China's hunger for iron ore is coming to Australia's economic rescue but our luck can't last
https://www.watoday.com.au/national/chin...561jl.html
EXCERPTS: "Australia is no longer the lucky country," was the headline on a column in January. [...] Mining had helped power Australia to an unrivalled three decades of growth. But the raging bushfires were the sign that Australia's luck had run out: "By participating so eagerly in the mining boom, Australia might also have been helping to dig its own grave. Fossil fuels are driving climate change; and, as the government now accepts, global warming is a major factor behind the fires, water shortages and record temperatures that are ravaging the country."
But [...] just when you'd think we were completely buggered, our hair on fire and the arse out of our trousers, Lady Luck smiled on Australia afresh. Although Lady Luck looks a lot like Xi Jinping in this instance. The Chinese President is trying to power the country's economy out of its COVID collapse by injecting big stimulus.
[...] The upshot is that there's a new surge in steel-intensive projects in China this year. And that means there's a surge in demand for the ingredients for making it, iron ore and metallurgical coal. Guess which country China is turning to for 60 per cent of its iron ore imports and 60 per cent of its metallurgical coal imports? You guessed it. The Lucky Country. Even as Beijing imposes its political punishments on Australia for daring to have its own views and voice, it is paying billions of dollars more for the essential inputs for its own economic stimulus.
[...] This doesn't do anything to help the tourism, university, beef, wine or barley sectors cope with the pain. But the booming trade in iron ore means that, against its own intentions, China is handing the Australian economy a bonanza. How big a bonanza? The federal budget each year assumes that the iron ore price will return to its long-run average of $US55 a tonne. Instead it's running at double that. The federal budget next Tuesday will reveal an enormous crater of debt and deficit, as it must to support the country through the pandemic. But the iron ore trade is a bright spot.
[...] Overall, in spite of China's announced sanctions, Australian exports to China are booming. ... But, of course, there are some big problems with a rock-based economy. We may think we're pretty clever in exploiting Beijing's heavy reliance on Australian rocks. But consider this. Australia was the most China-dependent economy in the developed world last year. China bought a remarkable 38 per cent of everything Australia sold abroad.... But by the end of June this year, Australian export dependence on China had grown to a breathtaking 48.8 per cent. There's nothing clever about that. In exploiting its dominance in iron ore and metallurgical coal to make money from China, Australia has made itself intensely vulnerable to China.
We'd better do something to diversify. Because China certainly is. The world has two enormous sources of iron ore – Australia and Brazil. Chinese state-owned companies are about to bring a third online. They are pouring billions into the vast Simandou iron ore deposits of West Africa's Guinea. [...] So Australia's rock-based luck is on its last gasp. Within the next few years, Simandou will be shipping huge quantities and Australia will have lost its comfortable dominance... (MORE - details)
Tweed museum exhibition highlights hidden history of Australia's sexual past
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-10-03/t...w/12727180
EXCERPTS: The Tweed Regional Museum has reassessed its entire archive. The museum says "queering" its collection has unearthed a crucial part of history. People who identify as LGBTQI can contribute to the museum's Small Town Queer project.
[...] Ian 'Teacosy' Gray, curator of the Northern Rivers Queer History Project, was enthralled when he saw the photos that had been found among 50,000 other archived images at the Tweed Regional Museum. ... "There is such a strong need for me as a gay man to believe that we existed in rural areas prior to the 1950s, despite there being virtually no record of our existence other than as criminals and deviants sensationalised and demonised in the newspapers," Mr Gray said.
[...] Mr Gray said LGBTQI history was mostly hidden, despite its role in shaping the Tweed region today. He was one of the early settlers of the Mandala community, a gay commune set up near Uki in the Tweed Valley in far-northern New South Wales in 1976 by Melbourne TV producer David Johnstone. Going by the name of the Radical Faeries, the small group of gay men established a sanctuary where they could live as their true selves without fear.
