quite there yet. If all else fails, he could move in with Uncle Andrew.
But now to remember the worry the Brits have. If the plane with his elder brother and children went down, Prince Harry would be heir presumptive (Henry IX?). And Princess Princess the presumptive queen consort. The fact that she is a foreigner shouldn’t be a worry. Most of the English/UK’s queen consorts have been foreigners.3
The problem will be her (and Harry’s) eldest, Archie, born in the US and future king.
1 And five other notables, including Elton John and Elizabeth Hurley.
2 He’s fifth in the queue.
3 Of the 30 queen consorts since 1066, 19 were foreigners. Henry XIII had a record six consorts, of which four were English.
5. Brain fades
Uncle Albo’s brain fade has already been noted. But Readers might also consider Sarah Henderson (Liberal shadow communications minister). She admitted to ‘testing” the triple zero system to assess the extent of the Telstra outage, thereby confirming her severe RDS4. Strong minded police would take action.
But the biggest brain fade of the week was that of UK wannabe PM, the very-far-to-the-right-of-the-soup-spoon Nigel Farage. Farage, under investigation over an undeclared £5m crypto-billionaire’s gift and a separate convicted-fraudster’s largesse, resigned his Commons’ Clacton seat this week to trigger a by-election; a “people vs the establishment” gesture, in his words, to let voters vindicate him.
The establishment, unhelpfully, declined to show up. Labour, the Conservatives and the Lib Dems have all confirmed they won’t field candidates, denying Farage the landslide validation he was fishing for.
A stunt requires an audience willing to play along. Better still for media coverage: a nutter as an opposing candidate. Which has happened. ‘Count Binface’ will, with luck, get more votes from an electorate that is getting tired of Farage. But if Farrage is victorious, it will be one for which the Greeks have a word: Pyrrhic.5 Either way, his polling numbers will fall.
4 Relevance Deprivation Syndrome.
5 A Pyrrhic victory originates from King Pyrrhus of Epirus, who fought the Romans in 280–279 BCE. Despite winning battles at Heraclea and Asculum, Pyrrhus suffered irreplaceable losses among his troops and commanders, prompting him to remark, “One more such victory and we are lost.”
6. Canada’s net zero by 2050 gets DCM
Mark Carney, Canadian PM and once the world’s poster boy for green finance, has discovered oil and gas. Or rather, rediscovered them, given Alberta’s oil sands were there all along.
The former Bank of Canada and also Bank of England governor (but not at the same time) is now backing a C$44bn, 1,000-kilometre pipeline to ship Canadian crude oil to Asia, and has quietly given the DCM to Justin Trudeau’s target of net zero by 2050.
Too expensive and too divisive, said the man who spent a decade telling everyone else’s central bank the opposite.
Australia, meanwhile, remains resolutely committed to net zero by 2050, the target, not necessarily the emissions cuts required to get there.
One country has decided the plan is unaffordable. The other has decided it’s merely unmentionable, perhaps because it is unaffordable. Progress, of a sort, either way.
7. Still counting
The US-Iran 60-day negotiation period concludes on Tuesday 11 August. That’s counting from the date of the verbal agreement. Counting from the date of the signing, it’s Sunday 16th August.
What news of progress?
Well, according to the latest outburst from Trumpster, the fragile ceasefire “is over.” The reason is simple: there are two competing forces.
Trumpster wants to quickly get ships moving through the Strait to ease energy prices before the US mid-term elections. Iran does not want to have its control over the Strait diluted.
Iran doesn’t need nuclear weapons if it can control the Strait. It’s a geographical weapon of mass destruction. Hence its intransigence.
8. Trumpster’s own goal
Trumpster likes winners. So, he rang FIFA president Gianni Infantino to get a one-match ban on America’s gun player6 overturned. Infantino took the call.
Neither man paused to ask whether a country’s president should be phoning the president of a sport’s governing body about a football red card, or whether the other president should be picking up the phone.
Then again, propriety was never Trumpster’s strong suit. Trumpster is the first leader since Benito Mussolini in 1934 to intervene publicly in his team’s favour. Then fascist Italy was host and won the cup. Mussolini chose the referees for the games in which Italy played – it was later revealed the referees had been bribed.
And FIFA’s ethics were always submerged. This is the organisation that awarded a World Cup to Qatar, not quite a prominent football-playing country, to be held in a July; sacked half its executive committee on corruption charges; had members who used bribery, fraud and money laundering to corrupt the issuing of media and marketing rights for FIFA games in the Americas (estimated at $150m) and ran itself for 16 years under Sepp Blatter like a tiny, tax-free European principality.
