Australia - you're standing in it
jshe35 wrote:It's now up to
$40 billion of Jobkeeper given to businesses that actually made profit during the pandemic....
Whoops.. no claw back provision at all.. 'our bad'... as if! Tax cuts are always hard to get through for businesses so why not just give them our cash directly.... Labor too scared to do anything for fear of creating another negative gearing, oldies and their super scenario.
Once in a lifetime cash grab that us working suckers will be paying for, for a long, long time. The rest is chickenfeed....
https://www.afr.com/rear-window/jobkeeper-wasted-40-billion-not-27-billi...
Better economic managers.
I like the heading of that article “JobKeeper wasted $40 billion, not $27 billion, but who’s counting? “ Just waiting for Josh to say “ yeah but I saved the taxpayer 70 billion on handouts didn’t I ? “
+From the totally bodacious Macrobusiness website, dude.
Love the picture! Fits in with the completely-not-authoritarianism tone of Aussie politics.
Victorian Bar fights Dictator Dan’s pandemic power grab
By Unconventional Economist
The Victorian Bar – the professional association of barristers – has urged the state government to reconsider its controversial new pandemic laws which would grant the Andrews Government “unlimited, unreviewable power”.
Amongst other things, it has expressed concern that the Department of Health could exercise its new powers under the legislation without sufficient oversight by parliament.
Sixty barristers have in turn signed an open letter in which they warn that the legislation would enable the government to effectively rule the state by decree for the foreseeable future.
The bill was passed by the lower house in October and will require the support of at least three crossbenchers in the upper house.
From The Australian:
Some of Melbourne’s most prominent legal figures are among 60 QCs who have now signed an open letter expressing concern that the Andrews government’s pandemic legislation could allow the Premier to “rule the state of Victoria by decree”.
Signatories of the letter, first circulated late last month, now include Black Saturday bushfires royal commissioner Jack Rush QC, former chief crown prosecutor Gavin Silbert SC and former IBAC deputy commissioner Andrew Kirkham QC.
The new signatures come as the Victorian Bar renewed its calls for the Andrews government to reconsider the controversial legislation, warning the bill would provide “grossly insufficient parliamentary supervision” over the power it will grant the health minister to exercise…
The Bar’s 12-page submission to the health department’s expert reference group on the bill comes after the legislation passed the Lower House last month, 51 votes to 26.
While Labor holds 55 of 88 Lower House seats, it is expected to gain the required support of at least three crossbenchers to pass the legislation in the Upper House later this month.
The open letter expresses grave concern that the bill, if passed, “may allow the Victorian government effectively to rule the State of Victoria by decree for the foreseeable future, without proper parliamentary oversight or the usual checks and balances on executive power.”
The QCs state in their letter that the bill would effectively confer “an unlimited and practically unreviewable power” on the state’s health minister.
“The minister can make a pandemic order while a “pandemic declaration” made by the Premier is in force. Given the low threshold for the making of this declaration (s 165AB) and the fact that COVID-19 is unlikely to be going away any time soon, we can expect a pandemic declaration to be in force for the foreseeable future,” the QCs argued.
Earlier this week, the Victorian Bar released a summary of its submission to the Victorian Government, which labels the laws grossly undemocratic and calls for fundamental reform:
The essence of the Victorian Bar’s concern is that the Bill seeks to take powers that were intended to be used for a very limited period of up to six months in an unforeseen emergency, and to entrench them as the ordinary method of dealing with pandemic diseases over extended periods.
The Victorian Bar emphasises that the rule of law, the sovereignty of Parliament and the checks and balances of our democratic Westminster system of government must be respected, even in times of emergency or crisis. While broad emergency powers that circumscribe ordinary checks and balances of our democracy may be justified to deal with an unforeseen crisis in the short term, they are not appropriate for the management of risks over extended periods…
The Victorian Bar believes that the Bill provides grossly insufficient Parliamentary supervision over the Minister’s exercise of that power…
The Victorian Bar recommends that the Bill be amended so that:
The power of Parliament to disallow a pandemic order, in whole or part, is not conditional on the recommendation of SARC or any other body;
Disallowance be by passing a motion in either House of Parliament, in accordance with the ordinary process under the Subordinate Legislation Act 1994; and
There is protection for persons who are alleged to have failed to comply with a pandemic order that is subsequently disallowed…
[The Bill] authorises extreme limitations of basic liberties of all Victorians and confers enormous powers on the executive. It is among the most important pieces of legislation to come before the Victorian Parliament in decades.
