Writer
Michael Pascoe
Michael is the contributing editor for The New Daily. Journalist, commentator, speaker, rugby follower, would prefer to be skiing.
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MICHAEL PASCOE. Leaderless Australian government outsources all responsibility (New Daily, 20.11.18)
It has come to this for the Australian government: With no leadership, no mettle and no political capital to spend, difficult decisions are outsourced, and responsibility for decisions that might offend is spread far and wide. Continue reading »
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MICHAEL PASCOE. Fairfax joins the Murdoch sectarian beat-up brigade (The New Daily).
The first law of journalism is that bad news is good news – bad news sells. On Monday, Fairfax’s Sydney Morning Herald and The Age newspapers had a choice between a “good news” story and twisting the facts to make a “bad news” story. No prize for guessing which way the decision went. Continue reading »
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MICHAEL PASCOE. Scott Morrison’s Australia resembles the 51st American state (the New Daily, 17.10.18)
“We’re a sovereign nation,” said Scott Morrison. And then proceeded to act as if we were not, as if Australia was not merely an American vassal, but a Donald Trump toy. Continue reading »
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MICHAEL PASCOE. ‘Not pretty, but riveting’: Royal commission interim report due (the New Daily, 27.09.18)
Here comes the first of Kenneth Hayne’s large hobnailed boots up the backside of Australian banking, superannuation, financial advice, wealth management, insurance and regulation. It’s not going to be pretty, but it’s certainly going to be riveting. Most obviously the Big End of Town’s CEOs and chairmen were mostly spared embarrassing questioning about what they Continue reading »
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MICHAEL PASCOE. Why now is definitely not the time to scrap negative gearing (The New Daily, 21.09.18)
Conventional and entirely reasonable wisdom holds that the middle of a drought is not the time to develop drought policy – but that is what we appear to be headed for with Scott Morrison’s “drought summit”. Continue reading »
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MICHAEL PASCOE. For-profit funds take a hit off back of royal commission (11.09.18)
Never mind the fines and compensation building up, what about retail fund managers losing more than $20 billion of assets in the June quarter? Continue reading »
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MICHAEL PASCOE. Billions wasted on drought aid that’s not helping those who need it most.
Wealthy people are stuffing their kitchen cupboards with donated goods and their sheds with free hay while animal welfare is being ignored and low-paid rural workers go without favours. Continue reading »
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MICHAEL PASCOE. PM Dutton would abandon what has made Australia great (The New Daily, 22.08.18)
There’s a big hint in the job title – “leader”. It means the job is to lead, not to follow, not to merely manage a disparate group by appeasement, compromise and bribery. Continue reading »
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MICHAEL PASCOE. Why Australia’s latest wages figures are worse than they look (the New Daily 16.08.18)
The June quarter wages index headlined a slight lift of 0.6 per cent for the quarter, making 2.1 per cent for the year. Don’t be fooled – the numbers are worse than they look. Continue reading »
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MICHAEL PASCOE. Don’t believe in climate change? Then come over to Europe.
Just how hot does it have to get before the global frog understands he’s cooking? Continue reading »
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MICHAEL PASCOE. Electricity – driving towards the coal cliff
How bad, how dumb, how driven by internal political stupidities, how simply nonsensically odd are the electricity troglodytes pushing to keep the old Liddell coal-fired power station open for a few more years? Their case is destroyed by a single graph. Continue reading »
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MICHAEL PASCOE. Wealth and power inevitably having their way with the tax system
The strange thing at the core of the Turnbull personal and company tax cuts is that the most important and controversial elements are so far away. And as John Kenneth Galbraith put it so succinctly ‘The modern Conservative is engaged in one of mans oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is the search for a Continue reading »
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MICHAEL PASCOE. Liberals’ lurch to the right is straight out of Trump playbook
“What federal council meeting? Oh, that federal council meeting – privatising the ABC, following Trump on moving our embassy to Jerusalem? No, nothing to see here. Move along.” Continue reading »
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MICHAEL PASCOE. The Australian government’s hypocritical stance on PNG corruption.
It’s illegal for Australian entities to bribe foreign entities, but apparently we’re perfectly happy to take dirty money from bribed foreigners and consort with corrupt leaders. Malaysia’s prime-minister-in-waiting, Anwar Ibrahim, called us out on Friday, expressing a view that Australia has been “completely dishonest” about ousted leader Najib Razak, and “complicit” in Malaysian corruption. Continue reading »
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MICHAEL PASCOE. Fear and loathing in superannuation – Liberal and industry fund conspiracy theories
The Productivity Commission’s recommendation that all superannuation funds have an independent chairman and board seems reasonable, yet industry funds are vehemently opposed to it. Meanwhile the industry funds, on average, clearly outperform their retail opposition, but the Liberal Party has been explicit in its desire to undermine them and lift the retail funds’ market share. Continue reading »
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MICHAEL PASCOE. Profit-rich private health insurers burning billions on non-health costs
Australian capitalism’s sheltered workshop, the private health insurance industry, is burning billions of dollars a year unrelated to Australians’ health. Continue reading »
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MICHAEL PASCOE. Budget 2018: The ‘Middle Australia’ tax cuts are a con
No, Scott Morrison is not promising average Australians significant tax cuts. To use a technical term, the proposed cuts are ‘bugger all’. The Treasurer is promising a radical flattening of the tax scale to primarily benefit the top tier of income earners. Continue reading »
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MICHAEL PASCOE. It’s confession time and there’s much for the government to confess
If confession is good for the soul, key government figures should be mightily uplifted by the admissions now pouring out of them, however obliquely. Continue reading »
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MICHAEL PASCOE. The reality of our ‘scary’ China confrontation.
Fresh on the heels of the Chinese invasion of Vanuatu that wasn’t, febrile minds have been seized by the headline-grabbing story of a Chinese navy “confrontation” with the Royal Australian Navy. The Prime Minister was quickly ready in London to assert Australia’s right to freedom of navigation in the South China Sea. Well, I suppose that’s more fun for Continue reading »
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MICHAEL PASCOE. What’s the story behind the Dastyari story?
What do leaking spooks, a dashed Dastyari and a dubious donor say about our most important trade partner? Continue reading »
