Want to exercise your democratic rights? Please pay at the next window

Until we remove the levers of funding from the government of the day (currently via passing the budget), stop government Ministers from having powers to direct the ABC on matters of national interest (Section 78 of the ABC Act), and make the organisation run democratically, it’s never going to stop being soft on the government of the day, nor be able to actually stand up to corporations or lobby groups.

GetUp’s campaign on saving the ABC was such a joke to me because they kept saying “save the ABC, save the ABC” and only talking about protesting budget cuts, which is incredibly short-sighted.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that organisations are much less likely to bite the hand that feeds it.

The ABC has been plagued with allegations of bias for years, and because they’re not really independent, they kow-tow way too often.

Never forget what they did to David McBride.

I think it’s time to link ABC funding to inflation or something via the constitution or some other more concrete mechanism than simply legislation, and make all employees have a say in the running of the organisation. A workers coop that just so happens to be a government organisation (obviously with checks to ensure they can still have funding revoked if the org goes completely off the rails, and that they can’t just decide, hmmm, let’s just not hire new people and share the funding between a smaller group of employees. I doubt this would with democratisation, though)

Pay to protest would have been farcical.

Absolutely, why we let you halve your taxable income for investments is beyond me.

Work for your money? All of that is taxable. Let your money work for you? Ooooooh poor baby, let’s half that taxable income shall we? Ooooh you didn’t work at all, let me refund you 30% of your dividends back to you, oh dear, oh dear gorgeous.

It’s stated in my contract, but also this is the appropriate award for enginners: https://www.fairwork.gov.au/employment-conditions/awards/awards-summary/ma000065-summary#who-the-professional-award-covers

Unfortunately as it currently stands, I’m not entitled to overtime because of clause (section? I dunno the terminology) 18.6 of the award https://awards.fairwork.gov.au/MA000065.html#_Toc201323508

I’m hoping that this legislation ties the hands of the fair work commission so that I don’t have to work 2 “extra reasonable hours of overtime” each week for free.

Yes, but also this would be a huge scandal which would no doubt come out.

As much as this is a pretty big fuck up, I have decent trust in the integrity of the vast majority of public servants. (Not to say that information isn’t ever massaged or suppressed in the public service, just that a conspiracy of this magnitude would not stay quiet).

Give it a couple of months. If it really is a conspiracy, I bet we’ll find out.

This is extremely unreasonable. It should be on record how an individual MP voted on every single bill. How else are we supposed to hold them to account?

Something something, rules based order, something something ruining our reputation.

But honestly, we need to get legislation in place to stop governments making such plainly terrible deals in the first place.

If it’s not profitable, but has to get built, that’s just screaming government should built and control it.

Why we keep subsidising hugely profitable companies is beyond me.

And where old contract terms are unfair, we ought to grow some balls and say: we’re reneging on this as a sovereign entity, because the terms were unfair, and oil and gas companies have lobbied like crazy to make them happen.

We should make these past injustices against Australia, right.

Try let the Americans coup us, at least it’ll be overt

I’m not against regulation, without regulation is how we’ve ended up with Facebook Analytica and everyone and their dog collecting mountains of personal information to sell.

Just that they went and decided on this nebulous age verification instead of actual privacy protection we’re sorely lacking in this country (online)

It’s honestly a travesty we got this before an Australian version of the GDPR…

Yeah, we’ve dropped the ball. You actually need to do some enforcement to make this work, seems like that’s hardly being done. And increases in enforcement would pay for itself.

Making something annoying to do definitely is a winning strategy.

It’s not even criminal to use a VPN in China, but they are banned and make it very difficult use, you just accept your fate that they don’t really work anymore. It’s still possible to circumvent the Great Firewall, but requires way more effort than before. Most people just don’t, even those with a desire to.

Just that for our purposes, it’s for something worthwhile (In my opinion. Smoking is dumb, and as stated in another comment, someone’s “freedom” to do it isn’t convincing if you want to live in a social democracy.)

Licencing seems like a good first step (that, I find it mindboggling didn’t already exist).

It’s not like the same level of enforcement is needed continuously.

I kinda do think shutting down and charging shop owners would be enough to massively curb the trade. It wouldn’t stop it, but suddenly it becomes more of a pain to buy.

