Biloela family: new home affairs minister Karen Andrews urged to look with 'fresh eyes' at plight.

Extract from The Guardian

Australian politics

Labor senator Kristina Keneally says cabinet reshuffle creates opportunity for government to show compassion.

A Sydney vigil in support of the detained Tamil family from Biloela, who have been held in detention on Christmas Island for the past three years.

Sarah Martin

@msmarto

Tue 30 Mar 2021 18.19 AEDT

Last modified on Tue 30 Mar 2021 18.21 AEDT

The new home affairs minister, Karen Andrews, is facing calls to cast “fresh eyes” on the plight of the detained Tamil family from Biloela who have been held in detention on Christmas Island for the past three years.

Urging a bipartisan approach to the portfolio, Labor senator Kristina Keneally said the replacement of Peter Dutton in the role in this week’s reshuffle created an opportunity for the pair to “work together” on national security issues, including on cyber security and the rise of rightwing extremism.

“Let’s work together in the national interest to secure the national security for this country,” Keneally, Labor’s home affairs spokeswoman, said.

She urged Andrews, who was sworn into the role in a virtual ceremony with the governor general on Tuesday, to intervene in the case of the Tamil family who were taken from their home in central Queensland more than 1,000 days ago.

The family – Priya and Nades Murugappan and their daughters Kopika and Tharnicaa – have been involved in a protracted court battle based on Tharnicaa’s right to apply for a protection visa.

Last month the full bench of the federal court rejected an appeal by the federal government over an earlier ruling by justice Mark Moshinsky, which found Tharnicaa was denied procedural fairness in making a protection visa application.

The plight of the Murugappan family has garnered support from across both sides of politics for the family to return home, with vigils for the #HometoBilo campaign held across the country earlier this month.

Keneally said that she was appealing to Andrews to intervene in the case in the “spirit of bipartisanship”.

“This is an opportunity for her to have fresh eyes to the situation of the Biloela family,” Keneally said.

“I don’t make the comment in a partisan way, I make it as a mother, I make it as an Australian who has been moved by the passion and the compassion of the Biloela community.”

Following her appointment, Andrews said she would be focused on ensuring Australians were kept “safe and secure”.

“The security of our nation should never be taken for granted,” Andrews said.

“My priorities will be keeping our borders secure, our communities safe, and ensuring our nation maintains its reputation as a serious global citizen in international efforts to counter extremism.”

Tuesday’s reshuffle saw Andrews promoted to the portfolio as part of what the prime minister, Scott Morrison, described as a “shake up” that would ensure women had a greater voice in the government.

The minister for women, Marise Payne, took to morning radio on Tuesday to talk up the government’s focus on women, after Morrison labelled her the “prime minister for women”.

Payne said the frontbench shake up and a new cabinet taskforce focused on women’s issues would ensure women’s issues were “at the centre of government”.

“This has never been done, to the best of my knowledge, in any government in Australia,” Payne told the Nine network.

“To bring an absolute focus to the issues around gender equality, around women’s safety, around women’s economic security and leadership. They are the absolute focus of this. And I think it’s a very, very powerful action and a very, very powerful message.”

But Payne was also forced to defend Liberal National [arty MP Andrew Laming, who will remain in the Coalition partyroom despite announcing he will not contest the next election following a series of reports about Laming’s poor behaviour towards women.

Keneally said the Morrison government was “shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic”.

Kolchak: The Night Stalker – pulpy midnight-movie tales that almost make journalism seem cool.

Extract from The Guardian

Stream teamTV streaming

Hollywood veteran Darren McGavin is the quip-ready correspondent hunting down monsters in this 70s comfort-food classic

Kolchak: The Night Stalker is available to stream in Australia on SBS on Demand. For more recommendations of what to stream in Australia, click here

Darren McGavin dictates his conclusions onto a tape recorder in Kolchak: The Night Stalker.

Doug Wallen

Wed 31 Mar 2021 03.30 AEDT

Last modified on Wed 31 Mar 2021 04.21 AEDT

When creating a supernatural crime thriller, the obvious hero wouldn’t be a middle-aged journalist. But such counterintuitive strokes are exactly what makes 1974’s short-lived Kolchak: The Night Stalker such enduring comfort food.

Spawned from a popular pair of TV movies based on a then-unpublished novel by Jeffrey Grant Rice, the series already had an offbeat birth. The premise itself follows suit, tracking the mostly nocturnal exploits of Chicago wire-service reporter Carl Kolchak. Donning his signature straw hat as a humble everyman touch, Kolchak faces off against outlandish adversaries ranging from vampires and werewolves to more obscure creatures gleaned from folklore.

