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I still don't understand why wind turbines only last 20 years when turbine power stations last 50 or 60 years. There must be some way to extend their life. Each wind turbine is a massive investment and the foundations are huge and costly, but it's all scrapped in 20 years? This is idiocy to me.

Keating spent years talking up the sale of the CBA, it was his baby, all the way. The champagne glasses are still clinking in the boardrooms of the private banks over their "coup" in getting rid of the CBA - the only bastion still in place to stop private banks from making excessive profits. I have seen an article about how much this banking greed cost all everyday Australians.

Government ownership of assets is not the sole love of Laborites. Plenty of conservative voters bemoan the loss of public assets. But I see your point that some Labourites wouldn't be happy with a Labor government selling it.

ok, I googled whether the sale of the last 50% was legislated and it was legislated in 1995 under the Commonwealth Bank Sale Act. Short answer, it was already legally locked in before Howard took over in March 1996.. Blaming Howard for it is a bit of a stretch don't you think. If Howard wanted to save it, it would have been near impossible to draft legislation, pass it through parliament and enact it all in twelve short weeks.

Ask the question specifically and you will get the answer I got. I also recall Howard recommending it.. The Last 50% is significant in terms of losing control. It would NOT have been Popular with Laborites. I'm NO admirer of Hawke at all. Nev

Nev can you provide some links that clarify whether Howard took that decision on his own bat or whether it was already locked in by Keating. Reason I ask is that most references I can find say that the sale occurred shortly after Keating's defeat (about 3 months after) when Howard was in office but is attributed to Keating. Labor had planned and set up the sale of the third tranche and it would have sold if Keating had won the 1996 election. Here's a question: was the sale of the third tranche already legislated when Howard took office. It's a bit hard to find accurate information on it.

We had two rentals. I sold one after five years because we were losing money on it despite it being a nice house with good tenants paying a fair rent, mainly because there was no capital gain over those years. We probably lost $50k overall. I still have the other one, a small A-frame where the increase in block value has been the main driver of capital gain as the house is so small. It has been rented out over the last 20 years to a handful of tenants - all young singles or couples in their early twenties who were great. On the other hand a rental next to my son’s place was utterly trashed by the tenants before the owners managed to get rid of them. Our daughter now rents the A-frame because she like so many others has been priced out of the market and can’t afford to buy. She gets it for what it costs me to keep the property because I don’t want to make money from our kids and hopefully that will help her to save and buy her own place one day. We are very fortunate to have this property now, but I have mixed feelings about properties as investments in general unless you’re pretty hard nosed about pushing rents and cutting costs.

Wind FARMs should be called "Wind Energy Harvesters" . They don't use the soil as nutrient, You can still farm the area at the same time. They don't CAUSE wind. Nev

Qantas?

One track It was the HOWARD Gov't the sold off the Last 50% of the CBA. Look it up. Nev

AI often makes mistakes when it ignores punctuation, like this:

I welcome the government moving toward controlling the housing investment businesses

Owning a rental house is not the simple business it once was. For instance, There is a whole industry of Real Estate agents managing the rental, taking usually 7% of the rent. They promise to 'protect the value of the property', and protect the interests of the tenant. I have not heard any glowing reports of value for money. There is a notable lack of general care by tenants on the assumption that the landlord is getting rich from the rent, so the wear and rear is worse than that of an owner occupier. Also, many young renters simply have no idea how to look after a property. Remember, a house is not rentable until it is brought up to a set standard, but the overheads continue to cost the landlord until it is once again rented out. Nowadays there are extra costs for regular testing of safety switches and fire alarms (every 6 months?). There are no cheap rentals nowadays for the poor. For instance, when I first married, we rented a tumble down house with an outside toilet, with no light. It was rough (non tenantable in modern rules), but we went out and bought paint and spruced it up. Later we moved to better places, but it was common to run a paint roller over the walls to make it look a bit cleaner than it was when we moved in. Modern tenants wouldn't dream of this. The result is a shortage of cheap rentals. I had two rentals, one made nil capital gains for seven years, the other made a capital gain. Meanwhile, they just broke even, whilst being a constant pain in the arrs. My experience is that about one tenant in ten was good. Sure, the developers and big players seem to get rich from it, but not the smalltime investors.

Correct.

Like everything these days. Publish a story about a horror renter and it puts the wind up a landlord. Vetting of potential tenants is a pretty terrifying process for a tenant needing a home.

There are many good tenants needing homes. I don't see that as a reason to leave a house unoccupied.

Batchelor party.

A person I know has a house or two in town that are unoccupied. Why? Because of the costs of repairing the damage that tenants cause. That is probably one of the reasons for the numbers of vacant houses.

Correct.

It annoys me when people write I lead the cow rather than I led the cow when it is past tense.

Somewhere over the rainbow

Correct.

I tawt I taw a puddy tat.

Sorry Nev, your memory is faulty today. It was Paul Keating who sold off the Commonwealth Bank - largely to the other big Australian private banks. QUOTE: The Commonwealth Bank was privatised in stages under the Labor government of Prime Minister Paul Keating. The sell-off process occurred in three tranches: 1991: The Keating government floated the initial 30% of the bank's shares to the public. 1993: The government sold another tranche, reducing its stake to just over 50%. 1996: The remaining government shareholding was fully sold off to investors, completing the privatisation.

In linguistics, homonyms are words which are either homographs—words that mean different things but have the same spelling (regardless of pronunciation)—or homophones—words that mean different things but have the same pronunciation (regardless of spelling). Using this definition, the words row (propel with oars), row (a linear arrangement) and row (an argument) are homonyms because they are homographs (though only the first two are homophones). So are the words see (vision) and sea (body of water), because they are homophones (though not homographs). I'm going to read a book tonight. I read in yesterday's paper... homographs It's time to sow the seed. The pig farmer bought a new sow. homographs It's time to sow the seed. Sew a button on it. homophones On the subject of the topic, AI, closed captions AI regularly gets it horribly wrong.