Open Thread – Mon 18 Sept 2023


The Iron Rolling Mill (Modern Cyclopes), Adolph Menzel, 1872-75

Subscribe
Notify of
guest

1K Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
DrBeauGan
DrBeauGan
September 18, 2023 7:45 pm

I remember a rabbi saying that when a husband and wife have sex, God is present in the room.

That could make a bloke very nervous.

Bar Beach Swimmer
September 18, 2023 7:51 pm

JC @ 7:02pm

Every time a person dies or a kid is born GDP goes up or goes down.

So the economy must really be toast given that we’re adding thousands to the population from immigration.

Bar Beach Swimmer
September 18, 2023 7:52 pm

Dr BG,
I saw your comment from this morning:

So right back atcha: Boo!

Roger
Roger
September 18, 2023 7:54 pm

The Ukraine is now a DNC outpost/colony in Eastern Europe

I suspect you’ve never met a Ukrainian.

miltonf
miltonf
September 18, 2023 7:55 pm

I suspect you’ve never met a Ukrainian.

Actually yes- I can think of two

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
September 18, 2023 7:58 pm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XTbDSMtwyo

Peta Credlin interviewing Dennis Shanahan, from the Oz.

Crossie
Crossie
September 18, 2023 7:58 pm

Russell Brand is being accused not so much by the women whom he damaged or disrespected. He is being accused by disappointed women, those who expected more and got little or even nothing for having sex with him.

Cassie of Sydney
September 18, 2023 8:00 pm

Re the women making the allegations against Brand, I’m sorry but when I hear stories of women who choose to go to the media rather than the police to “tell their story”, surely I can’t be the only one who is somewhat suspicious.

Cassie of Sydney
September 18, 2023 8:01 pm

“Russell Brand is being accused not so much by the women whom he damaged or disrespected. He is being accused by disappointed women, those who expected more and got little or even nothing for having sex with him.”

Yes.

Roger
Roger
September 18, 2023 8:01 pm

So the economy must really be toast given that we’re adding thousands to the population from immigration.

The diminishing returns on the population ponzi are now tangible in terms of living standards for the average Australian.

DrBeauGan
DrBeauGan
September 18, 2023 8:02 pm

Russell Brand is being accused not so much by the women whom he damaged or disrespected. He is being accused by disappointed women, those who expected more and got little or even nothing for having sex with him.

They got bragging rights. ‘I shagged a celebrity!’

Roger
Roger
September 18, 2023 8:03 pm

Actually yes- I can think of two

Then you’d know they’re not exactly Democrats, milt.

Roger
Roger
September 18, 2023 8:05 pm

They tend to be patriotic, religious and socially conservative.

In that, they reflect Trump supporters more than Biden’s Democrats.

And they’d like the corruption to be dealt with once the war is over.

Crossie
Crossie
September 18, 2023 8:07 pm

DrBeauGan
Sep 18, 2023 8:02 PM
Russell Brand is being accused not so much by the women whom he damaged or disrespected. He is being accused by disappointed women, those who expected more and got little or even nothing for having sex with him.

They got bragging rights. ‘I shagged a celebrity!’

That seems to have worked until he went off the reservation and challenged the status quo. At that point he became a liability and fair game for #MeToo.

JC
JC
September 18, 2023 8:07 pm

Swimmer

So the economy must really be toast given that we’re adding thousands to the population from immigration.

Not really, Swim, or at least it depends if these immigrants are earning their keep holding down jobs and earning their keep.

Why you need to be cautious about capita GDP.

There was an interesting story about the poorest localities in the US that I read about five years ago. The poorest neighborhood in the US is a burb just outside of NYC, close to a place called Yonkers. When the analysis dug deeper, we found out that the neighborhood is made up primarily of Hasidic Jews. Hasidic Jewish couples are human breeding factories with 600 kids per couple. 🙂 Is that neighborhood blindly poor, or are the statistics really telling the real story? Obviously, it’s the latter because the GDP per capita was spread out over a large number of family units.

miltonf
miltonf
September 18, 2023 8:07 pm

Yes point taken Roger but as far as I can see the Ukraine is now a client state of the US which is controlled by the DNC.

Wally Dali
Wally Dali
September 18, 2023 8:09 pm

Just noticed the similarities between Russell Brand and Daisy Cousens. No, not the tarty schtick insect do-up, more the annoying voices… and being three years behind the Cats and Kittehs, big brain thinking wise.

Cassie of Sydney
September 18, 2023 8:14 pm

The stunningly beautiful UK commentator Esther Krakue nails the allegations about Brand….

We often miss a good teaching moment, that is if you are a man in the public eye, or just a man in general, sexual discipline is very important because if you make a habit of being intimate with many women, at some point there is a high likelihood that something negative will happen, or something will come back to bite you on the bum.

I think Esther has said it best.

JC
JC
September 18, 2023 8:16 pm

Just after the 2010 US census. It still makes me LOL.

The poorest place in the United States is not a dusty Texas border town, a hollow in Appalachia, a remote Indian reservation or a blighted urban neighborhood. It has no slums or homeless people. No one who lives there is shabbily dressed or has to go hungry. Crime is virtually nonexistent.

And, yet, officially, at least, none of the nation’s 3,700 villages, towns or cities with more than 10,000 people has a higher proportion of its population living in poverty than Kiryas Joel, N.Y., a community of mostly garden apartments and town houses 50 miles northwest of New York City in suburban Orange County.

About 70 percent of the village’s 21,000 residents live in households whose income falls below the federal poverty threshold, according to the Census Bureau. Median family income ($17,929) and per capita income ($4,494) rank lower than any other comparable place in the country. Nearly half of the village’s households reported less than $15,000 in annual income.

About half of the residents receive food stamps, and one-third receive Medicaid benefits and rely on federal vouchers to help pay their housing costs.

Kiryas Joel’s unlikely ranking results largely from religious and cultural factors. Ultra-Orthodox Satmar Hasidic Jews predominate in the village; many of them moved there from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, beginning in the 1970s to accommodate a population that was growing geometrically.

I bet it was growing geometrically. 🙂

More here and why poverty stats are complete bullshit.

H B Bear
H B Bear
September 18, 2023 8:21 pm

If you stick your dick In enough big holes eventually it will bite you in the bum. Celebrity only carries you so far.

Bar Beach Swimmer
September 18, 2023 8:23 pm

Not really, Swim, or at least it depends if these immigrants are earning their keep holding down jobs and earning their keep.

Why you need to be cautious about capita GDP.

JC, when you say “earning their keep”, do you mean by doing anything?

JC
JC
September 18, 2023 8:24 pm

If you stick your dick In enough big holes eventually it will bite you in the bum.

According to his own account he was banging 80 gals a month. Do the math.

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
September 18, 2023 8:25 pm

Tash Peterson’s Instagram account disappears from platform just days after vegan posted photos of bare bum

All that meat, on display?

thefrollickingmole
thefrollickingmole
September 18, 2023 8:25 pm

ABCcess the drum devoting an episode to hating on the new folk devil…
Russel Brand.

All females and one lactating male like object keeping quiet on the commenter screen.

A popup appears just says ” wobblygong country” in the corner and disappears.

Apparently ” right wing people” come out and say it’s wimmin/ blacks/ the Media’s fault and are evil, or something.

Apparently Brand loves victimhood, and is nasty.

What’s the odds of their ABCcess finding such complete unanimity of views from a completely random selection of x- spurts.

Oh, and they are having a whinge about ” why don’t people trust the media”

RABZ the place now

JC
JC
September 18, 2023 8:28 pm

JC, when you say “earning their keep”, do you mean by doing anything?

Having a job.

Black Ball
Black Ball
September 18, 2023 8:30 pm

He is being accused by disappointed women, those who expected more and got little or even nothing for having sex with him.

A lads by the name of Debbie Schipp weighs in:

I don’t know if Russell Brand is guilty of the specific rape and sexual assault and harassment claims being levelled against him.

I do know I’m surprised that it’s taken this long for him to be called out as an allegedly predatory and controlling creep.

I do know that when I walked out of a one-on-one interview (actually, there was one of me, and then him and the tittering entourage he played to in the room) with Brand more than a decade ago, I’d just met a very unprofessional and decidedly ordinary human being.

I’d been witness to — and the subject of — a Russell Brand performance he’d spent countless press tours perfecting which featured a specialist misogynist using a facile, lowbrow stunts dressed up as humour to disarm and humiliate women trying to go about their jobs and remind them he was in charge.

Russell, his supporters would say, was just being Russell: the notorious womaniser was flirty, cheeky, bold. It was banter. It was harmless. Lighten up. Who was he hurting?

These were the days before #MeToo.

Nobody was calling him out on the way he acted in interviews, made comments on questions he didn’t feel like answering or hearing, and felt it utterly acceptable to comment on your appearance or physical attributes.

Nobody took on a major celeb. If you called it out, you were the problem. You were humourless. You were being ridiculous.

And you certainly weren’t getting any more interviews.

I’d been told by other female journalists who’d had the dubious pleasure of interviewing Brand how it would go.

Russell would pick a feature … your boobs, your legs, your butt, the length of your dress, early in the meeting. It would be masked as a compliment, and then it would get creepy, unprofessional and uncomfortable as he’d inevitably riff on it again and again.

For one of my colleagues — an entertainment writer of years of experience — her boobs were, apparently, totally fair game.

Brand’s running commentary at their first meeting saw her eventually, half-jokingly, appeal: “Russell, can you look at my eyes?” as his assistants tittered, and his co-stars sat mute.

She, like so many of us before and since, sucked it up and rolled with it.

For her next encounter, she was ready. “No Russell, we’re not doing this,” she said firmly, as she saw the words about to leave his mouth.

He meekly “behaved”. Like a naughty little child.

I had written sport for ten years before I switched to entertainment, and in that round had met a thousand Russell Brands: blokes who didn’t like that a female would have the audacity and temerity to write about serious subjects like racing and rugby league.

You learned to push back, or make the fact you were female invisible. Sometimes both.

So on that day in 2009 at Sydney’s Park Hyatt as I waited for my time with Brand I was on my guard, but only vaguely.

I’d seen Brand’s work — the stuff he got paid for — before, and actually admired his eccentric schtick, humour and razor-sharp wit.

The interviews were running later, as these things often are.

I had plenty of time to watch other journos emerge from their time with him. The majority of them were women. Stony-faced.

I can’t recall what he was selling on that trip to Australia. But within seconds it was clear it wasn’t professionalism.

As I walked in and offered my hand to shake his, he looked me up and down, carefully assessing me, then slowly met my eyes.

“Hello, Debbie Schipp,” he said, a faint mocking tone as he used my full name and his gaze returned to my legs.

I’d been warned Brand could be quite hard to pin down, so I thanked him for his time, and said ‘since we’re a bit late can we get right into it?’.

He laughed, looked at my legs again, and then said “Ooh, you’re very serious, Debbie Schipp, aren’t you? Why are you so serious?”

I shrugged and said, “I’m really not. I love a laugh, I just know we don’t have much time.”

Too late.

Brand had stood, glanced at his giggling entourage and darted out the door, insisting on saying hello to somebody he’d apparently met earlier in the lift.

He returned a few minutes later, sat — no apology — looked at my legs again, and said “right, where were we?”.

As I posed a second question, he was off again, this time chasing down a Park Hyatt employee he’d seen wandering past our interview room, for something that clearly couldn’t wait.

But the time he’d mocked two of my questions, inviting his entourage to ridicule them again, remarked several more times how serious I was (a shame, he said, because I could be quite pretty when I smiled) and had left the interview for a third time to hail yet another new hotel ‘friend’, I’d had enough.

I closed my notebook. Switched off the tape recorder. Stood. Shouldered my bag.

“Where are you going, Debbie Schipp, we’ve got another ten minutes,” Brand said, looking me in the eye for the first time.

“Yeah, I’m done,” I said.

It was the only time he had no smart-arse reply and no control.

As I exited, a publicist looked at me bleakly and said: “So I’m guessing this won’t be a cover?”

It should have been a cover story. But nobody would have read it.

These were the days when few called out the likes of Brand on his bullshit.

I shook my head and kept walking.

I was more sad and disappointed than angry.

I’d admired the irreverent and offbeat Brand as an entertainer with a formidable intellect who went where few dared, and skewered with smart humour.

Resorting to lame commentary on a woman’s physical attributes and palming it off as a joke was lazy humour. Easy pickings. Not the slightest bit clever. I thought he was edgier than that.

It wasn’t funny then. It’s not funny now.

Russell, the position you find yourself in now isn’t some mysterious plot engineered by faceless powerful people and angry women to bring you down.

You did that all by yourself.

It’s way past time you and creeps like you were called out.

It’s not a conservative revenge plot. It’s not a grand conspiracy.

It’s just people finding their Voice. And the karma bus catching up.

And you didn’t write about this at the time Debbie? It’s a #metoo moment, but not in the way you envisage.

Black Ball
Black Ball
September 18, 2023 8:31 pm

A lass. Fer phuck sake.

Bar Beach Swimmer
September 18, 2023 8:33 pm

Having a job.

