The post NBN Vision appeared first on Bridge Street Journal.

Grim times ahead if wages don’t pick up was the message delievered by the RBA Chief, a bleak future awaits if wages continue to increase at record low levels.

This article titled “Australia’s bank chief warns low wages growth will hurt economy” was written by Gareth Hutchens, for theguardian.com on Wednesday 13th June 2018 07.31 UTC

Australia could become mired in a low-wage, low-inflation environment if incomes keep growing at near record-low levels, the Reserve Bank governor has warned.

In a speech that will dampen expectations of strong wages growth in coming years, RBA governor Philip Lowe said he was still trying to figure out why countries such as Australia were not experiencing the traditional increase in wages growth in response to tightening labour markets.

He said he still believed wages could eventually start growing at an annual rate of 3% again, rather than the current low of 2%, but it will be a process that could take years.

“We are still trying to understand fully why things look different in so many countries and how persistent it will be,” he told the Australian Industry Group on Wednesday.

• Sign up to receive the top stories in Australia every day at noon

“Part of the story is likely to be changes in the bargaining power of workers and an increase in the supply of workers as the global economy becomes more integrated.

“But another important part of the story lies in the nature of recent technological progress … the benefits of new technologies are accruing unevenly across the community.”

In April, Lowe had told a business audience in Western Australia that the economy’s painful run of record low wages growth may have finally troughed, and that wages could be expected to grow more quickly from this point.

But on Wednesday he cautioned that the process could take time.

He said persistently slow wages growth was contributing to persistently weak inflation, and if wages growth remained near its current rate for an “extended period”, the rate of inflation could fail to average at the midpoint of the RBA’s target in coming year.

“Wages growth of 2% and reasonable labour productivity growth are unlikely to make for 2.5% inflation on a sustained basis,” he said.

“Some pick-up in wages growth would be a welcome development. It would help deliver a rate of inflation consistent with the target, it would help with the debt situation and it would add to our sense of shared prosperity.

“[But] this pick-up is expected to be only gradual given both the spare capacity that still exists in our labour market and the structural factors at work,” he said.

Given the difficult task of fully understanding current wage dynamics, Lowe said Australia needed to focus on lifting education and research levels, and improving worker-related training, because that was historically a way to boost productivity.

“Ultimately, the basis for sustained growth in real wages is that we become more productive as a nation,” he said.

“The recent productivity data are difficult to interpret. Despite a positive outcome in the most recent quarter, there has been no net increase in measured labour productivity over the past two years.”

Lowe said the design of the tax system, the provision and pricing of infrastructure, and Australian business culture around innovation were also important elements in the productivity debate.

“We need to keep all these areas on the radars of both government and business if we are to build on the current prosperity that we currently enjoy,” he said.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.

The post Hurt Economy appeared first on Bridge Street Journal.

This article titled “Microsoft is buying code-sharing site GitHub for $7.5bn” was written by Alex Hern, for The Guardian on Monday 4th June 2018 11.56 UTC

Microsoft is buying the code-sharing site GitHub, a developer-focused startup that has become a crucial part of the programming industry, for $7.5bn

The acquisition shows Microsoft further cementing its role as a company built around tools for developers, part of a pivot away from its flagship Windows operating system started by its chief executive, Satya Nadella, four years ago.

“That is why we are so excited about today’s announcement,” Nadella wrote in a blogpost announcing the acquisition. “More than 28 million developers already collaborate on GitHub, and it is home to more than 85 million code repositories used by people in nearly every country. From the largest corporations to the smallest startups, GitHub is the destination for developers to learn, share and work together to create software. It’s a destination for Microsoft too. We are the most active organisation on GitHub, with more than 2 million ‘commits,’ or updates, made to projects.”

The vast majority of GitHub’s users access the site for free, with the trade-off being that the code they share must remain public. Users can pay for private accounts, while larger companies can pay more for the ability to host GitHub’s platform on their own private servers. The paid-for features reportedly bring in around $200m in annual revenue.

