Latest news with #IPA
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Commemorative Banks's beer a 'thank you' to city
The makers of Banks's beers have said a specially-brewed IPA will be a "fitting tribute that honour the brewery's legacy". Its brewery in Wolverhampton will cease operations in the autumn, after 150 years, with production moving to Burton-upon-Trent. Carlsberg Britvic said its Sesquicentennial IPA would be available exclusively at the Wolverhampton Beer Festival from 24 to 26 July. Julie Gale, senior production manager at Banks's, said: "This is a thank you to our drinkers, publicans, fellow brewers, our amazing, dedicated team at Banks's and everyone who's supported the brewery over the years." Banks's Brewery opened in 1875, but last October the Carlsberg Marston's Brewing Company announced it would close as part of a company restructuring. The brewery has had a close relationship with Camra's Wolverhampton Beer Festival since it started in 1977 and has a history of supplying limited-edition beers. It described the anniversary beer as "dry hopped with Ahtanum, from Washington State, USA, and the new English variety, Opus, the beer has a bold floral aroma, with vivid flavours of orange and grapefruit citrus along with fragrant elderflower and subtle herbal hints." Ms Gale, who led the team brewing the Sesquicentennial IPA, said Banks's beers had "become a symbol of craft, heritage and local pride". She added: "We're incredibly proud of what this brewery has stood for over the past 150 years, and we couldn't think of a better stage than the Wolverhampton Beer Festival to share this beer with the community." Carlsberg Britvic also said it was working with local stakeholders to preserve items from the brewery. They include the brewing ledgers, which will be entrusted to the Wolverhampton Archives, along with other documents. Follow BBC Wolverhampton & Black Country on BBC Sounds, Facebook, X and Instagram. More on this story Mystery beer to bring cheers as Banks's bows out Drinks giant first occupier of huge logistics hub Banks's Mild and Bombardier among ales axed by brewer Banks's Brewery set to close in its 150th year Related internet links Banks's
BBC News
4 days ago
- Business
- BBC News
Commemorative Banks's beer a 'thank you' to Wolverhampton
The makers of Banks's beers have said a specially-brewed IPA will be a "fitting tribute that honour the brewery's legacy".Its brewery in Wolverhampton will cease operations in the autumn, after 150 years, with production moving to Britvic said its Sesquicentennial IPA would be available exclusively at the Wolverhampton Beer Festival from 24 to 26 Gale, senior production manager at Banks's, said: "This is a thank you to our drinkers, publicans, fellow brewers, our amazing, dedicated team at Banks's and everyone who's supported the brewery over the years." Banks's Brewery opened in 1875, but last October the Carlsberg Marston's Brewing Company announced it would close as part of a company brewery has had a close relationship with Camra's Wolverhampton Beer Festival since it started in 1977 and has a history of supplying limited-edition described the anniversary beer as "dry hopped with Ahtanum, from Washington State, USA, and the new English variety, Opus, the beer has a bold floral aroma, with vivid flavours of orange and grapefruit citrus along with fragrant elderflower and subtle herbal hints." Ms Gale, who led the team brewing the Sesquicentennial IPA, said Banks's beers had "become a symbol of craft, heritage and local pride". She added: "We're incredibly proud of what this brewery has stood for over the past 150 years, and we couldn't think of a better stage than the Wolverhampton Beer Festival to share this beer with the community."Carlsberg Britvic also said it was working with local stakeholders to preserve items from the include the brewing ledgers, which will be entrusted to the Wolverhampton Archives, along with other documents. Follow BBC Wolverhampton & Black Country on BBC Sounds, Facebook, X and Instagram.
