Wry & Dry: a cynical and irreverent review of the week in politics, economics and life. For intelligent Readers who disdain the trivial.
Investment Matters
Craig Shepherd writes on:
- ASX mini-correction
- Copper outlook
- Updates on Sandfire, Rio Tinto and Aurelia Metals
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…
A win-win: Chris Bowen out of the country for 2026 and $2bn to spend of subsidies caused by his energy policies. The federal Liberals doomed to extinction by demography. And Trumpster’s Munich 2.0 moment approaches.
1. Trumpster has a new rival
Well, it’s taken the best part of 2025, but at last Trumpster has a competitor for the most self-satisfied narcissist1 on the planet: Energy and Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen.
As part of the deal to avoid the $2bn cost of running the next COP climate change conference in Adelaide, Uncle Albo wisely yielded to the inevitable and pulled out of the beauty parade, ensuring that Turkey got the gig.
This is a win-win for Australia: Mr. Bowen will now be out of Australia for most of next year. And the $2bn that is now available can be spent to subsidise the power bills of Australians, elevated by Mr. Bowen’s energy policies.
Mr. Bowen was typically understated in describing the global significance of the role: “As COP president of negotiations, I would have all the powers of the COP presidency to manage, to handle, the negotiations, to appoint co-facilitators, to prepare draft texts, and to issue the public decision.”
Wow! To ‘appoint co-facilitators’. To ‘prepare draft texts’. To ‘issue the public decision’. This is weighty stuff. Readers should not ridicule Mr. Bowen’s appointment. He will now be in line for the top gig at the United Nations.
1Narcissism refers to a personality trait characterized by an excessive focus on oneself, often leading to a lack of empathy for others and a constant need for admiration.
2. Liberals dead for a generation
The Coalition’s primary vote for Gen Z (i.e. aged 18-28) is now at long-term extinction level.
The new-look Liberal Gnats-breakfast policy on No Net Zero will confine the party to minor status for a generation. If not cause extinction. The reason is the death hand of voter demography.
Y’see, the Liberal primary vote falls sharply by voter age. Sure, it’s always been the case that communists become capitalist when they grow up. But no longer.
Consider that the current cohort of 15-, 16- and 17-year old wannabe voters is being educated both at school and on social media about the dastardly danger of fossil fuels and the palliative panacea of renewables. It is a simplification, but readers will get the drift. That is, it is probable that most will follow the trend of the current Gen Z. At most only 10% their votes will go the way of Coalition.
At the other end of the spectrum, Coalition voters are fall off the perch. Meanwhile the Greens are capturing Gen Z like Taylor Swift.
Add to this that the Coalition is not going to even have a chance to implement its energy policies for at least nine years (i.e. two elections). By then Uncle Albo’s energy policies will be irreversible, even if not already.
Which brings Wry & Dry back to last week’s observation about the Liberals’ brains.
3. Munich 2.0 approaching
Tsar Vlad’s and Trumpster’s acolytes have agreed on a deal to end the war in Ukraine. Oh, oops. Sorry, President Zelensky. We decided it would be easier for you to give away the entirety of your Donetsk and Luhansk regions, halve the size of your armed forces and agree to having Russian as the official state language if you were not party to the agreement.
Oh, and, yes, Russia has been gracious and agreed not to make any concessions. And, of course, Russia has no intention to further expand its interest in Ukraine.
And so it was that Trumpster’s ‘special envoy’ Steve Witkoff – a former real estate developer – announced a peace plan to which he, Trumpster, had approved.
It remains a mystery to Wry & Dry that the world sees the whole chessboard that is Putin’s mind, whereas Trumpster sees only the next move. And in so doing shows himself as the pawn.
4. Secured lending 101
Wry & Dry’s rheumy eyes were drawn this week to news that a Sydney ‘hospitality entrepreneur’ had managed to borrow more than $135m secured against a property valued at $4.5m.
But wait, there’s more! He had also borrowed $53m secured by a property owned by his mother, the property being valued at $9.3m. Hey, what are mothers for?
It will come as no surprise to Readers that he had been forced out of his apartment, where he was paying rent of $60,833 a month.
And equally unsurprising, he has the princely sum of $106.72 in a Westpac bank account and $8.54 in his self managed superannuation fund.
This person is Australia’s biggest personal bankrupt since Alan Bond in 1992.
The question on everyone’s lips should be not how could he possibly lose over $1.7bn, but rather how could anybody/ company/ bank lend him $1.7bn?
5. And the dummy landed on the moon
The new PM of Japan Ms Sanae Takaichi said last week that if China made a military move against Taiwan Japan could deploy it armed forces.
Emperor Eleven’s cut-and-colour session was interrupted. And he not only threw his dummy out of the cot, it went as far as the moon.
Chinese tourists were urged not to travel to Japan, with Chinese airlines offering full refunds. Emperor Eleven sent the Chinese Coast Guard to conduct ‘rights enforcement patrols’ around the Japan-controlled Senkaku Islands.
Chinese state media have since been pumping out nationalistic sentiment and reminding of Japan’s wartime atrocities in China.
The then the undiplomatic vitriol. “If you stick that filthy neck where it doesn’t belong, it’s going to get sliced off. Are you ready for that?” wrote China’s consul-general in Osaka, Xue Jian, on X, apparently a social-media platform.
