Australian Politics General...

[IFocus]

Australia in general does nothing but bag the U.S and the U.K, actually you are usually more vocal than most, now all of a sudden the U.S does what you and your chorus have asked they do and butt out, and you have a meltdown.

What?

Plenty of reasons to be negative about the US/UK I’ll leave the grovelling position to you

Pointing out the bleeding obvious instead of making excuses isn’t having a meltdown glad to see you are a candidate to join the Cult.
Happy to hear you tell us how Trump’s actions so far help Australia’s position economically/security remembering it was Howard who signed us up to be in this position “Deputy Sheriff “.

 

[sptrawler]

What?

Plenty of reasons to be negative about the US/UK I’ll leave the grovelling position to you

Pointing out the bleeding obvious instead of making excuses isn’t having a meltdown glad to see you are a candidate to join the Cult.
Happy to hear you tell us how Trump’s actions so far help Australia’s position economically/security remembering it was Howard who signed us up to be in this position “Deputy Sheriff “.

Yes Howard did and was constantly bagged for it, yet the last month all we have heard is Rudd and the rest off them grovelling to the U.S by bringing up that we were the 'Deputy Sheriff".
I mean Rudd, really priceless!!!!

 

[SirRumpole]

Australia in general does nothing but bag the U.S and the U.K, actually you are usually more vocal than most, now all of a sudden the U.S does what you and your chorus have asked they do and butt out, and you have a meltdown.

As I said Howard was bagged by the left for supporting the U.S, I asked on here recently when there was heaps of vitriol against the U.S, "if not the U.S then who do we turn to" and it was followed by more slagging off against the U.S.

The same with the U.K again it is the familiar faces that constantly deride them, well I guess it is time for Australia to grow a pair, pull on their big boys pants and actually start and work out a long term plan that isn't as dependent on being looked after.

As the old saying goes, you have to be careful what you wish for. Well you have got your wish the U.S has pizzed off and taken its ball home and the U.K has a left wing Govt that doesn't know where it is going, so now maybe the Australian politicians might have to earn their money.

There will obviously be a new paradigm so Instead of making stupid disparaging comments from the sidelines, as per Turnbull, Cook, Rudd etc, then wondering why they end up with a blood nose, they will actually have to do their job.
Our modern politicians will have to learn to be statesmen and women, rather than a peanut gallery, they are certainly going to have to earn their money now the days of sitting back and cruising are over. IMO

Interesting times, politicians actually having to think past the current election cycle, should be a whole new experience for them.
Having to work with oppositions, to get bilateral party agreements that ensure projects have good continuity, should improve question time and reduce wastage no end.

I'm glad I didn't jump on the bandwagon and buy US shares.

Maybe things will change, but investors have given a big thumbs down to Trump, Musk et al.

 

[IFocus]

Yes Howard did and was constantly bagged for it, yet the last month all we have heard is Rudd and the rest off them grovelling to the U.S by bringing up that we were the 'Deputy Sheriff".
I mean Rudd, really priceless!!!!

On a different note currently in NSW the area makes Greenfields look like City Beach pretty rough lot

 

[sptrawler]

I'm glad I didn't jump on the bandwagon and buy US shares.

Maybe things will change, but investors have given a big thumbs down to Trump, Musk et al.

Investors are scared, which is understandable, IMO it will make our politicians have a really good look at themselves.

They will have to take a lot more care in their decision making and money throwing exercises as the money will have to support more pressing long term projects.
IMO it will reduce the brain fart ideas immensely.

 

[sptrawler]

On a different note currently in NSW the area makes Greenfields look like City Beach pretty rough lot

I have heard there is a lot of ethnic fighting going on in outer Sydney and Melbourne, mates who live in Brisbane say the main difference they are finding there is petty crime seems higher.

 

[moXJO]

On a different note currently in NSW the area makes Greenfields look like City Beach pretty rough lot

Where in nsw?

 

[SirRumpole]

Investors are scared, which is understandable, IMO it will make our politicians have a really good look at themselves.

We should thank Trump if his policies make us more self reliant and less dependent on others.

