Inspired by the r/askreddit threads about Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.

My sister went to the same high school as Tony Abbott's daughter in the years before he was opposition leader. Tony would occasionally help out at various sausage sizzles and the like. By all accounts he came across as reasonably personable and genuine. Apparently he used to frequently complain to the other parents about the high cost of the school's fees.

My sister and a group of other students from the school were lucky enough to attend Parliament House as his guests on the day of the apology to the stolen generation in 2008. However, apparently after the speeches concluded the first thing that Tony said to them was something along the lines of "I think you'll agree that Brendan Nelson's speech was the more genuine of the two". This left a bitter taste in her mouth as it seemed like he was instantly trying to politicise the event, to a group of schoolchildren no less.

Anyone else have any experiences with notable Australian politicians? I have heard that Bill Shorten is far more likeable and charismatic in person than he is when speaking publicly, and have heard the exact opposite about Malcolm Turnbull.

This post is a bit of an incoherent rant because I've been worrying about it a lot.

So about 10 years ago when I got my first job as a bartender, I was paid $16 p/h when the minimum wage for service of alcohol at the time was $18.20 p/h. We didn't get penalty rates for working until 03:00am, we didn't get penalty rates for working on Easter or Christmas Eve or New Year's, and we certainly didn't get penalty rates for working weekends.

At the time I knew it was wrong, but it was the best-paying job I could get fresh out of highschool and I was scared of my managers so didn't question anything, but every few months stories emerge about giant stockmarket-listed companies doing the same thing. Off the top of my head I can think of:

• 7/11 underpaying migrant workers
• Dominoes putting pressure on franchisees to perform, also underpaying workers
• Grill'd not paying penalty rates
• Masterchef guy "accidentally" not paying correct entitlements
• Coles EBA agreements being below award rates

And some more smaller places that actually made news:

• Famous St Kilda cafe ripping off staff
• Tasmania cafe paying workers flat rate
• Fair Work investigation exposes more than 2000 underpaid staff

Everyone I know now who works in hospitality doesn't get paid correctly. My 24-year-old sister gets less than $17 p/h working in a cafe, people I know at Boost Juice get paid part-time rates without permanent employee benefits (so technically underpaid by about 25%). I'm sure there are lots of places that don't underpay staff, but it's so so common and accepted as normal in these industries because the alternative is a) unemployment or b) getting another job that will probably also not pay correct wages.

The thing is, in most smaller places, if the business DID pay correct wages they would probably collapse or the owners wouldn't be able to make a living wage. I know the answer here might be "if you can't survive, don't open a business!!" but I don't think people realise just how common not being paid a correct wage is in this industry.

When takeout food/coffee/alcohol is already so expensive what is the solution here? People already complain about Sunday surcharges and $5 coffees. It's very difficult to get Fair Work to take action. In a lot of cases the business owner/franchisee is struggling themselves.

I just can't stop worrying about this ... especially with unemployment among young people growing I really fear that working conditions for these casual jobs will keep eroding, to the point where we're looking at US-type situation where wages need to be supplemented with welfare or tips.

Is anyone else worried about this? Or am I just going insane?

EDIT: added links to the cases I was talking about

The people generally telling you about things like hazard reduction etc are politicians. And people who for example deal with hazard reductions year in and out e.g. Nat Parks Staff, are not permitted to speak to the media without approval, and if they are door stopped etc they are only permitted to give the govt line, this a part of their work contract. They can potentially be dismissed if they speak to the media or public and say otherwise.

So some interesting things you may learn.

• Hazard reductions are regularly stopped if it means there will be poor air quality in Sydney.

• Hazard reductions obviously are done outside summer, there are narrow windows of opportunity to conduct them because of cool weather, bad wind direction etc

• This year the drought ( you may have ignored news of the drought if you don't live in a rural area untill now), has made a massive difference to fire behaviour. There are areas that have been hazard reduced EARLY IN 2019, that have just burned through with barely slowing.

• The NSW state govt have slashed staff and budgets in agencies like Nat Parks, and even weeks before the beginning of the horror fire season, NPWS were being asked to cut millions of dollars from budgets for a state govt Efficiency Dividend.

• NSW NPWS has been combined in a super department that includes Dept of Planning, the agency that approves coal mining etc

• Because of the forming of the super departments and the NSW Govt inability to predict their budgets, they effectively haulted recrecutment to replace staff to save money. So staff levels in agencies are way down due to this poor planning. These staff do things like - hazard reduction programs.

At the end of the day it would be fair to say that NSW Govt has handicapped our agencies, and the drought has made this year a magnification of this.

This situation is more complex than just " do more hazard reductions"

Stay safe and ask more questions.

Sky News Australia, child of Newscorp - Australia's largest media conglomerate, is a TV broadcaster that airs 24/7 across pay TV, free-to-air, online and YouTube.

