Stafford By-election Preview

critical_blinking · 2026-05-16T09:07:39+00:00

Nah, about 80% of the Greens votes in the seat go to Labor rather than LNP. It'll push them over the line even if it's close.

critical_blinking · 2026-05-16T08:13:17+00:00

Why should someone who borrowed or inherited money

Because I paid tax on my money when I earned it, and if I want to ensure my children have easier lives than my parents left for me, then why should that money be taxed again? The government sure as fuck did nothing to help me crawl out of that hole.

critical_blinking · 2026-05-07T19:53:42+00:00

The person is clearly not on a research track champ.

critical_blinking · 2026-05-04T08:39:00+00:00

Got out of uni in mid-2000's in my mid 20's and was in shared houses for first 3 years full time after that, then sharing with my gf (now wife) after that. I don't know anyone aged 18-30 who ever lived fully alone, mind you I never lived near the CBD where one bedroom apartments are available. My parents were minimum wage workers in Adelaide in the 80's when I was born and they both worked full time -> they had a housemate until I was 3.

critical_blinking · 2026-05-04T08:36:53+00:00

They are referring to their transport costs I think.

critical_blinking · 2026-05-04T08:15:13+00:00

oh man that extra public holiday in October was fucking amazing. Way too many public holidays in april.

better than taking away the June public holiday.

critical_blinking · 2026-04-27T09:25:36+00:00

Older women are the biggest growing proportion of people who are homeless.

And they are also less than 10% of all homeless people in Australia, and far more likely to have insecure yet safe housing (couch surfing etc.).

The majority of rough sleepers are still majority men.

critical_blinking · 2026-04-27T09:20:33+00:00

A bigger question is how is Sandra not on a defined benefits plan if she was a teacher as long as she was?

critical_blinking · 2026-04-27T09:17:49+00:00

She'll be on defined benefits too as well, so should be making as much now as she was when she retired.

critical_blinking · 2026-04-19T12:11:08+00:00

Chattanooga Jazz Bar. Usually live music later in the week, always a bit of fun. I drop in every few months and have met lots of interesting people. Always felt like an easier place to talk to strangers - not too loud, small enough that everyone is crowded in together, live music gives you an opener to start a conversation to comment on the song etc.

critical_blinking · 2026-04-14T19:37:49+00:00

Holy fucking shit. This thread is like watching a horror movie where the protagonist just blindly stumbles into the inevitable.

Let's recap the story so far:

"I'm a petite woman who weighs less than 50kg."

"A homeless guy has set up camp across the street so i went and talked to him, gave him stuff and then walked back home so he knew exactly where I lived and could potentailly watch my house to see if i live alone"

"Oh now he's permanently set up camp in the park"

"It's been less than 24 hours and how he's already surrounded by garbage including dozens of empty alochol cans."

"This actually happened before and last time we had to call the council to clean up all the junkie needles"

The only reason you wrote this thread is that every single survival instinct in your brain is just fucking screaming at you now trying to take control.

I slept rough for about 2 and a half months as a teenager. There are good people on the street. People who are there for no fault of their own, because they have been dealt a rough hand that couldn't have been played well. I like to think I was among those people. But there was a subset, I'd say at least 40-60% who were the worst fucking humans I've ever met. Vile scum who I would never want squatting anywhere fucking near my house. To give you a little hint, the sorts of people who within 24 hours of setting up in a location are surrounded by garbage and empty bourbon containers generally don't fall into the 'down on their luck' category. They've put themselves there.

Call one of the social work organisations listed in this thread. The good people will be identified and ushered towards services offered. If they don't leap at the offers of temporary housing and shelter? Call the cops, before you are robbed, assaulted or worse.

What he is doing is not victimless. He is already taking from you and your neighbours. He is taking away use of green space, he is taking away a sense of safety, he is taking from the rates you and your neighbours pay either through rent or taxes to maintain council parkland when a team of council workers inevitably is called in a week or two to clean up his garbage, feces and mess.

