The Financial Review has a federal poll from Freshwater Strategy, the pollster’s first for the paper since mid-December, though it conducted one for the News Corp papers in early January. It has Labor leading 51-49, after its previous two polls both recorded a dead heat. There is little change on the primary vote, with Labor on 31% and the Coalition on 38%, respectively steady and down one from both the two previous polls, and the Greens on 14%, up one from the December poll and steady from January.
A preferred prime minister measure has Anthony Albanese leading Peter Dutton 42-38, little changed from 43-39 in December. A question on the tax cut amendments finds 44% supportive, 26% indifferent and 15% opposed, with 32% expecting to be better off, 12% worse off and 43% anticipating no difference. The poll was conducted Friday to Sunday from a sample of 1049.
From the Dawn Patrol:
Victorians are forking out more on stamp duty than any other state in the nation, but new modelling shows how the tax is now costing the state almost $5 billion a year in lost economic activity, reports Josh Gordon.
https://www.theage.com.au/politics/victoria/the-fastest-way-to-add-5-billion-to-victoria-s-economy-axe-stamp-duty-20240213-p5f4gz.html
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They always say to axe stamp duty in these stupid articles…
So the government would have to axe programs and services to make up the funding shortfall for starters.
What would happen to the price of houses if that happened? They wouldn’t go up by just the amount of the stamp duty, the figure would be several times that amount.
It would be the stupidest sugar hit to get egg on your face possible if any government were to be pathetic enough to do it…
“ Now Bruce Lehrmann has lodged a complaint of professional misconduct with the NSW legal watchdog against the Ten Network’s most senior lawyer, alleging her advice to Lisa Wilkinson contributed to the long delay in his criminal trial.”
That will go nowhere after a long time
A conga line of men line up for Cook by-election…
A banker, McKinsey partner and veterans’ commissioner are among five Liberals vying to replace former prime minister Scott Morrison in the seat he held for more than 15 years, in a race that has attracted only one woman.
As the NSW Liberals accelerate an early preselection plan designed to put the federal opposition on a war footing for an election in 2025, the former prime minister’s blue-ribbon seat of Cook is emerging as a test case on whether efforts to boost representation are gaining.
….
ANZ institutional and private banking boss Alex Cooke and former McKinsey partner Simon Kennedy have both received the party’s rubber stamp to contest the preselection on March 2, as has Veteran Family Advocate Commissioner Gwen Cherne.
Ms Cherne, who is an ADF war widow and has worked in Afghanistan and around the world in reconstruction and development, is the only woman in contention. She also has the backing of Hilma’s Network, which is the Liberal Party’s dedicated funding body to promote more women into parliament.
A preselection brochure for Ms Cherne included endorsements from Boeing president and former Liberal leader Brendan Nelson, former defence minister Linda Reynolds and NSW frontbencher MP James Griffin.
A brochure for Mr Kennedy included endorsements from former premiers Nick Greiner and Dominic Perrottet, former prime minister Tony Abbott, former Wentworth MP Dave Sharma and corporate heavyweights including banking boss David Gonski and former Telstra chief executive David Thodey.
Others in the race include Sutherland Shire Mayor Carmelo Pesce and ex-UAP candidate Benjamin Britton, who has also run for the seat of Kiama.
Mr Pesce is regarded as the frontrunner among local members after serving as mayor for more than eight years, and sitting on local council for more than a decade. But locals are not the only ones with a say. They control 75 per cent of the vote while an open pool of members decides the remaining 25 per cent, of which 30 per cent is made up of the state’s executive.
https://www.afr.com/politics/mckinsey-consultant-anz-exec-vie-for-scomo-s-seat-20240219-p5f633
Liberal front runner for Cook Carmelo Pesce has a car collection…. And a big shirt to fill
“Mr Pesce is regarded as the frontrunner among local members [in Cook] …”
So was Michael Towke. And yet …
Mr Pesce has some desirable and classic machinery there – AC Cobra, Holden HQ, Mid 60’s Mustang plus the Roller, Bentley etc
Morning all. Sprocket thanks for the rundown on Cook preselection. You can feel the diversity from here in Adelaide.
Thanks BK for the morning roundup. On the further reported blowout in Hunter frigate costs, words fail me. Marles lacked the courage to kill off the program in his first two years, so now the bleeding continues. At over $7 billion per ship, Hunter frigates are costing more than US or UK SSNs. They remain not very well armed.
