INFLATION AND ALBO’S FLIGHTS
Another day, another set of economic data primed to fuel the endless predictions on the Reserve Bank of Australia’s next interest rate decision.
As flagged in Monday’s Worm, the consumer price index for the September quarter will be released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics today with the RBA’s next monetary policy decision following next Tuesday. The AAP recalls how the central bank has said its primary focus is not headline inflation — which is being brought down by temporary measures such as household energy discounts — but underlying inflation.
The newswire flags Westpac economist Justin Smirk saying a predicted trimmed mean inflation (which scrubs away major price changes at either end) of 0.7% would still be stronger than the RBA would want.
Headline inflation is expected to be pulled down by cost of living assistance and lower petrol prices, the AAP said, with housing costs such as higher rents working in the opposite direction. AMP chief economist Shane Oliver said an interest rate cut by the RBA in December “still can’t be ruled out if September quarter trimmed mean inflation comes in as forecast and October monthly underlying inflation shows a further leg down”.
One person very, very keen for the RBA to start cutting interest rates ASAP is the prime minister, who continues to find himself at the centre of the news agenda — and not for the reasons he’d like.
Yesterday’s news coverage was yet again dominated by the allegations surrounding reported upgrades Anthony Albanese received from Qantas when transport minister. That was until, as Karen Middleton at Guardian Australia points out, the government was conveniently able to rapidly get the report from the inquiry into the COVID-19 pandemic out.
Albanese was again on the defensive on Tuesday, focussing on the likes of former AFR columnist Joe Aston — whose new book The Chairman’s Lounge features said allegations — and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton. As James Massola flags in The Commentariat below, the criticisms by the PM that Aston hadn’t declared his previous work with the Liberal Party and Qantas didn’t quite work when they are referenced on the first page of the book…
Dutton was using his usual attack line on Tuesday, attempting to discredit Albanese’s character, saying at a news conference: “Instead of focusing on Australians and how we can help them, it seems the prime minister’s focused only on himself and what he can get from the system,” Guardian Australia quotes him as saying. The Coalition leader added: “They know they can’t get the economy right, and now they’re seeing a prime minister who can’t lie straight in bed. He gets angry, and he’s not a good person under pressure, which is never a good trait in a prime minister.”
Albanese said at HIS press conference: “Peter Dutton seems determined to just be arrogant and nasty every day.” Anyway, away from all the personal attacks, Dutton has called on Albanese to refer himself to the National Anti-Corruption Commission, The Australian highlights, while Albanese maintains the flights were all declared and he had “been completely transparent”.
Guardian Australia in a separate report also flags that at least 90% of federal politicians have declared taking up invitations to join the exclusive Qantas Chairman’s Lounge with dozens also receiving “flight upgrades, expensive gifts or hospitality from the national carrier”.
US ELECTION LATEST
With the US election days away, Democratic candidate Kamala Harris is planning on delivering her “closing argument” at the same spot near the White House where her Republican rival Donald Trump held a rally on January 6, 2021, shortly before his supporters stormed the Capitol building.
The New York Times says Harris’ team is planning for up to 40,000 attendees on Tuesday night, while the BBC says an audience of over 20,000 is expected. The location of Harris’ address, The Ellipse, has been designed by her team to highlight the “alternate futures that voters face if she or Trump takes over the Oval Office”, the Associated Press reports.
The newswire quotes Harris’ campaign chair Jennifer O’Malley Dillon as saying: “It’s a place that certainly we believe helps crystalise the choice in this election”, calling it “a stark visualisation of probably the most infamous example of Donald Trump and how he’s used his power for bad”. The NYT also highlights O’Malley Dillon saying the event is aimed at persuading still-undecided voters and will highlight “what her new generation of leadership really means”.
AP adds O’Malley Dillon’s (perhaps to be expected) prediction on Tuesday that early voting returns in key states suggest the vice president’s supporters are turning out in numbers she needs to win. “It’s OK to be worried,” she said, adding: “We are on track to win a very close election.”
The BBC highlights Trump has launched the final week of his campaign with a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida. He will also later make an appearance at a community roundtable in south-east Pennsylvania and then host a campaign rally in Allentown in the evening.
Trump said at the Mar-a-Lago news conference that his controversial rally at New York’s Madison Square Garden at the weekend was a “love fest”, The Guardian reports. “I don’t think anybody has ever seen anything like what happened the other night at Madison Square Garden… The love in that room, it was breathtaking,” he said.
The event has been widely criticised after comedian Tony Hinchcliffe told the crowd at the rally Puerto Rico was an “island of garbage”.
Elsewhere, Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon was released from prison on Tuesday after serving a four-month sentence for defying a Congressional subpoena. The New York Times said he was planning on recording an episode of his podcast, War Room, upon being released and quoted him as saying: “If people think American politics has been divisive before, you haven’t seen anything”.
Despite the confidence expressed on both sides with a week to go until polling day, a new Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Tuesday shows Harris’ lead over Trump has dropped to a single percentage point, 44% to 43%, and with a margin of error of about three percentage points in either direction, the race is effectively tied, the newswire said.
Reuters also flags that shares in Trump’s media company jumped 20% on Monday. Oh, and The Guardian wants to flag rapper 50 Cent reckons he turned down $3 million to appear at Trump’s New York rally on Sunday.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE…
A huge Mayan city has been discovered in the Mexican jungle by a PhD student “by accident”.
Luke Auld-Thomas, a student at Tulane University in the US, made the discovery while browsing online, the BBC says.
“I was on something like page 16 of Google search and found a laser survey done by a Mexican organisation for environmental monitoring,” Auld-Thomas is quoted as saying.