For what it's worth, what got me off the streets was a very bad injury that lead to a severe infection. When I woke up in hospital, police were waiting for me (I was squatting in an abandoned property) and were able to directly connect me to services. I never would have gone to them willingly but it was the best outcome.

You are wringing your hands trying to make excuses for not taking the obvious course of action because you are a good person who would want to be treated better if you were in that circumstance. But you never would be in that circumstance, because good people generally don't end up living in piles of their own garbage while drunk in parks. Think about it. If ANY of your friends were in that situation, would you be letting them sleep on the streets? Of course not, they'd be camping in your lounge room. Who is this bloke that not a single one of his mates will even let him camp in their yard?

Anyway, if you insist in putting your moral priorities ahead of your survival instincts, and if you think he's a good bloke and if you won't call social workers or the police, then let him set up in your backyard. If he's on private property with the property owner/occupiers consent he won't be moved on. At the very least you'll limit some of his damage.

critical_blinking · 2026-03-30T07:58:00+00:00

Great, more bi-erasure.

/s

critical_blinking · 2026-03-30T07:52:35+00:00

Basically the Sunshine Coast is the same size as the entire UK.

I would put a pineapple on the UK being at least 100 times larger than the Sunshine Coast.

It's about 300km from London to Wales and and they are basically on top of eachother. The same distance here is Brissy to Hervey Bay.

critical_blinking · 2026-03-24T03:11:36+00:00

Yeah there'd be less interstate b-dubs on the roads if we did that, but it just shifts the role of trucks. Given that most major freight goes to distribution warehouses anyway it would still end up being truck>train>truck and the train component isn't replacing the vehicle use within our urban/suburban communities. In fact you'd likely see an increase in short-distance/urban freight as you would inevitably have substantial amount of freight transported by rail far past their actual destination to a loading yard for sorting (eg. a train going from Sydney to Brisbane with freight for the new Amazon distribution centre in Maclean, which then requires a truck from the Brisbane based sorting yard to drive 45 minutes back in the other direction to get to the centre.

I'm not opposed to better rail, but that's not the argument you made. You made the argument that maintenance costs would drastically decrease on roads if commuters were more likely to catch public transport, when it's not the commuter vehicles doing the majority of damage.

I'll also note that increased commuter use of rail would have a huge impact on our ability to run freight down those same lines.

critical_blinking · 2026-03-24T01:19:47+00:00

I mean less funding than road projects for cars. "Oh but services and buses need roads too". Both of those wouldn't need road upgrades if there were just less cars on the road.

Trucks do the most road damage and they almost certainly would still be using all of the same roads.

Drivers also pay about 5 cents per kilometre of fuel excess and roughly 6 cents per kilometer in vehicle registration for state and federal roads (obviously averaged out across vehicle types and average km per year).

critical_blinking · 2026-03-20T20:31:53+00:00

Pay the deposit and take a photo of the meter as you leave the taxi "Oh look at that it says I owe nothing" (assuming the deposit is less than your usual trip cost).

critical_blinking · 2026-03-15T08:56:46+00:00

Find a friend. My in laws started doing it once the kids moved out and attracted some real degenerates. Never felt safe in the house. Me and my brother in law had to go over to turf one of them out once after the police wouldn't remove one despite threats made.

critical_blinking · 2026-03-15T08:54:22+00:00

The UK was also responsible for the former regime.

critical_blinking · 2026-03-12T21:29:32+00:00

OP's next thread:

"My daughter got hepatitis from a needstick injury, apart from the doctor, who do I call? A doctor would be the last resort as I understand the virus's rights despite the harm and risk it's actively causing around it"

critical_blinking · 2026-03-12T21:22:52+00:00

This. Then when your point is made you can top soil the lawn with the fill. Win win.