So, it doesn’t matter what the job entails – working at Maccas or in a servo. No cost-benefit analysis re the effect on housing supply/traffic etc?

Black Ball
Black Ball
September 18, 2023 8:34 pm

So this lady could have called Brand out judging by the second paragraph of this article. Before #metoo. She could have been a contender, could have been almost anything!
I call bullshit

thefrollickingmole
thefrollickingmole
September 18, 2023 8:34 pm

Debbie thinks accusations of rape are ok because Brand was an asshole.

Seems like a nice well balanced lass you’d love to have on your jury.

johanna
johanna
September 18, 2023 8:34 pm

Anna Bligh, formerly of the Liars, tells us:

Anna Bligh, CEO of the Australian Banking Association, said Australia was seeing an “explosion of scams” hitting Australian citizens.

She defended the banks’ efforts to detect and prevent scams.

Every bank is doing their best every day to try to make sure everyone is safe,” she said.

Couldn’t lie straight in bed.

H B Bear
H B Bear
September 18, 2023 8:35 pm

There is an implied covenant as a groupie. It gets a bit blurred with paid PR girls paid to stand around and glam the place up. I expect social media isn’t helping.

JC
JC
September 18, 2023 8:40 pm

Bar Beach Swimmer
Sep 18, 2023 8:33 PM

Having a job.

So, it doesn’t matter what the job entails – working at Maccas or in a servo. No cost-benefit analysis re the effect on housing supply/traffic etc?

Swim, the comment was having a job is meant to show that if someone is working, it adds to GDP and doesn’t detract.

Outside of the public sector, a cost benefit analysis of a job we can leave to employers.

Black Ball
Black Ball
September 18, 2023 8:40 pm

“Every bank is doing their best every day…

John Mason from The Rock comes to mind.

Dot
Dot
September 18, 2023 8:43 pm

thefrollickingmole
Sep 18, 2023 8:34 PM
Debbie thinks accusations of rape are ok because Brand was an asshole.

Seems like a nice well balanced lass you’d love to have on your jury.

Precisely mole.

These people are deadset psychopaths.

“There’s nothing wrong with falsifying rape accusations because I don’t like you”

An idea which is gaining traction in the zeitgeist is false accusers ought to get the maximum penalty for what they accuse someone of.

A corespondent notes:

Two newspapers and one tv show investigated Brand for four years, talking to 300 different people.

And alls they got was a couple sluts out of it.

Bar Beach Swimmer
September 18, 2023 8:46 pm

You did that all by yourself.

It’s way past time you and creeps like you were called out.

Yet she doesn’t point out that there’s a big different between being a preening git and engaging in actual sexual assault.

Got a claim? Take it to the police. Just as has been pointed out re Knickerless.

Fair Shake
Fair Shake
September 18, 2023 8:48 pm

Calling all WWII Heroes! Kelly has a caper to get some Nazi gold on Fox Classics …now.

JC
JC
September 18, 2023 8:49 pm

thefrollickingmole
Sep 18, 2023 8:34 PM

Debbie thinks accusations of rape are ok because Brand was an asshole.

Mole, here’s the problem with this nutball. He claims to have had sex with hundreds and hundreds of women. Possibly thousands, by his reckoning. Claiming to bag 80 gals a month means he was having sex with two/three gals a day. He also claimed to have sort professional help because he was a sex addict. In other words, he had an incredibly strong urge to get a leg over Put all that together, and it’s not a zero proposition that he may have forced himself on a few women who had second thoughts at the wrong time.

Fair Shake
Fair Shake
September 18, 2023 8:49 pm

Oddballs also accepted

chrisl
chrisl
September 18, 2023 8:49 pm

I bought two couches.
Sales lady was Macedonian ( absolutely lovely)
The couches were manufactured in Vietnam
The delivery guy was from Kosovo
His off slider was from Fiji
Where were the Aussie ( well may you ask )
Most likely at university learning how to run things ….

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
September 18, 2023 8:51 pm
duncanm
duncanm
September 18, 2023 8:52 pm

About time the SFL’s stepped up and wedged the ALP on zero emissions and nuclear power.

Dutton is quite good when he’s on point, but he does seem to get a bit confused on the details (eg: today’s claim that Canada is 60% nuclear. It is not. Canada is about 15%, Ontario is 60%).

Bar Beach Swimmer
September 18, 2023 8:52 pm

JC, ok. But what about including in the estimate what the cost-benefit of strong immigration numbers will be on the rest of society? Is that possible?

Dunny Brush
Dunny Brush
September 18, 2023 8:54 pm

Just on the shagging blokes and nutty older women pining for children thing. If only some society had come up with a way to combine sexuality with care and procreation so blokes can settle down and women can have children at an age younger than 41….. Anybody got a name for it?

Dr Faustus
Dr Faustus
September 18, 2023 9:00 pm

On Russell Brand.

The Sun, my go to on UK sleaze, provides the sordid details – plus the background on what has management at the Beabysea, the Big Brother production house, and Channel 4 in desperate panic mode. And it’s not Brand challenging woke Leftist orthodoxy.

Beyond the direct allegations from the four women, two former crew members who worked with Brand on Big Brother’s EFourum claimed that their felt as if they were working as a “pimp” for the star as he got them to approach young female audience members for him to meet after the show.

Brand received treatment for sex addiction in the US in 2005, but The Times report claimed that “more sinister behaviour” was an “open secret” among TV bosses.

Given the wholesale career destruction that followed Saville’s official outing as a pervert in full view, stable doors are being slammed shut.

Naturally MP’s have now joined in the moral panic – and Inspector Knacker of the Yard is on standby…

GreyRanga
GreyRanga
September 18, 2023 9:00 pm

[email protected], “That could make a bloke very nervous”. Especially if it wasn’t your wife!

Bar Beach Swimmer
September 18, 2023 9:00 pm

He claims to have had sex with hundreds and hundreds of women. Possibly thousands, by his reckoning.

Could be exaggeration.

Unless they all come forward; or he’s got pictures.

Two-three every day would be a bit like the keystone cops; in one door and out the other, endlessly.

JC
JC
September 18, 2023 9:00 pm

Bar Beach Swimmer
Sep 18, 2023 8:52 PM

JC, ok. But what about including in the estimate what the cost-benefit of strong immigration numbers will be on the rest of society? Is that possible?

Absolutely.

Dot
Dot
September 18, 2023 9:02 pm

Marriage is fu**ed.

The new consent laws Speakman implemented as NSW AG means that a young wife on the first morning of her honeymoon with her husband, could warm him up so to speak, no talking, just smiles and head pats, then after a brief period of being a generous lover to him, she is then dominant partner as her husband submissively receives coitus on his back. Not a word is spoken except for moaning and shouting each others names. They both are satisfied and she says I love you as they kiss and cuddle.

Well what it means is she is now a rapist.

If there is no enthusiastic consent, )YES means YES), then it is now sexual assault despite consensuality.

Our legal system is the enemy of family formation along with our tax system.

JC
JC
September 18, 2023 9:06 pm

8% isn’t a controlling interest.

The Vanguard Group, Inc. 8.22% 12,272,048
BlackRock Fund Advisors 4.63% 6,912,497
SSgA Funds Management, Inc. 4.12% 6,152,336
Temasek Holdings Pte Ltd. (Invest…

Farmer Gez
Farmer Gez
September 18, 2023 9:11 pm

Debbie Schipp’s article speaks to her own insecurities rather than an insight into the character of Russell Brand.

Bar Beach Swimmer
September 18, 2023 9:13 pm

Absolutely.

So is anyone doing it?

Knuckle Dragger
Knuckle Dragger
September 18, 2023 9:16 pm

Debbie Schipp, who I have never heard of, in 2009:

So on that day in 2009 at Sydney’s Park Hyatt as I waited for my time with Brand I was on my guard, but only vaguely.

In 2009. Fourteen years later, she decides to put pen to paper.

So – it was apparently important that Debbie Schipp stayed on-side rather than ‘calling out’ this apparent, and I mean apparent, terribly terrible behaviour by a bloke who was at the time not even on the cusp of the fame he later enjoyed.

In fact, at that time he may have only been ‘famous’ for a very, very poor reprise of Dudley Moore in Arthur, a story about a rich kid who falls in love.

Weak as piss. I will almost guarantee Schipp had just another giggly interview with Brand and then, because it then became fashionable, turned it into a #metoo where she’s the hero.

All for a couple of hundred freelancer bucks.

As Santa says, ‘Ho. Ho ho, and ho’.

Bar Beach Swimmer
September 18, 2023 9:18 pm

FS,
thanks for that. One of the great fillums.

Crapgame – played by Don Rickles is just magnificent.

Old Lefty
Old Lefty
September 18, 2023 9:21 pm

The pimping of young female audience members for the green room after the show didn’t just happen at the Beeb. It was legendary at a certain studio in Elsternwick, I’m told. Just don’t tell Louise Milligan or Justice McClellan.

cohenite
September 18, 2023 9:22 pm

Watching the people on the march for the screech and noting the people supporting turtle’s opposition to nuclear. There are a lot of fuking idiots in this shithole.

On the other hand watched Babylon which was a grim, pleasant surprise.

Delta A
Delta A
September 18, 2023 9:24 pm

Recently, someone posted about side effects of covid antiviral infusions, including the feeling of smashed glass in one’s mouth. I can not remember who it was because, at the time, I was not affected in any way by the post, but today that changed quite significantly.

If possible, could that person please repost the relevant information?

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
September 18, 2023 9:26 pm

There are a lot of fuking idiots in this shithole.

You rang?

LGBT groups call for advisory board amid NSW government faith council establishment

Exclusive
By alexi demetriadi
NSW Political Reporter
@ADemetriadi
6:56PM September 18, 2023
No Comments

Sydney’s LGBT community is ­demanding Premier Chris Minns keeps his promise to set up a voice-like advisory council for gay and trans people, after he set up a similar body for religious leaders who have promised to use it to push Labor on policy priorities.

The state government last week announced the establishment of a “milestone” NSW Faith Affairs Council to advise ministers on policy that could affect ­religious communities, such as – one faith leader suggested – changes to voluntarily-assisted dying or conversion practices.

LGBT groups, although welcoming the move to give ­religious figures a forum, want the government to ensure a similar olive branch will be extended to them.
Read Next

“Everyone deserves to be treated with dignity and respect, including LGBT people, people of faith, and those of us who belong to both groups,” Equality Australia legal director Ghassan Kassi­sieh said.

JC
JC
September 18, 2023 9:27 pm

Bar Beach Swimmer
Sep 18, 2023 9:13 PM

Absolutely.

So is anyone doing it?

I recall reading a column by Henry Ergas in the Australian some years ago about the cost benefit of heavy duty immigration and the policy of large immigration showed up poorly. Henry had a consulting business focused on spitting out cost/benefit analysis.

johanna
johanna
September 18, 2023 9:28 pm

Yessers, keep telling us that Senator Price doesn’t know what she is talking about:

Two men accused of fatally stabbing an Alice Springs man as part of what prosecutors describe as an “armed mob” attack have pleaded guilty to manslaughter.
Key points:

Ronald Martin and Jeremy Scrutton have pleaded guilty to fatally stabbing Kumanjayi Presley with a “butcher-style knife”
The two men in their 40s were armed with an arsenal of weapons when they confronted Mr Presley in Gillen in June 2020
They remain remanded in custody and are due to be sentenced in October

WARNING: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that this article contains the name of an Indigenous person who has died.

Ronald Martin, 47, and Jeremy Scrutton, 43, appeared in the NT Supreme Court in Alice Springs on Monday morning, each charged with manslaughter over the death of Kumanjayi Presley in June 2020.

Mr Presley, who was 36 when he died, was the nephew of Northern Territory senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price.

Benjamin Martin, 42, a co-accused who is also charged with manslaughter, had his matter adjourned to Tuesday due to a lack of available interpreters.

Hello Marcia? Hello, hello? Any comment?

Mark from Melbourne
Mark from Melbourne
September 18, 2023 9:31 pm

I remember a rabbi saying that when a husband and wife have sex, God is present in the room.

Hardly a shock, given the language used, at least in my experience.

Knuckle Dragger
Knuckle Dragger
September 18, 2023 9:31 pm

More Debbie Schipp:

He returned a few minutes later, sat — no apology — looked at my legs again, and said “right, where were we?”

Let me get in character:

Oh noooo. Someone looked at my shoulders once 14 years ago. And my legs, and gave me an up-and-down look while walking past me in a pub.

Where’s my compo? I’m the real hero here!

JC
JC
September 18, 2023 9:34 pm

Found the piece. Google is your friend. It’s a column, but not accompanied by stats. Good piece though.

We love a big Australia — but not so fast
henry ergas Follow @HenryErgas henry ergas

12:00AM April 20, 2018

It is true that Melbourne, with just half London’s population, covers six times London’s area, as Shaping a Nation, the research paper on migration released earlier this week by the Treasury and the Department of Home Affairs, claims. But it hardly follows that Melbourne should, or sensibly could, aim to achieve London’s population density.

After all, the goal of migration policy is not to increase popula­tion density for its own sake. Nor is its purpose to increase gross domestic product, or even GDP per capita, as the paper implies.

