Trans-Pacific Partnership: the start of a protracted process
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Trade Ministers reaching agreement on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) has dominated news this week, and for good reason: it’s a big deal.
The New York Times reported this week that the 12 Pacific Rim countries negotiating the pact account for around 40 per cent of annual GDP and one-third of world trade.
The TPP is the most significant trade pact since the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994. While Australia didn’t feature in NAFTA, (though some key provisions were replicated in the 2004 AUSFTA) the TPP is an enormous opportunity for Australian businesses wanting to trade across Asia Pacific.
There is already widespread criticism of the TPP despite the negotiations and text mostly remaining secret. Wikileaks published some material which has concerned environment groups, privacy rights advocates and labour unions.
So will the TPP get the go-ahead?
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Fast Action Finance finished? Australia world leader in payday lending protection
Last week the Federal Court found that payday lenders, Fast Access Finance Pty Ltd breached Australia’s consumer credit laws with its diamond purchase contract business arrangements in a case brought shortly after Australia’s world-leading payday loan protections came into force in 2013.
What is a payday loan?
Payday loans, so called because they are short-term and repayment of the loan is typically due on the borrower’s next payday originated in the US in the mid 1990s and rose to prominence in Australia in the early 2000s after the first payday lender set up shop in Australia in 1998. Due to the increasing demand of consumers unable to access other forms of credit, in the year between 2000 and 2001 the number of monthly payday loans in Australia grew by a whopping 640 per cent.
Payday lenders typically charged high interest rates for speedy access to cash, sometimes stretching into equivalent annual rates of 500 per cent or more of the original loan amount.
Due to the susceptibility of low-income consumers unable to access other forms of finance to the lure of payday loans, in 2013 Australia amended national credit legislation to protect vulnerable consumers, leading the world in consumer finance protections.
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Facebook poised to pursue election ad spend
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For advertisers, elections are big business.
Some experts are predicting 2016 will see roughly $1 billion spent on online political advertising in the US, and Facebook is positioning itself to capture as much of that spend as possible and hopefully capture some campaign dollars traditionally spent on television ads.
Although the political digital advertising spend in Australia is much lower than in the US, recently released Australian mobile statistics point to an increasing focus on reaching Australian voters where they spend most of their time: on their phones.
Last year, the Pew Research Centre found Facebook the second-most popular source for political and government news among American Internet users (explored in The Agenda Group’s analysis of last year’s Victorian election) and with such high Facebook usage in Australia there is no reason to think that it won't play a similar role in our elections.
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Rise of the Cities
Cities are unquestionably the flavour of the month. And it may prove to be a very long month at that.
Only this week have we received the latest in a long line of warnings, this time from the Australian Council of Learned Academics, about the unsustainability of the growth in our cities without better transport planning and the requisite investment in infrastructure and services.
A notable change in tack from the Federal Government under new Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has seen the appointment of a ‘Cities’ Minister. An avowed fan of public transport, Prime Minister Turnbull has made clear he will now countenance federal funding support for metropolitan rail projects – an approach that was off the table under his predecessor.
The Federal Opposition has also moved to bolster its credentials in this area, announcing this week that Infrastructure Australia would have its remit expanded under a Shorten Government to move beyond merely advising on the suitability of infrastructure projects, but will go further in acting as a financial enabler of preferred projects.
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