dutchroll

I think the farce on day 1 of this term of parliament demonstrates it nicely. Government members, freshly chuffed from "winning" the election decide to go home early. Opposition keeps all their people in parliament and starts defeating government motions. Opposition tables motion to establish Banking Royal Commission which the government objects to. Only the fact that the motion must be debated allows government time to send SOS to its absent members telling them to "get the hell back here NOW!!!" so they can defeat it. I'm actually a bit disappointed that those government members made it back in time to vote, personally! On signing into law, there was another thread where this was discussed and the history is quite fascinating. The Governor General is the Queen's representative here, and she only gets to decide if he refers the legislation to her. At no point does he have to do this. If the GG is happy and signs it......its law, irrespective of what the Queen thinks. In any case, only one Bill in Australia's history has been referred to the monarch by the GG and failed to receive Royal Assent. That was the Customs Tariff (British Preference) Bill of 1906. Saying God has anything to do with all this is a bit tenuous.

The Australian Constitution specifically prohibits making "God" or any other deity or religion a part of any Federal laws. In fact Section 116 of the Constitution was specifically drafted to address fears that the preamble, in its reference to "Almighty God" (a reflection of society back in those days), might encourage the Commonwealth to pass religious legislation.

Well, Professor Stephen Hawking is widely considered the most brilliant physicist since Einstein, and is also an avowed atheist. Millionaire Robert Wilson was an avowed atheist too. He gave away $600 million to various charities including the Nature Conservancy and the World Monuments Fund, as well as giving $22.5 million for Catholic elementary school education in New York. Which all just goes to prove your point Gnu: atheists are not only incredibly dumb, but also totally evil and care about no-one except themselves.

Does anyone actually listen to "Lord" Monckton anymore? He demonstrated many years ago when he toured here with Plimer that he just makes it up as he goes. Of course Plimer trashed his own previously credible scientific and academic reputation in the process, so accepting the offer of working as a "consultant" for mining magnate Gina Rinehart was pretty much all he had left.

We have no kids, so I refuse to accept any blame for population growth. I will, however, accept some degree of blame for land clearing to produce vineyards and malted barley/hops plantations.

Never. Procreating is too easy (well, for many). No need to operate special equipment. No need to bring anything. Just turn up and do it. Pretty hard to "control" that through licensing!

Yeah it's funny what they'll fight tooth and nail against, given their chequered past and less-than-stellar performance when it comes to sexual misconduct and "family values" in general.

I think that varies quite a bit depending on the region. By individual country, Indonesia has the largest proportion of the world's Muslim population and although they have some extremist elements intent on causing trouble, my experience there is that they largely couldn't care less who you are and just want to be left alone to get on with daily life. I know a number of people who have lived there. It's funny how people get different perceptions. When talking about walking down the road to the shopping centre or a restaurant in Jakarta, I've had people say "Walk down the road in Indonesia with all those muslims around? Are you crazy? What about your personal safety?" I've replied "I'm walking down the road to find a 7-eleven mate, I'm not roaming the city waving an "Australia First" banner trying to find a street protest to get involved in." They've invariably either never been there themselves, or if they have, remained holed up in the hotel the entire time. Strangely, no Indonesians have yet tried to cut my head off while I'm buying a coke and packet of pringles. It's almost like they're too busy trying to etch out a living to really care who I am or where I come from - who'd have thought? I've had much the same experience in eastern Malaysia. However in northern Africa or Afghanistan I think things would be a little more precarious.

I've had quite a bit to do with "anti anti-vaxer" lobbying in the past. One of the things which is intriguing is that they come with no predominant political or religious persuasion. Left wing, right wing, atheistic, religious, liberal voters, labour voters, green voters. The things they have in common are: 1) a deep distrust or fear of anyone who has "expertise" in any area (so basically anyone who is well educated) and a tendency to gravitate towards conspiracy theories. 2) a total inability to see information in a contextual way. In other words, if polio vaccinations saved 10 million children from dying or being crippled but three children had severe anaphylactic reactions and died or became injured, they would see polio vaccinations as extremely risky. 3) the display of some quite extreme forms of the psychological trait which has become known as "Dunning-Kruger syndrome", a cognitive bias where they lack the capability to reasonably assess their own competency in a subject.