Rather, the aim is to improve the wellbeing of existing Australians, taking into account their interest in the prosperity of future generations, and humanitarian concern for the rest of the world.

The choice of objective matters a great deal. The building industry wants to boost the number of homes that need to be built, while our major retailers salivate at the prospect of a larger market, but those goals may conflict with maximising the welfare of present Australians.

At its heart, that conflict cen­tres on the resources that are difficult to expand, such as roads in densely populated areas. By increasing the demands placed on those resources, immigration makes them more congested, harming existing users in ways that conventional measures of GDP do not capture.

It may be that proper pricing of those congestible assets (say, through road charges on intensely used routes) would limit the damage to living standards, as the paper suggests. But with even the most efficient pricing in the world, existing users will still be worse off than they would have been if fewer additional vehicles were on the road.

And the costlier it is to increase those assets’ capacity, the more dramatic the harm to existing users must be as population rises, and demand with it.

That is important because the costs of adapting our major cities to absorb fast population growth are now extremely high, compared with similar cities overseas and with historical experience.

In part, those high costs are due to our industrial relations system, which adds 10 to 15 per cent to the cost of infrastructure projects, with myriad other productivity-reducing regulations aggravating the penalty. The persistently poor selection and management of major infrastructure projects makes costs greater again.

But the high costs mainly arise from the fact, over more than a century, abundant land availability, high per capita incomes and a short working day have shaped an urban fabric that ­combines relatively compact CBDs, sprawling suburbs and heavily trafficked radial links ­between them.

When that settlement pattern was in its formative stages, providing infrastructure largely involved its extension to new greenfields sites, where construction encountered few obstacles. Although costs were high — because the spacing between homes was nearly twice that in comparable cities in the US and more than three times that in Europe — they were relatively bearable.

Moreover, in that phase of our development, population growth tended to significantly reduce unit costs over time, as fixed costs were spread over a larger number of users.

Now, however, capacity expansion almost always involves brownfields work in heavily developed areas, disrupting existing uses of land and requiring reliance on costly underpasses, elevated ramps and tunnelling over long distances. And instead of economies of scale, costs often rise more than proportionately as the scale and pace of projects rises, with “mega-projects” being especially prone to massive cost blowouts.

Those facts of life aren’t about to change. The urban fabric is extraordinarily durable, as is the housing stock: that is why there is so much truth in Winston Churchill’s dictum that “we shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us”.

In democracies — which cannot adopt China’s approach of simply bulldozing millions of homes to build high rises and ­superhighways — modifying the structure of urban areas is the work of many decades.

As a result, the constraints those costs impose should figure prominently in setting population policy. Put in the jargon of economics, they limit the optimal population of our major cities, relative to many cities overseas, and the rate at which their population ought to increase.

But rather than facing that reality, the report simply excludes the costs of adapting our urban fabric from its calculations of the net benefits of the migrant intake.

Given that those costs are scarcely negligible — as a proportion of GDP, our infrastructure spending is already almost twice the average for the major advanced economies and may need to rise further — that exclusion casts serious doubt on Scott Morrison’s claim that the report provides “a clear evidence base for the government’s migration policy settings supporting our national interest”.

That the report’s quantifica­tion also ignores many other costs — including the impact of high rates of population growth on non-market resources, such as the untrammelled enjoyment of open spaces — only makes the Treasurer’s claim yet more suspect.

None of that is to deny that ­migration brings a broad range of benefits, many of which are also hard to measure. By far the most important is that migrants are driven by the desire to make a better life for themselves and their families. Settler economies, such as Australia, have benefited enormously from that ambition, as migrants have striven to give their children the future they dreamt of. Retreating from “Big Australia” to a country bunkered against inflows from the rest of the world would therefore be an unwarranted diminution of national possibility and an unjustifiable loss of social hope.

But there is no surer way of provoking that retreat than to keep migration at levels that exceed our absorptive capability. If that is what the government wants to achieve, it risks succeeding wonderfully.

Mark from Melbourne
Mark from Melbourne
September 18, 2023 9:35 pm

https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2023/09/voice-unity-albanese-style.html

SWMBO and I wondered why both SBS and ABC were covering a No rally in Adelaide that hadn’t yet started in their evening news. Non-event doesn’t begin to describe it.

As the above shows, it was because there was scheduled to be a bunch of protesters yelling “racist” etc and they were there to catch the vision.

Pretty poor turnout on the basis of the vid… I wonder if there will be better footage later on?

cohenite
September 18, 2023 9:35 pm

Ronald Martin, 47, and Jeremy Scrutton, 43, appeared in the NT Supreme Court in Alice Springs on Monday morning, each charged with manslaughter over the death of Kumanjayi Presley in June 2020.

Mr Presley, who was 36 when he died, was the nephew of Northern Territory senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price.

WTF!!

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
September 18, 2023 9:37 pm

There are a lot of fuking idiots in this shithole.

You rang?

Governments should consider if Indigenous defendants should be heard by ‘mixed jury’, new report finds
A new report has made strong recommendations that an inquiry be launched immediately to remedy chronic underrepresentation of Indigenous jurors.

Exclusive
By ellie dudley
Legal Affairs Correspondent
@EllieDudley_
8:28PM September 18, 2023
No Comments

Governments should consider granting First Nations defendants special rights to be heard by a mixed jury of half Indigenous Australians, according to a report commissioned by a peak judicial body and backed by a Northern Territory Supreme Court judge as “ground breaking”. The report made strong recommendations that a national inquiry be launched immediately to remedy chronic under-representation of Indigenous jurors.

The inquiry, held by the Standing Committee of Attorneys-General, would also consider whether express rights should be given to Indigenous ­defendants to allow them to be heard by Indigenous jurors, after the researchers criticised the Territory Law Reform Committee for failing to assess the benefits of a structured mixed jury before ruling it out.

The report, written by University of NSW researchers Jill Hunter and Sharleigh Crittenden and published by the Australasian ­Institute of Judicial Administration, was championed by sitting NT Supreme Court judge and ­AIJA president Jenny Blokland, who congratulated Professor Hunter and Ms Crittenden on producing a report that makes recommendations for “positive change”
Read Next

“The long-standing barriers to Indigenous representation on ­juries must be urgently addressed if the administration of justice is to have any credibility in the parts of the community most affected by its decisions,” she wrote.

“The AIJA Council resolved to directly commission this work, as although the issue is not new, the lack of reform in the past has led to sharp and justifiable criticism of the existence of being tried by ‘ones peers’.

“The failure to address the barriers to first peoples’ representation on juries, as the Report makes plain, has long been acknowledged in legal, judicial and policy circles. This failure must not continue.”

The researchers said there was a “strong argument” to restructuring Australian jury representation to “affirmatively include First Nations jurors”.

One suggestion raised to enable this was the concept of “juries de meditate linguae” – a method granting a minority defendant the right to be tried by a jury comprised half of that minority.

The researchers backed this method as having a long “historical heritage” that could “increase the inclusion of racial minorities on juries”. “The jury de meditate originally entitled Jews in medieval England to special mixed juries, made up half of Jews and half of Englishmen,” they wrote, noting the method is used in Argentina to boost the representation of ­Indigenous jurors.

“While this form of mixed jury was abolished in England in 1870, it continued to operate beyond that time in Australia and elsewhere. The de meditate linguae was recognised and applied in both South Australia and Queensland.”

These juries were employed in at least two separate Australian trials concerning Chinese defendants in the 1800s: the Melbourne trial of Ah Toon and the Northern Territory trial of Ah Kim.

Colonel Crispin Berka
Colonel Crispin Berka
September 18, 2023 9:37 pm

isn’t some mysterious plot engineered by faceless powerful people and angry women to bring you down.
You did that all by yourself.

The voice of an absolutely narcissistic bully. Attacking people then disavowing any choice in the matter by declaring “look what you *made* me do!”

duncanm
duncanm
September 18, 2023 9:40 pm

Some interesting defenders of Russel Brand coming right out hitting.
https://twitter.com/SammiePressdee/status/1703133573035733003

In 2006 I refused to have sex with Russell Brand. I was in his London flat. There was a lot of heavy petting and we were both down to our pants. He didn’t pressure me when I said no. He wasn’t angry or abusive. Everything that happened was consensual. I stayed the night in his flat and felt safe.

You’d hardly expect that sort of defense from women if he was a genuine predator.

Gabor
Gabor
September 18, 2023 9:41 pm

johanna
Sep 18, 2023 9:28 PM

Benjamin Martin, 42, a co-accused who is also charged with manslaughter, had his matter adjourned to Tuesday due to a lack of available interpreters.

Is that even possible, that he cannot speak enough English in Alice Springs to understand the charges and proceedings?
I am curious what the interpreter would translate some of the legalize as?

johanna
johanna
September 18, 2023 9:46 pm

Steve trickler
Sep 18, 2023 7:23 PM

I remember this clip at 12k views. Now it is up to 124 million.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly – The Danish National Symphony Orchestra (Live)

Thanks for reminding me – it is a magic performance. I saw a clip of an interview with the whistler (perfect tone and note) and she is a married mother of three kids, surprised and delighted by the success of that performance.

Unlike Sydney’s SSO and Ballet, The DSO actually are interested in what punters want.

duncanm
duncanm
September 18, 2023 9:47 pm

So what, exactly, is Debbie Schipp’s complaint?

The bloke is a sleaze? Is that now punishable by the state?

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
September 18, 2023 9:48 pm

Mr Presley, who was 36 when he died, was the nephew of Northern Territory senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price.

Wasn’t the bloke who was shot by the Territory cops, for trying to stab one of them, with a pair of scissors, another of Senator Price’s relatives?

Black Ball
Black Ball
September 18, 2023 9:54 pm

FMD. William Shekel (most likely wrong spelling) is a young fellow on Q+A. For nuclear power. Then Allegra Spender sez we aren’t ready. Chris Bowen to speak shortly.
Give me the young fellow. He was very good.

duncanm
duncanm
September 18, 2023 9:55 pm

Another outstanding performance of a Morricone classic.

You can see the contestants (finalists?) in the background just looking on in astonishment.. ‘we’re totally outclassed here, gals’.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1e9Mtygzgk

Farmer Gez
Farmer Gez
September 18, 2023 9:57 pm

So what, exactly, is Debbie Schipp’s complaint?

Waiting for the penny to drop there Duncan.

johanna
johanna
September 18, 2023 10:01 pm

miltonf
Sep 18, 2023 7:55 PM

I suspect you’ve never met a Ukrainian.

Actually yes- I can think of two

There are plenty of them in Queanbeyan, thanks to the Snowy scheme. The originals are very old, but still passionate in their views. They congregate for coffee in the mall, reminding me of Lygon St in the 70s.

Their offspring are a mixed bunch, ranging from the obese teenagers covered with ugly tatts and their druggie ‘boyfriends’ to hard-working and affluent tradies and professionals.

cohenite
September 18, 2023 10:10 pm

The video images of the screech rallies shows only white tards present, every one a liars or filth voter.

Robert Sewell
September 18, 2023 10:16 pm

Bar Beach Swimmer:

So, it doesn’t matter what the job entails – working at Maccas or in a servo. No cost-benefit analysis re the effect on housing supply/traffic etc?

Doesn’t that particular demographic, like the Mormons, barely enter the statistics because they are self sufficient?
So what would happen if they constituted half the population?

MatrixTransform
September 18, 2023 10:19 pm

I suspect you’ve never met a Ukrainian

my neighbours are Ukrainian and there’s a Camry with a Ukie flag on it parked in front of my joint right now.

I remember 5 years ago when we moved here and a day after there’s a knock at the door and Boris and Natasha are standing there with an an A4 photo-copy of a cat.
yep …a rag-doll

B&N: hello I am Boris and this is my wife Natasha. We live at #9
MT: nice to meet you
B&N: have you seen our cat?
MT: nup
B&N: can we look in your shed?
MT: er … nup
B&N: ok

their grown kids are fair dinkum Adidas wearing gangsters
Grandma Olga, occasionally walks the the court with her zimmer frame and scowling
i swear the bird-life goes quiet when she comes out
dont even try to say hello

they’re warming to us … Natasha actually waved back at me the other day

Sancho Panzer
Sancho Panzer
September 18, 2023 10:25 pm

H B Bear

Sep 18, 2023 5:55 PM

News flash, Geoff – Australians are over the cultural cringe.

Some people make it their life’s work.

“The Eyes of the World Are Upon Us”.
Firstly, they are not. Australians are broadly travelled enough to know that the rest of the world couldn’t give a fat rat’s clacker what happens here.
Secondly, it’s now reciprocated. We don’t care what they think even if there is a remote chance one or two are paying attention.

Bar Beach Swimmer
September 18, 2023 10:29 pm

Thanks, JC:

Ergas:

After all, the goal of migration policy is not to increase popula­tion density for its own sake. Nor is its purpose to increase gross domestic product, or even GDP per capita, as the paper implies.

Rather, the aim is to improve the wellbeing of existing Australians, taking into account their interest in the prosperity of future generations, and humanitarian concern for the rest of the world.