Darren McGavin as Kolchak, the salty hack who faces off against outlandish adversaries. Photograph: Universal Pictures/Getty Images

Kolchak’s salty, quip-ready charm is all down to Hollywood veteran Darren McGavin, who’s best known for playing father to Candice Bergen’s Murphy Brown and Adam Sandler’s Billy Madison. Aged 52 at the time – and reprising the title role from those TV movies – McGavin is the biggest draw here, attacking these pulpy midnight-movie tales with a determination that actually makes journalists seem almost cool. In any other show he would be a faded cop, but the backdrop of mundane journalism allows for a lot of (now quite timely) questioning of what becomes news and what doesn’t.

In another twist on the usual formula, there’s no love interest in sight for our downtrodden hero, who’s loathed by local police and barely tolerated in his own workplace. Yet the show is a wincing pleasure to watch, between its low-budget 70s scrappiness and its resistance to any satisfying closure. Kolchak carries a camera with him everywhere but his photos are always either taken, destroyed or otherwise prevented from public consumption. He abandons his proper assignments to pursue more uncanny leads, but those reports never actually make it to the wire service. Instead, he dictates conclusions to himself via tape recorder at the end of each episode.

Every week Kolchak is right back where he started, chasing some new threat without reward. He never tires of his Sisyphean task, glued to his police-band radio and always ready to impersonate an authority figure. Kolchak is what we’d call a conspiracy theorist today, and Night Stalker was a key influence for The X-Files: cue the fringe-dwelling believer who never gives up. One of that show’s producers helmed a disastrous Kolchak reboot in 2005, and McGavin’s final TV credits were for playing a Kolchak-esque guest across two episodes of The X-Files. The rebooted X-Files paid even more explicit tribute to the character in the 2016 episode Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster.

Kolchak spawned from a popular pair of TV movies based on a then-unpublished novel by Jeffrey Grant Rice. Photograph: Everett Collection Inc/Alamy

As for the monsters, they range from killer robots and Aztec mummies to shapeshifting animals and a near-immortal Jack the Ripper. But the best creatures give us a glimpse into the culture behind them, with Kolchak consulting experts in specific cultural lore to gain the upper hand. For all the potential absurdity of a light-hearted horror series, the show has real writerly pedigree: Sopranos creator David Chase and Oscar-winning filmmaker Robert Zemeckis both got their start here, while revered author Richard Matheson (I Am Legend) penned the novel-to-movie adaptation that sparked the series.

The show was cancelled after just one season, and its final episode (The Sentry) offers no trace of resolution, though it does feature a laughable lizard costume that proves the old adage about not showing too much when aiming for scares. (Something that the show otherwise handles quite well.) A character running on sheer persistence, Kolchak now lives on in comics and novels still being produced for a loyal cult audience.

That’s exactly how it should be for Kolchak: always on the hunt and never any closer to success. Just a wrung-out reporter who treats the most over-the-top occurrences (devil worshippers, swamp monsters, a prehistoric proto-human) as simply another day on a never-ending beat that’s all his own.

'Delay is as dangerous as denial': scientists urge Australia to reach net zero emissions faster.

Extract from The Guardian

Climate change

Heatwaves to double and many properties will be uninsurable if global heating reaches 3C, Australian Academy of Science says.

A house surrounded by flood water in Port Stephens. Scientists call on the Morrison government to accelerate the transition to net zero in a report that examines what Australia could look like in a 3C world.

Lisa Cox

Wed 31 Mar 2021 03.30 AEDT

Last modified on Wed 31 Mar 2021 04.21 AEDT

Global heating of 3C would more than double the number of annual heatwaves in some parts of Australia, leave properties uninsurable due to flood and fire risk, and make many of the country’s ecosystems “unrecognisable”, according to Australia’s leading scientists.

The Australian Academy of Science is calling on the Morrison government to accelerate the country’s transition to net zero greenhouse gas emissions in a report that examines what Australia could look like in a 3C world.

The analysis paints a grim picture in which heatwaves in states such as Queensland would occur seven times a year and last for 16 days at a time, and unprecedented fire seasons such as the 2019-20 fire disaster become a regular occurrence.

The report’s authors said what Australia and other countries did to reduce emissions over the next decade would be critical as it would determine what occurred in the second half of this century.

“When we sum up what’s happening, we’re not doing enough and we have to change the game to avoid a very consequential future,” Prof Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, a biologist and climate scientist at the University of Queensland, said.

The planet has already warmed by 1.1C since pre-industrial times and, based on current commitments by countries under the Paris agreement, is on track for an average 3C temperature rise.

The report considers how that would affect Australia’s ecosystems, food production, cities and towns, and health and wellbeing – and what Australia’s contribution must be to ensure global heating remains well below 2C, as promised under the 2015 global climate deal.

Prof Mark Howden, from the Australian National University Climate Change Institute, said Australians had already experienced increased heat and reductions in rainfall as a result of the climate crisis.

He said a 3C world could lead to “heat stress” temperatures being a daily occurrence in northern parts of Australia. Nationally, what was once considered a hot year would become a cool year.

