I am sitting here on January 26, 2022, contemplating another year gone, with the new one coming at us, wondering if anyone in power has ever heard Henry Ford’s quote: “If you always do what you have always done, you’ll get what you’ve always got’

Such was 2021, except we seem to have doubled down on the stuff that generated a negative outcome in the past, mistakenly betting on a better outcome this time. I looked back to the Australia Day post for 2021, and almost all of the issues aired remain valid.

Little has changed, apart from the date, and the conga line of politicians has evolved a bit. There have been a few political scalps have been taken, and a few resurrections in the national party that surely rival any spoken of in the good book!

New South Wales’s god-fearing Premier who took over in unusual circumstances in October 2021, said at the time: ‘I will take NSW to the next level‘ has been proved correct, at least in relation to Covid cases. He has put all our eggs in the almighty’s basket, and the almighty seems to be on holiday, or is perhaps isolated, as infection levels skyrocket.

Clearly the only way to reduce the reported cases is to reduce testing, while playing with the definitions of what constitutes a ‘contact’.

Monty Python would be proud!

In November, the report of the review into the parliamentary workplaces landed on the federal governments desk. This is in contrast to the yet to be seen report commissioned by the PM to be conducted by the head of his department on the specifics surrounding the alleged rape in the office of the defence minister in February. Clearly the stench coming from the big house is not what anyone should expect in the place that is supposed to be governing the rest of us, making laws about how we will behave, and the penalties for not doing so.

As we go into an election campaign, we will see a lot of the PM in high vis. being the daggy bloke from next door, telling outrageous porkies while looking everyone directly in the eye. Must be a learned skill, honed with extensive practice, as few are as good. Meanwhile, the opposition leader, despite a bit of cosmetic work with the glasses, hides from just about everyone. Probably a good strategy.

I can smell the baking pork from the coming election BBQ from here!

The trading relationship with China still resembles a pygmy kicking a giant in the foot trying to get his attention. The reality is that we have affronted the Chinese leadership, they have reacted, will not forget, and we can do nothing about it, beyond swallow the medicine and stop being stupid. A big ask, especially for some of the conservatives in the government who, perhaps rightly based on its sad history, believe there are votes in being belligerent. The narrative that Australia must ‘pick a side’ between the US and China assumes a binary world, when it is in fact way more nuanced and complex than that. It seems crazy to me that this is not obvious to those who find themselves in positions of political power.

I guess it is lucky we might have a few nuclear subs to use as a deterrent in about 30 years. Pity they require very deep oceans to operate effectively, and our area is surrounded by largely shallow ones. Sadly, they also require deep and practical nuclear engineering expertise to keep them operational, which we do not have, and are unlikely to ever develop to the level required. This is before we consider either the time before these mirages emerge from the deep, and there is any consideration of the anti-submarine technology that might emerge over those 30 years, making our subs very expensive coffins. Knowing a few very senior navy officers over the years, I am sure they pointed out these obvious facts to the politicians, who seemed not to be listening. Ah well, it must have seemed like a good press release at the time.

Climate change. What can you say about the triumph that was Glasgow?

Our dear leader speaking to a packed house at midnight, explained the ‘Australian way’ of tackling this global problem. It amounts to subsidising fossil fuel emissions and funding research into technology that has as much potential to capture meaningful CO2 emissions, as medieval alchemy had of turning copper into gold. Never mind: our supporters want, and are paying for the effort via party donations, just don’t let on to the taxpayers, which does not include the aforementioned political donors.

Some of this nonsense might be excised if there was a version of a federal ICAC. Clearly nobody in the big house wants such a body to examine the entrails of their shenanigans, it might be embarrassing. The first effort by the then Attorney general, later to be pushed towards the exit kicking and screaming after a nasty scandal involving, wait for it, a woman now deceased, was laughed out of the place. The simple fact that it was so obviously a piece of window dressing was made clear by the fact that the opposition was laughing at it as well. This is despite knowing they might have to live with the consequences of a beefed-up version, if they ever regained power.

The two-laned economy we are building where the benefits go to those in a position to charge economic rent, is continuing to significantly distort the choices made in the allocation of resources. As the gap continues to widen between the ‘Haves’ and ‘have nots’, as it will if nothing changes, it will at some point become toxic, as it did on January 6 last year in Washington.

As an illustration of our challenge as a competitive economy that will serve Australians more equally, we should consider the asymmetrical picture painted by the ASX top 10 in Australia compared to the S&P top 10 In the US. Our top 10 are all traditional hard asset companies, all from mining or financial services, with the single exception of CSL. By contrast, the US top 10 are all, with the single exception of Berkshire Hathaway, ‘soft’ asset, technology-based companies.