Currently shops are doing this in the open. How hard would it be, honestly, to make a tip line (internet form), have a small team of inspectors go around, charge and shut people down? It kinda feels like this isn’t even being done.

And if funding is the problem, well, it kinda pays for itself.

Gotta make it juuuust enough of a pain that you either quit, or are willing to pay the extortionate excise.

Can’t really argue with the results, we massively curbed smoking in this country until vapes showed up.

One of your neighbours sounds eminently reasonable

but as long as these loopholes exist, there must be an alternative

The current alternative is pretty funny, if you live in a council who’s really strict about parking.

It’s really hilarious when people park like wankers in Melbourne CBD because there’s an online form you can fill out to sic the parking inspectors on them really quickly depending how busy they are.

I’ve done it multiple times to people parking in the car-share dedicated spots. It’s always Teslas, BMWs, Mercedes.

Though, now we’ve had this conversation, I’ll keep an eye out for oversized car parking too.

Them when they get the fine: wHaT dO tHeY eXpEcT mE tO Do?

Buy literally any other ute/van that easily fits in the spots.

I’m a bastard haha, I can’t wait.

Why I think we should do literally nothing to accommodate this ridiculous vehicles, accommodation is a precedent they will come to expect and feel entitled to.

People already feel entitled to large roads, and right of way for cars. Let’s not give them a single mm.

That said, it is amusing driving through certain housing estates where there is one normal-sized car in the driveway; which is being blocked in by the Dodge Ram that is too big to fit in the driveway.

I suppose they’re doing their best haha

Nah. Until vaping took off, smoking rates plummeted.

Smells a lot better in this country compared to the ones they smoke in.

Ugh. (I do empathise with people who’ve picked up the habit, but not those who advocate for it)

Say what you will, the taxes worked, and have without a doubt saved us a tonne in avoided medical costs from all the people who gave up or never started smoking in the first place.

People talk as if a black market existing somehow negates the benefits of smoking reductions.

If it’s black market, it’s still more of a hassle to buy. Unless it’s really out of control. In which case the answer is blaringly obvious.

Law enforcement.

Edit: in B4 nAnNy StAtE!!! Look, we live in a society people, where there are trade offs between freedom from and freedom to. It’s not hard to argue that costing us all uncessarily with Medicare, making places smell like shit, and causing suffering to loved ones as you die an early death is a freedom from that trumps your “freedom” to sell your soul to the tobacco industry.

Go live on an abandoned oil rig for all I care, but if you want to live in stable, social (somewhat) democracy, that’s the deal.

I vote we don’t do that because it’s taking up valuable space that creates urban sprawl. We already have dedicated truck parking (as in, actual trucks, not oversized utes & SUVs) in places where they’re needed for deliveries.

Utes have fit in regular parking spots for decades. We should just say - no, these oversize utes/SUVs just can’t be bought.

Have you ever wondered why you even need a car to pop to the shops?

Because we’ve designed our cities around cars. (Unless you live in the CBD or other dense pockets in this country where you can literally just go downstairs. Weekly shop? What’s that?).

Let’s not have them park anywhere (in my opinion).

Make them buy a real vehicle, not one for emotional support.

You simply don’t understand why most people in this country are against the death penalty.

I’m not defending his actions whatsoever, even want to see his sentence extended.

If you’d like to actually read my position as to why I, and most of this country (though perhaps not for the same reasons as me) are against the death penalty, you will see you’re being a bit dishonest by saying I’m defending him.

You’ve literally just repeated the same thing twice.

And it looks like you don’t want to actually engage in an honest defence as to why society should have the death penalty.

Kicking out transphobes being probably fair notwithstanding, it would be nice to see the Greens democratise their internal party functions. Members aren’t really consulted on policy creation, they don’t get to vote on the leader etc.

Note: I’m not a member but know people who are or have been.

You make valid points. I do think there’s still quite a big shift in people’s lives when they turn 18 (most), or rather, when they leave secondary school.

Much more so than when they turn 16.

And that learning accelerates a lot in the last 2 years of school.

I will say, I’m not 100% opposed.

And that my previous comments about this being a distraction were not fair statements.

This is fair. And I’m sorry for how I responded because of my strong dislike for her.

I should have just left the reminder that she’s anti-worker as an off-topic aside.

The rest of it, as you rightly point out, is not my best work.