He said this would pose significant challenges for food systems and human health but “there are adaptive measures we can put in place”, such as better warning systems for managing the health effects of heatwaves and floods, and designing clean and green hospitals “for the future and not the past”.

While its assessment of a 3C world is bleak, the report paints a much more positive picture of what governments can do now and over the next decade to keep global heating to within 2C.

The scientists write that Australia lags behind the best practice demonstrated by many other countries. Their 10 recommendations include a call for the Morrison government to accelerate the transition to net zero emissions “given how much Australia stands to lose if GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions are not reduced”.

They also recommend governments improve their understanding of climate impacts, including tipping points and the compounding effects of multiple stressors at global heating of 2C or more, so that Australia can develop effective adaptation responses.

The report calls for a systematic exploration of how Australia should prepare its food production and supply for a worsening climate crisis, and improved understanding of the risks of climate change to human health.

Prof Frank Jotzo, from ANU’s Crawford School of Public Policy, said achieving the goals of the Paris agreement would require accelerated investment in renewable energy, energy storage and electricity transmission.

He said reducing transport emissions, which account for about 19% of Australia’s current carbon pollution, was the next major and necessary step, and that an electric vehicle fleet would also present “a handy opportunity for decentralised electricity storage”.

“The costs of reducing global emissions are much less than the cost of adapting to the impacts of unrestrained global warming,” Jotzo said.

Prof Lesley Hughes, an ecologist and pro vice-chancellor at Macquarie University, said there were steps the Morrison government could take immediately to encourage the uptake of electric vehicles, rather than inhibit it.

“Delay is as dangerous as denial,” she said.

“The main message we would have for the federal government is that what we do, as well as the rest of the world, in the next decade ... that’s the critical thing.”

Axing coronavirus welfare payment forecast to plunge 155,000 Australians into poverty.

Extract from The Guardian

Welfare

Modelling estimates reduction will push 18,000 children below the poverty line

Kirra Niner, 21, says she is dreading the end of the coronavirus supplement.

Luke Henriques-Gomes

@lukehgomes

Wed 31 Mar 2021 03.30 AEDT

Last modified on Wed 31 Mar 2021 04.21 AEDT

An estimated 155,000 people in Australia will be plunged into poverty this week when the pandemic boost to welfare payments expires, according to new modelling.

While the government will introduce a $50 a fortnight permanent increase to the base rate of jobseeker, student and parenting payments from 1 April, it is scrapping the $150 a fortnight coronavirus supplement at the same time.

It means about 2 million people will see a $100 reduction to the base rate of their income support payment.

Modelling from the Australia Institute, released on Wednesday, estimates the reduction will push a further 155,000 people, including 18,000 children, below the poverty line.

“When the government first introduced the $550 coronavirus supplement, it was the biggest poverty alleviation policy that I think Australia has ever seen,” said Matt Grundnoff, senior economist at the Australia Institute.

“And what it highlighted was that a lot of the poverty that we have in this country is a policy choice. That is, the government totally has the capacity to get rid of this poverty.

“And unfortunately, a combination of them cutting gradually the coronavirus supplement back and then now eventually getting rid of it and the increase in the unemployment because of the recession has basically undone all their initial good work.”

The coronavirus supplement was introduced in April 2020 and was initially set at $550, before it was tapered to $250 in September and $150 in January.

Grundnoff said if the government restored the coronavirus supplement to its original level of $550 a fortnight, 500,000 people – including 90,000 children – would be lifted above the Henderson poverty line.

For a single person, the Henderson poverty line is $1,122.44 a fortnight before housing costs.

Australia does not have an official measure of poverty, and other researchers have who have modelled the impact of the supplement have used a relative measure of 50% of median income, which is $914 a fortnight for a single person.

When asked about the relationship between poverty and welfare payments, the social services minister, Anne Ruston, has repeatedly noted Australia does not have an agreed measure of poverty.

She told ABC radio this week the “non-financial social transfers” – which refers to services such as free healthcare and social housing – provided to Australians on lower incomes were “well over $500 a week”.

“But the one thing that we can’t underestimate here is that this will be a business-led recovery,” she said.

“And the most important thing that we can do, as a government, is to make sure those businesses are strong so that they are able to create the jobs so that people don’t stay on payment.”

Grundnoff said his research used the Henderson poverty line, first established in the 1970s, because it was a “uniquely Australian” measure, but he said it would be good thing if the government adopted an official measure of poverty.

Despite the fact that welfare payments will still be higher now than before the pandemic, when the old Newstart base rate was $40 a day, Grundnoff found approximately 580,000 more would be living in poverty than before the pandemic began.

This is because there are more people relying on unemployment payments now due to the layoffs caused by the pandemic.

There are about 1.1 million people relying on the jobseeker payment, compared to about 700,000 before the pandemic began.

