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.
TV may owe me a bottle of something nice before the end of the year……….Arise Sir Dutts……..
Strange days. Let’s see if he can win an election. If it gets that far.
No knighthood for the likes of Dutton, a guy whose inhumanity knows no bounds. Australians wouldn’t stand for it Razor.
Warren Entsch apparently wanted to tear Tony a new one, can’t imagine what🤔 but he may have to join the queue
He could have 2 up for sale then.
OMG – all those who we laughed at when they said Abbott would be back may have the last laugh.
Call an election and get it over with. This country just cannot burn much longer while they fiddle
Thank God , we didn’t end up with Dutton , we don’t need another Donald Trump in this world.
So it’s Dutton for PM. They have gone mad. Abbott would have more chance – buckley’s
Don’t worry, it’s all theatre. Even if it does happen, Turnbull will give them enough rope and then step up to save the Party before the next election.
Quite right. The right-wing extremists who seem to be taking over the Liberal party apparently lack the insight to realise that their views are held by a noisy, tiny, dwindling minority. Most Australians actually live in the hated multicultural metropolises, and will react to Dutton as PM as they would to his more svelte lookalike, Lord Voldemort.
Actually the Liberal party is a centre right party with the combination of factions making it so. Exactly the same way Labor is centre left. All that is happenning is the right is dragging it back from the centre left which is right where Malcolm put it.
As for the demographics you quote most Australians live in the suburbs on the outside of those metropolises and that’s where elections are won and lost. Add to that the Qld provincial cities of course……
Turnbull beats Dutton 48-35 in Round one, Mr. Insider and more challenges to come. Dutton has resigned from the Ministry and gets to sit on the Backbench with his buddy ex outsed PM Abbott.
There are stories going around that Dutton has told some of his colleagues Abbott will not be given a ministry. If so, this is smart from Dutton and likely to reassure moderates in the party room. The second spill may happen this week but is more likely to occur at the next sitting of parliament next month.
I got a bridge to sell them moderates
I’m guessing Abbott’s now aware of his exclusion from Dutton’s Ministry & if so wouldn’t he be a tad upset?
How totally pathetic these ambitious politicians are..🤐
Who’s the PM tomorrow?
Of course, the political decisions around energy are important in relation to sending signals to investors. But some big investors have already left the Government in their wake. Do you remember Tony Abbott warning that Whyalla would become a ghost town? Not only has British billionaire Sanjeev Gupta bought the Whyalla steelworks, but in the last few days he has announced that work will be commencing in the new year on a 280 megawatt solar farm outside Whyalla. Yes, he believes fossil fuels have a role to play during the transition to renewables, but he is a man who knows how to make money and he knows where the money will be made in the future.
To all intents and purpose, his announcement tells the Government that they are a bunch of amateurs living in their own cocoon and who should get out of the way.
I’m inclined to disagree that the current government consists of amateurs NFY. They are in fact professional hit men and agents representing the fossil fuel elites. They will give ground as slowly as is politically possible in maintaining the profits for the fossil fuel shareholders. Albeit factionalised. It’s an immensely wealthy conservative demographic they serve, not the citizens, not the planet, mainly older citizens who don’t see AGW as a threat to themselves , considering only the short term financial gain. They’d switch to renewables in a flash if there was no short term financial pain in the transition.
The Guptas of the world are exemplary, but they give us unreasonable hope that their example will be followed.
Turnbull is an interesting study and I suspect Plan B or C or D or whatever is probably where he intended to be at from the beginning. He “gave ground to at least get something done in spite of the hardliners.”
He’s done enough to please his backers I think. Even if he does get rolled, it will just be revolving doors and he will knock over whoever replaces him just before the next election.
Give ’em heaps.
Great comment JB.
Sanjeev Gupta is clearly a man with vision.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-15/gupta-launches-1-billion-renewables-program-in-whyalla/10122036
We have had the Rudd/Gillard/Rudd governments, Mr Insider, is it possible we might get the Abbott/Turnbull/ Abbott governments as some pundits are saying in the papers?
Tony Abbott you magnificent bastard, come on down!
He says no although there may be a furniture saving exercise that could lead to his revival some time in the future. More likely Dutton will strike against Turnbull again and win this time.
I recall years back some commentator stating that Turnbull had a pair. His PM’ship has raised doubts about their whereabouts, but if he has them then he would call a spill soonish.
Seems like he has.
Turncoat may have had a pair in the finance sector but they must’ve shrivelled to nothingness once he bought his way into the top job.
History will note he became yet another sell-out to the mining magnates who manage their Fiberal puppets for their own ends.
We now have Peter Dutton being challenged on the pecuniary interest test.
I note, in the Constitution this is based on both direct and indirect pecuniary interests, in a document written over a century ago, when the average person did not own shares.
So, if I have a holding in a super fund, and that has holdings in a company that receives some sort of grant from the Government, do I have an indirect pecuniary interest in the Government?
If that is the case ~100% of Australians are precluded from holding office! Including politicians
By the way I got someone else’s email auto filled…
The interpretation of S.44 (v) is pretty restrictive as we saw with Phil Cleary and Jackie Kelly. Not a lot of wiggle room. Trouble is he won’t be referred to the HC by the parliament. An individual or external group would have to do it and we are talking about a $200,000 exercise minimum.
Many thanks Jack for your clarification. For my interest I will look at the relevant cases. I hope you are holding up well, and bladder 2.0 is performing as expected? No reboots required like Srate Rail or Commbank…
And so goddamn close with the Roos on Sunday. Bugger.
All good, mate.
Crowdfund