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 Shepherd is on leave.
Wry & Dry’s ponderings…
Trying to draw together the threads of the Iran war is impossible. But Wry & Dry will try, with an op-ed piece. Elsewhere, the new federal Liberal leadership failed to launch, the ACTU suffers from Relevance Deprivation Syndrome, and has the world seen peak Emperor Eleven1 empire?
1 That is Xi Jinping. The nomenclature is sourced from a newsreader in India, who called him Eleven Jinping. Perhaps trying to show here knowledge of Roman numerals. She got the DCM (Don’t Come Monday).
1. Now, just where is Iran?
American polls show that 27% of Americans support and 43% oppose Trumpster’s airstrikes against Iran.2 What the broader media didn’t publish was only 23% of Americans can correctly identify Iran on an unlabelled large map of the world.3
Which leads Wry & Dry to ask, could Americans find America on a map? Could Grace Tame find Iran?
All of that doesn’t matter. Neither does the incisive sounding question being proffered by armchair experts: “what next?” These two words try to simplify thousands of years tribal strife, but ultimately it is the wrong question. A better question would be: what do the multitude of peoples in the Middle East want?
There is no doubt that the people of Israel support the actions of their government and that of Trumpster’s. Equally, there is no doubt that most Iranians, especially women, welcome the elimination of Ayatollah Khamenei, the globe’s most heinous and malevolent autocrat since Hitler. The other peoples in the Middle East just want peace, and the ability to prosper. They also know that there can be no peace with Iran’s current leadership.
But the leadership of Middle Eastern countries have been prepared to kick the can down the road, as long they can prosper in peace. They really don’t care about Iranians or Palestinians or Lebanese.
The chance of peace in the Middle East by diplomacy is a facile dream, pursued by dreamers. Just as diplomacy as envisaged by those who hope for the success of the United Nations is a dream. Lawyers can scream about illegality, but allow Wry & Dry to ask what was the last effective legal solution to regime as brutal and oppressive as the Supreme Leader’s. And to ask, who wants Iran to have nuclear weapons?
Diplomacy with people like Khamenei would be as successful as diplomacy with Hitler. Realpolitik, this time, recognises that the first step to Middle Eastern peace is successful military action against Iran’s leadership and military apparatus.
With that achieved, Israel’s safety is more assured. And hence the greater opportunity for Saudi Arabia and the US to better manage a better future for Palestinians (and others). However, it is doubtful that Trumpster has thought the issue through like that, but Wry & Dry has no doubt that some of his brains trust (ex Hesgeth, Kennedy, Bondi) and the Saudis have.
But for that to happen, the first step is an uncomfortable one, with all its uncertainty.
2 [Control click:] Reuters survey.
3 [Control click:] Newsweek.
2. Liberal spuds
Being a farmer, the latest Liberal wannabe PM, Don’t-Call-Me-Boring Taylor, is used to handling shovels. Well, this week on his parliamentary debut as leader, he used two of them. And found he had dug himself into a hole deeper than the one with which he had started the week.
The first shovel he used was that the opposition’s focus in Question Time in the House was not Grim Jim’s glass jaw i.e. the economy. It was on stuff to excite One Nation One Policy supporters, e.g. whether taxpayer dollars were being spent on mosques. Really?
The second shovel was his ongoing defence of his party’s refusal to publicly release its review of last year’s disastrous election campaign. He needn’t have bothered; as Uncle Albo cheekily, but with a straight face, tabled it in Federal Parliament. Don’t-Call-Me-Boring didn’t get a mention in the review, although his deputy, the pesky Jane Hume, was both named and shamed for campaigning idiocy.
What the review didn’t mention, whilst dumping excrement from a great height on the former leader, was that it was federal Liberal parliamentarians who elected Dutton. How was it that the electorate saw from the off that Dutton was a spud; but the party didn’t?
3. Alarming RDS outbreak
Ask even the most biased voter the single greatest base cause of Australia’s economic woes and the answer would be… woeful productivity.
Which brings Wry & Dry to the epitome of economic Luddite-ism, the Australian Council of Trade Unions. It now wants to add an extra week to annual leave entitlements on the basis that it would improve productivity.
