Not committing to a daily post and this may be a one-off, but a daily reflection on the world is helpful. Have been looking for a daily scratch pad.
Format to be bullet points of the main data, with some commentary related to current focus on entrepreneur support and startups.
Energy and Climate Change
Trump steps back from Uranium trade war
Wonder where nuclear sits in the transition to clean energy, particularly for Australia. Opportunity for startups to address some of the challenges with nuclear energy?
- Was a proposed 25% domestic sourcing requirement, could have resulted in a two-tier uranium pricing with high US and low abroad.
- Stocks of two US uranium miners dropped 36%, spot price for fuel edged up.
- Fears that a "buy America" requirement would distort the market.
- Three uranium mines in AU, AU is world's 3rd largest producer of uranium ore, 7,343 tonnes in 2017, valued at $575M, for electrical power generation. 1/3 exports go to US for nuclear power.
- Mines owned by BHP, Rio Tinto - majority owner of Energy Resources of Australia, and General Atomics, private US firm.
Defence force chief Angus Campbell noted risk of China claiming and militarising islands abandoned to rising sea levels
Climate change relationship to national security, although from a China perspective, could be seen as an island-building startup program.- China island rebuilding program began in 2013, seven man-made islands militarised.
- Claims islands impacted by rising sea levels
Australian cars more polluting
- Australian cars emit 8% to 42% ore carbon dioxide than UK counterparts
- Compared each country's best variants, AU cars about 27% worse on average
- May be evidence of "leakage", where manufacturers sell high-emitting vehicles in coutries with less rigorous standards
- Combination of high manufacturing costs for fuel-efficient cars and small size of AU market makes it expensive to import advanced vehicles. Taxation and duties structures hold back advancement of new technologies
- Carmaker claime that Emission standards need to wait for fuel quality improvements due to Australia's low quality, high sulphur petrol cannot power more advanced engines.
- Refuted by government and petrol industry
- Proposed fuel efficiency standards, estimate to save motorists $500/year in fuel costs
Labour and Talent
Op-ed, Canberra is the problem with the visa system
- Coalition government position to cut permanent immigration over the next four years
- Reduce to 160,000 per year, reduction by 30,000 from previous highs a few years ago.
- About 2 million people on temporary visas, including holiday makers, skilled workers, and nearly 00,000 NZ citizens.
- Large majority reside in Melbourne and Sydney. Likely to remain despite tweaks to encourage regional or other states
- Biggest increase to be from international students, set to dramatically increase. 600,000 international students in Australia as of last March. Concerns about imbalance in classes, many courses dominated by foreign students, usually Chinese.
- Universities focus on benefits, higher fees from international students. International education is Australia's 3rd largest exporter
- 90,000 skilled workers on temporary visas as of last March plus 70,000 family members
- Average base salary for skilled temporary visa holders is $95,000, ulikely to undercut local employment
- Temporary skilled migrants of working age account for 1% of workforce
- Some suggest use of temporary visas contribute to decline in businesses training existing workforce
- Imminent workforce challenges unlikely to be addressed by education and training alone
- Shortfalls of 123,000 nurses by 2030, 18,000 cybersecurity workers by 2026 (AU universities produce 500 graduates a year)
- Constant and unpredictable changes to temporary skills visa program undermines ability of business to plan workforce needs.
- 70% of those ion skilled visas live in VIC and NSW, which have lowest unemployment rates in the country
- Over 50% of temporary skilled visa holders work in four industries: accommodation and food services; professional, scientific and technical services; information and telecommunications; other services like personal care.
- Top four occupations granted visas last FY: developer programmers; ICT business analysts; university lecturers; cooks. Almost all under age of 50.
- CEDA recommendations: review job assessment classifications and methods; remove labour market testing requirement for advertising to Australians first; review usefulness of Skilling Australia Find training levy, which may just transfer funds from company training budgets to government training initiatives.
EY Badge System
- Internal online training modules, employees can earn bronze, silver, gold, platinum badges
Inclusivity
PM supports indigenous constitutional recognition but not enshrining a voice in Parliament
Commentary on proposed Indigenous voice to Parliament, one of three proposals in the 2017 Uluru Statement from the Heart. Notes that positioning as a third chamber is misleading. Be interested in a review of how all countries acknowledge first nations. With inclusivity and diversity, if it is not intentional it will always be a side issue and that thing we do over there.
Gender balance in national intelligence community
Gender balance will take a generation, but there is progress.
- 7,000 people working in National Intelligence Community
- 42% female, about 25% females in senior leadership positions
- In three years, number of women in senior executive roles increased in ONI from 9% to 39%, and in ASIO from 35% to 39%
- NIC made up of six agencies: Office of National Intelligence; Australian Secret Intelligence Service, Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, Australian Signals Directorate, Defence Intelligence Organisation, plus intelligence arms of the Australian Federal Police, the Australian Transactions Reports and Analysis Centre, the Australian Criminal and Intelligence Commision, and Australian Border Force.
- Continued challenges in international sector.
- Never been a female ambassador or high commissioner to Washington, Jakarta, Tokyo, or London.
- Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security never had a female chairman and female membership was 18%.
- 1/3 of senior executives at main internationally-facing government departments are women, compared to 45% in public sector.
- None of the 33 white papers, reviews, and inquiries in the past 51 years on Australia's foreign and security policy have been led by women.
International and scale
Trump invites Morrison to state-level dinner, China to be discussed
- First invite since 2006.
Space
India to land unmanned rover on moon's south pole
- Land September 6 or 7. $US141M. Analyse minerals, map the moon's surface, search for water.
- Plans to send humans into space by 2022, only 4th nation to do so.
- US looking to send a manned spacecraft to the lunar south pole by 2024
- In April, an unmanned Israeli craft crashed into the moon in a failed attempt at the first privately funded lunar landing
- India's first lunar mission in 2008 orbited the moon and confirmed presence of water
- In 2013-14, India put satellite orbit around Mars
- Some question expense, India 1.3b people, widespread poverty, one of world's highest child mortality rates.
Technology
Facebook fines
- $US5B fin from US Federal Trade Commission
- Ireland's data regulator launched investigation over Cambridge Analytics leak, potential fines of 4% of annual global turnover, could cost FB $US2.3B based on 2018 revenue. The commission has almost 12 open investigations on FB and subsidiaries.
- Canada's privacy head announced in April he was taking FB to court
- In October, British regulators slapped 500k pound fine
- Belgian Data Protection Authority and Germany's Federal Cartel Office also looking into it
AI to be used to analyse data from foreign bribery probes
- Average data seized in an operation has gone from 10 terabytes of data in 2011 to 45 Tb in 2018
- Added a predictive analytics team and a pilot AI program.
Retail
Barneys New York explores bankruptcy
- Nearly 100 year old department store
- Others who have filed in past year: Sears Holdings, Toys r Us, Gymboree Group
Corporate
VCI Innovation: State of Play report
- Survey of 800 mining professionals across 399 companies,
- Higher mining shareholder returns when junior staff drive innovation compared to when senior executives are the main driver
- Focus on one to three or three to five year timeframes failed to drive urgent or hard-edge improvements at the operational level and stymied major strategic change.
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