Methusala

I think that you are right about that Yenn. I grew up on the Snowy Scheme and I still think that it was the correct thing to do. But there is no simple solution to make the Earth conform to our "progressive" ideas.

You're right Nev. NZ has Hare-Clarke voting system which features multi-representative electorates so that if a mob gets,say 20% +1 vote, they get a rep into parliament wheras in OZ a person can be elected with much less than 50% of the 1st pref votes. Hello country party etc.

Although we are the world's greatest exporter of LNG we do VERY POORLY from it. Because the powers that where during the developments stage did such a pxxs poor job of negotiating royalties we get around 10% of what Qatar makes. " The treasurer, Scott Morrison, announced a formal review of the PRRT regime in November following a rapid decline in revenues from the tax."( The Guardian, Thu 9 Feb 2017 14.48 ) "The petroleum resource rent tax has failed to collect billions of dollars in revenue and the Turnbull government should reintroduce royalties for natural gas projects off north-west Australia, a resource tax expert has said." Why is Australia so reliably,"The dumb country?" The answer I think lies in the facts that a) Murdoch dominates the news delivery, b) We allow ourselves to be slaves to western (mainly US) culture and finance, and C) We have an electorate which is heavily propagandised and enthralled by right wing reaction. We are being forcibly reminded of the error of our ways watching the current federal government flounder in response to a national catastrophe.

This story, courtesy of those 2 excellent sources of fake news, the Telegraph and Ray Hadley, is a beat-up. The house was bought in 1997, many years before Flannery published his views on sea level rise. If you need cover to justify your opinions don't quote from Murdoch or 2GB. Not a great look!

I have also noted an image, purported to be a NASA satellite photo of our continent. It shows fires generally scattered including in central desert areas and far north Queensland. Fake news is everywhere.

Hey Marty, might have to arrange a "taste-off". Tassy is the only place with a better environment than Canberra.

Another "no-brainer" is the water extraction industry. We live in Canberra where, as a plumber, I know that we have the best drinking water available. You wouldn't believe the number of people who will only drink water from "disposable" PET bottles! In other areas aquifers are being drained as the locals need to import water from distant sources for their own use. Doesn't even begin to describe the lunacy of mines below Sydney's water catchments or miners getting "free", almost unlimited, access to water to enable huge , export coal mines. FFS!

This question."Who is to blame?" reminds me of a story that I used to read to my young kids called, "Mr Archimedes bath". A group of friends are enjoying a bath together until the final one hops in and the bath overflows. Of course he cops the blame for the overflow. The moral of the story is that we ALL share the blame for the bushfires. People who make the tree change. People who (like me) are addicted to fossil fuels. People who build massive trophy homes requiring 20, 30 or more kW of reverse cycle to keep cool. Coal miners who, through no fault of their own, need jobs to support their families and governments who find the easiest path to re-election to their cushy positions is to push easier options such as resource extraction over longer sighted tech advancements of the economy. I am sympathetic to "green" issues having lived in and enjoyed the Aussy bush. I am interested in following the very plausible theories of great environmentalists such as Tim Flannery and the politics of Bob Brown. This is the challenge of our times, a watershed when the old ways of half-hearted she'll be right must give way to a new discipline. We will need to sink or swim and face unpleasant reality or suffer worse and worse consequences.

It is inescapably true that these fires are not,"business as usual". The extraordinary dryness, resulting from the failure of normal rainfall over season on season has combined with a decade of record temperatures. Fires have ranged over unprecedented tracts of bushland and attacked where no fires have ocurred previously. We have no idea when or if rainfall will return to normal distribution. This has been building for decades and shows what only a degree and one half increase in temperatures can be like. Even Bill Shorten's Labor had planned to increase firefighting capability but that would have been too little, too late. Well, at least people who receive franking credits are happy and Clive Palmer will get his mine.

60,000 square km burnt so far!!! FFS

How do we make those with bovine like reticence realise how small the Earth is in the scheme of things? The photos taken by Apollo astronauts, looking back at our blue jewel of a home planet were a revelation to some of us. Imagine not being able to comprehend that the Earth is, in fact, tiny on the scale of cosmology and time. Man is not Dog's instrument; more like the film on a petri dish in the high school biology experiment. The rapture is waiting for those who can't accept the logic of scientific method.

