willedoo

I was looking through the SA poll figures so far and the Libs have copped it from all sides, losing a possible four seats to Labor, possible three to independants, one likely and two possible lost to One Nation.

ome, did you read that or have you tried it?

I don't remember whether they said PAYG tax would be decreased or not, someone here might know. The original deal was supposed to do away with certain state taxes like stamp duty, but the states reneged on that crying broke and we ended up with GST and stamp duty. We ended up paying GST on a lot of extra things, but a lot of things previously had the 22% general sales tax rate so it probably balanced out.

Due to the high primary vote they got, the party picks up a fairly good pay packet helped by South Australia's new electoral rules. Most political donations were banned, but the dollar rate for votes received by parties has increased. I don't know One Nation's state/national branch financial sharing, but they should be a bit more cashed up for the Victorian by-election and the state election later on.

Jerry, it already has got way out of hand where I live. It's not just 10 or 20 kids hooning around town, there's dozens of them all over town causing problems in the afternoon after school. It's bad in the whole district, but my local town gets singled out in the press as being the most troublesome standout area. I think it's to do with the geopraphy and layout of the town and where the school is sited. It makes it easy for the kids to roar around and not get caught. What's brought it to a head lately is the number of deaths and injuries to riders and pedestrians. The police don't have the resources to be chasing them all over town every afternoon, it's only a small local station.

With this one, if you took the pedals off, you could call it an electric motorbike. A pedal E-Bike I think it's called.

I think that's why they are restricting under 16's. Regulations are already there to stop them from modifying the speeds, but no amount of regulation stops it. It doesn't work proactively in the case of kids, so at the moment all the police can do is act reactively after the offence.

The final preferenced result won't be known until Saturday. One nation has one lower house seat called by different outlets, but I don't think it's official. They're ahead in three others, but I think of those three, only Hammond will get up for them. It's a ON against Labor contest with the sitting Liberal knocked out. ON has a good lead over Labor at this stage and they'll pick up Liberal preferences. In the other two, ON is ahead of Liberals in the number two position, but only just. Labor and Green preferences will flow to the Liberals ahead of ON, so I can see the Libs gaining those seats.

That's the thing, they're sold legally with a motor capable of those speeds but by law have to have a speed limiter. It doesn't seem very hard for the kids to get their hands on a black market chip to override that limitation. If kids under 16 are totally banned from riding them in public it would negate a lot of that. I think back to when I was 13 or 14 and how great it would have been if your parents bought you something like that and let you loose with it. That's why I don't blame the kids fror the temptation; I would have done the same thing at their age, hotted it up to go as fast as possible.

I think some of them can get speeds up to 100kph with illegal chips, if the motor is big enough to do it.

It's not before time, it's been getting out of control. One of the worst areas is my local town. It's the high school kids who are the worst offenders. The police have tried a crack down but it doesn't seem to have helped much. If you go to town you really have to keep a good eye out for them as it's quite scary when you're walking along the footpath and a gang of them roar past at 30kph only inches away. I can't say I blame the kids; it's a no-brainer what will happen if you give kids what is in effect an electric motorcycle and let them ride it anywhere they like. I saw a couple of kids outside the shopping centre the other day with those big ones that have tyres the size of a Harley front wheel. There's been people killed around here, mainly the kids colliding with each other.

The Trump comparison is not relevant here Marty. The Americans have a fairly undemocratic system where the nation elects a president, a bit like an elected king. That president then appoints his cabinet from non elected people. In their case the protest vote can deliver the federal administration where only the king/president has been elected. Now look at the case here where we have a much fairer way of electing a government. The chances of One Nation winning government and Pauline Hanson becoming prime minister is not even worth a mention it's so ludicrous. They'll never get enough seats to do that. So back to complacency. If the majors see their vote going in concerning numbers via the way of protest to One Nation or any other minor party, they are smart enough to do something about it to head it off, in other words, shake out of their complacency. Othewise we could stick to the status quo and continue to reward complacency.

Thanks Jerry. It's not a serious glitch, just a bit of a niggle for someone like me who uses multiple tabs most of the time.

ON are certainly rocking the boat. The Liberal boat has already hit the rocks, but the Labor boat is slowly leaking as well as they are losing the blue collar vote. The chattering classes like to dismiss the rise in One Nation as being all about ignorance and racism, but that's an over simplification by simple minds. If it was all about racism, One Nation woud have been polling these numbers all along. There's more factors to the rise, and cost of living and housing is a big one pushing voters to One Nation. A lot of people see their situation going downhill under the status quo and they see One Nation as a way to shock and punish the big parties into some real action. Complacency is a big thing in politics and often the only way the big parties will look outside their bubble is if someone gives them a jolt like this. The Coalition is getting a big slap in the face, but it's no time for Labor to think they are immune from it. The only party not effected by this is the Greens. They have a niche spot in politics and a steady voter base, so not much will ever rock them.

