April 2020
ABC 730's Turnbull book infomercial tanks in ratings - comprehensively beaten by Lego competition
Tuesday, 21 April 2020
Malcolm Turnbull's much-hyped interview on ABC's 7.30 television program about his divisive memoir failed to crack the 1 million audience barrier.
The former prime minister’s lengthy interview about his book, A Bigger Picture, with 7.30 host Leigh Sales was watched by 940,000 metropolitan viewers on Monday night, ranking eighth on the TV ratings table.
The interview trailed behind the evening news programs on the Seven and Nine commercial TV networks, plus a Lego-building competition show.
Seven and Nine’s one-hour evening news continue to dominate TV viewing, as the public tune-in for the latest on COVID-19 and most recently the demise of the nation’s second biggest airline, Virgin Australia.
Seven's 6pm news program topped the TV ratings table once again, with nearly 1.27m metropolitan viewers on Monday night. The second-part of its one-hour evening news program boasted an audience of just over 1.2m viewers, according to the latest available TV ratings figures from OzTam.
Nine's 6pm news came third with 1.2m viewers, with the second-half hour slipping to nearly 1.14 viewers.
Rounding off the top five TV programs was the second episode of Nine's popular Lego-building competition show, Lego Masters, with just over 1m metro viewers. It was also the most popular entertainment program.
Great Trump ad sums up Nancy Pelosi and the Dems perfectly
Tuesday, 21 April 2020
Americans are losing their jobs since the virus rocked the economy.
— Brad Parscale - Text TRUMP to 88022 (@parscale) April 20, 2020
Nancy Pelosi blocks funding for people to keep getting paychecks.
But she’s got a $24K fridge full of ice cream, so she’s cool.
“𝑳𝒆𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒎 𝒆𝒂𝒕 𝒊𝒄𝒆 𝒄𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒎.”
- 𝑵𝒂𝒏𝒄𝒚 𝑨𝒏𝒕𝒐𝒊𝒏𝒆𝒕𝒕𝒆 pic.twitter.com/6KDurMFJDD
US oil price drops below zero for the first time in history - can't give it away
Tuesday, 21 April 2020
US oil prices crashed into negative territory for the first time in history as the evaporation of demand caused by the coronavirus pandemic left the world awash with oil and not enough storage capacity — meaning producers are paying buyers to take it off their hands.
West Texas Intermediate, the US benchmark, traded as low as -$40.32 a barrel in a day of chaos in oil markets. The settlement price on Monday was -$37.63, compared to $18.27 on Friday.
Traders capitulated in the face of limited access to storage capacity across the US, including the country’s main delivery point of Cushing, Oklahoma.
After the price drop, Mr Trump reiterated plans for the US to open the federally-controlled strategic petroleum reserve to store excess oil that cannot find a home in commercial storage facilities. Congress refused to fund federal purchases of crude oil when the White House first proposed the idea several weeks ago, but the Department of Energy has also considered the possibility of leasing capacity to producers.
“We're filling up our national petroleum reserves, the strategic reserves, and we're looking to put as much as 75m barrels into the reserves themselves that would top it out,” Mr Trump said at his daily news conference. “We're going to either ask for permission to buy it, or we'll store it, one way or the other, it will be full.”
Line chart of West Texas Intermediate showing US oil trades in negative territory for the first time The shale sector has transformed the US into the world’s largest oil producer in the past decade, giving the president a foreign policy tool he has brandished as “US energy dominance”, but which now faces a rapid decline.
Negative prices are the latest indication of the depth of the crisis hitting the oil sector after lockdowns imposed in many of the world’s major economies have sent crude demand tumbling by as much as a third, leaving the industry facing what Jefferies analyst Jason Gammel called “the bleakest oil macro outlook” he had ever seen. Not all oil contracts are trading in negative territory. Brent, the international benchmark, lost 8.9 per cent on Monday to fall to $25.57 a barrel, but is less immediately afflicted by storage issues.
Too much oil, with nowhere to put it Kit Juckes, Société Générale Brent is a seaborne crude allowing traders to easily ship it to areas of higher demand. Amrita Sen at Energy Aspects said: “With Brent you can put it on ships and move it around the world immediately. Storage tanks at Cushing, however, will be full in May.” WTI contracts for delivery in June lost 14.7 per cent but held above $20 a barrel, though traders warned it could face further losses. Both benchmarks traded above $65 a barrel as recently as January.
Stephen Schork, editor of oil-market newsletter The Schork Report, said he expected access to storage capacity in the US to be exhausted within two weeks — and cautioned that the collapse of the country’s oil consumption was accelerating. “It just gets uglier from here,” Mr Schork said, adding that sharply rising unemployment numbers meant fewer and fewer Americans would be driving, hurting petrol demand even during its peak summer months. “This summer is dead on arrival. The biggest demand months are not going to happen,” he said.
Just 13 new Australian ChiCom Coronavirus cases in the 24 hours to 6AM today
Tuesday, 21 April 2020
As at 6:00am on 21 April 2020, there have been 6,625 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Australia. There have been 13 new cases since 6:00am yesterday.