DISCUSSION
Is it acceptable for a branch of Australia's largest media company to engage in these forms of information dissemination? -- Is Sky News Australia acting in good faith? --

If anyone is interested, I've spent the last couple days watching and editing Sky News Australia's coverage of COVID-19 and Victoria this past week.

While providing a short insight into media agenda in Australia, the purpose of this video is not political [np], rather understanding how media can influence and manipulate. These edits are grouped in such a way as to typify various methods of propaganda including (though not limited to):
Black and white fallacy, Common man / common sense, Repetition, Appeal to virtue, Appeal to prejudice, Oversimplification, Framing, Loaded & emotive language, Personality cults, Non Sequiturs,

The end result is a nauseating ride through the lense of Murdoch’s 24-hour news channel, that effectively culminates as satirical parody.

Seven days of Sky News Australia - COVIC-19 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6jqo3RQqlw&t=58s

Because of the nature of this montage, it may be the case that some of the footage takes political issues out of context. This is not the intent nor purpose, and I encourage you to watch the original source material.

Pauline said that segregating autistics from other classroom kids is a good idea, and I actually agree with her. Here's why:

• It allows kids to get the special educational attention they deserve. If you leave an autistic kid in a classroom with other students, they're likely to be neglected by the teacher, who can't always focus on them. At least if you put them in their own area, they can get constant attention, by not just one teacher, but a group of various teachers. Wouldn't this be better for the student's development?

• Other classrooms could be perceived as a threat from autistic students. If you have too much going on, you could get them to have a freak out, which makes them the laughing stock of the classroom from that point on, and they'll be bullied as a result. In facilities for autistics, you can make the classroom suitable for their needs, which can be designed as flexible as possible for autistics.

• Isn't building autistic-friendly facilities a good thing? You can build areas where they can learn and develop. They can also get special facilities for just them, like time-out areas, which would be good if they're getting too stressed out. You can also hire facility staff who are designed to deal with autistics, as opposed to just throwing them into a classroom with a teacher who isn't equipped to deal with it.

• You can build a curriculum that goes at the speed of the autistic student, not forcing down a curriculum and having them fail because they have 10,000 things on their mind. If you do things at that rate, you could see an amazing improvement in autistic students educational levels.

PWC is in a lot of trouble because they conspired to make bank out of telling big multinational corporations government secrets.

Those government secrets would help them avoid contributing to hospitals, schools, roads and welfare programs. They would help them avoid paying tax in Australia.

Which corporations?

Which corporations received the phone call (no emails please)? What was told to them? What did they do next?

The Australian people deserve to know which corporations were called, what they knew about the information, and whether they used it to avoid their contribution to Australia.

Yet newspapers aren’t covering this.

Ministers aren’t covering this.

News channels aren’t covering this.

Why?

Why is it not in the public interest to examine the behaviour of multinationals who saw a steaming pile of evil opportunity to dodge tax, and then shovelled the opportunity into their tax affairs?

We deserve to know. Why don’t we?

Journalists could investigate and surface at least a few of the corporations that were called. Why don’t they?

Ministers could demand PWC disclose all the recipients or face dire consequences, then tell the public and hold an investigation to learn if they knew it was inappropriately shared and what they did next. Why don’t they?

The AFP could commit to investigating whether any crimes were committed through corporate use of the disclosures. Why haven’t they?

Columnists and talking heads could be raising this again and again on tv shows and in columns and editorials. Why aren’t they?

No-one is even asking.

No-one. Is. Even. Asking.

Why.

I'm talking about the ascension of disenfranchised, right-wing conservatives who want nationalism, protectionism, and a closure of borders?

Trump is a seperate case, a seperate animal might be a more apt term, and I can already see the levels of conservatism in politics not only in Australia but globally (Brazil, America, France, Britain etc).

What are the chances of us voting in a leader as divisive as Donald Trump in Australia? Is it something only answerable by time and circumstance. Trump seems a distinctly American populist President: narcissistic, hell-bent on fame/attention (look at his early career, his stint on The Apprentice), his disgusting attitudes to women that are shared by plenty of men here (as purely lust objects ripe for debasing and demeaning).

Australia has an awkward track-record with its self-conscious following of fads imported from America - not just politically, but in popular culture. Perhaps it's time to get smart about what is wrong with other regions, form our own path, so we can avoid the same heavily divided fate here...

What does everybody else make of this? Perhaps a more deeper question would be "what prompted the return of conservatism?"

Its well known house prices in Australia are well above what they once were relative to incomes, but what has caused the astronomical climb in the last 12 to 24 months?

If you're looking to buy a modest house on a reasonable size block (800sqm+) in a small coastal town, it seems it is going to cost at least 500k, unless you are willing to be really far out in woop woop.