Whack an export tax on all our natural resources and use it to build industries, defence, communications, construction, you name it.

We should have done it years ago, but the quality of our politicians has been abysmal.

 

[IFocus]

Where in nsw?

Central Coast a lot safer than home but real lower economic social level

 

[moXJO]

Central Coast a lot safer than home but real lower economic social level

True. Everyone got pushed out of the cities and areas getting gentrified. A lot out of Newcastle, Wollongong, shire,etc.

I actually prefer those types of characters. You know where you stand and they generally have a moral code to some degree.
There's a fake element to the people that expanded out of Sydney. Real puddle depth Narcissists that are about as interesting as watching grass grow but with less character development.

 

[sptrawler]

We should thank Trump if his policies make us more self reliant and less dependent on others.

Whack an export tax on all our natural resources and use it to build industries, defence, communications, construction, you name it.

We should have done it years ago, but the quality of our politicians has been abysmal.

Absolutely, there should be a whole lot less money printing and Government sponsored ideological pet projects that have absolutely no merit.
IMO it will force politicians to be prudent, rather than seeing taxpayers money as their personal slush fund, for personal, ideological or political furtherment.

It should bring about a better standard of decision making process and with it better political candidates, because their decisions will be scrutinised much more thoroughly and poor decisions will have far greater ramifications.

As we have been saying for a long time, too many things are done on an ideological basis, rather than a technical basis.
I think the money for virtue signalling will run out very quickly.

 

[Smurf1976]

Happy to hear you tell us how Trump’s actions so far help Australia’s position economically/security

It's about the long term not the short term.

Forcing Australia and other Western countries to face the reality of their circumstances and shaking them out of complacency.

Short term it's all pain but that goes for anything worthwhile. At the personal level well exercise, study or investment are always a negative in the short term. But if you don't do them then a point comes where you'll wish you had.

In Australia's case we've been coasting for decades, our entire economic base has become dependent on selling off finite resources, running up debt and pretending it's all OK.

The consequences of that aren't just in terms of defence but it's ruining a generation also. Lack of challenging work and opportunity, especially for men, meanwhile they've no prospect of home ownership. We're paying a hell of a price for coasting.

Now I don't agree with the detail of how Trump's going about it, and suffice to say I've had personal experience with someone remarkably similar in attitude so I can relate more than I'd like to, but it is shaking things up. It'll almost certainly force change here in Australia.

The reason a nation needs industrial capability isn't just about economics although that is certainly one reason. Australia's present approach of exporting ever more coal, gas and iron ore to fund the import of pretty much everything else is ultimately unsustainable. It's living off capital since those are finite resources which, particularly in the case of gas, are being extracted at an alarming rate.

It's also about defence on both sides of the coin.

One side is about self-sufficiency and not being so dependent on others especially for critical things like fuel, metals, building materials, basic machinery parts (eg bearings), etc.

The other side is that to have manufacturing and heavy industry you need a few things to go with that and this is the critical bit. Among other things as a country you need logistics, you need broad based engineering and scientific capability, you need skilled trades and labour, you need machinery and buildings, you need energy, etc.

In other words, having a lot of factories forces you to have things that are also critical to defence. Because even if they're not in the Army and have never had anything to with it, there's a definite benefit to the nation in having people who can do things and having the machinery and basic materials (eg steel) to do them with along with things like well developed freight movement and so on. If push comes to shove, that stuff has huge value for national defence.

So the negative of Trump is outright chaos and a lot of babies being hurled out the window along with the bathwater. I don't agree with the detail of how he's going about it at all.

But the positive is shaking Australia and the rest of the West out of complacency. Forcing us to face reality that being China's coal mine and flipping houses really isn't leading us anywhere good in the long run.

Trump's akin to the parent who tells their adult kids they're selling the house and moving interstate. In doing so shaking the kids into action that they'd better get their life together, that there's no option not to.

 

[sptrawler]

Nailed it @Smurf1976 .

 

[IFocus]

True. Everyone got pushed out of the cities and areas getting gentrified. A lot out of Newcastle, Wollongong, shire,etc.