But it failed to explain how a consequential 2% increase in employment costs would cause an increase in productivity of at least 2%. Otherwise, why do it?
Or answer the obvious question: “if five weeks leave will improve productivity, why not offer six?”
Readers will recall that on the eve of Grim Jim’s now forgotten economic reform summit (August last year) the ACTU called for a four-day work week with no loss of pay. Sigh.
Some suggest that the reason for ACTU’s Lenten wish is an attempt to boost its falling membership (falling from 40% in 1992 to 13% in 2025).
Wry & Dry explains it by an onset of RDS.
4. Peak Empire Eleven?
Emperor Eleven’s empire is entering a period of slower growth. Yesterday, it signalled a GDP growth target at 4.5% to 5%, its lowest since 1991. Growth last year was 5%, although not everyone accepts the official numbers at face value. Some experts estimate that the Chinese economy grew less than 3% in 2025.
This is a sensible move; there are economic rapids ahead: the mess in the Middle East but more persistently, persistent trade pressure from Trumpster. And China is still in domestic rapids: consumer and business sentiment has plunged, wage growth has stalled and youth unemployment is at historic highs.
As Wry & Dry writes, Grim Jim is reading the green tea leaves to see how iron ore prices will be affected.
Chart source: Wall Street Journal 5 March 2026
5. CFMEU protection racket continues
The Victorian government once again failed to capture the opportunity to investigate corruption in the CFMEU. This would have occurred by giving the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission (IBAC) greater powers, specifically ‘follow the money’ powers to investigate third-party officials misusing public funds.
The legislative means for so doing was in part of an omnibus bill, that part the government split out from the bill and adjourned.
And on Wednesday it was revealed that a Victorian ombudsman’s briefing warned Jacinta Allan’s government’s agency managing the $100 billion Big Build project is exposed to corruption.
Wry & Dry is sure that the Victorian government has genuine and valid reasons for tying IBAC’s hands. Sure.
6. Wither Persia?
It might not have come to this. Iran could have been a G20 country.
Iran has the second-largest gas reserves on Earth and the third-largest oil reserves. But its citizens languish in poverty and corruption.
Perhaps spending more than half-a-trillion dollars on a failed nuclear programme and about $2 billion a year on proxy militia, for the sake of little more than bigotry has something to do with it.
In central Tehran, a public clock counts down the hours to the supposed destruction of the Jewish state (by 2040).
Go figure the priorities.
7. Wordsmith par excellence
Readers who take the trouble to peruse legal judgments will recall Justice Lee’s apposite comment about Bruce Lehrmann’s hapless defamation action: “Having escaped the lions’ den he made the mistake of going back for his hat.”
An opportunity has again arisen for those who cherish the wit that the English language provides. Justice Lee, yesterday, handed down his judgment4 in a complex case where ASIC sued the Star casino directors and senior management. Readers might consider:
On his judgment’s length:
“… if not already apparent, this is a long judgment. For intended readers, Lent is an apt time for delivery. Its penitential length reflects the number of defendants, the need to make a vast number of factual findings, and the convoluted way ASIC has pleaded its case.”
On modern directors’ board papers:
“The temptation exists for those preparing the pack to chuck in everything … unofficially, it serves to insulate the preparers from potential criticism.”
On directors’ need to learn from history (the following is the very first item in his judgment):
“The succession of the infant Marquess of Bute to the marquessate in 1848 made him staggeringly wealthy. As part of his inheritance, the Marquess was made President of the Cardiff Savings Bank; a position held by his late father. But despite his Lordship’s abiding interests in architecture, linguistics, philanthropy and Catholicism, the Marquess eschewed any interest in the affairs of the Cardiff Savings Bank. Remarkably, in the almost four decades leading up to the bank’s collapse, he had presided over precisely one board meeting… Toleration of the languid, listless indifference of gentleman directors of the Victorian and Edwardian ages is a thing of the past.”
Hear, hear!
4 Interested Readers should go to: https://www.judgments.fedcourt.gov.au/judgments/Judgments/fca/single/2026/2026fca0196.
8. Grim Jim and the new black
“Intergenerational equity” was the new black of 2025, as Grim Jim looked for a reason to do stuff. Or to not do stuff. And it was becoming so entrenched in his lexicon that rarely an utterance was uttered without it being mentioned.
