Seems fair enough to me.

From the BBC:

Australian citizens returning home from India could face up to five years in jail and fines after the government made the journey temporarily illegal.

The health ministry said the ruling had been made "based on the proportion of people in quarantine who have acquired a Covid-19 infection in India". Earlier this week, Australia banned all flights from India.

...in an emergency situation, the government can make something a criminal offence overnight. At the height of the pandemic last year, the government beefed up its Biosecurity Act to give the health minister near unconditional powers bypassing parliament.

That's why citizens now trying to flee a danger zone can face jail for trying to come home. A legal challenge to this two-week ban will take time and be costly - public outrage and pressure may be the only effective remedy.

As at a year ago, when there was no real expectation of developing vaccines, any government had to choose some balance between the following strategies:

1. Continue as normal, accept that the number of deaths in the next year might double (your chance of dying if you catch covid-19 is approximately equal to the chance of you dying in the next 12 months anyway, and we can assume that within a year, most people would have caught it), ameliorate this as much as possible by temporarily increasing NHS capacity, and hope to achieve 'herd immunity' within a year or so.

2. Shut down the borders and/or have strict quarantine rules for arrivals, and wait for it to all blow over.

3. Impose a lockdown of whatever severity is needed to minimise transmissions and wait for it to all blow over.

If you shut down the borders, then hopefully the internal lockdowns wouldn't need so strict, but Australia ended up having to do both, which has so far superficially worked. Absent a vaccine, this would never have worked long term, it is merely a delaying tactic.

(The UK's response was pretty dumb. Having chickened out of strategy 1 - politically it is OK to do something dumb of every other government is being just as dumb - we left the borders largely open and had to impose correspondingly stricter lockdowns. In terms of deaths-per-million, strain on NHS and economic damage, this was a worse strategy than Australia.)

The Australian government has now decided to close its borders even more tightly, which is fair enough, this is for the benefit of their own citizens and their 'reward' for observing domestic lockdown measures and not going abroad. Flying abroad is tantamount to ignoring the domestic lockdown measures and as a quid pro quo, you can't come back in (to protect those who observed them).

So the bleating about "citizens now trying to flee a danger zone" falls on deaf ears with me, I'm afraid. They went to India voluntarily, so clearly didn't perceive it to be a "danger zone" and if there were no ban on coming back, I'm sure that just as many would be going there today.

Is this racist because it is largely Australian citizens of Indian heritage who are affected? I don't think so. Hopefully, the Australian government would have done the same if a 'white' country had the same high incidence of new variants and infections. (There again, knowing the Australian government, they might not have been quite so draconian with returnees from such a 'white' country).

"My kids' future is gone."

From The Daily Mail:

A property which was listed for $12million had its value drop to just one dollar due to proposed land zonings.

Theo Koutsomihalis' home's value plummeted after the NSW government rezoned land surrounding the airport at Badgerys Creek - which is due to open in 2026. Mr Koutsomihalis' four hectare Bringelly property went from rural land to 100 per cent environmental land designated as a green space...

He said planning firm Urbis, which had initially valued his then-enterprise land at $11million, informed him the property would now be 'unsellable'.

"I'm stuck now with a property worth $1 for the next 20 or 30 years, if it ever sells," Mr Koutsomihalis told The Daily Telegraph, "The other day I literally had to pull the car over and have a panic attack for 45 minutes. My kids' future is gone."

Think of those poor children who will have to struggle through life without a share of a $12 million inheritance! The fact he bought up four acres and wanted to market it as "enterprise land" suggest that it was a speculative purchase (the article doesn't mention what he originally paid for it). You win some, you lose some.
----------------------------------
Where this chapped lucked out, somebody else was cashing in. Right at the end of the article:

Meanwhile, taxpayers won't know any time soon what changes are needed in the wake of revelations the federal government spent 10 times the market value on a land deal for a new airport.

The government paid almost $30million for a 12-hectare plot for the Western Sydney Airport in 2018. The inflated figure came to light through a scathing auditor-general's report which found the land was worth only $3million and the federal infrastructure department fell short of ethical standards.

The land is not needed until 2050 when the airport's second runway is to be built. Australian Federal Police are investigating the deal over possible fraud.