I actually prefer those types of characters. You know where you stand and they generally have a moral code to some degree.
There's a fake element to the people that expanded out of Sydney. Real puddle depth Narcissists that are about as interesting as watching grass grow but with less character development.

Meth is a real problem at home strangely haven’t seen much evidence of it here a bloke I surf with is one of the guys that smash’s the door down busting meth labs next level hearing the insider stories is heavy as.

 

[IFocus]

It's about the long term not the short term.

Forcing Australia and other Western countries to face the reality of their circumstances and shaking them out of complacency.

Short term it's all pain but that goes for anything worthwhile. At the personal level well exercise, study or investment are always a negative in the short term. But if you don't do them then a point comes where you'll wish you had.

In Australia's case we've been coasting for decades, our entire economic base has become dependent on selling off finite resources, running up debt and pretending it's all OK.

The consequences of that aren't just in terms of defence but it's ruining a generation also. Lack of challenging work and opportunity, especially for men, meanwhile they've no prospect of home ownership. We're paying a hell of a price for coasting.

Now I don't agree with the detail of how Trump's going about it, and suffice to say I've had personal experience with someone remarkably similar in attitude so I can relate more than I'd like to, but it is shaking things up. It'll almost certainly force change here in Australia.

The reason a nation needs industrial capability isn't just about economics although that is certainly one reason. Australia's present approach of exporting ever more coal, gas and iron ore to fund the import of pretty much everything else is ultimately unsustainable. It's living off capital since those are finite resources which, particularly in the case of gas, are being extracted at an alarming rate.

It's also about defence on both sides of the coin.

One side is about self-sufficiency and not being so dependent on others especially for critical things like fuel, metals, building materials, basic machinery parts (eg bearings), etc.

The other side is that to have manufacturing and heavy industry you need a few things to go with that and this is the critical bit. Among other things as a country you need logistics, you need broad based engineering and scientific capability, you need skilled trades and labour, you need machinery and buildings, you need energy, etc.

In other words, having a lot of factories forces you to have things that are also critical to defence. Because even if they're not in the Army and have never had anything to with it, there's a definite benefit to the nation in having people who can do things and having the machinery and basic materials (eg steel) to do them with along with things like well developed freight movement and so on. If push comes to shove, that stuff has huge value for national defence.

So the negative of Trump is outright chaos and a lot of babies being hurled out the window along with the bathwater. I don't agree with the detail of how he's going about it at all.

But the positive is shaking Australia and the rest of the West out of complacency. Forcing us to face reality that being China's coal mine and flipping houses really isn't leading us anywhere good in the long run.

Trump's akin to the parent who tells their adult kids they're selling the house and moving interstate. In doing so shaking the kids into action that they'd better get their life together, that there's no option not to.

Cannot say I agree, in saying that I in no way think the status quo before Trump is in anyway OK given the rampant inequality between super wealth and the rest. Clearly the wealth distribution/ divide has never been greater the idea Trump and his billionaire cronies will change that is beyond the pale IMHO

 

[Smurf1976]

Clearly the wealth distribution/ divide has never been greater the idea Trump and his billionaire cronies will change that is beyond the pale IMHO

If it wasn't for Trump, would the Australian Government have stepped in to save the Whyalla steelworks?

The past history of both Labor and Liberal says nope, not a chance.

That's the first tangible benefit to Australia.

Meanwhile even the mainstream media, and The Age at that, has this story where the headline says it all:

Trump has done us a favour by showing where we stand during peacetime​

Trump has done us a favour by showing where we stand during peacetime

Donald Trump’s decision on tariffs is another reminder that he has cast aside old friends and embraced traditional US enemies, Russia most conspicuously.

www.theage.com.au

That being my point. I don't like Trump's approach in terms of the detail but he is forcing Australia and others to wake up and stand up. All of a sudden we've stopped worrying about being offended and obsessing over race and gender and are now talking about steel and defence. That's the refocusing onto actually important matters I'm referring to.

Now we've got about half a century worth of catching up to do, and nowhere near that much time in which to do it.

