China’s government has reportedly started enforcing a new law that it passed in December this week. The law bans the government from purchasing PCs with Intel and AMD chips inside, along with software products from Microsoft, including its Windows operating system.

According to The Financial Times (via PC World), the new rules on purchasing products for China’s government PCs were set in place in December by the country’s Information Technology Security Evaluation Center. They include all governments and agencies above what is considered to be the country’s township level.

China previously ordered its government offices and agencies to no longer use Microsoft’s Windows OS in 2022, in favor of a homegrown Linux-based OS. As a result, these new guidelines are not expected to affect Microsoft. However, the ban on Intel and AMD chips could result in a noticeable hit in the revenue numbers for both companies.

On the other hand, the ban on these products on China’s government PCs does not include their use in private businesses or by regular consumers in that country.

China previously banned the use of Apple’s iPhone products in its government buildings. It has also banned the use of products from Micron Technology for its infrastructure projects, citing security concerns.

These new moves come sometime after the United States government banned China’s Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) from exporting fabrication equipment to make certain chips in that country.

Late in 2023, the US government banned the export of some of Nvidia’s AI GPUs to China. Nvidia has instead developed AI chips, the H20, that were specifically made to conform to the restrictions of the US government’s export rules. The company started taking preorders for the H20 chips in early 2024, and are expected to begin large scale shipments of those China-specific AI GPUs sometime in the second quarter of 2024.

Source: Neowin

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Indonesia’s Presidential Election (PE) 2024 is just around the corner. On Valentine’s Day, the first round of voting will take place. A second round – which will happen if no candidate pair wins at least 50 per cent of the national vote plus one and at least 20 per cent in half of Indonesia’s 38 provinces – will be on 26 June.

From a national development perspective, the three pairs: Anies Baswedan and Muhaimin Iskandar (Team AMIN), Prabowo Subianto and Gibran Rakabuming Raka, and Ganjar Pranowo and Mahfud MD, each have their ways to shape the future of Indonesia. What would the policy possibilities post-PE2024 look like? What are the potential impacts on Indonesia’s development trajectory?

As policy (content) cannot be separated from politics (process) and polity (culture), it is important to start answering the question by examining what the presidential nominees’ campaigns reveal about the state of the Indonesian political elite.

In terms of coalition building, there have been shifting alliances and power dynamics among the elite. The coalition that supported President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) in his 2014 and 2019 campaigns has now split. Most have gone to Prabowo-Gibran, who have a more populist agenda, some to Ganjar-Mahfud, seen as representing the nationalists, and the remainder to Team AMIN, who claim to be reformist. Thus, their campaign narratives: Team AMIN offer “change”, Prabowo-Gibran “continuity”, and Ganjar-Mahfud “improvement”. These keywords also capture their main policy approaches for key issues in development.

Despite their promise to bring about significant change, Team AMIN surprisingly set quite a conservative target of annual economic growth between 5.5 to 6.5 per cent until 2029. They aim to reach it through shared prosperity, wealth distribution, and social justice. Prabowo-Gibran’s target is 6-7 per cent with a vague, jargonistic strategy: “Jokowinomics”, interpreted as a version of a “Pancasila economy”. This is basically a system with a controlled market economy as a counterbalance against neoclassical economic tenets like individualism and free markets. Ganjar-Mahfud has set an ambitious 7 per cent growth target with a “we have all” (semua ada di kita) strategy.

From the three teams’ vision and mission documents and campaigns, there are a few similarities in their policy platforms. On promoting growth, all candidates aim to accelerate it to improve living standards and reduce poverty. On enhancing industrial development, all candidates recognise the importance of strengthening the country’s industrial base to reduce reliance on imports and strengthen export competitiveness. Last, they all agree to improve physical infrastructure to support economic activity and facilitate trade and investment.

However, the teams differ in the following ways. First, on the role of government, Team AMIN advocate limited government and greater reliance on private sector initiatives. This is likely due to the influence of their campaign advisor, former finance minister Tom Lembong, who also headed Indonesia’s national investment agency. This is in contrast to Prabowo-Gibran, who favour a more active state role in directing economic policy despite big businesses’ support. Ganjar-Mahfud takes the middle ground: in their platform, the government is the regulator and facilitator in guiding development, not an active player.

Second, on trade and liberalisation, Prabowo-Gibran’s focus on protectionism contrasts with Team AMIN’s emphasis on liberalisation and market-based solutions. Again, taking the middle stance, Ganjar-Mahfud seeks to balance the protection of domestic industries with fostering foreign direct investment-based innovation.

On social equity and environmental sustainability, Team AMIN and Ganjar-Mahfud emphasise tackling social inequality and environmental concerns, while Prabowo-Gibran’s primary focus is on growth and national self-sufficiency.

Many investors are waiting to see if Jokowi’s signature policies – including downstreaming, the proposed shift of Indonesia’s capital to Nusantara (IKN), East Kalimantan, and infrastructural development – will continue.

The answer is clearly yes. The signature policies can be grouped into three broad types, the first of which is infrastructure, particularly for connectivity, like ports, roads, and industrial complexes. All the candidates recognise that infrastructural development is crucial and have pledged to continue upholding this policy.

Second, Jokowi has emphasised social protection, particularly social assistance. All candidates understand that this is a populist vote-winner that they must continue, even if they differ on how it is delivered. Third, all candidates will continue downstreaming (hilirisasi) as they know how important it is for Indonesia to move up the value chain. This is not limited to the mining/extractive sectors but extends to agriculture, fisheries, and even digital downstreaming. Team AMIN and Ganjar-Mahfud have declared that they will not stop at this but work towards “re-industrialisation”.

On the planned relocation of the new capital city, Prabowo-Gibran and Ganjar-Mahfud will continue this part of Jokowi’s legacy. The former pair strongly support IKN. Echoing Jokowi’s rhetoric and notwithstanding criticism from academia and civil society, Prabowo-Gibran emphasise the need to develop areas outside Java and has pledged to uphold sustainability and environmental responsibility in the IKN’s execution.

