Gilgamesh_Novem posted:

As for bbqing, uhh we did that indoors. Get a butane burner to grill meat (or electric grill), spread newspaper to catch excess grease or kids becoming messy...

Unimpressed posted:

I heard once, not sure how true it is, that Menzies actively encouraged home ownership as a bulwark against communism, and that before WW2, far more people rented. In other words, that home ownership served the purpose of creating a layer of petit-bourgeois land owners.

Also, in the whole apartment vs house argument, people living in units are far more likely to be renters, and with Australia's loose rental laws, the continuation of the trend towards renting is deepening inequality. So a mind shift towards apartments over houses, if not accompanied by policies to support ownership of those apartments, actually plays into the hands of the rich, who would love to return to the days of yore where a landlord owned the entire street, like a feudal baron.

Don Dongington posted:

Oh god. Australians doing this would result in hundreds of yearly fatalities...

Don Dongington posted:

Oh god. Australians doing this would result in hundreds of yearly fatalities...

Negligent posted:

Buys a mcmansion to have five friends around twice a month

Uses massive amounts of water and fertiliser growing own vegetables in lovely suburban sand

Installs solar panels to run ac and fully sik home theatre

Takes the car to go to bbqs at housing estates on the other end of the freeway

Australians.txt

Don Dongington posted:

I had suspicions about this, but honestly I haven't looked at pricing since all those new apartments went up in East Perth/Maylands/Inglewood etc. I assume these are the ones you mean? I've looked at a few of them via the sales offices while passing through and they definitely looked more like they were being marketed at rich retirees, loaded foreign nationals or the odd FIFO people who don't believe that the size of their penis is proportionate to the number of burners their BBQ has.

Jumpingmanjim posted:

http://www.bbc.com/news/health-34615621

Anyone here work in cattle farming or know someone who does? Are they concerned about the World Health Organisation declaring red meat a carcinogen?

Jumpingmanjim posted:

http://www.bbc.com/news/health-34615621

Anyone here work in cattle farming or know someone who does? Are they concerned about the World Health Organisation declaring red meat a carcinogen?

freebooter posted:

Everything wrong with Australian suburbanisation basically boils down to the outdated notion of having to work in the centre of town, which was fine in the 50s when the population was like 100,000 people and everybody could find a parking space and be back home at the edge of the city in Scarborough by 5.20pm because there was no traffic. Whereas now there is an endless Styxian river of cars trudging up and down the freeway twice a day, and for some reason everyone seems to be fine with it. There is literally nothing that would make me tolerate a commute of 60 minutes in an endless traffic jam, I'd either get a shittier job closer to home or sacrifice living space and live in a tiny apartment in the city.

freebooter posted:

Anyway I genuinely think it's a problem that will solve itself as the internet becomes more completely integrated in every aspect of our lives

Laserface posted:

Working from Home will never take off because theres too many skill-less, unemployable fuckwits working in middle management whose roles exist solely to micromanage teams of people with skills.

They fall rear end backwards into these jobs and then do loving everything to justify their position.

hooman posted:

This is the greatest thing I have ever seen.

Also comparing places in Australia to Copenhagen or New York is poo poo because we don't have that population density. I live in Perth. Even places that "aren't far" from the city are 20+km away. Having to wear a helmet isn't what stops people loving commuting by bicycle. lovely bicycle infrastructure and immense distances are.

I once had a race from my university to my home against one of my friends (who lived very near me), I cycled and he took public transport. He beat me there by 5 minutes. It was ~30km. Total travel time ~ 1 hr 30 mins. Helmet laws don't fix poo poo like that.

hooman posted:

Also for all the Australian Suburban/City Planning is poo poo chat, which totally covers why nobody wants to ride a loving bike. Nobody has really addressed helmets as being a root cause. At least compared to all the other poo poo that we're doing wrong that makes trying to cycle around here a total misery.

Also 40 degree heat in summer isn't great for long rides either.

quote:

The post-traumatic moment in Australian politics

OPINIONTHE DRUM TIM DUNLOPABOUT 7 HOURS AGO

Malcolm Turnbull is riding the tidal wave of relief that is washing across the country, and at this stage the polls are showing nothing more than the fact that he isn't Tony Abbott, writes Tim Dunlop.

