Australian Politics, Mark II

Lol.

Upon further scrutiny it will be revealed the plan is to put the team in Hobart resulting in a loss of seats up North. Or visa-versa…

Silly ALP. Will they ever learn?

Ah yes. This will be completely unbiased.

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I had a similar experience.

Early in my 20’s, my goal was to go to Uni. Obviously I had to wait until March before the Uni year started. So effectively I was applying for jobs, I had no intention of working at, to keep Newstart allowance coming in before I got shifted over to Austudy.

The job network agency were completely useless, Because they were trying to force me into work when my intention was to go to Uni in 1-2 months. They’d call me every day explaining they have a job that suits me (a shitty retail job that pays minimum wage). The job network agencies, didnt care about my long term job prospects and getting educated. The funding model is built on job agencies getting $$$ coming in, for putting the unemployed into work… any type of work.

I’d like the agencies to start working from outside the box, and encourage clients to take on freelance and contract work and running their own business… and help seek out contract work in their client’s specific field. This is far more effective in getting clients into work, than trying to force them into retail or hospitality (when someone has a masters degree in Law or Science).

Then again, there are only 3 possible media companies left in Australia from which he could have come from.

If you’re not keeping an eye on the Murray-Darling Royal Commission, you need to be. Absolutely scandalous what’s been going on there. And the Libs have had the brass face to order the Murray-Darling Basin Authority to refuse to testify or cooperate with it.

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can they do that?

Also, Mark Latham and Pauline Hanson getting together, does it get any weirder?

They have done that. There is currently a case before the High Court as to whether them doing that is legal or not.

Surely it can’t be legal, and if it is, what the hell is higher than a Royal Commission?

Two biggest global job growth industries

Tech
Renewable energy

No wonder we can’t create any jobs

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I believe the excuse figleaf reasoning behind the move is that the SA royal commission is only a state-based RC (like the fitzgerald commission was), not a federal-initiated RC (like the child abuse RC, or the building unions RC, or the banks RC), and so therefore federal govt bodies are not bound by it.

Which certainly SOUNDS like bollocks to me, but I honestly don’t know the legalities.

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Visuals for life.
Good day.

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Went for a cruise up the mouth of the Darling river around 8 months ago. We got around 40k upstream before it turned into a fetid, trickle. Locals tell me that’s the new normal. This was after a number of wet events that would normally increase flows. It’s just the pool level from the Murray. Environment aside, this is killing farms too. This is what happens when business lobbyists get their claws into politicians and bureaucracies to set up a rort. That it’s happening across such a large area and negatively influencing so many is quite astounding. We don’t hear about it much which is yet another sign that we live in a dead zone for informed media. I’m quite on this issue. Even die hard right wingers don’t like it. Not that it will change their voting but when it isn’t reported why would they even consider it? This exact issue is why this nation desperately needs the cold light of day that an independent corruption authority can bring. If we screw up at the next election I can see us slipping below the water line of any chance of coming back from this sort of stuff. It will be RIP for the Australia we grew up in.

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I’ve thought about it. I am completely ok with the abc being a government subsidised pay tv service. eg subscription based.

with seniors/unemployed/student discounted or free subscriptions to ensure it’s still accessible by all.

the give from the government would be a certain base funding model set base of GDP in legislation with the cream being generated by paid subscribers.

ABC to be funded properly by those who can afford it.

Govt spends less on it = lower tax or more on other things.

removes politics of funding it.

if the ABC is too biased it will self correct in order to attract more subscribers.

ABC retains a charter to deliver certain services as a responsibility of receiving funding.(eg special interests)

If it doesn’t get up the new SA government will just toe the line. It will be hugely unpopular and they will get the ■■■■ again in 3-4 years. By which time, forget about it. Their waterways and wetlands will start dying again, whatever is left of a basin plan will be officially about delivering water to the most favoured bidder, we will hear next to nothing about it, communities will die, wetlands will die, funding will be stripped from protecting it and educating about it, and occasionally, people will hear about it and they will think “Oh well, I guess that’s just how it is. Oh dear.”

Provided they don’t breed, … no, probably not.

Something we can agree on Comrade.

It has me farked how stupid Government is; both colours ! We have great innovative minds and people prepared to have a go, and we just Fark them over. CSIRO is screwed to death, and we sack some great scientists at the peak of their powers.

I have probably told you before that we received about $700,000 to commercialise some CSIRO technology we licensed, and were then advised by AusIndustry to find a Chinese partner to manufacture.

If I was Dictator for six months, we would have viable industry, it is not that difficult.

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How much would it cost to buy back Cubbie Station, and how did it get into foreign hands?

You’d have to worry about the ancillary industries that don’t fit, such as cotton and rice.

A fuckload if you want to do it the polite way, a fair bit less if you just say ‘■■■■ this’ and nationalise it. But you wouldn’t have to do that, just pass some laws specifying that only dry-climate crops can be planted in low-rainfall areas or you forfeit your entire water allocation.

As for how it got into foreign ownership, it was sold with the bipartisan agreement of the Libs and ALP during Gillard’s PMship, though some of the Nats grumbled and the Greens screamed blue murder but of course nobody listened to them. But anyone who thinks that Australian owners would be doing anything much different to the current Chinese/Japanese owners is kidding themselves,

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The significant thing about Cubbie is the water rights. So you don’t have to take the property back, you need to redefine water rights, which are a piece of bizarre bullshite in all regions.

In fact, I reckon water should be treated as a commodity and farmers have to buy it, with no rights at all for supply.

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I get the principle, but that gets really hard in practice. A lot of farming properties are big enough to cover entire water catchments. That means that rain falls on their property, then flows downhill into trickles and accumulates into rivulets and creeks and then rivers. Where EXACTLY do you draw the line between ‘that water is from rain that landed on your property, it’s fine for you to keep’ and ‘that water is from a watercourse running through your property, you need to pay for that’. how big does the waterway need to be before it becomes common property? It’s a pretty tough one.