Serious concerns about the Bill have been raised publicly by a number of legal organisations, including the Victorian Bar.
The Victorian Bar urges the government to delay the introduction of the Bill into the upper house, so as to seriously consider the issues that have been raised, and make amendments to the Bill.
The Victorian Bar is ready to provide further assistance to ensure that this Bill better upholds rule of law.
Victoria is the closest thing in Australia to a ‘one party state’. One party states breed authoritarian leaders like Daniel Andrews, who also happens to be in bed with the CCP (as evidenced by his ‘Belt & Road’ deal).
The situation will only change when Victorians wake up and vote this guy out. Sadly, despite the world’s longest lockdown, Australia’s worst COVID outcomes, and heavy-handed tactics by the police, Victorians seem to be afflicted with a bad case of Stockholm Syndrome.
The fact that the Victorian Liberal Party is utterly useless is also not helping the situation. Victoria desperately needs a strong opposition
Bodacious is stretching it a bit...
But I think Australia needs to start stripping back and repealing all the emergency powers passed over the past 18 months, instead of introducing new and stronger ones...
So the picture is fitting.
Hey Gsco
If I’ve got an idea for an but zero idea how to get one created, how would I go about it you reckon?
Import a sea container full of Indian IT experts?
Seriously….I’ve got a concept which will make me richer than Bezos. I’m talking solid gold matching tracksuit style opulence.
PS….the picture is a pisser!
yeah but what abut the pink bats.
"The ABC has obtained documents showing McGrath Estate Agents banked over 4 million dollars in JobKeeper assistance, half of which was delivered during a year in which the company made more money than the previous five years combined"
https://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/pm/mcgrath-real-estate-banked-$4m-in-jobkeeper/13623602
Blowin wrote:Hey Gsco
If I’ve got an idea for a website but zero idea how to get one created, how would I go about it you reckon?
Import a sea container full of Indian IT experts?
Seriously….I’ve got a concept which will make me richer than Bezos. I’m talking solid gold matching tracksuit style opulence.
PS….the picture is a pisser!
I left out a pretty important word
lol yes why not, I hear there's 300,000 coming your way real soon
Herein Lies the Problem. It's the Australian Media. ( Bernard Keane, Twitter and The National Times 9/11/2021)
"Have you noticed that even when confronted with clear evidence that Scott Morrison lies and in a blatant insistence that he never did and despite all footage of him doing so, the Australian media are still reluctant to call him a liar?
The Australian media are the problem and it's because likes of News Corp have a strangle hold on what the daily narrative will consist of.
If the media did not enable a flounderer like Scott Morrison, then he could not survive and would be out on his ear.
But Morrison’s team understands the corporate media so well, they game the system knowing full well Morrison will never be called out and never held accountable for what he says. Australia has become a liar’s paradise and the corporate media enable this.
It's a case of the bully prevailing and it happens all too regularly in Australia. There is an innate fear in people to upset the bully who has demonstrated repeatedly he has no qualms in turning on anyone who opposes him.
In his world you are either an accomplice or an enemy.
If a Labor person says the sky is blue, then the assembled media throng drill them for hours with a barrage of questions on what they meant by blue, why are the other colours excluded?
How much does this blue cost us, why was this hidden from us, and why did Dan do it?!
Morrison's just using News Corps standard procedure: Just keep yelling the big lie, and by the time you have to apologise or correct it, it's too late, and if you ask good old Merv and Raelene at the bowls club [or their equivalents on here] they'll still be parroting the original story as if it's holy writ, Scott Morrison's holy writ.
4th Estate Journalism is on its last legs in Australia.
It's 5th Estate Journalism that is saving the truth from total extinction but it's done by the very, very, very few."