…the report simply excludes the costs of adapting our urban fabric from its calculations of the net benefits of the migrant intake.

And still not happening because decisions for the benefit of the people are of little value to politicians.

So, the benefit of filling a servo job from migration maybe outweighed by the cost of more traffic on the road, or to repeat Ergas’ better prose, ‘the costs of adapting our urban fabric’.

Under this analysis high migration is not a win-win and not every job, when filled by a migrant, brings a standard benefit.

MatrixTransform
September 18, 2023 10:31 pm

Australians are broadly travelled enough to know that …

sancho,

aren’t you the same bloke that was sending genuine cultural-cringe post-cards from Kyoto just last week?

Black Ball
Black Ball
September 18, 2023 10:32 pm

Governments should consider granting First Nations defendants special rights to be heard by a mixed jury of half Indigenous Australians, according to a report commissioned by a peak judicial body and backed by a Northern Territory Supreme Court judge as “ground breaking”. The report made strong recommendations that a national inquiry be launched immediately to remedy chronic under-representation of Indigenous jurors.

Hang on, if your lineage is only 1/16th or less, you can claim all benefits available? Just really stupid and should be laughed right out of any self respecting institution.

Top Ender
Top Ender
September 18, 2023 10:40 pm

You know it makes sense!

Juries must contain a percentage of gay people if the defendant is gay.

What about if the defendant is from overseas? Insist there should be people from the defendant’s country of origin!

If the defendant is male insist there should be 48% of the jury male!

Trannies form a queue – we’ll get to your case when we can find enough…

Nelson_Kidd-Players
September 18, 2023 10:51 pm

Yoohoo, Rabz!

Indolent
Indolent
September 18, 2023 10:59 pm

The Vanguard Group, Inc. 8.22% 12,272,048
BlackRock Fund Advisors 4.63% 6,912,497
SSgA Funds Management, Inc. 4.12% 6,152,336

Firstly, they’re interconnected, certainly BlackRock, Vanguard and StateStreet and I’m sure some others too. Secondly, for a large public company, 7% and 8% investment is a huge amount, with board seats and plenty of influence to ensure they retain the holding.

JC
JC
September 18, 2023 11:14 pm

Firstly, they’re interconnected, certainly BlackRock, Vanguard and StateStreet and I’m sure some others too

How are they “interconnected’?

Secondly, for a large public company, 7% and 8% investment is a huge amount, with board seats and plenty of influence to ensure they retain the holding.

You described it as a controlling interest. It’s not. A controlling interest is by definition, 50%.

Sancho Panzer
Sancho Panzer
September 18, 2023 11:29 pm

Cassie of Sydney

Sep 18, 2023 8:00 PM

Re the women making the allegations against Brand, I’m sorry but when I hear stories of women who choose to go to the media rather than the police to “tell their story”, surely I can’t be the only one who is somewhat suspicious.

I saw a t-shirt on the street today.
“You can’t force people to respect you.
But you can choose not to be disrespected.”
Bit long for a bumper sticker, but there you have it.

Sancho Panzer
Sancho Panzer
September 18, 2023 11:33 pm

I’ve had some butcher’s paper sent up to the hotel room and I’ve worked up some calculations.
I estimate that somewhere around 8.4% of the male Japanese population aged between 13 and 21 are in J-pop Boy Bands.

Sancho Panzer
Sancho Panzer
September 18, 2023 11:45 pm

I have become more adventurous in playing with the buttons on Japanese toilets (albeit with the lid shut and standing a safe distance away to start with).
They have a sound effects button which plays birdsong and babbling stream sounds to mask any actual splashing, tinkling and groaning noises.
But nothing to mask the smell unfortunately.

John H.
John H.
September 18, 2023 11:49 pm

“You can’t force people to respect you.
But you can choose not to be disrespected.”

Holocaust.

MatrixTransform
September 19, 2023 12:12 am

I

Alamak!
September 19, 2023 12:46 am

they’re interconnected, certainly BlackRock, Vanguard and StateStreet and I’m sure some others too

Strange how the capitalist system draws in these entities, all seeking to maximize their wealth and prepared to buy any share or pay any (reasonable) cost to do that.

Could it be that they do this because they are managing money for ordinary people?

The capitalist conspiracy never ends …

Steve trickler
Steve trickler
September 19, 2023 1:52 am

duncanm
Sep 18, 2023 9:55 PM
Another outstanding performance of a Morricone classic.

You can see the contestants (finalists?) in the background just looking on in astonishment.. ‘we’re totally outclassed here, gals’.

That was astonishing.

Cheers.

Wally Dalí
Wally Dalí
September 19, 2023 1:53 am

I’d admired the irreverent and offbeat Brand as an entertainer with a formidable intellect who went where few dared, and skewered with smart humour.

Resorting to lame commentary on a woman’s physical attributes and palming it off as a joke was lazy humour. Easy pickings. Not the slightest bit clever. I thought he was edgier than that.

Sheesh some people are dumb. Or easily mesmerized by glamour. All i’ve ever seen on the screen is a heavily made-up doyenne who can speed-read a set scwipt fwom memowy, but fails to meaningfully engage with interviewers or guests… or subjects, as discussions progress.
Does it not dawn on anyone that Brand is no great wit, no deep thinker, no edgy contrarian… but rather, just a convincing performer?

Tom
Tom
September 19, 2023 4:00 am
Tom
Tom
September 19, 2023 4:01 am
Tom
Tom
September 19, 2023 4:02 am
Tom
Tom
September 19, 2023 4:04 am
Tom
Tom
September 19, 2023 4:05 am
Tom
Tom
September 19, 2023 4:06 am
Tom
Tom
September 19, 2023 4:07 am
Tom
Tom
September 19, 2023 4:08 am
Tom
Tom
September 19, 2023 4:09 am
feelthebern
feelthebern
September 19, 2023 5:33 am

Last weekend the All In podcast held their annual summit.
They had a lot of good speakers & are dropping selected ones onto their youtube channel.

https://www.youtube.com/@allin/videos

These include Larry Summers, Ray Dalio, Bill Gurley & Elon.
The Bill Gurley one talks about the stagnation of the US.

feelthebern
feelthebern
September 19, 2023 5:57 am

Cocoa prices hit 50 year highs over the past week.
How long before ColesWorth jack up their chocolate prices for stock that was contracted 6-12 months ago?
Heads ColesWorth wins.
Tails the consumer lose.
If only there was a competition regulator to ensure profiteering like this didn’t happen.

feelthebern
feelthebern
September 19, 2023 6:01 am

Two of my WhatsApp groups is lighting up this morning with a range of Yes front groups being granted DGR status in late 2022 & early 2023.
Is this old news?
Or fake news?

Gabor
Gabor
September 19, 2023 6:09 am

feelthebern
Sep 19, 2023 6:01 AM

Two of my WhatsApp groups is lighting up this morning with a range of Yes front groups being granted DGR status

Made me look up DGR status.
One learns somet new every day.

Vicki
Vicki
September 19, 2023 6:16 am

I can’t believe this. Breakfast TV News just reported that a large number of Sydney and Sth Coast schools are closing today because of anticipated temperature of 34 degrees plus ! Good heavens – what are they going to do in Summer? Permanently close the schools?

Dot
Dot
September 19, 2023 6:24 am

Oh no! 34 degrees! Heavens to Betsy!

Jorge
Jorge
September 19, 2023 6:33 am

The Barassi worship continues, driven by sports media.

Nothing against him but the game is bigger than one man and the Cup should not commemorate an individual.

He wasn’t gay and he wasn’t black. Most unsuitable.

Dot
Dot
September 19, 2023 6:50 am

DUDE! WHERE’S MY F-35?

billie
billie
September 19, 2023 6:53 am

You use Whats App?

Get onto Signal if you want privacy.

Dot
Dot
September 19, 2023 6:57 am

The Barassi worship continues

As it should.

The John Elliot Shield will be even better.

Which hopefully after 2023, will be the new name for the AFL Minor Premiership given the McClellan is now the Club Championship for the AFL/AFLW.

calli
calli
September 19, 2023 7:11 am

So…I looked it up. DGR status follows so you don’t have to –

Deductible Gift Recipient specific listing | Treasury.gov.au
Entities endorsed as deductible gift recipients (DGR) are entitled to receive donations which are deductible from the donor’s income tax. Division 30 of the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997 determines which entities can gain DGR status.

And, I presume “No” does not have this status?

Our government and its agencies are either corrupt or very, very close to it.

132andBush
132andBush
September 19, 2023 7:11 am

Good heavens – what are they going to do in Summer? Permanently close the schools?

As I referred to the other day; if you read the BOM definitions for the various classes of heatwave we will have heatwave announcements nearly each week.
Interesting stats exercise there if anyone wants to take it on. They are basically declaring a heatwave if it’s forecast to be three consecutive days over the average in any particular district.

Cassie of Sydney
September 19, 2023 7:11 am

Russell Brand’s career is finito.

It’s surreal now, we now live in a time where female accusers don’t bother going to the police, instead they go to the MSM to air their real or imagined complaints about a man, and the media run with it, and what happens, a man’s life is destroyed! Geez Louise, it works a treat. Such trivial details as “evidence” and “trials” are now deemed irrelevant. Every day in the West is now…..”j’accuse”!

Further to Esther Krakue’s very wise words about “sexual discipline”, I think mothers need to counsel their sons very carefully. It’s open slather on heterosexual males. But you see, all of this has come about by a chronic lack of sexual discipline in the West, and now we live in a culture drenched in lewdness, vulgarity, indecency and pornography. It’s been fifty years in the making, a culture now totally infused with sexual unrestraint.

The old rules protected males and females. Perhaps it’s time we adopted those rules again.

Pogria
Pogria
September 19, 2023 7:13 am

I’ve been reading an article a Swiss moron who bought a $300.00 live lobster at a restaurant in Sardinia, then dropped it back into the sea. The best part of the article were the comments. My favourite comment;
I buy eggs and then let them free by throwing them towards the lefties on the picket lines” 😀

132andBush
132andBush
September 19, 2023 7:14 am

Obese teachers can’t cope with the heat?

Vicki
Vicki
September 19, 2023 7:15 am

There is no doubt that fire conditions in rural areas are going to be dodgy this summer particularly in relation to grass fires. And it is a warm, dry spring up here. But this media panic regarding mild temperatures is ridiculous. It was in the low 30s here yesterday. I went for my usual 45 minute walk around the property without any discomfort & we did all the normal maintenance work – gardening, machinery maintenance, cattle work and so on. Husband helped a neighbour repair an excavator. All out in the sun. All normal.

Husband remarked this morning that this is just the same as the Covid panic. It does not worry him. It makes me seethe. It is insidious mind control.

calli
calli
September 19, 2023 7:17 am

Good heavens – what are they going to do in Summer? Permanently close the schools?

They have form. This is just a tryout for more and for other reasons.

Old Cats and Kittehs have already mentioned the 100F “go home” for children…if the principal decided to apply it.

Discomfort is now considered dangerous.

Robert Sewell
September 19, 2023 7:17 am

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/09/woman-euthanized-belgium-heard-screaming-loved-ones-as/

“Belgian law specifies that to qualify for euthanasia, the person must be in a ‘medically futile condition of constant and unbearable physical or mental suffering that cannot be alleviated, resulting from a serious and incurable disorder caused by illness or accident.’”

Unfortunately for Alexina, her death was anything but peaceful. After a cocktail of drugs failed to end her life, European media outlet Le Soir, reported that Alexina was suffocated with a pillow by nurses while her loved ones in another room heard her screams.

And who assured us this wouldn’t happen?

Knuckle Dragger
Knuckle Dragger
September 19, 2023 7:19 am

Obese teachers can’t cope with the heat?

Closer to the mark, I reckon.

Dot
Dot
September 19, 2023 7:24 am

Cassie

Women don’t want to get married and they don’t want children until they’re 30 and it is only one.

Sure I am talking to younger university educated women.

They initiate hookups. There’s a reason why Bumble exists.

I’m not blaming women. I’m just asking what’s in it for men anymore if they don’t want unemotional promiscuity.

(We’re not waiting for women to become almost infertile. Who will save them? Not me.)

Speakman’s absurd enthusiastic consent laws even cruel a relationship forming organically let alone a sneaky link.

If a man wants multiple children from a fertile wife you may as well convert to whatever religion necessary and enter into an arranged marriage.

Look at the divorce rates in Western Europe.

It’s wild.

Robert Sewell
September 19, 2023 7:25 am

It Begins: Australia’s Fifth-Largest Bank Announces Digital-Only Transactions – Will Phase Out Cash, Cheque, and Phone Payments in All 80 Branches Starting Next Year
January 2024: Phasing out of new checkbooks for new cash management accounts, including any linked Macquarie Wrap accounts.
March 2024: Automated telephone banking services will be shut down, making phone payments impossible.
May 2024: Depositing or withdrawing cash or cheques over the counter at Macquarie branches will no longer be possible. Ordering checkbooks for existing accounts will also be discontinued.
November 2024: Writing or depositing cheques, including bank cheques, will be completely phased out. Superannuation contributions or payments using cheques will also cease.

eric hinton
eric hinton
September 19, 2023 7:25 am

Heavens to Betsy

uptick

Vicki
Vicki
September 19, 2023 7:25 am

132 and bush – thanks for that. It makes sense. BOM – who are all warming fanatics – must be contacting the media whenever 3 days are above average & declaring a heatwave.

lotocoti
lotocoti
September 19, 2023 7:27 am

Feckin’ ijits.