The latest Fairfax-Ipsos poll has the Turnbull Government on two-party preferred lead of 53-47 against Labor.

Most of the pundits have pitched this result as "bad news for Labor" and as further proof of Malcolm Turnbull's innate wonderfulness.

Many on the left are in despair wondering why, when so few of the fundamentals of policy have changed, people are suddenly giving their polling support to what is still, essentially, the party of Abbott.

Oh dear, they mourn: are people blind?

There is a simple and much more basic explanation for what is happening: the country is still breathing a huge sigh of relief that Tony Abbott is gone.

In fact, I think many are severely underestimating just how deep that sigh of relief has needed to be.

What we are going through is less a honeymoon for Mr Turnbull than the sort of psychic relief that comes from waking up alive in intensive care after a particularly horrific car crash.

We are scarred and bruised and in need of ongoing care, but all our limbs are intact and our organs are functioning. We are still in recovery, sipping through a straw.

This is why Labor's attacks on the new Prime Minister have been so misjudged and have fallen so flat, especially amongst their own supporters.

First Labor tried to tell us that nothing had changed when in fact a huge thing had changed: we were suddenly living under King Aragorn rather than King Joffrey.

Then they tried to rile us up by pointing out that Mr Turnbull is rich, which was sort of like complaining that the car of the guy who drove us to the hospital after the accident was too nice.

I mean, who cares?

Mr Abbott was damaging our collective soul, making us feel bad about ourselves, hitting us between the eyes with the bullet we dodged by not electing Mark Latham.

Nearly everything Mr Abbott did left people in despair: his first budget; his onion eating; his reintroduction of knighthoods, and then giving one of them to Prince Philip; his winking; his endless broken promises; his hyper-masculine attitude; his craven use of national security; his national-flag orgy every time he had a press conference; his instinct to treat opponents as enemies; his instinct to divide the nation; his flicking tongue; his inability to articulate anything remotely like a vision for the country.

And let's not forget: all this came after two-terms of Labor nonsense as well.

We were already pretty much over most of what the political class were throwing at us, to the extent that Mr Abbott - who as opposition leader was really no different to how he was as prime minister - looked to many like the better choice.

The great promise that Mr Abbott made and broke was that he would restore calm, that he would settle things down, that he would see to it that we had an adult government of "no surprises".

It was a promise no leader could ever keep, but we believed him enough to give him a chance. When he not only failed to deliver but turned out to be probably the worst, most embarrassing and dishonest prime minister in recent memory, it was insult upon injury.

We were suddenly being ruled by an incompetent, having been assured by the media - who are meant to be on top of these things - that he was the best option.

No wonder we were traumatised.

And I don't think traumatised is too strong a word. Mr Abbott brought out something ugly in certain sections of the community - and that part of the media that continued to shill for him - and to the majority who only pay peripheral attention to such matters, his behaviour and his policies were a genuine shock.

So my guess is that the support showing up for the Coalition in the polls now is an inch deep and a mile wide. It will retreat, not least because the new PM himself is a brittle personality - as his previous tenure as Liberal leader showed - but because his leadership is built on the fragile alliance of party factions that are at heart incommensurate.

Labor's best response - if they are capable - is to get their own house in order, present a genuine alternative, and gently assist the internal contradictions within the Coalition to assert themselves. Full-frontal attacks on Mr Turnbull himself are unlikely to be effective for the time being.

But all this stuff is cosmetic.

To read the media at the moment is to be lulled into a sense that Mr Turnbull's leadership has returned us to "normal" politics, that somehow we are back in the time of Hawke and Howard rather than that of Rudd and Gillard and Abbott. It is based on the idea that somehow the right leader can pull everyone into line and square all circles, and that Mr Turnbull is that leader.

But leadership alone is not the issue. His popularity might be enough to get the Coalition safely through the next election, but Australia, like most Western democracies, is riven with structural democratic problems that cannot simply be smoothed over.

The underlying support for the major parties is weak; globalisation - think the Trans-Pacific Partnership - continues to undermine the ability of parties to formulate policy that reflects the will of the electorate rather than that of an increasingly internationalised business sector and political class; and ongoing issues around everything from equal marriage to immigration, to climate change, to an aging population in a time of technological upheaval are throwing up issues that are simply beyond the capabilities of "normal" politics.