It is also a glaring double standard to let this project survive while the French sub was killed off for less delay and cost overrun. BAE must have excellent lobbyists.
#weatheronPB
Rinsed and re-rinsed clean,
I enjoy the empty sky.
Gorgeous, endless blue.
C@tmomma @ Tuesday, February 20, 2024 at 6:59 am:
==============
It would be grimly ironic if it was one Russian’s murder which galvanised the West into finally taking their duty and need to oppose Putin seriously, and not the tens of thousands of Ukrainians murdered these past two years. However, I think the penny had dropped among European countries anyway before Navalny was killed. The fall of Avdiivka has been a more portentous event in waking Europe up. Now, it remains to find what will wake the US political class up to do what is necessary.
Soc
Good points, IMO. There is another sordid matter, IMO. Votes in shipbuilding electorates.
Three frigates will be axed from Adelaide’s Hunter warship build because of a $20bn blowout and replaced by a next-generation air warfare destroyer project, Defence Minister Richard Marles will reveal.
Releasing on Tuesday morning a long-awaited response to a review of navy’s surface fleet, Mr Marles will announce the cost of building nine frigates at Osborne Naval Shipyard, as previously planned, has soared from $45bn to almost $65bn – or about $7.2bn per ship.
Mr Marles will renew his repeated pledge of continuous naval shipbuilding by promising the six Hunter anti-submarine frigates will be immediately followed by construction at Osborne of the replacement for Adelaide-built Hobart Class air warfare destroyers (AWDs).
It is understood the process to determine the replacement for the three AWDs will start in the late 2020s, ensuring a decision on that build is made no later than 2035.
This timetable would mean a decision on next-gen AWDs before the third Hunter ship is launched by contractor BAE Systems Australia, because the frigates are expected to be produced every two years from 2032.
The government’s response to the 18-page review, commissioned last April, will accelerate plans to increase the navy’s 11-ship surface combatant fleet with a fleet of smaller missile-laden corvettes built in Perth, in a bid to counter China’s 370-strong fleet.
The review, conducted by US navy Vice Admiral William H. Hilarides, agrees with the defence strategic review and federal government’s assessment that “a commitment to continuous naval shipbuilding is essential for Australia’s sovereign capability”. Mr Marles is expected to attack the former Coalition government for failing to fund key defence spending. The frigate project’s cost was $35bn when the contract was awarded in 2018 to BAE. Despite facing criticism that the Hunter was too expensive, heavy and lacking sufficient missiles, the promised air warfare destroyer project positions BAE to build them using the same hull as the frigates.
The Advertiser last April revealed one scenario being considered was three Osborne-built frigates, followed by three air warfare destroyers, using the same hull but bristling with missiles, then three more frigates to capitalise on updated technology.
In regards to the Greens policies and Max’s student politics claims, they’re a political party like any other. Is what they are ‘promising’ any different to some of the wilder claims by the Liberal party, or perhaps even the Nationals? Some of the water, mining and energy policies by those ‘mainstream’ parties are wild. Nuclear power. How is that not a student politician’s policy?
Do I like what the city bound Greens have become, no. But they have found a constituency that they think will lead them to more seats, and therefore more real power, so they’ll pitch whatever that group of voters is saying are the most important issues for them.
Grounded in reality? Well that’s for others to decide.
MI
Red on the outside. Red on the inside. They have left the old biodiversity greens well behind.
Thanks BK for this sad little gem.
I can almost hear the wheels turning. “First it was no bonking, then no drinking. What’s next? Someone has to draw the line.” Interesting too that it’s the same bloke in the middle.
The high Victorian land tax is forcing investors with mortgages to sell property ie negating negative gearing
Landlords with blocks of 1960s flats in Toorak that attracted lower rents and being sold because the land is valuable and the land tax is high
Perhaps the next owner will live in the dwelling
land tax really bites when the value of the land is over $3million, it’s an exponential scale
Boerwar @ #463 Tuesday, February 20th, 2024 – 8:53 am
What shits me the most about the current batch of citybound Greens is their negotiating tactics and how that is portrayed in the media.
When the Coalition is in power and the Greens try to block legislation the Coalition get zero blowback about just saying no to their demands. When Labor draws a line in the sand then every person and their doggo say the Greens have Labor wrapped over a barrel, when Labor does negotiate it’s portrayed as ‘caving in’ to the Greens demands.
