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If you're seeing this, I'm in jail.
  • soldiers were being wrongly accused and illegally investigated for war crimes.

    Is honestly pretty unambiguous wording.

    And the other evidence against your claim is, why would McBride had been pissed off by the ABC's reporting of his leaked files? If you were right, the ABC's angle would be completely aligned with McBride's. Why would Oakes allege there was disagreement there?

  • If you're seeing this, I'm in jail.
  • Did you ready the article? McBride initially posted on his personal blog, which caught the attention of ABC journalist Dan Oakes. The information was leaked to Oakes and the ABC from there.

    My reading of the article was McBride didn't initially think there were war crimes committed but:

    ADF leadership alleg(ed) that SAS soldiers were being wrongly accused and illegally investigated for war crimes.

    “If there is political bullshit going on against soldiers, and it doesn’t matter whether they’re SAS or not, you need to stand up for it,”

    McBride didn't think war crimes had happened which is why he asserts that the soldiers were being wrongly accused and investigated. Oakes disagreed.

    Now the question is, why is Oakes making this allegation allegation against McBride if it's not true?

  • Ambulance cancelled for man who later died in custody
  • I'm sorry mate you are a terrible first aider and you should reconsider your approach before someone dies on your watch. As an EMT, loss of consciousness is absolutely something that warrants clinical assessment by a healthcare professional.

    As a first aider you should understand the chain of survival, one of which is "early access to advanced care". Delaying calling the ambulance completely violated that training. You should understand that the protocol DRSABCD has "send for help" after any response less than "alert" is identified. Your anecdote already shows you cannot follow the protocol and are not acting within your training. It also doesn't say "go back and cancel the ambulance if they regain consciousness". The training is simply "put them in the recovery position" which implies "and wait for ambulance to arrive".

    The reason it is taught that way is, you are not a doctor qualified to diagnose whether someone's complex condition is an emergency or not. The absolutely worse thing you can do is make the wrong choice and delay necessary care. The best case is the paramedics come, assesses the patient, and decided they don't need to go to hospital and they go on their merry way (at no cost to the patient). So for you, you always make the worst case scenario.

    It's not your responsibility as a first aider to consider the strain on the ambulance or the financial outcome to the patient. Your duty of care is to the medical outcome of your patient, nothing else.

  • Our children are victims of road violence. We need to talk about the deadly norms of car use
  • On a completely unrelated note, I was scrolling down the article and saw a big X and clicked it thinking it was a popup or ad and hit it out of habit, but it was actually the embedded tweet.

    Another reason why the X rebrand is dumb.

  • Queensland opposition backflips on support for state's Path to Treaty
  • There was a podcast episode, I think from Democracy Sausage, that talked about how historically referendum no campaigning parties actually do poorly in the subsequent general election since they lean in to absolutely insane arguments during the campaign, which gets them the referendum win, but the loss in the general election. I hope that happens here.

  • Australia has long debated this housing idea, but in Auckland it's already working
  • I actually find state politics to be very different than federal or even local politics. Here in NSW, Labor have massively ramped up development, even more than the Coalition did (their head of the department of planning suggested some corruption is acceptable for accelerated development). However they put the brakes on public transport projects started by the Coalition.

    Local council level Greens and Labor are all anti-development NIMBYs though.

    Probably goes to show that "left" and "right" aren't really monolithic terms.

  • Australia has long debated this housing idea, but in Auckland it's already working
  • I don't think the left and right divide on this issue has ever been that clean. The left are generally anti-development (to maintain local characteristics and heritage) but pro high density developer (but always in someone else's suburb). The right have been pro-development but mostly in poor or outlining suburbs.

    There's so much self interest at play it's hard to actually implement a good sensible centre policy.

  • Seven Peter Dutton lies on Voice to Parliament corrected - Uluru Statement from the Heart
  • It is, but unfortunately it's the smallest increase in representation that we could offer to our First Australians that could actually get up. I don't need to comment on how even that little increase in influence that I'd bring proposed is going down.