Ganjar-Mahfud has stated that they will study the project further, expressing concern about its potential impact on the local environment and livelihoods of affected communities. In their campaign, they have offered “corrective measures” for what might have been neglected in the developmental process so far, like considering the impact on indigenous groups and the mitigation of environmental problems.

Whoever wins, what is clear is that Indonesia must be prepared to fulfil different, creative development policy priorities to meet its challenges.

Team AMIN are the most critical; they omitted discussion of the IKN in their vision and mission document. They question its feasibility and high cost, arguing that the government should focus on addressing other issues such as poverty and inequality. In the less likely scenario (given Prabowo-Gibran’s high poll ratings) that they will win PE2024, Team AMIN is unlikely to stop the project outright, even though there is growing resistance to the shift to Nusantara from the public and civil servants. At most, the relocation can be delayed, as the IKN’s status is already enshrined in a national law.

The new president and his administration will determine Indonesia’s development trajectory for the next five or ten years. Whether and to what extent the next administration can realise the vision for Indonesia’s “Golden 2045” (Indonesia Emas) centennial remains open to scrutiny.

Whoever wins, what is clear is that Indonesia must be prepared to fulfil different, creative development policy priorities to meet its challenges. All things considered, the PE2024 candidates’ proposed policies are not far-reaching enough to address the multifaceted challenges awaiting Indonesia, especially as it has aspirations to reach advanced development. Excellent technocratic capacity and strong political support must sustain and surpass what President Jokowi has achieved.

Source: Fulcrum

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MANCHESTER, Iowa — Vivek Ramaswamy knows he doesn’t have the foreign policy chops of some of his opponents. He hasn’t been a president, an ambassador, a senator or even a governor. But still, he wants to talk about it.

At campaign stops in early states, Ramaswamy is urging voters to ask him about his foreign policy views.

“Anybody have any questions about my foreign policy?” the candidate eagerly asked a roomful of Iowans at a diner in the small town of Manchester on Monday. 

Luckily for Ramaswamy, a voter took him up on it. 

“I was going to say that’s one of the criticisms about you, is that you don’t have enough experience in foreign relations,” the voter said. Ramaswamy acknowledged that he could tell his lack of experience was “weighing on people’s minds.”  

“I think we should just talk about it in the open,” he said before diving into the two key pillars of his foreign policy plan. 

“My foreign policy is clear: stay out of World War III, declare economic independence from communist China,” Ramaswamy said.  

Ramaswamy’s reluctance to leave his foreign policy unaddressed on the campaign trail comes on the heels of fresh attacks on the debate stage from rival Nikki Haley, who was ambassador to the United Nations in the Trump administration and was governor of South Carolina.

“Putin and President Xi are salivating at the thought that someone like that could become president,” Haley said at the most recent debate in Miami, slamming Ramaswamy for wanting to stop funding Ukraine in its war with Russia.  

After the attack, Ramaswamy shifted his strategy on the campaign trail. Previously, the 38-year-old businessman took questions from voters after delivering a stump speech without the subject-matter suggestion. But now, he wants to make sure his foreign policy stone isn’t left unturned. 

Just three days after the third GOP debate, while on a swing through New Hampshire on Nov. 11, he again pressured voters to challenge him on the topic. 

“And if anybody else, while we’re on this topic of foreign policy, we can maybe hit a couple of foreign policy questions and then we’ll bring it back home,” he said while campaigning in Hillsboro. 

Haley’s swipe at Ramaswamy for his foreign policy views wasn’t the first time she’s taken aim at him. At the first GOP presidential debate in August, again while Ramaswamy was questioning American support for Ukraine, Haley went for the jugular.  

“You have no foreign policy experience, and it shows,” Haley said to applause from the crowd.  

But it wasn’t until Haley’s latest barrage of attacks that Ramaswamy took on this new tactic. 

Ramaswamy’s plan to avoid the next world war relies on his noninterventionist philosophy and includes freezing the current lines of control between Russia and Ukraine. He’s also promised to keep American boots off the ground in Israel or Palestinian territory. 

He has said he and former President Donald Trump are the only “non-neocon“ candidates in the primary, taking aim at what was the predominant foreign policy stance of the Republican Party, particularly during the presidency of George W. Bush.

“As your next president, my sole moral duty is to you the American citizens here in our homeland, not any other country,” he explained, questioning if billions of dollars in aid to fund foreign conflicts benefit the people of the United States. 

“I sense that there’s a lot of people who love aspects of my candidacy but have questions about my absence of abroad experience, foreign policy experience in particular,” Ramswamy explained to NBC News on Monday when asked why he’s urging voters to ask him about his foreign policy.  

“Questions about faith also come up,” he added. 

Ramaswamy, who is Hindu, has been dogged by questions about his religion since he began campaigning in the first-in-the-nation caucus state, but he wants to bring it “out in the open.”

After a man questioned him about his faith during a campaign stop in Marshalltown, Iowa, this week, Ramaswamy called out the topic: “I think it ends up being an elephant in the room at times.” 

“I think they’re two of the topics that I want to give people full comfort in and asking about,” he said, referring to his new strategy of inviting questions about his religion and his foreign policy views. 

“If you think about it like a due-diligence checklist,” he added, “I think that those are some items that we need to make sure … people fully know where I am on.”

Source : NBC News

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AFTER years of political turmoil that saw rapid turnover at the prime minister’s office, Anwar Ibrahim’s first 12 months as Malaysia’s leader might feel like a success in itself.

Except a stalled reform agenda has meant the 76-year-old has been unable to boost the nation’s revenues and pare debt, as the rising cost of living hits the pockets of ordinary Malaysians.

The lack of promised reforms — undoing hefty subsidies and broadening the government’s revenue base — is weighing on Malaysian assets, adding to the pressure from a surge in US interest rates and sputtering growth in China, the nation’s biggest trading partner. 