Well, stand aside. The new black for 2026 will be “global economic uncertainty”, or a variation. Expect these words to fall not only from Jim Grim’s lips but also from Uncle Albo’s as reasons for doing stuff or not doing stuff.
Yesterday, as the public-spending-sourced sound GDP data was released, Grim Jim debuted the new black, so to speak. “These really encouraging numbers are a very robust from which we confront intense global economic volatility, made worse by the dramatic escalation of hostilities in Iran and across the Middle East.”
How often will we hear the nexus between ‘global economic uncertainty’ and government actions of inactions?
9. Royal Navy is… in Starmer’s work shop
A former First Lord of the Admiralty5 would be knocking on the lid of his coffin. The UK has a military base in Cyprus. And has other Middle Eastern assets, all probable targets of unfriendly activity. Where was the Royal Navy (cue “Heart of Oak”)?
Err. Well. It’s two aircraft carriers are in the work shop. It’s six destroyers (ideal for providing air defence) are in Portsmouth. Yesterday, PM Dithers Starmer said, in response to a request from the Cypriot president, that one of them “is to be deployed to the region.”
It will leave Portsmouth late next week and take a few days to get to the eastern Mediterranean. By which time the war will probably be as good as over.
Meanwhile, M. Macron, the French president, has stepped in and had already dispatched its aircraft carrier (not surprisingly named the Charles de Gaulle), a frigate and two air-defence destroyers in response to the Cypriot request.
Perfidious Albion has returned.
5 The title of the political head of the Royal Navy. Winston Churchill was the most famous First Lord. He occupied the role twice, firstly from 1911 to 1915; and then from 1939 to 1940. On his second appointment, the Admiralty sent a message to the fleet, “Winston is back.”
Snippets from all over
Tariff refunds?
A federal trade-court judge on Wednesday ordered the Trump administration to start refunding the more than $130 billion it collected in the global tariffs invalidated by the Supreme Court last month. (Wall Street Journal 6 March)
Wry & Dry comments: Trumpster has already lawyered up.
Italy enters the war
Italy announced on Thursday that it would deploy naval ships to defend Cyprus, a Mediterranean island that has come under retaliatory Iranian fire, and air defense weapons to protect Arab allies in the Persian Gulf that have also weathered attacks from Iran. (New York Times 6 March)
Wry & Dry comments: Is this the start of a Nato response?
Trumpster’s ICE maiden gets the DCM
Donald Trump has sacked Kristi Noem, his homeland security secretary, a longtime ally and one of the most senior members of his cabinet. (UK Telegraph 6 March)
Wry & Dry comments: Ms Noem was the driver of ICE and the Minneapolis crackdown. She sought annoying self-promotion exemplified by a $220m advertising campaign about border security in which she prominently featured.
Indonesia’s credit warning
Rating agency Fitch has lowered its outlook on Indonesia to “negative,” citing growing risks to south-east Asia’s largest economy from President Prabowo Subianto’s economic and fiscal policies. (Financial Times 5 March)
Wry & Dry comments: Since taking office, Prabowo has centralised power and expanded the military’s role in government and civilian affairs. His appointment of his nephew to the central bank’s board of governors this year raised concerns about independence.
Emperor Eleven’s Mandarin lesson
China is set to enact a landmark law requiring ethnic minorities to use Mandarin Chinese as their main language of instruction, overturning decades-old policies that date back to the era of Mao Zedong. (Financial Times, 3 March)
Wry & Dry comments: So…Tibetans, Uyghurs and Mongolians will no longer be entitled to use their native tongues for core subjects in schools and universities.
It figures
- 4.3%: US, unemployment rate in February. Better than expected.
- 2.6%: Australia, GDP growth in the year to end December. Above expectations.
- 16%: UK, unemployment rate for 16 to 24-year-olds
And to soothe your troubled mind…
“Khamenei’s son is a lightweight. I have to be involved in the appointment…”
Trumpster, with a view on who should succeed the Ayatollah Khamenei.”
Wry & Dry comments: Doubtless the role will be advertised on Seek.com and LinkedIn.
Disclaimer
The comments in Wry & Dry do not necessarily reflect those of First Samuel, its Directors or Associates.
Cheers!