MisterFrog
@MisterFrog@aussie.zone
- Comment on ABC journalists to strike for first time in 20 years with widespread news disruption expected 6 days ago:
Why would they? Out of curiosity
- Comment on Living without a private vehicle in Brisbane is impossible for residents due to the city’s sprawling layout and limited public transport options 6 days ago:
I think it’s more than the city is not well laid out for most people to use public transport.
I live in Melbourne, and it is the same thing here (except that our public transport is better). I can live car free, but don’t begrudge those who choose not to.
What I do begrudge though, are the people voting for more roads and car-centric infrastructure. We should be building zero new car roads.
At most upgrades of intersections to make them work better. We need to be making it convenient enough for most people NOT to get in their car.
- Comment on This fuel costs as little at 80c a litre in Australia. So why isn't everyone using it? 6 days ago:
Gotta prop up the gas industry you see.
The propaganda has been so successful people don’t realise how terribly cooking with gas is compared to induction.
Hell, I even prefer the glass top resistive electric, so much easier to clean than gas stoves.
- Comment on Victoria teachers strike: warning of further action as 35,000 rally and hundreds of schools cancel classes 6 days ago:
The Labor government had better acquiesce, the teachers’ demands are downright reasonable, and they’re the “Labor” government.
Smh
- Comment on Six fuel ships bound for Australia cancelled 6 days ago:
And oil have to stay anyway, but more as material than source of energy.
100% with you here. Hence why we need to preserve it and move to stop burning it ASAP.
batteries are not a answer
Also agree with you on this. Batteries habe their place, but not for long duration storage, they aren’t practical for that. There a number of promising technologies (beyond pumped hydro which is probably the best, but requires certain terrain) while have poor round trip efficiency, are still worth it in my opinion - compressed/liquid air energy storage, vanadium flow batteries, other thermal solutions like sand.
It also bears noting that a lot of our thermal energy needs (both heating and cooling) could be built our as district heating/cooling.
There’s a bunch of stuff that can be done, we have literally no choice but to try.
nuclear never get promoted by so called “green”
Nuclear, while vaguely better than oil and gas, is a stupid long-term solution, because there still is almost no permanent storage of waste, and to get the most out of it, you need to do recycling which the US and other nuclear powers don’t want you to do because you can enrich plutonium.
I could maybe live with building it provided no alternative in the short-term, but just doesn’t seem like the smart play to me. Everyone just conveniently forgets about the waste which will last for 10,000s of years.
Thorium seems interesting though.
we just do not have time for something which take 30 years to materialise
Almost everything listed above could be built right now. It wouldn’t be the absolute most efficient thing possible, not profitable, but we could start right now - and are, but usually drips and drabs and banks don’t want to fund them at the scales we need.
- Comment on Six fuel ships bound for Australia cancelled 6 days ago:
At this moment, but oil exploration and re-expanding our oil refining capacity doesn’t exactly happen overnight either.
I agree with you that our energy system is dependent on oil, and we’re continually kicking the can down the road on this one.
The best time to invest in a green energy future was decades ago, the second best is now.
We just have to stop waiting for the free market to do it, because it won’t do it, and if it does, it’ll be way too late.
Storage needs to be built like yesterday, even if it’s terribly unprofitable at first. Until we have that, no for-profit company will want to invest further in renewables (assuming we continue capitalism).
In any case, we need to build it (via the government), because the private market hasn’t, and won’t.
- Comment on 'There is a risk': Concerns over the new Iranian leader owning assets in Australia 1 week ago:
Capitalism is only good when our owner class is on the same side as their owner class
- Comment on Australia: Taiwanese Indigenous group's planned performance at AFC Asian Cup match between Taiwan and China cancelled at the last minute for "political reasons" 2 weeks ago:
This is such a brain-dead move because recognition of indigenous Taiwanese people and celebration of their culture has no impact on cross-straight relations whatsoever (at least, you’d think).