Grundnoff noted Treasury has estimated up to 150,000 people may lose their jobs after the separate jobkeeper wage subsidy ended at the weekend.

Given some of those people will be pushed on to unemployment payments, he said his modelling likely underestimated the number of people who will be in poverty.

In a separate report released on Wednesday, the National Youth Commission Australia warned the reduction in welfare payments would hit young people particularly hard.

The commission is calling for a youth income guarantee, which would set income support for young people at $820 a fortnight for a person living away from home.

That is based on a measure of the minimum cost for healthy living, it says.

“High housing costs force students and young jobseekers into poverty and sub-standard accommodation, compromising their education and employment outcomes, physical and mental health,” said chair of the commission, David Eldridge from the Salvation Army.

Currently, unemployed people young people aged below 22 who live away from home receive youth allowance, which is about $100 a fortnight less than jobseeker payment.

Young people surveyed by the commission said they were dreading the end of the supplement.

“I’m worried about the rate lowering because it will negatively impact my already unstable living situation and the freedom I have in day-to-day activities,” said Kirra Niner, 21.

Sapodia Lindley, 26, said she was “continually forced to choose between these basic needs and my health and wellbeing”.

“There’s a toll on mental health that can feel almost unbearable at times,” she said. “Your personal relationships become strained, you can’t go out and do things you enjoy to counterbalance the negative feelings, because you can’t afford it. It becomes a cycle of feeling stuck and isolated, of living in despair.”

Labor unveils first electric vehicle policy since Coalition said party was 'waging war on the weekend'

Extract from The Guardian

Labor party

ALP wants to reduce the cost of electric cars and increase their uptake as fleet vehicles across Australia

Labor’s proposed EV tax changes will cost $200m in lost revenue over three years and apply to vehicles priced below the luxury car tax threshold for fuel-efficient vehicles.

Katharine Murphy Political editor

@murpharoo

Wed 31 Mar 2021 03.30 AEDT

Last modified on Wed 31 Mar 2021 04.21 AEDT

Labor will cut the import tariff on electric vehicles worth less than $77,565 and exempt them from fringe benefits tax in an effort to reduce retail prices and create incentives to drive up fleet purchases.

The new policy will be unveiled at the party’s national conference on Wednesday as power brokers continue to wrestle over amendments from the Australian Workers Union and the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union intended to strengthen Labor’s support for new gas projects.

As officials attempt to land a deal on gas to prevent a show of defiance on the conference floor, the federal leader, Anthony Albanese, and the shadow climate change minister, Chris Bowen, will unveil their first post-election policy commitment to encourage the take-up of electric cars, and a separate $200m program to install 400 community batteries to serve up to 100,000 households.

Community batteries allow people in high rises or rental properties who can’t install their own solar systems to draw from excess energy stored in a battery serving a local neighbourhood.

The new commitments on electric vehicles are the first time Labor has returned to the policy fray since the Morrison government, during the 2019 election, characterised the party’s measures – which included a national electric vehicles target of 50% new car sales by 2030 and pollution regulation on car retailers “in line with” 105g CO2/km for light vehicles – as a “war on the weekend”.

The hyperbolic rhetoric deployed by the prime minister, Scott Morrison, and the energy minister, Angus Taylor, in 2019 was part of the Coalition’s efforts to weaponise climate action.

The tax changes will cost around $200m in lost revenue over three years and apply to vehicles priced below the luxury car tax threshold for fuel-efficient vehicles. It is unclear whether or not Labor will persist with the measures it flagged before the last election, but senior figures say Wednesday’s EV policy is a first instalment rather than the final word.

The Green Recovery: how to put more electric vehicles on Australia's roads – video

The first day of the national conference saw delegates agree to recognise Palestinian statehood “as a priority” and also settle the party platform wording for other foreign affairs and trade issues.

Labor’s climate and energy policies will be debated on Wednesday. Gas has become a focal point in an internal fight about whether or not climate ambition has cost Labor election victories – a fight that reached a crescendo with the departure of the New South Wales rightwinger Joel Fitzgibbon from the shadow ministry, and the replacement of Labor’s former climate spokesman, Mark Butler, with Bowen.

Albanese meanwhile used a speech to delegates on Tuesday night to rally the party faithful. The Labor leader said Morrison led “a government that is out of ideas, out of touch, and at the next election they should be out of office”.

“Over the last two weeks, what we used to call once-in-a-century floods have drowned much of our east coast,” Albanese said.

“They come in the wake of an unprecedented fire season that scorched much of our continent. And in the nation’s capital and beyond, women are making a brave stand against a toxic culture that has held them back and endangered them for so long,” he said.

“What these challenges have in common is a government in denial about how quickly our world is changing – in denial about the science of climate change, in denial about women’s truth”.

Albanese said if Labor won the next federal election, he would offer “sound, considered, honest government” and lead a government that “faces up to reality, listens to what people are saying, accepts expert advice, has genuine empathy for people’s concerns [and] backs the aspirations of all Australian families for a better life”.

