Crypto Christensen Crikey’s favourite maverick MP George Christensen has many well-known special interests — travelling to the Philippines, spruiking Ivermectin, and most recently threatening the government’s agenda over vaccine mandates. But another lesser-known special interest was disclosed this week: his love of cryptocurrency.
Christensen updated his register of interests on Monday to say he had opened up two crypto accounts — one with the platform CoinJar and another with MetaMask. Given the whole point of cryptocurrency is to make transactions less traceable, we wonder what the point of disclosing the accounts is. But then again, it is nice to see George following the conventions of Parliament.
Advance Australia where? Right-wing lobby group Advance Australia has rebranded itself as “ADVANCE”, updating its website with “a bold new look” that reflects who the lobby group is “today and into the future”. Crikey can’t help but note the fact that the lobby group which champions patriotism over all other things has managed to remove the word “Australia” from its name.
But don’t despair, ADVANCE is still committed to putting “everyday Australians upfront” — the everyday Australians that want to grow nuclear power capabilities, dismantle the ABC and prevent the education system from “brainwashing” our kids. Real everyday stuff.
Sit this one out, champ Strange to see Peter “no ticker, no start” Costello piping up on the subject of interest rates to Alan Kohler on the ABC’s 7.30 last night. Costello was treasurer in a government that boasted that interest rates would always be lower under the Coalition — before the Reserve Bank (RBA) proceeded to demonstrate him wrong not once, not twice, but six times between 2005 and 2007, as the Howard government’s spending spiralled out of control.
Costello reckons the RBA is being irresponsible in saying “it could hold the three-year rate at 0.1% out to 2024”, despite the fact that the RBA has in fact said it will lift rates only when inflation is sustainably within its target band, driven by wages growth. It doesn’t expect those conditions to be met until 2024.
Costello’s comments seem to put him at odds with Scott Morrison, who is now trying to claim he will keep interest rates at their current levels with his continuing “downward pressure on interest rates”. But Costello, we would submit, shouldn’t be offering any opinions about housing affordability. Australia’s worst housing affordability in recent decades was in early 2008 in the aftermath of his reckless fiscal profligacy that drove interest rates up. It’s currently nearly 20% below the levels reached due to Costello’s stewardship of the nation’s finances…
Myth busting We really do hate to do this, but it seems inner-city leftie types might be barking up the wrong wharf in the current controversy over worker conditions and pay at Newtown bookshop Better Read than Dead. A Sydney literary institution and a small business with just over a dozen staff, the shop is facing industrial action from employees in the Retail and Fast Food Workers Union, who are seeking an enterprise bargaining agreement. Better Read co-owner Terry Greer told The Sydney Morning Herald he not reneged on any agreement as has been claimed, and said the full story would be aired at the Fair Work Commission, with the first mention set down for this Thursday.
But a rumour doing the rounds is the juicy bit: that the shop’s silent partner, businessman Patrick Corrigan, is allegedly the brother of Chris Corrigan, the man who took on the Maritime Union of Australia and delivered dogs and balaclavas to the wharves. In other words the bookshop is the next frontier in union busting. But to let a fact get in the way of the yarn, while Patrick Corrigan is (or was as of 2014) a co-director of the shop, he is not Chris’ brother. So good people of Newtown rest assured: no balaclavas are coming to King Street just yet.
I was hoping “Pissant Pete” Costello would be reflecting on the affects of his and Honest John’s pissing of the proceeds of the mining boom up the wall of political expediency to cut taxes (and thus services and infrastructure investment) to buy votes – dealing ‘middle-class welfare’ to addicts. Including negative gearing :- raising the fortunes of asset-rich, multi-dwelling owning, investors, so that they could out-bid those trying to just buy A home?
The habit they’ve got affluent Australia hooked on – ‘snorting the real estate coke’, with the bubble that’s got in it?.
But as with Morrison – “you can’t blame him”, for anything?
If you were really hoping for that, you must be an incurable optimist. Costello doesn’t strike me as the reflective type.
Like any vampire?
His smart Alec smirking puts Morrison to shame. Although Josh makes him look good, anyone could have done a good job as treasurer then, all you had to do was sell telstra and invent a great big new tax. Hang on, isn’t that what Morrison reckons Labor is going to do?
Morrison is Costello Lite (among so many other borrowed, assumed affectations) – except Scotty FM had the fundaments and necessary front to go after what he wanted : rather than, in Costello’s case, ‘hoping the party would realise his talents over the “Lying Rodent’s”‘?
That’s “the Liberal Party” – for all his self-perceived perspicacity – how bloody delusional can anyone get?
Costello should stick to boiled lollies at $1 per pack.His only claim to fame is his ‘glorious win’ in the Dollar Sweets case. Middle-class welfare has destroyed..the middle class and every layer beneath it.
But perfectly spiffy for those above, as intended.
Costello is a wuss and was incompetent to boot. Asking his opinion on housing affordability when he did so much to destroy it is insulting.
Economic girlyman.
Insulting to the intended audience – if the hard questions (with facts/history) aren’t going to be pursued until run down by the interviewer.
No ticker!
On Advance Australia, their slogans give away their loyalties aka Kochian US style radical right libertarianism joined at the hip with the LNP/IPA; ‘Freedom, Security & Prosperity’ aka Tea Party, Capitol Hill and World Wide Freedom Protests. From their Wiki page (inc. choice quotes from Crikey):
‘Advance Australia has been accused of astroturfing and being little more than a front for the Liberal Party’.
On Costello, represents something about Australians when given a stage, not just smirking; his loose smart aleck comments about US interest rates after a (presumably confidential) meeting with Greenspan (?), causing some angst.
Far from being property of the extreme Right, there are everyday Australian politicians of all parties who are contemplating the growth of nuclear electricity here. After all, global warming is looming as a nuclear-sized problem that needs a nuclear-sized answer.
Nuclear is dangerous and expensive. The mythical SMR is just around the corner, just like fusion.
Chanting off bigotry against nuclear won’t make it true. Worse, it distracts people who are realising that we must get to zero emissions and renewables cannot do it alone. Times are changing fast. The AUKUS deal commits us to buying SMRs in nuclear submarines, where they have functioned safely across the last 60 years
Nuclear is too expensive and takes two long . Flamanville and Hinckly Point C , both a decade late and double budget and very expensive electricity.
Flamanville in France is second of the prototypes for the (gigantic at 1600 MW) EPR reactors. Hinckley Point C power station in UK, currently on schedule in its third year of construction, will use the fifth and sixth EPR, so the projected production cost has been brought down to USD ~10 $/W, which is quite reasonable considering that they will be producing for up to 100 years. Construction “learning” requires a series of units to be completed for confident time and cost predictions, to level out across subsequent constructions. In contrast to the few EPRs so far, power stations based on the much smaller SMRs progressively install up to a dozen units on the same site. The first installed are to be producing electricity before finance is negotiated on the last, with confident time and cost.
The antiquity of a fallacy is poor justification for its continued propagation.