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Very, very, very old. It has been attributed to a German POW camp Kommondant and I have also heard it attributed to a Japanese POW camp Commondant.

There was a TV show set in Melbourne with the actors satarised their being Greek. The show was called Acropolis Now. One of the characters was Effie, played by Mary Coustas. The character "Effie", was a stereotypical second-generation Greek Australian prone to malapropisms. A common one of hers was " how embarassment". https://www.facebook.com/nickg1/videos/the-first-time-that-now-iconic-phrase-howembarrassment-was-heard-on-aussie-tv-on/2132406587584055/

The line was related to me in 1970 in South Vietnam, by a fellow soldier. He told me it was a story retold to him by a WW2 POW veteran. The Japanese camp commandant had lined up all the Aussies and was berating them in his best Japinglish. He was told by the POW that the commandant came out with, "You Ostalians think Japanese stupid. You think Japanese know f**k-nothing! We soon show you, that Japanese know f**k-all!!" Of course, the Australian POW's apparently broke out in fits of laughter, which only made the little Jap officer go apoplectic, and scream more abuse at them, and told guards to hand out beatings. So the basic line goes back a long way, but I wouldn't imagine much more before WW2, as the F-word wasn't used a great deal back then, and it was regarded as a particularly vile word in the 1920's and 1930's. This article on the origins of the F-word is quite interesting. The word has been in use for centuries, but almost never in publications, as it was deemed obscene when in print. https://bigthink.com/the-past/history-of-the-f-word/

Then there's Mario in The Wog Boy - "They say I know f*ck nothing. But I know f*ck all!"

An old Slav prospector I knew used to say "I'm doubt", whenever he should have said, "I doubt it".

They can be amusing sometimes. I remember an old Croatian bloke telling me once, in all seriousness (although with a few shots of slivovitz on board) - "My wife, ok, I get home a bit late, and my wife, he say to me, 'What in the hell have you been??'"

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.

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.

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.

And the ticky-tacky little boxes have come about via property investor greed that has pushed house prices up 700% in 3 decades. That's unsustainable, and is setting the country up for a majpr recession, perhaps even a Depression. House prices go up 3% annually over the long-term, normally. Only in the last 3 decades has this outlandish property pricing occurred - so we need to look at what has driven that - and it's the taxation system generously favouring property investors. So Labor is now trying to address that major imbalance.

The last census showed approx 1 million homes unoccupied on census night. That shows a lack of homes is not the issue but house hoarding. A clear case of a broken and unethical taxation regime.

I say the same thing. However, although the sale pricing of the property has doubled, the value hasn't really changed since the money (if I sold right now) doesn't buy a more grand place. Capital gains are only realised by wealthy speculators who buy multiple properties.

Sorry, Red, but you have it wrong. The mean is the mathematical average of all numbers in a data set. The median is the exact middle value of a data set when the numbers are sorted in order. Here is an illustration where the an original set of scores has two more included. In the illustration, the numbers 75.5, 83, and 41 &90 are obtained from the original data. The numbers 73.1, 82 and 42 are what one gets after inculding the two extra scores. We give a stvff because a lot of us here have decided that accuracy in posts is important. That is why we like to see where the support for a comment comes from. In my post here, the diagram comes from a Google search for the difference between 'mean and median', as well as the fact that back in the day I did a course in statistics at Uni, and the topic is usually included in high school Maths.

No it doesn't. Take 12 houses for sale, 10 @ $1m, 2 at $600,000. The average (mean) is 10 x $1m + 2 x $600K = $11,200,000/12 = $9,333,333 The median is $1m + $600K =$1.600K / 2 = $800K

Mean is the average. Median is halfway down the list between the highest and the lowest.

We have some of the Biggest Houses in the world and they Produce Nothing. Factories Produce things. Abbot and Hockey Booted the Auto Makers out quite unceremoniously, and the accessories Industry disappeared over night.. with it. Abbot said they should get 'DECENT' Jobs. What a Twerp. Nev

So when circumstances change, you would rather the government of the day either stuck to their election promises or call an election every time they needed to pivot? What the hell do we elect them for then? When Howard and Costello brought in the CGT discount in 1999 (from which the wealthiest 10% get 80% of the benefit), did they take it to an election?

There are a few examples of the unfairness of retrospectivity in leglislation. The various state's cultural heritage acts are an example. People in one state were immediately criminalised for something that's legal in other states due to introduced leglislation being retrospective.

One of the Beetoota Advocate's satirical headlines, referring to grandfathering of leglislation: ' Labor To Finally Even The Playing Field For Younger Australians By Stopping Future Generations From Using The Tax Loopholes That Boomers Will Be Allowed To Keep Using'.

I'm not saying they are the worst government around, but are you saying that it is OK because there are worse ones around? I also think that the recent lies within the budget would have been talked about before the election. You are right that they may only be in for one term but they know that before hand and one reason for the generous pension schemes although its not as relevant as it use to be. When the pension was implemented people use to have one job their whole working life, not so anymore. I hold people in office to a high standard, but that standard is not reached as often as it should be. They do work in a media saturated society now so you would think they would be more honest as they should now chances are they are going to get caught. I believe they don't care because I think they are smart enough to realise this. The way some (all) of them act in question time when they get asked a question they don't answer makes a mockery of the whole system!

