Wry & Dry: a cynical and irreverent review of the week in politics, economics and life. For intelligent Readers who disdain the trivial.
Eight stories you may have missed…
1. At the indoor Nuremberg rally
Sleepy Joe did his best to stupefy an unstupefiable crowd. It was as though he was giving the eulogy at his own funeral. All the achievements, success and stories. After three hours, people looked at their watches and only 30 minutes had passed. It was another 20 minutes before a relieved crowd were able to wave him into retirement. Rather like a family watching the hearse driving off from the funeral service.
Then the indoor real Nuremberg rally got underway. Two former US presidents with oratorical gifts not heard since Martin Luther King showed how to whip a crowd into a frenzy of fervour. And Viennese Walz did an even better job. When would a hologram of Franklin D Roosevelt appear, speaking of the only thing to fear was Trump himself?
With a tailwind such as this, with a nationwide swell of emotion, with the Big Mo1 rolling on from sea to shining sea, it seems as though all that Kamala Kamala has to do is turn up. And spread the joy.
But that’s not reality. No amount of high oratory can change the leaden weight in her saddlebags: illegal immigration. That is the issue for middle America. And the Trumpster will relentlessly drive that point home, by fair means or foul.
Of course, the Trumpster’s leaden saddlebag weight is more widespread: women.
For now, Kamala Kamala has out-speeched the Trumpster with energy and vision.
Now expect 73 days of the worst of the Trumpster’s campaign tactics. He doesn’t like losing.
1 Big Momentum, a term derived from team sports when one team achieves a series of successes that seem to take on a life of their own.
2. Dutton’s one trick
Uncle Fester Dutton has done an amazing job of getting inside Albo’s brain, again.
Result? The Prime Minister is increasingly resembling a wooden soviet apparatchik, looking for luck and relying on hope for a decent outcome from the next Five-Year Plan. There were always doubts as to whether he was in Labor’s First IV.
Given the deputy leadership of William Shorten as a reward for long service and hard stations, he has shown himself to be out of his depth at almost every turn. Wry & Dry has no doubt that the country would have been better off if William Shorten had won in 2019. Then there would have been no Miracle Morrison and no Albo.
Speaking of Labor’s First IV, Readers would have noticed that William Shorten’s head is increasingly appearing above the parapet. And former Labor Deputy Leader and current Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek has hit the news this week. Her totally illogical over-ruling of approval for a gold mine in New South Wales could not have anything to do with the merits of the case by 18 members of a breakaway Indigenous group. It was about getting her name in the media, in a seriously big way. Expect more.
And Wry & Dry’s worries about Australia’s leaders continue with Uncle Fester Dutton. Oh, he has been a pesky mosquito in the night to Albo: relentlessly buzzing around in the dark, keeping him awake. Returning every night to again pester.
Uncle Fester trades in brutal confrontation. Pushing back against something. Anything. And that is the problem. Sooner or later, he’ll have to say something positive. And be constructive.
Winning government is about showing readiness to govern when in Opposition, with, hello, policies. To date, Wry & Dry can recall just one. A nuclear power station near you.
Uncle Fester has yet to show that he is in the Coalition’s First IV for government.
3. A state worse than Victoria?
That erudite and plain-speaking Taswegian economist, Saul Eslake, has just presented his Independent Review of Tasmania’s State Finances, as requested by its government
It’s not good news. It is Australia’s poorest state by a big margin, he said. And, “if you include unfunded super liabilities and the government business enterprises … Tasmania’s finances look worse than Victoria’s or the NT’s.”
What! Worse than Victoria? Wry & Dry is shocked. Former Chairman Dan is shocked.
This is appalling. The Victorian government has worked amazingly hard for the past decade to ensure that Victoria was the fiscal basket case of Australia, if not the developed world. And that its bovine citizenry would live a sullen and stoic soviet existence.
Wry & Dry calls on the Victorian government to do whatever it takes to return Victoria and Victorians to their tired, poor, huddled mass, yearning to breathe free(ly). Wry & Dry suggests:
- Announce the Victorian Rail Loop: a new and exciting Big Build project, a railway commencing at Yarram in South Gippsland, and winding its way through Heyfield, Licola, Mt Beauty, Violet Town, Kyabram, Inglewood, Avoca, Skipton, Mortlake and ending at Port Fairy. Build it under medical centres with ultra-sensitive medical technology. Compulsorily acquire the land, sign construction contracts for one trillion dollars. Appoint the CFMEU as the sole union for all contractors.
- Then bid for the 2036 Olympic Games, to be held in Melbourne, but totally decentralised. The sports’ venues will be Yarram, Heyfield… and Port Fairy.
- Then cancel the project. And pay the one trillion dollars in compensation.
- Then cancel the Games.
Wry & Dry is sure that with 24 months of these measures being commenced and foreshadowed, Victoria and Victorians will once again live in the dystopian dark sun of being the worst state in Australia.