With the Covid-19 pandemic unleashing a debate in Australia and around the world about sovereign capability, Albanese said a Labor government would back industries of strategic importance, which he nominated as mining and resources; agriculture, forestry and fishing; medical science; renewables and low emission technologies; defence industries; and transportation.

Albanese told delegates the choice voters would face at the next election was “becoming clearer by the day”.

He said the contest would be between “a tired government that been in power for eight long years that’s unravelling before our eyes, led by a man who is an empathy vacuum and an accountability black hole” – and a Labor alternative promoting a strong, inclusive and confident country.

Leaked documents show Adani is paying millions to a Myanmar group hit with US sanctions.

 Extract from ABC News

Exclusive by investigative reporter Josh Robertson

Posted 16minutes ago

The Adani tour of Mandra port in 2019 included Adani Ports boss Karan Adani and Myanmar military chief Min Aung Hlaing.

(Supplied: Myanmar’s office of the Commander-in-Chief of Defence Services)

The Adani Group is paying up to $US52 million ($68.1 million) to a Myanmar military-controlled company that has just been slapped with sanctions by the United States over human rights violations.

Key points:

• Myanmar's military seized power in a February coup, triggering violent protests 
• The US imposed sanctions on a Myanmar conglomerate involved in an Adani Ports deal
• Australia's Future Fund says it has no plans to divest its holdings in Adani Ports over the issue

Leaked documents in a report by human rights lawyers obtained by the ABC reveal the scale of Adani's cooperation with the junta over a proposed container port in Yangon.

Video and photos show Adani Ports' boss met with the junta's top general in 2019, contradicting the company's claim last month that it had never "engaged with military leadership" in Myanmar.

The US government sanctions against Myanmar Economic Corporation (MEC) are likely to ramp up pressure on the Australian government's Future Fund to dump its $3.2 million investment in Adani Ports, which also owns North Queensland operations linked to the Carmichael mine.

The leaked documents, from the Yangon Region Investment Commission, show Adani's subsidiary is paying US$30 million to MEC in "land lease fees".

Adani Ports chief executive Karan Adani with Myanmar general Min Aung Hlaing at an Adani port in Mandra, India in July, 2019.

(Supplied: Myanmar’s office of the Commander-in-Chief of Defence Services)

Millions of dollars in fees

A joint report by the Australian Centre for International Justice (ACIJ) and activist group Justice for Myanmar says another US$22 million in "land clearance fees" is likely to also flow to MEC as the owner of the port site.

Report author and ACIJ human rights lawyer Rawan Arraf said the documents were leaked "shortly after the violent February 1 coup perpetrated by senior general Min Aung Hlaing and his cartel of the Myanmar military".

"What these documents reveal in particular is the amount that was provided to the MEC, a Myanmar military conglomerate that is controlled and owned by the Myanmar military [which] stands credibly accused and is being investigated at the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice for crimes against humanity, war crimes, and even in the case of the crimes against the Rohingya, genocide," she told the ABC.

"The concern here — as has been publicly stated by the United Nations fact-finding mission — is that these military conglomerates provide essential financial revenue streams direct to the Myanmar military.

"Adani has been put on notice several times publicly, and they've refused to disengage from their Myanmar deal with [MEC] and that's a real problem.

"This money indirectly could be financing the Myanmar military to conduct international crimes."

The Myanmar military has opened fire on protesters during street battles following the February 1 coup.

(AP)

Ethical issues for wealth funds

Australian lawyer Chris Sidoti was a member of the United Nation's 2019 fact-finding mission to Myanmar, which warned foreign companies against doing business with MEC and named Adani Ports as one of those engaged with the military conglomerate.

Mr Sidoti told the ABC the ACIJ report established links between the Myanmar military and a company "intimately involved in the Carmichael coal project in Queensland".

"The question for Australia and Australians is whether we want to be hosting a company that is contributing to the enrichment of the Myanmar military," he said.

"The question for investors in Adani is whether they want to fund the operations of the Myanmar military, because that is what they are doing indirectly by investing in Adani.

"This is a question especially for sovereign wealth funds and pension funds that should have a highly ethical basis for their investment decisions."

A spokeswoman for Adani Ports said the company was "watching the situation in Myanmar carefully and will engage with the relevant authorities and stakeholders to seek their advice on the way forward".

She said the Yangon International Terminal project was "fully owned and developed by" the company.

"It is an independent container terminal with no joint venture partners."

Protesters have attempted to stop the Adani Group's Carmichael coal mine in north Queensland. 

(Supplied: Frontline Action Coal)

Video and photos show 2019 meeting

Last month, following Myanmar's coup, the Adani Group issued a statement denying it had engaged with military leaders over the 2019 approval of its US$290 million port.