Denise has a prostate. Most transgender women do, as do some intersex and non-binary people. That’s ok. Nature is weird and wonderful sometimes. It is infinite in its diversity and combinations.

Delusions are weird and wonderful too.
Sometimes.

132andBush
132andBush
September 19, 2023 7:27 am

It is insidious mind control.

It is.
If you remember in January I was down at Horsham and the forecast was for some ridiculous temperature and I was scoffing at it given there was a southerly forecast as well. We were on track for one of the coolest summers on record and it felt as though some people were trying to “bump up”perceptions.

Robert Sewell
September 19, 2023 7:31 am

It Begins: Australia’s Fifth-Largest Bank Announces Digital-Only Transactions – Will Phase Out Cash, Cheque, and Phone Payments in All 80 Branches Starting Next Year

So is the Macquarie Bank going to suffer a run on its deposits?
I don’t know, but I’m accelerating the plunder run of my Commonwealth accounts into gold.
Silly people.

Cassie of Sydney
September 19, 2023 7:32 am

We live in a dumb times, but worse, both dumb and forgetful times.

At work last week I sat and listened as people sitting near me, all of whom are younger than me, shrieked about the coming week’s “heat wave” and how “unprecedented” and “boiling” it was.

To which I turned around and said “nonsense”. I said I clearly remember the year 2000, how on the first day of the Sydney Olympics a heat wave began that went on for weeks. I then said that the difference between 2023 and 2000 is that 23 years ago people celebrated the heat whereas now people shriek and catastrophise about it. There was silence. And then surprisingly a younger colleague agreed with me, he said he also remembers how in 2000, when he was nine years old, he also remembers that heatwave.

I sometimes wonder if people here quite understand the depths of this climate alarmism and catastrophism, and how it is framing much of the business world. ESG is now running amok through large corporations. I work with younger people and climate change IS their religion. Some I’ve had conversations with are even convinced the northern beaches are going to disappear! LOL. Of course, of course, none of this alarmism curtails their winter skiing trips or their jaunts off to Europe this year. They just don’t seem to think they need to make any sacrifices to save da planet! Sacrifices are for little people.

Dumb times, forgetful times, and very hypocritical times.

132andBush
132andBush
September 19, 2023 7:48 am

Remember:
This time last year everywhere was or nearly was under water.

Robert Sewell
September 19, 2023 7:52 am

They’re determined to control your money, no matter what. And next in line is the refusal by the banks to allow you to spend it on something their woke department disagrees with – like excess meat for this month, or an OS holiday if you’ve already had one this year. Or a new car if it isn’t an EV.
So how is this going to apply to business trips? Will they be curtailed? Or just not counted? And how are they going to happen if all the airlines go broke because the peasants aren’t going to be allowed to fly and subsidise the rich industrialists? Because those 737s aren’t going to leave the ground with just Business Class on board.
Actually, those 737s aren’t going to be built – only the Learjet Class will survive. Boeing will go tits up and the stockmarket will as well.
It’s going to be a hell of a ride, strap in.

Cassie of Sydney
September 19, 2023 7:58 am

I’m so sick and tired of this constant blackwashing in historical programmes.

Last night I watched on SBS IQ programme called ‘Royal Mob’, about Queen Victoria’s grandchildren and their various marriages. Last night’s episode dealt with the Hesse sisters, the daughters of Queen Victoria’s second oldest daughter, Princess Alice, who tragically died young from diphtheria. Princess Alice married the Grand Duke of Hesse Darmstadt, a German royal family. Their four daughters were as follows……Victoria, Elizabeth, Irene and Alix. All were great beauties, particularly Elizabeth and Alix. Ella and Alix married into the Russian royal family, and the rest is history, both were murdered by the Bolsheviks. Alix became Empress of Russia and she, her husband Nicholas, and their five children were shot and bludgeoned to death in a cellar in Ekaterineburg.

But anyway, the eldest Princess Victoria married Prince Louis of Battenberg in 1884, and their children included Princess Alice, the mother of the late Duke of Edinburgh and Earl Mountbatten of Burma. The programme had a reenactment of Victoria and Louis’ wedding day in Darmstadt Germany in 1884……and what did they have at the reception, a black actor as a wedding guest. Yeah…nah…nah….nah….bulldust and bullshit. I can guarantee you there were no blacks in Darmstadt in 1884.

I’m getting tired of this blackwashing.

Cassie of Sydney
September 19, 2023 8:01 am

“If a man wants multiple children from a fertile wife you may as well convert to whatever religion necessary and enter into an arranged marriage.”

And that will happen, Islam is on the rise in Europe, and more and more European men are converting. Wonder why?

shatterzzz
September 19, 2023 8:03 am

It Begins: Australia’s Fifth-Largest Bank Announces Digital-Only Transactions – Will Phase Out Cash, Cheque, and Phone Payments in All 80 Branches Starting Next Year

Why isn’t the gummint investigating with this? .. shirley, any company in the banking business, who’s main function is money, has an obligation to deal in money .. if a bank isn’t interested in accepted standard monetary practises is it in breach of its licensing conditions ……. and if not, why not? …….

Miltonf
Miltonf
September 19, 2023 8:04 am

Better not to bother with contemporary tv Cassie. I only watch it when I happen to be in public places where it’s rammed down your throat but fortunately there seems to be a move to subtitles so U don’t have to listen.

Farmer Gez
Farmer Gez
September 19, 2023 8:08 am

If you want a rest from the YES campaign, come out to the bush.
The Voice is barely a whisper and the biggest issues in conversation will be the state of the roads and power/fuel prices.
Call it a sanity break.

Cassie of Sydney
September 19, 2023 8:10 am

Netflix tried some blackwashing and the ensuing blowback was sweet, very sweet to watch. Portraying Cleopatra as a sub-Saharan black women didn’t go down very well, particularly in the middle east, and particularly in Cleo’s home of Egypt. But more importantly, it was a a lie. Cleopatra was Greek, perhaps with some Persian blood. I loved reading about the Netflix blowback, because racism towards sub-Saharan blacks is endemic in the Arab world. LOL. As I wrote above, we live in seriously dumb times.

Robert Sewell
September 19, 2023 8:18 am

“To reverse these cruel travesties of justice, tonight I’m announcing that the moment I win the election, I will appoint a special task force to rapidly review the cases of every political prisoner who has been unjustly persecuted by the Biden administration,” President Trump said.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/trump-pledges-task-force-to-investigate-alleged-persecution-of-political-prisoners-by-biden-administration-5492548?utm_source=ref_share&utm_campaign=copy
Considering the stories coming from these gaols about the bashings and mistreatment of these prisoners, I really hope the guards are held to account.
And no, ‘I was just following orders’ won’t be accepted, just like it wasn’t accepted at Nuremburg.

Cassie of Sydney
September 19, 2023 8:24 am

Mark Speakman, the current NSW Liberal opposition leader, is THE example of why I can’t and I won’t vote Liberal. Nothing surprises me about Speakman, a green lite figure who hasn’t got a Liberal bone in this body. This is the same Speakman who enthusiastically joined in the lynching of Bettina Arndt back in 2020. Yesterday, here on this blog, C.L. informed us how the Queensland government has passed a law in the last week which will allow all men accused of rape to be named and shamed in the media from the get-go, yet complainants cannot be named. This new law has been supported by the LNP. Just great.

I wrote this yesterday on C.L.’s blog…

As an aside, and it is related to the likes of Milei and Meloni, because we’ve seen how useless Meloni has been, how utterly useless the Conservative clowns in the UK have been for thirteen years, with Europe’s borders now completely collapsing, and now we’re witnessing, in real time, the dystopian deluge of sub-Saharan African and middle eastern males into southern Europe, next month there’ll be an election in NZ and the NZ Nationals are poised to win. But you might wonder why I’m so tepid about this. Well, because it’s becoming increasingly evident that voting for these right of centre and/or conservative parties is a waste of time, prior to elections they talk the good talk, but after winning elections they fail to walk the good talk (although I’ll make an exception about the Victorian Liberals, they don’t talk the talk). There is simply no point voting for them. I write this as it’s becoming increasingly clear that the NZ police, back in March in Auckland, didn’t just stand back and allow the violence at the Let Women Speak rally, they knew it was going to happen and they stood outside the park. It was deliberate. Will a new Nationals government try and clean out a politicised police force? Will a Nationals government clear out government departments infested with career leftists? Until right of centre governments decide to put on some boxing gloves and at least try to defang and dismantle departments of LGBTQI+ gunk, human rights nonsense and so on, absolutely nothing will change and the progressive winds keep blowing, I believe that there is simply no point voting for these parties. Or perhaps I’m just now too cynical. As C.L. wrote, either here or on Dover’s page, a country like Italy that won’t deport scum (and that’s an insult to scum) like Kanye (or whatever he’s called now) and the botoxed female he’s currently with for their ongoing pornographic antics on Italian soil, I believe that country no longer deserves to exist.

It’s not the economy anymore, stupid.

This focus on the “economy”, at the expense of other pressing societal cultural issues, has been the downfall of the right. It goes without saying that the right are (usually) better economic managers than the left. But whilst the economy should be a concern, it should not be the sole concern of the Liberal/Conservative or National Parties, there are many other concerns. Too many on the right look misty-eyed at Reagan and Thatcher, and here in Oz too many misty-eyes look to John Howard (whose economic credentials (apart from the GST) are overrated). I think it’s time those eyes were wiped dry, and it’s time to keep them dry. We no longer live in even remotely similar times to the 1980s or even to 2007. When Reagan, Thatcher (and Howard) held power, the pillars of faith and family, whilst under attack, were not crumbling, sure they were unstable. But this is no longer the case, the West is collapsing before our eyes.

Anyway, unlike myself and unlike others here, I get the the impression that there are some right of centre voters who still think that having any right of centre government is preferable to having a left of centre government, even if that conservative right of centre government, once in power, like the UK Conservatives from 2010 to now, like the Oz Liberals from 2013 to 2022, do nothing to fight, combat and reverse far-left infiltration and so on, instead they just stick to “economics”. Well, that sole focus on economics no longer works, people now want more, they’re right to want more, and I won’t vote for such a party, because whilst I might regard a good May budget as important, I also regard perverts in women’s bathrooms as equally as important, I also regard LGBTQI+ propaganda in our schools as equally as important, and I particularly regard the forced takeover of a Canberra Catholic hospital by a far-left Green government as equally as important, in fact I regard that as more important than any good May budget.

Boambee John
Boambee John
September 19, 2023 8:25 am

shatterzzz

if a bank isn’t interested in accepted standard monetary practises is it in breach of its licensing conditions

Will Macquarie Bank refuse to accept legal tender? If so, what is the penalty?

eric hinton
eric hinton
September 19, 2023 8:27 am

Farmer Gez
Sep 19, 2023 8:08 AM
If you want a rest from the YES campaign, come out to the bush.
The Voice is barely a whisper and the biggest issues in conversation will be the state of the roads and power/fuel prices.

Correct. Went for a ride on the toy R1 yesterday and saw a total of one No and no Yes signs. Plenty of The Gates Are Shut signs near a solar factory. And it did cross my mind this is my last crotch rocket. The next bike will have to have off road capabilities to cope with the potholes.

Dot
Dot
September 19, 2023 8:28 am

The Liberals haven’t had a claim to “the economy” legitimately for 20 years now.

Boambee John
Boambee John
September 19, 2023 8:30 am

Cassie

You are correct. Until mnon-leftards can gain control of the culture, they will not have any significant effect on the economy.

Offer social conservatism and moderate economic policies and there might be some change, but nothing will change while ever the current toxic political and social culture prevails.

And those “moderate economic policies” should be focused on individuals, small and medium business. Big Business has made its bed with leftards, they should be left to sort out their industrial relations mess themselves.

Boambee John
Boambee John
September 19, 2023 8:32 am

non-leftards …

Northshore Redneck
Northshore Redneck
September 19, 2023 8:32 am

Craig Kelly and Ralph Babbet at the Oaks tomorrow night for local cats.

https://twitter.com/senatorbabet/status/1703727813931758052

I want to shake Craig’s hand for organising the covid rallies, they were a great solace for some of us during a very dark time.

billie
billie
September 19, 2023 8:36 am

Is now the right time for all the special interest groups to demand a Voice in the Australian Constitution?

Why not every nationality/ies have their own voice? Would it be racism, to give one nationality more than others?

You could have combinations of nationalities, say Irish Germanic Filipino, or Sri Lankan Peruvian African American etc .. and we could all introduce ourselves by our specially selected and edited honorific .. I’m a proud whatever whatever whatever (but leave out the ancestry you don’t want to draw attention to or you think might dilute your superiority claim)

The point of claiming all the “nation” titles is just to underline, that you belong more than someone else does and are thus superior. (welcome to “MY” country)

How this contributes to the quality of life for all Australians is beyond me to recognise.