Pointless publicity stunt of the week

From the BBC:

An Australian student has filed a lawsuit against her government for failing to make clear climate change-related risks to investors in government bonds. It is thought to be the first such case in the world...

What does the lawsuit say?

"Australia is materially exposed and susceptible" to climate change risks, according to the statement filed with the Federal Court of Australia in Victoria state.

It alleges that the country's economy and the national reputation in international financial markets will be significantly affected by the Australian government's response to climate change.

You can only bring a civil case like this if:

a) you have suffered a loss (which she hasn't shown), and

b) the counter-party completely misrepresented what you were investing in, or at least, deliberately withheld certain important facts and you wouldn't have invested if you had been told those facts.

She knew perfectly well what she was investing in.

And I see no reason why the Australian government has to state the blindingly obvious like "the weather is unpredictable" and "Australia always has been - and always will be - susceptible to heat waves, floods, droughts and wild fires".

But I suppose the lawyers will make a shed load of money from this.

Good news from Australia...

From The Daily Mail:

The Victorian Government is reportedly considering scrapping stamp duty in favour of annual land tax payments. Often considered a growth-killer by economists, [stamp duty] is paid to Australian state governments when a home-buyer purchases a property.

But with a huge decline in the housing market, Premier Daniel Andrews is examining new ways to stimulate the state's real estate sector. While the price of the tax varies in different states and cities, in Melbourne where the median residential home is $819,611, the cost of stamp duty is $46,383.36, according to Core Logic data.

But since the coronavirus crisis began the state's property market has plummeted, leaving a massive hole in their annual $6billion cash cow... Even before the coronavirus derailed the property sector a report by the Productivity Commission in 2019 urged Scott Morrison to ditch the 'inefficient' tax in favour of an annual homeowners' tax.

"Shifting from stamp duties to a broad-based property tax could leave New South Wales up to $5 billion a year better off, while also improving housing affordability," the report said.

"Stamp duties are among the most inefficient and inequitable taxes available to the states and territories. In contrast, property taxes – which are levied on the value of property holdings – are the most efficient taxes available to the states and territories."

Fingers crossed!

"Australia's Fire-Ravaged Forests Are Recovering. Ecologists Hope It Lasts"

From an article at npr.org from a couple of weeks ago. Well worth a read.

The trees are doing what they've evolved to do:

Can Someone Explain Australia?

OK. First up, it's a cute song, and I've nothing against seeing some of Ms Minogue.

But... here's the things they show in the ad:-

- beaches
- sports
- bit of modern art
- fishing
- restaurants
- wines
- pubs

You can go to France, Italy or Spain and do all that, can't you? So, why spend a couple of days and a grand flying there and getting jetlagged, when you can nip over the channel?

Australian heat-wave, BBC vs Tony Heller

From the BBC:

Australia has experienced its hottest day on record with the national average temperature reaching a high of 40.9C (105.6F).

The Bureau of Meteorology (Bom) said "extensive" heat on Tuesday exceeded the previous record of 40.3C set on 7 January 2013. Taking the average of maximum temperatures across the country is the most accurate measure of a heatwave.

From Realclimatescience.com:

There are 25 locations in Australia with daily temperature data going back before 1890. This graph shows all 1,389,419 daily maximum temperature readings at those locations since 1876.

The actual waveform is a 120 year long cycle. The hottest year was 1902 and the second hottest was 2018. Australia was cold during the 1970s ice age scare, just like everywhere else.

At least one of them is grossly misrepresenting the actual situation.

"Australia leads the world...

... in dangerous debt".

Australian home borrowers are so in debt they will be forced to sell their properties for a loss next year in a plummeting housing market, an American banking giant fears.

With Sydney and Melbourne house prices already in a downward spiral, Morgan Stanley predicted Australians would collectively lose $700billion if they were forced to offload their real estate.

It described Australia as the world's most 'exposed' nation to a deleveraging disaster, where borrowers with little to no savings have to sell for a big loss to pay off their mortgages.

Ominously, Morgan Stanley predicted there was an 'imminent risk' this would happen in 2019 as house prices fell and credit growth slowed.

Morgan Stanley predicted Australian house prices would plunge by 15 per cent, from their peak, which would spell the worst real estate plunge since the early 1980s.

