The editorial at the SMH is always a bit off-putting. This might be because the editorial team at the Herald are decidedly not on the ball and seem to focus on the stupid problems of the world. Take this one here.
It started in 2011 as the O'Farrell-Baird show. Mike Baird as treasurer did a good job and built enough of a profile that when he rose to Premier it was basically a one-man band. His transport minister then treasurer Gladys Berejiklian did well too, although her public profile was subdued.
Now the state's voters have an even more mysterious double act: Ms Berejiklian as leader alongside right-wing quid pro quo Liberal deputy Dominic Perrottet.
While the Herald supported the factional deal that elevated Mr Perrottet at age 33, the economist-lawyer is hardly known outside his party. Having toiled away in the backrooms of Finance for a few years, he has served his apprenticeship and will be the face of the NSW economy as Treasurer from Monday.
But add in the relatively unknown freshman Nationals leader, Deputy Premier and Regional Minister John Barilaro, and it's a Neville Nobody leadership trio to most NSW voters.
Throw in the absence of old guarders there since 2011 – Mr Baird, Jillian Skinner, Duncan Gay and especially the much-respected Adrian Piccoli – and the nation's key state suddenly has a second-term government on trainer wheels.Got that? The editorial thinks they were okay with Mr. Perrottet until they realised he was 33 and therefore not even Gen-X, he's a Gen-Y/Millennial. Surprise! We're all getting old here.
Frankly, the problem with these people - Berejiklian, Perrottet and Barilaro isn't their age. It's their political orientation and ideology - but let's leave that for the moment. If we're going to play demographics, then it's worth looking at these people a bit more through the prism of a more contemporary Australia.
It's kind of nice that both Berejiklian and Barilaro are second generation Australians with migrant parents, even though they come form the conservative wing of politics. It's also nice that they're not Baby Boomers trying to preserve some imaginary status quo from the 1950s and 1960s. Imagine Perrottet to be the kind of Liberal that make you want to throw up - sort of like Tony Abbott - but to be honest I don't know anything about him except he's from the Right faction which generally means, anti-science, anti-progress, anti-intellectual, pro-stupid-development, pro-fossil-fuels, pro-stupid, in the pockets of Mac Bank and likely a career plutocrat. And that's a problem. The fact that he's 33years old, seems much, much less of a problem than the ossified neo-liberal econo-babble he's going to bring to the table in a bid to privatise everything that isn't nailed down; but the SMH editorial is worried about his relative youth. *Ugh*.
Go figure.
What No Quid Pro Quo Looks Like
This TPP business is kind of strange. You wouldn't want it the way it was phrased, and based on what was leaked via Wikileaks, you really wouldn't want a bar of it if you're a sovereign state. There must have been a huge carrot in it for the non-USA countries that signed on for it, but alas Donald Trump has put the big kibosh on the thing and it's dead; dead in Washington DC, dead in Tokyo, and dead in the water in the middle of the Pacific as a result.
The Japanese government had even gone to the trouble ratifying it, which is more than can be said of Australia; they had to talk down to their own big agricultural lobby in order to get it through, which is a bit like the National Party whacking the interests of the Australian farmers in order to get it through in Australia. It's hard to imagine, but that's kind of what it took.
Mr Turnbull on Tuesday said he had spoken to the leaders of Japan, New Zealand and Singapore about how their nations could "maintain this momentum towards open markets and free trade".
But in a swift rebuff, Japan indicated it was not considering any further action on the TPP, repeating Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's declaration that the deal was "meaningless" without Washington."The fundamental balance of interests is lost without the US."
Japan was "not thinking about an action with 11 countries" at the present time, Mr Hagiuda reportedly said at a press conference.It's hard to see what was in the TPP that made it viable only if the USA was in it, but apparently that is the case from Tokyo's perspective. Of course, the first thing that came to my mind was how Turnbull's government absolutely shafted Abe's government over the submarine thing, and it was just a sitter to swing at the dead TPP's head and kill it, if Turnbull asked to keep it. In other words, "how are them French subs working out for you Malcolm?"
Malcolm Turnbull's not going to get any favours out of Shinzo Abe, and Abe's popular enough to outlast Turnbull. Turnbull might want to avoid talking to Abe at the next G-20, and that's if he lasts that long.
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