onetrack

With regard to the pressing immigration problem that's on everyone lips, and which PHON is making a killing out of, by promising to address it with an anti-immigration stance - I was quite surprised when surfing the 'net (looking for something completely different, of course), to come across this vicious American anti-immigration electoral poster from 1920 (link below). I knew the Americans were frightened of a Chinese invasion in the mid-1800's, and passed a law banning them from entering the country - specifically, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1892. This Act was as a result of enduring hostility towards the Chinese, and the Americans fear of cheap Chinese labour. So, little has changed in over 175 years. Key Aspects of the Anti-Chinese Movement & Legislation: Initial Acceptance Turns to Hostility: Chinese immigrants arrived in large numbers during the 1850s California Gold Rush and played a critical role in building the western portion of the transcontinental railroad in the 1860s. However, as numbers grew (exceeding 105,000 by 1880), they faced severe animosity. The "Invasion" Narrative & Violence: White workers, particularly in California, feared losing jobs to "cheap" Chinese labor. This led to organized violence, including the 1871 Los Angeles Chinese massacre, the 1877 San Francisco riot, and the 1885 Rock Springs massacre. The Page Act of 1875: Before the 1882 act, the Page Act was passed, which technically banned forced labor and prostitution but was broadly applied to restrict the immigration of Chinese women. The Chinese Exclusion Act (1882): Signed by President Chester A. Arthur, this act prohibited Chinese laborers from entering the country for 10 years and denied those already in the U.S. the ability to become citizens. It allowed exemptions for teachers, students, merchants, and diplomats, but these were difficult to obtain. Permanent Exclusion: The exclusion was extended in 1892 by the Geary Act and made permanent in 1902. These restrictions remained in place until 1943. The laws were justified by politicians who described the Chinese as undesirable, arguing they could not be assimilated, and threatened the "American Anglo-Saxon civilization". But by 1920, it was a different race that the Americans feared - it was the Japanese, this time. Anti-Japanese sentiment was riding high when James D. Phelan was up for election in 1920, and anti-Japanese posters abounded. Phelan wasn't elected, but continued his anti-Japanese immigration activities until the new Immigration Act of 1924 banned Japanese from entering America. So, the seeds of WW2 were planted early. The Immigration Act of 1924, also known as the Johnson-Reed Act, severely restricted U.S. immigration by establishing strict national origins quotas based on the 1890 census. It heavily favored Northern/Western Europeans, dramatically reduced immigration from Southern/Eastern Europe, and effectively banned immigration from Asia, setting an exclusionary policy that was in place for decades. https://digital.library.cornell.edu/catalog/ss:19343554

We had the tip of a cold front come through the State today, it was a real fizzer. The forecast was up to 6mm in Perth, but we only got a light shower, barely enough to wet the ground. The cold front dissipated rapidly into just low clouds, and only a few coastal areas got a couple of millimetres. A bit disappointing, and there's no sign of any decent cold front, for close on another fortnight. https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/JAWF_Monitoring/Australia/GFS_forecasts.shtml

But you're still a millionaire, Peter - because of the massive increase in your house value. Asset-rich, but cash poor, that's for sure. There are thousands of baby-boomers just like you, and they are trapped to a certain degree, by the distortion in property prices. But at the end of the day, you can always cash in on that major value in your house, and purchase something smaller and newer and easier to maintain, such as an apartment. A sizeable number of my baby boomer friends have "downsized", and ended up with a major amount of cash to invest, thus allowing them to improve their lifestyle. You seem to have a lack of understanding as regards legalities and taxes around deaths. "Probate" is the act of determining the validity of a will, and the Court examines the will, determines if it's valid and then issues a "Grant of Probate", which allows the executor of the estate to proceed with asset distribution and finalisation of the Estate. If the family home os passed onto children, it can be sold within 2 years without payment of capital gains tax. If a superannuation death benefit is paid out, it can sometimes be taxed, depending on the circumstances of the beneficiary. As you have no super, there's no super tax to worry about. As to the shares, there's no tax payable upon inheriting them, only CGT when they are sold. There are no death duties in Australia, and there haven't been for many years. I feel our Govt should probably start looking at death duties, just as Britain had to reintroduce them, due to massive untaxed wealth gains.

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.

Great song, and Harry Chapin is one of my favourite musos. W.O.L.D. goes around in my head many a time, and I often sing a few bars of it. It was a dreadful tragedy to lose him at age 38 in a freeway crash.

