How do we select the leader of an independent Australia?

[Marty_d]

50 minutes ago, Yenn said:

 

Daylight saving is another thing states can't agree on. Why would you want to get up earlier and then have a longer hotter evening?

 

Australia's got a huge diversity of environmental conditions including the length and type of daylight hours. 

For example down here in Tassie there's usually a longish period of twilight, whereas closer to the equator the sun goes down like a light switch being flicked off.

But specifically with daylight savings - in winter months down here I drive/bus to work in the dark and come home in the dark.  In summertime I love daylight savings because it means beautiful long (not usually hot) evenings where you can actually get out after tea and get some stuff done.

(Also - I thought the reason QLD never had daylight savings is because Joh Bjelke-Petersen thought the sun shone out of his arse, and he wasn't getting up an hour earlier for anyone?)

[Bruce Tuncks]

I don't like daylight savings because I never know what time it is. Any clock around my place could be: vic winter time, vic summer time, sa winter time, sa summer time.

This causes me to get into trouble by coming home late. You can't trust the sun anymore.

[old man emu]

I was thinking about house design specifications when I was talking about laws being the same nationwide. Clearly, applying Darwin's cyclone standards to Hobart would be silly, but it there are basic standards for all houses. The peculiarities of an area could be addressed within the building regulations.

 

As for Daylight Saving, I've written before that, due to our small population, Australia should work off one time zone, based on 135 East, which is GMT +9 and is just about mid-way between the east and west coasts. That would mean that east and west could work more efficiently as everyone would be at work at the same time. That is, 9;00 am in Perth would be 9:00 am in Sydney.

 

Of course Governors assent to the Bills forwarded to them. The idea behind this is ancient. Parliament nutted out solutions to problems and once a solution was agreed upon, the Parliament placed the problem before the monarch with its considered solution. The monarch took their advice and assented to the solution, making it Law. The monarch has the right to veto a Bill, but wisdom born of the study of history, make the monarch politely suggest that Parliament might like to give a bit more consideration to the problem to improve the suggested solution. Since Governors are the representatives of the monarch, they act in a similar way to the monarch.

 

By the way, for those interested in The Dismissal, the correspondence between John Kerr and Buckingham Palace is now available for reading.

 https://www.naa.gov.au/explore-collection/kerr-palace-letters

[Bruce Tuncks]

One of the worst people I have ever met was a buildings inspector who was a stupid bully. The local council actually paid a couple to fight this guy in court...  they paid a ratepayer to contest the ruling of one of their inspectors! And they won, not that this slowed the inspector down in future dealings.

The couple were installing a heater and the inspector had said that the entire wall behind the heater needed fireproofing. The regs say 3m ( total or each side I'm not sure)

But this inspector thought that his approval meant that he liked the idea, when of course it means that he has checked and the proposal complies.

I hate bullies. No punishment would be enough for a bully.

[nomadpete]

Yenn, I'd suggest that universal sensible house design can be worded to suit all parochial locations. It is simple to have one set of rules that requires height of flood to be above the known 100year flood height. That would require houses on stilts in flood prone locations (for a moment, setting aside the suspected corruption behind developers being allowed to create whole suburbs in known flood locations).

[willedoo]

8 hours ago, Yenn said:

When Qld did away with many Shire governments, it was done on a pack of lies by the Qld premier and the Governor wasn't in the least interested in the corruption used to get that legislation up.

That whole thing was one big fraud case. They dressed it up as efficiency saying smaller shires weren't economically viable. The truth is, a lot of larger shires were heavily in debt and a lot of smaller ones had money in the bank. Amalgamate the small ones with the money into the bigger bankrupt ones and presto, the local government minister's books look good. A good lurk if you can get away with it. Goodbye small shire, hello unfixed potholes and reduction of service.

Edited November 3, 2020 by willedoo

[Jerry_Atrick]

On 02/11/2020 at 8:57 PM, old man emu said:

Perhaps the need for a Head of State is in response to the need for stability of government no matter who is PM. Let's face it. We've had more PM's in the past 20 years than there have been lives of parliaments.  The PM is elected by the majority Party holding government, and we have seen how the internal machinations of Party members have either severely distracted the PM from governing, or have actually done the Julius Caesar act on the PM.

 

One of the things that holds Australia out as a stable country is that its Head of State has been a steadying hand on the tiller of the ship of government.   For 120 years our Head of State might have been a monarch living in a distant country, but the monarch's representatives, bar one, have been bipartisan in the conduct of their duties. We have never tried to lynch a Governor-General, or a State Governor. We have not had the political fights that other countries have had to endure.