Following the acquisition, GitHub will continue to operate independently and will remain an open platform, Microsoft said. The company committed to continuing to allow to use the programming languages, tools and operating systems of their choice for their projects, and to be able to deploy their code to any operating system, any cloud and any device.

“The enterprise offering will fold nicely into Microsoft’s other businesses,” the analyst Ben Thompson of Stratechery wrote “but … the real win for Microsoft is not incremental peanuts in enterprise revenue but winning hearts and minds with developers broadly.

“In other words, not only should sceptics not be worried about Microsoft unduly favouring their own platforms, they should also be excited that, more than any other potential acquirer, Microsoft is likely to push the individual and community aspects that make GitHub so unique.”

GitHub’s ubiquity has led to some unconventional uses. GreatFire, the activist campaign that works to disseminate information blocked by Chinese web censors, uses GitHub as a distribution platform, ensuring that China cannot block the material without also severely harming its domestic technology industry. The government tried, in 2013, but lifted the ban five days later after an outcry from Chinese coders.

In recent years, GitHub’s popularity as a platform has disguised problems within the business. It has been without a chief executive for almost a year and its revenues have been outpaced by its expenditure, with net losses in the tens of millions. As part of the deal, Nat Friedman, former chief executive of Xamarin, a software firm acquired by Microsoft in 2016, will take over as chief executive.

Microsoft, for its part, has slowly been repositioning itself from being focused on the Windows operating system to a broader suite of developer-focused services, including its Azure cloud platform – the largest competitor to Amazon Web Services – and the Cortana AI suite.

In March, the chief executive, Nadella, finished the reorganisation, axing the Windows division entirely and splitting its responsibilities between a consumer-focused group, led by a former Microsoft Office head, and a developer-focused one, led by the company’s cloud and enterprise chief.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.

The post GitHub for $7.5bn appeared first on Bridge Street Journal.

This article titled “Elon Musk: as business fortunes dip, he starts a war with the media” was written by Rory Carroll in Los Angeles, for The Guardian on Monday 4th June 2018 05.20 UTC

Once upon a time Elon Musk was our era’s real-life Tony Stark, a billionaire Iron Man streaking across the sky with technology to save the planet and take us to Mars.

Reusable rockets, electric cars, solar power, he did them all, taking time out to advise Robert Downey Jr on how to play the Marvel superhero on a trajectory seemingly forever up, up, up.

Now Musk, 46, is literally and figuratively in a long, dark hole.

He is tunneling beneath Los Angeles to create a prototype underground transit network which, he says, can save the city from traffic congestion.

A noble goal. But a recently released video of the tunnel plus a map of potential lines coincided with a dark turn in Musk’s fortunes and reputation, creating the impression of a man in a labyrinth of his own making.

His car company Tesla is hemorrhaging money and credibility. Unhappy shareholders want to dump three directors, including Musk’s brother Kimbal, from the board. Lawsuits tangle his clean energy company SolarCity.

The entrepreneur has responded to negative headlines by lashing out at the news media and individual journalists.

“Holier-than-thou hypocrisy of big media companies who lay claim to the truth but publish only enough to sugarcoat the lie, is why the public no longer respects them,” he tweeted last week, ire stoked by a damning report about Tesla factory safety.

Musk followed up by calling journalists sanctimonious twisters of facts beholden to advertisers – and proposed a remedy.

“Going to create a site where the public can rate the core truth of any article & track the credibility score over time of each journalist, editor & publication. Thinking of calling it Pravda.”

For some of his online supporters – he has 21.9 million Twitter followers – this was a call to arms. They piled on journalists with abuse and threats.

For Musk skeptics it was further evidence of his burrowing into ethical murk. Instead of Iron Man here was Gollum, erratic and vengeful, scrabbling with trolls.