Now, realpolitik demands that Labor do in fact negotiate with the Greens to get their political agenda delivered, but there is the issue that the Greens do not seem to be negotiating in good faith. I dont think that hurts the Greens in their base seats, but it is a long term limiting factor if they want to move outside of those inner city seats.
Drinking in Parliament
In 1880s only propertied men sat in our colonies parliaments
Parliaments could sit all night and often did
Now there are more women in Parliament all night sessions don’t happen
No booze in Parliament and definitely no free booze
To those who are saying it’s a stressful workplace, if parliament sat more often the working hours would be more normal
Good God! this isn’t the 1950s when Bob Menzies Press Secretary got home once a year at Xmas because he had a 5 day train journey across the Nullarbor
billie @ #465 Tuesday, February 20th, 2024 – 9:03 am
Time to reactivate the No Land Tax Party – what is Peter Jones up to these days?
Who does labor dislike the most the Greens or liberals?
Labor barely staying above minority gov in the polls federally .
Two possible step downs.
More boat arrivals and also in about two weeks the Dec quarter economic figures if they are negative then for three months after until the next figures all the economic talk will be is Australia in recession.
Pied Piper. says:
Tuesday, February 20, 2024 at 9:22 am
Who does labor dislike the most the Greens or liberals?
_______________________
There’s a fair few on here who don’t even like the Labor Left.
The Catholic Right, and people like Bill Shorten are their heroes.
It’s easy. I dislike Peter Dutton the most. A useless former Minister intent on conning the electorate to vote for him as Prime Minister of our great country.
All sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Abolish Land Tax and Victoria is left high and dry by the next vindictive Federal government that starves Victoria of funds like Morrison did
I talked to a 72 year old engineer (RMIT part time) who wants to abolish fuel excise at Dunkley pre-poll yesterday. I was too flummoxed to remind him that primary producers eg farmers and miners get the diesel rebate
shellbell @ #452 Tuesday, February 20th, 2024 – 8:00 am
He’s getting his money, and advice for all this from…somewhere. 😐
I would say the political party Labor hates most is the Nationals followed by the Greens. As to the Liberals there has always been respect for the “Big end Blue-Rinse/Deakinites aka wets” but little love lost for the suburban Liberals.
Remember how Keating called Howard: “The bowser boy from out Canterbury way” or a “Suburban Scrubber” meaning Howard was just a small time suburban Liberal from small business who interests would have been better advanced supporting Labor.
Pied Piper. @ #469 Tuesday, February 20th, 2024 – 9:22 am
Wishin’ ‘n hopin’ ‘n prayin’ for a miracle. 🙄
You are a sad case.
When you thought there was nothing left about Trump that could shock you, days late and after pressure from Haley, he uses Navalny’s murder to peddle his own perceived victim state, without mentioning Putin.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/feb/19/donald-trump-alexei-navalny-death
OK. So, in his senile mind he can see himself as a future US Navalny. (Meaning that he’s finally figured out and admitted that he’s going to jail.) If his cult follower’s dissonance wasn’t so baked in, I’d say go for it. Maybe it will shake some of the Putin-lovers free of their delusion. But then I think, the cult isn’t for shifting. Noise, noise, me me. This is just to remind them he’s still there. Something else next week.
Supermarket price gouging
I was working at Coles in 2000 when Aldi was entering the Australian market. I reviewed the trade papers
Aldi entered the Australian market because of the fabulous margins of the duopoly. Initially Aldi prices were much lower than Colesworth but they are now 66% of a Colesworth shop
Coles and Woollies banned Aldi from shopping centres, hence their inconvenient stand alone locations outside established shopping strips
Aldi has lower margins because they stock 20,000 items, colesworth might stock 40,000 to 80,000 line items
[Hardware stores have the largest inventory]
Aldi predominantly stocks pre packed fruit & veg – traditionally 20% wastage
Aldi reputedly has better relationships with its suppliers ordering stock ahead of the growing season or in line with lead times
Coles management was mediocre, sucking up and kicked down. Their beehive shaped headquarters overlooking the suburban sprawl of south east melbourne encouraged workers to focus inward to physically navigate through the building rather than look out at their customer base.