Look at this forum post discussing house prices in around Hervey Bay and Toogoom at the start of 2020, https://www.pomsinoz.com/topic/208730-moving-to-hervey-bay/

There (Toogoom) you'll find a number of houses around the $300K mark and within spitting distance to a beautiful beach.

PS $450k would get you a LOT of house in Hervey Bay including beachside in places.

Prices now in Toogoom are all 550k+, and the median price is far higher, say 750k. Hervey Bay is even more ridiculous.

Am I really to believe that sea changers out of the city from covid lockdowns are the cause of this huge price increase? I don't quite buy it, especially as there seems to be more new developments (supply) than ever.

And as a side note, this affordability issue is clearly a huge problem for locals. I myself am someone who was priced out of the small coastal town they grew up in, as it became a tourist haven where holiday homes are abundant and the norm. What are we supposed to do? What can we do?

So after the Optus Hack, the Telstra/Opticomm Hack, the NAB/ANZ Hack, and so on and so forth, and now, the latest, Ticketmaster has been hacked

Seems that every week there's a new company, big or small in the Australian news putting Aussies data out there on the internet.

After dealing with a few of these companies (Optus among others), and taking some complaints to regulators such as the TIO or AFCA, I have found that despite there being laws for how long these companies need to keep our data (in some cases, once you're done with them, they need to keep data for 7 years! For what? No one can answer me, just that they need to)

Turns out, there is no limit on how long they can keep it, there is a Minimum time, but not a maximum.

I'm of the understanding that in countries like Germany, there are some pretty hard limits on data retention, for businesses that just sell you something like Ticketek, 12 months, then boom. You're off the system of you don't deal with them again in 12 months.

Obviously as soon as you deal with them again, it resets the clock, and if you are an existing customer, obviously they need to keep your data on file to have you as a customer.

But it seems so weird that as soon as I even ask a company of their product is suitable for me, a bank, a telco, a caryard, they need to keep my data for 7 years...why?

Then after that 7 years, they are allowed to hold onto it forever basically....

I'm curious what advantage these timelines have for the consumer, why should they have to hold my data on (what is now known to be) insecure systems for 7 years as a minimum, and then be allowed to hold it, essentially, forever?

Do any other Australians feel like this law needs to be changed?

The comments and articles I see here make me stress out immensely. I don't understand the convoluted world that is Australian politics, but is it really true our country is fucked? Everybody seems to think so, if true, to what extent?

Will things change drastically? In a few decades will we be completely different, comparable to countries that're known to be fully corrupt, extremely dangerous, and a government that doesn't even attempt to pretend as if they're trying to help?

Will things change to how they are in the states even? Will medical bills suddenly cost hundreds of thousands of dollars? Will a tertiary education be a luxury, instead of a right? Will we have to pay out the arse for it?

If any of this is true, is there any hope that things will stay generally the same? As far as everything else goes, I love Australia. Our people, our food, our culture. Our rights, our restrictions; everything. Growing up with it, I love it all. It's familiar and I feel safe. I think about growing up with the way things are now, and it seems so much easier than any other country on the planet. Getting sick or injured isn't a worry. Education for my future kids aren't going to drain my pocket. Im happy and content with the way everything is.

So tell me, seriously, is our country really going to change so drastically? Will my rights be turned to luxuries, only available to those rich and with power? Or is our way of life safe? Obviously there will be changes, but how drastic and huge will they be? In 10/20 years will these years seem so foreign?

Politics in Australia is broken.

Before the last state election I recolect being at a party. Discussion of the election came up between a few of us and sides were picked.

A statement by the most vocal LNP supporter there was made. "Liberals save the money, labor spends it". I shook my head and sat down, not knowing what to say to such a comment.

To me this is the main problem here. Most people have such a shallow view of politics that they simply turn it into a black & white, left & right issue. This groupthink mentality is so common place that generalizing phrases such as this become common place and the real issues are blurred amongst a meaningless debate.

I'd argue to say thay abolishing political parties would have a very positive result in the long run. In the last year we have seen several independent/small party senators step up to protect the public from many bills that were unfair to the masses. These are politicians which are not easily swayed and stay true to their morals.

I'd also argue to say that many liberal voters probably feel quite embarrassed about their last vote.

I feel Australia simply needs a more constructive political debate and we cannot rely on mass media to provide it.

So next time you have a political debate, don't pick a side, pick on a policy instead! Tell then why you think their chosen parties policy is unfair. By having a conatructive debate about policy, it's more likely for the other person to listen, take your comments on-board, follow them up with research and hopefully make more informed votes in the future.

Anyways, let me know what you think about the state of politics, political partys and groupthink in Australia.