I was going to say the Taliban and most other religious nutters actually appear quite sane compared to the anti-vaxer movement here in Australia. Their Queen of Nuttiness Meryl Dorey has just been advising people who have a bowel or breast cancer diagnosis to adopt a "wait and see" approach because "they almost always resolve naturally", as opposed to seeing a doctor who will just make every effort to kill you. It sort of does resolve naturally with time, because it stops spreading and growing when you die.

Kids lies are more "innocent" in a sense, knowing they're in trouble for a naughty, but generally fairly trivial, act and naively thinking they can talk their way out of it by fibbing. Politicians' lies are somewhat more elaborate, pre-planned, and usually adversely affect numerous other people or involve very large sums of money.

So according to the article, Britain's Purchasing Manager's Index (PMI) shows that Britain is wiping the floor as an economic powerhouse, but Germany's PMI shows it is weighed down by the shackles of the EU. Yet Germany's is still higher than Britain's and always has been. The FTSE 250 gained a whopping 116 points, according to the article. This equates to 0.66%. In the USA, the S&P 500 is up 6% this year. The German DAX30 is up 4.7% this year and a few weeks ago gained 1.37% in a single week. Spin, like only the Express can do. But I guess if you set your expectations sufficiently low, almost anything can be interpreted as a win!

Yeah I agree in general terms that "legal is legal". But there's "clearly legal", "marginally legal", "probably not legal even though you think it is", and "Legal? Seriously? What are you smoking?" The last two categories, and occasionally even the second one, are determined ultimately in courts of law where one legal argument is pitted against another (regrettably someone has to lose) and usually when people push it too far in the eyes of the authorities, government, etc. There seems to be a fair amount of big company tax "minimisation" which skips the first category.

Irish corporate tax on sales is supposed to be 12.5% but Apple were granted an exemption to this which allowed them to record European sales in Ireland and pay almost nothing. The EU has ruled that this is tantamount to illegal State aid to give an unfair advantage over competition. Just about every democratic country in the world has laws preventing the stifling of competition. Companies of course always try to minimise their tax bills, but if you violate anti-trust laws doing it, you are in a lot of trouble no matter where you are. Apple (and the Irish government) should not have been so stupid.

Actually Apple violated longstanding EU anti-trust laws and Ireland - an EU member - knew full well Apple was doing that and facilitated it. The EU is enforcing the law which Ireland turned a blind eye to. **the EU anti-trust laws prevent companies from gaining an unfair advantage over competitors due to Government assistance.

Yeah by "a while now" I mean in the last 20 years!

I think Australia is actually fairly tolerant towards that and has been for a while now. Certainly in the general workplace at least. In the USA however, it's a different story all together. For a start, if you run for any sort of public office, you do not declare or admit or even hint at atheism!

One of the problems with evolution vs creationist arguments is that the creationist side pretty much dismisses with a wave of the hand a couple of hundred years of rapidly increasing scientific knowledge and tens of thousands of hours of accumulated scientific field work by geologists, palaeontologists, etc under the guise of "nup....didn't happen.....and even if it did they're wrong". As the saying goes: "show me a fossilised bunny in the pre-Cambrian and I'll admit all of our current scientific knowledge on the topic is wrong". Alas, while many Cambrian and pre-Cambrian fossils have been found, unsurprisingly none of them are rabbits.

The measurable evidence is in the fossil record. You just said science doesn't actually have to be personally observed but can be based on measurement, and now you're demanding observations? The measurable evidence is in the fossil record. In the fossil record for the 3rd time! In............the.............fossil............record.

On that I am in complete and total agreement with you! That's a difficult problem to tackle. The only thing I could say with a degree of certainty is that successive Governments have failed at it.

Alright. The higher tax brackets in Australia currently are 37c in the dollar over $80k, and 45c in the dollar over $180k. If you abolished the highest one completely, and dropped the 37c down to say 35c over $80k, a person earning $200,000 a year would save precisely $4,000 in income tax. I don't think you realise how little a top marginal tax rate cut affects people on high incomes. I'm being quite serious in saying that I wouldn't even notice that extra $153 in my fortnightly pay, because if I'm earning $200k, my take home pay every fortnight is $5,248.00 (I'm not including Medicare, for simplification). I'd rather give the money to someone who really needs it. $153 is a lot of money to someone on a low income.