This is all rather silly. It is settled and known policy that if China were to actually launch a military invasion of Taiwan and the US military were to deploy to the Taiwan Strait, then “the possibility of Japan’s self-defence forces exercising collective self-defence alongside the US military was already week known.”
So, what’s with the resurgence of Emperor Eleven’s wolf diplomacy? Perhaps it’s an Otto von Bismarck playbook, to take the minds of the Chinese people off the sagging Chinese economy.
Yesterday, the US ambassador to Japan offered “unshakeable support for Sanae Takaichi and condemned what he said was a “classic case of Chinese economic coercion”.
Delightfully stated.
6. Rather be somewhere else?
Trumpster hosted a state dinner for Mohammed bin Salman, Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. Most guests were having a whale of time. Except one…
7. UK Labour shuts the barn door, but…
The UK has become attractive to one sort of shopper. Apparently, it is Europe’s top destination for ‘asylum shoppers’.
The UK government has finally realised that there is a not immodest backlash against the record number of asylum claims being made.
The new policy has created a bit of furore. Consider:
- Refugee status will no longer be a five-year route to settlement. It will now be temporary (30 months)
- Refugees may be returned to their home country if it is deemed safe
- The wait to apply for permanent settlement will increase from 5 years to 20 years.
- The statutory obligation to provide housing and financial support to asylum seekers will be removed.
- Family reunification will be limited to refugees in work or study, and even then, it is not guaranteed
The Labour left wing has gone nutzo.
8. Factoid
If the world’s families have one child on average, the global population would fall from 8bn to 1bn in three generations (75 years), to 125m in six generations, and to just 8m people in ten generations.2
2 Cited in The Economist, 17 November, 2025. Sourced Jones, Chad. The End of Economic Growth? Unintended Consequences of a Declining Population. American Economic Review, November 2022.
9. Trumpster derangement update
Trumpster reacted grumpily when [US] ABC News reporter Mary Bruce asked why he didn’t simply order the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files instead of waiting for Congress. His response was:
“It’s not the question that I mind. It’s your attitude. I think you are a terrible reporter. It’s the way you ask these questions. People are wise to your hoax… your company, your crappy company is one of the perpetrators. I think the license should be taken away from ABC because your news is so fake and so wrong.”
And yesterday, the following, in response to a group of Democratic lawmakers who served in military or intelligence roles over a video they made telling service members that they must refuse illegal orders.
“SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!” Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social platform on Thursday. “This is really bad, and Dangerous to our Country. Their words cannot be allowed to stand. SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR FROM TRAITORS!!! LOCK THEM UP???”
Trumpster took the hook, the line and the sinker.
Snippets from all over
Borisconi sat on his hands
An excoriating report by the UK Covid-19 inquiry says Boris Johnson failed to appreciate the calamity and that lockdowns have left ‘lasting scars’ on society. (The Times)
Wry & Dry comments: The inquiry led by Baroness Hallett, the retired Court of Appeal judge, also accused Johnson of presiding over a “toxic, sexist and chaotic culture” at the heart of government in which women were marginalised and the “loudest voices prevailed” to the detriment of good decision-making.
Unions or drivers; who closes the doors?
The launch of a new £7bn railway line has been delayed while trade unions argue about who should operate the trains’ doors. (UK Telegraph)
Wry & Dry comments: East West Rail (EWR) will eventually link Oxford with Cambridge and reopening a rail route that has not been in use since the 1960s. Drivers operate the doors on most of the regions commuter services.
Ukraine buys French kit
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has signalled interest in buying 100 French-made Rafale fighter jets for his country’s armed forces over the next decade as Russia’s war grinds on. (The Economist)
Wry & Dry comments: Too little, too late?
Japanese long term interest rates rise sharply
Yields on 10-year Japanese government bonds have jumped to a 17-year high, as investors placed a “Takaichi trade” bet that the new administration will unveil a much larger fiscal spending package than originally expected. (Financial Times)
Wry & Dry comments: A canary in the coal mine?
Trumpster’s family + Saudi partner
Donald Trump’s family business and its Saudi partner are to build a luxury Maldives resort that uses blockchain technology to attract investment, in plans unveiled on the eve of a visit to Washington by the kingdom’s de facto ruler. (Financial Times)
Wry & Dry comments: How dare Readers suggest that there is link between the investment and Trumpster being POTUS!
It figures
- 4.4%: USA – unemployment rate. The highest in four years.
- -1.8%: Japan – GDP change in the September quarter. Trumpster’s tariffs blamed.
And to soothe your troubled mind…
“The inquiry does not advocate for national lockdowns – far from it. Restricting people’s liberty in such a draconian fashion, with all the devastating consequences, should be avoided if at all possible.”
Baroness Hallett, chairman of the UK’s Covid-19 Inquiry.
Wry & Dry comments: The UK’s comprehensive inquiry starkly compares to that of Uncle Albo’s, where the terms of reference restricted the inquiry to, essentially, medical matters. Dan Andrews, come on down.
Disclaimer
The comments in Wry & Dry do not necessarily reflect those of First Samuel, its Directors or Associates.
Cheers!