The ringgit has lost almost 6 per cent against the dollar this year, making it the worst performer in emerging Asia. Kuala Lumpur’s benchmark stock index has been one of the biggest losers worldwide.

The political shocks that ushered in four administrations since 2018 have unnerved investors, as have the lack of of promised reforms, which have proved tricky to execute given the country’s fractious political environment. 

“Headlines on the Malaysian political situation don’t boost investor sentiment,” said Jian Shi Cortesi, a Zurich-based fund manager at GAM Investment Management, whose Asia equity strategy has no exposure to the country. “Malaysia doesn’t look particularly attractive.”

Here’s how Anwar’s government has fared and the potential pitfalls it faces:

Political stability

It’s been a striking comeback for Anwar, whose career has included a stint as deputy prime minister and two jail terms that he said were politically motivated.

His promise for reforms had fueled hopes that he would be able to repair Malaysia’s international standing, following the 1MDB investment-fund scandal that led to the jailing of former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak.

Still, political stability hasn’t been a given for Anwar.

A member of his ruling alliance pulled out in September to protest a decision to drop corruption charges against Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi — Anwar’s key ally. The premier has since managed to attract four opposition lawmakers to back him, giving him the support of 151 out of 222 members of parliament.

Voters though are getting impatient with the government’s handling of the economy. The premier’s approval rating dropped to 50 per cent from 68 per cent in December, according to a poll by Merdeka Centre for Opinion Research conducted last month. 

Anwar doesn’t know how to solve the nation’s problems, including a weakening ringgit and the rising cost of living, according to Mahathir Mohammad, a two-time former prime minister.

“A popular person is not necessarily a capable person,” Anwar’s 98-year-old arch rival said. “He does not know how to handle the government.”

Economic direction

Anwar’s administration has spent the year outlining the country’s ambitions, including plans to scale up the nation’s renewable energy mix, while looking at ways to export renewal energy. It wants to mine rare earth minerals and raise wages.

Malaysia still relies heavily on revenue from fossil fuels, with national oil company Petronas paying RM40 billion (S$354 million) in dividends to the government this year.

“The strategy is clear,” said Munirah Khairuddin, the chief executive officer of Principal Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur. “We are waiting to see how that translates into the real economy, the stock market.” 

Anwar has revealed that Malaysia’s debt and liabilities stood at RM1.5 trillion, or 82 per cent of gross domestic product. His administration has also acknowledged the need to find new sources of revenue, though it has resisted introducing a goods and services tax, opting instead to marginally increase service taxes and introduce taxes on luxury goods and capital gains. 

A hefty subsidy bill

A key component of Malaysia’s fiscal position is the hefty subsidy bill it foots every year.

All Malaysians enjoy subsidies on petrol, diesel, cooking oil and locally produced rice. Electricity is also subsidised with lower tariffs for most domestic users. The government’s subsidy bill, which has been growing due to rising global commodity prices since last year, will exceed RM81 billion this year.

“No country can survive” such a hefty subsidy bill, Anwar has said while hoping to shift to a system that targets lower-income groups.

However, a clear plan on how the subsidies will be reallocated has not been presented to the public, and anticipation of possible cuts are raising inflation risks in the country.

“The challenging domestic political landscape constrains the prospects for material revenue reform, subsidy rationalizstion and, ultimately the reversal of the deterioration in its fiscal metrics over the past few years,” said Moody’s Investors Service senior vice-president Christian de Guzman.

The reformist

Anwar has spent decades as the figurehead of the reform movement in Malaysia. His government, however, is still working on several promised pieces of legislation with wide political and social implications. 

A bill to introduce a two-term limit to the office of prime minister and policies to provide equal funding for opposition lawmakers — both of which his coalition advocated — have yet to materialise. Nor has a promise to separate the powers of the attorney general and chief public prosecutor.

A pledge to prohibit smoking appears to be on the back burner, while an attempt to rationalise citizenship laws, especially those concerning children born overseas, has proved to be controversial.

“Despite his clear majority in parliament, the administration does not have the political will to push for much-needed institutional and fiscal reforms,” said Asrul Hadi Abdullah Sani, a former deputy managing director for Bower Group Asia, who is now an independent analyst.

The outlook

Anwar’s ability to execute his economic and fiscal plans within the next two years will key. A series of state elections starting in 2025 will heighten political considerations before federal polls in 2027. 

If Anwar manages the short-term pain of reforming the local economy, Malaysia is poised to benefit from supply-chain realignments and increasingly positive relations with its more developed neighbour, Singapore, said Mark Mobius, the veteran emerging-markets investor, who is considering buying Malaysian stocks.

Concerns about “what reforms are possible” are partly why Malaysia’s ringgit is one of the cheapest among developing currencies that make up MSCI Inc.’s widely followed indexes, said Charlie Robertson, the London-based head of macro strategy at FIM Partners UK.

“Anwar is a smart individual who might be taken as a positive by markets,” Robertson said. “Not a negative.” BLOOMBERG

Source : Business Times

The post Malaysia’s Anwar Faces Hard Policy Decisions as Popularity Dips appeared first on Policy Print.

In terms of environmental policy, the coalition agreements announced last week are objectively extreme. Despite the agreements opening with an acknowledgment of the “long-term economic, social and environmental challenges” the country faces, they then commit to dismantling environmental policy that has been built over decades by successive governments driven by public concern.

First, both agreements seek to do away with recently reformed resource management law, including the Natural and Built Environment Act. This is the country’s overarching environmental law, under which other policies such as freshwater and biodiversity policies will sit. It was finalised this year and was designed to be brought in gradually over the coming decade.

Not only do both coalition agreements commit to repealing this newer resource management law but, according to the National-Act agreement, to replacing the Resource Management Act with policy that has “enjoyment of property rights as the guiding principle”. 

