Weekend round-up
New Zealand's All Blacks won a thrilling cliff hanger of a rugby test in South Africa to take the Tri-Nations crown for 2010, adding it to the Bledisloe Cup won a fortnight ago against the Wallabies.
Meantime, over the ditch in Australia, voters hung their politicians of all persuasions out to dry. Nice one, Aussies!
All in a weekend's work, as they say.
Showing posts with label Australia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Australia. Show all posts
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Heritage Battle Across the Pond - Melbourne Flinders St Station Ballroom
According to last week's Sunday Herald Sun, Melbourne's Mayor Robert Doyle "says it's small, difficult to get to and a health and safety nightmare."
We are not sure if he's talking about the City's Flinders St station ballroom that citizens are calling to be restored as a heritage building -- or his brain or other place...
The Herald Sun's article is here and Our Great Southern Land blog's restrained, by Aussie standards, opinion piece is here.
We're always interested here at The New Zealand Journal in the occasional goings-on a bit further west of God's Own.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Swaggies On Shank's Pony - Especially for Jayne
Swaggies on Shank's Pony, Waltzing Matilda
According to Wikipedia - for a quick ref. subject to a second opinion of an expert, "to waltz Matilda" is to travel with a swag.
Shank's pony means to walk on one's own legs. One suggested source for the term is that the horse drawn grass mower of Alexander Shanks and Co of Arbroath, Scotland required the human operator to walk behind horse and mower rather than ride.
Shank's pony means to walk on one's own legs. One suggested source for the term is that the horse drawn grass mower of Alexander Shanks and Co of Arbroath, Scotland required the human operator to walk behind horse and mower rather than ride.
"waited 'til his billy boiled,
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me..."
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me..."
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Reserve Bank Chops OCR Interest Rate by Full 1 Percent
Comparative Central Bank Interest Rates - New Zealand, Australia, United States
Fairfax Media
Reserve Bank Governor, Alan Bollard, has chopped the Official Cash Rate by a full one percent to 6.5 percent in his October review of monetary conditions. It was the single largest cut in the rate since the OCR was introduced in 1999. The OCR is the rate at which the Reserve Bank lends to or borrows from the NZ banking system.
With the increasing impact of the global economic crisis showing up in New Zealand's domestic recession in the form of weakening export demand, the Reserve Bank's hand was forced into a large cut. Market sentiment is that a further 0.75 percent can be expected in the next few months.
Domestically, the weakening of the housing market, tightening credit, a decline in Fonterra's payout to dairy farmers next year, and increasing unemployment are combining to shift the Reserve Bank's concern to offsetting weakening demand from inflation control as price increases are moderating.
Thursday, October 9, 2008
A Day in Infamy in Trans-Tasman Cricket
The low point in trans-Tasman cricketing relations was the infamous underarm bowling incident in the World Series Cup final on 1 February 1981 between Australia and New Zealand.
Australia, dominant in world cricket in modern times, does not always simply allow its superior skill to determine the outcome of a game.
The unsporting final act of underarm bowling the final delivery in the game, though not illegal, was widely regarded as underhanded, even by many Australians including commentator Richie Benaud, a former Australian test player, who makes clear what he thought of the underarm bowling at the end of the video clip below.
New Zealand could only tie the game by hitting a six on that last delivery, so there was no prospect of an Australian loss.
It certainly took a long time for the poor sportsmanship demonstrated by the Chappell brothers on this occasion to be forgotten or forgiven.
Australia, dominant in world cricket in modern times, does not always simply allow its superior skill to determine the outcome of a game.
The unsporting final act of underarm bowling the final delivery in the game, though not illegal, was widely regarded as underhanded, even by many Australians including commentator Richie Benaud, a former Australian test player, who makes clear what he thought of the underarm bowling at the end of the video clip below.
New Zealand could only tie the game by hitting a six on that last delivery, so there was no prospect of an Australian loss.
It certainly took a long time for the poor sportsmanship demonstrated by the Chappell brothers on this occasion to be forgotten or forgiven.
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
New Zealand Needs Deposit Insurance
New Zealand will be the only member country of the OECD area that does not have deposit insurance for bank customers once Australia introduces a scheme it announced in June to guarantee up to A$25,000 of bank deposits.