It's all a bit exaggerated, but this sort of thing is just part and parcel of Home-Owner-Ism. This is what people want. No point wailing about it now.

I was pleasantly surprised to see this in The Daily Mail.

The radical real estate solution that's helping Australians in one major city save MILLIONS on housing costs every year

A radical real estate solution helping Australians save millions on housing costs has been revealed. About 1,000 households in Canberra are saving $9million every year by renting the land their houses sit on instead of buying it...

Economics lecturer Cameron Murray said it helps renters secure long-term home ownership while saving 'about half' their housing costs. Renters pay two per cent of the market price of their property each year to the government. 

"As long as they pay the [ground] rent, they can occupy it for life," Mr Murray wrote in a post for The Conversation.

So what's the downside..?

"The downside, for them, is that they forgo the increase in the value of the land. The upside is that it costs them two per cent per year instead of the five per cent interest rate they would pay if they had a mortgage. When they sell their home they built on the land they pay out the land value to the government." Mr Murray said the scheme 'works out pretty much even' for the government.

That's not a downside, future residents will be making savings equal and opposite to their notional loss.

"Farmer, 49, gored to death by an 'angry and aggressive' 600kg bull"

From The Daily Mail:

The 49-year-old Warrnambool Midfield Meat worker was attacked by the large Friesian steer at 9.30am at a property in Dunkeld, Victoria, on Friday morning, The Standard reported.

He was weighing cattle when he was mauled by the "aggressive" animal, police said.

"He suffered fatal injuries. The man has managed to get out of the yards and was near the loading ramp. When located he was unconscious and not breathing and was unable to be revived," Hamilton police Sergeant David Walkley said.

The animal has been put down*.

* Wasn't the bull going to be slaughtered anyway? What's the difference?

Economic Myths: Compulsory pensions saving

From medium.com: "There is no economic rational for compulsory superannuation".

He explains that forcing people to buy financial assets instead of funding old age pensions directly (via the tax system) is just another Ponzi scheme that will collapse under its own weight soon enough. Using the tax system at least has the advantages of predictability and low transaction costs.

I would add that the total return on financial assets is simply not enough to give all pensioners a predictable and adequate income in retirement. For sure, some people could, but that just reduces the pool of available assets/income for all other potential pensioners.

Somebody on Twitter followed it up with this from The Monthly: "Why compulsory superannuation benefits the financial industry and the rich at the expense of everyone else".

"Teenager, 19, dies after being crushed by a BULL in a horror accident on a remote farming property"

From The Daily Mail:

*Teenager, 19, died after being crushed by a bull on Monday morning

*The accident occurred on a farming property in Esperance, Western Australia

*The woman was struck into a fence railing by the bull, police said

There are lots of superfluous words in the headline, which distract from the underlying tragedy.

Buffalo news

From The Daily Mail:

A man has died after a station wagon hit a buffalo on a remote Northern Territory highway.

Police say a 54-year-old man was travelling in a car with five other people in north-eastern Arnhem Land around 5am on Sunday when it crashed into the beast.

How can you just "hit" a buffalo?

Maybe buffaloes are like trees? If they see somebody driving carelessly, they jump out in front of them to teach them a lesson?

Strewth Sheila, 'Straya has fake charities too!

From the BBC:

The vast majority of Australians worry that national drinking habits are excessive, according to new research.

An online poll commissioned by the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education (Fare) also found 92% of Australians believe alcohol is linked to domestic violence.

Fare surveyed 1,820 people across Australia...

Ho hum.

From FARE's our history page:

The Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education (FARE), formerly the Alcohol Education & Rehabilitation Foundation (AERF), is an independent, not-for-profit, national health organisation based in Canberra, Australia.

Established in 2001 by the Australian Parliament with a $115 million grant, the Foundation was set up to distribute funding for programs and research that aimed to prevent the harms caused by alcohol and licit substance misuse...

The balance sheet on page 11 of their 2015 accounts shows they've burned through two-thirds of the original $115 million.

Note 2 on page 20 shows all their investment income, the next largest source is government funding of $164,217, previous year $226,377.