The extreme individualism demonstrated by this is the opposite of the collective, government-led response that is essential to addressing long-term environmental challenges like climate change and water pollution.

This National-led coalition’s proposals on environmental policy echo its widely condemned choices on tobacco in that they appear willing to sacrifice the health and wellbeing of the wider community to increase the wealth of industries and individuals who are already wealthy.

The Resource Management Act was brought in in 1991, passed under a National government. Its purpose: to guide the sustainable management of the country to “safeguard the life-supporting capacity” of the natural environment, protect the interests of future generations, and “avoid, remedy or mitigate” impacts on the environment. 

Thirty years ago, a National government recognised that water, soil, air (etc, otherwise known as the natural world we all live in) needed to be looked after and that government had a responsibility to do this. It also recognised that as a society, we wanted to leave our children a healthy place to live.   

Concern for the health of the environment has only increased since 1991, not just in New Zealand but internationally. 

These coalition agreements and new National-led government, therefore, appear years, if not decades, out of touch with public sentiment and the direction the rest of the world is moving in. They also fail basic tests of understanding of the nature of the “economic, social and environmental challenges” highlighted in the first line of the documents’ preamble.

As the communities of Tairāwhiti and Hawke’s Bay understand after Cyclone Gabrielle, the safety and “enjoyment” of the places we live in rely in large part on the actions and responsibility of many other people; individuals, industries and agencies. Our health, safety, security and wellbeing takes a serious hit when silt and forestry slash barrel through a valley and into our home or business.

“Property” is the narrowest characterisation of people’s interaction with the natural world around them and our natural resources (this, of course, is to say nothing of the fact that those of us without property have rights when it comes to our environment too).

Take drinking water as an example. The vast majority of us don’t get our drinking water from our property: it comes from an aquifer, river or other waterbody. The safety and quality of that water is directly related to the actions of people across multiple properties and public land. 

New Zealand’s environmental policies recognise this reality: that collective responses, guided by government, are essential to responsible care of the places people live in. This has been recognised for decades (though policy implementation and enforcement are another matter).

As many communities’ waterways (including drinking water sources) have become more polluted, as the impacts of climate change become clearer and the consequences for the health of communities and native biodiversity more widely understood, the public has continuously pushed for stronger policies to address these challenges. This includes the ban on offshore oil and gas exploration and the latest (and strongest) version of the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management. These policies came about due to public pressure and are slated to go under both the National-Act and National-NZ First agreements. 

Both agreements indicate the new government wants a return to the unrestrained and unthinking intensification of agricultural land that began in the early 2000s. Both emphasise a return to promotion of large-scale irrigation and water storage schemes that drove the intensification of agriculture in places like Canterbury. Such schemes have played a major role in nitrate contamination so serious that it breaches human drinking water standards. These human health standards are about 10 times higher than what is needed for the health of the wildlife that lives in waterways and, increasing evidence suggests, for the health of communities.

In 2017, Sir Peter Gluckman, the chief science adviser to then prime minister Bill English, produced a report on freshwater and wrote, “New ways of utilising our land for economic gain that also have lower environmental footprints need to be found and adopted if we are to meet the vision New Zealanders have for their fresh waters.” That same year the OECD warned, “New Zealand’s growth model, based largely on exploiting natural resources, is starting to show its environmental limits with increasing greenhouse gas emissions and water pollution.”

Improved policies in recent years are the result of public pressure, and critique from grassroots community groups to international organisations. With global shocks from climate change and the pollution of water and air hitting communities at home and around the world, the pressure for greater environmental protection through government policy will only get stronger and more intense: not only from our own people but from the international community, who have come to expect leadership from New Zealand. 

A rational, responsible government, therefore, would be taking environmental policy forward, not backwards. 

Source : The Spinoff

The post The Government’s Extreme Environmental Policies Will Take Us Back Decades appeared first on Policy Print.

It’s Black Friday and the new government coalition parties have signed up for a mixed bunch of bargains.

New Zealand First and ACT leaders Winston Peters and David Seymour will take turns as Deputy Prime Minister and Nicola Willis will be Finance Minister.

Peters will be Minister of Foreign Affairs and Seymour Minister for Regulation.

The next cabinet will have 20 members; 14 National ministers, three ACT ministers and three New Zealand First ministers.

The most notable rise will be of Tama Potaka who was elected to Hamilton West only last year in a byelection . He will jump ahead of many more experienced MPs to become Minister of Conservation, Minister for Māori Crown Relations: Te Arawhiti, Minister for Māori Development, Minister for Whānau Ora, Associate Minister of Housing (Social Housing)

In terms of ministers outside Cabinet, there will be five from National, two from ACT and one from New Zealand First.

ACT and New Zealand First will each have one parliamentary under-secretary.

National’s foreign buyers tax will not go ahead, NZ First has secured a $1.2 billion regional infrastructure fund, and David Seymour’s Treaty referendum is out v with the new government instead to support a Treaty principles bill to select committee stage. Charter schools are back, light rail and Let’s Get Wellington Moving is gone.

ACT’s policy for a Minister for Regulation will be accompanied by the disestablishment of the current Productivity Commission. Firearms laws will also be reformed.

The three parties have unveiled the details of their coalition agreements this morning, with National making separate coalition agreements with each of its partner parties.

New Prime Minister Chris Luxon thanked New Zealanders for their “patience and understanding in the wait for this government to be formed over the last 20 days”.

“The new government is looking forward to working with you and to delivering the government’s programme and to getting things done for Kiwis.”

“The negotiation process has been diligent; it’s been focused, and it’s been purposeful. Our aim has simply been not to form a government but to form a strong and stable government that gets thing done for Kiwis.

The two coalition agreements and ministerial appointments can be found on the National Party’s news page here.