The Guardian
4 days ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
Liberal party hardliners are on the back foot – but while Tony Abbott is around, the right will fight
Four days on from the Liberal party's worst federal election defeat in its 80-year history, Tony Abbott sought to explain the wreckage. Peter Dutton, Abbott argued, put the Coalition in the 'box seat' to beat Labor with his opposition to the Indigenous voice to parliament, nuclear power ambitions, refusal to stand in front of the Aboriginal flag and warnings about 'indoctrination' in schools. That was at the end of 2024. Then something changed. 'This year, really from January on, we failed to pick fights,' the former Liberal prime minister told a podcast by the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA), the rightwing thinktank of which he is a distinguished fellow. 'And when we did pick fights on, for argument's sake, trying to get public servants back into the office, as soon as we came under a bit of pressure, we pulled back. We kind of lost our mojo a bit; we lost direction a bit.' The explanation from Abbott – who was close to Dutton – reflected a popular counter-narrative pushed by hardline conservatives in the election postmortem. The Coalition didn't lose, and lose badly, because Dutton had dragged it too far to the right, as most commentators concluded. It lost, Abbott was suggesting, because Dutton pulled back. As Sussan Ley tries to reposition the Liberals to the political centre in response to Dutton's catastrophic defeat, the new leader will face resistance from conservatives, inside and outside the party, who are adamant it must remain on the right. This latest chapter in the party's enduring internal conflict is expected to flare during debates over whether to dump the target of net zero emissions by 2050, adopt gender quotas and embrace or shun culture wars. Sign up for a weekly email featuring our best reads Conversations with Liberal MPs and insiders suggest that more than six years after losing his seat in federal parliament, Abbott remains arguably the most powerful conservative in Australian politics. One senior Liberal source said Abbott was as influential as he has been since he was dumped as prime minister in 2015. The 67-year-old is entrenched in the ecosystem of rightwing media, thinktanks and lobby groups that shape conservative thinking. He sits on the board in charge of Fox News (Donald Trump's favoured cable news channel), appears regularly on Sky News, often with his former chief-of-staff Peta Credlin, and has ties to the IPA and the rightwing campaign group Advance. Overseas, Abbott advises the rightwing political forum Alliance for Responsible Citizenship and is a senior visiting fellow at the Danube Institute, a Hungary-based thinktank supportive of the country's far-right prime minister, Viktor Orbán. In a revealing insight into his worldview, Abbott used a recent speech to the Hungarian Conservative Political Action Conference to urge western countries to have the 'cultural self-confidence' to resist the 'the politics of climate and identity' and the 'false doctrine of multiculturalism'. One Liberal source suggested Abbott's endgame was to transform the Liberals – the supposed 'broad church' accomodating moderates and conservatives – into a rightwing party. 'He [Abbott] wants to be the major power behind the throne. He's not driven by money; he's driven by power,' a Liberal source said. Abbott helped orchestrate Jacinta Nampijinpa Price's post-election defection from the Nationals to the Liberals to run as Angus Taylor's deputy, two sources familiar with the covert plot confirmed. He actively campaigned for fellow anti-voice campaigner Warren Mundine in his preselection tilt for Bradfield. He publicly put pressure on Ley to extend the Dutton-backed intervention into the troubled NSW Liberal division. The three cases are evidence of Abbott as an active player internally. But they are instructive for another reason: in each, he failed to achieve his ultimate outcome. The Taylor-Price leadership team never materialised while Mundine lost preselection in Bradfield to Gisele Kapterian. The NSW intervention was ultimately extended but in a vastly different form after Ley secured support for an all-NSW administrative committee to run the branch, effectively sacking the two controversial Victorian figures installed under Dutton with Abbott's support. An 11th-hour push from right faction powerbrokers to secure Abbott a seat on the new committee failed. Some Liberals view the sequence of setbacks, each at the hands of Ley and her allies, as signs of the waning influence of Abbott and the conservatives over the party. Others aren't so sure. Under Dutton, the conservatives ruled the Liberal party in Canberra. After the teal independents all but wiped out the Liberal moderates in 2022 and Scott Morrison's exit diminished the centre-right group that had expanded around him, Dutton and the right faction assumed both numerical and ideological control of the federal party. Dutton's dramatic downfall at the 3 May federal election set in train a realignment of the internal power dynamics. With more than 20 members, the right is still clearly the largest faction in the 52-member federal Liberal party room. Yet it was unable to install Taylor as Dutton's successor after surviving moderates, centre-right and unaligned MPs combined to make Ley the federal party's first female leader. Taylor and senior rightwingers Michaelia Cash, James Paterson and Andrew Hastie have retained senior roles, but other conservatives were dumped or demoted, including Sarah Henderson, Claire Chandler, Tony Pasin and Price, who abandoned plans to run for deputy leader after Taylor lost the ballot. The right was surprised and concerned at how far Ley went in rewarding backers and punishing internal rivals in her shadow ministry, particularly given she won the leadership by just 29 votes to 25. 