And then former Chairman Dan can sleep well again.
4. Ranking
When a new president of the US takes office, his/her office has a hierarchy of country leaders from whom it receives a call. This choreographed order might be Canada, China, Japan, UK, EU, France, Australia, Mexico, Israel (not if Kamala Kamala is president), South Korea.
When the President-elect of Indonesia planned to make those necessary relationship-building visits, in which order should the countries be ranked?
Readers will be aware that President-elect Prabowo Subianto of Indonesia was in Canberra this week, meeting Albo and other local dignitaries.
Some context: Indonesia has a population of about 280 million, is the world’s largest Muslim country, is the 7th largest country by GDP and occupies a 5,100 km arc to the north and north-west of Australia. Somewhat vital to Australia’s interests.
Some data: the President-elect’s order of country-visits has been China, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, Jordon, Saudi Arabia, France, Serbia, Turkey, Russia and then… Australia.
The ranking suggests that Albo has work to do. But at least his Foreign Minister has often visited Indonesia and fluently speaks Indonesian (as well as conversational Bahasa Malaysia, Mandarin, Cantonese, and basic French and Portuguese).
The Coalition’s recent Foreign Ministers were either slumbering (Marise Payne) or shopping (Julie Bishop).
5. Musings: Gaza – anarchy?2
[This piece is a bit lengthy, for which Wry & Dry makes no apology. Any person wishing to better understand the mess in Gaza might find the below useful. It also goes without saying that there are no good choices about the Middle East’s woes, only least-worst ones.]
Wry & Dry has often noted that advocates of an instant Two State Solution to the Middle East mess ignore a simple reality.
And that is in both the WestBank and Gaza the concept of a universal (i.e. state-wide) government is not understood. And where it exists it is a thin layer, the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza. Beneath that top layer government is just large kinship groups operating fiefdoms.
When Hamas took control of Gaza from the PA in 2007, it was confronted with a task that the PA had failed to achieve: controlling the 683 ‘kinship groups’ i.e. large families or clans. These groups had evolved since before 1948, initially based around the three Palestinian cleavages: tribes (Bedouins), village people (fellahin) and city people (mudun).
The 1967 occupation of Gaza strengthened kinship groups. And when the PLO returned after 1993, it chose to use the kinship groups to manage Gaza, rather than develop a universal law-based political system. It became mandatory for every person in Gaza to have a mukhtar, a family headman, as a representative approved by the authorities. Power was personalised. The opportunity for statehood was compromised.
Then came the irony of occupation. During the second intifada, Israeli forces retaliated by attacking police stations. Essentially, police and security officials were told to safeguard their weapons by taking them home. Thus evolved the arming of kinship groups, turning them into militias.
So, in 2007 Hamas found itself not only fighting Israel, but also trying to control the kinship groups. Hamas tried a brutal approach, but soon worked on a better way and acknowledged that the kinship groups, with arms, numbers and loyalty, were there to stay. And a symbiotic relationship came about.
But since 7 October, Hamas has lost any semblance of administrative control of Gaza, and the police force has evaporated. The kinship groups and their ‘popular committees of protection’ (i.e. militias) are now the police.
The result, it seems, has been lawlessness, with widespread looting and theft. Well-armed kinship gangs fill the security vacuum and control monopolies on everything on the roads through which the aid trucks may pass.
Readers can see the problem. In the absence of Hamas, Gaza has reverted to governance by its hundreds of kinship groups. All with their vendetta and grievances. A mini-Balkans, as it were.
Israel, Egypt, Qatar and the US can negotiate as much as they like with Hamas. But all of the suggested post-war outcomes are not going to change the underlying problem.
Gaza had all of the hallmarks of a failed state before 7 October last year. This was not just an economic issue, but also a practical one of governance.3 Overlay this with the fact that Hamas and its enabler has no interest in peace short of the destruction of Israel.
Even if all the current strife is curtailed and a sort-of-peace descends, the idea of a Two State Solution just doesn’t seem possible for at least a generation. One of the counterparty states exists only as an ideal. Its peoples first loyalty is to its kinship group: its family.
Until it gets a latter-day Konrad Adenauer4 as its leader, the ideal of a state will not be realised.
2 Readers may wish to further read: Full article: Hamas and the clans: from Islamisation of tribalism to tribalization of Islamism? (tandfonline.com).
3 Wry & Dry hastens to add that the same could apply to the West Bank. But there, Israeli PM Netanyahu is complicit by allowing ongoing Israeli settlements.
4 Konrad Adenauer was the first Chancellor of West Germany, who was mostly responsible for rebuilding a country from the rubble of the Second World War. He denazified and then switched to recovery.
6. China: the tale of two wannabes
China is, well, somewhat important in world affairs. It is therefore incumbent upon Wry & Dry to put some context on the Democrat wannabe US leaders and their international experience.