Like, everyone could happily say “the indigenous people of the island of Taiwan” and it have no meaning about the sovereignty of the island between the two different governments claiming to the the “One China”.
- Comment on Government urged to let Iranian women's football team stay in Australia until safety is assured 2 weeks ago:
🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
No wonder they’re able to lie to you. You haven’t understood the graph.
Do you think that if inflation drops from 3% to 2% that things got cheaper?
No, this is not the same concept. Inflation is increase in prices over a set period. (Typically given per year). It’s a rate of change. I’ll try spell out for you what the graph I linked to means, but it’s not showing rate of change per time. It’s showing a ratio of current houses, to current population for each given year.
We’re still bringing in significantly more people than we’re building houses to support. Building 400 houses when you brought in 1000 isn’t enough lol.
This is total housing per person at the given year. NOT the rate of change.
Let’s take the reciprocal fractions, maybe you’ll get it then…
In 1990 there were ~2.65 people dwelling (1000/377). In 2022 there we only ~2.38 people per dwelling (1000/420). At that date, not rate of change like you’re imagining.
I’m really hoping you understand now, that per person there are MORE houses than there were 30 years ago, but this hasn’t caused the price of housing to drop because this hasn’t translated into more available houses (because of aforementioned hoarding) and because of commodification of housing.
After this I’m gonna give up, and be sad that people didn’t pay attention in maths because they “weren’t going to use it” ☹️
- Comment on Government urged to let Iranian women's football team stay in Australia until safety is assured 2 weeks ago:
I hate to pull the insulting card, but you started it:
Bro.
What don’t you understand about 420 dwellings per 1000 inhabitants being higher than 377 dwellings per 1000 inhabitants?
Did you fail year 6 maths?
What are you not understanding here? Where do you get off implying I can’t read graphs when clearly you don’t seem to understand the concept. (Or just refusing to acknowledge it?)
More likely, you’re just too stubborn to admit that your pre-decided “reason” for the housing crisis is bullshit, and you’re just spouting numbers without actually bothering to look up the source. You just feel it’s those pesky foreigners.
I really hope it’s not that you innumerate. Would be a scathing indictment of our education system
- Comment on Government urged to let Iranian women's football team stay in Australia until safety is assured 2 weeks ago:
7000 new homes per week? No.
Clearly we must be, otherwise how would the number of houses per person be increasing…?
Something tells me the 7000 per week number isn’t correct or otherwise misconstrued. Please link to the relevant study or ABS data page. (There may be some confusion between net migration, and number of ARRIVALS per week, which includes tourists and other temporary visa holders)
they’re not for sale or rent so they’re irrelevant
You are not owes someone else giving you their house to live in. If they choose to buy it and keep it empty that’s up to them, and they shouldn’t be forced to do otherwise. Thinking they should is just jealousy.
Sorry, but I think this take isn’t sensible. We regulate a lot of our society. We don’t let people do whatever they want, where we draw the line in different areas comes down to what we value as a society.
You seem to value ownership above all else. Never mind the extremely damaging externalities, in your point of view.
If you own a house, and you’re not living in it, and you’re not renting it out, especially if you own more than 2 (I think holiday houses aren’t some sacred thing people NEED, but fine, have A holiday house), then sorry, yes, you should be forced to sell or rent it out. Thinking it’s okay to just keep it empty as your personal choice, is anti-social behaviour, and we as a society can choose to disallow it like we do with many other anti-social behaviours.
It’s not jealously, it’s empathy for your fellow human beings who need somewhere affordable to live. We as a society do get to decide when someone’s behaviour is unacceptable. Unless you’re not a fan of democracy?
We balance freedoms for the individual with what’s best for the collective. Both extremes of hyper-individualism (what you seem to think “FreedomAdvocacy” means) or no personal rights whatsoever are dumb. There’s a debate to be had about where exactly we should fall for any given topic, but the extremes seem a terrible way to run society.
- Comment on Government urged to let Iranian women's football team stay in Australia until safety is assured 2 weeks ago:
We aren’t building enough houses. This is fact.