'She overextended in the reshuffle and that could come back to haunt her,' one Liberal insider says. For now, senior conservatives are supporting Ley after a tumultuous first two months in the role, which included navigating the brief split with the Nationals while grieving over her mother's death. Taylor, now the shadow defence minister, has not been agitating behind the scenes and has been dissuading others from doing so, sources say. The open hostilities in the run-up to the leadership vote, which included the distribution of a scorecard mocking Ley's closeness to centre-right numbers man Alex Hawke, her past support for Palestine and her alleged faith in 'numerology', have stopped. There is a widely held view among Liberal MPs that Ley's fledging leadership is not under threat and undermining her serves no one's interest. Sign up to Five Great Reads Each week our editors select five of the most interesting, entertaining and thoughtful reads published by Guardian Australia and our international colleagues. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Saturday morning after newsletter promotion Conservatives are wary, though, of the new leader's early, deliberate steps to distance herself from Dutton, such as opening her speech to the National Press Club with an acknowledgment of country to traditional owners. '[Sussan] is a completely different leader to Dutton and that is a good thing,' a senior Liberal source says. 'She does need to be careful in navigating her way. Her acknowledgment to country at the Press Club and standing in front of three flags during her press conference did not go down well with the base. 'The Liberal party is the main centre-right party in Australia and we cannot forget that. If we do, we will lose our base.' The right secured a small win ahead of parliament's return, with the faction's pick, Slade Brockman, defeating the Ley-backed candidate, Andrew McLachlan, in an internal ballot for the role of deputy Senate president. Liberal MPs acknowledge conflict is inevitable and even necessary after internal contest was sacrificed for discipline under Dutton, a trade-off many MPs blame for the threadbare agenda it offered on 3 May. But some fights are expected to extend well beyond the bounds of robust debate, descending instead into open political warfare. 'Everyone will behave themselves in the short term, but whenever something comes up, people will seek to use that to litigate their personal grievances,' one MP said. 'Things like net zero, for example, will really ramp up.' Climate change is ground zero for the Liberal party's internecine conflicts. The latest battle – whether to abandon a commitment to net zero emissions by 2050 – shapes as a defining contest for Ley's leadership and the future of the Liberal-National Coalition. The hard-won but fragile consensus that allowed Morrison to sign up the Coalition to the emissions target in 2021 has fractured, exposing deep divisions over what has become a totemic issue for the political right. Ley immediately put net zero up for debate after agreeing to review the opposition's entire policy agenda. The shadow energy minister, Dan Tehan, is leading an internal policy working group that will report to Ley and the Nationals leader, David Littleproud. The Nationals will conduct a separate review, to be jointly led by parliament's loudest net zero critic, Matt Canavan. Liberal MPs are not optimistic a consensus position can be achieved as they brace for a divisive and damaging brawl. 'I'm a bit worried about it,' one says. 'The issue was settled at enormous cost [under Morrison]. No person in their right mind should open it up again.' One option discussed among some Liberal MPs would involve abandoning 2030 and 2035 targets – a position that would be incompatible with the Paris agreement – but retaining the 2050 ambition. Even that compromise would struggle to placate a growing number of sceptical colleagues, who believe net zero proponents have failed to explain the case for climate targets to rightwing voters. 'The mods say we need net zero to win,' one such MP says. 'That is the most facile, self-serving reason – it's exactly why people hate politicians.' Pressure to dump net zero is also coming from the party's state branches and grassroots members. Alex Antic's SA Liberal division, Price's NT Country Liberal party and the NSW Nationals division have all passed motions since the federal election rejecting net zero. The branch members, who are responsible for selecting election candidates, tend to skew older and more conservative than the average Liberal supporter. They tend to get their news and opinions from Sky News, Liberals say, making the conservative figures who appear on the channel's evening programs hugely influential over the 'base'. Figures such as Tony Abbott.
