Are we witnessing a marked deterioration in economic literacy at the Australian Council of Trade Unions? Or is this just secretary Sally McManus having some fun with topspin and statistics?
The question arises because the ACTU keeps flicking out press statements railing against the insurance companies and banks for their contribution to inflation.
“The cost of insurance and financial services has been one of the key drivers of inflation, increasing by 6.4 per cent from higher premiums and mortgage rates,” the ACTU said on Thursday.
McManus herself blames the banks and insurance companies for “keeping inflation higher than it should be” through premiums and mortgage rates. Remember those words, mortgage rates.
One week earlier, in a separate statement, the union mothership attacked the banks again on the topic of inflation, saying they were making “massive profits” from “increased mortgage rates”.
All this fuss about mortgage rates, and inflation, yet mortgage rates aren’t included in CPI calculations and haven’t been since 1998. To keep insisting that they drive up inflation, as the ACTU seems to be doing, suggests McManus’s economic adviser might only be on the payroll for decoration.
What’s funny, however, is that the ACTU’s recent whanging on about inflation and its drivers don’t mention a word about industry super funds, whose admin fee collections have rocketed from $806m to $1.2bn between 2015 and 2023. These admin fees have grown 43 per cent per member during this period: from $82 to $117, or roughly the same percentage (46 per cent) as that of the insurance companies McManus and the ACTU keep shouting about. No shouting, of course, about super.
Could it be because the ACTU remains a shareholder of the country’s largest industry super fund, AustralianSuper? Or is it perhaps because McManus herself sits on the board of the Super Members Council, a lobby group for the superannuation sector?
Bonuses walk out
Looks like that infamous Brad Banducci interview with the ABC earlier this year might have cost the Woolworths leadership team their hefty long-term bonuses.
Well, not exactly. Surely we can’t say it was all Banducci’s fault. Actually, one of our spies spotted the outgoing CEO at Marrickville Metro on Thursday, working the floor with a name-tag firmly pinned to his chest.
The supermarket group’s full-year results were published just over a week ago and came with a surprise plot twist revealing that no one in upper-management received their long-term bonuses. No vesting of any performance rights, the company said, because the board failed to meet its three crucial targets: shareholder return, return on funds employed, and the most crucial of all: reputation.
“There was nil vesting under the plan as all three measures achieved outcomes below entry,” the annual report said.
Brutal indeed. That last one – reputation – was said to have been affected by “the launch of multiple government enquiries (sic)” into supermarket pricing and “negative media attention”. One can only assume that Banducci’s walkout on a Four Corners interview in February might have contributed, but surely – surely – that didn’t cost the rest of management their extra packet.
It was worth a pretty penny, too, between $2.6m and $4.4m for Banducci and between $1m and $2m for everyone else. Better luck next year, eh?
Vetting support
ASIO boss Mike Burgess has been calmly trying to dispel the confusion unleashed around the visa vetting for people fleeing Gaza. In doing so, he appears to have cracked open an entirely separate can of worms – but only a rhetorical one, to be sure.
Speaking to the ABC, Burgess said Australian visas wouldn’t be granted to anyone found to have expressed support for Hamas or the October 7 attacks on southern Israel. This would include anyone who so much as liked or recirculated social media posts advancing the sentiment, he said.
“Is it a one-off comment? If it’s a tweet that actually – or reinforcement or liking of a tweet – that says the 7th of October was acceptable, that’s going to be a problem for that person.”
Clear enough.
But how might ASIO now regard Australian citizens who behaved in identical fashion? Cases of this kind keep surfacing.
Including that of Joanna Horton, partner of the fame-seeking Greens MP Max Chandler-Mather and someone who Murray Watt recently described by saying, “The most dangerous place you can possibly be is between Max Chandler-Mather and a TV camera.”
On October 7, Horton retweeted her support for the “heroism” she saw on display in southern Israel – in the immediate hours after Hamas terrorists had overrun Israeli villages, commenced an organised mass-slaughter of civilians and systematically murdered hundreds of young people attending a music festival.
“The heroism of the Palestinian people never ceases to be amazing and inspiring, in terms of state power they have essentially no friends in the world yet look what they can pull off against the most well funded per square inch settler camp in the world,” Horton signal-boosted to her followers (the original tweet was written by another account).
Would this support still pass the Burgess test? Even now, 12 months on, the tweet remains faithfully attached to Horton’s timeline. Margin Call put this all to Chandler-Mather’s office for comment but it declined to respond.
If nothing else, this places Horton in the cosy company of Ziad Basyouny, an independent political candidate running against Tony Burke in the seat of Watson. Basyouny was exposed this week for a profusion of online posts glorifying October 7, shared in the days after the attacks occurred.
More wrongs than rights at the AHRC?
A case of curious priorities over at the Australian Human Rights Commission where hand-picked appointee Giridharan Sivaraman seems to prefer playing politics over action on anti-Semitism.
Freehills partner given notice over synagogue tweet
Herbert Smith Freehills leaders have voted to remove one of its longstanding partners, Damien Hazard, over a ‘deeply offensive’ tweet targeting Jeremy Leibler.