What is it about the left that they want to “make things better”, by condemning the entire community to their will?

Whatever happened to the concept of equality in Australia, why do so many people think it’s OK for some people to have more equality than others?

Do they read 1984 at schools these days?

/sarc

I’ll get out of your way now

I’m a proud Australian

calli
calli
September 19, 2023 8:37 am

Okay. Our government isn’t corrupt, just glacially slow when it suits them and circumstances allow. Twelve weeks is supposed to be fast?

I can see the late submission being workshopped in Leigh’s office – the No campaign gifted them an opportunity for plausible deniability. Exactly a month before close of books for individuals to get a deductible donation away, enough time to design and screen print a few corflutes.

Meanwhile, Yes has had months and months of access to corporate funds and sponsorship.

calli
calli
September 19, 2023 8:38 am

Meanwhile, Yes has had months and months of access to corporate funds and sponsorship.

And of course, our humble fact checkers…the ABC.

Makka
Makka
September 19, 2023 8:39 am

nothing will change while ever the current toxic political and social culture prevails.

Every year for near 2 decades, our education system pumps out tens of thousands newly minted green/left zombies, thanks to the insidious curriculum they have been immersed in for the prior 12 years. It will take them another near decade for them to somewhat think for themselves unraveling the MSM propaganda they are bombarded with- IF they are lucky.

Until we see a Govt willing to rebuild our education system devoid of the green/left/indigenous/Marxist claptrap permeating almost all subjects, nothing is going to change ,not really where it matters. At the foundations.

Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
September 19, 2023 8:39 am

Netflix tried some blackwashing and the ensuing blowback was sweet, very sweet to watch.

Today’s episode of schadenfreude:

Disney Sees Massive Fall Off for Disney+, Hulu Subscribers After Price Hike, Woke Policies (Newsmax, 17 Sep)

Disney is expected to fall tens of millions short of its 2024 goal for Disney+ and Hulu subscribers in the aftermath of big price increases for their streaming services and growing public anger over their woke policies.

In March of 2022, Disney’s political demands in Florida that children as young as the third grade be taught sexual matters sparked a national furor among conservatives, with boycotts against the entertainment giants services like Disney+ and Hulu.

They’re also trying to sell off the American ABC, which is likewise very popcornworthy:

ABC News Staffers ‘Freaking’ out over Reports Disney in Talks to Sell Outlet to Mogul Byron Allen, Nexstar (15 Sep)

You’re own silly fault woke lefty peoples. GWGB.

OldOzzie
OldOzzie
September 19, 2023 8:40 am

Why being a tradie might be a better option than uni

Julie Hare – Education editor

University enrolments have headed south as potential students opt for trades over study in a heated labour market that has delivered big salaries and pay rises – without the student debt.

The lowest paid and most unskilled have received the biggest pay rises, proportionally, as the economy struggled to find enough electricians, mechanics and other blue-collar workers.

Experts said declining demand for university study – enrolments dropped by 109,600, or 8.7 per cent in the year to May 2022 – was the result of skill shortages and big salaries on offer in blue-collar jobs.

The tight job market has provided the lower-skilled with wage gains that have reduced inflation’s bite and were not mirrored in wealthier parts of the economy.

Seek chief economist Matt Cowgill said that since 2019 the lowest income quintile experienced a 13.1 per cent growth in salaries, compared to 7.8 per cent for the highest quintile. “We’ve seen really strong demand for labour across a range of traditionally lower to middle paid industries and occupations and that’s reflected in the salaries,” he said.

Higher pay and no uni debt

Adecco country manager Nicholas Lee said shifting dynamics in the workforce should push more people to think about whether university was the right path.

Apprentice electricians could earn $55,000 a year while they learnt on the job. “Admittedly, it’s low wage, but it’s a good return on investment.

Once fully qualified, they almost double their earnings earning up to $100,000,” Mr Lee said, and salaries can jump to $200,000 in certain parts of the country and in sectors such as mining.

James Brookfield left school halfway through Year 11 for an apprenticeship and now runs his own business, P Phase Electrical, employing five staff members.

“With the amount of infrastructure going on around Sydney some of the guys working on mines and tunnels and so on are earning $300,000 to $400,000,” Mr Brookfield said. While he can’t compete with that, he is paying new fully qualified electricians around $110,000 a year, compared to $70,000 five or six years ago.

One of his employees, Tristan Johns, 25, is in the final year of his psychology degree at Western Sydney University but said his mind was open to taking a trade in future.

“Being a tradie wasn’t on my radar prior to working for James, but the more I’ve learned while on the job I would definitely think about it in the future. I could definitely earn more as a tradie at least for a few years, than I will be able to as a psychology graduate,” Mr Johns said. His student debt was close to $35,000.

Train drivers could also earn between $150,000 to $180,000 with just a certificate level qualification, with those in remote areas earning up to $250,000 – with no student debt to pay off.

Even disability workers, with only a TAFE certificate, could earn $64 an hour – the equivalent of around $120,000 a year. Traffic controllers earn $50-$60 an hour, with zero qualifications. Diesel mechanics, electrical and mechanical engineers are also in strong demand and can attract high salaries.

Meanwhile, the median salary for university graduates in 2022 was $68,400, while the average student debt was $24,770.

Mr Lee said many blue-collar workers now earned salaries usually associated with white-collar jobs and earn-while-you-learn training meant they graduated debt free.

“These are roles that are not going to be easily replaced by artificial intelligence and automation,” he said.

“Roles that use hands and heart and mind are going to increase in importance and value.”

Trades back in demand

Australian Bureau of Statistics data reveal that university enrolments fell by 5 per cent between 2021-22 as school-leavers and mature-age students responded to the healthy jobs market.

Andrew Norton, a higher education policy expert with Australian National University, said school-leavers with high ATARs were going to university anyway, but those with lower ATARs were “making a sensible trade-off” and going into trades and other jobs.

Data suggests that after years of being the poor cousin to university study, trades and vocational education have regained lost ground.

The trend appeared to undermine federal education minister Jason Clare’s target for 55 per cent of people aged 25 to 34 to have a university degree by 2050, which require a doubling in the number of students from current numbers.

At the end of 2022, there was a 10 per cent increase in the number of people starting an apprenticeship compared to a year earlier, according to the National Centre for Vocational Education Research.

South Australia and Queensland had the highest growth, with the number of apprentices in training rising by 16 per cent.

Those figures coincide with an increase in the number of people who did not complete year 12.

“It’s causing universities quite a lot of problems, but it’s mostly benign from the point of view of students because they are doing something constructive,” Mr Norton said.

Demand is so soft that the University of New England last week promoted a guaranteed place in 2024 – without an ATAR score. All potential students need is a letter of recommendation from their school.

In its September labour market update, Jobs and Skills Australia said that employment had continued to increase across all five skill-level groups with the biggest rises in the lowest and middle groups and the lowest rise in the highest skill level.

Mark Diamond, national secretary of the Rail, Tram and Bus Union, said there was a lot of anecdotal evidence of older workers looking to move into the occupations the union represented.

“While that may be taking some people away from studying at university, those workers are usually substituting one form of education for another,” Mr Diamond said.

Dot
Dot
September 19, 2023 8:42 am

Until we see a Govt willing to rebuild our education system devoid of the green/left/indigenous/Marxist claptrap permeating almost all subjects, nothing is going to change ,not really where it matters. At the foundations.

I think you need to get the government out.

There’s no welcome to country at a coding boot camp.

Black Ball
Black Ball
September 19, 2023 8:42 am

Led by morons with delusions of grandeur. Herald Sun:

Combined gas and electricity bills have risen to a record $4400 a year for typical families in some outer suburbs and regional towns, sparking calls for urgent new relief.

The eye-watering cost of living hit is revealed in St Vincent de Paul Society’s latest tariff tracker report, which shows price hikes this year have added $675-810 on average to dual-fuel household bills across Victoria.

Volatile wholesale prices and the cost of maintaining and building poles and wires to get power to homes have helped pile on the pain.

Vinnies policy manager Gavin Dufty said state government relief payments early this year, which were linked to an energy comparison website, should be reintroduced in a targeted way as high winter bills arrive, and ahead of Christmas.

A federal government bill credit scheme for concession cardholders is currently being rolled out.

The Vinnies report, done by Alviss Consulting, assesses every offer in the market to work out average real price hikes each year.

Mr Dufty said along with council rates, petrol costs, and high food prices, many families were “getting smashed” and considering whether they can afford to buy new school uniforms for their kids or go away in school holidays.

“Many households will be going without certain things to make these payments,” he said.

“Having another targeted power saving bonus has two advantages; it’s when households need to offset big winter bills, and it might spice up the retail market and squeeze the retailers to put better offers on the table,” he said.

The highest average bill cost — $4425 — for dual-fuel families is in the historic engine room of Victoria’s energy generation, the Latrobe Valley.

Similar bills are landing in northern and eastern suburbs including Warrandyte and Ringwood, and across northern Victoria in Wangaratta and Wodonga.

Costs are average market prices and based on households with typical use, such as a family in a three-bedroom brick veneer home.

The report shows solar households can now save between $745 and $1000 a year compared to non-solar homes, depending on where people live.

All-electric households in general have lower average bills than dual-fuel homes, which could be impacted further by the decision to ban new gas connections for new builds from next year.

Mr Dufty said he hoped utility price pain had peaked due to recent interventions in wholesale markets, but that high interest rates and capital costs could still put pressure on bills through network charges.

He said big savings could be found for people shopping around, with the “price spread” – the difference between the best and worst deals – creeping up to $520-$690 a year for electricity and $630-$785 for gas.

The Sunday Herald Sun this week revealed that outer suburbs of Melbourne were where the most people claimed the Andrew Government’s latest $250 power saving bonus, which opened for applications in March but wrapped up last month.

Growth areas such as Werribee, Pakenham, Reservoir and Berwick had more than $15,000 applications each, signalling where the cost of living pinch was hurting most.

The government said of the 4.4 million people who had visited the Victorian Energy Compare website to apply for their relief payment, 40 per cent found a better deal to which they could switch and save a further $200.

Combined gas and electricity bills for typical consumption dual-fuel households

Inner city (Melbourne CBD, Brunswick, Carlton, Fitzroy, Northcote, Richmond and Collingwood): average annual combined energy bills $3955 — up $690

Inner east and southeast (Kew, Hawthorn, Camberwell, Balwyn, South Yarra, Prahran, Armadale, Toorak, Caulfield): $3910 — up $675

Inner city bayside (St Kilda, Port Melbourne, Albert Park and South Melbourne): $3910 — up $675

Northern suburbs (Heidelberg, Fairfield, Ivanhoe, Bundoora, Thomastown, Preston and Reservoir: $4100 — up $775

Inner west/northwest (Footscray, Yarraville, Williamstown, Flemington, Moonee Ponds, Broadmeadows, Coolaroo, Braybrook and Sydenham): $4075 — up $765

Southeast/bayside (Elwood, Elsternwick, Brighton, Sandringham, Beaumaris, Chelsea, Bentleigh, Moorabbin, Springvale, Noble Park, Keysborough): $4000 — up $730

Outer bayside (Frankston, Seaford, Mornington Peninsula): $4040 — up $745

Eastern suburbs (Bulleen, Templestowe, Box Hill, Doncaster, Mitcham, Vermont, Glen Waverly and Chadstone: $4000 — up $730

Northern Victoria (Echuca, Shepparton, Heathcote): $4140 — up $760

Western suburbs (Hoppers Crossing, Werribee and Geelong/Bellarine regions): $4140 — up $775

Western Victoria (Macedon, Kyneton, Ballarat, Colac, Warrnambool, Portland, Hamilton, Horsham, Ararat and Daylesford): $4040 — up $730

Outer northeast, east (Warrandyte, Ringwood, Chirnside Park and the area around Mount Dandenong): $4385 — up $795

Northern/Northeastern Victoria (Kilmore, Seymour, Violet Town, Nagambie,

Wangaratta, Chiltern and Wodonga): $4400 — up $790

Eastern Victoria (Latrobe Valley, Sale): $4425 — up $810

Mother Lode
Mother Lode
September 19, 2023 8:46 am

About the school closures…when I were a kid, knee-high to a grasshopper, our schools were built of solid brick. The classrooms were big and windows that could be opened along at least two (opposing) walls, and blinds. The classrooms were cooler than the outside.

Has there been a change to school construction? Are they designed with fewer windows that can be opened or changes of materials – on the assumption that air or even air conditioning will be circulating? And, in the infrastructure abundance that was the Building uh Edumacation Revolution, this was done badly?

They are pretty much messing up kids at the best of times now. Half of them are on meds for ADHD and the teachers have more important things to do than engage the kids – they have to condition them with SJW reactions and fevered megaphoning of nonsense theories and histories.

OldOzzie
OldOzzie
September 19, 2023 8:47 am

HumeLink transmission project shapes up as a test of governments’ will

Angela Macdonald-Smith – Senior resources writer

The $4.9 billion HumeLink transmission project is shaping up as the first big test of governments’ will to progress difficult projects needed for the energy transition, says a key adviser to the NSW government.