With European countries such as Germany extending a blanket guarantee to all personal deposits in recent days, the pressure on countries without deposit insurance schemes will mount to introduce some form of guarantee to reduce the risk of capital flight to banking systems where deposits are insured.
In New Zealand's case, the risk is of trans-Tasman capital flight to Australian insured deposits in times of financial instability that could further squeeze the availability of credit in New Zealand's banking system. Such disparities in deposit insurance schemes has seen British funds transferred into guaranteed deposits in Ireland. Moreover, since New Zealand's major banks, referred to as "the trading banks", are Australian-owned, an uneven deposit regime would likely create perverse incentives for the parent companies in relation to their NZ subsidiaries.
Deposit insurance in the United States has prevented runs on banks since the mid 1930s. Recent financial collapses in the US have occurred in those parts of the financial sector outside the FDIC-insured deposit sector. Banks holding insured deposits are subject to greater regulation than the investment banks and others that have become insolvent after trading rashly, and some fraudulently, in off-balance sheet financial derivatives that are poorly regulated.
The US policy error in the early 1980s was to socialise the liabilities (deposits) of savings & loan associations (saving banks) by escalating the amount insured per account but to deregulate or privatise the assets side of their balance sheets. The ensuing mayhem in the casino economy that US policymakers created ended in the savings & loan crisis in the mid to late 1980s.
Many of the current crop of bank failures were among those who scavenged the insolvent thrifts and turned them into peddlers of financial innovations encompassed under the umbrella term financial derivatives. The Federal Reserve under Greenspan helped things along by weakening the application of Glass-Steagall Act controls on asset management of commercial banks put in place to prevent some of the excesses of the Great Depression. Glass-Steagall was ultimately repealed by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in 1999 wherein some of the seeds of the current US financial crisis may be found.
In the US, the solution is to re-regulate asset management. In New Zealand, the Reserve Bank apparently exercises effective prudential supervision of the trading banks, but the solution to minimizing the risk of systemic financial instability likely involves a deposit insurance scheme.
The Reserve Bank and other policymakers are supposedly concerned about the moral hazard problem if deposit insurance were to be introduced - that knowing deposits were guaranteed, bankers would engage in reckless lending activity. First of all, in the New Zealand banking culture, banker behaviour is relatively conservative given the dominance of the trading banks. Second, worrying about moral hazard when the horse has bolted from the global banking stable is not the time, as financier George Soros says, to be concerned about it: the systemic crisis must be dealt with decisively and effectively now to avoid deflation and broad economic collapse.
Finally, New Zealand has a long and undistinguished history of strategy switching when it comes to policy. The economic tsunami of the Great Depression, THE crisis of modern times, precipitated - eventually - a Labour-led welfare state of economic "insulation" - regulation & trade protection - combined with the broad development of social services. In the mid 1980s, a balance of payments and currency crisis unleashed free market reforms and fiscal & monetary austerity not seen since the 1920s. In short, policy development in New Zealand has been all too often ad hoc and reactive in nature to some economic or political crisis. The real challenge of strategy switching is to shift policy regimes when economic times are prosperous, when policy can be developed with reflection and full participation, not in haste, under the gun.
Central banking and financial regulation have been of that nature too. The Reserve Bank was only established in 1934, relatively late in the piece for developed countries, with New Zealand's own currency being issued for the first time in that year. The free market policies of the past twenty-five years combined with the Reserve Bank being charged with the primary responsibility of achieving price stability, have exposed the New Zealand economy to the full winds of the global market economy. In a curious irony, policymakers that have championed free markets ignored the fact that however well the New Zealand economy might perform - and it has continued to be mediocre by international standards - as a small, open economy it would have to respond to whatever policy regimes larger nations might follow.
An obsolete ideology has entrapped the nation in an economic web that exposes it to periodic systemic destabilization of the economy, polity, and society. The lesson learned by Kiwis in the 1930s has been forgotten by those in the early 21st century. Kiwis today are about to be taught the lesson once again because a careful knowledge of history is not something ideologues are known for.
With European countries such as Germany extending a blanket guarantee to all personal deposits in recent days, the pressure on countries without deposit insurance schemes will mount to introduce some form of guarantee to reduce the risk of capital flight to banking systems where deposits are insured.