We have more houses per person, so it is not a fact. We do have a supply problem, because we’re not utilising our existing housing stock.
We do have a supply problem, but it’s wild you think it’s okay for wealthy people to screw the rest of us over. The supply problem is because houses are sitting empty, and tax incentives are such that profiting off of housing makes it an asset class people are pouring money into.
We could just decide tomorrow we’re going to keep housing prices nominally stable, make hoarding empty houses illegal (like, someone’s “freedom” to profit doesn’t trump the rest of our freedom of having somewhere affordable to live… we live in a society, not an anarcho-capitalist hellscape), and remove tax incentives that make housing such an attractive asset class.
We could be using these piles of money invested into unproductive assets (the house just sits there, the actual value from living there is far, far exceeded by the current price) and invest them in actual productive assets like companies and research.
Housing needs to be for people to live, not to profit.
We are building enough housing per person, that’s a fact, and I’ve given you the data to prove it. Yes, even with how many people were bringing in (which I agree, we ought not just aimlessly do).
But it’s plainly obvious that the reason housing is expensive is not because of the number of houses we have.
To be clear we have more housing per person than before, so the 7000 per week figure (also, is that net?), doesn’t really prove your point at all.
- Comment on An 18-year-old woman in Queensland faces two years in jail for wearing a shirt that says "from the river to the sea." 2 weeks ago:
I think we’re roughly on the same page here, but I’m slightly confused. Mostly because I think our conceptions of “The Left” differ, and that “the left” never asked for laws clamping down on freedom of speech. Certainly not for the last 20 years or so. (Just opposing the brain-dead calls for 18c to be removed).
These specific laws to ban these phrases from this post was passed by the QLD government in Queensland.
I can still say from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free because I’m not in Queensland.
The federal government, being stupid, recently passed extra “hate speech” laws which I believe will end up simply being used against political opponents. Right now it’s anyone calling for the government to stop supporting genocide, but who knows what they’ll be used for in the future.
Currently, the federal legislation doesn’t ban specific phrases, as far as I’m aware.
It’s all stupid, because racial hate speech was already illegal.
“The left” (which I don’t include the Labor party as a part of, they’re centre at best, and centre right if we’re being honest), never asked for extra stupid laws like this. And the biggest targets currently of our new hate speech laws will likely be leftist groups, since they’re the ones who are in opposition to Israel’s genocide, and the lobby groups from Israel who are basically telling our government what laws they’d like them to enact.
To be clear, these other groups of people on “the left” (centrists) talking about identity politics are stupid, and playing right into the hands of “the right” doing the same thing, only on opposite sides of “the debate”, meanwhile oligarchs are bleeding all of us dry…
Do these laws clamp down on Nazis (the far right) too? Sure, but I don’t actually believe that was the intended target, since again, Nazi speech was already illegal.
I hate the way politics is going in our country…
You and I don’t seem to agree on much, but I’m happy at least we can agree that laws clamping down on political speech is dangerous and should be fought against at all costs.
- Comment on Australia to provide military support to Gulf states attacked by Iran 2 weeks ago:
I’ll preference the Greens over Labor because the Labor party is a centre-right party, but fuck, the Greens had such a sook when they lost at the last federal election, even claiming that preferential voting was somehow unfair.
Like???
Wtf.
Git gud The Greens, Christ.
P.S. I think single member electorates ought to be expanded to 3 member electorates (and maybe increase the number of lower house MPs by 50%), to mitigate against a party getting less than 50% of the vote (after preferences) but more than 50% of the seats and therefore 100% of the power.
I’m not for state-wide proportional in the lower house though, because it’ll make forming government too difficult in my opinion (evidenced by Tasmania and a bunch of European countries where that’s a thing). I think having a proportional upper house with Hare-Clark is pretty decent as a tempering.
- Comment on Australia to provide military support to Gulf states attacked by Iran 2 weeks ago:
Wrong order in Australia. Greens are not an anti-capitalist party. There are a lot of tree tories in the Greens in Australia, unfortunately.