Kamala Kamala, the wannabe president of the US, has never visited China. Prior to becoming vice-president to Sleepy Joe, she had never visited Europe. Lucky to find her way to Washinton, really.
Viennese Walz, the wannabe vice-president, used to live in China. In 1989 and 1990 he taught English at a secondary school in Foshan in the southern province of Guangdong. Later, he visited over 30 times.
The question on the pursed lips of smarter people in the US is will Viennese Walz have an influence on Kamala Kamala’s China policy? And, importantly, will Emperor Eleven even care?
Wry & Dry has zero confidence that she could wisely handle the proverbial 3 a.m. call about, say, a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. And turning to Viennese Walz might be comforting, but fruitless. He’s not the president.
Remember, the Chinese have never liked the Democrats, which might make conversations difficult.
The Economist this week recalled the words of Mao in 1970: “I don’t like the Democratic Party. I prefer the Republican Party.” Emperor Eleven follows suit. He could and will play the Trumpster like a fish. Kamala Kamala will delegate to a factotum. Sigh.
7. Public service advice
Wry & Dry Readers are worldly and well-travelled, especially to Europe. But the days of 90 days visa-free travel to the EU will soon be confined to history.
From 10 November this year, EU’s Entry/Exit System (EES) will commence. All visitors to the EU will be fingerprinted and photographed.
From May 2025, EU visitors wishing to avoid obtaining a visa can apply for European Travel Information and Authorisation System (ETIAS), valid for three years or passport expiry. The visa waiver will cost €7. This is similar to ESTA, the visa waiver programme for the US.
This is a somewhat belated security measure. And the EU will expect a deluge of arrivals from dodgy types (broadly defined) before 10 November.
Wry & Dry will be prepared.
8. PwC in deep China trouble
Foreign investors into China like the reassurance of a ‘Big Four’ accounting firm. Appoint one of these and what could possibly go wrong? And they can always be sued.
Which brings Wry & Dry to PwC (i.e. PricewaterhouseCoopers5). PwC has just announced that it expects to receive a six-month business ban in China and a very large fine.
The problem, y’see, is Evergrande, the collapsed property developer. The Chinese securities regulator said in March that Evergrande had inflated in mainland revenues by almost $80bn in the two years before it defaulted on its debt in 2021.
PwC’s China arm had signed off on the accounts. Oops.
The six-month ban will not cause the demise of PwC in China. But will slash its revenue and reputation. It has already lost over two-thirds of its mainland clients. Ouch.
5 PwC was formed in 1998 from a merger between Price Waterhouse and Coopers & Lybrand. Both accounting firms originated in London in the mid-1800s.
Snippets from all over
1. BMW outsells Tesla
BMW sold more electric vehicles than Tesla in the European Union last month—the first time it has outsold its American rival in EVs. (The Economist)
Wry & Dry comments: The guy who runs BMW is focused only on BMW. The guy running Tesla is focused on Tesla, X (formerly Twitter), SpaceX, The Boring Company, xAI, Neuralink and OpenAI.
2. Tsar Vlad confronted
Mothers of the victims of one of the worst terrorist attacks in Russian history have confronted President Putin over a 20-year investigation into the school siege in which more than 300 people were killed. (The Times)
Wry & Dry comments: Tsar Vlad is bound to be losing sleep about this.
3. Qatar expands
Qatar Airways on Tuesday acquired a 25 per cent stake in Airlink, which flies to more than 45 destinations in 15 African countries. (Financial Times)
Wry & Dry comments: Will Virgin Australia be next? Qatar Airways already has a 25% stake in British Airways; 10% in Latam Airlines (South America’s largest airline), 10% in Cathay Pacific Airways and 3.4% in China Southern.
4. Diversity bans causes slump at US university
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology [the top-ranked university in the world in QS Rankings, for the 13th straight year] said 16% of its new intake identify as from a minority – down from 26% last year. Black enrolment fell from 15% to 5%. (BBC)
Wry & Dry comments: The US Supreme Court ruled in 2023 that university admissions schemes promoting diversity violated the US Constitution’s equal protection clause.
5. Libya’s central bank IT person kidnapped
Libya’s central bank halted all its operations after its information-technology director was kidnapped. (The Economist)
Wry & Dry comments: This could be the new black. Don’t worry about on-line ransom demands, just kidnap the man who has the IT keys to the safe.
Data
- Gold: this week the spot price for gold hit $2,500 per ounce for the first time
And to soothe your troubled mind…
“Women are not without electrical power.”
Sleepy Joe, in his valedictory address to the Democratic National Convention.
Wry & Dry comments: Perhaps he meant electoral power. Perhaps?
Disclaimer
The comments in Wry & Dry do not necessarily reflect those of First Samuel, its Directors or Associates.
Cheers!