Cartoon posted:

I like the fact that these Neanderthals can't fathom that the strategy of burying this is completely undone by their outraged declarations of unfairness.

Graic Gabtar posted:

If they are thinking of something like FATCA for say the UK and the US I'm going to laugh so hard I'll do myself an injury.

Jumpingmanjim posted:

Thread favourite Chris Kenny is here to explain why it is not a big deal:

Recoome posted:

i cannot believe that Chris "dogfucker" Kenny, known fucker of dogs, has carnal knowledge of an animal of the canine variety

gay picnic defence posted:

Would other countries bother signing up if we did something like that? I can imagine nations being a bit unwilling to ignore a US or UK request to do stuff like that because those two actually have some clout on the world stage, but who would give a gently caress what a little tinpot state like us wants?

quote:

The consular staffer told the investigator Mr Briggs had told her she had “piercing” eyes and had placed his arm around her and kissed her on the neck.

quote:

borderline incident

Smegmatron posted:

The Australian government, ladies and gentlemen.

Some dogfucker posted:

Photos of the night in question — which I have seen — show Briggs happily posing, and the young diplomat who sparked the inquiry in familiar and informal pose with Briggs’s chief of staff, Stuart Eaton. Yet Briggs has lost his ministerial position for similar informality.

quote:

At one point, the staffer, a legal graduate on her first overseas posting, complained to Mr Eaton that Mr Briggs was standing too close to her. Mr Eaton suggested she stand next to him, which the staffer did until the night out wrapped up about 2am.

gay picnic defence posted:

Would other countries bother signing up if we did something like that? I can imagine nations being a bit unwilling to ignore a US or UK request to do stuff like that because those two actually have some clout on the world stage, but who would give a gently caress what a little tinpot state like us wants?

open24hours posted:

They could refuse to renew your passport if you're not making repayments.

Graic Gabtar posted:

On another completely unrelated topic. Went to the supermarket before. 2nd January, hot cross buns.

ewe2 posted:

They were in Coles on New Years Eve.

freebooter posted:

I for one thing hot cross buns are rad and would be happy to see them all year. Ditto easter eggs

freebooter posted:

I for one thing hot cross buns are rad and would be happy to see them all year. Ditto easter eggs

freebooter posted:

I for one thing hot cross buns are rad and would be happy to see them all year. Ditto easter eggs

fiery_valkyrie posted:

Agreed. I'm always disappointed when Easter ends because there are no more hot cross buns.

quote:

What amazes me is not that the media starts attacking any woman who accuses someone high profile of sexual harassment (par for the course really) but that any women actually go through with reporting it at all, given the treatment they receive.

One of those articles was appalling. They weren't going to identify the victim for "privacy" but here is the job she does and a bunch of identifying details about her background.

ewe2 posted:

Not just that but arses like dogfucker and Uhlmann whine about losing Briggsy, someone who was "at least interesting". More interesting to them than his victims.

Graic Gabtar posted:

Very unlikely. FATCA is insane given there is zero benefit to the Australian financial sector - with those costs passed straight onto us. As you say, no other country is going to bear that burden unless they are forced to. So maybe some level of basic data sharing with debtors stung with a "no re-payment agreement/no leave" deal when they re-enter Australia will be the extent of it.

open24hours posted:

They could refuse to renew your passport if you're not making repayments.

gay picnic defence posted:

How would they guarantee that they know that you should be making repayments? Seems like a huge penalty for something so vague.

quote:

Dr Fulde said there was a trend over the last year or two of more women using ecstasy.

"If they knew where they had come from, where people had concealed them, a lot of people would nearly vomit, I believe," he said.

"And that's one of the ways they do it: they swallow it and then the person vomits up the plastic balloon with all the pills in it and somebody buys it, which is pretty insane."

Cleretic posted:

Here's the funny thing about that: was he, really? Before this happened, was he a blip on anybody's radar, did anybody give a poo poo?

We're not losing 'a character', we're losing a footnote, and the fact the best they can say is that he was 'interesting' when he wasn't even someone like Bernardi is hilariously damning.

quote:

Chinese debt binge is fuelling a dangerous property bubble

Kevin Rudd may privately badmouth China, but his economic strategy is heavily dependent on continued strong Chinese growth. His earlier return to surplus depends on the new mining tax delivering massive new tax revenues. His new tax also obliges the Commonwealth to reimburse 40 per cent of unrecovered losses if a project fails. So were Chinese growth to slow, not only would mining tax revenues decline but, in a double whammy to the budget bottom line, if projects were to fail the Commonwealth would be called on to pick up its share of losses.

So how sound is the government's assumption that the China boom will continue for many years?

China's extraordinary growth and development is awe inspiring. But it is capable of making the same mistakes of excessive spending and borrowing as any other country.

As the historian Niall Ferguson recently observed, blow-outs in public debt are always and everywhere ''consequences of political weakness …Excessive expenditure and insufficient taxation, failures to make decisions about unsustainable fiscal policies are political, they are not the results of profound economic weakness."