Need a new emoji to rate this one. It stinks!

And more hints of catastrophe...(sorry) https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-25/marine-heatwaves-threaten-oyster-industry-great-barrier-reef/11726630

Thanks for posting. I just posted the link to the thread 'NSW 737 fire bomber..'

I have heard of many instances of Aussie families, wrecked by a single son (or daughter) overcome with drug problems, leaving them living in enormous fear of their lives. The media ramp up fear because a fearful population is easily controlled. There have been over 75 separate pieces of "anti terror" legislation passed since 11th November. 2002. These are responsible for our individual freedoms ( even to the extent of fencing off the lawns over PH in Canberra) being strictly curtailed. Where is the greatest threat to our freedoms originating? From our "democratic" overlords.

Come on Spacey! Even from you this is a bit of a stretch. How many gunmen, quoting verse from the Qoran have you had on your door step FFS!

We who have been conditioned to fear socialism (via union and welfare bashing) are blind to the "elephant in the room". Slavery, a practice that we all thought so abhorrent, has reared its ugly head. Not only through young women secretly imported for sex slavery, but in the form of the gig economy and Newstart dependent older workers and disabled no longer able to get meaningful employment. Feudalism is the new direction that the powerful have set for our kids and grandchildren.

How many of us think it would be ok to take a walk up Dunrossil Drive. to take a $h1t on the land around Yaralumla? How about Kirribilli House? Good view from there I reckon Cuz. I think that if you wouldn't like me climbing your roof to "'av a bit of a look around", why would you want the people who live in central Australia to put up with us?

The most unpopular thing about unions is the required union dues. Australians don't see the small percentage added to each purchase that pays the producer's BCA fees etc. Workers must realise that their employer belongs to an employer's federation which opposes the unions. Bosses know that they need to have an organisation to lobby government and act in industrial disputes. They are, in this sense, far more sophisticated than their workers. I think that capitalist political parties are also more sophisticated than the labour arm. This is why they win the majority of elections and have the strongest voice in politics.

See if you can get the modern Labor Party to oppose any of the nonsense happening in the Gulf or the South China Sea! No way.

When was the old age pension "done away with"? I know that under the 2-party dictatorship that we misname 'democracy' in Oz, the qualifying age has been increased but it is still there for any citizen to access. We can see that people are able to artificially manipulate their state of financial affairs to "bend the rules" so that some wealthy grafters get more than their fair share. I am more dismayed at the fact that people who have little chance, regardless of their willingness, to land a paying job are shafted by the poverty trap known as 'Newstart Allowance". We who have been fortunate enough to have had permanent employment with super can fund our own retirement. People who have lots of money can invest in shares and double dip by claiming the fraudulent tax credit imputation scam bought in by the (alledged) war criminal, John Howard.

They don't have to raid anything! They are able to spend money (as they do on, for example, submarines, F-35's or $1/2bn for the barrier reef boondoggle) simply by raising the deficit( as they have been doing) since they got in over 6 yrs ago. If spending on pensions, or any other social program, such as the Newstart allowance or single mothers, they will reap much more from taxation (remember the GST - 10% on most consumption). Again... the federal spending is NOT like a household budget.

Australia is at a disadvantage because many believe that a nation's economy is equivalent to household finance. Government's budgets don't need to balance or produce a surplus to be effective. Government spending needs to be 'anti-cyclical'. They need to spend in the slack times and to restrict activity when times are good. This injects money, enabling a stimulus to activity when down and also dampens excessive activity when thing are going gangbusters. Morrison's zeal for surpluses will lead to the opposite result that we need as the economy trends down. Until the enthusiasm for surplus or balanced budgets is corrected we will be at the mercy of poor decisions.

Banksters???

I'm not wanting to claim that, "Only Murdoch sells propaganda". Of course there is diversity in news reporting. But Goebel's reported line, that the bigger the lie and the more often it is told, seems to fit a lot of our Murdoch publications here. It seems to me that, having a very large share of popular media in Australia, the accepted "truth" is skewed across the spectrum. ABC has succumbed to years of criticism by Murdoch and LNP politiciuans to become very timid. Emma Alboreci's story is a case in point.