But if you bought them at $20 in 1998, you'd still be pretty happy - especially when you count the massive dividends paid out on them annually, along with the stock splits. One of SWMBO's Uncles was a CTB manager, and he was made redundant around 1997 when the Commonwealth was taken over by the Big Banks. He got a $250,000 redundancy payout, plus 50,000 Commonwealth shares as part of the deal. He's never sold any of them, AFAIK. Imagine what he's sitting on now. I bought 100 local Bendigo Bank shares in 2000 - $100 worth, because that's all I could afford at the time, because I was as broke as they make them. I was a founding customer of that branch at that time. Other well-heeled people bought up to several hundred thousand of those Bendigo Bank shares at $1 each. The shares paid 10% dividend for years, then they started paying 15% dividend, and the last few annual dividends were at 20%. But I know those profits have been at the expense of working people. I only wish I'd had $100,000 at that time, I'd be one of the baby boomers Chalmers is targeting - and I'd be squealing like a stuck pig, too - as they all are. I have no problem with Chalmers grabbing some money off the wealthy baby boomers, most of whom have made incredible capital gains over the last 30 or so years. Most are multi-millionaires.

Nev's confidence about coming weather events is not something I can say I have the same confidence in. 10 day Forecast - Gilgandra: https://weather.com/en-TT/weather/tenday/l/Gilgandra+New+South+Wales+2827+Australia?canonicalCityId=36affdfba0f3fd7d6d0e3cdcf2f1d26b

In the 2026 Budget, Govt services to veterans have been reduced by "better targeting" of monetary allocations. There's a lot of double-speak in this area, with DVA saying it has more money to pay to allied health providers. Then there's "an Annual Monetary Limit for veterans' allied health services", which appears to me, to be public service gobbledegook. It doesn't say, if that means individual Veterans face an annual limit on their health expenditure, or if the annual limit is the total paid to individual service providers. This needs clarification. Then there's the complication that Veterans are currently paid benefits under 3 Veterans Acts. I'm covered under the 1986 Veterans Entitlements Act, which covers all veterans up until 2004, when it was replaced by the Military Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 2004 (MRCA). There's also a third Act, the Safety Rehabilitation and Compensation (Defence-related Claims) Act 1988 (DRCA). All three Acts are being replaced from 1st July 2026, by a new "Vets Act", which will cover all Veterans. Entitlements under previous Acts will remain unchanged. The bottom line is, the number of Veterans is dropping rapidly, and they will soon only make up a small number to be serviced by DVA. As a result, the money allocated to Veterans should decrease accordingly. There are barely a handful of WW2 Veterans left, there are only a small number of Korean War Veterans, and even the Vietnam Veterans numbers are depleting rapidly. Post-Vietnam War Veterans are only a relatively small number as well, because the size of the Australian Military has been much smaller in the decades since the Vietnam War. The 2026 Budget for Veterans: QUOTE: "Based on the 2026 Federal Budget, the Australian government is restructuring veteran services, resulting in a reported reduction in expenditure to providers of approximately $779.5 million over five years. While the government describes these changes as "better targeting" of services to veterans and their families, critics describe this as a reduction in support, with some labelling it a "bandaid" solution. Key Changes and "Better Targeting" Measures: The government expects to achieve savings of $779.5 million over five years from 2025–26, with an ongoing savings of $352.4 million per year. Reduction in Payments: Specifically, "better targeting" of services is expected to decrease government payments to providers by $606.6 million over five years. Allied Health Limits: A significant portion of this involves introducing an Annual Monetary Limit for veterans' allied health services, amounting to $748 million in savings over three years starting in 2027–28. Simplifying Referral Requirements: Further savings of $30.1 million over three years will be achieved by simplifying referral requirements. Context of Reforms (VETS Act): These changes are part of the broader Veterans' Entitlements, Treatment and Support (Simplification and Harmonisation) Act 2025 (VETS Act), which takes full effect on 1 July 2026. Single System: The current complex three-Act system will be replaced by a single, updated Act (based on the MRCA) for all new claims. 'Grandparenting': The government has provided assurances that those already receiving benefits before 1 July 2026 will not have their payments reduced or altered, and will continue to receive annual indexation. Goal: The stated goal of these reforms, based on the Royal Commission recommendations, is to reduce complexity and speed up claims, which has been a major source of distress for veterans. Impact on Services: Advocacy Funding: While payments to providers are reduced, the government has reported increased funding for the Building Excellence in Support and Training (BEST) program to support free, volunteer advocate services. Allied Health Fees: In a contradictory move, the Department of Veterans' Affairs (DVA) noted that it is increasing allied health provider fees to improve veteran access to services, which was a recommendation of the Royal Commission. Grants: There will be a reduction in uncommitted grant funding for certain commemorative, memorial, and graves-related projects.The reforms aim to align veterans' support with modern workers' compensation schemes, placing a stronger emphasis on rehabilitation and early intervention."