News.com.au
5 days ago
- Business
- News.com.au
‘A bit artificial': Shock unemployment figure exposes cracks in Australia's migration-fuelled NDIS jobs boom
Sky-high numbers of immigrants have been 'absorbed' into taxpayer-funded industries like the NDIS in recent years in an 'artificial' situation now starting to unravel as growth in the so-called non-market sector slows, experts warn. The unemployment rate rose to a four-year high of 4.3 per cent last month, beating market expectations of 4.1 per cent, according to Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) figures released on Thursday which showed there were an additional 33,600 people looking for work — the highest level since the pandemic in late 2021. The shock jobless figure, which sent the Aussie dollar into free fall and raised market expectations of an August rate cut by the RBA to near certainty, came on the heels of fresh data showing a record number of arrivals in May despite the Albanese government's pledge to curb migration to 'sustainable' levels. There were 33,230 net permanent and long-term arrivals in May, surpassing the previous record of 31,310 in 2023 by 6 per cent. In the year to May there were 245,890 net permanent and long-term arrivals, also the highest on record, while the 12-month rolling number of 447,620 was the second highest on record after 482,450 in the 12 months to May 2024. The Institute of Public Affairs (IPA), a conservative think tank, estimates that if current trends continue the number could reach 598,000 by the end of the calendar year. 'With Australia's unemployment rate trending up since December last year, yesterday's rise highlights some fundamental weaknesses in Australia's economy and jobs market — chief among them is Australia's worker shortage crisis,' said IPA research fellow Saxon Davidson. 'The simultaneous rise in unemployment and worker shortages shows how far out of alignment the Albanese government's labour and migration policies are. The federal government has fundamentally mismanaged the labour market. Despite allowing record levels of migration, Australians are not seeing the benefits of this in terms of per capita economic and overall productivity growth.' Mr Davidson said it was 'unconscionable that in a time of rising unemployment the Albanese government continues to flood the Australian labour market with record numbers of migrants competing for jobs'. 'The latest ABS data shows that Australia's worker shortage crisis is 42 per cent higher than pre-pandemic levels, increasing by 2.9 per cent in May 2025 to 339,400,' he said. 'Job vacancies have been over 300,000 for four years straight. What the latest unemployment rate rise shows us is that we need to cut tax and red tape barriers to allow more Australians to get into work so businesses can grow to their full potential, as well as returning Australia's migration program back to a sustainable level.' 'It's a bit artificial' AMP chief economist Shane Oliver agreed that immigration was a 'double-edged sword'. 'On the one hand it creates demand which is good, but on the other it also increases supply of workers,' he said. 'If underlying conditions in the economy are weak as they have been for the last few years, you have to generate a lot of jobs [to keep pace].' Growth in the civilian working-age population has eased from a peak of 3 per cent in 2023, at the height of Australia's post-Covid immigration surge, to around 2 per cent, or about 29,000 per month — still well above the historical norm of 1.5 per cent. 'If you've got your working-age population growing at 29,000 per month and the participation rate at 67 per cent, that means every month you've got to create about 19,000 jobs,' Dr Oliver said. 'We seemed to be able to do that quite easily until a year ago because we were generating a lot of jobs in the care economy. The immigration situation was manageable because we were creating all these jobs in health and aged care, NDIS.' Experts have previously warned that Australia's taxpayer-funded jobs boom, largely driven by the explosion in the NDIS, has masked weakness in the private sector jobs market. Last year, 80 per cent of all new jobs created were either in the public service or taxpayer-funded 'non-market' sectors like healthcare and education. 'All of that surge in immigration was being absorbed into the workforce but going into the public sector or non-market jobs, whereas private sector employment growth was quite weak,' Dr Oliver said, noting growth in non-market sector jobs was now starting to soften. 'It's a bit artificial in a way, if you regard private sector jobs as more real. You're absorbing a lot of workers into the public sector, it may have a way to go as there is demand for some of those services, but unfortunately it can be detracting from overall growth in the economy. A lot of the jobs they were going into were also relatively low-productivity jobs.' 'Plainly unsustainable' Australia has seen both declining GDP per capita and declining productivity — measured as GDP divided by hours worked — in recent years. 'They tend to go hand-in-hand,' Dr Oliver said. 'If you increase the supply of labour which is what we've done dramatically in the last few years, it can have the effect of depressing productivity. So what's happened is we've pumped a lot of people into the economy, that's pushed up employment numbers to some degree but also pushed up hours worked, but we haven't seen the commensurate rise in GDP.' Innes Willox, chief executive of the Australian Industry Group, said the June labour market data 'points to the impact that our weak private sector is having on the labour market'. 'For over a year, there has been negligible jobs growth in the private market sector, with government-supported employment in the public and non-market sectors doing the heavy lifting,' he said in a statement on Thursday. 