Jerry_Atrick

Care to explain your reasoning? Only because I am interested in hearing why (and yes, I have read your previous posts).

Maybe I was mixing up without conversion what determines a religion. However, from Wikipedia: "With the notable exception of some Syrian Jewish communities (primarily the Brooklyn, New York and Deal, New Jersey communities), all mainstream forms of Judaism today are open to sincere converts" (their bold, not mine) And Muslims allow conversion into but not out of their religion.

There are three criteria in this case, which should ally the fear of the suspicious and cynical - they are descendants, they identify, and they are accepted by their community. I beleive religious gropus go by two.. the person idenifies as and is accepted. The acceptance as is usually marked by some ritual of conversion, such as baptism (note, I am not sure in the case of Islam and some orthodox judaism - I think they require ancestry specifically of the mother being of the religion).

Sorry - missed the sarcasm bit - electronic comms, eh? In all honesty, I can't say it will cure "the problem", whatever the definition of the cure is relative to the problem. But there is nothing in the constitution that guarantees the government will cure anything or do anything properly. Robotdebt is a great example. Section 51 (xxiiA) of the constitution gives the power of the federal government to legislate on various provisions of welfare payments. Yet the whole premise of the implementation of Robodebt was illegal in the end, and founded on a myth that there was widespread fraud of the welfare system. (Particularly unemployment benefits). The government had the power to legislate to change the law to make it legal but it opted not to and instead ran a sham that ultimately cost lives. Hardly curing a problem, I would contest. What the Voice does do is ensure that there is a ABTSI representation body that must be consulted and that the government can't do what they did to the ATSIC commission of defunding it, letting it descend into chaos as a result and declare it a failure. And, while the constitution does not guarantee that any government will do more than fund a bare skeleton, just like Robodebt, where the government were too scared to change the law due to the political pressure, they would have brought upon themselves, it would be a brave government that would water it down if the majority of the Australian public had voted to enshrine it in the constitution. Why would it have a better chance than previous organisations? To be honest, I don't know how the other previous organisations were composed, so I can't be sure. But here is how I see it helping to achieve the best outcomes for ATSI people based on the government's described implementation: The representatives are to be selected from the various communities by the various communities. They are not appointed by a government or board. And as they only have advisory powers and not decisive powers, they are more likely to be representative of their people than of self-interest. Therefore, they own the advice given, and the communities are likely to own it, too on the basis of the next point. They will be given research resources, which would imply if they are giving advice, they may well be asked to back it up by the research of it within their communities. If the advice doesn't meet the research, or the research is deemed as inadequate, then they will suffer reputational damage and with the transparency provisions, erode their standing in both their and the wider Australian community. The government (parliament and the executive) are compelled to seek the advice. If the advice is well researched and reasonable, then it would be a brave government that would defy that advice. This would mean programs are likely to be implemented taking the advice, so if it is bad advice and doesn't solve the problems (in a relative sense), then ATSI people effectively only have themselves to blame. This would further strengthen the buy on of that implementation. Of course, if the government neglects to follow the advice and implements a program differently, then the government can pay the price. The transparency and accountability provisions would hopefully keep people on their toes. Of course, no system is perfect and the above is not guaranteed, but it seems that people want perfection and guarantees in this case which, given we are only human, is absurd. The reality is that the laws that implement something in the constitution are tweaked or overhauled over time to (hopefully) resolve issues or keep whatever it is relevant The big issue I can see in the above is that, as it is representative of a diverse community, there will be the ATSI equivalent of factional fighting amongst the representatives. But that assumes that in any one area, there can only be one policy for all different communities. That does not have to be the case. Culturally, what will work in one community may not, and it may be up to government to be culturally sensitive to different communities in order to achieve a desired outcome. It was long, but that is the way I think the current proposed principles of the Voice implementation may work better than previous attempts.

Dang it - they're supposed to copy opur intellectual property 😉

Oh, how nice would that be? Sadly, I am not so sure your assertion that large private corporations are as quick to turnaround as you think. The bigger the ship, the longer to turnaround (or some such saying). QANTAS isn't really that big a corporation; the chariman of the board had said he intends to put QANTAS right; let's see how long the changes start to move. I have worked in large corporations during overhauls (not that I had any part in the management of them), and I can tell you from experience, they were very long and very painful. But, I do like the idea. Let's start with "Services" Australia, and the DHS.