We had a week of very strong and chilly winds last week, although the days were sunny. The high pressure systems travelling West to East across the Southern Ocean are still very big and very strong, making for extended periods of strong winds. It's unusual for this time of year, but the weather is following a similar pattern to last year. Big strong high pressure systems blocking cold fronts from coming in at higher latitudes. We had a very dry Autumn last year, and didn't get a "season break" until the start of the last week of May. But when it did rain, in came in adequate amounts and the right spacings, which all provided another excellent cropping season. OME, the 4 day forecast map is indicating you could get some rain by Sunday or Monday.

Marty, that's an interesting point. Seems like there was some avoidance of warranty obligations on your phone. A phone should be guaranteed for the set manufacturers period, and a change of owner should not be enough reason to wiggle out of a valid warranty claim. After all, the phone is made by Samsung in a Samsung factory, it's not like it's being knocked up out of spare parts in a backyard workshop in Mumbai. There's also the angle of "official dealer" and "grey market" dealer. It appears Samsung refuses to support resellers who are not "official dealers". But Nostech is an Australian company, with an ABN, and is supplying the genuine product, and Nostech offer a 12 mth warranty on all new phones they sell. Interestingly, Samsung offer a 24 mth warranty on new Samsung phones from "official dealers" - but only in Australia. In all other countries, the Samsung warranty is only 12 mths. Both the S26 Ultra and the A37 are appearing on my Samsung account as "registered devices" - but I did nothing to register them with Samsung, this happened the instant I activated the phones. There's nothing to say on there, that the S26 Ultra is a "foreign-purchased device", but perhaps that might come if I try to make a major warranty claim. There's plenty of technical support on the Samsung page for software problems, which I guess covers the vast majority of technical problems with phones. As many people are extremely mobile today, moving from country to country, I wonder how this pans out in the overall "origins" manufacturer scheming? A sticking point with warranty is the manufacturer can always claim the phone was abused, mistreated or dropped, to avoid any major warranty claim. Australian consumer law is pretty strong, and often, if a valid warranty claim is being rejected, there's always Tribunals to settle the matter. Hopefully, it won't come to that. A lot of Chinese products have very poor warranty backup - so be careful when you purchase that Chinese EV! I'm hearing some bad things about MG's total lack of owner/warranty support.

On my new Samsung 26 Ultra phone, I just have to ask AI to draw me up a wallpaper image that suits my description. I typed, "I want a beach scene painting and nothing else, drawn in the impressionist style". It promptly produced a very good "art-deco, impressionist style" wallpaper, with a beach scene with chalk cliffs behind the beach, art-deco style ships in the distance, and impressionist images of people and umbrellas on the beach. I'd give it 9.9 out of 10.