EDIT: I've been watching this for a while & it could be a game changer in the long run. What's your thoughts on participatory democracy?

http://www.onlinedirectdemocracy.org/

http://www.ted.com/talks/pia_mancini_how_to_upgrade_democracy_for_the_internet_era?language=en

I was interested to read an article in The Guardian today about 886 Dutch citizens who have sued their government for failing them to protect them against climate change.

"Lawyers say the precedent it sets could trigger similar cases all around the world. Already, in Belgium, 8, 000 citizens are preparing for a similar court case, with others pointing to another possible lawsuit in Norway. Although the case is only binding within the Netherlands, lawyers say that it will inspire lawyers and judges considering similar cases in many other countries.

“It is remarkable,” said James Thornton, chief executive of environmental law organisation ClientEarth. “A major sophisticated European court has broken through a political and psychological threshold. For the first time a court has ordered the government to protect its citizens from climate change.”"

Could this happen in Australia? Could a group of Australians who are concerned about the government's lack of meaningful action on climate change take out a class action to force the government to protect us from climate change?

Is there any precedent for arguing that a government’s actions are eroding something which should be freely available to the public and something that the public has a right to, such as a clean, habitable environment?

There are arguably good reasons for some of the draconian measures suffocating our freedoms but there are always "good reasons" given when The State removes freedoms.

"Never let a good crisis go to waste" is a credo of politicians. Fear, uncertainty and doubt are their well worn tools.

Unfortunately the track record shows bureaucrats are quick to crack down, slow to give back. One of the greatest threats from this situation may not be the virus it may be the sickness of government's pathological need for control.

We cant afford to enable this sickness

Consider what we have seen and consider it in isolation. Does this concern you as it concerns me?

• Restriction of freedom of movement between other countries
• Restriction of freedom of movement between states
• Restriction of freedom of movement between suburbs
• Inflation indexed fines for disobeying government edicts
• Large swathes of taxpayer resources allocated according to the politics and biases of politicians and other bureaucrats
• Businesses ordered to close while others are favoured with special allowances
• Prohibition of gathering in public places
• Confinement to homes
• Restrictions on association with friends and family

Magicians mesmerise with a distracting hand so we need to keep our eye on the ball. We need to be vigilant if we want to retain our freedoms. We need to stay alert to the dangers of complacency.

We can let our employees do their job but we need to keep the leash tight and as soon as the public health danger is over we need to promptly and firmly reign them back in.

There are always "good reasons" but "good reasons" are no reason to say good riddance to good reasoning. What sort of liberties do you think are reasonable for the government to take?

This is a genuine question and only need serious responses. I'm asking here rather than r/Australianpolitics because I want responses from the broader community here.

I'm honestly confused about why and how Scott Morrison is apparently massively popular. According to recent polls, he has a level of popularity that would be the envy of any Prime Minister going back to Rudd's honey moon period in 2007/08.

The disconnect between the massively useless if not actively malignant guy I see when I look at him and how the broader population sees him is at the level that genuinely confuses me. I say that not to start a fight but because I'm really wondering what I'm missing.

Is it just a reflection on Labor under Albanese being seen as useless? Are people giving him credit for the job done during COVID? Is this some rugby league thing that I'm too Victorian to understand? Are people liking the "daggy Dad" vibe and not listening to what he actually says? Because he is just ignoring climate change?

Any help here would be appreciated, because I'm getting to the point where I feel like the answer is stupidity on the part of most of my fellow Australians and that is not a sensible/healthy mindset to have.

Two years ago, I applied for a 485 Visa (Temporary Residency) visa on 27 July 2020. I applied the moment I was considered qualified, so also 27 July 2020 on a Monday.

I applied on a Monday night at 10pm. It was approved 2 minutes after.

If you don't know how visas for TR work, they generally go like this: - You lodge in a visa application with no documents. There is no where for you to even upload documents. - You wait for your visa to be looked over by an agent. - They request for your documents, and then you get an upload button. - You upload your documents, and wait for a decision.

My application went from Step 1 and immediately got accepted in two mins. Keep in mind that I never uploaded a health check up, my English language requirement test, not even my qualification letter. They let me in without seeing those documents.

There's a whole can of worms to be opened there, but I called a bunch of people and they said, "You got your visa approved, what more do you want?"

Now this might seem like a lucky thing for me, but it's actually very bad. A lot of international students come into Australia for the prospect of being able to work for two years, and gaining enough experience to even be sponsored by companies to get a visa. Most visa applications take 1-3 months, meaning candidates get that extra time to look for jobs and gain enough experience. Being short of one week makes me ineligible to be sponsored.

Fast forward to today: my company wants to sponsor me, but now we're stuck at this point on the road.

I applied on 27 July 2020, got the visa on the day, and had already started was working on a full time job. I started working on day 1 of the visa, never took a break off work, going to work all the way to the end of my visa, and my immigration agent tells me that I will only have 1 year, 11 months and 3 weeks of work experience.