I get that the GG/Monarch/Head of State should be a steadying hand, but I can't reconcile it to the numerous PMs yet continually steadying hand. The Kerr controversy was an outlier and arguably the GG wields little, if any practical power. Given the PM can appoint a GG today, there is no more threat to Australia's political stability than there is should the Queen be simply omitted.. I get it can be argued that as Queenie can be the steadying hand - which is actually an argument for retaining the constutional monarchy, as it can hardly be more independent, but in reality, wouldn't Lizzy simply acqueisce to requests from the colony - er - independent nation she is a head of? Re the PMs being put through the revolving door as frequenty as Trump's various cheifs of staff and whatever else, well, in that time, I don't recall the GG changing with each incarnation. My contention is that the GG has little real power.. I think the GG (and the Monarch) should be stripped of the real power to dismiss a government and call a dossolution of parliament. This should be in the hands of parliamentarians through the existing mechanism of a double dissolution.. Maybe another tool should be made available (No Confidence in the Government?). BTW, I agree with @Yenn: Senators should not allowed to be on the executive (ministers or their support). They are the house of review and to allow them to form the executive is a direct conflict of interest (mind you, I played a few games of indoor cricket with Sen. Robert Ray - at the tome the Minister of Defence.. Had no idea! I was little older than a lad.. And he was very handy with the bat).

 

18 hours ago, Bruce Tuncks said:

I don't like daylight savings because I never know what time it is. Any clock around my place could be: vic winter time, vic summer time, sa winter time, sa summer time.

This causes me to get into trouble by coming home late. You can't trust the sun anymore.

Sir.. use it to your advantage.. has saved me from the dog house many-a-time 😉

 

15 hours ago, nomadpete said:

Yenn, I'd suggest that universal sensible house design can be worded to suit all parochial locations. It is simple to have one set of rules that requires height of flood to be above the known 100year flood height. That would require houses on stilts in flood prone locations (for a moment, setting aside the suspected corruption behind developers being allowed to create whole suburbs in known flood locations).

I would tend to agree with this.. Minimum standards can be set, with wording required to take into account local environmental conditions (building on a flood plain! WTF? They allow it here, too). For example, the Queenslander is a great house made for local conditions. They were all over the place for ventialtion more than flood protection (my mother's siblings were all concentrated in Keperra, all had Queeslanders and I cannot recall Keperra ever flooding). However, state lines are more or less arbitrarily drawn rather than based on environmental factors. For example, the border between NSW and Vic is the Murray river from its source and to the East, a straight line to the coast. There is no discernible difference betwenn both sides of the river and any longitude, howver, the regs are technically different. Similarly with the border between NSW and QLD - just north of it, Queenslanders, South of it - well, not somany houses on stilts.

 

 

[Yenn]

Yes you could make houses to suit each state, but doing so would enable Victorian style houses to be built in N Qld, where they are just not suitable and also Queensland high set styles in Tasmania, where I don't think they would be suitable.

Massive differences between different environments, for example Southern states are looking to admit as much daylight as possible, hence massive windows, double or triple glazed. In Qld we shade the windows and because of cyclones don't want them too big. Write the rules to cover the whole country and you are going to end up with miles of paperwork. The last thing we need.

We all go on to time centred on 135 deg East and school kids on the east coast of Qld would be going to school in the dark and coming home at the hottest time of the day.

[old man emu]

3 hours ago, Yenn said:

We all go on to time centred on 135 deg East and school kids on the east coast of Qld would be going to school in the dark and coming home at the hottest time of the day.

Looking at a date late in the school year (15th December) and with Queensland on AEST, sunrise on that day is 4.44 am and sunset 6.38 pm. If we all used 135E as the time zone, then on that date sunrise would be 4.14 am and sunset 6.08 pm.  If school gets out at 3.00 pm, then using the current time zone, they get out 10 hours 16 minutes after sunrise. Using 135E, they would get out 9 hours 46 minutes after sunrise. In mid-winter (1 July) sunrise is at 6.38 am and sunset 5.02 pm AEST. Using 135E they would be 6.08 as and 4.32 pm.

 

Ask a Melbournian how they manage in winter now when sunrise on 1 July is 7.36 am and sunset is 5.11 pm. Perhaps the idea would be to have Daylight Saving from April to October.

 

However what's more important here 

[Bruce Tuncks]

You guys who admire the old Qld houses need to visit Darwin and weep at the tiny concrete-block modern houses,  which disobey everything about passive cooling that the old Queenslander embodied.

BUT... with enough air-conditioning, they can be comfy inside.

There were some highly-paid social workers who visited people in Darwin who claimed to have trouble paying their electricity bill. They explained how leaving the aircon on all day while they were at work would cost them more. Apparently this was a great surprise to some.