Wry & Dry: a cynical and irreverent review of the week in politics, economics and life. For intelligent Readers who disdain the trivial.
But firstly, a snapshot of this week’s Investment Matters:
The semi-annual company profit reporting season finished last week. Craig Shepherd, our CIO, gives a summary. With added deep dives on:
- Steadfast (insurance broking and agency)
- Cleanaway (waste management)
- Emeco (mining services)
- Worley (global engineering and project management)
To read Investment Matters, just click on the link at the bottom of this week’s Wry & Dry. Or here.
Wry & Dry’s rant
The capricious, malevolent, and deplorable salesman in charge of the US didn’t stop to draw breath over the last seven days. He threw the President Zelensky under the bus out of the White House, cut off intelligence support and military assistance to Ukraine, shredded Nato, and imposed 25% tariffs on both Mexico and Canada, before announcing delays and exemptions. And those are just the headlines.
Work with Wry & Dry on this, as he reminds Readers of McCarthyism1. And moves to quote attorney Joseph Welch, who was appearing in the infamous and widely televised McCarthy Senate hearings in 1954. Welch addressed the bullying and fearmongering by Senator McCarthy, who was falsely accusing a young associate of Welch’s law firm, “Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness.” He went on, “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”
That quote stopped McCarthy, as the public finally realised what a destructive, narcissus he was. He was censured by the Senate. His career died. As did he, three years later.
In 1954, McCarthy’s chief counsel and rabble rouser was a Roy Cohn. In 1973, Donald J Trump’s first lawyer was the same Roy Cohn.
1 McCarthyism was U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy’s widely publicised indiscriminate allegations, especially on the basis of unsubstantiated charges during the 1950s in an effort to expose supposed communist infiltration of various areas of the U.S. government.
1. Top Gun Pete
The first circumnavigation of Australia since that by Matthews Flinders in 1802 was well underway last week. A fleet armada flotilla of two of Emperor Eleven’s armed tugboats and a mobile 7-Eleven ship were last spotted off south-western Australia. There was a little more fuss with this circumnavigation…
The media wet their collective beds: “the barbarians are at the gate!” was the wailing.2 Well, 300 kilometres from the gate. The seeming barbaric threat, momentarily, forced Trumpster’s latest follies onto page two. Albo was lost for words and Uncle Fester Top Gun Pete Dutton gushed, err, gushiness.
Top Gun Pete’s response to the naval threat was aerial: to promise $3bn to buy 28 new F-35 fighter jets. Which would reverse Albo’s decision last year to scrap the purchase of those same 28 F-35 jets. But doubtless cost-of-living pressure would have pushed up the price of the jets at the checkout. $4bn, perhaps. Who knows?
Top Gun Pete is the new maverick.
2 The phrase was originally used to refer to Ottoman forces, which twice (1529 and 1689) got as far as the gates of Vienna.
2. Cyclone election
Speaking of beds getting wet, the good folk of south-eastern Queensland might be inundated today and tomorrow. And that is not from ‘swollen creeks and rivers’. But rather from the swollen heads of electioneering politicians.
‘Never waste a crisis ‘ is item one on page one of Electioneering For Dummies. And the cyclonic crisis is the perfect opportunity for Albo to take off his hi-vis tradies’ vest and don his still-new wellies and Driza-Bone. He has dutifully appeared in front of the milling media with a background of flooding rains; oozing as much empathy as the water oozing from the ground beneath his wellies.
Wry & Dry suspects that Albo’s dash for downpour disaster relevance is much like clean shoes. No-one notices if they’re clean, but everyone does if they’re dirty. On-site Albo won’t win any votes today – but he’d lose plenty if he were elsewhere and Top Gun Pete was filmed trudging through the shallows of the rising Brisbane River (wearing Hunter Gumboots, of course).
Queenslanders would be wishing/ they both would be vote-fishing/ somewhere else tonight.
3. This week in Trumpsterland
In a show that would not be out of place at a Las Vegas nightclub, Trumpster spoke to the American Congress.
Like American football, where live action is 20 minutes, playing time is just 60 minutes in a three-hour game, so his speech was about 20 minutes of State of the Union stuff, 60 minutes of belligerent ranting and 20 minutes of staged applause.
Gotta hand it to him, he does storytelling very well. But he doesn’t do fact-telling very well. Good grief, what a liar. Still, this is politics.
