willedoo

Can you provide some links to the articles? I haven't seen anything apart from that ANU bloke dreaming about it.

Specifically to get a bite from you Nev.

I haven't read a lot of news on the government plans, but haven't seen any reference to anybody thinking of introducing tax on the family home. The only reference I've seen to it is the daydreams of an ANU twit in this article: https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/4m-pensioners-how-australia-s-tax-system-subsidises-wealth-over-work-20260227-p5o666 I could originally read that article yesterday, but opening it now has the subscribers only block on it and turning javascript off doesn't unlock it. Maybe it only allows a free reading by one IP address once.

I doubt even each way Albo and co would be silly enough to levy CGT on the suburban home block. It would be political suicide. Most of the country would vote for whichever party vowed to reverse it. It would be like banning beer and television (some would say that would be a good thing).

People like myself get caught up in the CGT trap if we sell. I've owned my place for 38 years, principal place of residence only, no business ever run on the property. I'm just an age pensioner with the arse out of my pants but I would still be up for a minimum of $50,000 tax, possibly quite a lot more if I sold. When people talk about scrapping the 50% discount if you've owned the property more than 12 months, they think it's all rich investors involved. They are largely ignorant of the fact a lot of non rich ordinary people get caught in the net as well. People in glass houses are good at throwing stones but they'd squeal if they were no longer eligible for the CGT exemption on their suburban block. My big tax crime is that my block is bigger than two hectares and I bought it after 20th. September 1985. If you have more than two hectares, with the pension, you can get an asset test exemption if you've lived continuously on the property as principle residence for twenty years. They knocked me back on the first application due to me giving up work to look after my sick, elderly father for a while. I stayed at his place with him and gave centrelink that address for correspondence regarding the carer's pension I received. Because of that period, they used the angle that I didn't live at my place for twenty continuous years. I ended up putting in a stat dec saying I still considered my place principle residence during that period and gave evidence such as power and phone still connected, mail still delivered there and stuff like that. They ended up granting me a full pension, so fingers crossed they don't change their mind in the future.

The only similar experience I've had was not with the Greens, but with our local environment council which is an independent organisation. Back before the tree clearing laws came in, a landowner near me with a 20 acre block on the side of a hill got a dozer and cleared the lot, then got an excavator to terrace the whole block like rice paddies. It looked awful, like a giant rock quarry and could be seen for miles. Probably the worst eyesore I've ever seen in the district. I decided to let the environment council know without naming names, just to inform them of the type of thing the shire council was approving. I thought it might be in their interest. They were barely interested, and all they seemed interested in was shoving brochures and membership application forms in my face. I walked out of there fairly disgusted that all they seemed to want was membership money. I think it was probably individual staff on the day to blame rather than the whole organisation.

When the war finished they had a lot of Japanese held in pow type camps awaiting repatriation back to Japan. In a lot of them they didn't have allied soldiers guarding them, they were doing it themselves. One night my dad and his mate were returning back to camp from a local watering hole and walked past one of the camps. All hell broke loose, the sentry called the alarm and the camp commandant roused the whole camp of Japanese out of bed to form up on the parade ground. He got my dad and his mate who were full as a boot to inspect the troops. The old man said it was one of the craziest experiences he had over there, two private ranked Australians with the wobbly boot on walking up and down the Japanese ranks inspecting them. He told me they hammed it up a bit and did a fairly dodgy officer impersonation to give the commandant a bit of face.

Over time there seemed to be a lot of fairly solid evidence against him.

Getting off topic a bit here, but this photo of my dad and his platoon making their way up through Balikpapan was taken on the first day of the landings. The same day, another platoon in their company got strafed by a trigger happy American plane. Lucky nobody was killed but some were wounded. They were right out in the open as well, in clearly visible land just off the beach.