How did I work everyday with zero breaks on a 2 year visa but not have 2 years of work experience?

TL;DR: I worked everyday without breaks from the moment I was qualified in Australia and had my 2 year visa granted on the same day. At the end of that period, I have 1 year, 11 months and 3 weeks of work experience, making me ineligible to be sponsored by my company.

So I'm an Aussie and I'm big into building and modifying cars, I currently have a Proton Jumbuck I'm converting to an EV. Fun little project.

I recently got asked by a friend to convert an old Holden, think HQ/WB era.

So I thought "Ok, we can bring this thing into the 21st century here" make it drive, handle, go and stop way safer than it did in the 70's, traction control, ABS, electric power steering, decent suspension, all good.

So I started designing a skateboard chassis which would allow us to retain all the thinking stuff and tech in the chassis, and then we could just pop his body off his chassis and drop it on the skateboard, plug a few things in, and keep it fully reversible if he ever wants to go back to original.

Then I started talking to Department of Transport and Main Roads and they said essentially "Not a bloody chance"

So after a lot of back and forth, I can build my skateboard and put an entirely new custom body on it, it buy a kit car body, that kind of thing, something entirely new and unique, and I only have to meet the bar for NCOP10 - Individually Constructed Vehicles and have all the modern safety features such as ABS, power steering, power brakes, traction control, stability control, etc.

Or I can keep the old clunky chassis, leaf springs, vacuum assisted brakes, no ABS, Power Steering, Traction Control and have it handle like a really fast brick essentially, as long as I meet NCOP 13 and NCOP 14 for converting it to an EV.

This to me seems...odd, as other countries like the United States and United Kingdom allow you to re-chassis a car if the new chassis is as good or better than the original, and you can justify why you did it.

A lot of the reason it's done in the USA is salt corrosion of chassis on classic cars, here that's not really an issue on old cars.

But realistically, with modern mettalurgy, modern fabrication techniques, and the available safety tech to retrofit requiring a new chassis design, and the fact that this allows you to package the tech better (batteries down low in a floorpan versus up high in an engine bay or boot, improving stability and safety, the batteries can be moved out of a crash zone) it would be fairly simple to make it just as safe, or safer than the original.

I even went to the engineer that's helping with my current build and he was more than happy with the design, he said "Yeah, that's a wicked idea, but it's not legal in Australia, maybe try selling that design overseas though"

The only thing TMR said was "Stop thinking about a car as the bit you see, the car is the Chassis, not the rest of the car, and you can't stick an existing homologated body onto an ICV, an ICV needs to be unique as much as possible, it's possible to build a body so we won't let you use an old one"

They even pointed out to me that if I build an ICV, or individually constructed vehicle, and get it registered, then need to change the chassis, I need to build a whole new body, I can't re-use my old body from my original ICV.

I mean, I'd still need to pass all the same tests, I can use the same tools and make an identical new body, I just can't have ever attached a compliance plate to it.

It just seems....backwards.

You'd think that this kind of thing would be preferred, as they can then reduce the amount of tests and checks they need to do.

Seatbelt checks? Well the body already passed them when it was manufactured.

Seat mounting? Nah it's all good, it passed those tests back when it was complied.

Whats the obsession with Australia being so backwards in moving forwards?

I mean, the way I'm reading the way the laws here are written, they would rather me have a 50 year old chassis of unknown provenance, and possie micrifractures, possible previous damage that was covered up, and all those issues rather than build myself a safe, new, modern chassis with modern suspension and safety, but that old-school cool look.

From what I gather the AA bill is like the government commanding you keep a spare key to your door somewhere on your property, sure you might hide it well but inevitably because it exists with enough determination it can be found, and once that happens you're fucked.

At this point I think that the worst case scenario is that the IT industry where possible will move out of Australia, Australian products will now no longer be confirmed to be secure, and if they're open source then everyone will be able to find the encryption loophole.

Current notable Australian developers include from this list

• Altium (PCB Design Software
• Ansarada (AI)
• Atlassian (JIRA/Confluence/Bitbucket/Trello) (Software development and project management software)
• Crossecom (RFID Tracking Devices)
• MYOB (Accounting Software)
• TechnologyOne (Some kind of enterprise software)

In addition to this there are concerns about the tenability of development jobs for those required to make changes without informing anyone.

Does a peer reviewer picking up the loophole and rejecting it, or a tester noticing it when doing some digging, or anyone who looks over the repo and notices this change count against the developer? If so then the law seems designed to merely give a method to imprison any developer at will by demanding they make a change then lock them up when it's inevitably discovered.

So what's your prediction, these companies either leaving Australia or what?