 

[JohnDe]

If it wasn't for Trump, would the Australian Government have stepped in to save the Whyalla steelworks?

The past history of both Labor and Liberal says nope, not a chance.

That's the first tangible benefit to Australia.

Meanwhile even the mainstream media, and The Age at that, has this story where the headline says it all:

Trump has done us a favour by showing where we stand during peacetime

Donald Trump’s decision on tariffs is another reminder that he has cast aside old friends and embraced traditional US enemies, Russia most conspicuously.

www.theage.com.au

That being my point. I don't like Trump's approach in terms of the detail but he is forcing Australia and others to wake up and stand up. All of a sudden we've stopped worrying about being offended and obsessing over race and gender and are now talking about steel and defence. That's the refocusing onto actually important matters I'm referring to.

Now we've got about half a century worth of catching up to do, and nowhere near that much time in which to do it.

Every storm has a silver lining, and that is how great leadership, and good governance should plan and work.

The tariffs shouldn’t directly trouble Australia too much. We are among the rare group of nations with a trade surplus with the US. Our total steel and aluminium exports to the US were a little over $1bn ($1.6bn) last year, a tiny fraction of our total exports to all countries of more than $650bn.​

​

BlueScope Steel, Australia’s biggest exporter of steel to the US, even said it could benefit overall given its significant operations within the US.​

​

For all the bravado, Canberra has been wise at least to rule out any retaliation. If another country wants to artificially inflate prices for their own citizens, then so be it: we don’t have to copy that strategy to our own detriment.​

Anthony Albanese must focus on ailing economy, not bashing Donald Trump’s tariffs

Anthony Albanese appears to be following Canadian prime minister-elect Mark Carney’s strategy for re-election: harness domestic anti-Trump sentiment – triggered by the US President’s tariffs push – to cruise back into office.
The Prime Minister on Wednesday slammed Donald Trump’s imposition of a 25 per cent tariff on steel and aluminium imports into the US as “completely unjustified” and “against the spirit of our two nations’ enduring friendship”. Trade Minister Don Farrell went further, decrying a “very bad day for our relationship with the United States”.

Albanese might ride this anti-Trump wave to victory, as Carney hopes to in Canada, but such confected outrage will look like a tantrum, an over-reaction on both the economic and political front.

Canada, whose exports have been similarly affected, can afford to mouth off about the US; it isn’t in the same precarious position as Australia, which is practically defenceless, except for the good graces of the US.

Malcolm Turnbull on The Project.

Equally, Malcolm Turnbull’s provocative sniping at the US President didn’t help Australia’s chance of obtaining an exemption as we did in 2018; still, it’s unlikely we were ever going to get one. The second Trump administration is far more assertive, ideological and organised than the first. Trump himself doesn’t face re-election.

The tariffs shouldn’t directly trouble Australia too much. We are among the rare group of nations with a trade surplus with the US. Our total steel and aluminium exports to the US were a little over $1bn ($1.6bn) last year, a tiny fraction of our total exports to all countries of more than $650bn.

And some – probably most – of the new tariff will be paid ultimately by US consumers, given the real incidence depends on the relative market power of exporters and importers at any given time and location. Every year the US produces only around half of the steel it requires, making it hard for local buyers to pivot to domestic alternatives. And even if they could, Australia could redirect steel and aluminium to other nations.

BlueScope Steel, Australia’s biggest exporter of steel to the US, even said it could benefit overall given its significant operations within the US.

From Trump’s point of view, why should the US give Australia an exemption, which will inevitably prompt similar demands from other nations?

Remember, the US has several “special relationships”, including with Britain, Israel, Canada and France, depending on who its officials are talking to. Don’t forget uniform tariffs were front and centre in Trump’s re-election platform.

Still, he may have cast his tariffs as a way to Make America Great Again, but they more readily serve as a way to Make America Solvent Again.

As I wrote in these pages last week, the US is facing a shockingly poor fiscal position, making new spending commitments almost impossible without significant spending cuts or massive tax increases. Indeed, America’s woeful fiscal position stems in part from its subsidisation of Australia’s and other nations’ defence for decades.