Sick today
Monday, 20 April 2020
Barnaby once again just says what regular people are thinking
Sunday, 19 April 2020
Splits have emerged within the Federal Coalition over the COVID-19 tracking app. @Barnaby_Joyce has told 7NEWS he won't download the app saying not only is it an invasion of privacy, he doesn't trust his own Government with his data. https://t.co/MlW1GFkZNa @Riley7News #7NEWS pic.twitter.com/UL2hdmgL5z
— 7NEWS Sydney (@7NewsSydney) April 19, 2020
ABC Canberra bubble - when the most important national story is who leaked a copy of Turnbull's book
Sunday, 19 April 2020
INSIDERS EX ABC @ 09:38:43 - “I understand that, I have not been responsible for disseminating any” (46)
INSIDERS EX ABC @ 09:38:46 - SPEERS: “But you've received one? (47) PAYNE: “I've received and deleted and I would encourage anyone who has received to do the same thing” (53)
INSIDERS EX ABC @ 09:38:54 - SPEERS: “Did it come from the Prime Minister's Office? This is the suggestion from the publisher?” (58) PAYNE: “Absolutely not” - SPEERS: “Ok, who did it come from?” (00) David I've received and deleted, that's the most important thing” (03)
INSIDERS EX ABC @ 09:39:04 - SPEERS: “You won't tell us who it came from?” PAYNE: “Received and deleted, David” (08) I’ll take that as a no answer (09) long pause (12) SPEERS: “I think we will” (13)
Good Sunday arvo viewing!
Sunday, 19 April 2020
Thanks to the many readers who've sent us links to this video.
I hope you find it worthwhile too.
Turnbull's version of Downer, Russia and Trump
Sunday, 19 April 2020
Extract from "A Bigger Picture", Malcolm Turnbull.
Trump was shaking up everyone else, but by the end of 2017 I felt we had reached a good and stable understanding – he was beating up America’s allies around the world, but seemed to be leaving us alone. And then The New York Times rang our embassy in Washington: they had a question about our high commissioner in London, and former Foreign minister, Alexander Downer, and how he had set off the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) inquiry into the Trump campaign’s alleged links with Russia.
It all went back to 10 May 2016 when Downer had a few gin and tonics with George Papadopoulos, an American businessman who was working on the Trump campaign as a foreign policy adviser. Amid a wide-ranging chat about Trump’s likely foreign policy, Papadopoulos told Downer that the Russians had indicated they would prefer Trump to win, rather than Clinton, and were prepared to assist him, including by anonymously releasing information during the campaign damaging to Hillary.
Alexander duly reported on this a few days later by cable to Canberra. It wasn’t brought to my attention and as far as I can recall no action was taken on it. Trump was endorsed as the Republican candidate on 19 July, and that prompted Alexander to call on the US chargé d’affaires (standing in for their ambassador) and tell him all about the Papadopoulos discussion.
He had no authority from Canberra to do this, and the first we heard of it in Australia was when the FBI turned up in London and wanted to interview Downer. We were very reluctant to get dragged into the middle of the US presidential election, but agreed to Downer being interviewed on the basis it
was kept confidential and any information he provided was not circulated beyond the FBI.
That all went well until December the following year, by which time Trump had been president for nearly 12 months, and The New York Times called.
Hockey did a good job trying to hose it down and ensure that Trump did not conclude Downer’s action had been officially authorised or, as Papadopoulos later argued, was part of some kind of anti-Trump conspiracy. Fortunately sanity and the facts prevailed, but it provided an interesting frisson to our meetings at the White House in February 2018, the first one since Manila in November 2017.
Together with Lucy, I travelled to Washington and we were warmly received at the White House by Donald and Melania. The meetings went well; even the joint press conference proceeded without incident.
I didn’t revisit the steel tariff issue in depth because I didn’t want to give him an opportunity to change his mind, so simply noted that we appreciated his commitment that we’d be exempt, holding my breath that he wouldn’t disavow the commitment in Hamburg. He didn’t, instead reminiscing fondly about Colorbond, and once we moved on from trade to regional security, we were pretty much in agreement on most issues.
Back in Australia, a week later, we learned that Trump was about to make his decision on steel tariffs. So I called him again on 10 March.
We covered a lot of ground: regional security, China and North Korea as well as my concerns about how the United States and its allies had lost – and should work together to regain – leadership in wireless technology and especially 5G.
But my focus remained persuading him from imposing tariffs on our steel or aluminium. So I went through the big surpluses America had with Australia and how their trade deal with Australia should be their ideal.
I sensed, as I had before, that he didn’t want to get pinned down to make a commitment, but I pressed on.
‘Donald,’ I said, ‘you can use Australia as an argument because you can say we have a level playing field, we have a surplus, so we aren’t going to impose steel tariffs.’ He could, I argued, say to other countries, ‘If you want to have no tariffs, give us a level playing field like the Australians do. Fair and reciprocal trade.’
Trump liked the term ‘fair and reciprocal’ a lot. That was very promising; that was a better theme for his trade policy than the American ‘might is right’ message, which might go down well in the Midwest but was so corrosive of American goodwill everywhere else in the world.
So in hands-on chief executive style, he started dictating a tweet, with me commenting on it as he went. How many years had we been an ally? Two hundred? ‘No, just one hundred to 4 July this year,’ I said. And at one point we nearly had ‘the great state of Australia’ in the message – ‘Perhaps nation,’ I suggested.
It was a practical and good-humoured collaboration. We even compared our Twitter followers (he had 158 million, I had only one), and finally settled on a very plain announcement saying that because of our fair and reciprocal military and trading relationship, the US would not impose steel or aluminium tariffs on the great nation of Australia.
And aluminium only just made it. I was so fixated on steel, it was only at the last moment I reminded him to include aluminium. No problems, steel and aluminium it was.
Trump’s tweet, when it came out, was slightly different: ‘Spoke to PM @TurnbullMalcolm of Australia. He is committed to having a very fair and reciprocal military and trade relationship. Working very quickly on a security agreement so we don’t have to impose steel or aluminum tariffs on our ally, the great nation of Australia!’
We were taken aback by the reference to a security agreement – it hadn’t been mentioned in the call with Trump – but we were assured both directly and via our embassy that this was inserted by the White House lawyers, and that it didn’t detract from the president’s unequivocal commitment.