It is said lotteries are a tax on people who are too stupid to understand probability. The chances of winning the $100 million Powerball draw last night were 134 million to one. Yet it seems buying a lottery ticket is a better investment than AMP super.
An AMP executive admitted at Royal Commission hearings in Melbourne yesterday that an investor who ponied up with $100,000 would find his nest egg whittled away eventually to nothing. Adding interest minus commissions and fees, the unlucky punter would have lost almost $500 after three years.
Australia’s largest wealth manager has promised to provide some 12,500 existing investors a share of $5 million in compensation.
Meanwhile two unidentified people who are too stupid to understand probability pocketed a breezy $50 million each.
The Turnbull government was dragged kicking and screaming to announce the Financial Services Royal Commission. In the end it was left to the big banks to give it the green light. In public hearings where bank and finance company executives have been forced to make admissions of chronic malfeasance if not downright criminality, have shown not only that this Royal Commission was necessary, but that it should have happened years ago.
The Great Barrier Reef Foundation experienced the mother of all windfalls when it was handed $443 million by the government. The only difference is the GBRF did not actually buy a ticket in this lottery, nor did it excitedly flip through the back of the paper looking for the numbers.
The foundation’s chair, John Schubert, chairman of the Garvan Medical Research Institute, a former Esso CEO, former chair of the Commonwealth Bank and previously a director of BHP Billiton and Qantas, merely turned up to a meeting in Sydney on 9 April in an office where the only other two attendees, Malcolm Turnbull and Environment and Energy Minister, Josh Frydenberg, cut him a cheque.
At face value, it smacks of a Turnbull captain’s choice. The reasons for the almost half billion-dollar one off largesse, however, are more complicated and go to a $716 million spending commitment the Turnbull government made to UNESCO last year to ensure the Great Barrier Reef retained its World Heritage listing.
In other words, the Turnbull government can say the money or most of it has left its coffers although not a brass razoo has yet been spent on saving the reef and in all probability, the GBRF will have to contract government departments to assist in providing services.
Maybe the government’s best and perhaps only chance of re-election is to give $443 million to everyone who didn’t ask for it.
18 months ago, at Bill Leak’s wake, I had a discussion with two political observers of some note over a beer. I asked them how long they expected the Liberal Party to remain in its current form, structure and with the political muscle it has historically enjoyed. One, who is closer to the Liberal Party than the other, remained silent. The other suggested five to ten years. Two, I told them. And then I told them why.
The Liberal Party today is not the party of Menzies nor even of Howard. It is a party laced with intrinsic ideological conflict combined with toxic personality rivalries. These stresses and strains were going to be sorely tested over the same sex marriage issue but taken to the point of explosion over energy policy.
And here we are.
The amusing thing is voters haven’t got a clue what all the fuss is about.
One of the points of anger is that Turnbull has not sold or even adequately explained what the NEG is and how it will work within his own party room. What is even more bizarre is the people who vote them in or out have been wilfully left ignorant.
Whenever prime ministers and ministers of the crown babble in acronyms, the battle is already lost. One can almost the feel the eyes of a nation glaze over, the aggregated shifting of arse cheeks on couches and the collective reach for the remote.
Acronyms are a politician’s worst enemy, the tool of the lazy and/or uncertain. The punters may not oppose the policy. They simply have no idea what is being proposed. In the case of the NEG, all they will see is an unseemly brawl within the government. They may see resignations of cabinet ministers, they may see the prime minister toppled and replaced by a person they barely know.
They may witness a fully blown schism within the Liberal Party either before the next election or directly in its wake. I can virtually guarantee it.
The internal feud over energy policy is not just another nail in the coffin of the Turnbull government’s re-election prospects. It is a 15-centimetre long, galvanised, zinc-coated roofing nail that will keep the lid firmly shut. There will be no beyond the crypt Karloffian reanimations here.
We could trace the Liberal Party’s decline back many years. Suffice to say, it began in earnest on 14 September 2015 when Turnbull rolled a sitting prime minister. The stated reasons for doing so made no sense then and even less now.
Turnbull has failed to connect with voters, and if you asked any one of them what the Turnbull government is about, what it stands for, and what its agenda is, they could not tell you. That’s not the voter’s fault, by the way. The Turnbull government is bereft of purpose or direction.
The disconnect was reinforced in Turnbull’s awful performance in the 2016 election where Tony Abbott’s enormous majority was hacked back to just one.
Turnbull was outcampaigned by Shorten, routinely outplayed and outsmarted.
The double dissolution election that Turnbull faithfully assured the nation would sort the Senate out once and for all did precisely the reverse, and left the Upper House the sort of rolling freak show that the election of the Bearded Lady or Lobster Boy would only have raised the tone of the joint.
In the recent ‘Super Saturday’ by-elections, we saw Turnbull wagging his finger at voters, more interested in winning arguments than votes.