Working out the true level of government debt in China is very difficult. Nobody believes the official figures of about 20 per cent of GDP. But how much higher is it?

Victor Shih, of Northwestern University in Illinois, is the leading analyst of government debt in China and he has pointed to the way in which local governments have established their own local investment companies largely for the purpose of borrowing funds from Chinese banks to develop and invest in real estate.

He has estimated that when you take into account the massive indebtedness of the local investment companies, government-related debt in China would, by next year, be close to RMB 40 trillion ($7 trillion) or 96 per cent of GDP and 4.6 times government revenue.

Shih's estimate would place China among the countries with the highest debt to GDP ratio, although it should be noted that China's debt (like that of Japan) is almost entirely funded from its own domestic sources.

And those domestic sources are the prudent households of China who have been depositing their savings in banks at deliberately depressed official interest rates. By lending at low, indeed negative real, interest rates the thrifty households of China have been subsidising what is all-too-often speculative and wasteful investment by government-owned companies.

Another China economist, Michael Pettis, points out that this effective financial subsidy by households to the banks and their customers amounts to at least 5 per cent of GDP a year and possibly up to twice that.

This raw deal for depositors is helping to fuel the property bubble. When Chinese banks are offering depositors a guaranteed loss after inflation of 1 to 2 per cent a year, is it any wonder that Chinese families are jumping into the property boom in the belief that residential property is a "hard asset" that holds value - unlike cash, which certainly does not. One property analyst was very candid when asked why there were so many apparently unoccupied flats in Beijing as there were no lights on at night: "The flats are occupied. Cash is living there."

HSBC recently calculated that the total value of China's residential property market was now 3.27 times GDP, which is nearly twice the peak reached before the subprime crisis in the US and approaching the levels in Japan during its 1980s property bubble.

Asset bubbles are like a Ponzi scheme - everything is fine until the cash dries up and asset prices stop rising. Like it or not we are exposed to the Chinese property bubble. The iron ore China buys from Australia is turned into steel, and most of that goes into building apartments and infrastructure. Our bauxite and alumina exports are turned into aluminium, of which about 40 per cent goes into construction in China.

So at the same time as we congratulate ourselves on escaping from the consequences of the property bust in the United States, the resources boom that underpinned our strong economic performance is itself based on another debt-fuelled property boom in China.

The Chinese government is acutely aware of the risks of the local government debt binge and consequent property bubble creating what the leading economist Fan Gang recently described as "an internal 'Greek crisis' ". And apart from the threat to bank balance sheets, rapid inflation in property values prices young families out of the housing market.

Already the Chinese government has announced it will reform real estate taxes, and most believe this will result in a new annual property tax.

Li Daokui, a member of the central bank's monetary policy committee, has also called for an increase in the interest rates paid on bank deposits. This would better reward Chinese households for their thrift and reduce the flow of cheap money to property development. As part of this credit tightening policy, the China Banking Regulatory Commission has increased the capital and provisioning requirements for Chinese banks, with a director, Liao Min, saying: "We are ready to take the punch bowl away."

Hopefully a combination of fiscal discipline and solid, if somewhat slower, growth will resolve China's debt and property bubble without any damaging economic shocks - either there or here.

Malcolm Turnbull is the Liberal MP for Wentworth.

Sky Poos posted:

Briggs admits sharing photo of public servant

Former cities minister Jamie Briggs has confirmed he personally distributed a photograph identifying the female public servant who lodged a confidential complaint about his behaviour in a Hong Kong bar.

Newscorp reports that despite choosing not to name the woman to 'protect her privacy', Mr Briggs yesterday confirmed that the photograph of the public servant published on the front page of the Weekend Australian was taken on his phone.

The former minister denied leaking the picture, but confirmed he'd 'sent it to a few people prior to the complaint and following'

'I didn't have anything to do with today's stories. I called and apologised. I called (the public servant) because I thought it was the right thing to do,' he told Newscorp.

Mr Briggs quit the ministry on December 29 following a complaint over his behaviour in a Hong Kong bar during an official overseas visit last month.

In a statement Mr Briggs said it was an informal night out, but agreed that his behaviour didn't meet the 'high standards' required of his position.

Tokamak posted:

Maybe he should keep walking from the front bench, all the way out of the door.

open24hours posted:

Depends, will you get a better job?

Birb Katter posted:

Birb Katter posted:

quote:

The Sunday Telegraph can also reveal some cabinet ministers were “shocked” at the volume of alcohol he disclosed consuming to ­investigators in a cabinet-in-confidence report that detailed his Hong Kong high jinks with the young public servant.

Birb Katter posted:

ewe2 posted:

How about them Cabinet leaks?

Birb Katter posted:

Trapezium Dave posted:

It was painfully obvious from how Cabinet announced the resignation that there was a long conga line of bullshit from Briggs and they were trying to save face for everyone. To then turn that around and attack Cabinet for being too hard on what was the final straw means the biggest question in all of this is how someone as politically stupid as Briggs got a ministerial position in the first place.