Nath

Immigration and asylum seekers have been politicized my whole life. When I was little, it was "wogs" - though which nationality that referred to was confusing. It was originally Italians and Greeks after World war 2, but later evolved to Lebanese. Then it was the Vietnamese/Asians. Then it was Middle Eastern / Arab nations. I think we're still hearing about Sudanese gangs yeah?

It's an unending cycle that has showed no signs of going away. Ned Kelly resorted to crime because of being discriminated against for being Irish. Yes, Mr. Howard absolutely tapped into that cycle with the Tampa incident, but he didn't start the fire. It was always burning like the world's been turning.

This thread is a product of our collective ages. Billy McMahon is pretty universally thought of as the worst PM ever, but we're too young to remember him first-hand. A rich guy, I think he still holds the record for longest time in parliament. He was probably gay, but persecuted LGBT+ people.

Laurie Oakes: [he was] "devious, nasty, dishonest - he lied all the time and stole things". He tells a story where McMahon tried to steal (clearly labelled) radio station gear after an interview, claiming to own it.

Robert Menzies: "the most characterless man who was ever prime minister of Australia – a dreadful little man"

John McEwan almost succeeded in keeping McMahon out of the PM spot, by absolutely refusing to work with him. McMahon couldn't get party leadership until after McEwan retired. Gough Witlam reportedly called him a "notorious homosexual" and a "cunt" in a story told by McMahon - who complained that he "couldn't be both".

Challenge for anyone here: Google him and see if you can find anyone with something nice to say about him. The quotes you'll find about him are honestly hysterical. 😃

I had several disagreements with Mr Howard, but I believe that despite those differences, he really was trying to do the right thing for the country.

I liked Mr Turnbull. In an alternate universe where he was permitted to actually lead the nation and wasn't held down by his party, I think he could have been one of the great PMs.

I didn't have a lot of time for either Mr Abbott nor Mr Morrison. Both were bad for the country. I honestly can't recall a redeeming thing to say about either of them.

Mr Fraser privatised Medibank (the original Medicare). Universal healthcare was the dream-child of the preceding government. The Liberal Party hated it and tried to block it. One of the first things they did was kill it. I fully recognise that my views of Mr Fraser were the product of my childhood - where my political views mostly boiled down to "Liberals are evil and Labor are the good guys" thanks to my parental influences.

It turns out that universal healthcare is pretty popular, though. It was the main issue that kept the Libs in the wilderness for over a decade. They had to promise not to kill Medicare to ever get another shot at government.

The thing about legislation is: The new government can make/change/remove it. Unless you enshrine it in the Constitution - and we have a pretty poor track record of changing that.

The problem with a "Future Fund" is that our politics isn't geared up to handle it. Imagine a kitty of $50 Billion sitting just there and a new party gets in. They'll spend it, of course. So even if you get a fiscally responsible PM who establishes such a fund, the other party would get in three years later, spend that money immediately on [PROJECT] and then claim all the credit for it.

WA still owns its power grid. My power bills in WA are far cheaper than they were in Victoria. These two facts are probably related.

Also, the WA government reserves a stash of gas for local reservation before companies are allowed to sell the rest "at market rate". That gas belongs to everyone, not just the company that extracts it. This policy also helps to keep energy prices in WA reasonable.

How do the telcos get more money? A few phone sales are not going to do anything to their profits. They own the 3G infrastructure, it's theirs. They could have legally turned it off years ago and there's nothing anyone (including the government) could have done about it. Forcing them to sell a service is no different to forcing Woolies to sell your favourite brand of peanut butter. You can argue that the Government of the day should never have sold 100+ years of infrastructure investment and only privatised the retail side of Telstra - and would 100% agree with you. But that horse bolted 30 years ago. The simple truth is that all our phones rely on three companies and with few exceptions, there are no guarantees the service will work. As that Optus outage a year ago demonstrated.

I'm all about bashing on the telcos when they deserve it. But they've handled this about as nicely as was possible. They've been warning everyone for over a year. They've been individually messaging affected phones for months. Nobody can really say they didn't get warning.

I don't really agree with blocking IMEIs of phones they didn't sell because they're not sure they'll work without 3G. But I see the reasoning for it. They can't make a regular call today, but they can make an emergency call. They are forcing that pain now, while the phone can still call in an emergency instead of it dropping totally off the network at a future date when it can't make any sort of call. I'd have gone the other direction to give those customers more time. I recognise though that some people simply would not have done anything until they were forced to - no matter how much time they were given.

It's pretty similar to the analogue tv signal shutdown in 2010. The difference though was you could buy a digital tuner and plug it into your tv and keep using it.

3G is taking up a lot of spectrum space and they need to free it up for future data technology. It is also used by a very small (and shrinking) percentage of people, while costing too much to maintain.

It has to die. Telcos gave more than a year's warning. Then an extended grace period. I don't really know how they could have done this without annoying some people.

While I move in a bubble of nerds who tend to have decent gear, I don't actually know anyone affected by this shutdown first-hand.

While I agree with you, she's in far better shape now than she has been for years. During a 50-day stay in hospital, she gained 7kg and grew 3.4cm. One presumes that recovery is continuing.

She certainly is not dead.

I was saying they're not likely to axe those seats. Sorry. 😀

The back seats serve a purpose: You can buy a ute through your business as it is clearly a work vehicle. If you want your business to effectively pay for your family car, you make a ute that can drive your family around.

That's why tradies buy these. They don't need the dual cab for work, they need the tray to justify buying the family vehicle through their business and expensing/depreciating it.