The bottom line is this: Malcolm Turnbull is riding the tidal wave of relief that is washing across the country, and at this stage the polls are showing nothing more than the fact that he isn't Tony Abbott. For things to really improve, we are going to need more fundamental change than that.

Mad Katter posted:

MonoAus posted:

I thought someone put forward that repealing the helmet laws would encourage more people to cycle. What you've quoted is the multitude of other reasons why the amount of people cycling wouldn't change if the laws were repealed.

Personally I'm still waiting to hear why helmets are such a deterrent for some people.

Kommando posted:

Mandatory helmet laws hurt bicycle sharing schemes as a casual user, of which many are, will not be carrying a helmet around in case they happen to use a bike share

MonoAus posted:

I thought someone put forward that repealing the helmet laws would encourage more people to cycle. What you've quoted is the multitude of other reasons why the amount of people cycling wouldn't change if the laws were repealed.

Personally I'm still waiting to hear why helmets are such a deterrent for some people.

Don Dongington posted:

Bikeshare isn't really a viable option here, and the people I know who cycle to work spend that much time shoehorning themselves in and out of lycra and showering at work that the helmet isn't going to be an issue.

SynthOrange posted:

Perth will be underwater in a few years so it's a problem that doesnt need solving.

QUACKTASTIC posted:

Mad Katter posted:

they will won't bother with it if they feel it's inconvenient.

SynthOrange posted:

Perth will be underwater in a few years so it's a problem that doesnt need solving.

Mad Katter posted:

This is really tiring, because nobody has suggested that mandatory helmet laws are the one single thing stopping people from cycling and that their repeal will usher in a glorious cycling utopia where people in the outer suburbs will ride 30km to work every morning. Nobody has suggested that Perth and Copenhagen are exactly the same.

Copenhagen sees high rates of commuting by bike because its the cheapest, fastest, and most convenient option for a lot of people. They have done great work there identifying ways to make cycling cheaper, faster, and more convenient so as to encourage more people to cycle. There is no reason why we can't learn from this and implement solutions to make cycling cheaper, faster and more convenient for people. For many people, like those living in the suburbs of Perth, cycling will never be the fastest and most convenient option, but that's okay. There's absolutely no reason why we can't work to remove barriers of entry for other people.

Australia as a whole will likely never have the rates of commuter cycling seen in Copenhagen, but that doesn't mean that certain parts of it aren't very well suited for commuter cycling, and it doesn't mean that we shouldn't bother implementing good ideas seen in other cities.

Your attitude of "people in the suburbs of Perth won't ride a bike therefore nobody in the entire country should bother" is nonsensical.

meteor9 posted:

What I'm gathering from this is that there are a ton of other things that need solving before safe, mass bike transit can be a thing down here in most cities, and helmet laws are therefore one of the last things that should be removed after working on some of that other stuff first.

The issue there seems to be that helmet laws are the first and only thing people ever wanna bring up in regards to 'fixing' it all.

Mad Katter posted:

Cartoon disagrees, but I think the example set by cities such as Copenhagen shows that helmets aren't a necessity for commuters. I went to several events associated with the VeloCity conference back when it was held on Adelaide, and the delegates there were horrified by our laws.

meteor9 posted:

What I'm gathering from this is that there are a ton of other things that need solving before safe, mass bike transit can be a thing down here in most cities, and helmet laws are therefore one of the last things that should be removed after working on some of that other stuff first.

meteor9 posted:

What I'm gathering from this is that there are a ton of other things that need solving before safe, mass bike transit can be a thing down here in most cities, and helmet laws are therefore one of the last things that should be removed after working on some of that other stuff first.

Cartoon posted:

That's a blatant misrepresentation. Once all the infrastructure and cultural issues have been sorted out then commuting without a helmet becomes much less dangerous and more to the point helmet requirements aren't why so many people either do or do not ride bikes.
This is a much better representation of my views. Although as long as the medical community and statistics back me I'll still recommend that helmets be mandatory. The simultaneous points of fact:

quote:

Muslim children walk out when national anthem is sung

Negligent posted:

courier mail

Negligent posted:

courier mail

crazy old lady posted:

"I saw red. I'm Australian and I felt 'you don't walk out on my national anthem; that's showing respect to my country."