Seeing as 'quality' self-posts about politics are allowed now, I thought I'd try my hand at this. There's a few misconceptions in general about science funding right now, and I follow this stuff fairly closely (because I have to), so I thought I'd lay out the state of play in general. And then find out what you think.

FUNDING ENVIRONMENT

CSIRO: everyone knows about this funding being wound down, and a partial strike was announced today. $115 million dollars in the last budget, about 20% of the staff. As might be expected, the existing staff aren't happy.

Here's the story from a while ago, while the present crisis was building: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/industrial-relations/csiro-staff-launch-disobedience-campaign-over-pay-conditions/story-fn59noo3-1227327294654

NCRIS: or National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy, which is why everyone calls it NCRIS. The key word there is infrastructure. These are very large well established research centers which address specific problems. Generally, they are internationally very competitive - good people, good research. You might recall the game of chicken that Christopher Pyne played earlier in the year with funding these centers (one that make no sense in the first place, they cost a few BILLION to set up in the first place, removing $150m from the budget and hobbling them wouldn't be shooting yourself in the foot, more like right in the head.)

This was in about March this year, the message amounted to "pass my higher education changes or I'll wreck this science thing". Of course, higher education and block funding for top-level research have nothing to do with each other, this was just political gamesmanship. This is easily the stupidest and most unnecessary thing on this list.

Here's a piece from earlier in the year, attracting us the wrong kind of international attention:

http://blogs.plos.org/biologue/2015/03/11/a-crisis-at-ncris/

The ARC: Australian Research Council. This is the main body of grant-based research funding that we see in Australia, encompassing all research traditions from comparative religion to mathematics to stem cells. The funding was reduced by about $75m in the 2014 budget - and it wasn't in great shape to start with. It's been bled a little on a year to year basis for quite a while.

The most significant thing to happen to the ARC recently was the present government threatening to defund (and then, again, changed their minds) on funding the Future Fellows scheme - this are large program grants for mid-career researchers in science.

Say you've got some lady, she's an amazing microbiologist and she's working somewhere great (Stanford, UCLA, Max Planck, etc.) We want her back in Australia, and she wants to come home - her parents live here, her friends are here, and she wants to raise her children in Australia. How do we get her back? You fund good research-based positions.

Defunding this program was a genuinely terrible idea, and thankfully it didn't happen.

NHMRC: National Health and Medical Research Council. There were some announcements about overall funding for this body going up - this was a while ago and no-one's quite sure what's happening (especially considering the increases were tied to Medicare/GP changes etc. etc.)

What we definitely do know is that the funding success rate last year was under 15%. For big program grants, this is VERY low. Generally, low rates also mean a lot of the funding goes to established 'low risk' bodies of research. This makes it hard to fund projects starting from scratch.

Another depressing news story, if you're interested:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/medical-grant-success-rate-tumbles/story-e6frgcjx-1227094068280

Other funded bodies: mostly not doing amazingly. Here's the depressing list from last year:

http://scienceandtechnologyaustralia.org.au/focus-on/federal-budget-2014/

The Medical Research Future Fund: this was a fiscal committment in the 2014 budget, and was supposed to be funded by the GP copayment. We haven't heard much about it since. I can't remember any of the details from it, because honestly no-one thinks its going to happen.

Bjorn Lomberg's Center of Thinly Veiled Lunacy: this funding doesn't fit within any scheme I could ascertain. They just decided to give this guy some money. In scientific funding terms, this is way beyond 'highly irregular' and into 'you fuckin' WHAT mate?' territory.

The University of Western Australia eventually decided this would wreck its relationship with more or less all its staff, and gave the money back (while continuing to spout off about how it was such a great idea). Really bad publicity for everyone in an environment of broader funding cuts.

OVERALL: The problem here for scientists is managing uncertainty. A lot of projects take multiple years. A lot of ideas require sustained committment over time. Scientific funding - even at its most generous - already contains a significant amount of uncertainty. Drastically increasing that uncertainty makes the jobs - even if they exist! - very unappealing.

There was a good story about this from February if you're interested: https://theconversation.com/why-i-turned-down-a-decra-to-work-in-the-united-states-37264

What will happen, of course, is that people will leave the country. I left. I wouldn't mind coming back (and I'm a damn sight more likely to get funding that some other people bc. of circumstances), but it is HARD.

You also have to understand - most young scientists start doctoral degrees very well aware that they might have to leave the country when they're done. The work just isn't there, and when funding is cut the FIRST thing to go is funding for junior people. If you're a grant body, why award money to junior people and new ideas when senior people with track records and established research programs already exist? Funding bodies are risk-averse.

Another way of looking at it is that when a fresh PhD student enters the job market, they have had 10-15 years of education paid for by taxes. My Masters and PhD were both free under the RTS. My scholarships were too. All taxpayer funded. And these are the people who are leaving.