As usual, I like to start with the facts, and here is some on trachoma (to be honest, a diseae I had not heard of until Bruce brought it up - proves you learn a new thing every day!) Here they are: https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/indigenous-australians/indigenous-eye-health-measures-2022-data/contents/prevalence/prevalence-of-trachoma I would suggest, looking at the graphs on the variuous pages, the trend has been in sharp decline from 2012, and then sort of running at quite low percentages. In any population, there are a number of people who are vulnerable, and therefore susceptible to the problems that come with it, and the numbers suggest that this may be the case as well, although that is just my intepretation on a very quick look, without looking at what is behind the numbers, I will admit. Spacey - I think you are confusing a department, that has powers to initiate programs, formally itiate legislative programs, has a raft of public "servants", with an advisory body that has none of that. In fact, I am sick of hearing people don't know enough of what it is about, so I did a little digging, and guess what, there is a government website that explains what, for some reason the MSM and even the government itself (let alone the opposition), everyone is asking about - "what is the voice?": https://voice.gov.au/about-voice/voice-principles To summarise: It will give advice to parliament and the government (reactively and proactively) It will be provided resources (budget) to carry out research to develop and make [reseatched] representations The representatives will be chosen by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders commuinities; they will serve for a fixed period of time, and the selection process will de defined post-referendum (that bit admittedly should have been worked out, but no doubt there will be some electoral process amoingst the commuinuties) Members of the Voice will be Aboriginals/Torress Strait Islanders based on a standard three part test (more later) Memebrs shosen from each of the states, territories, and Torress Strait islands. Required to have balanced gender and youth representation (the latter is more prgressive than the standard political system, IMHO). The voice will be accountable and transparent, with standard goivernance and reporting requirements (and therefore audit as well); they would fall within the scope of the national anti corruption commission. The voice does not have a program delivery function (therefore not a department) and has no power of veto. OK - So, what is the "standard 3 part test" nto determine someone is an Aboriginal/Torres Strait Islander? When I did the search on google, a Daily Mail article came up number one. Although it was accurate, I figured a more formal organisation may be better to quote. According to the Australian Law Reform Commission (https://www.alrc.gov.au/publication/essentially-yours-the-protection-of-human-genetic-information-in-australia-alrc-report-96/36-kinship-and-identity/legal-definitions-of-aboriginality/), it consists of: The person has to be of Aboriginal or TSI descent [my addition - obviously, this can be partial - after all, it was not unheard of that Aboriginal/TSI women had affairs, were raped, etc by non-aboriginal/TSI poeople] The identify as an Aboriginal/TSI They are accepted by the [Aboriginal/TSI] community in which they live [as being Aboriginal/TSI] There ya have it; There is more info if you look, but at a high level, it explains quite a bit. The idea is that you will still need departments - which may include one for ATSI Affairs - that is up to the government to determine the best way to implement the programs regarding ATSI matters. These departments aren't only staffed bt ATSI people.

Maybe adopt a behaviour tax.. The worse the kids behaviour, the more tax the parents pay.. Soon would see an improvement in behaviour. Or could do it the other way around - the better behaved the kids do and the better grades they get, the less tax the parents pay (or more welfare they get).. as the kids are less likely to be a burden on society... .. Very, very right wing of me, I know ;-))

And proved the moon is made of cheese

Sorry, OK.. but I have been baited, so back off topic: Really. Here is their stock price chart since 1999: Here is teh CBA since 91, so a longer period of time gfor roughly the same gradient of returns.. Think on a return basis, Macquarie has not done too bad The 5 year curve (not putting it here, go to finance.yahoo.com and search both) is much flatter for Macquarie than it is for CBA, but the start and end points are largely the same - which means the Macquarie ship has been steered through some relatively choppy waters of late reasonably consistently. Now if you put your money into NAB: That is since 1988 - than that is not looking too good from the '99 point in terms of returns. In the last 5 years, much choppier, and slightly lower than the other two in terms of valuation. All in all, Shemara Wikramanayake seems to be not doing too bad a job at the head of Macquarie. What they pay her is their business and shareholders can revolt if they want.

Yes, but Macquasrie doesn't pretend to tbe nation's bank. Macquarie hasn't taken more in government handouts than paid tax in the current CEO's tenure. And Macquarie doesn't pi$$ its customers off (not in their institutional and investment bankin divisions, anyway)., If they did, they would be broke and no government handouts.

What he did was absolutely criminal. And then he and successive LNP goverments stifled renewables R&D that we could have been world leaders at. Now the brains drain to overseas corporations. I am not aying Labor is any better (how is their Buy Australian policy going?). We are now maniufacturing some of the worlds most advanced UAVs - and the profits are shipped off to the USA..

We will never know

They're not car tyres; they're soviet style vortex generators

Second rate creative accountant

Actually we assume one can't change the matches relative position, but by moving the top and bottom matches of the zero to the right hand side, rotating them 90 degrees and placing one on top of the other you get 51181

5031 by moving the 2 left matches of the 8 to the right of the now transformed 3

This just goes to show how crap at campaigning Albanese is.. because the wording has been out since July and people still don't know there is wording. Also shows how crap I am in that I assume people have read everything; Octave posted the wording on here way back on July 21...