The broadcaster reports the PhD student processed the Lindar survey, which uses laser pulses to map objects, on a section of the jungle in the southeastern state of Campeche and found a huge ancient city dated to 750-850 AD, which may at its peak have been home to 30- 50,000 people.
The settlement has been named Valeriana and researchers say it has the “hallmarks of a capital city”.
Archaeologists report the newly-discovered city is second only in density of buildings to the famous Calakmul site, around 100km away, the BBC adds.
Say What?
Trust has also been eroded, and many of the measures taken during COVID-19 are unlikely to be accepted by the population again.
The COVID-19 response review
The review was released on Tuesday and, according to the ABC, found Australia’s COVID-19 response frayed after early successes.
CRIKEY RECAP
Collaborating with a creative team from companies DDB Group Melbourne and experimental AI consultancy Pow Wow Solutions, Crikey has built a tool that hands you the role of fake news baron as you spin the story either way and ramp up the sensationalism. With the Bullshit O’Meter, the power of conjuring AI slop is in your hands.
Why build such a tool? Well, one thing that AI is rather good at is regurgitating. The technology enables content production at a scale, speed and cost never before possible. When ChatGPT first came out, people amused themselves by making it rewrite the ’90s hit song “Baby Got Back” in the style of “The Canterbury Tales”, or paint Vincent van Gogh singing Christmas carols in his signature style. It can mash together the information it’s been trained with to produce something that seems new. It’s not good enough to fool anyone who spends any time on it, but it’s good enough.
When applied to journalism, regurgitation isn’t useful if you want to build an audience who expect a unique and informed perspective of what matters. But if you’re more interested in spinning and twisting the world to your liking, something like AI shines.
If lacking a wider, common law-style misconduct in public office offence is one reason why so few Commonwealth public officials have ever been prosecuted, having an effective public sector anti-corruption body to undertake investigations into officials’ conduct is another. In its absence, we’re left with the uncertain tool of royal commissions to expose misconduct — and governments rarely call royal commissions into themselves.
And if the Commonwealth lacks of proper, useable misconduct in public office offence, it also seems to lack an effective anti-corruption body. The failure of the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) to investigate robodebt or the Thales scandal — and the NACC’s own secretive behaviour around the Paladin scandal — has raised serious questions about whether the corruption watchdog will represent a genuine threat to those engaging in misconduct, or join the ranks of nobbled or useless regulators that litter the Australian public sector, from gambling regulators to ASIC and ACMA.
With the likely failure of the NACC, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that whatever major party politicians say about the behaviour of their political opponents, they’re on a unity ticket in making sure people in public office can continue to get away with it, untroubled by either a wide-ranging law against misconduct or a body that will pursue it.
Research suggests that American society, like all other societies, has many shades of grey. Elite politics, engaged in by people who live and breathe politics, is polarised, and participants tend to use social media to amplify their extreme views, thus giving the impression that the entire society is divided. In reality, ordinary people think American society is much more polarised than it really is, and when it boils down to it, there’s more on which Americans agree than disagree.
Americans are on average moderate on most policy preferences. But the “culture wars” of politics involve insulting one another, which hides commonality by stirring up emotions attached to differences either in sensibility or social identity.
It is now a cliché to say that American society is polarised, but this is a bit of a myth. The reality may be that the media and social media create this impression through the growing trend towards partisanship across the board in their reporting.
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Puerto Ricans in must-win Pennsylvania say Trump rally joke won’t be forgotten (BBC)
Harris’ closing argument: Turn the page on Trump, and avert chaos (The New York Times) ($)
Hezbollah names Naim Qassem as new leader, Israel says he won’t last long (Reuters) ($)
The owners of a New Zealand volcano that erupted in 2019, killing 22 people, appeal their conviction (Associated Press)
Ex-British colonies should be GRATEFUL for the empire, says Tory leadership contender Robert Jenrick (The Sun)
Jeff Bezos defends Washington Post non-endorsement after subscribers flee and staffers resign (CNN)
THE COMMENTARIAT
‘Upgrade’ Albanese’s attack on Qantas critics just makes it worse — James Massola (The Sydney Morning Herald): Anthony Albanese’s attempt on Tuesday to quash questions over his free Qantas flight upgrades was a complete mess.
The prime minister made a mistake on key details, attempted to re-direct heat onto Opposition Leader Peter Dutton, and was evasive when asked if he had ever contacted former Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce to ask for an upgrade.
Just a fortnight after the prime minister’s clifftop house purchase burst into view, Albanese’s indignation risks turning this into another saga like “choppergate”, the taxpayer-funded ride to a fundraiser that claimed the speakership of Bronwyn Bishop almost a decade ago. As a senior Labor source said on Tuesday: “Albanese needs a one-way ticket to a mirror so he can take a long hard look at himself.”
I’ve been through a lot of election nights. Here’s how Nov. 5 may go — Ben Ginsberg (The New York Times): Five of the battleground states — Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, Michigan and North Carolina — give voters time after the election to “cure” mail ballots that have authentication problems such as a missing signature. This, too, could extend results in Arizona until a week after the election, Nevada until six days after the election, and Georgia and Michigan for three days. North Carolina permits its county boards to determine cure procedures.
Another unknown is the number of “provisional ballots” cast in each state by people whose eligibility is questioned at the polls and verified in the days following the election.
So don’t expect to know the winner of a close presidential contest on election night — and understand that this is because of policy choices made by each state. Delays themselves are not evidence of a conspiracy. They should not breed mistrust. If either candidate jumps the gun and declares victory before the votes are counted, dismiss it as political posturing and know that each state’s rules will decide the outcome.