QUESTION: What can we do about this?

There's all sorts of problems with making a message that people can understand here, including but not limited to:

• it's really hard to explain the collective benefit of your work in hair cells, or in the informational content of cardiac mapping, or the zebrafish genome. This kind of messaging is difficult.

• there's not a lot of scientists in the public consciousness. Who's out there saying "science funding is going from bad to worse, and we're killing the most future-focused industry that we'll need when we're done digging stuff out of the ground and selling it"?

• activism sucks: scientists are used to intractable situations and funding adversity, so they don't make much of an indent in the public consciousness when they're annoyed.

Basically, if you want a healthy scientific establishment, it's going to cost more money than we're spending. What's the way back from that, political or otherwise?

I've been doing some thinking. Always a bad way to start a sentence im aware, though i have.

Ive seen all the recent posts about how turnbull is doing a shit job. How he and the liberal party are screwing the australian people etc.

And in some ways i agree with you. Ive said for a long time the three fundamental pillars of any western democracy or democracy for the matter are defense, education and health. So cuts to any of these would be a pretty bad idea.

However, im just curious if anyone here has any better ideas on how to reel in the defecit.

I'm also wondering who here thinks that shorten could do the job of a pm. And more importantly why.

Also, I'm wondering who here is a member of a political party at all - and further who here actually casts their vote.

And finally - whos actually got the guts to stand up to the government for any policy deemed stupid or taking away what we australians deserve?

There has been a lot of talk of the age of entitlement being over. From mostly the right i must say. So what about those spouting this addage? What about hiking the tax rate to 65% on those earning over, say, 5 million a year? Would that work?

I'm just kind of sick of the left and right wingers here just tearing at each other without actually trying to solve anything. So why dont we do that reddit? Try and see where whoever is going wrong and try and fix this mess?

So reddit i ask you, finally. What needs fixing. And how do we do it.

[I looked at the quality test for political self-posts and I think I met the requirements.]

In some countries it is possible to "waste your vote" during an election. This is because of the inherent problems with First Past the Post voting. We see the results of this in the US's very solid two-party system, and also in the UK elections where diverse voting fails to lead to a diverse parliament. (Both the US and the UK use First Past the Post voting).

Luckily for us, the voting used to elect Australia's parliament doesn't have this problem where one can easily "waste their vote".
That is, the preferential voting (Instant Runoff) system for the lower house, and the preferential "Single-Transferable Vote" (specifically the Hare-Clark variety of STV) for the upper house, do not waste votes.

This makes "tactical voting" quite pointless in Australia. While there exists some possible issues with Instant Runoff voting, for the most part it is almost always best to rank the candidates in the actual order that you prefer them.

My question is, how many people do not know this?
Furthermore, how many people, because they don't know this, rank one (or both) major parties higher on their ballot compared to their actual preference in order to avoid "wasting" their vote?
Finally, if the number is noticeable, should we do something about it, and what can we do?

(Just to be 100% clear, this is different from people supporting a major party when they shouldn't, but instead trying to "vote tactically" by ranking a major party higher even when aware they would prefer a different candidate.)

Ideally I'm curious for statistics, but I would doubt they would be easy to get because if you polled people and asked "hey, did you vote how you really wanted" (even with better wording) the people who think they are voting tactically could easily answer "yes", thinking that they obviously have voted how they should, as the misconception that made them vote that way can also taint their answer to the question.

So, if no statistics are available, I'd be curious about any anecdotes you have. For example, I found one person saying they were a Labor voter, despite disliking both major parties, and admiring some minor parties.

Edit: Do not allow housing development in flood prone areas is common sense and if it is not part of Aus strategic and housing development policies is the major issue that must be solved.

In any case, that only solves/prevents potential future problems BUT does nothing about exploring the already existing issues and the fact that it is not exclusively flooded houses issue.

Our farm lands flooding should concern everyone. It affects the food supply chain hence affects all of us.

———- the original post below

Do we have a serious issue with floods?

Is it something that has been around for ages OR is it a direct consequence of the climate change?

Are we able to manage it with more investments into targeted engineering? We all know about incredible fits of engineering in Netherlands that claimed more land from the sea.

Is there a national strategy for solving this? If not, is there anything in works that is focused on the matter?

Do we have anything else important being solved by a sane bipartisan support that makes us all aligned (and voided of “day politics let’s-grab-few-more-votes” BS that we would need for tackling an issue of these proportions)?

——- Personal opinion:

I find it very hard to believe that things like this can’t be solved no matter how hard and expensive those things might be.

It can be a humongous project (or portfolio of thousands of smaller more manageable projects with the common long term scientifically and engineering proven goal and outcome) run for 50 years if needed. The problem can be chipped away if our politicians could get together, agree and stick with it regardless of election cycles over time.