There's been a big variation in swings in different seats. Labor has had a lot of small swings to and from and a few big swings either way. The seat of Light around Gawler is one example. It was previously held by Labor on a 20% margin but a swing away to One Nation of 18% has pegged that back to 2% if Labor holds. Labor is currently leading by 730 votes and will probably retain it with Green preferences. At this stage of the counting (65%) the swing totals are Labor down 2.3% overall, Liberals down 16.6%, One Nation up 19.5%, Greens up 1.2% and others down 1.8%.

I had a look at the seat by seat first preference count as of today, and if it was a first past the post result based on those figures the lower house seat tally would be Labor 35, Liberal 7, One Nation 3 and Independants 2. Not much different to early estimates of a two party preferred result.

I see where the ABC has called the lower house seat of Ngadjuri for One Nation with a TPP estimate of 56.9% over Labor's 43.1%. It was a Liberal seat loss. The ABC are usually fairly conservative on their calls, so they must think the numbers stack up. It's the first time One Nation has won a lower house seat outside of Queensland.

The problem with the council amalgmation was that the smaller councils were generally more efficient and debt free with money in the black. The larger councils were way more inefficient, more corrupt, broke and in massive debt. To balance the debt, the smaller councils were amalgamated into the bigger ones, along with their cash which on the books bailed the bigger ones out. The end result was ratepayers and residents pay more for less service. It was grand theft by any measure. A broke state government coming up with a scheme to bail out the worst of the bigger councils.

We have a big problem with councils here in Queensland and it got a lot worse when they amalgamated them into less but much larger councils. They're the weak link in the government chain and it would be good if the state government could rein them in. Over time they have gone from being servants of the public to thinking they are our masters and a law unto themselves. Our state governments over time have handed them way too much autonomy. In other states, the state government still has a fair bit of control over local government, but here they've just handed councils the keys to the lolly shop and turned a blind eye. They spend more time checking satellite images to try and extort revenue from ratepayers for some silly minor bylaw infringement than they do providing services. You always know when the rate bill is about to come out (every six months) as it's the only time they slash the road verge, twice a year two weeks before you get the rate bill. A lot of people are looking forward to the next local government elections to kick the deadbeats out. We have four year terms here now so it's a long wait. There's a bloke here who ran for mayor last time and just missed out. He's a local, and well known and liked community member and calls a spade a spade, so we're hoping he'll get in next time. I knew him back in the days when he was a pub bouncer. He'll be more value than the rest of the clowns put together.

octave, I built my own place in 1996 when I was in my early 40's and I'm thankful I did it then and not now. Looking at some of those beams I got up there on my own gets me trying to remember what it was like to be young and physically capable. The deepest stump hole was up to almost the top of my head and too tight for a jackhammer, so I levelled out a punching pad in the rock base with a crowbar. I used it like a percussion drill, letting the hand pressure off just as it hit the rock so it would twist a bit like a drill and chip a little bit out at a time. It was a bit claustrophobic down there. I dug all the stump holes with a shovel, crowbar and jackhammer. As far as raising bearers and beams, it's amazing what you can do with pulleys and temporary gin poles. To raise and place the poles in the holes I had pulleys and ropes set up at different points so I could tie the rope onto the 4WD and just drive away and watch the pole stand up in the rear vision mirror. It was hard work but a lot of fun and I'm glad I did it. All the 4x2 wall studs, king posts and collar ties, the 6x2 rafters and verandah joists and the 10x2 ridge board are all recycled ironbark from when they pulled down the old Maroochydore RSL. I bought a whole truckload of it from a demolition mate. Great seasoned timber but as hard as your mother in law's heart. You can't drive a clout into it without pre drilling.

I like South Australia. I spent a fair bit of my working life in oil and gas exploration from the Flinders Range up to the Queensland border. Haven't had much to do with the city apart from transiting by air through there and the occasional overnight stopover, but from what I've seen of Adelaide I like it. We even almost speak the same language. They say darnce and charnce and we say dance and chance like the Yanks and Scots. A couple of workmates were from Oodnadatta and they used to call soft drinks cool drinks. I don't know if that's a general SA term or an Aboriginal one as they grew up with mainly Aboriginals. But yes, fond memories of South Australia.

It started earlier than that Marty. In Australia it appeared in the goldfields in the 1850's. I've got one of Frank Weston's Wizard Oil bottles I found out in the desert. He came out here from the US in 1864 and started a travelling medicine show selling his wizard oil. At one stage he got into strife with the government for having an opioid in it and had to remove it from the recipe.

I think you meant to write shouldn't pay tax.

I don't know enough about proportional representation systems to make any judgement on them. Preferential voting and first past the post are easy to understand but the various PR systems can be a bit complicated and need a bit of research to understand fully I would think.

Litey, I hope you're not saying he's a fool for favouring proportional representation. If that was the logic, then there's hundreds of millions of fools around the world. New Zealand, most of South and Central America, a big slab of Europe, a heap of African countries, Turkey, Indonesia, Cambodia, Iceland, pacific Island nations, Sri Lanka, Tasmania, Ireland - that would add up to a lot of fools.