Infantino simply modernised the model: fewer envelopes, more presidential phone calls.
But the manager of the US team’s careful approach to keep politics out of football was torpedoed by Trumpster’s narcissism. The US lost 4-1 to a country the size of the 42nd largest US state, that played with an unmatched hunger. The winners summarised the result on Twitter themselves: “Overturn this.” Hard to improve on that.
What began as America’s charming co-hosting turn – good stadiums, indifferent soccer, worse haircuts, friendly crowds – ended as a tidy morality tale. Cronyism was rewarded with a red card from the football gods. Delivered by Belgian players FIFA couldn’t fix.
As for Trumpster’s reprisals, carpet-bombing seems excessive for a football loss. Annexation, though… Belgium does make excellent chocolate.
6 Folarin Balogun became an American citizen by virtue of birthright citizenship – a US constitutional right that ironically Trumpster tried to overturn (he failed). Born to Nigerian parents who lived in London, his mother wound up giving birth to him in New York after being turned away from her flight back to London due to her advanced pregnancy. That surprise made him a U.S. citizen
9. Afterward
Monday morning found Wry & Dry, as usual, pouring over his bulging email box. After much thought, he is now given to briefly responding to some of his correspondents.
Multiculturism – an invitation to sectarianism?
A clarification is in order, lest last week’s defence of multiculturalism be misread as an endorsement of everything that now shelters beneath that capacious umbrella.
Multiculturalism, properly understood, is one of Australia’s genuinely fine achievements: the Afghan restaurant, the Greek Easter, the Vietnamese market garden, the Italian café that improved every suburb it entered. Come, bring your food, your music, your festivals, your language at home. Australia is richer for all of it.
What multiculturalism is not, and was never intended to be, is a franchise arrangement whereby one imports and modifies the prejudices, medieval attitudes, and sectarian grievances from wherever one came. And it is not to elect politicians mandated to represent those biases rather than the electorate. That is not diversity. That is fragmentation.
The deal was always straightforward: come as you are, stay as Australians. Shared culture does not require shared ancestry. It does require shared values. And that part, it turns out, is the part some people find optional.
Pauline Hanson and her acolytes get this badly wrong from one end. The identity-politics left gets it wrong from the other. The answer, unfashionably, sits in the middle. As does Wry & Dry.
Snippets from all over
Starmer’s parting gift
Sir Keir Starmer can expect many parting gifts as his time as prime minister nears its end. But none is likely to be as memorable as the one he was given by Recep Tayyip Erdogan. (UK Telegraph 10 July)
Wry & Dry comments: The gift was a personalised handgun and six bullets. Starmer felt lucky.
What’s in a name?
Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s first name has plummeted to its lowest level of popularity ever following his fall from grace. Just 127 Andrews were born last year, as the name fell to the rank of 334th. (UK Telegraph 10 July)
Wry & Dry comments: The name is now equal in popularity in the UK to Zorawar, Walter and Hussain. Top boys’ names were Muhammad, Noah, and Leo. Top girls were Olivia, Lily and Amelia.
Germany to spend up on defence
Germany plans to borrow more than €800bn by 2030, breaking with decades of fiscal restraint to bring defence spending to levels not seen since the Cold War. (Financial Times 8 July)
Wry & Dry comments: Is Chancellor more worried about Trumpster to Tsar Vlad?.
Tsar Vlad bans diesel exports
Russia banned diesel exports, fearing shortages. Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian refineries have worsened a supply shortage for the world’s second-largest exporter. (Economist 9 July)
Wry & Dry comments: Tsar Vlad hasn’t yet resorted to Plan B.
Xbox downscaling
Microsoft will cut about 4,800 jobs, about 2 per cent of its workforce, as it overhauls its Xbox division, claiming the games industry is “facing the most severe hardware crisis in its history”. (Financial Times 7 July)
Wry & Dry comments: Xbox is getting shredded by online gaming.
And to soothe your troubled mind…
“The Prime Minister has apologised unequivocally and that matter is now closed.”
Senator Wong, Foreign Minister, speaking of Uncle Albo’s now famous blokey comment.
Wry & Dry comments: Get real, Minister. The story is already going around the comedy clubs in New York and London. And will, for some time.
Leave
Wry & Dry will be on leave next week, hence no Wry & Dry.
Disclaimer
The comments in Wry & Dry do not necessarily reflect those of First Samuel, its Directors or Associates.
Cheers!