Fun with free trade deals

From the Australian Financial Review:

Australia's High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, Alexander Downer, says Britain's departure from the European Union will not hurt free trade negotiations with the bloc and suggested Brexit could be an opportunity to ease restrictions on Australians working in the UK...

"No this will definitely not kill any chance of us negotiating a FTA with the European Union. I think we can negotiate a high quality Free Trade Agreement with the European Union. Obviously, the UK is our closest partner in the European Union but we do have very close relationships with other countries - France, Germany, Italy and obviously Ireland as well."

From The Times (via MBK):

Mr Johnson wrote in The Daily Telegraph that he wanted “access” to the single market, but also said he wanted Britons to be able to work and stay in the EU, along with a points-based system for new arrivals from the EU.

This approach is unlikely to be agreed by the rest of the EU, according to officials and experts. They added: “It is a pipe dream. You cannot have full access to the single market and not accept its rules. If we gave that kind of deal to the UK, then why not to Australia or New Zealand. It would be a free for all.”

Now a lot of this is Doublespeak (which takes somebody with JohnB's mental gymnastic ability to decipher), but most countries have "access to the single market" without having any sort of explicit free trade deal (USA, China etc). But let's assume that in the second excerpt the Eurocrat uses this as synonymous with "tariff and quota-free access to the single market" (what the UK has at present, by and large). He implies that free movement of people and adopting EU regulations are pre-conditions and/or follow automatically from this.

Which will be news to the Aussies and Kiwis. Or is it genuinely expected that ANZ will be able to negotiate FTAs which are refused to the UK out of spite?

"Kill the b*****d, kill the b*****d, tell them to bring knives and forks"

From The Daily Mail:

Mrs Olsen returned to find her neighbour pinned against a fence after the bull had dragged her approximately 20 feet...

Mrs Olsen decided the only option was to nudge the bull with the bonnet of her car, shifting the bull off its owner, who then scrambled into the car.

"All she kept saying was, 'Kill the bastard, kill the bastard, tell them to bring guns'", Mrs Olsen told The Sydney Morning Herald.

OK, I made up the bit about "knives and forks", but well played Mrs Olsen.

Like Home-Owner-Ism, but without the subtlety...

Spotted by Random in The Guardian:

Tony Abbott has brushed off the Treasury secretary’s comments about a housing bubble in Sydney by instead accusing Bill Shorten of wanting house prices to go down.

Labor asked the prime minister in question time on Tuesday whether he agreed with the government’s top economic adviser, John Fraser, who told a budget estimates hearing that Sydney was “unequivocally” experiencing a house price bubble and this was also the case “in higher priced areas in Melbourne”.

Abbott said millions of Australians had home mortgages and the last thing they wanted to see was a decline in the value of their most important asset. He then turned the attack on the opposition leader, claiming that Shorten was saying people’s houses were worth too much and was “talking down our economy”.

And so on and so forth. You do wonder whether Abbott is really so stupid that he actually believes in what he is saying.

Interesting Eurovision Hopeful (also, I am not dead!)

From the Telegraph

Held this year in Vienna, Austria, the singing competition sees dozens of European countries battle it out for the coveted crown.   

San Marino's Eurovision host John Kennedy O'Connor thinks Italy, Sweden and Australia are in with the best chance.

*Update* Actually it appears the joke is on me and Australia actually are in the Eurovision! I thought this was a play on all those souvenirs you get in Austria gift shops that say "no kangaroos in Austria".

"The Gift" by Velvet Underground...

... turns out to be based on a true story, which had happened a couple of years before the song was recorded.

The only real embellishment was that in the song, Marsha's friend Sheila tries to break open the box by stabbing it with a sheet metal cutter and accidentally kills Walter. In the true story, Reg Spiers managed to arrive safe and sound.

"Escaped cow... charges man, leaving him injured"

Emailed in by James Higham from The Geelong Advertiser:

A MAN ended up in Geelong hospital with head and chest injuries after an escaped cow charged at him in Hamlyn Heights yesterday.

Paramedics rushed to Vines Rd after reports a man in his 50s had been knocked out by a cow about 4pm.

The man was taken to hospital in a stable condition.

Police and City of Greater Geelong officers spent more than two hours trying to capture the animal, believed to have escaped from Geelong sale yards.