Today's News - Friday 14 August 2020
Today's News - Friday 14 August 2020
Our Backyard
Australia's unemployment rate has edged up to 7.5 per cent, with almost 115,000 jobs created in July. Unemployment was expected to jump from 7.4 to 7.8 per cent, but only rose to 7.5 per cent.
The creation of an estimated 114,700 additional jobs was almost three times better than the 40,000 expected by most economists.
These ABS figures capture people's working situation for the fortnight of June 28 to July 11, and so do not capture most of Melbourne's stage 3 lockdown, and do not reflect the massive loss of work under the current stage 4 restrictions introduced on August 2.
Wages are growing at their slowest pace in 22 years as the coronavirus impact on the labour market spreads to pay rates.
Wages growth has declined to an annual pace of just 1.8 per cent, from 2.4 per cent in March — the slowest pace since records began in 1997.
Private sector wages have borne the brunt of the wage slowdown.
The latest Westpac-Melbourne Institute consumer sentiment survey fell 9.5 per cent in August, and Westpac's economists said the scale of the fall was a "major surprise."
Businesses have avoided a potential multibillion-dollar wage bill increase, with the High Court overturning a decision that granted shift workers and part-time employees more sick leave.
In the case between the manufacturing union and confectionary maker Cadbury, four High Court judges ruled workers who did 12-hour shifts were not automatically entitled to more sick leave than those who worked more normal 9am to 5pm hours.
The decision means many shift workers will receive fewer than the 10 days legislated in the Fair Work Act but preserves equality between workers on different rosters, with permanent employees accruing sick leave for the hours they work at the same rate.
The Shadow Treasurer, Mr Chalmers, claim that something like two-thirds of the debt was borrowed by the Government before the outbreak of COVID-19.
But Treasurer Josh Frydenberg recently warned Australians that his July budget was going to contain "eye watering numbers around debt and deficit", saying: "The coronavirus has required the Government to spend unprecedented amounts of money to support people in need".
Mr Chalmers appears to be is correct according to ABC News.
When the Coalition came to power in September 2013, gross debt stood at about $280.3 billion.
By the end of January 2020, as Australia began to record its first cases of coronavirus, gross debt was $568.1 billion.
On July 22, 2020, the day before Mr Chalmers made his claim, gross debt stood at $723.4 billion.
The increase in gross debt since the pandemic hit Australia — $155.3 billion — represents 35 per cent of the $443.1 billion of debt borrowed by the Coalition since it came to office.
Nearly a third of people who received the Federal Government's first COVID-19 stimulus payments saved the money, Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data shows.
The one-off $750 payment was made in March to about 6.5 million Australians on government benefits, at a cost of $4.8 billion.
La Trobe University has opened up a second round of voluntary redundancies and Victoria University has revealed a plan to cut up to 190 jobs as the gutting of Victoria’s university workforce continues.
The measures follow the recent departure of 239 La Trobe employees in an earlier redundancy round.
La Trobe has also told staff it plans to cut its total costs by 20 per cent in the next few years, and reduce the range of academic disciplines it teaches in response to huge revenue losses caused by COVID-19.
Queensland's Supreme Court has granted an order prohibiting a planned sit-in protest on Brisbane's Story Bridge this weekend. The demonstration was initially planned for last weekend, but was postponed late Friday while organisers met with authorities to try to negotiate an agreement. State Attorney-General Yvette D'Ath was granted the injunction to ban organisers from attending, citing concerns about coronavirus.
Queensland politicians will have their salaries frozen for four years as almost a quarter of a million people are out of work across the state.
Queensland had the highest unemployment rate in Australia last month, at 8.8 per cent, with 234,800 Queenslanders now unemployed.
Woodside Petroleum has posted a multi-billion-dollar loss as oil and gas prices tanked due to oversupply and weakened global demand amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The West Australian energy giant booked a net loss of $US4.067 billion ($A5.68 billion) for the six months to June 30, predominantly due to impairments that devalued the company’s assets by $US3.92 billion ($A5.46 billion).
“Approximately 80 per cent of the oil and gas properties impairment losses are due to the significant and immediate reduction in oil and natural gas prices assumed up to 2025,” the company said.
Telstra says it its adapting to an ever-changing 2020 with the major telecommunications provider flagging its profit fall was expected.
The country’s largest telco posted a net profit of $1.8 billion for the 12 months ending June 30, a 15.6 per cent decline compared with the 2019 financial year.
The company’s reported earnings before tax and interest was $8.9 billion, a 0.3 per cent decrease on a like-for-like adjusted basis.
Telstra has also issued a final dividend of eight cents per share, bringing its total dividend payout to 16 cents per share.