When I was there they made the strategic decision to move their IT to India [and fired their Chinese staff]
Performing IT function in another country with a different culture is not conducive to agile development and fast turnaround
Coles tends to buy american software packages and modify them out of existence, which becomes a problem when updates come through or australian legislation changes eg Coles wouldn’t use Australian payroll or workers compensation packages because woolworths might
I suspect Aldi doesn’t have the same overhead of clunky unmanageable IT systems.
I am anticipating the supermarket review will not lead to lower supermarket prices
Re Trump’s strategy, if we take off the hatred glasses for a minute and consider what he is actually doing here.
I see that this strategy has at least three objectives.
The primary objective to to instill fear and hatred in his existing base, with the key outcome of increasing turnout and therefore his chances of winning the general election in November this year.
The secondary objective is to put pressure on the judicial system at all levels, with the key outcome of keeping him out of jail and not listed as a federal felon, see above primary objective.
The third objective is to have an exit ramp if he does not win the general election in November this year, see above secondary objective.
Will it work, who knows, only time will tell. Sure it feeds into his growing victim narrative but that’s nothing new, he’s been running that line for years.
Shellbell/Cat
On Bruce Lehrmann’s latest legal bid:
“He’s getting his money, and advice for all this from…somewhere. ”
+1 No normal person could afford this. Not many millionaires could. “Somebody” is using Lehrmann as a vehicle to play the legal system. As a minimum, they should be identified.
billie
Interesting points about Aldi. I understand that they are more prone to trying to develop long term win win relationships with suppliers. They also tend to own their land and to try to work it so that car parking is right next to the entrance.
Socrates @ #481 Tuesday, February 20th, 2024 – 10:02 am
My eyes are looking o/s to Texas, where his family comes from. Wealthy Texas Republicans, awash in money.
billie, i was amazed at the level of opposition to Aldi starting a store in my town.
Aldi is great.
I would also add that Aldi regularly runs out of some fresh (unpackaged) fruit and veg. I think this is a good thing (occasionally annoying) because one assumes this means less waste, less over ordering, and the product isnt designed to last forever (nothing worse than a tasteless cardboard fruit) because they know it all gets bought.
The other thing is that Aldi, imo, works in better with an existing shopping district. They are adjacent rather than dominating. They stock less and not the best. So butchers, grocers, bakers, newsagents etc can thrive alongside and on their own terms.
Since the local Woolworths burned down, Aldi has started to thrive. Which brings me to my only problem with them. There is never enough staff – and no fast lane. I usually only drop in for a few things and often have to queue. Normally people are very kind and let me jump in front tho.
Jonathan V.Last analyses the Trump-Putin-Republican Party axis, and as it intersects with the death of Navalny and Trump’s cynical manipulation of it, very, very well:
‘1. Navalny
We wake to news that Alexei Navalny, the leader of the only meaningful opposition to Vladimir Putin’s regime, was murdered has died.
Just a quick thumbnail sketch for anyone who isn’t familiar:
* In 2020 Navalny was poisoned with Novichok by agents of the Russian government in an attempted assassination.
* When he voluntarily returned to Russia, he was sentenced to 30 years in prison.
* In December 2023 he was transferred from a prison outside of Moscow, where he was able to have some contact with his team, to Russia’s highest-security prison—which is located north of the Arctic Circle.
* Three of Navalny’s lawyers are currently imprisoned in Russia. Two others have fled the country and had arrest warrants issued in absentia.
Now Navalny is dead, a few days after Donald Trump declared that he would “encourage” Putin to invade NATO allies who were “delinquent” in their “payments” to America1 and Tucker Carlson visited Russia, participated in a sham “interview” of Putin, and then embarked on a tour to praise Russia as being superior in many ways to America. But that’s probably just a coincidence.
Prepare yourself for the grotesqueries.
Here is Dinesh D’Souza calmly explaining that Joe Biden is exactly like Vladimir Putin.
For starters, the claim that the Biden presidency is a “regime” is morally and intellectually offensive. Political scientists use that word in a neutral sense, but in ordinary American usage, especially since the start of the Cold War, it has been a derogatory term, usually shorthand for despotism. If we live under a despotic “regime,” then how did Donald Trump become president in 2016? And why is Trump leading in the polls today? Wouldn’t any administration worthy of the label “regime” have made it impossible for Trump to become president again?