'During 2024, approximately four in five new jobs created in Australia were in these government-supported sectors. As the Australian Industry Group has been warning since the start of this year, this level of dependence on the taxpayer for job creation is plainly unsustainable.' Mr Willox said with the private sector accounting for two-thirds of employment in Australia, 'it was inevitable that its sustained weakness would eventually spill over to the broader labour market'. 'It appears this problem is now coming home to roost,' he said. 'It is therefore imperative that government takes immediate action to return the private sector labour market to health. There is much that can be done — on tax, energy, regulatory burden, industrial relations and more — to provide better policy settings for private sector investment and jobs creation.' He added, 'We look forward to working with the Treasurer through the upcoming Economic Reform Roundtable in August to build a package of sensible reforms that can restart private sector growth.' August rate cut looms Dr Oliver said strong population growth had 'artificially kept up demand' in the economy, which had contributed to inflation pressures and forced the RBA to keep interest rates 'higher than they would have been' even as growth in the underlying economy and private sector was weak. 'Arguably the jobs figures are starting to expose that,' he said. The RBA surprised markets last month when it decided to keep the official cash rate on hold at 3.85 per cent. Money markets and experts had been widely predicting a rate cut due to weaker-than-expected economic data. After the latest unemployment figures, money markets are now pricing in an August rate cut at 100 per cent as of Friday morning. 'It should be a lock,' Dr Oliver said. 'You've got inflation figures [still to come], there's always a risk [it surprises on the upside] and the RBA could say we've got to hold.' In its official statement last month, the RBA board said while inflation was falling, it wanted to wait for a 'little more information' before moving on rates. RBA governor Michelle Bullock said the board had opted to reconsider cutting in August after full quarterly inflation figures were released. AMP is forecasting inflation will come in at 2.6 per cent or slightly below. 'I'm not going to put a number on if it comes in at 2.6 will cut or if it comes in at 2.7 we won't,' Ms Bullock previously told NCA NewsWire. 'What we'll be doing is we'll be looking at it in the context of where the forecast think it is leading us.' ANZ's Brian Martin and Daniel Hynes said in a note on Friday that the 'soft' June labour force data were pointing to a 25 basis point cut next month. 'The small increase in overall employment, the decline in hours worked and the increase in the unemployment rate (the latter to a new high for this cycle, albeit after some extraordinary stability) are all consistent signals,' they wrote. 'Within the details, it appears the group rotating into the labour force sample had a higher propensity for being unemployed than the group it replaced, which helps explain the jump in unemployment. That is, there is both statistical noise and signal in the survey.' Aussie dollar crashes A number of commentators have now suggested the RBA got it wrong last month. 'The July post-meeting statement described the labour market as 'strong', although given today's results, we would expect the RBA to note an easing in labour market tightness in the June quarter,' Mr Martin and Mr Hynes wrote. IG market analyst Tony Sycamore said 'combined with last month's fall in employment, there are clear signs of deceleration emerging in the labour market'. 'This calls into question the RBA's decision to prioritise inflation over growth and jobs at its board meeting earlier this month,' he said. Employment as a whole rose by 2000 people in June, following a fall of 1000 in May, and was up 2 per cent year on year. That was against expectations of 20,000 jobs to be added in the month and the unemployment rate to hold. Markets immediately jumped on Thursday's news, with the ASX200 rising 0.9 per cent to hit a new record high as investors bank on a future rate cut. With expectations of lower rates, the Australian dollar slumped back below 65 US cents. Despite Thursday's data, Treasurer Jim Chalmers said Australia's unemployment remains historically low while the participation rate remains near record highs. 'The ongoing resilience in our labour market over the past three years remains one of our best defences against the volatile global economic conditions we face, which is a big focus of my discussions here at the G20,' Dr Chalmers said from the G20 finance ministers meeting in South Africa. 'The Australian economy is not immune from global uncertainty but we are well placed and well prepared to face the challenges ahead.' Speaking to ABC Radio on Friday again about the job numbers, Dr Chalmers said the result was 'unwelcome' but 'unsurprising' and that the 'modest tick up in the unemployment rate' had been expected. 'And here at the G20, there are only two economies, including ours, where last year we saw continuous growth inflation with a two in front of it, and unemployment in the low fours,' he said. 'But it remains the case that over the last three years, the labour market in Australia has been a real source of strength at an uncertain time. More than 1.1 million jobs created on our watch [and] the lowest average unemployment of any government in the last 50 years.'
Sky News AU
6 days ago
- Politics
- Sky News AU
‘Greatest constitutional scandal': Top Jill Biden aide pleads the Fifth on cover-up saga
IPA Chief Economist Adam Creighton has slammed a top Jill Biden aide who has pleaded the Fifth when asked about Biden's health cover-up. 'It raises questions to what levels was he engaged with what was going on,' Mr Creighton told Sky News Digital Presenter Gabriella Power. 'This is one of the greatest constitutional scandals in the history of the US.'