AMP reported a sea of red on Thursday as operating earnings fell by 43 per cent in AMP's domestic wealth management business, 40 per cent in AMP Capital, 30 per cent in AMP Bank and 18 per cent in its New Zealand wealth management arm.
An IED planted outside a woman’s home in Canterbury, in Sydney’s inner-west was ‘retribution’ for a drug theft, police allege.
Nine men were arrested on Thursday after a special strike force investigation into the incident, in which police allege those involved got the wrong house.
The 55-year-old woman had been sitting in her home on Robert Street about 11:20pm on June 8 this year when she noticed a fire on the front porch.
When she went outside to try and extinguish the fire, an improvised explosive device made of aerosol cans and a highly flammable substance and loaded with firelighters, sparklers, and thumbtacks, detonated.
The Morrison government plans to amend the Defence Act to hand the Prime Minister of the day the power to declare a national emergency or disaster and deploy the Australian Defence Force within Australia.
While states and territories would still need to make a request for ADF support, government sources with knowledge of the potential legislation say the changes will make it easier to deploy the military and clearly set out its roles and responsibilities. This would likely include giving defence personnel greater legal protections in the event they have to help police search a property or detain someone.
Farm and tourism groups are preparing a proposal to put to government to allow backpackers into Australia.
Industries that rely on migrant workers fear a shortage as backpacker numbers fall to about 80,000.
Australia's domestic tourism sector suffered an $11.7 billion hit between April and May, as coronavirus restrictions wreaked havoc on travel and holiday plans.
The brutal impact of COVID-19 measures on the tourism industry has been laid bare in the latest National Visitor Survey data, as more than $7 billion was wiped in April alone as Australians took 9.6 million fewer domestic overnight trips compared to April 2019.
In NSW, domestic tourism spending crashed by $3.5 billion, or 89 per cent, as visitors numbers plunged to 1.4 million across April and May, compared with more than 7 million during the same period in 2019.
Victoria was also hard hit, recording an 83 per cent collapse in visitor numbers over the same period, amounting to a $2.5 billion loss compared with 2019.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/nsw/australian-tourism-suffers-11-7-billion-hit-20200813-p55ljz.html
World News
France will increase its military presence in the eastern Mediterranean, President Emmanuel Macron said on Wednesday, calling on Turkey to halt the oil and gas exploration in disputed waters that has heightened tensions with Greece.
The French leader voiced concern over "unilateral" exploration by Turkey in a call with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, Macron's office said. It added that prospecting should "cease in order to allow a peaceful dialogue" between the neighbouring NATO members.
The stand-off deepened this week with the arrival of Turkish seismic research vessel Oruc Reis in a disputed area of the Mediterranean, accompanied by warships, days after Greece signed a maritime deal with Egypt.
France would "temporarily reinforce" its military presence, Macron's statement said, to "monitor the situation in the region and mark its determination to uphold international law."
The Czech Republic intensified its confrontation with China with a plan to send a 90-strong delegation to Taiwan to meet President Tsai Ing-wen.
Prague Mayor Zdenek Hrib, who ignited outrage in China last year when he cancelled a sister-city agreement between Shanghai and the Czech capital, will accompany Senate leader Milos Vystrcil in a 90-strong delegation to Taiwan starting August 29.
The proposed visit deepens a rift between Beijing and politicians in a NATO and European Union member state that was once seen as the most China-friendly in Europe. That's despite an official stance of the national Czech government that Hrib, Vystrcil and others have veered from.
Listed industrial property juggernaut Goodman has defied the global pandemic, delivering a better than expected profit and is forecasting near double-digit growth as demand for e-commerce accelerates.
Amid the global economic turmoil, Goodman unveiled a $1.06 billion operating profit underpinned by a significant development pipeline for its major tenants, including Amazon in Australia and Alibaba across Asia.
The group now has assets under management of $51.86 billion and said it was expecting to broach $60 billion "easily" within the next year.
Penfolds owner Treasury Wine Estates says the coronavirus pandemic has induced major challenges in the wine market, significantly impacting its main export markets the US and China.
Treasury Wine Estates has a posted a net profit of $315.8 million for the 12 months ending June 30, a 25 per cent decrease on its 2019 financial year result.
The company said the second half of the 2020 financial year was riddled with unfavourable volumes and portfolio mixes as a result of COVID-19, which had reduced the demand for luxury wine sales.
It also noted challenging wine market conditions in the US had also impacted sales within its key wine channels, with overall North American earnings before tax and interest declining by 37 per cent to $147.3 million.