In New Zealand's case, the risk is of trans-Tasman capital flight to Australian insured deposits in times of financial instability that could further squeeze the availability of credit in New Zealand's banking system. Such disparities in deposit insurance schemes has seen British funds transferred into guaranteed deposits in Ireland. Moreover, since New Zealand's major banks, referred to as "the trading banks", are Australian-owned, an uneven deposit regime would likely create perverse incentives for the parent companies in relation to their NZ subsidiaries.
Deposit insurance in the United States has prevented runs on banks since the mid 1930s. Recent financial collapses in the US have occurred in those parts of the financial sector outside the FDIC-insured deposit sector. Banks holding insured deposits are subject to greater regulation than the investment banks and others that have become insolvent after trading rashly, and some fraudulently, in off-balance sheet financial derivatives that are poorly regulated.
The US policy error in the early 1980s was to socialise the liabilities (deposits) of savings & loan associations (saving banks) by escalating the amount insured per account but to deregulate or privatise the assets side of their balance sheets. The ensuing mayhem in the casino economy that US policymakers created ended in the savings & loan crisis in the mid to late 1980s.
Many of the current crop of bank failures were among those who scavenged the insolvent thrifts and turned them into peddlers of financial innovations encompassed under the umbrella term financial derivatives. The Federal Reserve under Greenspan helped things along by weakening the application of Glass-Steagall Act controls on asset management of commercial banks put in place to prevent some of the excesses of the Great Depression. Glass-Steagall was ultimately repealed by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in 1999 wherein some of the seeds of the current US financial crisis may be found.
In the US, the solution is to re-regulate asset management. In New Zealand, the Reserve Bank apparently exercises effective prudential supervision of the trading banks, but the solution to minimizing the risk of systemic financial instability likely involves a deposit insurance scheme.
The Reserve Bank and other policymakers are supposedly concerned about the moral hazard problem if deposit insurance were to be introduced - that knowing deposits were guaranteed, bankers would engage in reckless lending activity. First of all, in the New Zealand banking culture, banker behaviour is relatively conservative given the dominance of the trading banks. Second, worrying about moral hazard when the horse has bolted from the global banking stable is not the time, as financier George Soros says, to be concerned about it: the systemic crisis must be dealt with decisively and effectively now to avoid deflation and broad economic collapse.
Finally, New Zealand has a long and undistinguished history of strategy switching when it comes to policy. The economic tsunami of the Great Depression, THE crisis of modern times, precipitated - eventually - a Labour-led welfare state of economic "insulation" - regulation & trade protection - combined with the broad development of social services. In the mid 1980s, a balance of payments and currency crisis unleashed free market reforms and fiscal & monetary austerity not seen since the 1920s. In short, policy development in New Zealand has been all too often ad hoc and reactive in nature to some economic or political crisis. The real challenge of strategy switching is to shift policy regimes when economic times are prosperous, when policy can be developed with reflection and full participation, not in haste, under the gun.
Central banking and financial regulation have been of that nature too. The Reserve Bank was only established in 1934, relatively late in the piece for developed countries, with New Zealand's own currency being issued for the first time in that year. The free market policies of the past twenty-five years combined with the Reserve Bank being charged with the primary responsibility of achieving price stability, have exposed the New Zealand economy to the full winds of the global market economy. In a curious irony, policymakers that have championed free markets ignored the fact that however well the New Zealand economy might perform - and it has continued to be mediocre by international standards - as a small, open economy it would have to respond to whatever policy regimes larger nations might follow.
An obsolete ideology has entrapped the nation in an economic web that exposes it to periodic systemic destabilization of the economy, polity, and society. The lesson learned by Kiwis in the 1930s has been forgotten by those in the early 21st century. Kiwis today are about to be taught the lesson once again because a careful knowledge of history is not something ideologues are known for.
Reserve Bank of Australia Slashes Interest Rates
The Reserve Bank of Australia cut its official cash rate a full percentage point to 6.0 percent overnight in response to tightening domestic credit conditions and stock market volatility brought on by the global financial crisis. It was the RBA's largest cut since 1992 and stunned financial markets because of the abrupt U-turn in Australian monetary policy.
Reflecting tight credit conditions, Australia's major banks only passed on 80 basis points (0.8 of the 1 percent cut) to their variable home loan rates.