That’s why the globalists from the US all the way to Australia are now crying over the need to censor harmful “misinformation” from the internet.
Facebook and Twitter censored anyone from defending Kyle Rittenhouse and labeled him a mass murderer
— Jack Poso 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) November 10, 2021
His legal team wasn’t even allowed to crowdsource their defense fund
Speaking of which...
https://theconversation.com/australian-journalism-needs-more-than-better...
"At the moment the Australian Press Council deals with complaints about the print and online content of the newspapers, magazines and journals that fund it.
Among those publishers are the two biggest: Nine and News Corp.
Other big publishers are not or cannot be members, among them Guardian Australia, The Conversation and the ABC.
A separate Independent Media Council deals with complaints against newspapers operated by Seven-West media, which funds it. The Independent Council handles about 30 complaints a year, whereas the Press Council handles more than 1,000."
Gsco…I was serious.
I’ve got an idea for an App but feel like Jed Clampet trying to drill his own oil well.
I just want the Beverly Hills, movie stars and swimming pools!
Desperate and deranged. (By Rachel Withers and The Monthly)
"The PM’s attacks on Labor are growing increasingly detached from reality.
Election season is well and truly under way, and boy is it going to be a long and painful one – not to mention “overwhelmingly negative”. Scott Morrison’s “can-do capitalism” speech from yesterday has been widely perceived as an attempt to draw the campaign battlelines, with the PM reigniting “traditional ideological divisions” over the role of government, and setting up, as one Labor MP put it, a contrast between “the party of hope” and “the party of nope”. But it was this morning’s TV interviews – in which Morrison doubled down on his lies about Labor’s EV policy, and threw in some new ones – that truly showed how low the PM is planning to go. Morrison is no doubt deeply concerned about his diminishing approval ratings and the fact that the “liar” label is starting to stick. And he’s willing to tell increasingly deranged, desperate and dangerous lies in an attempt to claw his way back.
Appearing on both The Today Show and Sunrise this morning (when he wasn’t busy barbecuing up breakfast for veterans, that is), Morrison delivered an alarming number of brazen lies and bizarre non sequiturs about the Opposition – which, as both sets of hosts pointed out, he trails in the polls. Labor’s non-binding EV target, which Morrison had on Tuesday recast as a “mandate” that was going to “force” Australians from their cars, was suddenly about raising the price of petrol. “They want to put up your petrol prices,” he said, when asked about his EV backflip, without bothering to justify how that was even possible. This was a lie the PM repeated several times, even when pushed on the fact that he was again lying about Labor’s policy. As Guardian Australia’s Paul Karp noted, Morrison speculated in 2019 about what the EV target would mean for the fuel excise. But there was previously no reference to Labor putting up prices, and the latest lie has seemingly been invented overnight.
Questioned by the Today hosts about being called a liar by French President Emmanuel Macron, Morrison immediately accused the Opposition leader of siding not with France but with China – a country not even a direct party to the dispute. “I see Anthony Albanese backed in the Chinese government and a number of others in having a crack at me,” he lamented, before launching into an extended rant about standing up for Australia. When contacted by news.com.au about the China sympathiser line, Albanese’s office said it had no idea what Morrison was talking about, while the PM’s office covered by saying it was about Labor supporting an inquiry into AUKUS. What it was really about, of course, was setting up another ridiculous national security wedge, while stoking anti-China sentiment to boot.
Unprompted claims about Labor wanting to control your life, meanwhile, continued through almost every answer the PM gave today – whether defending anti-vaxxers’ right to choose (while simultaneously claiming credit for Australia passing the 90 per cent first-dose vaccination rate for the over-16 population) or implying that Labor’s climate criticism meant it only wanted to “tell people what to do and put taxes on them”. “I think Australians have had a gutful of governments telling them what to do in their lives,” said the leader of the government that has been in power for eight years, with no small echo of Barnaby Joyce’s “sick of the government being in my life” speech. As many have noted, Morrison’s complaint about Labor not having released its policies now that COP26 is over disregards the fact that the climate conference is very much still going, and increasing pressure on Australia to lift its game. (The government has, sadly, continued to embarrass itself, lobbying to remove references to limiting global warming to 1.5C from key documents.)