The rate of capital growth of soft assets is far greater than those of hard assets. Will 2022 be the year that it hits home that Australian industry is dominated by yesterday’s businesses, and we start to adjust? Fortescue (number 10 on the list) has just started to make those adjustments into areas that rely more on intellectual rather than financial capital.

Making any effort to bridge that gap between ‘New’ and ‘Old’ industries enormously more challenging, is the simple fact that Australian public spending on R&D has over an extended period been dropping. The total spend is being propped up by spending by business in specific areas of digital engineering, almost compensating for the drop in public spending. The total spending amounts to 1.8% of GDP, a number way below some of our international competitors. The OECD average is 3.4% of GDP. Our spending on education, the economy’s investment in the future, in the 2019/20 fiscal was 114 billion, around 1.8% of GDP, before the positive impact of $20 billion of ‘export’ sales to now excluded overseas students is removed. At the same time, the ‘quality’ of education has been dropping consistently. From the gutting of trade and technical education over the last 30 years, to the removal of teaching resources from universities as they are mandated to turn a short-term profit. The latest nonsense is to penalise the humanities, and favour STEM. While we do desperately need greater STEM education resources, it is insane to fund them by reducing our creative and behavioural education that enables the STEM output to be leveraged. While it is not just the amount of money we spend that is important, quality does count, when both are going in the wrong direction, there is unlikely to be a soft landing.

I cannot finish without acknowledging the continuing impact of the Covid pandemic. 2022 will no more be the end of it than was December 2021, and worse, we seem to have given up. Omicron is of less mortal concern than Delta, so we seem to assume that the next variant, emerging from the unvaccinated half of the world’s population will be less virulent again. Let’s hope it is so. However, if we look at very recent history, Aids, Ebola, Mers, Sars, none of them evolved to be less severe at each outbreak, they evolved to avoid the barriers we built.

Covid has been a catalyst for many other seemingly unconnected things happening.

For example, the disruption of our supply chains, firstly the international ones, and more recently the domestic ones. A month ago, a shortage of AdBlue looked like it was going to be a game stopper, and it still may be. However, more of a long-term threat is the closing of a number of (that I know of) significant regional transport companies. These companies, long established in places like Bathurst, Dubbo, and Tamworth, employ hundreds of people in support roles as well as their drivers, and service providers. They contribute significantly to local economies. The drivers are mostly blokes older than 50, who have never done anything else, but now will be lost to the industry. Difficult jobs like moving cattle, machinery, smaller multi-stop loads, will not be taken by the giants in the industry, who are just interested in moving pallets in bulk from point A to point B. In NSW the RMS has a lot to answer for.  Dyslectic drivers who have difficulty filling in a totally unnecessary logbook, as trucks now all have GPS locators, without spelling mistakes cop a fine of $400 a time. This stupidity is just driving them out of the industry. In terms of supply chain disruption, we ain’t seen nothing yet!

In order to address the challenges of Covid and Climate change, politics has privatised the development and distribution of vaccines, and kicked responsibility for acting on climate change down the road. Stick the means to fight the problems in the hands of a few billionaires, and magically, the problem will be resolved. Meanwhile, half the worlds population remains unvaccinated, so the new variants have plenty of opportunity to find the weaknesses in our defences. The polarisation of the populations continues. Politics encourages this polarisation as it suits the coming election in this country, as it has in other developed countries. Politicians tell bigger and bigger porkies, each trying to outdo the other. Sadly, it seems the bigger the lie, the more likely there will be a vocal minority that believes and goes on to proselytise it, compounding the divisions, and compounding the erosion of trust and the concept of mutual benefit and accountability. Two weeks ago, a big bloke in a supermarket shopping centre lift very aggressively abused me for being stupid, brainwashed, and ignorant of facts because I was wearing a mask. Had I been a 70-year-old woman instead of a relatively large and fit 70-year-old man, it would have been terrifying.

I really need to finish and get the Barbie lit.

However, before I go, have you seen the photos of the former, as of today, Australian of the year Grace Tame giving the eye to the PM yesterday? I sense that she does not think highly of our dear leader. I suspect that photo, along with the one in which the PM displayed a lump of coal in the parliament, will get a lot of coverage over the next couple of months.

Have a great Australia Day, however you choose to see and celebrate it.

Related posts:

Australia Day, January 26, 2020. Australia Day 2021 Australia Day 2018 New Year’s Day 2021