Still a way better choice than Labor though.
- Comment on Government urged to let Iranian women's football team stay in Australia until safety is assured 2 weeks ago:
So, let me get this straight. We have more housing per person than any time in the lady 30 years, and you’re saying we’re not building enough houses?
How is more demand from more immigrants a problem, but low supply from people literally hoarding houses, a human need, not a problem?
It’s crazy how people, including you, don’t have a problem with people hoarding, and will let the elites convince you it’s foreigners.
Like???
- Comment on An 18-year-old woman in Queensland faces two years in jail for wearing a shirt that says "from the river to the sea." 2 weeks ago:
She was arrested. Stupid enough, and a chilling affect on political speech
- Comment on Outsourced call centre sweeps Centrelink customer privacy breaches ‘under the rug’, staff allege 2 weeks ago:
Outsourcing a permanent government function may be one of the dumbest things we do.
Like, wtf is the point?
- Comment on Twelve Apostles visitors to be charged entry fee to see natural wonder 2 weeks ago:
- Comment on 'We've reached a breaking point': Is it time to tax older Australians more? 2 weeks ago:
Indeed, I agree with you. Tax avoidance is rife, be nice if we tightened up regs and legislation and enforced it more than we have been.
If we’re going to lower income tax more than we already have recently. Let’s increase the tax-free threshold, that way everyone benefits from low income earners to high.
- Comment on Government urged to let Iranian women's football team stay in Australia until safety is assured 2 weeks ago:
eating up all their excuses
Who’s excuses? You mean for immigration? I’m not for excessive, nor no immigration. I’m for a manageable number. Just that I think it’s wrong to say it’s the cause of the housing crisis.
Where did I mention crime?
From your child comment
Example:
The housing crisis is caused by supply and demand. Importing over 1000 people a day while building no houses will do that.
That’s the thing, we’ve been building houses like crazy, and somewhat keeping up with demand, evidenced by the fact there are THOUSANDS EMPTY PROPERTIES. The price inflation no where near matches the utility of houses or demand if it were for living in only. People are expecting to make returns on the house. It’s been commodified and tax incentivised and thus prices have gone way up. You’re also ignoring the extremely obvious fact that the more people who are here, the more labour there is to produce houses. Having more or less people makes practically no difference to the rate we can build houses (all else being equal).
Funnily enough, Singapore is way, way more constrained with land for housing, but have an extremely strong public housing system, preventing most people from living in properties that have been made into investment vehicles.
Billionaires are not the problem.
Yes. Yes they are. They lobby for lower taxes (for them), avoid the taxes that already exist, making billions off the backs of other people’s labour (you can’t seriously suggest Gina Rhinehart has put in enough effort to warrant her billions). They own practically 80% of the politicians in parliament. And it’s hilarious (and very upsetting) how many people are believing the bullshit they’ve been feeding us since forever.
The only solution to the housing crisis is making house investment less profitable, and make them somewhere to live, not somewhere to make a profit.
Good luck making your billions mate. It’s DEFINITELY within most people’s reach… lol /s
- Comment on Government urged to let Iranian women's football team stay in Australia until safety is assured 2 weeks ago:
You’re being duped friend. On average new arrivals to Australia are less likely to commit crimes.
The reason I say you’re being duped, is that the rich and powerful want us fighting amongst ourselves, instead of noticing that they’re screwing us over.
The housing crisis is being caused by massive asset inflation, we have literally tens of thousands of empty homes, and houses WAYYYYY more expensive than what they’re actually worth.
Fuck Labor, fuck the LNP, but also fuck One Nation. They’re trying to dupe you into believing all the problems in our society are being caused by migration, which just is plainly not true.
Get mad at the real enemy friend. Let’s take back our country from the leeches at the top.
Join your union, join local community groups. The only way we take back power for the people is organising as a united working class against the leeches: the billionaires…
- Comment on Victorian government faces backlash from small businesses over right to work-from-home laws 3 weeks ago:
This is problem with the employee, and not WFH.