Developments in te ao Māori from the National- NZ First deal include:

• • Remove co-governance from the delivery of public services.
• •As a matter of urgency, issue a Cabinet Office circular to all central government organisations that it is the government’s expectation that public services should be prioritised on the basis of need, not race.
• • Restore the right to local referendum on the establishment or ongoing use of Māori wards, including requiring a referendum on any wards established without referendum at the next Local Body elections.
• •Stop all work on He Puapua.
• •Confirm that the Coalition Government does not recognise the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) as having any binding legal effect on New Zealand.
• •Amend section 58 of the Marine and Coastal Area Act to make clear Parliament’s original intent, in light of the judgment of the Court of Appeal in Whakatohea Kotahitanga Waka (Edwards) & Ors v Te Kahui and Whakatohea Maori Trust Board & Ors [2023] NZCA 504.
• •Amend the Waitangi Tribunal legislation to refocus the scope, purpose, and nature of its inquiries back to the original intent of that legislation.
• • Conduct a comprehensive review of all legislation (except when it is related to, or substantive to, existing full and final Treaty settlements) that includes “The Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi” and replace all such references with specific words relating to the relevance and application of the Treaty, or repeal the references
• •Legislate to make English an official language of New Zealand.
• • Ensure all public service departments have their primary name in English, except for those specifically related to Māori.
• • Require the public service departments and Crown entities to communicate primarily in English – except those entities specifically related to Māori.
• • Protect freedom of speech by ruling out the introduction of hate speech legislation and stop the Law Commission’s work on hate speech legislation.
• •Abolish the Māori Health Authority
• •The Government will not change the official name of New Zealand.

Developments in the te ao Māori from the National- ACT deal will include:

• • Remove Section 7AA from the Oranga Tamariki Act 1989.
• • Create a truly independent monitoring and oversight agency for Oranga Tamariki.
• • Improve the rights and responsibilities of caregivers to give them more autonomy.
• • Increase devolution of care decisions to relevant community organisations.
• • Remove co-governance from the delivery of public services.
• • Ensure government contracts are awarded based on value, without racial discrimination.
• • Issue a Cabinet Office circular to all central government organisations that it is the Government’s expectation that public services should be prioritised on the basis of need, not race, within the first six months of Government.
• • Repeal the Canterbury Regional Council (Ngāi Tahu Representation) Act 2022.
• • Restore the right to local referendum on the establishment or ongoing use of Māori wards, including requiring a referendum on any wards established without referendum at the next local body elections.
• •Pass the Constitution (Enabling a 4-Year Term) Amendment Bill through first reading in the first 15 months of the term.
• • Introduce a Treaty Principles Bill based on existing ACT polcy and support it to a Select Committee as soon as practicable.
• •No Three Waters (with assets returned to council ownership).
• •Pro-democracy – upholding the principles of liberal democracy, including equal citizenship, parliamentary sovereignty, the rule of law and property rights, especially with respect to interpreting the Treaty of Waitangi

Source : TE AO News

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Conventional wisdom suggests Americans know little about foreign policy and care about it even less. Opinion polls regularly show that international issues take a back seat to topics more prosaic (economics, education) or provocative (culture wars, gun control).

Next year’s presidential election, however, might be a bit different. Continued international crises could focus attention on the benefits and burdens of American global leadership, and our polarized politics may turn on battles and events far from home. We might experience the rare phenomenon: a foreign policy election.

Israel’s war against Hamas has become a domestic political focal point, either praised as a righteous campaign of self-defense or criticized for bringing humanitarian catastrophe to Gaza. Some experts now believe Ukraine’s war aims are “out of reach,” and call on Washington to encourage Ukraine to pursue a cease-fire.

One might think a president with Joe Biden’s experience would perform well in a foreign policy election. So it’s surprising that his approach to the wars in Gaza and Ukraine — an approach he doubled down on in a recent op-ed that touted the U.S. as “the essential nation,” worried about Russian leader Vladimir “Putin’s drive for conquest” and reduced Hamas’ motives to “murderous nihilism” — instead appears to be endangering his reelection.

Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks and the president’s nearly unconditional support for Israel’s response have brought to a boil the simmering divisions within the Democratic Party on the issue of Palestinians. Many young, diverse and progressive voters are critical of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and the “open-air prison” of Gaza. They believe the Gaza war is unjust and disproportionate.

Fully 70% of U.S. voters under age 35 disapprove of Biden’s handling of the war, according to a Nov. 19 NBC News poll. Other polls show that a majority of young voters do not support sending weapons to Israel, and less than half of Gen Z and millennials even want the U.S. to publicly voice support for Israel as the president has so consistently done. The issue could tip the scale in the crucial swing states, such as Michigan, where razor-thin margins of victory are common.

Support for Israel has been uncontroversial for most of Biden’s political career. A decade ago, a pro-Israel lobbyist described his work to me as “pushing against an open door.” But as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has moved to the right and threatened Israel’s democratic institutions, he has infuriated many Israelis and tested the patience of otherwise sympathetic Americans — including many American Jews. Today, Washington’s pro-Israel lobby is dominated by evangelical Christians in the Republican Party base, borne by what one commentator called “solidarity with a particularly aggressive strain of Zionism.”

Democrats have sweated the electoral consequences of being seen as insufficiently pro-Israel since before it was even a country. In 1947, as the United Nations considered recognizing a Jewish state, President Truman’s general counsel, Clark Clifford, penned a private memo to his boss: “Unless the Palestine matter is boldly and favorably handled, there is bound to be some defection on [Jewish voters’] part to the alert [GOP nominee Thomas E.] Dewey.” Unlike Truman, Biden has to contend with a voting Middle Eastern diaspora, new human rights norms and mass media capable of relaying round-the-clock images of Palestinian suffering.

Apart from the Israel-Hamas war, a foreign policy election would present Biden with other fresh challenges. In broad terms, independent voters don’t seem to share Democrats’ — and the president’s — expansive view of the purpose of American power.