And this “Biden regime” is doing a very bad job of trying to imprison Trump. The attorney general waited a long while to begin the process of investigating Trump. He then turned over the investigations to an independent prosecutor. The federal judge tasked with overseeing the most open-and-shut of these prosecutions is so in the tank for Trump that the trial may never begin. The Supreme Court has so far found in Trump’s favor in his attempts to gain access to ballots and delay his trials.
What sort of madman would contend that the Biden administration and the American justice system are indistinguishable from state-sponsored assassinations, kangaroo courts, and Arctic gulags?
But wait, it gets worse.
Because while we have Dinesh D’Souza claiming that Putin is only as bad as Biden, we have Tucker Carlson claiming that Putin hasn’t done anything out of bounds.
Vladimir Putin isn’t doing anything wrong by killing Navalny.
And if Putin was wrong to kill Navalny, Joe Biden is just as bad.
The final step, of course, will be for these same people to blame Biden for Navalny’s death: “Navalny is only dead because of Biden’s weakness; when Trump was president, Navalny was alive.”
This is the cycle of Trumpism, a dynamic we have seen play out over and over—with the Charlottesville white nationalist riots; with the COVID bungling; with the January 6th insurrection.
And Americans keep falling for it. Not all Americans. But enough of them to give Trump a reasonable chance to become president again.
But are Americans really “falling for it”?
That’s my big question. Are the 35 percent or so of Americans who go along with this stuff foolish, or uninformed, or easily bamboozled? Or do they know what they’re about? Do they understand exactly what these argument are and agree with them?
I don’t know. What I do know is that in a rational society, the party of Putin would be getting blown out at the ballot box, every single time. And yet we live in a world where every election is a coin-flip.
Final point: Navalny wasn’t the only Russian dissident in jail. Ilya Yashin and Vladimir Kara-Murza remain imprisoned and probably have the same fate awaiting them. Pray for them.’
BW, the local Aldi used a local architect to design the building and make it as sympathetic to the surrounds as possible (for a supermarket). They did an OK job.
Mostly Interested, you ask a difficult thing. But I will try.
– Goal 1: The fear and hatred were already there.
– Goal 2: So far at least the justice system hasn’t blinked. He’s lost every civil trial. The criminal trials are about to start. And his attempts at delay haven’t worked.
– Goal 3: I can’t see him escaping jail. Ninety-one criminal indictments are a lot of escaping.
While I see it, his overall strategy doesn’t seem to be a winning one. The push back he’s creating is strong. (We’ll see if it is strong enough.) The other difficult thing to do is to put the news media’s need for him and the outrage they bait us with to one side.
billie @ #478 Tuesday, February 20th, 2024 – 9:52 am
It was great when Aldi first entered the market. Same items, just different packaging (but they made sure you knew who actually made them by clever package design) but at a significantly lower cost. And super efficient checkouts. Faster and cheaper! All the stuff you need and none of the stuff you don’t. And no bullshit discounts, just interesting specials.
However, they gradually lost the plot and now seem to have aligned themselves price-wise with Colesworth. They could see what Colesworth got away with and the potential profits were just too attractive, I guess. Prices up, but also staff reduced. Shelves not re-stocked, so you can’t actually ever be sure you can buy what you need – which means you can’t any longer do a “one-stop shop”. And so many of the “interesting specials” had to be returned because they were of such poor quality. Best avoided altogether. No admin or returns counter, and with so many returns in the checkout queue you groaned every time you realized you were queued up behind someone trying to return something.
The last straw was when they put in automated checkouts. All advantages now gone. Aldi had been subsumed by the Colesworth Borg.
Time for a new entry. What ever happened to Lidl?
The GOP’s dangerous performative outrage – the five fake Crises Republicans made up to distract you
Robert Reich:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZQF3oYt8hs
This is about the USA but there are obvious parallels here. Right now, the “Liberals” are trying to manufacture a crisis about “Boats”.
From BK’s Dawn Patrol
‘Australia is turning into a nation of mean, bad, tax-deducting landlords…’
https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/8526130/australias-growing-housing-crisis-can-be-helped-by-taxing-rich/?cs=14258
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Just don’t call them scum, or you’ll get crushed by the pile on.
@Late Riser, yeah I dont see it as a particularly good strategy, but there you have it.
Humans are quite dumb really, belief in one cause or another leads to some really stupid outcomes.