I'm sure the M-16 three shot burst setting was designed with US troops in mind, but I reckon a lot would have used auto a lot. Giving them an auto setting is a bit like giving a kid the keys to the lolly shop. When you see a lot of Vietnam footage of them firing, they seem to hugely misinterpret the concept of covering fire. Apparently they were a bit that way in WW2 as well, although they mostly had semi-autos there. My dad always used to say when he was up in the islands that they felt safer fighting the Japanese than they did being anywhere near the Americans.

I reckon the GE miniguns would account for a fair percentage of the total. They used them like whipper snippers.

The last federal election I voted for an independent. It was a choice of probably the pick of a fairly poor selection of candidates in our electorate. She didn't seem too bad compared to some of the others, and I think she might have had some connection with the teals. Labor never does any good there and it's a very safe Liberal seat. A big influence in the Liberal vote there is the demographics of the electorate. Heaps of small business people and tons of self funded retirees, many of them interstate migrants. The Greens always get around 10%, similar to a lot of electorates. The only time I can remember the seat not being Liberal was that brief period when Clive Palmer was our local federal member. From memory, I think he hardly ever showed up in parliament. A mate joined his party and went to a couple of meetings but left, like a lot of other people, once they realised what a dud Clive was. Just a lot of hot air.

I was just reading this article about inter and intra generational tax inequality. In the article the ANU Tax and Transfer Policy Institute director is calling for the primary residence family home to be taxed and included in asset testing to qualify for a pension. Note that he keeps referring to means testing, but I think he means asset testing. I don't think his idea would be too popular with pensioners. Under the current system the family home is exempt along with two hectares of land. For example, if you have a house on four hectares, two hectares of it is taken into account as assets. Under this bloke's plan, every pensioner living on a suburban block in town would be shafted. I can't see how any government would survive politically if they introduced a system like that. A lot of retirees are not rich and own their house and not much else and are cash poor. https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/4m-pensioners-how-australia-s-tax-system-subsidises-wealth-over-work-20260227-p5o666

Five counts of war crime murders the news reports are saying.

Regarding stored fuel, I'm planning to set up a proper diesel backup generator for thunderstorm and cyclone seasons. When we had the cyclone last year I bought a little 2kva petrol generator from Kings and had to run it for 40+ hours, but got caught with about 20 litres of petrol left over and not much to use it in. At least with diesel it will store for a lot longer and stored fuel can be rotated through the vehicle. On another note, over the years there has been a fair bit of diesel theft from farms where thieves come in with empty storage on a ute or small truck and clean out the farmer's overhead diesel tanks. I wonder whether there has been an increase in that activity since the price hike.

I was referring to the Greens. The Greens don't consider themselves far left but a lot of the rest of the country does. Labor faithful probably don't. Most people right of centre do.

I beg to differ Marty, I would say I'm bang on the point. That's just my opinion, you're entitled to yours. I'd consider myself centre right politically and you support a far left party so we're never going get an echo chamber thing happening here.

The only reason we are talking about One Nation is because they are experiencing a fairly significant rise in support which could rock the politcal boat a bit. In previous times they have had around 6-10% support, similar to the other main fringe party, the Greens. One in ten voters think the Greens are worth voting for and nine out of ten think they are not. One Nation was in a very similar position on the opposite end of the spectrum, but things have changed in their favour lately. The Greens will never attract more than that one in ten voters and what you see is what you'll get with them, but One Nation's numbers are on the move and nobody really knows for sure how far they will go. It won't be all the way to the top, I know that much.

Marty, you're dreaming if you think One Nation will ever get close to replacing a major party in government I think. The protest vote will have an impact, and that impact will be to force the major parties to lift their game. Or the option is to just keep voting for the same old status quo in the naive belief that they will magically one day lift their game by their own choice, ie; bend over and keep copping it up the rear end.

Fuel prices are starting to hit tourism. Over the whole four day Easter break, the Pink Roadhouse at Oodnadatta had two tourists visit, compared to the usual 50 to 100 per day.