With large parts of the media still failing to call out this week’s increasingly outrageous lies by the PM (Sunrise’s Natalie Barr, to her credit, gave it a go), Labor appears to have had enough. Yesterday’s fiery response from Albanese, calling out a reporter from The Sydney Morning Herald for echoing the PM’s “nonsense”, prompted many to wonder where this Albanese had been – though the speech did not get much airtime outside of Twitter. Shadow energy minister Chris Bowen today shared Guardian Australia’s accurate description of the latest EV policy “lie”. “He’s at it again,” Bowen wrote, his frustration palpable. The China sympathiser attack, meanwhile, left a number of MPs furious, with Tim Watts noting that there appeared to be “no depths” to which Morrison wouldn’t stoop.
Morrison, of course, doesn’t particularly care if his lies offend people, nor if they fail to make sense – as neither the petrol nor the China lines did. It’s clear that the desperate PM is ready to continue this disturbing process for the next six months or so, spouting whatever nonsense he thinks will work on voters, with little regard for reality, decency or what it might mean for our international relationships. It’s less clear whether the majority of the media will be ready to start calling it out any time soon."
Blowin, Maybe not really possible to answer your question based on the info you’ve given.
Depends on what you want to do and what kinds of (front and back end) functionality and capabilities you’d need.
You’d prob want to discuss your idea with some trusted friends who have backgrounds in web/app development, and software engineering more generally (possibly after having them sign non-disclosure and/or non-compete agreements).
There’s lots of online resources to learn a bit of coding targeted at web development in languages like HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, etc. My favourite is https://www.w3schools.com/
There's also lots of websites for people with no real coding backgrounds to enable them to build their own websites, such as https://wordpress.com/
You could also try some googling and reading of job ads etc to see the kinds of backgrounds and experience people tend to have in this area.
Mine is in maths, machine learning, statistics, and numerical/scientific/high-performance computing (in say Python, R, C++, Stata, Matlab, Julia, etc), so not general software engineering or app/web development. In my previous roles I always worked with teams of people that included dedicated (full stack) software engineers and data architects/engineers.
Achievements Of The Coalition Government
A comprehensive list of (almost) everything the current Australian government has done since Abbott. In reverse order. Latest to first. 964 things and counting.
Blowin wrote:That’s why the globalists from the US all the way to Australia are now crying over the need to censor harmful “misinformation” from the internet.
https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1458508151389622277?s=20
To clarify though of course, twitter and facebook can't ban anyone from crowdsourcing - they don't own the internet. As private companies they are not obliged to let you use their services in ways they don't like.
They are also not 'censoring', as private companies they are free to dictate what they put up on their platforms.
Perhaps the free speech warriors would prefer the government dictate what these private companies publish.
"Perhaps the free speech warriors would prefer the government dictate what these private companies publish."
given the closeness of facebook and the democrat party, and the milions and millions zuckerberg poured into getting them elected and basically buying pelosi...
isn't this essentially what we are seeing?
'fascism' by one definition...
mussolini's no less...
sypkan wrote:"Perhaps the free speech warriors would prefer the government dictate what these private companies publish."
given the closeness of facebook and the democrat party, and the milions and millions zuckerberg poured into getting them elected and basically buying pelosi...
isn't this essentially what we are seeing?
'fascism' by one definition...
mussolini's no less...
One could certainly make such an argument, but it is hardly limited to the democrats - and I certainly wouldn't trust your assessment of this. This is a feature of US 'democracy', it's what end stage capitalism looks like. Consider the ties between the largest cable tv network and the Republican party, or the various corporate mega donors.
Constance B Gibson wrote:Achievements Of The Coalition Government
A comprehensive list of (almost) everything the current Australian government has done since Abbott. In reverse order. Latest to first. 964 things and counting.
https://www.mdavis.xyz/govlist/
We need a biblical flood to flush these turds out of office
Constance B Gibson wrote:Achievements Of The Coalition Government
A comprehensive list of (almost) everything the current Australian government has done since Abbott. In reverse order. Latest to first. 964 things and counting.