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has laudably found savings in the tens of billions, but without savings in the trillions, tax increases will be necessary to balance the books.

Tariffs are practically the only lever a US president can pull without congress passing a new tax, which is next to impossible given the makeup of congress.

Trump has even promised to cut income tax. It’s not a matter of choosing the best of all possible worlds but the least bad. Tariffs could be a better option than a global financial crisis as faith in the US dollar plummets.

The bigger threat to Australia stems from any global slowdown triggered by higher tariffs on the rest of the world, including China, which still overwhelmingly underpins our prosperity via resource exports. The good news is the 2018 tariffs winded but didn’t derail China’s growth, despite the ominous forecasts at the time. Who knows how disruptive this second round will be.

Trump himself has hinted at some economic turmoil, refusing to rule out a recession. The truth is no one knows; the global economy is a complex, unpredictable beast. Perhaps a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine – and the diminished probability of nuclear war – will offset any loss of economic confidence caused by the tariffs. At any rate, given Trump’s on-again-off-again approach, they might not even last.

For all the bravado, Canberra has been wise at least to rule out any retaliation. If another country wants to artificially inflate prices for their own citizens, then so be it: we don’t have to copy that strategy to our own detriment.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton said the tariffs were a “bad day for our country”. Perhaps in the short term they might be, but if they serve as a reminder of our own lack of economic resilience in the face of a fading China boom, they might prove otherwise in the long run.

There’s a lot federal and state governments could do to help our exporters compete, such as paring back the excrescence of red and green tape that has hobbled our exports with additional costs. Getting rid of the net-zero fetish, which has pushed up costs for all Australian energy, prompting the closure of vast swathes of our manufacturing sector. This would be a good place to start.

As a country we should be far more concerned about the reasons, largely self-inflicted, that Whyalla steelworks collapsed rather than about the theoretical future impacts of US tariffs, which we can’t control.

The billions of taxpayers’ dollars the federal government is spending to bail out the South Australian facility, not to mention the de facto tax on energy that contributed to its collapse in the first place, dwarf whatever damage the Trump tariffs will cause. If the current government wants a legacy beyond posturing, it should focus its energies here, rather than the tiresome Trump bashing.

Adam Creighton is a senior fellow at the Institute of Public Affairs.

 

[SirRumpole]

Every storm has a silver lining, and that is how great leadership, and good governance should plan and work.

The tariffs shouldn’t directly trouble Australia too much. We are among the rare group of nations with a trade surplus with the US. Our total steel and aluminium exports to the US were a little over $1bn ($1.6bn) last year, a tiny fraction of our total exports to all countries of more than $650bn.​

​

BlueScope Steel, Australia’s biggest exporter of steel to the US, even said it could benefit overall given its significant operations within the US.​

​

For all the bravado, Canberra has been wise at least to rule out any retaliation. If another country wants to artificially inflate prices for their own citizens, then so be it: we don’t have to copy that strategy to our own detriment.​

That's a pretty balanced assessment in my view.

The outrage media has blown up this issue beyond its significance to Australia.

We also import steel and aluminium, so if we sell less to the US, then we should import less and use more of our own production ourselves.

 

[sptrawler]

Every storm has a silver lining, and that is how great leadership, and good governance should plan and work.

The tariffs shouldn’t directly trouble Australia too much. We are among the rare group of nations with a trade surplus with the US. Our total steel and aluminium exports to the US were a little over $1bn ($1.6bn) last year, a tiny fraction of our total exports to all countries of more than $650bn.​

​

BlueScope Steel, Australia’s biggest exporter of steel to the US, even said it could benefit overall given its significant operations within the US.​

​

For all the bravado, Canberra has been wise at least to rule out any retaliation. If another country wants to artificially inflate prices for their own citizens, then so be it: we don’t have to copy that strategy to our own detriment.​

Pretty well says it as it is IMO.

 

[moXJO]

More the fact that grub Dan Andrews raised his head in nsw. No surprises he is shilling to the ccp faithful though.