willedoo

So that's my thoughts on it. Please tell me if you were joking, and I'll apologise. But the way I read it was otherwise.

I'd like to expect better from you also Nev. We know you don't like football so why would you go to a football thread and bag the posts. Why would you do that? You don't have to be so negative and nasty. You've been told before at times on this forum, if you don't like a thread topic, stay away from it and let others enjoy it. You're a real sad sack at times.

There's an old saying - only boring people get bored. There's some truth in it..

We all know you don't lke sport, so be negative on another thread please.

You don't need to tell us Nev, we know you are.

An NRL update : footy season is in full swing with a couple of big things standing out. One is the incessant rule changes that irritate everyone except the NRL management geniuses. It would be good if they'd let the ink dry on the rulebook for a coupe of years and just let them play footy. I get it that they want to speed the game up, but it's now reached a peak where any more will turn the game into an unrecognisable rabble. It risks losing structure. The other thing is the acrobatics that have become part of the game, starting a couple of years ago. At first it was just a couple of players doing it, but now a lot are doing it in training with gymnastic type mats. Some of the physical things they are doing around the try line would have been unthinkable only a few short years ago, but are now rapidly becoming the norm. Next year will be a big year with the Perth Bears entering the NRL competition. Big Mal Meninga has gone over there as their coach. The Bears are still recruiting, but they have the core of the team sorted so far.

Nev, the only other option is an amalgamation, but I can't see the federal Nats agreeing to that. It worked in Queensland as the Nats were always the much stronger party of the two and it was a no-brainer for the Qld. Libs to enter into it, otherwise they would have faded away. Federally, the shoe is on the other foot and the Nats would feel they were having to make too many concessions to the Libs in an amalgamation. Maybe if the Libs went solo they could develop policies to gain some middle ground back from Labor and have a future where government would be a possibility again. The only other option is to sit tight and wait for Labor to lose, but that could take a while.

The South Australian federal MP on one of the election coverage panels last night was downplaying One Nation's significant primary vote regarding it's federal implications. He frequently said he thought the state of the SA Libs in recent times was a big factor. Time will tell, but there might be a bit more to it than that. The interesting part of the SA election regarding One Nation is that it did well in a state where most of the seats are urban, city based seats. In Queensland which has traditionally been One Nation's heartland, there are a lot of rural and regional seats where ON traditionally does well, but in SA, they have very few rural seats. If One Nation continues to grow, they'll need to organise better and function like a proper party to avoid the past habit of self destruction.

She seems like quite a capable leader and young enough to stick around for a fair while. You never know, she might be premier one day in the future, leading a rebuilt Liberal party. That's the job ahead for people like her, to bring the party back to relevance. It will take a long time but everything goes round in cycles eventually, and I don't believe we're stuck with a one party system forever. The question is, will the Liberals successfully rebuild, or will they fade away and be replaced by a new party. Either way will take a long time.

There's quite a big difference when you look across the seats. Labor had swings against them in eight seats and a lot of them were big swings. Where there were swings to Labor, the swings were mostly small, but a couple of big ones in there to Labor. Labor seats had much more swinging to them than against.

The way I look at it, Labor is lucky to have the Greens on their left. That 10% Green vote is quite a significant number of preferences that mostly flow to Labor. In that regard Labor has more benefit than threat on their left so it allows them to occupy a fairly comfortable space on the spectrum.

Preferential voting sure provides a much different result than first past the post. In SA for example, first past the post , depending on the final count, might have delivered One Nation quite a few lower house seats. As it stands with preferences, they might get one, possibly two, or none at all.

Marty, hopefully some of them got to read the emails. It makes you wonder how many are binned by staff members. I'm not sure if this is accurate or even true, but I was told a few years ago that if you write to a minister directly they are under no obligation to answer, but if you do it via your local member forwarding it on, then the minister is obligated to provide a reply.

If they could have got it all done and dusted in a short time frame, eg: getting rid of the regime, securing the shipping lanes and oil transit and securing the country, it would have been a lot better. A bit of wish list though, as Iran is a tough nut to crack. A big mountainous country with a lot of underground bunkers, and the Revolutionary Guard Corps as a defacto government.

Just looking at results via the ABC (updated 6 hours ago), One Nation are in with a chance in Hammond and MacKillop. Last night the Liberals in Hammond were on 51%TPP, but the latest results have them dropping back and One Nation on 53.8%TPP to Labor's 46.2%. MacKillop is tight between Labor and One Nation with One Nation at 50.8%TPP to Labor at 49.2%. Edit: those preferences are estimates by the ABC, not actual preferences didtributed.

Here's an article on how New Zealand changed to proportional representation in 1996: https://electoral-reform.org.uk/how-did-new-zealand-get-proportional-representation/ Another bit on how and where it's used in Australia: https://www.ecanz.gov.au/electoral-systems/proportional

The U.S. version of the Betoota Advocate.

It's hard to see it ever changing. The two party system, sometimes referred to as the uniparty, needs preferential voting to maintain their hold. They'll fight tooth and nail to keep it that way.

It's always interesting watching how the seats pan out on election nights. One seat, Mawson I think it was, Labor has lost 20% of their vote to One Nation. In a lot of seats the 20% approximate swing to One Nation has come at Liberal cost with a much smaller amount from Labor.

So how does Gina get rich. How much does government regulation and tax laws contribute to her ability to accumulate wealth. If it's a factor, she's become rich under both Labor and Coalition governments. At the moment she's getting rich under the watchful eye of the precious can do no wrong Labor government. If you have a complaint about her wealth, take it up with them. Whingeing about it here just makes you look foolish. Do something about it. Contact your federal member and take it from there. No amount of social media babble will reduce her wealth and power. Only governments can do that.

I can remember back when they mandated the low suplhur diesel there was talk of older engines having some issues with things like injector pump seals leaking. The only diesel engine I had at the time was an old IH motor, late 60's vintage and I never had any problems with it.

A handy combination Nev. You could get on the plonk, start up all the motorbikes and have a fat old time, all in the one space.

I filled up before the government lifted restrictions to allow us to use higer sulphur diesel, so I still have an almost full tank of the old low sulphur fuel. We normally export all the high sulphur fuel to countries that don't have as strict environmental rules as we have. $2.90 price of diesel today at our local servo. edit: I originally wrote $1.90 for today's price, it's $2.90.

The buggerup is supposed to hit the Cape tomorrow as a cat 5, wind gusts up to 315 kph they are saying. They're tracking it to hit the east coast just north of Coen and the west coast just south of Aurukun.

Nev, do you have a photo of it?