Australia's OCR cut comes later than the two in New Zealand in recent months, but the Australian cut will intensify pressure on the Reserve Bank of New Zealand to cut its OCR further.
Reflecting tight credit conditions, Australia's major banks only passed on 80 basis points (0.8 of the 1 percent cut) to their variable home loan rates.
Australia's OCR cut comes later than the two in New Zealand in recent months, but the Australian cut will intensify pressure on the Reserve Bank of New Zealand to cut its OCR further.
Monday, October 6, 2008
General Election - Voter Participation in New Zealand
With the enrollment deadline approaching this Wednesday, 93 percent of eligible voters are enrolled for New Zealand's General Election on 8 November.
In the 2005 election, voter participation was 81 percent of all those enrolled, with 82 percent participation in the general electorates and 67 percent in Maori electorates.
Voter participation in the 2002 and 2005 elections was sharply down from the average 90.3 percent in the period between 1946 and 1999 and may indicate a greater malaise in the New Zealand electorate.
By comparison, voter turnout in US Federal elections averages only 50-55 percent of eligible voters. Compulsory voting has been required in Australia since 1924 resulting in voter turnout averaging 95 percent of eligible voters in modern national elections.
In the 2005 election, voter participation was 81 percent of all those enrolled, with 82 percent participation in the general electorates and 67 percent in Maori electorates.
By comparison, voter turnout in US Federal elections averages only 50-55 percent of eligible voters. Compulsory voting has been required in Australia since 1924 resulting in voter turnout averaging 95 percent of eligible voters in modern national elections.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Kiwis Take Flight across Tasman to Oz
A net outflow of 33,000 Kiwis to Australia was recorded in the year ending August, a 19 year high, according to Statistics New Zealand. Kiwis are reported to be finding their wings and taking flight to the west because of higher wages and a higher standard of living in the land of Oz.
While 86 % of those leaving are under the age of 45, the majority are younger than 30.
In true ANZAC spirit, both countries are better off. As the late Sir Robert Muldoon, NZ Prime Minister in the late 1970s, quipped: "Kiwis migrating to Australia raised the average IQ in both countries".
Muldoon's government did its level best to mis-manage the economy in those years, helping to precipitate an exodus then. Kiwi voters on both sides of the Tasman gave him the toss in his equally famous mis-timed snap election of 1984.
His refusal to roll back a 40% sales tax on music sales because pop music wasn't "culture" prompted the following response below from NZ band, The Knobz:
While 86 % of those leaving are under the age of 45, the majority are younger than 30.
In true ANZAC spirit, both countries are better off. As the late Sir Robert Muldoon, NZ Prime Minister in the late 1970s, quipped: "Kiwis migrating to Australia raised the average IQ in both countries".
Muldoon's government did its level best to mis-manage the economy in those years, helping to precipitate an exodus then. Kiwi voters on both sides of the Tasman gave him the toss in his equally famous mis-timed snap election of 1984.
His refusal to roll back a 40% sales tax on music sales because pop music wasn't "culture" prompted the following response below from NZ band, The Knobz:
Saturday, September 13, 2008
All Blacks Triumphant - ABs 28 - Wallabies 24
The All Blacks stared down the barrel of a gun in their final & decisive test with the Wallabies in Brisbane for the Bledisoe Cup & Tri-Nations trophy. In a close, hard fought game, the All Blacks ultimately triumphed with a 21 point run that the Wallabies could not answer in much of the second half, after the Australians had led 17-7 early in the second half.
The All Blacks carry away all the silverware of the Southern Hemisphere rugby championships for 2008, the Bledisoe Cup having been locked away for a fifth consecutive year. As for the Tri-Nations title, the ABs have 4 consecutive titles and have won 6 out of the last 7. Although the Springboks may be World Cup champions, there can be no doubt who is the Southern Hemisphere champ.
The All Blacks carry away all the silverware of the Southern Hemisphere rugby championships for 2008, the Bledisoe Cup having been locked away for a fifth consecutive year. As for the Tri-Nations title, the ABs have 4 consecutive titles and have won 6 out of the last 7. Although the Springboks may be World Cup champions, there can be no doubt who is the Southern Hemisphere champ.
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