Bill Shorten already has a copy of the NEG draft legislation while Turnbull’s own partyroom does not. That tells you everything you need to know about where Turnbull’s best chances of survival lie. Labor will be disinclined to throw him a lifeline. Anyone who has witnessed Labor’s conduct over the last 20 years knows it regards the national interest as falling a long way back in second place to its own.
It is in Labor’s interests to stand back and watch the government tear itself apart.
You know, some days Shorten must feel like he’s won the lottery.
This column was first published in The Australian 17 August 2018.
No mention of $$
http://redflow.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/180820_Redflow_ZBM2_Williams_Burton_Leopardi_case_study_1808_FINAL.pdf?utm_source=Redflow+Mailing+List&utm_campaign=c6de474fb4-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_08_16_04_32&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_5e1bf20255-c6de474fb4-116022377
What are the odds of Chairman Mal surviving the week?
Pretty good. Dutton would come up well short of the numbers. No point in challenging until you think you have the majority.
The situation is so fluid he could get his DCM any day of the week.
“Go hard Malcolm” screams Lucy as the vultures circle the rotting political carcass. Meanwhile at another location, “Glove Puppet” Dutton is taking his riding orders from ex-ousted bitter nasty PM Tony Abbott.
Does DUTTON ever smile cos I’ve never seen it?
Perhaps you haven’t tried hard enough Bella
Might be a bit of truth around the rumours re the Libs. If Dutton becomes PM it is only fair that I get turn some way down the line. A conga line of ex-PM’s is just going to add to our welfare bills and big time.
Not sure how Dutton would go as PM, better than Malcolm i expect.
Shorten went pretty well against Turnbull, but the Liberal campaign was the worst I have ever seen, so its a bit like beating the Gold Coast, pleasing but hardly satisfying.
Abbott I always thought would beat Shorten, and I still do.
If Abbott does make a come-back could someone/anyone tell him to keep his tongue in his mouth in public.
Oh, lest I forget, could someone/anyone tell him that PMs should never walk like gorillas, at least in public.
C’mon, you know I’m right.
I find the reptilian flicking of the tongue most interesting Bella. And the walk, Cheetah mimicking John Wayne, has a certain appealing honesty to it. What you see is what you get.
The guy who mops the floor in Parliament could do a better job than Malcolm.
They have robots to do that now.
No wonder Malcolm has become so robotic Jack. He’ll be wiped off the floor soon enough.
Alexander Downer’s advice on how to win the next election “To win the election, the Liberals will have to run a fierce negative campaign against their opponents. A picture of a dystopian catastrophe in which Australia will become poorer, weaker and unattractive; a society which has no appeal to aspirational people, to the creative, the talented, the energetic … well, something like that”.
Gulp! Is this all he has? No wonder his daughter tanked running for Mayo. Its the old born to rule syndrome.
It’s always worked before BASS. Just depends on how much the elites want it.
abbott the wrecker looks like taking out another leader. He is the worst thing to happen to this Nation in decades. It looks like he is having the arsehole dutton proxy for him . the cons are NOT interested in the National Interest only their own small minded, backwards toxic interests. It really does make you wonder how a dutton PM’ship could possible have any credibility? It cannot obviously but we know some very ridiculous types will support it anyway. Regardless of the further damage it does to this Nation. This is the most morally bankrupt, deliberately divisive, bigoted, corrupt government in the Nations history. No Surprises
Strewth, Mr. Insider, big Mal may be about to reap what he has sown as we read tonite: “Fairfax-Ipsos poll: Voter support collapses as Peter Dutton leans towards challenging Malcolm Turnbull”
Lordy, Miss Clawdy it’s a wild ride these last 8 years in Aussie Politics, I do think we may have to have a “Stewards Inquiry” in the not too distant future. If Dutton rolls Turnbull just watch the “pledges of allegiance” to Dutton from the “frightened flock”
Next!
https://tinyurl.com/ycjyxhce
What we are seeing is the typical conservative. If they cant have it their way then everyone will pay. If the cons dont get everything they want somehow they are the victims of some sort of cons piracy and/or foul play. No Surprises.
Dutts declares his loyalty to Malcolm-now you KNOW it’s the end! The Looters are where they are because of their surge to the right so what do they do? They put up Dutts of the IPA to scare us to death! The hardest right winger in the tent. Dutts will take them even further to the right! In one of Paul Kelly’s rare fits of political honesty a while back in The Oz , he said if the Looters go to the next election still denying climate change, renewable energy and the emissions target they will get annihilated. Why? Because poll after poll clearly demonstrates the voters embrace these issues with a passion. Every politician should have to sit an IQ test before they enter parliament! If Dutts does challenge, in my opinion, it will be to save his seat. He feels they would not dump another PM (!) Pigz arse they would!