"We categorically deny having engaged with military leadership while receiving this approval or thereafter," it said.

However, Adani Ports chief executive Karan Adani met with top general Min Aung Hlaing, an accused war criminal, in late July 2019.

Video shows Adani Ports’ chief executive Karan Adani and Myanmar general Min Aung Hlaing met in July 2019.(YouTube)

This was days after the US government hit Min Aung Hlaing with a travel ban over his alleged role in "extra-judicial killings" and "gross violations of human rights".

The Myanmar military uploaded to its official YouTube channel a Myanmar state media report showing Adani Port's chief exectuive Karan Adani exchanging gifts with the general on his visit to an Adani port at Mundra in Gujarat, India.

"This is obviously directly inconsistent with the statement provided by Adani Ports and the Adani Group earlier this year," said Ms Arraf, the ACIJ human rights lawyer.

She said credible allegations of crime against humanity by Min Aung Hlaing were "publicly available information and foreign corporations like Adani Ports would have known about this information, it would have been absolutely clear to them".

An Adani Ports spokeswoman said the general's visit was hosted by the Indian government, and its officials accompanied him to Mundra Port, which was "only one location out of multiple sites on this visit".

"Mementos were exchanged as a cultural courtesy, which is customary practice," the statement read.

In December, the US froze Min Aung Hlaing's American-based assets and criminalised transactions between him and anyone in the US.

'Vital lifeline for the military junta'

Adani Ports owns the Abbot Point Coal Terminal near Bowen, and a rail company to haul coal from the controversial Carmichael mine.

Documents filed with Myanmar's corporate regulator show Adani is bringing in US$141 million in "capital in-cash" and US$148 million in "capital in-kind" for the project.

Last week, the US hit MEC with sanctions to target what the state department's Office of Foreign Assets Control director Andrea Gacki said was "a vital financial lifeline for the military junta".

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the sanctions were "the most significant action to date to impose costs on the military regime".

On Saturday, the country's bloodiest day since the coup involving the killing of at least 114 people, reportedly including children, prompted the Chief of the Australian Defence Force to join the military heads of 11 other nations in condemning the Myanmar junta.

A spokeswoman for the Future Fund told the ABC it had no plans to dump its $3.2 million investment in Adani Ports in the wake of US sanctions and evidence of cash flows to the junta.

"We are aware of the matter but have no plans to divest the holding in Adani," she said.

"Where the Federal Government applies sanctions, the Future Fund does – as you would expect – observe such measures."

Ms Arraf said ACIJ had "no confidence in Adani Ports that they will respond to growing action against MEC and its military controllers".

"That's why we're calling on investors, shareholders, governments all around the world to take action against Adani Ports, because of their consistent refusal to disengage with the MEC in Myanmar," she said.

"We're extremely disappointed with the response of the Future Fund."

She said if Adani were a US company it would now be "moving very quickly to review and suspend their operations because of the very serious implications that they could be in violations of sanctions laws".

The ABC has contacted the office of Foreign Minister Marise Payne for comment.

The rich-poor gap in America is obscene. So let's fix it – here's how.

Extract from The Guardian

Opinion Inequality

Bernie Sanders

While working people toil, the richest have never have it so good. It’s time to fight back – our democracy depends on it

An Amazon protest in New York. ‘Unbelievably, the two richest people in America, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, now own more wealth than the bottom 40% of Americans combined.’

Mon 29 Mar 2021 23.48 AEDT

Last modified on Tue 30 Mar 2021 06.59 AEDT

The United States cannot prosper and remain a vigorous democracy when so few have so much and so many have so little. While many of my congressional colleagues choose to ignore it, the issue of income and wealth inequality is one of the great moral, economic and political crises that we face – and it must be dealt with.

The unfortunate reality is that we are moving rapidly toward an oligarchic form of society, where a handful of billionaires have enormous wealth and power while working families have been struggling in a way we have not seen since the Great Depression. This situation has been exacerbated by the pandemic.

Today, half of our people are living paycheck to paycheck, 500,000 of the very poorest among us are homeless, millions are worried about evictions, 92 million are uninsured or underinsured, and families all across the country are worried about how they are going to feed their kids. Today, an entire generation of young people carry an outrageous level of student debt and face the reality that their standard of living will be lower than their parents’. And, most obscenely, low-income Americans now have a life expectancy that is about 15 years lower than the wealthy. Poverty in America has become a death sentence.

Meanwhile, the people on top have never had it so good. The top 1% now own more wealth than the bottom 92%, and the 50 wealthiest Americans own more wealth than the bottom half of American society – 165 million people. While millions of Americans have lost their jobs and incomes during the pandemic, over the past year 650 billionaires have seen their wealth increase by $1.3tn.

The growing gap between the very rich and everyone else is nothing new.

Over the past 40 years there has been a massive transfer of wealth from the middle class and working families to the very wealthiest people in America.