Thanks for posting. It's a long read haha
Why buy nuclear subs? They provide backdoor entry to the nuclear power industry.
https://thebulletin.org/2021/11/australian-uk-us-nuclear-submarine-deal-...
gragagan wrote:Constance B Gibson wrote:Achievements Of The Coalition Government
A comprehensive list of (almost) everything the current Australian government has done since Abbott. In reverse order. Latest to first. 964 things and counting.
Thanks for posting. It's a long read haha
And it’s not over yet
blindboy wrote:Why buy nuclear subs? They provide backdoor entry to the nuclear power industry.
https://thebulletin.org/2021/11/australian-uk-us-nuclear-submarine-deal-...
Yeah that was always a concern.
E wrote:Prime Minister Scott Morrison says he doesn’t believe he’s told a lie in public life
When asked by 3AW radio host Neil Mitchell if he had ever told a lie in public life, Mr Morrison replied: “I don’t believe I have, no. No.”
https://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal/scott-morrison-says-he-doesn-...
oh dear
Interviewer: Prime Minister, what is your favourite public lie.
Scott Morrison: I don’t believe I’ve ever told lie in public.
Interviewer: Ha! That’s my favourite too.
Hah, thats just a little creepy Super.
Unfortunately this is also on the money.
blindboy wrote:Why buy nuclear subs? They provide backdoor entry to the nuclear power industry.
https://thebulletin.org/2021/11/australian-uk-us-nuclear-submarine-deal-...
Realistically the subs will become nuclear armed at some point the as built will be fit for the purpose,
As for nuclear energy 20 to 30 year time line that's before you get to uranium processing which Australia doesn't have the technology for and the price is astronomical.
However nuclear energy becomes viable (all extremely astronomical expensive) if you go nuclear weapons.
Note current governments rhetoric on China points to nuclear weapons.
blindboy wrote:Why buy nuclear subs? They provide backdoor entry to the nuclear power industry.
Tactically and strategically they are a massive leap in capability and operational tempo. Even without nuclear weapons. See: HMS Conqueror in 1982 - sent the Argentine navy back to port for the duration of the conflict.
Some backgound info, very very good channel. He has an AUKUS one up now, haven't had time to view it yet tho
Keating is one of the few people making sense when it comes to China and our place in the region in which we live.
"Quoting himself at some length from an old speech was indulgent, the riffling through a pile of stapled notes distracting and the words didn’t always come quickly – not as easily as they used to, sometimes they had to be sought – but the words still came and were worth waiting for."
yep, ...and he also looked like he is still living in 1989...
the questions from the gallery were a little lacking too
but yeh, if you're looking for a plan for the 90's... keating is your man!
Watched Keating at the press club, Australian politics is poorer without him.
sypkan wrote:"Quoting himself at some length from an old speech was indulgent, the riffling through a pile of stapled notes distracting and the words didn’t always come quickly – not as easily as they used to, sometimes they had to be sought – but the words still came and were worth waiting for."
yep, ...and he also looked like he is still living in 1989...
the questions from the gallery were a little lacking too
but yeh, if you're looking for a plan for the 90's... keating is your man!
Of course the current plan includes EV's stealing your weekend...
"Of course the current plan includes EV's stealing your weekend..."
not sure what that has to do with anything?
"Watched Keating at the press club, Australian politics is poorer without him."
I agree... hence me including this in my quote...
"....and the words didn’t always come quickly – not as easily as they used to, sometimes they had to be sought – but the words still came and were worth waiting for.""
doesn't change the fact that the world has fundamentally changed since keating's vision...
and while I totally agreed with him on some things... it would have been good to see the journalists actually challenge some of his dated dogma...
it was a very polite crowd... and even stan grant felt the need to mention as such in the follow up show...
it isn't just morrison that has changed the settings with china post corona, essentially the whole world has... and not every one of those countries are run by no clue right wing shameless ad men... quite the opposite...