I am not disputing it, however, the act that establishes the body will no doubt include a section on the structure and apppointments to the senior positions. This is common for most if not all types of bodies in the public service. They are designed to be impartial, but in reality, there are always front runners for the role. Let's look at the AAT - virtually all LNP stooges in the end to thbe point where impartial representatives were terminated to make way. Even governor generals are appointed with some degree of bias and these are far more important constitutional appoitnments than an advisory board. Even if they are yes people, what are the board goign to say "Yes" to? I can't see too many ministers being personally affected by matters involving first nations issues. So they are going to be saying, "Yes, we will provide consultation to matters affecting aboriginals." Isn't that what it is for? OK, maybe some government insider wants their newphew's company to get some cushy government job or contract - or their son to get membership to the Chairman's lounge, but in other government institutions, the constitution stops it, right? Wow! I didn't know you fellas were over 300 years old. I doff my hat to you. Fair dunkum.. With respect, I think I will take archological, anthropologicla, and historicla studies over anecdotal experiecnes. And, when you were kids growing up, I would suggest there was 150+ years, say 5 generations at 30 years/generation of oppression, segregation, isolation, exploitation (happy to get the booze and drugs to them), and not only institutional, nut national racism.. But, your childhopod memory defines whether or not there were nations up to 1000's of years ago.. And the rest about population sizes after white man arrived and killed or spread disease and killed has what to do with it, I am not sure - that because a society that had never neen exposed to these dieseases contracts them and dies of in large numbers was never a nation? An interbreeding? What the hell has that got to do with anything? What, you havve never seem a mixed race couple before - a Greek marry and Italian, an Enlgish marry a French? Suddenly they are no longer countries? Buit then again, what that has to doi with the Voice, I am not so certain.

We shoudl be listening to this on Wattle Day:

As a casual polling clertk in the mid-90s based at Kensington Primary School's polling booth, most of the spoiled papers had doodles of usually male gentalia of varying degrees of accuracy; some that wold be at home in physiology text books. Thee was trhe odd "F&ck em" and "ar$eholes", but doodles was the preferred method of conveying condemnation of our candidates. Although, I did not do a referendum, so maybe it will be different.

I am sorry if I offended your sensibilities. History, however suggests there were over 250 separate terratorial areas of Australia prior to white settlement, where there were clearly distinct languages, laws, customs and cultures, and organised societies. In additon, history suggests that there were organised trade between neighbouring territoties, and there were protocols for receiving and visiting neighbouring territories people and a form of accepted laws of dealing with disputes that arose between them. And yes, they did fight each other.. but remind me.. Aren't European countries defined territories of different languages, cultures, laws, societal structures, etc? isn't there something going on between Ukraine and Russia at this very moment? And hasn't Europe been at war almost continuously or fighting amongst different nations, creating new nations as late as 2008 (Kosovo) and Montenegro (2006). As of 2019, 2 of the 5 newest contries were in Erupe as the result of squabbles and warring tribes, and that did not include Russia taking Crimea:https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/slideshows/these-are-the-5-youngest-countries-in-the-world?slide=4 Let's not mention the wars, though. So please understand out of respect to your sensibilities, I am calling them first nations people as it most if not all respects, they were peoples of nations.

Given that this would be an obligation of the government, yes.. But one would hope that they have the bones of it already.. I will get onto Albos lack of campaign ability shortly.. Normally, no.. as the ducks would be lined up.. but I am not confident Albo has too many ducks in line should it get up. He didn't seem to give it a lot of thought or have a plan with the election night pledge, which even caught his new ministers by surprise I read today. I would agree with this, although probably go from the Voice to an actual treaty - something that would no doubt please Lydia Thorpe. This is what the Aussie Human Rights Commission has to say: https://humanrights.gov.au/our-work/about-constitutional-recognition Albo is a shocker at campaigning. Everyone knows that to get something over the line in a constitutional referendum, you have to have bipartisan support. And a good campaigner will get that before they start the public process. All Albo did is open an opportunity for Dutton to oppose it to score political points. Also, Albo knows Dutton and a lot of the senior LNP are still ideolgues rather than with the moral fibre to lead a country. So, he knew he could probably never count on the opposition to formally support it. In which case, he would have done the first nations population much better service by implementing what he would have considered the necessary changes should the Voice become constitutional, tweak out the mistakes, get some early runs on the board no matter how small and then approach the opposition. If they failed to support it, he could then still go to the electorate while highlighting how out of touch, ideologtical, and even racist they are. Either way it would have had a much better chance as referendums are rarely won until the are announced after the majority of the public have decided to go for it.