Are you guys saying we should just accept that politicians are always going to lie for our benefit? Why worry about having election campaigns then. Do we just pick those whose lies matter least.

I can see the theory the poster made in the last point of the post, eg: "If One Nation had a candidate for Stafford, the right would have won this seat". No doubt O.N. preferences would have helped the LNP, but to get them over the line a One Nation candidate would have had to take almost 10% of the Labor vote and direct all those preferences to the LNP. Condsidering Labor already lost more than 4% of their vote to the LNP government, another 10% going to One Nation would be a big ask. It's possible, but still a big ask. I would think there would have been a certain amount of Labor voters prepared to vote ON if a candidate had run, but in lieu of that had decided to stick with Labor rather than vote LNP. The Labor opposition leader was on radio this morning praising their win and saying the result was a big wake-up call for the LNP government. Talk about a state of altered reality. Labor retained a Labor held city seat, but suffered a more than 4% swing away from them to the LNP government. Also it's very rare in by-elections for the sitting government to get a swing toward it.

Doesn't sound as if we are Missing MUCH. Nev.

They are all puppets, left included. Some party's hide it better then others and some are more transparent, not necessarily the ones that say they will be. Most are straight out liars as we have recently seen!

Nomadpete, I'm a boomer and I set about making money from property and other investments during the period 1965 to 1995. I spent 30 years busting my gut, and along with other family members, ended up with several properties, including a 2000 ac farm. I estimate I had about $350,000 in accumulated assets by 1995, with at least a third of that being property. Then our bank foreclosed on us with no reason (no arrears, nothing), just saying they had "lost confidence" in our ability to service our loans. So they demanded repayment of $1M within 48 hrs, which forced us to sell everything we owned, at fire sale prices. No other bank would even look at our business, as they all ganged up on us, and said there must be something bad going on, that we weren't telling them. There wasn't, we had a good operational business with minimal problems. In the washup, a 5 acre block in Perth city got sold for $300K, the farm was sold for $550,000, a 1 acre industrial block with a huge shed in Kalgoorlie/Boulder sold for $50,000. In the years since, the 5 acre block in the city was subdivided by others, and it reaped multi-million dollar profits for them - despite capital gains tax. The farm is now worth $8M, and has been sold about 5 times since we sold it, and each time, the "baby boomers" who purchased it, made massive capital gains on their investment. The industrial property in Kalgoorlie is now worth several million - more baby boomers made huge capital gains from the ownership of that block of land. The above capital gains have been repeated ad-infinitum by baby boomers. One contributor here talks about he's just poured $500,000 into a subdivision, like he's done the nation a favour. He hasn't. He's made huge capital gains out of that subdivision, greatly enriching himself - and pushed property ownership out of the reach of young people. I feel that Chalmers hasn't gone far enough to tax wealthy baby boomers who have nearly all made vast profits out of property of all types - which property has gone ballistic in values in the last 25-30 years. I do feel for those baby boomers who never did manage to position themselves to make gains from property, because of their circumstances, or the inability to be shrewd with property purchases. I could never regain a fraction of my former wealth, as I had to start again at age 46, suffering from no assets at that age, and therefore no borrowing ability - as well as now carrying a life-long hatred of greedy, avaricious banks - who place unjust gains in shareholder wealth above all else. The baby boomers who are struggling with no property assets, have nothing to fear from Chalmers budget. The ones with banks shares can't lose, their financial gains have been huge, and will continue to be huge, because banks make monstrous profits - the Commonwealth made $2.7B in profit in the March quarter alone. There has not been a year for the last 30 years, where the Commonwealth Bank didn't make a monstrous profit - and this, despite also having to pay somewhere around $1B in fines, for devious and outright illegal corporate behaviour, over many years. There is a need for major wealth redistribution in Australia today, the wealth gap between the haves and have-nots, increases daily.

Lately, His skin looks really terrible. Not just the Colour.. One Person in the Lower house is a long way from Having Pauline as the PM. Nev

I don't mind their views on the environment; it's a free world. I despise their politics on race and gender, particularly the antisemitisim.

Though I despise the greens, I agree.

informal votes were 9% the last election and 6.3% this one..that tells me more made their vote count I never take a HTV card when I vote. I am not rude to anyone just say no thanks as I walk through. I also always vote early. Cant stand waiting in line. I think I have become a grumpy old fart. I hate the practice I think it needs to be banned. make people actually take a interest and make their own decisions not follow the sheep.

6.3% is a lot of informal votes. Looks like a lot of people weren't impressed with any of the candidates.

I take every HTV card offered to me from every Party as I walk towards the polling station. I do that out of politeness to the volunteer. I already know who I am giving my first preference to, but the card is useful in sorting out lower preferences amongst a large number of candidates.

I never take a HTV card. Firmly of the belief that everyone who is eligible to vote should take their responsibility to engage in democracy seriously and number all boxes. It's not a big ask, once every 3 years.

This is the worst period of government I can remember in my lifetime. Perhaps except the Whitlam years. The ideology is to take from us all and redistribute to those who the Government sees as deserving. For which, read labor voters.