A survey released in October by the Institute for Global Affairs at the Eurasia Group found that Republicans and independents, when asked what the primary goal of U.S. foreign policy should be, chose “to protect America from foreign threats and stop other countries from taking advantage of the U.S.” Democrats, on the other hand, chose “to promote democracy, human rights, and the rule of law across the globe as the leader of the free world.”

When House Republicans recently cut Ukraine funding from a plan to keep the government running, they elicited howls from some Democrats about “abandoning” Ukraine. But independents aren’t howling. The survey shows that many share Republicans’ skepticism of alliances, concern over diminishing weapons stockpiles and desire to withdraw U.S. troops stationed in Europe.

In other words, independents echo the rhetoric of Donald Trump more than that of Joe Biden. The president has lately dialed down his trumpeting of a worldwide “battle between democracy and autocracy.” Perhaps his campaign realized this resonated with those inclined to vote for him anyway, and could fail to win over swing voters.

Historically, a foreign policy election benefits the incumbent. During the Cold War, politics were said to stop at the water’s edge, as Americans sought to show the world a united front. International crises often generated a “rally ’round the flag” effect for leaders seen as taking decisive action.

However, voters today don’t agree on the dangers the U.S. faces, let alone the best way to address them. Republicans’ greatest perceived threat — immigration threatens the country’s national identity — ranked last among Democrats on our survey. Climate -change-induced natural disasters were seen as the top threat among Democrats, but the second-to-last among Republicans.

Political leaders can usually be forgiven for not heeding the public’s foreign policy preferences. Voters can be capricious or ill-informed, and expertise is crucial for foreign policy decision-making. But if foreign crises continue to focus Americans’ attention next year, Biden ignores their views at his peril.

Source : Los Angeles Times

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Sameh Shoukry, Egypt’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, condemned on Saturday the killings of civilians in Gaza, saying that they cannot be justified by Israel’s claim of self-defence. He also criticized Israel’s policy of collective punishment, targeting of civilians and forced displacement of Palestinians.

Shoukry spoke at a press conference with the foreign ministers of Jordan and the United States after the Arab-American ministerial meeting in Amman on the developments in the situation in Gaza. He called for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire in Gaza and urged the international community to stop applying double standards to the Palestinian issue.

The foreign minister said that the number of civilian casualties in Gaza was unacceptable and demanded an immediate halt to the Israeli aggression. He reiterated Egypt’s firm rejection of any attempts to undermine the Palestinian cause or the rights of the Palestinian people.

He also stressed the need to revive the peace process based on the two-state solution and to launch an international investigation into the violations committed by Israel in the Gaza Strip.

Shoukry said that Egypt was doing everything possible to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip and to provide medical assistance to the wounded civilians. He added that Egypt faced many obstacles in its efforts, but would continue to work for the sake of peace and stability in the region.

He said that Egypt and the United States had many points of agreement on the need to stop the war and protect the civilians, and that Egypt would always cooperate with the United States on this matter.

Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi echoed Shoukry’s sentiments, saying that the war in Gaza was against all religions and human values. He said that the war crimes committed by Israel in the Gaza Strip must stop and that Israel must not enjoy impunity from accountability.

He called for an immediate ceasefire and an end to the destruction caused by the war. He rejected Israel’s characterization of its actions as self-defense, saying that it would not bring security to Israel or peace to the region.

US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken affirmed on Saturday that the United States aimed to end the crisis in the Gaza Strip and to achieve a lasting peace in the region. He expressed his gratitude to Egypt and Jordan for their hard work on the two-state solution and their dedication to achieving a safer and more stable Middle East.

Blinken expressed his concern over the escalation in the West Bank and said that the United States condemned the violence and called for holding the perpetrators accountable. He said that the United States believed that the two-state solution was the best way to ensure the freedom and dignity of both peoples. He also said that the United States would take some practical steps to advance this goal.

He said that the humanitarian situation in Gaza was very critical and that the United States would work with its partners to ensure the delivery of aid to the Palestinians. He said that the status quo before the war was not sustainable and that the international community had a responsibility to create a new path for a better future. He said that the United States would intensify its efforts to achieve this objective.

US Secretary of State said: “The humanitarian pause is very important to get aid in to the Palestinians; to ensure that people move safely, buildings are rebuilt; and we will continue to work with our partners to ensure that aid gets in.”

Source : Daily News Egypt

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The concept of Stabilitätskultur, or culture of stability, was first used by former Bundesbank President Helmut Schlesinger in 1991. In coining this phrase, he wanted to emphasise that stable money – the remit of central banks − not only required a stability-oriented policy from the central bank, but also from the government and society at large.

In the face of the current climate and nature crises, Schlesinger’s insight that stability-oriented institutions cannot pursue their objectives in isolation could hardly be more relevant. The Emissions Gap Report published by the UN earlier this week concludes that the world is on a global heating path of 3°C, far above the Paris Agreement objective of well below 2°C. And earlier studies have shown that 25% of species are vulnerable and an estimated one million species face a risk of extinction. Today I will convey that a culture of stability can only be preserved if climate and nature are stable. Most central banks and banking supervisors around the world have acknowledged this in recent years. And the ECB is putting it into practice in all its tasks and responsibilities, including our banking supervision and our monetary policy, the latter being the focus of my remarks today.

Taking climate and nature into account

As I have often said before and will reiterate today to remove any possibly remaining doubt: central banks and supervisors like the ECB are not, and do not intend to be, climate and nature policymakers. Moreover, as an independent central bank, the ECB is not directly bound by the European Climate Law that since 2021 has committed the EU to achieving climate neutrality by 2050 with interim deadlines. This does not mean, however, that the ECB is allowed to ignore the Climate Law. The EU Treaty requires environmental protection to be integrated into the definition and implementation of EU policies. The Treaty imposes an obligation on us to take into account the objectives of climate and nature-related legislation when performing our monetary policy and banking supervision tasks.

This is not just a legal reality. The massive impact of the climate and nature crises on the economy, including the financial system, makes it crystal clear that we must take climate and nature into account. In fact, if we didn’t do so, we would risk failing to deliver on our mandate.