Cameron O’Reilly, the lead author of an independent review into the state’s energy reliability and supply which recommended the extension of the Eraring coal generator, said the full benefits of several projects already under construction could not be delivered without the controversial HumeLink project, making it vital to the transition.

His report recommended that the NSW government take on HumeLink as a priority infrastructure transmission project under its electricity road map if project proponent TransGrid did not promptly commit to building it.

But this was one of four of the report’s 54 recommendations that was not accepted by the government, even in part, when it announced its response to the report earlier this month.

The 500-kilovolt, 360-kilometre project in southern NSW will not only connect to the Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro storage project but also a transmission line being built to South Australia that will open up the region to remote wind and solar farms. The Australian Energy Market Operator has said HumeLink needs to be online by July 2026 at the latest, but the venture faces fierce pushback from landholders and communities on the route of the line, which want it to be buried underground.

Mr O’Reilly said that although he accepted it was the government’s right to reject any of the report’s recommendations, it was a concern that such a critical project had still not received a commitment, despite being among four priority projects identified by the market operator as far back as 2018 and its key role in enabling the exit of coal power.

“I know it’s going to be expensive. I know it’s going to be difficult, everyone can see that,” he said, pointing to the difficult terrain in the region and the social licence issues. “But when you have Snowy 2.0 fully committed, EnergyConnect fully committed, the most singular, most no-regrets project in NSW, and probably the most coal exit-enabling project in the shorter term, is HumeLink.”

NSW Energy Minister Penny Sharpe was not available for comment.

Cost estimate goes up

TransGrid said on Monday that it expected to reach a final investment decision on HumeLink in March after the Australian Energy Regulator’s assessment on the project, due by the end of that month. A spokeswoman said landowner agreements were increasing and were in place for about half of properties on the HumeLink corridor.

She gave a revised cost estimate for HumeLink of $4.9 billion, up from $3.3 billion three years ago, an increase that has previously been roughly flagged by TransGrid chief executive Brett Redman.

She said that represented an increase in real costs of 29 per cent, less than the 30-50 per cent increases expected across the infrastructure sector in the past 12 months alone.

“The updated cost reflects the tightening global supply chain post-COVID and significant cost increases in construction, building, material and skilled labour costs in a highly competitive market,” the spokeswoman said, noting that benefits from the project were also increasing at a similar rate so the net market benefits should be greater than the existing $1.3 billion estimate.

Mr O’Reilly, who works at Marsden Jacob Associates, said it was “understandable” the state did not want to take on another project from AEMO’s Integrated Systems Plan given its function went well beyond NSW to the National Electricity Market more broadly.

He said that while there was a big effort to push the HumeLink project forward, some people would never accept it, requiring government leadership. Otherwise, the transition from fossil fuels would be at risk.

“We are probably in HumeLink facing the first test of will on something that’s facing significant resistance,” he said.

“There’s no escaping it will be a difficult project. This is probably the first big test of government wills – I’m not saying this is just about NSW, but government will to progress difficult projects as part of the transition.”

Mr O’Reilly said the importance of some of the independent review’s other recommendations, which include improvements to the planning system and moves to better integrate rooftop solar and batteries into the grid, had been overlooked in the reaction to the report, which had focused almost entirely on the Eraring power station.

He highlighted the NSW government’s acceptance that gas power would still be needed to cover for long periods without renewables. “That stands NSW in good stead, I think, in helping to manage its transition.”

Makka
Makka
September 19, 2023 8:49 am

Why being a tradie might be a better option than uni

Might? It’s a no brainer.

I don’t, but if I had a son I’d urge him into auto electrics/electronics. Anything that’s mobile, from cars, cranes to autonomous to 800t draglines become the available pool of work. Billions of $ in capital equipment needing sparkies. Every shift. Pay in mines ,off site mine support, OEMs will bring in north of 200k annually. Easy. And rates will only be going one way.

OldOzzie
OldOzzie
September 19, 2023 8:51 am

“ABC must be open to all voices”

The great strength of democracy is that everyone gets their vote and has an opportunity to have their say.

The Australian Editorial

Top Ender
Top Ender
September 19, 2023 8:53 am

Just got my comment rejected at the Oz.

The story was “‘Give defendants Indigenous jurors’: report”

Comment was:

Where would this lead?

Juries to contain a percentage of gay people if the defendant is gay?

What about if the defendant is from overseas? Insisting there should be people from the defendant’s country of origin?

If the defendant is male insisting there should be 48% of the jury male?

Makka
Makka
September 19, 2023 8:53 am

I think you need to get the government out.

Lol. To be replaced by our cowardly Labor-Lite pink wet effeminate yellow bellies in the LNP? You think they will somehow summon up the courage to tackle the curriculum and it’s rabid leftard custodians with a wholesale rebuild/restructure?

As I said, NOTHING is going to change.

lotocoti
lotocoti
September 19, 2023 8:54 am
feelthebern
feelthebern
September 19, 2023 8:54 am

Combined gas and electricity bills have risen to a record $4400 a year for typical families in some outer suburbs and regional towns, sparking calls for urgent new relief.

Petrol pump isn’t friendly to families these days either.
Good thing the Voice will distract the punters.
For now.

Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
September 19, 2023 8:56 am

It’s gaslighting season in New York. Be prepared for hordes of chicken littles and boys crying wolf.

Great Reset/Climate doomsters descend upon New York City: ‘The WEF, UN, Clinton Inc, & Bill Gates are getting the climate hoax gang back together’ (17 Sep)

Klaus Schwab, Bill Gates, Pope Francis, Matt Damon, Hillary Clinton, and the degenerates who run the U.N. walk into a bar in New York…

No, this isn’t a joke.

That’s basically what’s going down next week on the sidelines of the annual U.N. General Assembly meetings in New York City next week. Except they won’t be chit chatting in a bar. These forces will be demanding the surrender of your rights while virtue signaling to the world about their claimed moral supremacy.

UN Set to Agree New Political Declaration on Pandemics Next Week – & it’s a Horror Show (17 Sep)

On Wednesday September 20th, our representatives meeting at the United Nations will sign off on a ‘Declaration’ titled: ‘Political Declaration of the United Nations General Assembly High-level Meeting on Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response.’

This was announced as a “silent procedure”, meaning that States not responding will be deemed supporters of the text. The document expresses a new policy pathway for managing populations when the World Health Organisation (WHO), the health arm of the UN, declares a future viral variant to be a “public health emergency of international concern”.

Weather and the sniffles are now permanent existential emergencies, and our ears will be bleeding from the MSM propaganda stories coming out over the next week or two.

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
September 19, 2023 8:56 am

Inheritance tax will only hurt middle Australia
judith sloan judith sloan
Danielle Wood was appointed as the new chair of Productivity Commission in September.
Danielle Wood was appointed as the new chair of Productivity Commission in September.

12:00AM September 19, 2023
192 Comments

The Australian’s new commentary newsletter. Sign up to get the nation’s sharpest writers, with their bold opinions and incisive analysis in your inbox every Sunday.

The newly appointed chairwoman of the Productivity Commission, Danielle Wood, is very keen on taxation, especially new taxes. Indeed, the staff at the Grattan Institute, which she now leaves, have rarely seen a tax they don’t love or wish to increase.

Higher GST? Tick. Greater GST coverage? Tick. Higher taxation on older people? Tick. Higher taxation on superannuation? Tick. Property taxes on owner occupiers? Tick. Limits on negative gearing? Tick. Lower discount on capital gains tax? Tick. Carbon taxes? Tick. Inheritance tax? Tick.

On the face of it, Wood’s strongly held views on taxation policy could prove an embarrassment for the Albanese government. Indeed, just before her appointment being announced, she delivered a lecture in Tasmania where she endorsed the option of introducing an inheritance tax as well as including the value of the family home in the Age Pension assets test.
Read Next

theaustralian.com.au06:55

“While so-called ‘death taxes’, but more correctly ‘intergenerational transfer taxes’, are political dynamite, the windfall wealth gains of older generations and structural budget pressures mean we should at least have a sensible conversation about the possibility of taxing large inherit­ances,” she said.

She added: “At minimum, we should not be subsidising inheritances via some of the existing rules that allow the accumulated value of superannuation tax breaks to be inherited by the next generation, as well as the exclusion of virtually all the value of the family home from the Age Pension assets test.”

While strenuously denying the suggestion that the Albanese government plans to introduce an inheritance tax, senator Deborah O’Neill made the weak point that Wood’s speech came before the announcement of her appointment as chairwoman of the Productivity Commission. The fact is that Wood’s views on this matter have been well-known for a very long time.

But OK, let’s have an open mind about inheritance taxes, at least until you have read to the end of this column. We can all agree they are political dynamite, but are there sound economic reasons for considering such taxes? What does the international evidence tell us?

It’s always worthwhile returning to the basic facts before discussing policy options. Indeed, Wood refers to the previous work of the Productivity Commission on intergenerational wealth transfers but misses the main point. In her speech, she states “the Productivity Commission projects that among current retirees, just 10 per cent of all inheritances will account for as much as half the value of bequests.”

She quotes Thomas Picketty who likens this to a Jane Austen world “where inequality is exacerbated by ever-growing inheritances”. In fact, the Productivity Commission report shows the reverse. A key conclusion is wealth transfers actually improve wealth inequality. “When measured against the wealth they already own, those with less wealth get a much bigger boost from inheritances on average, about 50 times larger for the poorer 20 per cent than the wealthiest 20 per cent,” the report read.

On a dollar-for-dollar basis, wealthier people receive more inheritances and gifts but “less as a percentage of their existing wealth”, an effect the Productivity Commission expects to persist into the future. “Children tend to enjoy a similar relative wealth position to that of their parents, but inheritances are not the main driver of this.” These findings match international research. But just like bank robber Willie Sutton, it’s not surprising those seeking more tax revenue would eye off intergenerational transfers given the sums of money involved in annual bequests are substantial – currently close to $200bn annually.

In fact, Australia used to have a number of death duties levied by both federal and state governments. Currently there is a 17 per cent tax levied on any superannuation balance held by a deceased person not given to dependants. Capital gains tax is also payable by beneficiaries on inherited assets apart from the family home.

If we look across the world, many countries have inheritance taxes but many don’t. Interestingly, nine OECD countries have abolished them since the early 1970s. The Nordic countries don’t have them. In the US, the exemption levels are extremely high – assets of up to $11m given to children attract no tax, for example.

But the main take-out point of the international experience is how little revenue is generated from inheritance taxes – a mere 0.5 per cent of all tax revenue on average of those OECD countries with such taxes. It’s a lot of trouble to go to for such a little return. In Australia’s case, we would be lucky to drag in around $3bn a year.

Note also that the compliance costs of inheritance taxes are extremely large, including the required addition of gift taxes. Only annual wealth taxes have higher compliance costs. In those countries that have inheritance taxes, there is a thriving estate planning industry that is essentially productivity-sapping.

Let’s be clear on another point: the very wealthy don’t pay inheritance taxes. They have trusts, companies, overseas assets – complicated arrangements that mean that death doesn’t trigger a tax event. It’s only the middle classes that get caught in the inheritance tax net, which has been the recent experience in Britain.

One of the problems of Wood’s endorsement of an inheritance tax, as well as a number of other taxes/penalties to be imposed on older folk, is they essentially involve double taxation. In the case of superannuation, it would be triple taxation – at the point of contribution, earnings and pension.

People have accumulated assets using post-tax incomes or, if they have used negative gearing, are liable for capital gains tax on any realisation of assets. The presence of an inheritance tax and all the attached regulations carry the risk of deterring investment and capital accumulation, which would have wider negative economic effects.

That older people are wealthier than their children and grandchildren has always been thus. It potentially becomes an economic issue with a (slowly) ageing society. But it’s not helpful to set up a narrative about intergenerational conflict, as is Wood’s wont, in part because the older generation continues to help out, both financially and non-financially, younger generations.

As Wood takes up her role, she must bear in mind that she is heading up the Productivity Commission. It’s not about taxes which, to varying degrees, are productivity-sapping. The work of the Productivity Commission about productivity gains that could be made in the large non-market, government-funded services sector is important in this respect. If these gains could be achieved, then the need to raise taxes would be commensurately reduced.

As Paul Krugman opined, “productivity isn’t everything, but in the long run it is almost everything”. Wood may care to have this famous quote framed to hang in her new office.

The “Voice” is passed at referendum, and the Albanese Government introduces an inheritance tax. Civil war breaks out two days later.

Indolent
Indolent
September 19, 2023 8:56 am
OldOzzie
OldOzzie
September 19, 2023 8:58 am

The ‘ticking time bombs’ inside Aussie homes sparking a rising number of fires

An increasingly common item poses a growing risk to Australians, capable of exploding and injuring or even killing those in proximity.

A spate of fires sparked by exploding lithium-ion batteries in e-scooters and e-bikes in recent months has prompted renewed safety concerns.

Data obtained by news.com.au shows emergency services have responded to hundreds of incidents in the past 18 months, some of which led to serious injury and even death.

