This got a lot of good reviews so I was really looking forward to it. I have to say its a bit naff and maybe even condescending. I did have an odd idea as I watched it, that maybe the reason we don't hear from other alien races in space is because no other sentient species wants to traverse to distance to find another sentient race. That maybe earthlings - homo sapiens - is somehow the crazy species in the galaxy that keeps on imagining scenarios of alien encounters that essentially hinge on paranoid violence.
Maybe it's not quite what i thought it would be, while some of it looked like a parallel text to 'Independence Day' without the out and out spectacle of cities getting destroyed. It also seems to owe a debt to 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind'. Clearly this is about the fifth or sixth kind.
Sarajevo
A little perdue piece about the aftermath of the Grand Duke Ferdinand getting assassinated in Sarajevo which of course triggered World War I. An oddly depressing topic, tackled with some amount compassion and intrigue.
Below is the only relevant clip I could find. It gives you a sense of the understated nature of the drama.
The main contention of the film is that the assassination of Franz Ferdinand was a false flag operation perpetrated by the Australian military who were champing at the bit to fight what became World War I. Had they any amount of foresight, they might have avoided such moves at all costs.
The RBA Fears Apartment Price Collapses
Just following on from the previous day's entry about the RBA and its seeming indifference to the property bubble, it turns outfit is a little worried about the apartment glut they think is going to happen in Brisbane and Melbourne. They think Sydney should be fine, but then, it's not the prices as such that worries them but the systemic impact on the banking sector such a shock would have:
"It is about whether or not they are adequately provisioned, whether their lending standards are adequate, and if there is an oversupply and falling prices, whether they end up under water or wearing larger losses than they expected because they hadn't anticipated this.
"Have households purchased these apartments in the expectation of rising rents and rising prices, and with a glut may not be able to rent them out and may not be able to get the price they paid for them?"
Although the Prudential Regulation Authority instructed banks to tighten lending standards for investors in 2014 and succeeding in bringing the growth in investor lending down below 10 per cent, "everyone would be aware that more recently investor housing growth has started to speed up again".
Between October and January, the annual growth in lending to property investors jumped from 9 per cent to 27 per cent. Investors borrowed $13.8 billion in January, more than the $13.6 billion that was lent to owner-occupiers. Of the $13.8 billion, only $1.2 billion was for building new homes.
"We are watching it because investors can be the first ones to get out if things turn down," she said, warning that a rush for the doors could make a slump "much bigger than it would otherwise be".
Invited to repeat an assurance by Treasurer Scott Morrison on Monday that rapidly climbing house prices in Sydney and Melbourne were "not the function of any sort of investor credit bubble or anything like this", Ms Bullock declined, saying: "I would not like to speculate on what is a bubble and what is not, personally".That's a funny response. When you ad this scenario to the stranded housing assets out in WA in the wake of the mining bust, the apartment glut would be a classic case of supply arriving in time to rebalance the market. After all, all the politicians have been saying there's no bubble, merely a shortage in supply. If the system can't handle the arrival of supply, it raises serious questions as to just what the fuck is going on with the price rises.
In any case governments are moving to readjust some policies on the edge to "make housing more affordable" - which is semaphore for deflating the bubble slowly. Nobody seriously disputes that this is necessary; there's even bipartisan support for it in NSW - but of course the vested interests are already howling.
The property industry slammed the move to increase the surcharge as ill-conceived, cynically populist and counter-productive.
Developer lobby group the Urban Taskforce said it would put the brakes on supply at a time when Sydney was still delivering new homes at below the Department of Planning's target rate of 40,000 a year.
Chris Johnson from the group said "lifting the surcharge on foreign investors will obviously slow down to some extent that market which provides homes for renters in Sydney. Throttling down supply is not a good move."
Glenn Byres from the Property Council said foreign investment funded large scale developments and boosted pre-sales.
"Adding more taxes to foreign investment would actually hurt supply, particular at a time when lending conditions are more stringent on offshore income," he said.
Premier Gladys Berejiklian has repeatedly said that boosting supply was the key government response to the housing affordability crisis.
Steven Mann from the Urban Development Institute of Australia NSW said foreign buyers were an easy target.
"By targeting a group of people that are unable to vote our politicians are showing a predilection to winning votes rather than obtaining the best outcome for the greater good," he said.
NSW Treasury calculations released in a call for papers after the 2016 budget showed that the government's own modelling predicted foreign buyers would be discouraged from the NSW market by the 4 per cent foreign investor levy.
Treasury estimated a modest decrease of about $30 million a year in its stamp duty collection from foreign buyers for 2016-17 after the levy was imposed.
Labor pointed to this as evidence that increasing the surcharge would improve housing affordability.
So, there's that. All those people want the Bubble tontine for as long as possible, but they don't seem to have an exit clause for themselves so naturally you have to question their judgment if not sanity. The RBA and State governments as well as the opposition is moving to rein in the Bubble. Screaming against it only makes you look out of step.
More On That Vested Interest Thing, Part 1008
The mining lobby went pretty hard against Kevin Rudd because of the Mining Rent Resources Tax. Julia Gillard took the opportunity presented by the fall in his polls to assume the Prime Ministership, and wound back the tax so it hardly hurt the mining companies. By the time Tony Abbott became Prime Minister, it became a target for repeal, much like the ETS, and so the mining lobby got away with murder. I know, that's not nice language to describe it but their campaigns killed the tax, which deprived money for the Australian government that would have been spent on health and education amongst other things, so it stands to reason that in some chain of events, the austerity of the Abbott Government would have killed somebody, and that blood belongs on the mining lobby's hands. It's not hyperbole, it's logic.
So, naturally, it's interesting to see the mining lobby went after WA National Party leader who said there should be a mining tax.
West Australian Nationals leader Brendon Grylls has conceded defeat in his seat of Pilbara, following a $2 million campaign against him by the mining industry angry at his iron ore tax proposal.
Mr Grylls said he had contacted Labor's candidate Kevin Michel to congratulate him on his victory.
The ABC's election computer no longer lists Pilbara as a seat in doubt, putting Mr Michel more than 500 votes ahead and declaring the seat for him.
"It's quite clear that I can't catch up in preferences now," Mr Grylls said.Just in case you're wondering just how much our democracy is being fucked with by lobbies, and how our government can't get its proverbial shit together to enact sensible laws like having an ETS, or having a mining tax, there it is in black and white.
"The Nationals remain strong in the West Australian parliament and just like I replaced a leader, I'll be replaced and they'll get on with the job.
Politicians might be dumb, but they know enough that political necessity forces solutions. Sometimes they are against their own side of politics. After all a great leader can only be measured by their willingness to whack their own to make deals stick. It's eminently understandable why Mr. Grylls might want to propose an iron ore tax, given the parlous state of WA's affairs. Therefore, it's interesting to see the mining lobby is entirely happy to whack their own - and by extension we can see who wears the pants in conservative politics. It's the vested interests, all the time, all the way. The actual politicians are just sock puppets.
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