The relevance of climate and nature for monetary policy

At least five economic consequences of the climate and nature crises are specifically relevant to monetary policy and our primary objective of maintaining price stability.

First, we can expect macroeconomic volatility – including the volatility of inflation – to increase further as climate and nature events occur more frequently and have a greater impact on the economy.

Second, climate and nature shocks complicate monetary policy analysis and make it harder to assess the appropriate monetary policy response. Whether we are dealing with more frequent extreme weather events and nature degradation or actions to support the green transition, climate and nature events may largely materialise in the form of supply shocks, implying that economic activity and inflation move in opposite directions. Generally speaking, as supply shocks involve a potential trade-off, they are more challenging for central banks than demand shocks. If supply shocks persistently affect inflation, they may generate risks for price stability and so trigger a change to monetary policy that would further dampen economic activity. If, however, supply shocks are temporary and pose no risk to medium-term price stability, central banks can look through them and avoid slowing down the economy.

Third, the ongoing climate and nature crises may cause the equilibrium rate of interest to fall. The equilibrium rate is the interest rate that prevails when all shocks to the economy have dissipated and monetary policy is neither accommodative nor restrictive. Greater uncertainty owing to the climate and nature crises and the necessity to build up resilience to shocks can increase economic agents’ propensity to save, thereby lowering the equilibrium interest rate. A lower equilibrium rate implies that future monetary policy could come up against the effective lower bound for interest rates more often, though the more frequent occurrence of negative supply shocks that I referred to earlier may mitigate this effect to some extent.

Fourth, financial risks arising from climate and nature crises can impair the soundness of financial institutions. Should these risks materialise – despite all our efforts as a banking supervisor to mitigate them – the transmission of our monetary policy could be affected. Monetary policy decisions would be transmitted through the financial system and the economy in a less orderly and less predictable manner, potentially hampering our effectiveness in achieving our price stability objective.

Fifth, the risks that may affect financial institutions can also undermine the solidity of the central bank balance sheet. Unlike commercial banks, central banks are not profit-seeking and only expose themselves to financial risks if helpful in achieving price stability. This is especially true when such risks can cause financial losses that could erode confidence in the central bank’s ability to deliver price stability. Prudent central banks will thus seek to avoid any climate and nature-related financial risks that do not contribute to price stability.

I am not aware of any evidence suggesting that seeking exposures to climate and nature-related financial risks might help in securing and maintaining price stability. On the contrary, available evidence suggests the opposite is true. In fact, when we align our portfolios with the market status quo of high exposure to climate and nature-related financial risks, we risk adding to macroeconomic volatility. As already mentioned, this would make it harder to achieve the monetary policy goal of price stability.

To summarise, in the pursuit of price stability, central banks benefit from mitigation of climate and nature-related risks, which – as analysis consistently shows − is best ensured by securing a timely and orderly transition.

The ECB’s climate actions so far

Against this backdrop, in 2021 the ECB explicitly acknowledged that climate change had profound implications for price stability through its impact on the structure and cyclical dynamics of the economy and the financial system. In the case of the ECB, actions on climate equally serve our secondary objective, as also laid down in the EU Treaties, of supporting the general economic policies in the EU, which include the EU’s climate objectives. Accordingly, we unveiled an ambitious climate action plan covering macroeconomic modelling, financial stability monitoring, data collection, risk assessment capabilities and our monetary policy operations.

And this wasn’t just a plan. We delivered on it, just like we said we would. Let me give you some specific examples of how we have put into practice what were still mere ambitions back in 2021.

First, we have made significant progress in improving our capabilities to take climate considerations into account in the macroeconomic analyses that inform our monetary policy assessment. For example, we can now use a suite of macroeconomic models to analyse the economic consequences of the green transition in the euro area. Using this suite of models, staff have found that an increase in carbon pricing in line with the International Energy Agency’s net-zero scenarios may have a limited impact on economic growth and inflation. The analysis also suggests that due to the low substitutability of non-sustainable and sustainable consumption, the carbon price path envisaged by the Agency may not actually be sufficient to achieve net-zero objectives. This implies that either carbon prices would need to increase further, or that additional regulation would be required, or a combination of both. Again, we would need to be ready to take into account any monetary policy implications that could arise as a result.

Acknowledging that climate factors can have an impact on our monetary policy assessment is not just “what-if” thinking. ECB research shows that the related effects are already materialising. For example, ECB staff estimates suggest that the heatwave in 2022 pushed up food price inflation by up to 0.67 percentage points, with the impact lasting well into 2023. Thanks to our enhanced analytical capabilities, earlier this year we were able to acknowledge for the first time – in our monetary policy statement issued after the Governing Council meeting – that climate factors posed an upside risk to the inflation outlook.

Second, between October 2022 and July 2023 we started tilting our reinvestments of corporate bonds towards issuers that have a better climate performance. In so doing, we can avoid undue exposures to climate-related risks that are detrimental to price stability and align the way we administer our monetary policy more closely with the EU’s general economic policies. As of July 2023 we suspended bond purchases in our asset purchase programme, including corporate bonds, to support the downward pressure exerted by our current policy rates in order to bring inflation back to our 2% target. If required from a monetary policy perspective, the established direction of the tilt will set the minimum benchmark for any future corporate bond purchases.

In addition to our bond holdings, we are also looking at the collateral framework that we apply in relation to banks’ participation in our lending operations. We have decided that only assets that comply with the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive will remain eligible once it enters into force. In addition, we are now looking at setting limits on the share of assets issued by entities with a high carbon footprint that banks can pledge as collateral for our lending operations.

Some avenues that we explored did not result in us having to make any changes. When we reviewed the resilience of the haircuts that we apply to collateral valuation, we did not find any evidence that the existing scheme provides insufficient protection against climate-related financial risks over the horizon for which these haircuts should provide protection. We will continue to evaluate this in the future as and when better data become available.