Don't worry. I'm finding myself in the surreal and bizarre situation here of earning 2 & 1/2 times the "average" wage (wife earns a bucketload more than that) and arguing that I have no issues with the proportion of tax we're paying while others presumably on much less money argue that I should get a tax cut! What the.........? Geezus. The very plain and simple reality is that I would not even notice the effect of a tax cut to the top marginal rate. I really didn't want to say that, but I think it's getting to the point that I have to!

So Creighton states: "It is absurd to claim the “rich” - assuming incomes rather than wealth are the defining criterion - aren’t paying their “fair share” of tax when they in fact pay all of it." .....that's verifiable maths is it? The rich pay "all" of it do they? Average income earners pay "none" of it do they?

1) OK, Mrs Dutch is in one of the highest paying medical specialties and based on that information, she must be hiding well over a million dollars per year in a secret bank account. Her and I will be having stern words tonight. 2) She maintains that of dozens of specialist colleagues she knows, maybe two of them earn over $2 million/year. This is in the Sydney area, the national home of the highly paid specialist. 3) To speak of that sort of income, you're talking about the top tier of the top tier - the Charlie Teos and his equivalent, of which there are very few in the country. It is wrong to imply this is commonplace. Most specialist physicians, for example, and particularly the staff specialists are more like $250k or less. Maybe a little more in some cases. Yes a lot of money. But not $2 million! That's a "non sequitur" argument ("it does not follow"). The vast majority of the high-end specialist income is derived from the private healthcare system, which is not taxpayer funded. Yes I know. Yet where it's convenient in his article, he quotes the "average" anyway. That was my whole point. Have your cake and eat it too. Both my parents who are on a pension, and myself, have needed to provide fairly substantial amounts of financial assistance (in the tens of thousands of dollars) to my brother and sister-in-law who both work but have congenital disabilities they were born with and which make communication very difficult, and to my sister in the USA who had a daughter there born with a lifelong medical condition and was pretty much bankrupted by the American healthcare system despite working full time and being on an average wage. On the other side of the family we bought my elderly pensioner parents in-law a modest house and pay for its upkeep because one has mobility difficulties and needed to move closer to town and various facilities. Naturally there's no way on earth they could afford this on the pension. All of this was at our personal expense, and no government assistance helped in any significant way with any of the situations our family members have been in. I think you missed the bit about Creighton creating that label by counting public transport, education, etc etc. You're labelled a "welfare recipient" because you go to a public school or use public transport? That's what it has come down to? How about actually defining the term in a way that is not completely pointless rather than a way that can be applied to literally anyone including the top tier income earners, because believe me, they happily use Medicare and the PBS too. Just a suggestion.

Well, Adam Creighton has always been .......no in the spirit of refraining from personal insults I won't say it. For most people that column falls squarely in the TL:DR category but notwithstanding that, there are elements of truth in his column mixed in with grandiose statements which simply aren't true as well as a good deal of idealistic economic theory and fudging figures. It's what he does best. Conflating things to present his idealistic conservative think-tank view (what he did before becoming a journalist for the Australian, which is money for jam - editorial staff there earn 6 figure salaries for what could best be described as a dubious contribution to society and the country - so I don't blame him). Example: in the 9th paragraph he uses "average" figures to whinge about how much people get back in benefits, then several paragraphs later states that "average is an irrelevant socio-economic metric" and "distorted by outliers" (true, but "median" has statistical disadvantages too). This is classic Creighton. "Lets have a bet each way eh, depending on whether it supports my argument. No one will notice!" Example: Creighton uses some very fuzzy maths to show that an "average" income earner gets back $2.70 for every dollar they pay in tax. How does he arrive at this? He includes literally everything that's funded or partly funded by Government. Public schools. Public hospitals. Public transport. This distorts the income and tax picture at his convenience, because not only do those things exist for specific purposes, but they're useable by everyone for the general benefit of society. Also it's impossible to accurately quantify how the use of those things is distributed across various income earners and tax groups, but he makes it up as he goes anyway. I could go on but this is all classic Creighton. Randomly add everything into a pot and stir, then conclude "See? A croquembouche!" He does have a point that individual high income earners do pay a very large part of the tax burden, but doesn't seem to make any sensible argument as to whether this should or shouldn't be the case and why. And if I were an "average" income earner, I'd be pretty ticked off that he pretty much concludes you're as good as welfare recipients!