Russian pilot who defected found dead in Spain, says Ukraine security agency
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/19/russian-helicopter-pilot-defected-found-dead-spain-says-ukraine-security-agency
When you ask “which vested interests in USA might want to see the war in Ukraine continue indefinitely?”, there is more than Putin on the suspect list. Two immediately come to mind.
1. Oil and gas investors. The Ukraine war means higher prices, and volatile prices, both of which are great for Oil and Gas profits.
2. Weapons manufacturers. Obviously.
The politicians these two fund probably already have their orders not to assist Ukraine successfully conclude the war. Conversely, they will be all in for Israel continuing in Gaza, which triggers a sustained Houthi assault on the Red Sea shipping.
Speaking of which, the Houthi operations are escalating, not reducing. As predicted the air strikes are not stopping them. The Houthis are reportedly now getting torpedo-like underwater drones, effectively self-guiding torpedos.
https://news.usni.org/2024/02/19/houthi-lethal-underwater-drones-adds-new-threat-to-red-sea
Granny Annysays:
Tuesday, February 20, 2024 at 12:19 am
What I would like to see is some data about profitability of various product lines, basic food stuff and household goods in particular. I would be surprised to find that most of the loot they collect comes from items we just can’t do without…..
====================================
Granny overnight, & Billie at 9.52 today.
This report about the supermarket chains may be interesting for you both. Was released on Sunday via the Australia Institute site. They’re releasing a bit of work this year I have to add.
Link: https://australiainstitute.org.au/post/price-gouging-alive-and-well-in-australia/
@Socrates, the Farming Conglomerates of the USA? Grain prices have only gone up since the Ukrainian harvest has been impacted by the war. That’s where I see the most pressure on Republican politicians as farming sits squarely in their electorates.
Jimmy Carted didn’t call the US “the most warlike nation in the history of the world” for nothing.
If you can’t turn a decent profit in wartime, you are not really trying.
C@t….
You are astute enough to know that Piper has not one scintilla of interest in any form of debate when he comes here.
His aim is pretty straight forward – to be an irritant. Something like a stone in the shoe, a burr under the saddle or just chewing gum sticking to the bottom of the shoe.
Action = ignore and/or deride. – Even this response is a waste of time in any event as said contributions above are essentially dross.
C@tmomma @ #481 Tuesday, February 20th, 2024 – 10:06 am
One grandfather worked with Cheney at Halliburton.
Mostly Interested
Thanks, I hadn’t thought of US farming conglomerates but yes, the same motive would apply.
FMD.
I guess we will find out very soon, but based on overnight reports the Perfumed Warlord will double down on the cost blow out component of the disastrous Hunter Class Frigate program: make no mistake, the cost blowouts are nearly all in the process too design and bring into service the first ship; not in building the last ships of the class, because at that stage it is likely that it will be a mature and far more cost efficient program. $65 billion for nine ships? How much for the first 6?
It is a national disgrace that having committed to the obvious – a more capable large ‘Tier 1’ surface combatant – with MORE missile launch cells and CIWS systems – ‘as a priority’ the Government has decided to not proceed with this until AFTER the next to useless Hunter Class build program wraps up!
We are told that THIS decade and next are the critical times for our geopolitical security, yet we will not even begin to build an identified critical asset – large surface combatant ships with big missile payloads for a while decade; and the first one of these will presumable NOT enter service until the early to mid 2040s.
I hope the rumours are wrong, but I doubt it.
Frankly we should be building more Hobart Class AWDs NOW, to be followed by the ‘next generation’ large surface combatants being built from around 2030 onwards.
Surely – if the Anglo forelock tuggers have to be sated – we could go straight to a ‘Block 2’ Hunter Class with a 64-96 cell VLS replacing the ‘multi mission’ module: because at 10,000 tonnes displacement, and with only 32 VLS cells, the Hunter class is THE MOST undergunned warship of that size in the world.
… and the most expensive by an order of magnitude. $65 billion … for 9 ships … at nearly $7.5 billion a ship that is exactly EIGHT TIMES more expensive than the entire 8 ship ‘Future Frigates’ program as originally envisaged a decade ago.
An unrelated but amusing aside, there was a lot of whining in a facebook “World cruise” forum when Princess (I think, it could have another cruise company) advised that their World Cruise would now go via South Africa to the UK rather than through the Suez canal and Mediterranean.
Risk management is not strong with a lot of these cruisers, seeing the Pyramids or risking being attacked by Pirates and having your ship sunk by Houthis.