kgwilson

Most voters though aren't that savvy & the voting paper is ridiculously daunting so they take the simple option & we get what we've got.

Most of them have had to resign because they are dual citizens!!

Well she does call ON "Pauline Hansons One Nation". In other words once you are elected "if you don't do as I say eff off". It would be hard for anyone to be as pathetic as Roberts with his crackpot claims and laughable effort to prove he wasn't a dual citizen.The preferential system is seriously sick when a person with only 19 primary votes is able to become a senator. It was the same with that Ricky whatsisname from the Motoring Enthusiasts mob. No wonder politics in Australia is such a shambles.

Average download on 4G LTE is 33 MBPS whereas the NBN has a theoretical download speed of 100 MBPS but very few ISPs are able to deliver this, hence the current refunds going on. My ADSL 2 currently averages 15 MBPS download with around 4 MBPS upload speed. The real difference though is cost per GB. I have a land line ADSL2 connection and get 150 GB per month for $29.95. Telstra charges $24.00 for 1 GB plus $1.46 per MB above this with their top of the range hot spot Nighthawk M1. You can get 20GB for $70.00 plus 34c per MB above that. This is called a large plan. On their large mobile plan it would cost $70.00 for the first 20GB plus the next 130GB at 34c per MB or $340.00 per GB so the cost for 150GB would be $44,270.00.

It looks like a few more are likely to fall & that means the government will too. If they checked back to the date of the constitution there probably hasn't been a single legitimate government since. What a joke & totally pathetic.

Just goes to show that even complete f*ckwits can act like a stopped clock, though not as often. Once or twice a decade may be more accurate

I spent 40 year flying in EnZed & I reckon there were more good flyable days there than what I have now. It is somewhat more challenging but we just accepted that there would be 15-20 knots crosswind on a good day. Most kiwi aviators have a very strong sphincter muscle. When the weather is good and you are flying in the mountains the scenery is absolutely spectacular. Flying a C172 from Queenstown to Milford Sound on a beautiful Autumn day after the Warbirds over Wanaka show 17 years ago is, and is likely to stay the most awesome flight of my life.

The thing that's wrong with the NBN is politics. Remember we were all supposed to be connected by the end of 2016 & that was to our house. On the ABC 4 corners they were saying Dunedin in NZ was their first gigabit city. Our best seems to be around 100 megabits with some hapless people still trying to get to the magic 1 megabit mark. If a commercial venture was in charge without any political interference all of the cities & major towns would have been on ages ago. The problem would be getting access to the bush as the cost would far exceed any return so it would not be commercially viable.

Guy Fawkes night (5th of November) was celebrated in NZ when I was a kid. We all knew it was about some bloke called Guy Fawkes who tried to blow up parliament in England but didn't know anything else about the story & didn't care anyway. We used to dress up in old ragged clothes & put a mask on, knock on doors, try to scare the owners & then sing a ditty with "Penny for the Guy" in there somewhere. We then went to the local shop & spent the money on fireworks, mainly crackers. There were a number of bonfires set up around town & everyone congregated around them & let off their fireworks after dark. We really looked forward to it each year. I do remember one kid who got burnt when some other kid but a lit cracker in his pocket & it went off also setting of all of the others he had in his pocket. We thought it was absolutely hilarious at the time.

Pumped Hydro has been around for 100 years & it it has operated around the world since then. It is simply a matter of market economics. Produce power with the turbines when the demand is high & the price is high & pump the water back up the same pipe when demand & price is low. About 30 - 40 pumped hydro schemes plus wind and solar farms with batteries is all that is needed to provide cheap clean reliable power to the entire eastern seaboard plus South Australia. Some 22,000 potential sites have been identified around the country so there is plenty of choice.

The latest on Trump from his advisors is that he is "unstable" "losing a step" and "unravelling". Steven Bannon, once at the President's side as chief strategist, has reportedly told people said he thinks Trump has just a 30 per cent chance of making it the full term. A Trump advisor told Vanity Fair they were concerned about Trump's public appearances, and relieved he cancelled an interview on 60 Minutes last month. "He's lost a step. They don't want him doing adversarial TV interviews." Big deal, most of the world knew this before he was even elected & it's taken his advisors this long to catch up.

I was going to rate this funny but it isn't. If it's not true already it is about to be.

What's the point of having a head of state being one person? At present its Lizzy, a figurehead with no power or authority other than what is bestowed by the guvmint. Or we could have a Pres either elected by the people (Trump?? we might end up with Pauline) or elected by the guvmint so another figurehead. We don't have a big red button luckily. Mind you I believe back in the cold war days the code was 00000 anyway so it couldn't have been be easier to annihilate the planets population. We're probably just as safe now as Trump can only use one hand & then the thumb & forefinger always make a zero & he can't do 5 of them at the same time. I did like that cartoon of Lizzy with a red baseball cap on, emblazoned with "Make America GREAT BRITAIN again"

What gauge does the QLD tilt train run on? My assumption is 3'6" There have been a few derailments if my memory serves me right.

It's a bit naive to sing the praises of democracy in Australia when we sit at number 13 on the Corruptions Perception index, 12 places behind our nearest neighbour to the east & behind most of Western Europe. A few years ago we sat at No 8 so this great democracy is going backwards. While others have improved like the UK our backwards slide is keeping company with the likes of Spain, Turkey, Brazil and Libya. We are ahead of the US at No 18 but I don't see that as anything the cheer wildly about either.