“Going after the free press because they’ve been critical of your company is not how a CEO, visionary or even an adult reacts to criticism and it has real-world consequences,” Roberto Baldwin wrote in the technology blog network Engadget.

Other outlets have weighed in, excoriating Musk as a thin-skinned bully who wouldn’t recognise journalistic independence if it rode a blazing meteorite over California. “The Donald Trump of Silicon Valley,” declared the New York Times.

The bold champion of clean energy and space travel now locked in battle with the same media which once feted him as a visionary. How did it come to this?

One possible answer: Tesla has skidded into trouble and Musk is blaming the messenger in apparent hope of soothing skittish investors and potential investors.

A year ago Wall Street was toasting the company. Its market value surpassed that of Ford and General Motors thanks to sales of the battery-powered Model S sedan, a pioneering autopilot system and the promise that a $35,000 economy version of the Model 3 would soon roll off assembly lines, turning Tesla into a mass market auto-maker.

Breaking into a market of gasoline-focused giants to make stylish, emissions-free cars adored by customers was a remarkable feat. Few others had dared, let alone succeeded. Musk’s public presentations inspired an evangelical vibe among cheering audiences.

Then came setbacks. Tesla recalled 126,000 Model S cars to fix bolts. Crashes raised troubling questions about autopilot systems. “Production hell” – Musk’s words – plagued the Model 3. The long-promised economy version has yet to emerge, undermining Tesla’s claim to be a mass market player.

The company reported record losses and burnt through $750m in cash in the last quarter. Its stock, credit rating and valuation plunged amid speculation about bankruptcy. Tesla will likely need a big cash infusion to survive.

“More bad press for Elon: the car Elon Musk launched into orbit has fallen back down to Earth and crushed Malala Yousafzai,” blared a headline this week. This time it really was fake news – a satirical article from ClickHole, a spinoff from the Onion.

“Hell of a week,” he tweeted. The Pakistani human rights advocate ran with the joke and tweeted that she was keeping the car. “Finders keepers,” he responded.

It was a fleeting, lighthearted interlude in his toxic response to genuine bad news, a mix of scorn and conspiracy theory aimed at delegitimising reports of Tesla woes.

“Anytime anyone criticizes the media, the media shrieks ‘You’re just like Trump!’” he tweeted. “Why do you think he got elected in the first place? Because no one believes you any more. You lost your credibility a long time ago.

“Problem is journos are under constant pressure to get max clicks & earn advertising dollars or get fired. Tricky situation, as Tesla doesn’t advertise, but fossil fuel companies & gas/diesel car companies are among world’s biggest advertisers.”

His followers have followed up with invective against individual reporters, especially female ones, a misogynistic streak detailed in a Daily Beast article. “It is as though they’ve invested their own identity as males into Elon and his work,” said Shannon Stirone, a science writer.

When not gaslighting online, Musk’s fans can unwind by using handheld flamethrowers: his tunnel company, Boring, sold 20,000 at $500 each. A good investment for the impending zombie apocalypse, said Musk.

Amid the tide of criticism it is easy to overlook Musk’s achievements, and some nuance.

The South Africa-born boy who designed and sold a video game, Blastar, by the age of 12, is self-made. He studied economics and physics and minted a fortune at PayPal before upending space exploration with audacious innovation.

He sets impossible targets, for example in fuel efficiency, said one SpaceX engineer, on condition of anonymity. “We tell him it can’t be done, then spend months working around the clock and deliver maybe half the target, which is amazing, but we’re almost apologetic.”

SpaceX set a new milestone in February by launching the Falcon Heavy, the first time a private company has sent such a powerful rocket into space, paving the way for even bigger rockets to potentially carry humans to Mars. “It’d be pretty cool to die on Mars, just not on impact,” Musk once joked to the Guardian. (His representatives declined an interview request for this article.)

Unlike most CEOs, Musk engages with customers and journalists, albeit mostly via Twitter.