Earnings from Asian exports fell 14 per cent to an EBIT position of $243.7 million, while Australian and New Zealand EBIT declined 16 per cent to $133.3 million.
Appliance company Breville says its revenue during the coronavirus pandemic remained relatively unscathed, with home appliance demand increasing during the new era of working from home.
Breville booked a net profit of 66.2 million for the 12 months ending June 30, a 1.8 per cent decline on the 2019 financial year.
The company said the dip in profit was in line with expectations given the economic backdrop induced by COVID-19.
For the 2020 financial year, Breville’s earnings before tax and interest rose 11 per cent compared with the previous corresponding period to $126.5 million.
Covid-19
New Zealand’s Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters has claimed the new COVID-19 cluster is linked to a breach in the nation’s quarantine system.
Mr Peters added: “I don’t know where this quarantine breach may have happened, but I think you can eliminate it being some new strain of COVID-19 that hitherto my country hadn’t seen.
The Philippines will begin large-scale human testing of Russia’s coronavirus vaccine in October, but President Rodrigo Duterte will not receive the inoculation until regulators guarantee its safety, his spokesman said Thursday.
Duterte had offered himself up as a guinea pig for the very first jab, expressing “huge trust” in the vaccine, despite growing scepticism about its effectiveness.
- Brazil will require more information and talks before it commits to buying the Russian COVID-19 vaccine, which is at a very early stage, the country's acting Health Minister has said.
- New Zealand's first known community outbreak in more than three months has grown to 17 cases and is expected to increase.
- Researchers at Imperial College estimate that 6 per cent of England's population — or 3.4 million people — have been infected by COVID-19, a figure far higher than previous findings. The study, which covers infections through the end of June, found that London had the highest infection rate at 13 per cent.
- Two cities in China have found traces of coronavirus in imported frozen food and on food packaging, local authorities said on Thursday, raising fears that contaminated food shipments might cause new outbreaks.
- Not two months after battling back the coronavirus, Spain's hospitals are beginning to see patients struggling to breathe returning to their wards.
- Indonesia's move to reopen schools in some areas risks creating new clusters of coronavirus cases, with at least 180 students and teachers infected since a new academic year started in July, a teachers' federation says.
- India reported another record jump in its surging coronavirus cases with nearly 67,000 new infections, among them a religious leader who shared a stage with Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a ceremony to launch construction of a grand temple.
Property News
The state government has green-lighted major increases to building heights for an area earmarked as a tech hub near Sydney's Central Station, removing a large hurdle to construction of the headquarters of global software company Atlassian and two other major high rises.
More than six weeks after Atlassian unveiled detailed plans for its 40-storey tower, property companies Dexus and Frasers Property have also released designs for their joint $2.5 billion redevelopment next door.
Their project comprises two office towers of 37 and 39 storeys, which will be linked to a smaller sandstone building below comprising shops, a food hall and work spaces.
Market News
The Australian share market snapped its two-day winning streak to close lower on the back of a weak US lead and another rise in COVID-19 cases and deaths in Victoria.
The S&P/ASX200 closed 0.11 per cent lower at 6132, while the All Ordinaries Index dipped 0.24 per cent to 6257.
The materials sector led the declines after generally softer metals prices overnight, particularly gold, which fell sharply below recent record highs to less than $US2000 an ounce.
Despite the iron ore price nudging 12-month highs of above $US120 a tonne, Rio Tinto dropped 1.35 per cent to $101.40, BHP was down 0.72 per cent to $39.91 and Fortescue Metals shed 1.36 per cent to $18.13.
Three of the big four banks closed higher, with Westpac up 2.31 per cent to $18.19, National Australia Bank adding 2.24 per cent to $18.28 and ANZ gaining 1.95 per cent to $18.85.
But Commonwealth Bank lost 0.48 per cent to $74.34 after reporting an 11.3 per cent fall in full-year cash net profit, which doesn’t include gains from divestments, largely driven by bad debts as a result of the pandemic.
Recruiting group SEEK posted a loss of $111.7 million for the 12 months to June 30, a 162 per cent reversal on the previous financial year, saying the outlook for jobs amid the health crisis remained uncertain. The company’s shares dropped 8.63 per cent to $19.58.
ASX futures are down 3 points, or 0.1 per cent to 6044 at 6.59am AEST
On Wall St: Dow -0.3% S&P 500 -0.2% Nasdaq +0.3%
Spot gold +1.9% to $US1951.61 an ounce
Brent crude -0.8% to $US45.09 a barrel
US oil -0.8% to $US42.35 a barrel
Iron ore -0.1% to $US121.38 a tonne
10-year yield: US 0.72% Australia 0.88% Germany -0.42%
Michael Tran
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