It is also politics to make promises that will be impossible to keep. The biggest whoppers were that he was going to balance the budget; take Panama back and get Greenlanders to agree to become part of the USA.
Canadians must be relieved that the Trumpster only mentioned their country as a net exporter of Fentanyl. And not as the fifty-first state.
The ignominy of the world’s second largest country being represented on the flag of the US only by an additional star will never happen.
4. Turn out the lights
It has taken a Victorian government body to bell the government’s cat. And the news is not good for the good residents of the Bankrupt State of Victoria.
Y’see, Infrastructure Victoria on Tuesday warned of energy shortfalls and prices more than double recent lows. And accompanying supporting documents added to the analysis.
Firstly, engineering firm Jacobs listed ‘key risks’ for the Victorian energy market. Readers might consider four of the eight ‘high risk’ it identified:
- Offshore wind targets not met
- Peak and annual gas supply shortfalls
- Consumer take-up of battery EVs… not high enough to achieve emissions objectives
- More frequent extreme climate weather events increase frequency and unpredictability of peak demand events
Secondly, Aurora Energy said that Victoria will become a net importer of electricity, moving from being an exporter. This will lead to higher prices and reliability issues.
Wry & Dry’s recommendation to Victorian Readers: go to Bunnings and buy a petrol generator for about $900.
5. Muskovite’s Starlink rejected
Readers will recall an article some time ago about the NBN’s decaying satellites, collectively named Sky Muster. Sky Muster provides an internet service to rural and remote Australia. But its two sturdy satellites will die before 2032. And it is losing 10% of its customers per annum (to either Muskovites’ Starlink or fixed line services). That is why Sky Muster will keep losing more than $200m per annum.
Rather than launch its own satellites, NBN has chosen a US supplier. And not Starlink. That decision will probably not hurt the bottom line of Trumpster’s bestie (Musk’s net wealth is US$360bn). The winner of the beauty parade was Amazon with its 3,236 Kuiper satellites will be operational by 2026.
Not that of Amazon’s owner, Jeff Bezos (net wealth US$220bn), another of Trumpster’s bootlickers, will need the extra cash.
Readers can assess that if Albo/Uncle Fester upset Trumpster, which of Bezos or Muskovite would be more likely to seek revenge. And pull the pin on Australia’s remote internet service.
6. Work From Home
Trumpster’s order than all US federal employees no longer Work From Home sent shivers down the spines of many of Australia’s federal public servants. What would Top Gun Pete do if he got the top gig? Would he:
- Show benevolence and enhance WFH by offering a four-day WFH five-day-pay-week arrangement;
- Show entropy and keep the current WFH arrangements;
- Show wisdom and offer a hybrid arrangement that has the proven most productive outcome: three office days and two WFH days;3 or
- Show Trumpsterismness and order no WFH arrangements.
Close, but no cigar. The correct answer is d. But federal public servants should have no fear. Firstly, Top Gun Pete has to get the top gig. And then he has to negotiate changes to the incumbent workplace agreements. Nuh.
He knows that his policy is effectively an unfulfillable but seemingly attractive election ploy, like his A Nuclear Power Plant Near You.
3 Source: Productivity Commission chairwoman Danielle Wood, quoted in the AFR, 6 March 2025.
7. Tax the AFL!
There are more conniptions today in AFL House than in a sandbag business in Brisbane. An enterprising sports lawyer has suggested that the Australian Football League should pay tax on its profits.
Quite right, too. Readers will know that sports of all sorts receive an exemption from income tax if, under section 50.45 of the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997, a club or association encourages or promotes a game or sport (item 9.1 (c)).
However, the ‘not-for-profit’ tax exemption was not set up for multi-billion dollar businesses. It was set up to community-based organisations. Consider the massive revenue earned by the AFL, especially from gambling companies, and the explosive salaries it pays its executives. It is funded by cross media broadcast deals whereby those media companies are not in the charitable business. They are in it for the profit.
The tax deduction those companies get is because the payments are a business expense, not because they are supporting a charitable or not-for-profit organisation.
Certainly, the AFL, and the NRL for that matter, do spend funds on community activities. And on the promotion of the sport as a healthy pastime. Such expenditure would be a tax deduction for a profit-making organisation. And no-one can tell Wry & Dry that accepting funds from or being associated with gambling or junk food/drink companies derives health benefits for gamblers.
By the way, in New Zealand, the tax exemption only applies to amateur sports.