Our current actions aim to support a high degree of confidence in the alignment of our activities with the goals set by the Paris Agreement within our mandate. However, the decarbonisation path for our monetary policy assets remains dependent on actions that are not fully under our control, including the decarbonisation efforts made by the issuers of bonds that we hold.

Evaluating, adapting and broadening our actions to include nature

This is one of the main reasons why we have made a commitment to regularly review all our measures to assess their impact. If necessary, we will adapt them to ensure they continue to fulfil their monetary policy objectives and support the decarbonisation path to reach the goals set by the Paris Agreement and the EU climate neutrality objectives. Moreover, we will also look into addressing additional environmental challenges within our mandate. Even if the legislative environment on nature preservation is trailing behind that on climate change – in spite of the landmark Nature Restoration Law – our initial analyses show that nature-related risks are highly relevant for the European economy and financial system. Out of 4.2 million firms that we looked at, around three million are highly dependent on at least one ecosystem service, services provided by nature that are significantly subject to degradation.

Besides making continued efforts to further enhance our analytical capabilities and deliver on our data needs, what else should we include when we assess our actions? Given the prevailing inflation outlook and the need for us to continue to implement a sufficiently restrictive monetary policy to bring inflation sustainably back to our 2% target, we do not expect to expand our balance sheet again anytime soon. However, that doesn’t mean that we don’t need to continue re-evaluating the fitness of the instruments we have in our toolkit in case policy adjustments are required. Moreover, in proceeding with the rundown of our balance sheet, we need to think about which features we would like to maintain in a steady state.

Our monetary policy strategy enables us to think about both questions. Specifically, whenever we are faced with two configurations of the set of instruments that would be equally conducive to maintaining price stability, we will and legally must choose the one that best supports the general economic policies in the EU. This implies that whenever we make a marginal adjustment to the calibration of our instruments, we must choose the option that increases our confidence in the plausibility of our decarbonisation path, unless our proportionality assessment shows that there are other, less intrusive ways of achieving price stability.

Looking ahead, besides the adjustments that we are already implementing, I think this principle may require us to consider two further avenues.

The first concerns our public sector bond holdings. Here we can apply reasoning very similar to that applied to our corporate bond holdings. Currently, the bulk of our monetary policy assets consists of bonds issued by governments of EU Member States. However, the climate and nature-related risk intensity of these bonds is not obvious owing to the absence of a clear and reliable framework to assess their compatibility with the Paris Agreement. At the same time, since the pandemic, the universe of supranational bonds issued by EU institutions has increased significantly, with green bonds representing a relatively large proportion. In my view, when there is no clear monetary policy rationale for preferring domestic sovereign bonds, we should contemplate increasing the share of EU supranational bonds in our total bond holdings to avoid potential climate and nature-related risks and to better align our balance sheet with the general economic policies in the EU. Not only is this relevant for when we would need to consider new bond purchases. It is also relevant when we need to discuss the composition of any structural bond portfolio that we might maintain in the new steady state.

Second, whenever there is a monetary policy need in the future to reconsider targeted longer-term refinancing operations for banks, there are compelling reasons to seriously consider greening them. A parallel can be drawn with the way that the ECB has in the past incorporated financial stability considerations into the design of its instruments. As of the third series that was launched in 2019, the targeted longer-term refinancing operations (TLTROs) that we offered banks comprised a lending target that excluded housing loans to avoid contributing to the formation of real estate bubbles. Similar targeting strategies can be considered to support green lending or exclude non-green lending in the future, provided an operationally efficient validation process is feasible.

Source : ECB

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Grand Junction City Council has approved a policy allowing the city to self-perform some projects with City Council’s approval.

The vote brings to an end a nearly year-long process of formulating a self-performance policy for the city. In December 2022, City Council and staff met with representatives from the contracting community to discuss 9.2 miles of the Riverfront Trail, which the city was planning to convert from asphalt to concrete using its own staff instead of a private contractor.

Both sides agreed the city should have a formal policy for self-performance in place.

City Council rejected a bid to perform part of the Riverfront Trail project in April in favor of city staff performing the work.

Last month, City Council rejected a portion of an update to the city’s purchasing policy related to self-performance. That policy would have allowed the city to self-perform public projects that cost less than $750,000 and bid on projects that cost more than $750,000 under certain circumstances.

That policy was rejected in favor of the policy approved Wednesday, which will largely identify self-performance projects through the city budgeting process, and require a public hearing and City Council approval before the project starts.

City Attorney John Shaver said additional projects other than those identified in the budget can still be self-performed, but they still have to go through the public hearing process.

Mayor Anna Stout said that part of the policy gives the city flexibility in case a project doesn’t have any bids come in, or if the bids that do come in are exorbitant.

“There were plenty of reasons we didn’t want to have our hands tied,” Stout said.

During public comment, some local contractors spoke out against the policy.

“Is that really a policy or an open-ended check?” said Mays Concrete Executive Vice President Paul Burdett, one of the original people who spoke against the city on the issue.

Cori Elam, co-owner of Asphalt Specialists and Supply Inc., said the city might not be able to do the job as wells as private contractors on projects.

“What pisses me off is when I see shoddy work that reflects poorly on me as a person, as a contractor, as us as a community,” Elam said.

Elam said the City Council should make sure to ask questions when it has self-performance projects presented, and when council members don’t know what questions to ask, they should ask the local contracting community.

“I’m asking you to ask questions like ‘How did this three-year project turn into a four-year project, but after two years isn’t even halfway done?’ “ Elam said. “And oh by the way, people can die.”

Council Member Dennis Simpson, the lone vote against the policy, said he was concerned City Council won’t have additional sources of information besides city staff when projects are presented to council.

“If this comes, how will we ever challenge what we’re being told by staff?” Simpson said. “And I’ve used the term before, I’ll use it again. It’ll be a rubber stamp.”

Source : The Daily Sentinel

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