He has told his more trollish supporters to cool it. “At risk of stating the extremely obvious, I am against threats of violence & abusive epithets in any forum. Please do not use them in my name or at all.”

The media sometimes misses or chooses to miss his humour. Naming his putative journalism credibility rating site Pravda may not be hilarious but is hardly an attempt to recreate the Soviet propaganda mouthpiece. And yes, many journos are under pressure to get max clicks and earn advertising dollars.

The reason Iron Man fell to Earth, however, is that reality overtook the hype. He dazzled investors with an image of mass produced Teslas which so far remains a mirage. Maybe Musk can yet make it real – the jury is out.

Blasting the media is a tantrum or smokescreen, perhaps both. Either way it is straight from the Trump playbook, though in this case the media are not lying, hypocritical liberal ideologues but lying, hypocritical shills for Tesla’s fossil fuel rivals.

That narrative may play out underground too if the media keep reporting skepticism about Musk’s vision of a Los Angeles labyrinth, with some calling it a plutocrat’s fantasy, others a boondoggle.

A recent public presentation hosted by Musk was tightly controlled – no TV cameras, entry by reservation, pre-approved questions – and packed with a cheering crowd. The last question: “Will you organize a big party before the tunnel launch?”

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.

The post Elon’s War appeared first on Bridge Street Journal.

Australia needs to reset the relationship with China and stay cool

Tony Walker, La Trobe University

Let’s call it the “China syndrome”. This describes a condition that is a bit compulsive and not always rational.

Australia’s response to China’s continuing rise mixes anxiety, even a touch of paranoia, with anticipation of the riches that derive from the sale of vast quantities of commodities.

Economic dependence on China is two-edged and potentially policy-distorting.

To put this in perspective: Australian exports of goods and services to China in 2016-17 were worth $110.4 billion. That accounts for nearly 30% of total exports. This compares with $20.8 billion for the US, or 5.16% of total exports. The EU (including the United Kingdom) accounted for $30.5 billion, or 9.8%.

In other words, nearly one-third of Australian goods and services trade is hinged to the China market. Putting it mildly, such a level of dependence on a single market is not ideal.

Read more:
Megaphone diplomacy is good for selling papers, but harmful for Australia-China relations

No other country, relatively speaking, has benefited to quite the same extent from China’s extraordinary development since it began opening for business to the outside world after the Third Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee of 1978 of the Chinese Communist Party (CCCP).

In 2017, Australia registered the longest uninterrupted stretch of economic growth in modern history. This surpassed previous record holder the Netherlands with 103 uninterrupted quarters.

That expansion continues. Australia’s commodities exports, driven by Chinese demand, sustain unparalleled growth.

This is the context in which Australia might do a better job managing relations with its cornerstone trading partner and, arguably, its most important bilateral relationship.

This latter observation requires a leap beyond assumptions that security ties with the US mean there is no relationship more critical to Australia’s wellbeing.

That is changing fast as China’s economic might continues to expand and its ability to project military power in the Asia-Pacific grows in leaps and bounds.

None of this is to say that Australia’s security arrangements with the US versus China’s rise represent a zero-sum game. You could argue that security ties to the US have become more important as a consequence. It is simply to acknowledge the world has changed. It is sprinting ahead of the ability of policymakers to keep up.

Take the 2017 Foreign Policy White Paper, for example. Formulated over the period 2016-2017, the paper asserted the need for Australia to bolster its relationship with the US to take account of China’s rise.

On the other hand, and unavoidably, it acknowledged that the Asia Pacific is no longer uncontested space.

As the paper puts it:

Powerful drivers are converging in a way that is reshaping the international order and challenging Australia’s interests. The United States has been the dominant power in our region throughout Australia’s post-second world history. China is challenging America’s position.

Those “powerful drivers” have become more powerful since publication of the white paper.