My current gripe is around mobile phones. The Wednesday before Anzac Day, my u-beaut, 2-years-and-9-months-old Motorola Edge 30 Fusion locked up. Just wouldn't open the lock screen. Tried shutting it down and it took some effort as even the shutdown menu wouldn't respond to touch pressure for about 5 mins. When I did get it to shut down, and then re-started it, nothing had changed, it was still frozen. I could take calls still (although they sounded a bit funny), but I could do absolutely nothing else with it. Of course, part of the problem could've been the fact that I've dropped the phone numerous times in the period I've owned it. The screen cracked, the back cracked - in fact, it looked like a POS. When I asked repairers if they could fix it, they all grimaced, and said "$250 is the starting repair price, and it could end up more". 😞 I only paid $499 for it! The difference between the Motorola and the Samsungs I've owned previously, was that I could fix the Samsungs easily myself. I had a Samsung Note 4 for about 6 years, it was truly the best phone I've owned. I smashed the screen on it twice, and replaced it myself both times. That was the entire LCD assembly. The battery was replaceable on that phone, I replaced the battery twice. It had a stylus for writing notes on the screen with, and it had excellent performance all round. I think I paid about $360 for it off an eBay seller about 2016. The Note 4 was released in 2014 and became obsolete around 2020 as LTE technology appeared, and LTE technology made a lot of phones obsolete overnight. LTE is the current "backbone" of our phone services, bandwiths and "groups", being the latest evolution of 4G, and a still a support system behind 5G - although 5G actually uses advanced, scalable Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing (OFDM) framework for its technology. I have several "working" phones here - a Samsung S4, the Note 4, SWMBO's old Note 4 - and they are all useless, because they do not have LTE technology built in to them. You can install a SIM card in them, and they won't connect. I bought the Motorola as a mid-range replacement for the Note 4, and I must admit, it did work reasonably well in the 2 yrs and 9 mths before it simply locked up. So, when I had time, I set to and downloaded Motorolas "Repair Fix", the programme designed to cure Motorola software issues. But - despite loading the Repair Fix onto the Motorola, it changed absolutely nothing. I was greatly concerned that all my photos and contact information and messages were on that Motorola, and there was absolutely zero I could do to access them. 😞 In desperation, I carried out a factory reset and lost everything on the phone - and I tried the Repair Fix programme again - and still zero result. The phone was "bricked" as the young 'uns like to say. So, I decided to buy a top-of-the-wozza Samsung S26 Ultra - which comes with the stylus and some decent photographic ability. I started doing the rounds of the local stores - JB Hi-Fi, Harvey Norman, Retravision, the Good Guys, even Officeworks! Guess what? The phone is $2000 (well, ($1999 actually) at EVERY STORE - take it or leave it, was the message. Not a single discount of any kind. Asking about online "price matches" brought about general answers where they stated "they don't compete with the grey market". Yeah right. The "grey market" sellers simply buy the phones off Samsung outside Australia, and sell them for much less than the local "bricks and mortar" ripoff merchants. Knowing just how much profit there is in mobile phones, I was determined to not pay "the going rate". Of course, the S26 Ultra has only been out since late February and is the latest technology and latest processors, and the latest Android operating system (they're up to Android 16 now, and 6.2 standard for Bluetooth) - so discounts are "simply not done" on the latest phones, according to the local floggers. Even on the Samsung sales website, the phone was $1999. As a result, I went looking for an online supplier of an S26 Ultra. Bingo, I found "Nostech", based in Adelaide and Melbourne. Run by Indians of course - but they have 8 people working in the company, the two here in Adelaide and Melbourne have commerce degrees, and the other operatives are scattered through Asia - Singapore, HK, etc. They were selling on eBay and had highly satisfactory feedback. They buy the phones directly out of Vietnam (where they're manufactured), they go to HK and are then sent to buyers in Australia. Best of all - their S26 Ultra price was $1749. And for $100 extra, I could upgrade to 512GB memory, over the standard 256GB. So I bought a 512Kb - and paid $10 extra for Express Delivery via AustPost. Then the fun started. It was Anzac Day holiday on the Monday, and I thought that would slow things up for a day. However, I got notified the phone had been ordered on the Monday (27th May), and they said "2 to 4 days" delivery. I got an AP tracking number. I watched as the tracking said it had been processed at Toongabbie on the next day, Tues 28th. THEN, I watched in dismay, as the journey showed the phone going through no less than SEVENTEEN processing points within AP - and I watched it go from Sydney - to Perth - then back to Sydney again!! Jesus wept. https://auspost.com.au/mypost/track/details/34HFP509107801000964506 After 7 days and an "expected delivery date of May 5th", I gave up (because I really, really, NEEDED a working phone! - and went over to Costco and bought a new A37 5G Samsung - a mid-range phone - on special, for just $487. Normally selling for around $540 or more, it looked like a good fill-in phone, until I actually received my S26 Ultra I was still waiting for! The A37 turned out to be just an average phone, I was quite surprised that the camera on it wasn't anywhere near as good as I expected (and Samsung brag about their cameras). I tried some close up shots of a problem part I was seeking compensation on, and I couldn't get it to focus clearly at close range - despite using Macro (which is limited at .6, whereas the Motorola went down to .5 on Macro). Finally, the S26 Ultra arrived (on Tues May 5th, as AP promised (so much for "2 to 4 days" on Express Delivery) - and it is remarkable the difference in performance another $1363 makes. The S26 Ultra uses a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 processor, as compared to Samsungs own Exynos 1480 processor used in the A37. Supposedly around 20% faster than the previous Exynos processor, the Snapdragon 8 blows it out of the water. Plus, the cameras on the S26 Ultra are incredible. All in all, a stressful 2 weeks that has left me feeling a bit ragged, but with the new S26 Ultra phone up and running, and still being fine-tuned, hopefully the worst of my phone hassles are behind me. However - GUESS WHAT. Yep, today Samsung sent me a "special discount deal" from their online store - and the S26 Ultra is now available from their store for - $1750!! 🤦‍♂️

I can always remember the story about Pete Townshend as a young man, when he went for a jaunt on a little motorboat that was propelled by a small two stroke outboard engine. Pete was so mesmerised by the sound of the engine, combined with the burbling water against the hull - which both created a hypnotic, "sublime" musical experience, he claimed - that he fell into a hypnotic trance, and didn't realise he'd reached the shore, until the boat grounded in the mud! He's stated he's always sought to recreate that "musical ideal".

Shouldn't the blues song go .... "everybodys scrolling....."?

Perth would have only reached two-thirds of its current population level is we had to rely on groundwater and rainfall for water. We ran short of adequate amounts of drinking water around 15 years ago. As a result, two desalination plants have been installed, utilising our plentiful natural gas supply and a cleverly designed membrane, and those two desalination plants now supply around 35% to 40% of the drinking water for Perth. There are many country towns in W.A. facing a similar problem, and during drought periods, water has had to be trucked into some towns in W.A. that ran out of drinking water supplies. We live on the edge on this planet, at the best of times. Natural disasters such as extended droughts, massive storms, and earthquakes, have often decimated population centres.