octave

Was it out of the blue?????????? Labor promises to ‘move quickly’ on Indigenous voice to parliament referendum if elected

I honestly can't understand this comment. The evidence is pretty clear that aged care facilities were particularly vulnerable to COVID-19 as well as flu. I would have loved to visit my father during the worst of the pandemic however it is obvious that multiple visitors especially before mass vaccination would have endangered many lives. Some seem to have forgotten the terrible consequences of COVID-19 getting into vulnerable groups. Senior doctor tells Newmarch House COVID-19 inquest of his 'crisis day' as the nursing home outbreak unfolded The aged care facility my father was in adhered to the rules and because of this there were no cases or deaths from covid. Now my mother is a resident in the same home. Recently we were unable to visit because there was a case of gastro going around and many of the residents were ill and vulnerable. I don't regard these rules as some kind of fascist regime but merely following good medical practice. Different states handled the pandemic in slightly different ways but I would suggest all states put restrictions on aged care facilities. It is right and proper to analyze how the situation was handled, which things worked and which things didn't. Whilst of course understanding that this pandemic was not something any of us had any experience of.

Red this was not exclusive to Victoria. During the pandemic my father was in aged care in South Australia. The rules in S.A. were just as restrictive as they were in Vic. My father died in 2020 and due to the restrictions in S.A. I had to watch his funeral online. I have never winged and whined about this because I understood the necessity for these restrictions.

https://theshovel.com.au/2023/09/27/victorians-endure-final-day-living-in-brutal-dictatorship/?fbclid=IwAR1Hurnuxs1LlajaO1bVw2p9t26NOSZgPBA3j7CqbH0unvmRuPbRcoszN9Y

Yeah, starting life with Daddy's inheritance and buying up enough news outlets also gives you a strong voice.

Back in the day, there were many interestingly named places in Britain. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gropecunt_Lane

Whilst I can't claim to have read the whole Constitution, I have read a lot of it a scanned the rest of it. The Australian Constitution is the equivalent of the Constitution of your local flying club. It tells the committee how it should organize itself, how it should elect members, how often elections should be held etc. It is not the document you would write the rule that for example people should not leave dirty cups in the club kitchen or perhaps. constitution /ˌkɒnstɪˈtjuːʃn/ noun 1. a body of fundamental principles or established precedents according to which a state or other organization is acknowledged to be governed.

Red, why you you put advice to the government in the constitution? If an Aboriginal advisory group advised the government to introduce alcohol restrictions in indigenous communities are you seriously thinking that that should be in the constitution? Something I find frustrating is how many people many people haven't read or don't understand the Constitution. The Constitution is not a place where health or educational programs are written. The Constitution sets down things like how parliaments are constituted, the relationship of state and federal governments, the role of the high court, etc. https://www.aph.gov.au/constitution

If the yes case passes the only thing that will be in the constitution and therefore difficult (but possible) to change is the voice itself. The voice does not have the power to put things such as restrictions on climbing rocks into the constitution. Anything the voice recommends will not be in the constitution, at least not without another referendum.

We lived on a rural property between 1990 and 2011. Our place was precisely 100km from our workplace in Canberra. We would finish work at 8 PM and then drive along the King's Highway (one of Australia's more dangerous roads) 5 nights a week this was about 40000Km a year and around half of this was done in the dark. I can only remember hitting one kangaroo with enough force to damage the car and that was only minor damage to the plastic. A roo did once hop into the side of our car. Some of our neighbours (the ones with the rouge necks) thought we were quite mad for not attaching a load of metal to the front of our car. They would also seemingly brag about how many roos a week they hit. I put our good fortune down to knowing the road extremely well and knowing where we were likely to encounter wildlife. But the most important tactic was simply to drive at an appropriate speed at those times when we were likely to encounter wildlife. This is not a 100% guarantee of not hitting anything but it does reduce the chances and reduces the damage if you do hit something.

https://theshovel.com.au/2023/09/22/murdoch-steps-down-from-news-to-focus-on-running-australia/

There are plenty of these pictures around. https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/4456954/aboriginal-slaves-australia-chains-united-nations/ https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/mar/07/how-western-australias-unofficial-use-of-neck-chains-on-indigenous-people-lasted-80-years#:~:text=At peak periods%2C from the,with Yale or Hiatt padlocks.

Before it’s used in a solar panel, silicon dioxide must be turned into pure “metallurgical grade silicon” (MGS). This process uses a lot of energy: producing 1 kilogram of metallurgical grade silicon requires 14-16 kWh of power, which is roughly equivalent to using your home oven for seven hours. Still, over their lifetimes, solar panels emit 25 times less carbon dioxide equivalent per kilowatt hour than coal-powered electricity. MYTH #1: Solar panels require more energy to manufacture than they produce in their lifetime. FACT: A study by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory conclusively demonstrates that the manufacturing energy cost versus the energy production payback for solar modules is generally less than 4 years. A study by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory conclusively demonstrates that energy payback for photovoltaics (PV) is generally less than 4 years. You may download a free copy of the study here. It states: “Reaping the environmental benefits of solar energy requires spending energy to make the PV system. But as this graphic shows, the investment is small. Assuming 30-year system life, PV-systems will provide a net gain of 26 to 29 years of pollution-free and greenhouse-gas-free electrical generation … So, for an investment of from 1 to 4 years worth of their energy output, PV systems can provide as much as 30 years or more of clean energy.” When people float the suggestion that solar power is silly because it uses more energy to make (which is BS) they never seem to want to make a direct comparison with a power station, coal mining, coal transport, etc. Nuclear power is not required to manufacture solar panels. If this were true then no panels would be made in Australia https://renewableenergyaus.com/solar-panels-made-in-australia/ Every piece of technology has an energy cost and an environmental footprint. The question is how do solar panels compare with digging up coal and burning it?