In 1978, the top 0.1% owned about 7% of the nation’s wealth. In 2019, the latest year of data available, they own nearly 20%.

Unbelievably, the two richest people in America, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, now own more wealth than the bottom 40% of Americans combined.

If income inequality had not skyrocketed over the past four decades and had simply stayed static, the average worker in America would be earning $42,000 more in income each year. Instead, as corporate chief executives now make over 300 times more than their average employees, the average American worker now earns $32 a week less than he or she did 48 years ago – after adjusting for inflation. In other words, despite huge increases in technology and productivity, ordinary workers are actually losing ground.

Addressing income and wealth and inequality will not be easy, because we will be taking on some of the most powerful and well-financed entities in the country, including Wall Street, the health insurance industry, the drug companies, the fossil fuel industry and the military-industrial-complex. But it must be done. Here is some of what Congress and the president can do in the very near future.

We must raise the minimum wage from the current starvation wage of $7.25 an hour to a living wage of at least $15 an hour. A job should lift workers out of poverty, not keep them in it.

We need to make it easier, not harder, for workers to join unions. The massive increase in wealth and income inequality can be directly linked to the decline in union membership in America.

A job should lift workers out of poverty, not keep them in it

We need to create millions of good-paying jobs rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure – our roads, bridges, wastewater plants, sewers, culverts, dams, schools and affordable housing.

We need to combat climate change by fundamentally transforming our energy system away from fossil fuels towards energy efficiency and renewable energy which will also create millions of good paying jobs.

We need to do what virtually every other major country does by guaranteeing healthcare to all people as a human right. Passing a Medicare for All program would end the absurdity of us paying twice as much per capita for healthcare as do the people of other countries, while tens of millions of Americans are uninsured or under-insured.

We need to make certain that all of our young people, regardless of income, have the right to high quality education – including college. And that means making public colleges and universities tuition free and substantially reducing student debt for working families.

And yes. We need to make the wealthiest people and most profitable corporations in America start paying their fair share of taxes.

Growing income and wealth inequality is not just an economic issue. It touches the very foundation of American democracy. If the very rich become much richer while millions of working people see their standard of living continue to decline, faith in government and our democratic institutions will wither and support for authoritarianism will increase. We cannot let that happen.

• Bernie Sanders is a US senator from Vermont

The end of jobkeeper pulls the rug out from under places that depend on tourism.

Extract from The Guardian

Grogonomics Australian economy

Greg Jericho

Aside from some areas in Melbourne and Sydney, Cairns had more businesses still accessing jobkeeper than any other area in the nation

‘The employment situation on the Gold Coast is actually better now than a year ago, whereas in Cairns it remains much worse – about 12% down on February last year.’

Tue 30 Mar 2021 03.30 AEDT

Last modified on Tue 30 Mar 2021 03.33 AEDT

The end of jobkeeper this week comes at a time when the economy is still undergoing massive adjustment from the pandemic. While the government believes it is merely removing a temporary safety net, for some areas, such as Cairns, the impact is more akin to having the rug pulled out from under their feet.

Yes, the economy is doing better now than a year ago. The unemployment rate of 5.8% in February is very healthy given what has occurred over the past 12 months. But it remains a bit too early to suggest things are settled into a nice pattern.

The unemployment rate itself is a good indicator of how weird things remain.

Far from being a natural return to previous levels, the 0.5% percentage points fall in February was the second biggest fall ever recorded (the biggest occurred last August):

Graph not displaying? Click here

The two months after the big drop last August saw a slight increase, before four straight falls.

It is hard to say whether the big drop in February will lead to the same situation because last year involved so many changes due to policy and lockdowns that it is hard to parse any future moves from those of the recent past.

But the strong likelihood is that next month the unemployment rate will rise, because this week has seen the end of the jobkeeper program.

This quasi wage subsidy program was still being accessed by more than 370,000 firms in January according to the Treasury, and about 1.5 million workers.

It is hard to work out the impact given that last October, when jobkeeper was first reduced, there was a greater number of firms that stopped accessing the program than is the case this week:

Graph not displaying? Click here

And yet despite the big drop in numbers of firms (and thus employees) accessing jobkeeper, employment grew last October, and unemployment rose only slightly – due mostly to a big jump in the numbers of people re-entering the labour force.

But we can’t tell too much from that because at the same time, Victoria was ending its lockdown. So we had a flood of people back into work and back looking for work.

We also saw a big jump in the number of hours worked per capita, which was then followed by a big fall in January due to New South Wales restrictions, and then a big rise again in February when they were eased:

Graph not displaying? Click here

So nothing entirely sensible has occurred in the past 12 months that gives anyone much of a clue about how big the impact of the end of jobkeeper will be.

One area that is most worried about the impact is Cairns. Aside from some areas in Melbourne and Sydney, Cairns had more businesses still accessing jobkeeper than any other area in the nation.