“We’re concerned about the number of lithium-ion battery fires we’re seeing,” New South Wales Fire and Rescue Superintendent Adam Dewberry said. “And the number this year is well-and-truly trending up.”

There were 165 fires involving lithium-ion batteries across NSW in 2022, while there have been 114 incidents already this year, up to July.

Last month, a 54-year-old man died when a lithium-ion battery stored inside his Punchbowl apartment exploded. When fire crews arrived, they found his lifeless body on a bathroom floor and suspected he had perished after inhaling toxic fumes while trying to contain the blaze.

Early on Friday morning, a battery in a golf cart-style buggy exploded at a St John’s Ambulance facility in Burwood in Sydney’s inner-west.

Six ambulances, three support vehicles and a trailer were damaged while a nearby storage area, electrical wiring and part of the structure itself were also impacted. It took fire crews more than 90 minutes to bring the blaze under control.

And just yesterday, firies were dispatched to respond to two separate fires involving exploding e-bike batteries.

Queensland Fire and Emergency Services reports a total of 107 fires caused by lithium-ion batteries last year, while the tally for 2023 so far is sitting at 93.

In March last year, a 22-year-old man died when a scooter battery caught fire in his caravan in Logan Central. His pregnant partner sustained burns to 80 per cent of her body and had to be placed in an induced coma.

A spokesperson for Fire Rescue Victoria said: “Victoria’s fire services are responding to an average of one significant lithium-ion battery fire each week, and this trend is expected to increase.”

One of those was earlier this month when a house fire in Lalor was caused by a battery in a model toy bought online from overseas, leading to significant damage throughout.

A lithium-ion battery can leak up to 500L of gas per kilowatt hour, Professor Christiansen explained.

“A kilowatt hour is a measure of how much energy the battery stores. Typically, an e-scooter battery is a quarter of a kilowatt hour, whereas an e-bike battery is about three quarters. So, they’ll produce 125 or 375L or explosive and toxic gas.”

If it ignites immediately, intense flames of 1000C or more can be produced. If the gas fills a room, an explosion is likely.

“You might only have seconds before a major vapour cloud explosion or those rocket-like flames,” he said.

Research by the organisation EV Fire Safe found that if a battery goes into thermal runaway inside a home, there is a 64 per cent chance of being injured and requiring hospitalisation, and a 7.8 per cent chance of death.

Panic erupted earlier this year when it emerged an Australian online auction house had sold 40 discounted e-scooters that were water-damaged, posing a serious risk to buyers.

One of them later caught on fire while left on charge overnight. A man and his son woke to find the living room of their Northern Beaches home engulfed in flames.

“These damaged e-scooters were effectively ticking time bombs, ready to explode inside family homes across New South Wales,” Fire and Rescue NSW Assistant Commissioner Trent Curtin said at the time.

Be alert, not alarmed

With proper precautions, consumers can dramatically reduce the chance of a fire or an explosion, Professor Christiansen said, but with an increasing range of uses, the potential for problems is growing.

Rough estimates indicate there are between 250,000 and 300,000 electric scooter owners in Australia. There were about 75,000 e-bikes sold across the country in 2021.

Consumers should only buy a product with a lithium-ion battery from known and trusted companies and only use the charger supplied, Professor Christian said.

“Never buy one that requires the user to manually turn it off when charging is complete. And never charge a battery indoors, ever – full stop, period.”

If something goes wrong, “you might only have seconds” to escape disaster, he added.

“If you hear popping, hissing or screaming, or you see any kind of gas or smoke venting, do not attempt to deal with it yourself. Leave the building immediately, alerting other occupants, and phone the fire brigade.”

Photos of Damage Pretty Scary – OK will charge all LI Batteries outside in Future

Salvatore, Iron Publican
September 19, 2023 8:58 am

Farmer Gez Sep 19, 2023 8:08 AM
If you want a rest from the YES campaign, come out to the bush.
The Voice is barely a whisper and the biggest issues in conversation will be the state of the roads and power/fuel prices.

Yep. There’s never been a mention of it here.
Not publicly, not in the pub, not at BBQs, not anywhere.

The district would be an almost solid No vote (though you never know what the schoolteacher/nurse cohort will do)

Cassie of Sydney
September 19, 2023 8:59 am

So, last night at a NO rally in Adelaide, the oh so loving, kind, tolerant left screamed, hurled, screeched abuse at NO rally attendees, the abuse screamed and screeched was such charming epithets as “racist pigs*” at Warren Mundine, Jacinta Price, Alex Antic and ordinary Australian men and women arriving at the rally.

Well done to the member for Grayndler, this will be his legacy.

I now await Gucci clad Bin Chicken Burney to condemn the vicious, nasty, racist abuse hurled at Mundine and Price. Oh wait Cassie, you’ll just hear crickets from Bin Chicken Burney.

* Gosh, where were the ubiquitous Nazis, surely they turned up…oh wait, it’s Adelaide, not Melbourne.

Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
September 19, 2023 9:02 am

COVID severity ‘much lower’ now

Weird how that suddenly happened just when subsidies were removed.

The Daily Chart: Follow the COVID Money | Power Line (18 Sep)

And they wonder why trust is so lacking nowadays?

Indolent
Indolent
September 19, 2023 9:03 am
Top Ender
Top Ender
September 19, 2023 9:04 am

Over at Quadrant, on the new Snow White “jumping the shark”:

…the decision to remake Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs with a non-white lead, a gay huntsman, no prince, and no dwarves is truly a “jump the shark” moment.

Farmer Gez
Farmer Gez
September 19, 2023 9:04 am

“There’s no escaping it will be a difficult project. This is probably the first big test of government wills – I’m not saying this is just about NSW, but government will to progress difficult projects as part of the transition.”

Simple market solution for Mr. O’Reilly.
Pay landholders lots of money so the project looks like a bonanza and not a curse.

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
September 19, 2023 9:05 am

I now await Gucci clad Bin Chicken Burney to condemn the vicious, nasty, racist abuse hurled at Mundine and Price

Linda Burney’s performances in the House would have to be the least inspiring I have ever seen.

Cassie of Sydney
September 19, 2023 9:07 am

“Until we see a Govt willing to rebuild our education system devoid of the green/left/indigenous/Marxist claptrap permeating almost all subjects, nothing is going to change ,not really where it matters. At the foundations.”

Correct, hence my comment above about useless right of centre conservatives parties and leaders across the West, with the exception of Trump and Orban.

They are utter failures and they deserve our contempt.

Dot
Dot
September 19, 2023 9:09 am

I think you need to get the government out.

Lol. To be replaced by our cowardly Labor-Lite pink wet effeminate yellow bellies in the LNP?

No government besides redistribution if it needs to be done at all.

Make public schools non profit charities owned by the local real property owners, send parents a “cheque” (from Treasury) and close down the Ed Dept & BOSTES.

You will never win by trying to rewrite the curriculum.

The people you are fighting against are full time educationalists, Marxists and “academics”.

How can win in a game of bureaucratic chicken with these fanatics over a sustained period is beyond my comprehension.

I acknowledge public instruction is nearly 180 years old in this nation.

It may be a hard habit to cut off cold turkey.

It’s shooting the moon but it is the long term strategy for success.

H B Bear
H B Bear
September 19, 2023 9:10 am

I regard Brand as a Pommy tosser but current events are all to do with the removal of (primarily media) protection than anything that may or may not have occurred. Either way he’s finished, which is the main idea.

thefrollickingmole
thefrollickingmole
September 19, 2023 9:10 am

Makka.

Good choice on the auto sparky, if I may be allowed to anecdote…

Chap I despise spent his earlier years ( up to about 35) being a junkie, pump and at one time had his 15 year old ” girlfriend” traded to pay off his drug debts.

Then he flipped, went straight and did a mature age apprenticeship in auto sparky. $ 200,000+ per year and now owns 4 properties and is set for life.

I still despise him and hope he dies of arse cancer, but at least he’s worth an ounce of respect now.

Cassie of Sydney
September 19, 2023 9:11 am

A clever Liberal party (yes, I know, it’s an oxymoron) would already be out and about in marginal electorates like Parramatta, Bennelong and Reid warning that the Albanese government is coming to take away your gas, and will implement death taxes.

H B Bear
H B Bear
September 19, 2023 9:12 am

How long before it is described an “open secret”?

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
September 19, 2023 9:12 am

MarkT
17 minutes ago
The socialists are after the lot, they want your hard earned wealth so the leaners can get their cut of the spoils. Albo wants your money and he is not going to stop it. I don’t get the aged pension and never will. I live on my own money.
The government has no right to tell me how I organize and decide to spend my money, how much I can pass onto my children. I have been taxed on everything and in some cases twice over.
To the illogical millennial socialists that haven’t worked a hard day in their lives, you can either bugger off and winge your way through life, the world doesn’t owe you a living. Or you can pull your heads in, work hard and build your wealth with a large dose of self respect.

WHAT ! HE! SAID!

Farmer Gez
Farmer Gez
September 19, 2023 9:13 am

I forgot to add.
The main reason the government doesn’t want to pay farmers a decent income for having these transmission lines on their land is the precedent it would set in the market.
Much better to have deals done by companies under confidentiality agreements so no one knows the quantum of an average offer. Governments then are able to offer a token contribution as an act of goodwill.
Scum bags

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
September 19, 2023 9:15 am

Then he flipped, went straight and did a mature age apprenticeship in auto sparky

Cite you the business in Western Australia that will only employ adult apprentices – they say teaching the ones straight out of school ” the work ethic” is a waste of time.

Crossie
Crossie
September 19, 2023 9:15 am

Knuckle Dragger
Sep 19, 2023 7:19 AM
Obese teachers can’t cope with the heat?

Closer to the mark, I reckon.

I noticed at recent grandsons’ school events that most teachers are morbidly obese, and not just the old ones nearing retirement but the young ones barely out of university. Then I looked around me and the mothers were the same, strangely enough the grandparents were slimmer than their descendants.

Crossie
Crossie
September 19, 2023 9:20 am

Makka
Sep 19, 2023 8:39 AM
nothing will change while ever the current toxic political and social culture prevails.

Every year for near 2 decades, our education system pumps out tens of thousands newly minted green/left zombies, thanks to the insidious curriculum they have been immersed in for the prior 12 years.

Here in NSW all this happened under Coalition stewardship but then what can you expect with Coutts-Trotter running the Ed department. They had plenty of time to put in their own people and yet nothing was done. My grandsons attend Catholic schools and they are not much better than public schools as far as the green-leftism goes.

Beertruk
September 19, 2023 9:24 am

To paraphrase Monty Python…’and now for something completey different,’ today is Talk like a Pirate Day

Makka
Makka
September 19, 2023 9:27 am

It’s shooting the moon

Of course it is. You may as well go pee in the ocean.

At some point you have to accept we are fkd and plan accordingly. Moon shots are a waste of time and pixels.

Sancho Panzer
Sancho Panzer
September 19, 2023 9:28 am

Cassie of Sydney

Sep 19, 2023 8:59 AM

So, last night at a NO rally in Adelaide, the oh so loving, kind, tolerant left screamed, hurled, screeched abuse at NO rally attendees, the abuse screamed and screeched was such charming epithets as “racist pigs*” at Warren Mundine, Jacinta Price, Alex Antic and ordinary Australian men and women arriving at the rally.

And, right on cue, Liberal wet Simon Bummingham calls on both sides to show respeck.
The implication being that abuse is flying in both directions.
Flog.

Roger
Roger
September 19, 2023 9:32 am

The newly appointed chairwoman of the Productivity Commission, Danielle Wood, is very keen on taxation, especially new taxes.

Because nothing inspires you to work harder & smarter than the government’s hand in your pocket.

Colonel Crispin Berka
Colonel Crispin Berka
September 19, 2023 9:37 am

Toons.
Broelman’s was the funniest today.

Regarding Stiglich’s toon today it was just more evidence that Idiocracy has come true in so many ways. POTUS is a feeble joke instead of a WWE champion, but presumably that gap will be filled in about 9 years, ya dig?

Dot
Dot
September 19, 2023 9:39 am

At some point you have to accept we are fkd and plan accordingly.

You have tried this now for fifty or more years and you have lost badly each year.

Abolishing the Dept of Ed is the only way forward.

Makka
Makka
September 19, 2023 9:42 am

Here in NSW all this happened under Coalition stewardship but then what can you expect with Coutts-Trotter running the Ed department.

Exactly my point. The custodians of the Ed Dept’s are marxists/green/left. Regardless who is in power. We can change Govt’s but does anyone really think the LNP has any where near the conviction needed to make foundational wholesale change to the curriculum? To take on these parasites and their comrade journos it the Marxist media?

Clearly, whoever is in power, they are our enemy. That is the situation we are now in. They do not represent us or our best interests. They are there for themselves and their interests. Daylight second. We are the necessary evil in their parasitic lifestyles.

  1. This is the WSJ but not paywalled. Also not what you’d expect.Decline and Fall of America? Not Yet Trump appears…

1K
0
Oh, you think that, do you? Care to put it on record?x
()
x