I often get anti-EV memes and cartoons on my FB feed. This one was posted by a FB friend and ex-work colleague. He was never the sharpest tool in the shed. There are so many things wrong with this. Firstly there are very few areas where power is exclusively sourced from coal power generators. On average, around 34% (in Vic) of power comes from renewables. This is averaged over time and on windy or sunny days 100% of power can be from renewable sources. There are geographical differences. If you live in Tasmania 100% is from renewable sources. Apart from that in my case, I pay slightly extra to ensure my supplier buys the amount I use from renewable sources. Further to this I only charge my bike battery during the day from my own solar panels. The message of the cartoon seems to be that people who ride electric bikes or own EV cars are naive and don't understand where their electricity comes from but the cartoon suggests to me that the cartoonist and posters don't actually understand different sources of power in our grid. Apart from all of that, there seems to be an assumption that every electric bike rider only rides an electric bike for environmental reasons. You can be a total climate change denialist and still ride an electric bike because it is a good form of exercise or it is the most appropriate method of transport in a given situation or it is economical or perhaps just good fun. I can only think that these cartoons are drawn by people who are uncomfortable with new technology.

Tesla battery and drive Warranty Model 3 8 years or 160 000km Model 3 Long Range 8 years or 192 000km Model S 8 years or 240 000km Model X 8 years or 240 000km https://www.tesla.com/en_au/support/vehicle-warranty

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/feb/01/uk-child-migrants-sent-to-australia-offered-just-20k-compensation#:~:text=Child migrants from Britain sent,compensation by the British government. National apology to Forgotten Australians and former child migrants

I think there are many parallels. There is an argument that wrong A doesn't matter because there is also a wrong B they were both misguided. The fact that these were different times goes some way to explaining the thinking however this does not mean we should not acknowledge the harm done. I am sure many Indigenous children were removed for genuine welfare reasons however often they ended up in pretty brutal institutions. The more sinister side was the knowledgeable practice of taking "half-caste" children with the intention of breeding out the aboriginality. Numerous 19th- and early-20th-century contemporaneous documents indicate that the policy of removing mixed-race Aboriginal children from their mothers related to an assumption that the Aboriginal peoples were dying off. Given their catastrophic population decline after white contact,[7] whites assumed that the full-blood tribal Aboriginal population would be unable to sustain itself, and was doomed to extinction. The idea expressed by A. O. Neville, the Chief Protector of Aborigines for Western Australia, and others as late as 1930 was that mixed-race children could be trained to work in white society, and over generations would marry white and be assimilated into the society.[8][9][10] Some European Australians considered any proliferation of mixed-descent children (labelled "half-castes", "crossbreeds", "quadroons", and "octoroons",[9][11]: 231, 308  terms now considered derogatory to Indigenous Australians) to be a threat to the stability of the prevailing culture, or to a perceived racial or cultural "heritage".[11]: 160  The Northern Territory Chief Protector of Aborigines, Dr. Cecil Cook, argued that "everything necessary [must be done] to convert the half-caste into a white citizen".[12] This is not so much an argument for "the voice" but is more about the assertion sometimes made that these things did not happen and that, unlike other countries that were settled whilst already occupied, we were exceptionally nice. Anything negative that was done in our history either has to be hidden or justified by "it was done for the best reasons" or they were "different times" I think was Geoffrey Blainey who used the term " Black Armband" history. I can't remember who said it but the counter to that is that we don't want "White Blindfold History" either. When I was at school the only thing I can remember being taught about settlement was one paragraph under a line drawing of Cook shaking hands with an indigenous person. This certainly was a sanitation of history. I certainly did not see pictures like this until relatively recently. History is often not pleasant and it takes courage to not just celebrate the good things. As I say one could accept past injustices and still have legitimate reasons to vote no. When arguments such as it will be divisive are presented, I tend to look for similar situations in other countries. Is Canada divided over their similar system? Or New Zealand? Or Finland or Norway? In fact, we are one of the few first-world countries without this kind of arrangement and also and also a first-world country with perhaps the worst outcomes. We also should not brush under the carpet the history of British child migrants, we can care about more than one thing at once.

I took this photo on the Bellarine highway a few years ago. My question was "How"

Bruce, it is easy to say it did not happen because you personally did not come across it. There was definitely a policy of removing mixed-race children. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stolen_Generations

Originally said by Whitlam but also said recently by Howard John Howard encourages ‘No’ voters to ‘maintain the rage’ against the Voice

There is a whole lot of Conservative Christian money going into the no-campaign. Indigenous voice: no campaign’s deep links to conservative Christian politics revealed The lobby groups campaigning to sink the Indigenous voice to parliament referendum have deep links to a number of conservative Christian organisations and consultancies, a Guardian investigation can reveal. The no campaign is working with companies that appear to specialise in conservative Christian campaigning, including a US-headquartered marketing and fundraising firm that aims to help Christian nonprofit ministries “fulfill their mission”. Our investigation also shows links between the no campaign and the failed conservative push to defeat the marriage equality postal survey in 2017.

Perhaps it is not over your head but beneath you.

Same here.

We went for a bike ride/hike along the Timboon Rail Trail today. Twas absolutely beautiful. Old train bridge Some kind of rail equipment We were amused by this. It seems to be particularly unambitious engineering.