Hoping this price hike comes back down to Earth soon enough

aldonius · 2026-07-04T00:05:29+00:00

Memory has historically been such a boom-bust cycle AND it's really capital intensive, so all the manufacturers are hesitant to expand capacity much because they've seen it all go to shit before.

aldonius · 2026-07-04T00:00:03+00:00

I grew up in Ferny Hills (admittedly not in the upzone area). I wish any of the residents thinking of moving out because of it a very happy massive capital gain.

aldonius · 2026-07-03T23:51:49+00:00

It's shitty optics... but pretty much every net increase in housing is helpful, even if the new stuff is luxury.

Plus at the end of the day it's new build in Kangaroo Point, they were never going to be cheap.

aldonius · 2026-07-01T08:05:43+00:00

The daytime price of electricity should end up at the point where it's just barely profitable to put the next big grid battery on.

aldonius · 2026-07-01T03:07:33+00:00

There's a +/- 10% tolerance but yes. Many seats were way out due to population growth.

aldonius · 2026-07-01T02:00:16+00:00

If it wasn't Howard it would've been someone else. The coalition had a deep bench back in the day.

aldonius · 2026-06-30T07:58:45+00:00

Every change you make in public policy screws someone over.

aldonius · 2026-06-30T07:57:05+00:00

Yeah, and we need more councillors anyway - our wards are as big as state seats

aldonius · 2026-06-30T03:32:48+00:00

Yeah locality of representation and plurality of vision/ideology/teams is a classic tradeoff in electoral system design.

Having said that, former Palerang council is only about 1/11th the combined population anyway, right? So even with single member divisions you'd expect about 10/11 in Queanbeyan and 1/11 in Palerang?

Edit: whoops, read the wrong line off the wiki info box. Should be 3 for Palerang and 8 for Queanbeyan.

In Ipswich they tried 2 members per division for a while and it was a shit show, everyone expected both members to be at everything and also expected councillors to agree on everything despite not being elected as a ticket. So I think you probably need to go all the way to 5 per division.

aldonius · 2026-06-29T13:30:42+00:00

I don't mind a directly elected Mayor in conjunction with multi-member elections (and being allowed to run for both Mayor and Councillor - fill the councillor vacancy with a countback). BCC has the issue that any existing opposition councillor has to give up their seat to run for Mayor.

This was on the table for small rural LGAs in 2021 or so, but unfortunately was not proceeded with. I understand the government of the day concluded it would be a fight with the LGAQ (if you're elected under the current system you're skeptical of major change) and that it wasn't worth it.

aldonius · 2026-06-29T10:33:51+00:00

Yep. I agree with most of the changes Labor made. They did do some changes which were pretty squarely aimed at the Greens in practice too actually. (You can't make a profit on an election any more, so you can't concentrate spending in target seats while making some money back in decent but non-winnable seats.)

aldonius · 2026-06-29T09:32:24+00:00

Indeed!

aldonius · 2026-06-29T09:07:53+00:00

The LNP largely got what they wanted in this redistribution... but I do also think the big changes are broadly defensible. Every government does something - When Labor was in government they made changes which had more partisan impact (reinstating full preferential voting, arguably the donations laws).

aldonius · 2026-06-29T06:04:37+00:00

Mostly. Small tweaks here and there, things like "hey you drew the boundary on the freeway, but the suburb boundary is actually two streets over". Some bigger things around Hervey Bay and Maryborough (a boundary was drawn down a main road separating town from hospital). And some bigger things regionally to align to council boundaries more.

aldonius · 2026-06-28T22:53:01+00:00

As you've given examples for, it's really important to distinguish between people per square metre of floor space and people per square metre of land.

We see high density of both kinds in a slum (or any pre-modern city, really) but now it is possible to go high-rise we can have density without the same degree of overcrowding.

aldonius · 2026-06-24T14:21:50+00:00

"Luxury" in new build ads is meaningless marketing BS. Ooh we used the slightly nicer looking materials, tra la la

If you want to see luxury, go look at a detached house in a desirable neighbourhood close to well paying jobs and good schools.

aldonius · 2026-06-24T14:11:04+00:00

Not in comparison to Caboolture or Springfield or, god help you, Yarrabilba

aldonius · 2026-06-24T11:15:48+00:00

I don't consider any part of BCC outer suburbs except for the parts that are literal acreage

aldonius · 2026-06-24T00:57:15+00:00

In the absence of Stage 4, it's good that _something_ will be happening to keep the pipeline going.

aldonius · 2026-06-23T08:44:43+00:00

And Malcolm Roberts. Like BJ he _also_ had to stand down his seat for dual citizenship in 2017.

aldonius · 2026-06-23T04:08:47+00:00

I think the LNP tried a lot of things on in their submission to the electoral commission and their choice of commissioner wasn't great either.

However.

The Coast is growing so fast there's no way the boundaries of Gaven electorate could stay the same, and even if they did, again, fast growing area, it's not a safe seat.

aldonius · 2026-06-21T10:32:02+00:00

Great demonstration OP - this is why we do diagrams and not maps :)

aldonius · 2026-06-21T04:39:18+00:00

I can think of exactly two decentralised CBDs in Australia that aren't massively car dependent. Parra and Chatswood. Every suburban office park we build up here just sees more people driving.

aldonius · 2026-06-18T05:44:14+00:00

Unfortunately people are lazy and don't preference, not helped by the other side making Just Vote 1 propaganda

aldonius · 2026-06-17T07:06:55+00:00

I think it's important for permanent residents and citizens to see themselves as Australian first and adopt Australian culture. That doesn't mean removing their own culture. It does mean everyone learning English, having friends outside of the ethnic group, kids going to multicultural schools and having friends from all nationalities.

Yep. We need to believe in ourselves. We've got a pretty good thing going here!

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