And I’m glad as a state we’re not throwing the baby out with the bath water on this one.
You’ll figure it out how to manage 2 days WFH, I’m sure. It works absolutely fine for the vast majority of workers and employers.
- Comment on Victorian government faces backlash from small businesses over right to work-from-home laws 3 weeks ago:
Okay, but how would WFH affect that.
Especially since you said others did WFH with no probs, I’m really struggling to find how WFH in particular is so unworkable for you or other small businesses.
- Comment on Victorian government faces backlash from small businesses over right to work-from-home laws 3 weeks ago:
If youre making lots of mistakes, and others are helping you out a lot, then your performance needs to improve.
Is this not a type of performance monitoring? And to be fair, would performance not be monitored in the same way (assuming it’s a desk job) not matter if they’re working from home or not. I just am usually a bit sceptical that WFH is much of a burden.
This might be a little un-generous, but it seems that you believe the employee is making more mistakes at home, but it could also be your own bias that you know they have a child at home, and you think they’re more distracted. I’d encourage you to just look at their work and decide from that if there’s actually an issue here (there may well be, I obviously have no idea).
You’ll save yourself headaches down the line if you end up putting them on a performance management plan (if it really is a serious issue and not overreacting, again I have no idea), if you base it entirely on performance, and that way there will be no accusations of bias.
If they’re getting their work down, I’d encourage you to not worry about it and if they’re not, the issue is with them not holding up their end of the bargain - not WFH.
Me personally, I like being in the office, because it’s so much easier to bother each other for a quick chat about XYZ issue. When you’re at home all you can do is message, since it’s hard to tell how focused someone is. At the office you can base it on vibes. I am also single with no kids, so I am strongly in favour of WFH for everyone by default.
My point is, for a small business managing performance is much more challenging with WFH.
I obviously won’t tell you how to run your own business, especially since I’ve never managed a team before, let alone a small business. But I’m still finding it hard to imagine why it’s so much harder for a small business (if it’s just a desk job).
Anyway, just my 2 cents to encourage you to catch yourself being biased because of children (if you are, you may be right on the money!)
Good to catch with ya :)
- Comment on Victorian government faces backlash from small businesses over right to work-from-home laws 3 weeks ago:
Does this not just come out in the wash based on their performance? Like, even if they were say working 6.75 hours instead of the 7.6 standard per day (38 hour standard work week) and were getting their tasks done to a high standard, who cares?
With the time spent not commuting, they’re probably hitting their work hours easy.
This is obviously not legal advice, but the angle I’d take if I I were you is if their performance is lacking, just don’t even mention the kid at all, it should be squarely focused on performance, that’s the only thing that matters to you.
Just my two cents that I think this won’t be a big deal in the end, even for employers. Covid has shown us working from home works just fine for most desk jobs.
Disclaimer, I don’t have kids, and am an employee of a business where I have to submit timesheets, so these comments are based on my own opinions and not from experience or expertise.
- Comment on Chris Bowen urges motorists not to panic-buy petrol 3 weeks ago:
Hopefully this will make a number of people realise how heavily car dependent we are in Australia, not to US-levels, but pretty significantly.
There’s no solution to traffic other than viable alternatives to driving.
We need to invest in quality public transport, and in the meantime rapidly expand bus routes (making them less spaghetti-like, and increasing frequencies)
- Comment on Under half of young Australians believe democracy is always a preferable form of government 3 weeks ago:
Journalists are the absolute worst at citing their sources. Change my mind.
- Comment on Under half of young Australians believe democracy is always a preferable form of government 3 weeks ago:
Really not loving that you’re implying that socialism isn’t democratic.
In my opinion it’s not really socialism if it’s not democratic.
- Comment on RSA urges Albanese govt against further privileging religion through a faith advisory body | Rationalist Society of Australia 4 weeks ago:
May His Noodly Appendage guide us out of these troubling times