8. Meanwhile, in European defence stocks…
Whilst the US stock markets has been pummeled by Trumpster, there is one market that he has caused to boom: European defence stocks. The below chart shows only UK defence stocks. Readers should also keep an eye on Thales (France), Leonardo (Italy) and Rheinmetall (Germany).
There is every chance that a new Nato defence spend of 3% of GDP will be agreed in June. This might be Trumpster’s only laudable achievement, i.e. getting parsimonious countries to invest more in their own defence.
9. Humour
It’s carnival season in Germany. Which means a chance to satirise people who deserve to be satirised. Wry & Dry this week discovered the below – which says it all.
As noted in the UK Telegraph, a caption running along the sculptures of Tsar Vlad and Trumpster read “Hitler-Stalin Pact 2.0,” referring to the non-aggression treaty signed by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in 1939.
Snippets from all over
1. Trumpster’s Supreme Court loss
The US Supreme Court has narrowly upheld an order forcing the Trump administration to distribute nearly $2bn for foreign aid work already carried out around the world, in a further legal blow to the White House’s drive to slash government spending. (Financial Times)
Wry & Dry comments: Probably the first of many Supreme Court losses Trumpster and the Muskovite will endure. The interesting fact is that the Supreme Court has a 6-3 conservative majority. At least two justices seem to have spine.
2. Germany to loosen fiscal binds
After only three days of exploratory talks, the Union party and SPD decide on high billions in spending on defense and infrastructure. The parties negotiating Germany’s next coalition government said they had agreed to set up a €500bn debt-financed fund. (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung)
Wry & Dry comments: This will require two-thirds majority in the Bundestag. It’s a big request of a fiscally conservative country. Especially as the bond market’s reaction to the plan was somewhat negative: the 10-year Bund rose to its highest yield since 1997. But German stocks surged.
3. Tesla’s sales collapse
Sales of Tesla cars have plunged in the Nordic states and France, confirming a European trend as anger towards Elon Musk’s politics adds to a fall in popularity of his electric cars. (Times)
Wry & Dry comments: Sales in Sweden (-42%), Norway (-48%) and Denmark (-48%) might not be noticed by the Muskovite.
4. Europe plans to confiscate Tsar Vlad’s piggy bank
Europe’s biggest powers are swinging behind efforts to seize more than €200bn of frozen Russian assets, as they draw up plans for a ceasefire deal in Ukraine. France and Germany, long opposed to a full-blown seizure of the assets held in the EU, are discussing with the UK and other countries ways in which they could be used. (Financial Times)
Wry & Dry comments: G7 allies froze about €300bn in Central Bank of Russia assets in 2022 after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, of which the vast majority — some €190bn — sit in Belgium’s central security depository Euroclear, with smaller amounts held by France, the UK, Japan, Switzerland, and the US.
5. Trumpster’s conflict
Cryptocurrency prices jumped on Sunday after President Donald Trump said a US strategic reserve of digital assets would include bitcoin as well as lesser-traded tokens. (Financial Times)
Wry & Dry comments: What chance that eventually $Trump (a cryptocurrency 80% of which is owned by two-Trumpster-owned companies) somehow works its way in the US’ strategic reserve.
It figures
- 1.3%: Australia – GDP growth in 2024, down from 1.5% in 2023.
- -0.7%: Australia – GDP growth per capita in 2024.
- 2.5%: Eurozone – interest rates, a cut of 0.25% points.
- 2.4%: Eurozone inflation in 12 months to February.
- 64,809 deadweight tonnes: US – shipbuilding capacity in 2023. China’s was 42.32 million.
And to soothe your troubled mind…
1. “Trump behaved stoically. Trump stood up for Vance like a lion… Trump looked like a [chess] grandmaster.”
Dmitry Kiselev, a Russian television anchor, commenting on Trumpster’s deplorable treatment of President Zelensky.
Wry & Dry comments: Yup. That’s correct. Trumpster is a three-dimensional chess grandmaster.
2. “There are people who want to return to the time of Napoleon, forgetting how it ended.”
Tsar Vlad, referring to M Macron’s proposal to expand France’s nuclear ‘umbrella’.
Wry & Dry comments: Arguably, Tsar Vlad’s wittiest riposte. Napoleon, the famous French general, who led France’s invasion of Russia, ended up exiting Russia with his tail between his legs.
Disclaimer
The comments in Wry & Dry do not necessarily reflect those of First Samuel, its Directors or Associates.
Cheers!