Or rather they’ve decided what areas they’ll mess around for years while nothing gets done until this farce finally gets canned.

Yes, you pay to build it with your taxes and then you pay to use it as well. It’s a win-win!

This was a really interesting bit of history. Thanks Philip.

I work in software and we’re permanently work from home. (I don’t want to name my employer but they’re a medium sized company)

Even more interesting is how all of Geelong is excluded from Melbourne’s count when Gosford’s included in Sydney’s count, despite neither place being continuously connected to the larger city, Geelong being closer to Melbourne than Gosford is to Sydney, and Geelong having just as large a proportion of daily commuters as Gosford.

The reality is that Melbourne’s population outpaced Sydney a long time ago and the boundaries are only just starting to catch up.

I’m literally one of those people who you say is vanishingly small.

It’s not even a “the world is bad and I don’t want to subject my child to that” kind of decision. It’s more like a series of thoughts over the years: “is this the right time to have a kid?” and it’s never a good time.

I did a double-take at “Australia’s biggest city” referring to Melbourne

It overtook Sydney about a year ago when the ABS revised the statistical areas: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-65261720

Based on these new boundaries Melbourne’s had a higher population than Sydney since 2018.

Among scientists there wasn’t any significant doubt twenty years ago. It was just spin doctors trying to pretend otherwise.

The producer who was lumped with this was horrified and handed in his resignation the next day. I don’t think he was happy with the situation.

It’s a fair point but my intention was to bracket the possible returns.

I guess I was addressing the “living in poverty” part of the parent comment and the suggestion to downsize in your follow-up. I thought you meant to downsize to get some money to pay the bills. But it seems like you’re saying to downsize to get a house which is easier to maintain?

I worked in the superannuation industry for a while. I wouldn’t say that super is exactly a scam but it’s a terrible mess and the fees we pay on super in Australia are insane. Basically we have a lot of parasites taking a cut and that ends up making the standard funds poor investments. Median returns on the super funds are around 5.6% pa (over the last ten years for the standard “balanced” option) at a time when stock market tracking funds have appreciated by over 8% pa. A lot of that is being lost in inefficiencies and fees.

By comparison Americans with a 401k invested in the NASDAQ would have made 17.3% pa over the same period.

We’re getting a terrible deal with superannuation, and for many it’s the difference between retiring comfortably or retiring in poverty.

Aside from anything else, I’ve seen a couple of examples of downsizing up close and in neither case did it end up with them making very much money on the deal. They just ended up with smaller places.

In the first case they ended up with a small apartment which they actually ended up having to sell some of their retirement investments to be able to afford after selling a large family home in the outer suburbs and paying all the costs associated with selling.

In the other case she moved from a large family home in the outer suburbs into one of those “retirement communities”. The whole thing’s a massive scam. You “buy” the unit but you don’t actually own it, you only own a leasehold on it - something they didn’t make clear to her at all. You’re not allowed to even improve or renovate it. They impose rules on you much like a rental. And when you move out you’re not allowed to sell it - they contractually reserve the right to sell it themselves and pay you a massively discounted amount for it. Essentially they steal half the value of what you originally paid in a time when house prices are going up as well. It’s straight up exploitation of people who are old and struggling to even do everyday tasks, let alone understand complex contracts.

Toyota really screwed up in deciding that Hydrogen was the energy of the future. Even when everyone else in the world went with electricity they persisted in their failed vision. It’s a shame that an otherwise great manufacturer should fall victim to such massive hubris but honestly I think their days are numbered as a major vehicle manufacturer.

There’s no chance that hydrogen’s going to be a long term success for them and with all their eggs in the one basket it looks like they’re dead men walking.

I expect to hear in a few years that Carlson has been on the payroll of the Russians for years.

Ah, I see

Police weren’t happy about gay pride back in the 1970s and it seems they haven’t really evolved since then.

There’s no such thing as Miranda rights in Australia - that’s an American law. We do however have “the right to silence”, and must be informed of that right by police on arrest so it has a similar effect.

Here’s one on his lack of mental compentence to testify at his own trial.

Apparently Singapore contacted our intelligence service and ASIO organised the sting with the FBI. Prior to that he had no buyer. That’s consistent with the Wikipedia article.

I can’t find a reference now for the documents not actually being classified - I remember this from media coverage at the time. I think the story was that they were USGS maps which were subsequently publically available or something like that.

Even worse I can think of two other cases of the Federal Police and ASIO doing similar things:

• Scott Rush, one of the “Bali 9”, was imprisoned in Indonesia after a tip-off from the AFP. This followed his parents alerting the AFP in advance and them reassuring the parents that they’d keep him out of trouble - then waiting until the crime had been committed and tipping off the Indonesian police to take the credit.
• Jean-Philippe Wispelaere was a defence intelligence officer with mental illness who was caught selling secrets to Singapore. The “secrets” turned out to be publically available maps - not secret at all - and he hadn’t committed any crimes until the sting operation organised by an Australian government organisation and the FBI. He was arrested by the FBI and remains in prison today.

I guess for police it looks good on your resume to have caught a bad guy, and it’s easier to track if you’re making it all happen in the first place.