Back to the subs, had a chance to watch it, it's about the best in-depth coverage on the issue I've seen. Strategically patriotic, but politically impartial:
Facial recognition https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-11-10/facial-recognition-tech-on-hold-a...
In the face of a rising power whose citizenry is culturally, morally and ethnically uniform, and imbued with a sense duty, honour and national pride, we - Australia, the post-truth West - are in big trouble.
Maybe not exactly the right interpretation but these Sunday musings from Stan Grant are fascinating. Messy and contradictory, like he’s arguing with himself, trying to reconcile the conservative shouting in his right ear with the progressive ranting in his left one. No shouting, not really a conclusion, or an opinion - heaven forbid - to be had, but much to ponder. Maybe that’s point. The non-didactic antidote (along with Planet America) for much of what gets splashed over the ABC and elsewhere these days.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-11-14/remembrance-day-a-reality-check-a...
Roker, there are some interesting points there but anyone who leads off their argument by basing it on the belied that WW1 was fought to defend our liberal freedoms is instantly wrong. WW1 was absolutely pointless. The spectacular stupidity of all the leaders involved, both political and military, is almost impossible to believe. We would more greaty honour the dead in that war by remembering that than by pretending that their deaths were in defence of things that were never at risk.
I couldn't agree more with your take on WW1 BB - but I don't think he was quite suggesting that.
Anyway, while on the subject, I reckon Dick Diver has a good take on where entrenched cultural beliefs and uniformity can end up.
“See that little stream — we could walk to it in two minutes. It took the British a month to walk to it — a whole empire walking very slowly, dying in front and pushing forward behind. And another empire walked very slowly backward a few inches a day, leaving the dead like a million bloody rugs. No Europeans will ever do that again in this generation.”
“Why, they’ve only just quit over in Turkey,” said Abe. “And in Morocco —”
“That’s different. This western-front business couldn’t be done again, not for a long time. The young men think they could do it but they couldn’t. They could fight the first Marne again but not this. This took religion and years of plenty and tremendous sureties and the exact relation that existed between the classes. The Russians and Italians weren’t any good on this front. You had to have a whole-souled sentimental equipment going back further than you could remember. You had to remember Christmas, and postcards of the Crown Prince and his fiancée, and little cafés in Valence and beer gardens in Unter den Linden and weddings at the mairie, and going to the Derby, and your grandfather’s whiskers.”
“General Grant invented this kind of battle at Petersburg in sixty- five.”
“No, he didn’t — he just invented mass butchery. This kind of battle was invented by Lewis Carroll and Jules Verne and whoever wrote Undine, and country deacons bowling and marraines in Marseilles and girls seduced in the back lanes of Wurtemburg and Westphalia. Why, this was a love battle — there was a century of middle-class love spent here. This was the last love battle.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender is the Night: Tender Is the Night, novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Great book, I should re-read it. Every generation owes it to the following one to slaughter its sacred cows......but never do.
In the case of Stan Grant's piece I am not sure he can be taken seriously after expressing such pious nonsense. Faith and nation? Faith in what? A nation that is rapidly becoming an international pariah led by a government espousing the same values he claims are lost? A brief piece on the ABC website cannot provide an adequate cultural analysis of the type he is pretending to perform. So a shallow well-intentioned irrelevance?
Agree on the disaster that was the events leading up into WW1 - Massie's "Dreadnought" portrays the main characters and the tragedy of it very well, too.
This is too funny , maybe we should all send Scotty a congratulations letter . https://twitter.com/docb__/status/1460053865156337669?s=21
At least he’s got a few bucks to start up again. https://www.nation.lk/online/christian-porter-tipped-to-quit-politics-to...
Some good news about plastic in Australia. https://www.marineconservation.org.au/which-australian-states-are-bannin.... Sign the petition if you want
An interesting article. Sicktoria.
https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/opinion-post/the-commissioner-and-the-ch...
Lots of rumour, speculation and innuendo but very little evidence. Then there is the real weak link that Pell was found guilty by a jury before their verdict was overturned. Was that rigged too?
The "I can't believe it's not politics" thread.