At the same time, Australian policy towards Beijing has become more ragged, driven by worries about the impetus of China’s rise, concerns about America as a reliable ally under an “America First” Trump administration, and fears about Chinese influence in Australia itself.

Unfortunately, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s response to the latter became enmeshed in domestic politics, leaving the impression the new laws to forestall foreign interference in Australian democratic processes were aimed at China alone.

Between December 7 and 9, 2017, Turnbull said on three separate occasions Australia had “stood up” against outside attempts to interfere in its internal affairs. This was a pointed and, as it turned out, unwise use of the phrase.

On the last occasion, he said it in Chinese, adding offence to Beijing where such phraseology – “the Chinese people have stood up” – has sacred meaning in Chinese Communist Party history. This was the expression Mao Zedong used when proclaiming the People’s Republic in 1949, after decades of foreign interference, including the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Chinese at the hands of the Japanese.

Turnbull’s intervention raises questions about the quality of China policy advice from his own office.

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop had, in any case, irritated Beijing in a speech delivered in Singapore in March, 2017, in which she questioned China’s political model.

While non-democracies such as China can thrive while participating in the present system, an essential pillar of our preferred order is democratic community.

Bishop might have phrased her remarks aimed at “non-democracies such as China” more judiciously, while conveying a similar message.

What is lacking in Australia’s approach to its relationship with China is consistency, so the government speaks with one voice and, where possible, separates domestic politics from the conduct of China policy.

Beijing values consistency. It may not like forthrightness in defence of Australia’s legitimate interests in maintaining its own sovereignty and its own security, but it respects firmness.

Canberra should not shy away from articulating its concerns about China’s continued militarisation of facilities in the South China Sea. It should be on guard in withstanding Chinese efforts to interfere in domestic politics.

Policymakers should bear in mind a simple rule of thumb in dealing with China. It will seek to get away with what it can. That includes bullying and bluster.

Peter Drysdale, emeritus professor of economics at the Australian National University and author of a study of the Australian-Chinese economic relationship, told me the government needs to assert its “control of the China agenda”. This has been pushed off course in the recent past.

Drysdale perceives a “structural problems” embedded in the Australia-China relationship arising from “accelerated complications” in US-China relations. At the same time, Washington’s security establishment is pushing an alarmist viewpoint about China’s regional ambitions.

No reasonable observer pretends China’s impulses are benign. The question is how to manage, in a way that is not counter-productive, China’s attempts to spread its influence.

In Drysdale’s view, the greatest risk for Australia is that an erratic Trump administration will undermine a rules-based international order critical to Australian security.

Canberra’s diplomatic efforts over many years have been aimed at drawing Beijing into a rules-based system, promoting certainty in China’s behaviour as a “responsible stakeholder”.

That longstanding impulse of Australian foreign policy is now under stress.

However, what also needs to be kept in mind is that relations between Canberra and Beijing have had their ups and downs over the years. These blips have come and gone.

Read more:
Why China’s ‘debt-book diplomacy’ in the Pacific shouldn’t ring alarm bells just yet

The question is whether these latest tensions are more serious and lasting than others such as the chill that occurred after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. Or frictions that accompanied Australia’s support in 1996 for the dispatch of US naval forces into the Taiwan Straits after Chinese missile tests during the Taiwanese election.

The Australian government needs a reset of the relationship that would move the two countries past a difficult stage caused by a combination of misunderstanding and loose talk.

Australian officials also need to bear in mind that, in a region in flux, Australia’s Asian neighbours are accommodating themselves to new realities at warp speed. Old certainties such as the validity of US security guarantees are being questioned.

The Turnbull government is operating in a much-changed environment. Stakes are high. Levels of anxiety about China’s rise are unlikely to fall. Australia needs to keep its cool and avoid falling prey to a China syndrome characterised by unsteadiness and poor judgement.

Tony Walker, Adjunct Professor, School of Communications, La Trobe University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The post Reset Button appeared first on Bridge Street Journal.

The Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman today said that it is great to see the Independent Review facility that the Australian Taxation Office has afforded for so long to large business being extended now to small businesses with tax problems.

“Since 2013, the ATO has offered a case review service to large business before it issues an assessment. This allows all parties to have a better understanding of the issues and reach an appropriate resolution,” Ms Carnell said.

“It is pleasing to see that the ATO has recognised that the service provided to large business can be a real help for small businesses with tax issues too. The fact that small business will now have an independent area of the ATO to consider matters afresh is an important step and one that we will watch to see whether it provides for informal discussion of issues in a way that avoids formal legal routes.

“We encourage the ATO as part of the project to let small businesses know that there are a range of other people who can help with their tax issues, such as the Inspector General of Taxation and our Office. This is critical when things don’t go well,” Ms Carnell said.

“You need to remember that when small business does its tax, it is highly reliant on trusted advisors, mostly accountants. Getting a call from the ATO saying that there’s a problem is a big shock and extremely stressful.

The Ombudsman says approaches like the Independent Review are critical for small business – even more so than for big business – as people’s own houses are on the line.

“The ATO should be commended for extending the Independent Review to small businesses and we look forward to the pilot’s review and wider implementation.”

The post Taxing Issues appeared first on Bridge Street Journal.

Oxfam chief honoured by Order of Australia award

Oxfam Australia Chief Executive Dr Helen Szoke’s outstanding service to social justice has been recognised by the award of the Officer of Order of Australia (AO), announced in today’s Honours List.

The pre-eminent award commends Dr Szoke for “distinguished service to social justice through roles within human rights, anti-discrimination and equal opportunity organisations, to health sector policy development and to the disadvantaged.”   

Dr Szoke’s contribution to social justice has been achieved through various roles over her distinguished career, including her leadership and advocacy for Oxfam over the past five years, and her previous appointments as Commissioner of the Victorian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission and Race Discrimination Commissioner for the Australian Human Rights Commission.

Through these roles, as well as appointments to numerous boards and governance positions, Dr Szoke has provided outstanding service in her strong and determined advocacy for foreign aid and international development, human rights, and gender and race equality.    

“It is an absolute privilege to be able to do the work I do,” Dr Szoke said. “To have this work recognized through the Australian honours system is humbling, but it is also very important for the social justice causes that I have worked on.

“I also believe that the success of individuals relies on countless people along the way – including the many talented people I have and continue to work with, as well as my incredibly supportive family.”

Dr Szoke said her career had allowed her the fortunate experience of meeting many amazing people across the world, often facing extreme hardship and crisis.

“This has also given me great faith in people’s incredible resilience and generosity,” Dr Szoke said.

“But social justice requires constant vigilance – we cannot become complacent. In Australia, there is still more to be done to achieve gender equality and to make progress on the issues of inequality faced by many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People.”

Dr Szoke acknowledged there was a challenge in her award being announced today, Australia’s current day of national celebration on 26 January.

“Without detracting from the honour of today’s award, it does coincide with our current Australia Day,” Dr Szoke said. “The celebration of our national day on 26 January is deeply problematic for many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples.

“For Australia’s First Peoples, 26 January marks the beginning of colonial settlement in Australia – the beginning of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples’ being forcibly dispossessed of their land.

“It was also the beginning of a period of breaches of fundamental rights and stark inequality which many Indigenous people continue to face today.

“It is time for the Federal Government to choose another date for our national day which includes all Australians.”

The post Oxfam CEO Honoured appeared first on Bridge Street Journal.

Soft Landing Ahead For House Builders According to Industry Survey

The post Builders Cushion appeared first on Bridge Street Journal.

The post Pecan Acquisition appeared first on Bridge Street Journal.

Tenement Acquisitions Underpin BPL’s New Broken Hill Growth Strategy

The post BPL Growth appeared first on Bridge Street Journal.