A lot of people can't see the woods for the trees. Some who are unhappy with the rise in popularity of One Nation delude themselves that the problem is all One Nation and it's supporters who their critics perceive as a bunch of ignorant, redneck idiots. Fact one: One Nation wouldn't be having this rise in popularity if the major parties were doing a half decent job. Fact two: The major parties have been complacent for too long, and as long as they have their comfortable two party system of your turn/my turn without any major threat to their voter base, they will never get any better. For sure, a lot of the rise in One Nation is a protest vote against that laziness, complacency, and disregard for ordinary Australians that a lot of people see in the major parties. The voter erosion to One Nation is the kick in the pants that the status quo needed and still needs. They won't voluntarily get any better, so they need a boot up the rear end like this to to make them get off their backsides and start performing better to provide Australians with what they want and need from a government. If the threat of losing voters in possible election losing numbers keeps the major parties on their toes, in my opinion that has to be a good thing and an incentive to provide good government. I'm not defending One Nation or any other party, but just trying to point out the small minded nature of just blaming One Nation and their supporters and dismissing them as fools. Throwing rocks at them is not going to make them go away. You need to ask yourself why. Why are so many people abandoning parties they have supported for years. The problem the major parties have is not One Nation. The problem is within themselves. They need to ask themselves why do so many people not want to vote for them any more. To be honest, nothing much in politics surprises me, but I have been surprised lately by the sheer numbers of people I run into who say they are changing their vote to One Nation at the next federal election. A lot of these people are the last people in the world where I would have expected to see that. There's a problem for the One nation critics who are stuck in that rut of name-calling, ridicule and stone throwing in their stereotyping of supporters. While they're so distracted doing that, they're not seeing what's really happening. There's a big groundswell of a protest vote building, and I think it will keep rolling. I don't personally think what's happening now is just a flash in the pan. The way I see it, the Greens are immune from it. The Coalition has already taken significant hits and a lot of it by their own hand. And Labor, well I wouldn't be too complacent about if I was one of their supporters. At the moment, they are almost guaranteed to win the next election, and that's about as far ahead as most pollies can think, but they are already starting to bleed blue collar votes and that loss will continue to grow. For anyone who doesn't want to see One Nation grow in size, the challenge is how to create an environment where those lost voters will return. That's where they need to spend their energy. Ridiculing and blaming those lost voters for leaving in the first place is unproductive, and as I said earlier, small minded.

Regarding the recent rise in One Nation opinion poll figures, Newspoll has released their quarterly analysis which includes a breakdown of polling from January 12 to March 16. The initial figures quoted here are for Queensland voting intention if a federal election was held. One nation has hit the lead in the primary vote at 30%, followed by Labor at 27% and the LNP on 23%. As far as I know, the LNP still leads over One Nation in polls regarding a state election due to the relatively popular incumbent LNP state government. Federally, One Nation is running in second place everywhere except Victoria where the coalition has a 1% margin over them. One Nation's popularity with voters aged 18 to 34 had also risen to 19 per cent from 8 per cent during the last quarterly analysis in December, while also becoming the third most popular party (19 per cent) for younger Australians behind Labor (30 per cent) and the Greens (26 per cent). The polling found One Nation had also had a rise in support from female voters (26 per cent) as compared to male (25 per cent). The support of Australians from diverse backgrounds, who spoke a language other than English at home, for One Nation was also up from 9 per cent to 19 per cent. While the new figures brought it level with the Coalition, both parties trailed Labor’s 35 per cent majority in this group.

Not a smart thing to do, 30 Nurofen in two days. it's a wonder he's still got a liver. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15705659/Nurofen-counter-drug-left-clinically-dead.html

I've got a few motors to get running so plenty to do. There's a 2H motor, a side valve Howard L motor, a couple of Honda pump motors and a Honda compressor motor to work on as well as this Lister.

Get it off the back of the ute for a start. Then clean it up, put some parts on it and see if it's going to be a motor or a boat anchor. If it's ok, I might put an alternator on it for a backup.