As part of the Small Town Queer project, the museum is continuing to actively source items that tell the region's LGBTQI story to add to the online exhibition... (MORE - details, images)
https://www.watoday.com.au/national/chin...561jl.html
EXCERPTS: "Australia is no longer the lucky country," was the headline on a column in January. [...] Mining had helped power Australia to an unrivalled three decades of growth. But the raging bushfires were the sign that Australia's luck had run out: "By participating so eagerly in the mining boom, Australia might also have been helping to dig its own grave. Fossil fuels are driving climate change; and, as the government now accepts, global warming is a major factor behind the fires, water shortages and record temperatures that are ravaging the country."
But [...] just when you'd think we were completely buggered, our hair on fire and the arse out of our trousers, Lady Luck smiled on Australia afresh. Although Lady Luck looks a lot like Xi Jinping in this instance. The Chinese President is trying to power the country's economy out of its COVID collapse by injecting big stimulus.
[...] The upshot is that there's a new surge in steel-intensive projects in China this year. And that means there's a surge in demand for the ingredients for making it, iron ore and metallurgical coal. Guess which country China is turning to for 60 per cent of its iron ore imports and 60 per cent of its metallurgical coal imports? You guessed it. The Lucky Country. Even as Beijing imposes its political punishments on Australia for daring to have its own views and voice, it is paying billions of dollars more for the essential inputs for its own economic stimulus.
[...] This doesn't do anything to help the tourism, university, beef, wine or barley sectors cope with the pain. But the booming trade in iron ore means that, against its own intentions, China is handing the Australian economy a bonanza. How big a bonanza? The federal budget each year assumes that the iron ore price will return to its long-run average of $US55 a tonne. Instead it's running at double that. The federal budget next Tuesday will reveal an enormous crater of debt and deficit, as it must to support the country through the pandemic. But the iron ore trade is a bright spot.
[...] Overall, in spite of China's announced sanctions, Australian exports to China are booming. ... But, of course, there are some big problems with a rock-based economy. We may think we're pretty clever in exploiting Beijing's heavy reliance on Australian rocks. But consider this. Australia was the most China-dependent economy in the developed world last year. China bought a remarkable 38 per cent of everything Australia sold abroad.... But by the end of June this year, Australian export dependence on China had grown to a breathtaking 48.8 per cent. There's nothing clever about that. In exploiting its dominance in iron ore and metallurgical coal to make money from China, Australia has made itself intensely vulnerable to China.
We'd better do something to diversify. Because China certainly is. The world has two enormous sources of iron ore – Australia and Brazil. Chinese state-owned companies are about to bring a third online. They are pouring billions into the vast Simandou iron ore deposits of West Africa's Guinea. [...] So Australia's rock-based luck is on its last gasp. Within the next few years, Simandou will be shipping huge quantities and Australia will have lost its comfortable dominance... (MORE - details)
Tweed museum exhibition highlights hidden history of Australia's sexual past
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-10-03/t...w/12727180
EXCERPTS: The Tweed Regional Museum has reassessed its entire archive. The museum says "queering" its collection has unearthed a crucial part of history. People who identify as LGBTQI can contribute to the museum's Small Town Queer project.
[...] Ian 'Teacosy' Gray, curator of the Northern Rivers Queer History Project, was enthralled when he saw the photos that had been found among 50,000 other archived images at the Tweed Regional Museum. ... "There is such a strong need for me as a gay man to believe that we existed in rural areas prior to the 1950s, despite there being virtually no record of our existence other than as criminals and deviants sensationalised and demonised in the newspapers," Mr Gray said.
[...] Mr Gray said LGBTQI history was mostly hidden, despite its role in shaping the Tweed region today. He was one of the early settlers of the Mandala community, a gay commune set up near Uki in the Tweed Valley in far-northern New South Wales in 1976 by Melbourne TV producer David Johnstone. Going by the name of the Radical Faeries, the small group of gay men established a sanctuary where they could live as their true selves without fear.
As part of the Small Town Queer project, the museum is continuing to actively source items that tell the region's LGBTQI story to add to the online exhibition... (MORE - details, images)