  • Intergenerational Report 2023: Australian economy built on rent seekers who produce nothing
  • Completely agree. That property value grows over time in a fixed area is natural behaviour, as an area develops, density grows and demand increases. But that growth is not necessarily "productive". The only time that value is productive is if it incentivises redevelopment into higher density dwellings to meet the demand in that area. However this has been perverted into property owners who have paid off their property to just sit on the valuable land and reap the capital gains.

    Capital gains from land value really needs to be taxed in a special way as you suggest. I would propose two approaches:

    • Adding land tax (and abolishing stamp duty on property) that's not based on your property value but on the value of a property you're on (so high density apartments would end up with minimal land tax

    • increasing capital gains from land tax by either having a progressive taxation rate on capital gains due to land value (which would ignore increase property value from renovations etc) or capping it entirely (so gains above that are taxed at 100%).

  • Five cars destroyed at Sydney Airport after EV battery explosion
  • This smells like the owners left the car for an extended period of time for a trip and decided unplugging the battery would be a way to maintain its charge during the time, like a normal AAA battery.

    Except that's not how an EV's lithium battery works at all, and by manually disconnecting it, they've either damaged it, or disconnected it from any active monitoring that's needed to keep it stable.

    Wouldn't be surprised if it comes out that the owner is some tech enthusiast or amateur mechanic/electrician.

  • Just 724 new apartments were built last year, down from around 4000 previously
  • I think your first paragraph nails it. Developers are holding off development not to introduce artificial scarcity, but to maximise development. So they keep the land empty until either they can convince the council to approve a higher density, or a change in state government gives them an avenue to bulldoze through the council roadblocks.

    At least in NSW a single graph is needed to show this relationship: https://www.planning.nsw.gov.au/policy-and-legislation/housing/housing-supply-insights/quarterly-insights-monitor-q1/trends-in-housing-supply the correlation between number of approvals and number of constructions is basically exact. Which means, the roadblock to construction is council approval, not corporate greed or developers gaming the system to generate artificial scarcity or any other conspiracy you can think of.

    I do agree that removing infrastructure charges is not a solution. From my perspective, this won't do anything since developers aren't blocked because of costs, but either materials supply or council blockades. Removing infrastructure charges solves neither of these issues.

  • Just 724 new apartments were built last year, down from around 4000 previously
  • The opposing viewpoint is that the reason apartment building is slowed is because developers are incentivised to maximise profit, and thus they are disincentivised from building too many apartments at once, creating an artificial scarcity and keeping home prices high. Developers are land-banking to the detriment of society as a whole.

    I find this hard to believe. Every time council releases land, or the state government increases allowable density, developers are licking their lips and inundating councils with applications. Why submit an application, with the architect and application costs to get a DA to sit on, if they want to create artificial scarcity. Just don't sit on the land without a DA.

    The reality is, since covid, building companies have been collapsing left right and centre due to supply chain issues which has led to way higher building materials costs. Projects builders have started are now operating at a loss and causing builders to go bust. Furthermore, the lack of building supplies means projects can't proceed, despite the record demand for construction work. It's really one of those rare situations where a highly in demand industry is in recession.

    Just just way more convenient and fits the narrative to, once again, put it down to pure corporate greed.

  • www.abc.net.au Terminally ill man facing deportation after criminal conviction pleads to spend his last days at home

    Robert Taylor has lived in Australia since he was a baby but is facing deportation after being convicted for aggravated burglary. There are calls for him to be allowed to die with his family beside him.

    Terminally ill man facing deportation after criminal conviction pleads to spend his last days at home
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    Has anyone gotten an NBN upgrade from FTTN

    I heard that NBN have released a pretty long list of suburbs they've earmarked to get upgrades from FTTN to FTTP, but it's a bit light on details like when that happens, who will get it and how it'll happen.

    Has anyone seen yet happen, and what was it like? Did they upgrade apartments or houses only? Does it go to the point or just to the curb/basement?

    I have some issues with my coax connection but I'm wondering if I should kick up a stink about it now or just wait for the fibre upgrade.

    8
    InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)SU
    surreptitiouswalk @aussie.zone
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