In January, 1,395 businesses in Cairns were accessing the program, just above the 1,330 in Surfers Paradise:

Graph not displaying? Click here

It’s not surprising those two areas are among the biggest recipients of jobkeeper given their dependence upon tourism, which has been destroyed by the pandemic.

But as Cairns is around a quarter the size of the Gold Coast, it is clear that the end of jobkeeper is going to have a materially bigger impact there than in the surrounds of Surfers Paradise.

As it is, the employment situation on the Gold Coast is actually better now than a year ago, whereas in Cairns it remains much worse – about 12% down on February last year:

Graph not displaying? Click here

The different impact of jobkeeper perhaps can be seen by the fact that in October last year, employment in Cairns fell 1.6% and then a further 6% in November, while it rose nearly 7% in October on the Gold Coast.

It doesn’t help that a scheme designed to help businesses and workers through periods of a lockdown was removed on the very day that the Queensland government announced a lockdown of the greater Brisbane area and many states have closed their borders to visitors from Brisbane.

The head of the Treasury, Steven Kennedy, told the economic budget estimates committee last week that it expects between 100,000 to 150,000 workers to lose employment due to the end of jobkeeper.

It’s easy to get lost with big numbers, so for some context, prior to the pandemic the biggest ever one-month drop in employment was in 1992 when 74,889 people lost jobs.

So we are talking about a massive shock to the economy, even if it is nowhere near the 606,000 who lost work last April.

It would represent nearly 1% of all Australian adults losing work in a month and take the employment rate back to where it was in 2017:

Graph not displaying? Click here

The end of the jobkeeper program is the beginning of the removal of the economic safety nets that have been in place for the past 12 months. As a result, we will start to see the true strength of the economy.

Overall the impact looks set to be historically large, even if not so in the context of the past year. But in places more highly dependent upon the scheme – such as Cairns – the impact is likely to be significantly larger.

Cars, trains and ships: Albanese pledges $15bn fund for Australian manufacturing jobs.

Extract from The Guardian

Labor party

With number of workers in the sector at an all-time low, Labor leader says pandemic has shown the country must return to its sovereign capabilities.

‘Building new industries and boosting our existing industries represents an opportunity for Australia to recover from the Covid pandemic with a stronger economy,’ Labor leader Anthony Albanese says.

Sarah Martin

@msmarto

Tue 30 Mar 2021 03.30 AEDT

Last modified on Tue 30 Mar 2021 03.32 AEDT

The federal opposition leader, Anthony Albanese, will establish a $15bn reconstruction fund aimed at job creation if Labor wins government, saying Australia must be a country “that makes things”.

Setting up a contest with the Coalition over the post-pandemic recovery, Albanese will tell the party’s national conference in Sydney on Tuesday that the new fund will help revive the diminishing manufacturing sector which was already struggling before the Covid-19 downturn.

The number of Australians currently employed in manufacturing is the lowest on record, with the sector accounting for just 6.7% of all jobs in the country, compared to almost 17% in the 1980s. An estimated 50,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost throughout the course of the pandemic.

Albanese will tell delegates from the unions and party branches that the fund will seek to reverse this decline, putting Australia back on a path to “make cars, trains and ships” as part of a manufacturing revival.

“The Covid pandemic has exposed serious deficiencies in Australia’s economy, in particular our ability to manufacture products and be globally competitive when it comes to innovation and technology,” Albanese said.

“Building new industries and boosting our existing industries represents an opportunity for Australia to recover from the Covid pandemic with a stronger economy.”

“If there is anything that Covid has taught us, it is the need for Australia to be a place which makes things – to have our own industrial and manufacturing capabilities, our own sovereign capabilities.”

The fund would be modelled on the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, meaning the initial $15bn capital injection would stay off the government balance sheet to be provided through a combination of loans, equity, co-investment and guarantees.

Recipients of the funding would need to return rates above the government borrowing rate, with the intention of funding projects in partnership with the private sector, including superannuation funds.

The new fund would be legislated and governed by an independent board, with the aim being that it would achieve a return to cover borrowing costs, with an expected positive underlying cash impact.

The $10bn Clean Energy Finance Corporation – colloquially known as the “green bank” – was established by the Gillard government in 2012 and has achieved a seven-year rate of return of 4.75%.

The jobs fund is the latest major policy announcement from the federal opposition after he announced a suite of reforms to improve job security in a pledge last month.

In October, he unveiled childcare and energy promises, with the party readying itself for an election this year.

Labor’s draft policy platform, which will be debated this week, also flags using government procurement strategies to drive local manufacturing, saying the party is also committed to strengthening Australian Industry Participation Plans for public and private procurement.

“Good procurement choices should always seek to achieve value for money, which cannot be decided solely by comparing purchase prices. Any sensible procurement decision will take into account the impact of the decision on communities and the broader economy,” the policy document says.