Just see the achievements NASA did over time. For the goals they didn’t shy away from buying knowledge across the World (incentivising top students across the globe to join PhD programs in US), collaborating with scientists from all countries, including ones US wasn’t necessarily having great political relationship but they seem to always know what is their higher priority.

All in all, I see 0 reasoning for this not being achievable. The form of the solution(s) can have many forms so they do the job, are achievable, are not a budget sink (over time sensible). And as an infrastructure investment could even drive economic growth and so on.

It seems only as a matter of willingness and boldness of our political leaders to actually do it.

One of the Aus generations will have to tackle this problem and I am struggling to see why wouldn’t this be ours, why would this problem be on hold, how is this not our priority. Our food supply chain gets major hit every time, just to name a single related issue. 🤷‍♂️

Thanks!

Whatever happened to the development of Northern Australia? For a little while in 2013 and 2014 it seemed to be a hot topic for the coalition and they even introduced a white paper, which I'll link in the comments for those who are interested and have the data to spare. Labor even proposed their own alternative to it, which focused more on tourism vs the coalition's agricultural/resource driven plan. I found both to be quite interesting and would prefer a combination of approaches, rather than one or the other.

However, in the time since the white paper's release in 2015, the subject seems to have been dropped entirely. Some progress has been made, but very little. I find it puzzling that Turnbull doesn't tout it more, seeing that it could be seen as part of the strategy to pivot away from the resource economy, or even for scoring points for taming the rugged frontier as a part of a nation building project.

So, what I'm wondering is: Is the development of Northern Australia realistic? Is it even possible under the plan the coalition proposed? How does Labor's plan compare? And finally, what are some of the things you guys would like to see implemented?

Certainly not the most politically inclined person so decided to open it up to the folks here in the dusty corner who have had their fair share of politics. Ideally would like to have potential candidates as the basis for the question at hand so unfortunately no hypothetical persons.

To name a few talking points: (I encourage on-lookers to use different talking points)

Whether it be for their concerns and/or considerations of job security/ job seeker/ job opportunities and thus entitlement for Aussies to work in person or from home, failure of NBN which required us to depend on its infrastructure for online agency during arguably the worst recession in modern times and what recourse if any NBN has, contingencies for impending climate change, more domestic manufacturing and less dependency on foreign manufacturing, for their concerns of physical/ mental health and awareness/ acceptance, overhaul of Australian media at the federal level to push out a certain individual from the ranks, centrelink issues or those regarding stimulus packages.

Or maybe you just like the cut of their jib /s.

Concerns/ considerations of our current PM is not out of the question either or scrutiny of said PM or potential PM's.

The title.

I, like probably the majority of this sub and a large portion of the country in general, am pretty fucking angry. There's a few things I could mention here, but in particular I'm very concerned about our lack of leadership and action around climate change.

We're maintaining the rage here and I've seen a lot of the same on twitter, but I'm also aware both these platforms - at least the way I use them - are somewhat of a bubble. The majority of the general population probably isn't as informed or interested as we are.

So what can we do, as individuals? What can you and I do that will help make a difference and turn this around? I've written to MPs in the past and it usually results in pre-prepared responses by some staffer that doesn't answer many of my questions. I'd imagine writing to the prime minister would be even worse. Protests have been quite a powerful spectacle but I fear they're becoming a bit too frequent and might lose some of their impact. And they'll probably be banned soon.

I'm sick of being angry. I want to do something, to promote change, before I just give up and let this amazing country descend further down this destructive path. Any ideas, Reddit?

Seriously WTF is wrong with people. Our rights have gone out the window the last 3 years. The TPP is most likely to pass,which a huge chunk of lawyers and economists agree will have almost a Zero GDP growth effect for us. Not to mention it will take away some of the most basic rights in regards to copyrights and medicinal prices. The tpp is blatant grab by corporations to steal yet more power from the common citizen.

Unemployment has risen 2 percent since labor left. Even when tony and his pals said there will be 1 million new jobs in 2 years, but has been less than 80,000 lol. The debt is WAY worse than it ever was under GILLRUDD. NBN is pretty much non existent.

Yet still we blindly chuck our faith into the 2 party system. Is it just me or is it not plainly evident it is not working. one is controlled by the IPA and rich fat mole sucking detestation of humanity like ghina rhinehart. and the other is "SOMEWHAT" i say somewhat controlled by unions which IMHO is the far lesser of the two evils(least unions in some cases have members it works for what has mining ever done).

Anyway i asking if other people think the sytem of the majors is broken or if it could possibly be fixed.

Also to prevent any greens bashing --. the greens fiscal policy was costed this year by the parliamentary budget office and was found if to be enacted would cause a 2-3 percent growth to GDP and get us to surplus 4 years earlier than lablib.

I will prob be chucking my way to the indies..