Nath

No. Read past the headline. While they don't like it, Google is like the only US company actually complying with the Australian media code.

Getting lumped in with the others because you are a member of the same association is like me getting blamed for the actions of my local member of parliament because he represents me.

We may have actually exported it to the rest of the world! In 1970, we had the Hutt River Province secede from the nation of Australia. To be fair to old Prince Leonard - he had valid grievances and was not just a nutter. The Australian Government was imposing wheat quotas on him when he was just about to harvest, and frankly didn't exactly offer him much in the way of services.

According to my 2-minutes of Wikipedia research (which makes me an expert on this topic, don't you know?), the Soverign Citizen Movement appeared in the USA in the "early 1970's". Which sounds to me like it may have drawn inspiration from the waves that Prince Leonard was making in Western Australia.

So I had a brief look at the Labor policies, and to be frank, it all looks reasonable. I didn't see anything there where I thought "that's an awful position".

So I re-visited the Liberal version. Maybe they all sound fine at first. Oh wow the Liberal one is awful. It's all 'Labor bad' and 'Under Labor...' and 'fix the mess of Labor'. Why are they the only party of the three to trash talk their opponents?

Anecdotal, I realise - but this is the first time I've ever heard of any school in Australia school dropping swimming lessons. To hear that it is one-in-four is not just surprising, it's downright difficult to believe. From looking on the Royal Lifesaving website, I haven't found this report. I have found something that appears to refute the news article however.

I think I'm going to need a source on this one.

I was discussing this just a couple of days ago. Greens have terrible marketing and are in desperate need of a rebrand. I'm curious though: Which of their policies are you opposed to? Because honestly: if breaking up bank cartels, restoring Internet privacy laws, promoting local manufacturing, science and research as well as improving the calibre of education are bad, then I guess I'm bad.

For me, my criticism of Greens comes mainly from putting stuff in policies that would be better suited to "dreams and aspirations". They have a tendency to put stuff in there that are unspecific or at least out of the realms of what government does. But for all of that, I struggle to point to anything on their policy stuff and say "that's an awful position". At least, even if I'm not totally on-board, I see where they're coming from. And that's another point. Their policies page overwhelms you with too much to actually go through in one sitting. But, look at the Liberal/Labor equivalent pages? Greens are super open about what they stand for and what they would like to achieve. Labor have a few bullet points and Libs have a marketing brochure.

Oh yeah!! Who called it in November 2024, baby?!

It's not clear from the video, but that billboard is a digital screen. It rotates between ads, so it never stays on any one ad for more than 10 seconds or so. It isn't staring at Woodside employees all day. I drove past that spot yesterday (that freeway in the video is the main artery to get around Perth), and saw three ads on that billboard in the time I was in front of it. I did not see his ad. I don't know if it is still in the rotation, of if he just had it on for the day he was filming. Also: It's either really neatly edited so that it's in the background most of the time he's in front of the billboard, or he's digitally altering it in the video to keep it in shot.

That said: West Australians are well aware that the state government works for the mining industry. As he said in the video, it's glaringly obvious everywhere you look in Perth. I think he may be missing something from his claims that mining doesn't contribute to state coffers though: it obviously does in some way. WA is rolling in money, posting big surpluses even through the pandemic years where every other government was broke. I don't know anywhere near enough on the how of that to refute anything he's saying though. Just that Teachers are not the reason WA posts a $5 Billion surplus.

That's only a scenario that plays out in a few Melbourne seats. It isn't a thing for most of the nation. So, I didn't consider that. Sorry.

It isn't a matter of liking us. I don't think any nation sees Australia as a threat, other than as a staging ground for US forces. At the same time, I don't think any nation is seriously considering attacking Australia. That's why I don't really prioritise spending more on our defense.

But, 20-30 years from now? I have no idea what the future looks like. I wouldn't want to look up suddenly 20 years from now and be like Russia in 1912.

I don't know about Tasmania, but 2022 in WA was an anomaly. That was the year where WA voted in only two Liberal candidates and three National. The voters were very angry at the LNP because they kept telling the nation that our closed borders were not doing anything to protect us from the pandemic and criticising us. Meanwhile, WA rode out 2020-2022 mostly unaffected by Covid.

Politics of that era aside, you can't rely on 2022 data for WA. We have already seen a bit of a correction. The LNP likely have 15 seats, now (they're still counting votes and some of the seats are on a knife-edge).

Of course I do. 😀
But the parties give out those "how to vote" cards at every ballot point for a reason: most voters use them. Which means that the party does set the preferences.

I don’t really see it as a preference issue.

Just about every election (well, not at the moment in WA ha!) comes down to preferences.

Their preferences alone would handily get Greens over the line.

See? You actually agree that preferences make a big difference. The issue is that the Liberal party would prefer to see a Labor candidate in a seat over a Green party member. So, if they saw a possibility that the Greens might take a seat, they wouldn't give Green their preferences.

The biggest problem I see for the Greens is that Labor has no incentive to actually court Green preferences. They assume Greens will always preference them over Liberal, because they always have. They can take those preferences for granted.