Opinion: What the budget doesn't say, but should have, is that the US presidential election matters as much, if not more, to our wellbeing. The US is to the global economy what Victoria is to Australia's. While it remains in recession, so do we
Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time.This is a bittersweet weekend to be a Melburnian. The second wave of the coronavirus is finally behind us. Only one new infection was reported on Friday, bringing the rolling 14-day average down to 5.5. That should mean a significant easing of restrictions on our movement from next week.
These are the details of the pandemic that will live in our cultural memory long after we've forgotten who let the virus out of hotel quarantine.At the peak of the Victoria's second wave from early August to mid-September, the death toll was more than 100 a week. This week, just one death was recorded, on Monday.
But the Australian economy won't return to normal until we can safely reopen our borders to the rest of the world. The budget assumes this can't happen for at least another 18 months. Net overseas migration is forecast to fall by 71,600 this financial year and 21,600 in 2021-22. The last time we had more people leaving Australia than coming here in peacetime was in the 1930s.
The US has just 4 per cent of the global population, but has recorded 20 per cent of all the deaths to COVID-19 so far – almost 230,000 of 1.14 million. Our borders can't open in a meaningful way while the virus continues to run unchecked in the US. The virus will still have three months to burn on Trump time before a handover of power in January. It might be too late to bend the US curve by then. But if Biden did prove to be a miracle worker, it would still mean the global economy slows in the short term through the withdrawal of US demand during its lockdown. In other words, a double-dip is looming for our economy whoever wins.
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Biden needs 'elixir of life' to get through next debate | Sky News AustraliaSky News contributor Cory Bernardi says the Democrats wheeled Barack Obama out to campaign while Joe Biden was “getting the elixir of life to get through the debate” and animate him for long enough. \n\nHis comment comes after former United States President Barack Obama slammed the Trump administration for its coronavirus response in a drive-in Biden campaign rally in Pennsylvania.\n\n“Barack Obama is one of the greatest phonies,” Mr Bernardi said. \n\n“His rhetoric there about ‘we wouldn’t tolerate it from a president’ comes from a president who put the IRS onto conservative organizations who were opposed to his rule, that corrupted - I use that term advisedly, - the FBI and turned it against its own citizens.\n\n“He knew about Hilary Clinton’s private server; he was communicating with her using an alias and yet he denied any of this. \n\n“This bloke is a phony, but that’s how desperate the Democrats are.”
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Joe Biden did nothing but ‘build cages to keep children in’: Trump | Sky News AustraliaDemocratic Presidential candidate Joe Biden has declared he will create a “pathway to citizenship” for over 11 million undocumented immigrants.\n\nMr Biden also indicated he will “immediately certify” all of the ‘dreamers’ – immigrant children in America on DACA – so that they will be able to stay in America and put “on a pathway to citizenship”.\n\nPresident Trump said Mr Biden had eight years in the White House to reform immigration and implement the policies he is now proposing.\n\n“We got rid of catch and release, we got rid of a lot of horrible things that they put in.\n\n“He had eight years, he was Vice President, he did nothing except build cages to keep children in.”\n
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Americans will have 'socialised medicine' under Biden-Harris presidency | Sky News AustraliaPresident Donald Trump says he wants to terminate Obamacare and introduce a “brand new, beautiful health care” if the Supreme Court is successful in overturning the Affordable Care Act. \n\n“It’s in court because Obamacare is no good,” he said. \n\nThe president touted his administration for removing the individual mandate, claiming Obamacare was gone without it. \n\nHe said if Joe Biden was elected president, 180 million people would lose their private health insurance plans. \n\n“Under what he wants to do, which will basically be socialised medicine, he won’t even have a choice, they want to terminate 180 million plans,” Mr Trump said. \n\n“We have done an incredible job on health care and we’re going to do even better in the future, just you watch.”\n\nMr Trump continued to push the point of “socialised medicine”, saying Senator Kamala Harris was behind the move. \n\n“It is not that he (Biden) wants it,” the president said. \n\n“His vice president, she is more liberal than Bernie Sanders and wants it even more, Bernie Sanders wants it, the Democrats want it.\n\n“You’re going to have socialised medicine.” \n
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Biden said three ‘very strange’ things during final presidential debate | Sky News AustraliaSky News host Paul Murray says Joe Biden said three things which were “frightening, or ludicrous, or just a little bit weird” during the final presidential debate.\n\nUS President Donald Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden went head to head in the final presidential debate in Nashville, clashing over issues such as COVID-19 and the economy.\n\n“Number one, during the coronavirus discussion Biden said that an extra 200,000 people will die before the end of the year,” Mr Murray told Sky News host Peter Gleeson.\n\n“It’s idiots on Twitter who think that Donald Trump is directly responsible for 200,000 people dying in the United States.\n\n“The second very strange moment was when Joe Biden said that ‘yes I’m for transitioning away from the fossil fuel industry and do it sooner rather than later’; put simply there’s more than nine million oil jobs, gas In America is the cheapest it’s been in decades because they don't have to worry about the Saudi's anymore.\n\n“And finally, Joe Biden actually brought up Adolf Hitler, and as we all know the first person to bring up Hitler or the Nazis loses a debate.”\n
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Donald Trump, Joe Biden claim victory in presidential debate | Sky News AustraliaDonald Trump and rival Joe Biden have both claimed victory after their clash in the final presidential debate.\n\nWhen asked about his performance, President Trump said “the first one, I thought I did great, there were certain groups of very aggressive people that loved the first debate”.\n\n“But I think this was better, this was obviously a more popular way of doing it,” he said.\n\n“I wanted to play by the rules, I felt very strongly about it.”\n\nFormer vice president and Democratic nominee Joe Biden spoke critically about the debate at a rally in his home state of Delaware.\n\n“Last night we saw the president of the US lie to the American people and repeatedly lie about the state of this pandemic.,” he said.\n\n“We saw him refuse to take responsibility for the crisis that should’ve been met with real presidential leadership.\n\n“Instead, it has cost hundreds of thousands of Americans’ lives and pushed millions into poverty, we saw him diminish the pain felt by so many Americans.”\n\n“We’re not learning to live with it, we’re learning to die with it.”
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