The main rail line to QLD from NSW is 4 feet 6 inches from memory and the QLD guage is 3 feet 6 inches. Now that was a smart move. Just another reason why the creation of separate states out of the individual colonies was a dumb idea.

A very selective response. 100mwh is 100mw used in 1 hour. If the draw on the battery was 100mw and there was nothing feeding in to it, yes it would last 1 hour. It is there to smooth power supply when demand is high to extreme and reduce the possibility of brown outs so if the wind is still blowing it is being replenished at the same time power from it is being used. Like any power supply it will be useless if a storm knocks out the grid and there is no alternative way of getting power to customers. Yes there are diesel generators as well but these are a short term insurance while the other renewable projects get built so they will eventually become redundant. The Hornsdale project is one of several around the state which will provide reliable renewable energy to SA in spite of the lack of action by the Federal Government.

I don't have the NBN yet but my ADSL plan gives me 150GB a month with average download speeds of 12.3mbps upload speeds of 4.2mbps. Cost with IInet is $29.95 a month. I don't think I have ever used more than 40GB. I have Foxtel & download a few movies which usually consume 1.5 to 3 GB each & browsing, youtube email etc for 2 users makes up the rest.

Coal is dead, dead, dead. There is no such thing as clean coal as Abbot & co continue to rabbit on about without a shred of evidence. Solar is not so viable in the UK with a distinct lack of sunshine along with the geographic location much closer to the polar region than Australia. There is plenty of wind but the farms have to be huge (1500 turbines) to produce the amount of energy that Hinkley Point will, & Hinkley Point will last twice as long. Plus energy storage would be required when the wind doesn't blow. Nuclear plants are relatively safe these days other than natural disasters like tsunamis or earthquakes or man made disasters like being sabotaged or bombed. BUT and it is a big one, what happens to all the radioactive waste? No-one wants it in their backyard. Now check out what is happening in South Australia. Teslas lithium battery at Jamestown next to the Hornsdale wind farm is half built and will be ready for Summer. It may only be 100mw but it is a great start and all done at breakneck speed. Add to this a 150mw solar thermal plant being built at Port Augusta next year, the Roxby Downs 120mw solar farm & 100mw battery, Morgan 300mw solar & 100mw battery. SAs renewables plan already in action makes the Federal Governments complete failure to have any plan absolutely pathetic. Their continued attacks on SA & renewables only serves to highlight their own failure to embrace future needs and elimination of greenhouse gas emissions. Add to this the latest sideshow where the east coast is running out of gas & consumers are paying twice what the gas companies get exporting it to India & China.

I'd also like my next car to be EV. Development is currently full on. Combine this with Australias ability (so long as the head in the coal dust conservatives get creamed) to move to 100% renewable energy within 15-20 years (pumped hydro, solar & wind) all new passenger vehicles are likely to be electric. Coal is dead. No-one wants to invest in it. Look at what Sanjeev Gupta is doing buying steel mills to run on renewables.

Hansen & her mob are bigots. There are also plenty of those in the Lib/Nats but they don't portray it with the same aplomb. PH has become so right wing that she has chewed up & spat out many of her own supporters when they don't agree with her. "Hey it's my party, do as I say not as I do". And what about the rorts and corruption. Hang on that seems to be normal practice with those currently in power. The current political landscape worldwide is on a slippery slope to annihilation. Put Pauline, Kim Jong & Donald in a room & watch humanity disappear even quicker. Do I sound pessimistic. You betcha. At the current rate of decline we'll be lucky to see 2100.

I couldn't give a flying fig if 2 males or 2 females or 2 hermaphrodites get married. That's their business. How that destroys the nuclear family or ensures kids at school are going to be taught about homosexuality or make boys wear dresses or all this other garbage being spouted by extremists is beyond me. Abetz keeps rabbiting on about all the bad experiences in other countries who have marriage equality without providing a single example or any shred of evidence. I think I'm like most people, I just don't feckin care. Why this issue has consumed Australian politics for so long is a sad indictment on the pathetic state of our system. In Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom, United States Uruguay and soon to be law in Germany there was some debate and the bloody government then legislated it. Simple and cost them feck all, not $122 million for a non binding voluntary survey that they may not even take any notice of. All those other countries must look at Australia and just shake their heads in disbelief.

With the LNP running the show where the PM doesn't have the balls to counter the conservative heads in the sand mob we will not see any real progressive move to renewables even though they all talk about it. Look what happened when the storm knocked the power out in SA. Renewables was the kicking boy for weeks with the lot of them including Turnbuckle chanting baseload, baseload, & blaming solar & wind even though it was proven within a few hours the problem was destroyed infrastructure. The only good part was in a press conference when the SA premier called Frydenberg a total dickhead. Correct and nothing has changed.

The polls all point to an overwhelming "Yes" vote and that is the problem as it always is. Too many will not bother to return the survey form as they think the result is a foregone conclusion. If it close you can bet the ultra right Abbot mob will rant on about it being too close to call (due to a small percentage of survey forms returned etc) and try and force parliament to abandon the whole thing. There is still hope though that the high court challenge to be heard on 5-6 September will pour cold water on the whole thing.

Good effort but a real lawyer would add a lot more meaningless words and phrases so the wording would be completely impossible to interpret by anyone else. Why say something in 10 words of simple plain English when you can spin it out to several hundred that no-one can understand.