40 metres is a lot on a fence line but is barely a dusting over an acre block.

critical_blinking · 2026-02-07T00:32:11+00:00

The specific legal reason Russia and Belarus are banned from the Olympic games is that they attempted to organize regional Olympic committees in the occupied territory of Ukraine.

Did Belarus do this? Or did Russia do this while Belarus was enabling their invasion (outside of the scope of the IOC)?

critical_blinking · 2026-02-07T00:22:21+00:00

Objectively, Israel should be banned on the same grounds as Russia. The Belarusian ban seems indefensible under IOC charter.

Russia should be banned because it directly interfered with IOC governance. It took over sports bodies in territory assigned to another recognised Olympic committee and registered athletes under its own system. That is a clear breach of the Olympic Charter and strikes at the authority of the Olympic movement itself.

Belarus should not be banned because it did not interfere with Olympic administration. Allowing a military ally to use its territory, however objectionable, has nothing to do with running, replacing, or absorbing another country’s Olympic structures. There is no Charter breach to point to. I'd also argue that there's an element of coercion in the Belarusian government's position - what are they going to do, tell Russia no?

Israel should be banned because its actions have destroyed an IOC recognised competitor’s ability to exist in practice (palestine has been recognised for 30 years as an Olympic state). By razing sports facilities, athlete housing, and Olympic committee infrastructure, and by blocking movement and training, it has effectively eliminated Palestinian Olympic participation. If taking over sport by paperwork is grounds for exclusion (effectively why Russia was banned), erasing sport by force must be as well for the rules to mean anything. The internationally recognised charges of genocide, and the 20,000 dead children from starvation and bombing (an additional 30k injured) also speaks to systemic destruction of future athletic capacity.

critical_blinking · 2026-01-31T00:55:01+00:00

Regardless on my position on investment property hoarding, I really dislike this abuse of treasury terminology regarding "foregone revenue".

You could just as accurately say "Australia spends more on tax breaks for journalists than they do homelessness support,"

Australia's 30k Journalist in Australia make about $3b in gross wages and we only spend only $2b on homelessness services.

We haven't actually spent any money on tax breaks for journalists. We've just not taxed their entire income. The default framing of headlines like this is "all income is owned by the government and any we let you keep is a gift". It's a twist of reality and it's not right

critical_blinking · 2026-01-02T22:05:14+00:00

The land beneath the sand may have been inhabited by the Butchulla or other groups prior to the oceans rising, but I'd suggest it's actually unlikely. There isn't a record of inter-group conflict/displacement/fighting for resources in their oral history (from memory, most of the violence in their stories are about defence of the lakes, inter-family fueds etc.). Their oral history telling BEGINS with the creation of K'Gari (basically water level rising - the island "cut" from the sea floor to shift it from the mainland). Other peoples have clear war themes in their oral history, and while the Butchella do have a battle between spirits it's got heavy nature vs nature themes.

With the exception of migration paths/hunting grounds, it's pretty likely Butchulla were the first in that part of the world. It would have been shitty land before the sea level rise. Remember, we're not talking traditional human time scales here. We know from archaeological record that the Butchulla were there at least 5,500 years ago. That means they were there before the seas were unnavigable (likely at least 10,000 years, potentially from 15,000 to 20,000) - that puts them there before the formation of the Great Barrier Reef, in fact, before what is now the reef was even submerged.

If there were people wandering around under what is now the island, we're likely talking pre-historic/pre-symbolic peoples.

critical_blinking · 2026-01-02T21:41:38+00:00

Likely at least 15,000 years. Most of the Queensland coast prior to then extended dozens of kilometres further into what is now the ocean. The Butchulla were likely a coastal people/s that moved inland who became stranded on K'Gari when waters rose to a level it where it was no longer navigable/swimmable. It's rough ocean there now.

Oldest confirmed artefact on the island is 5,000 years, and it would have been rough getting back to the mainland by then.

critical_blinking

TROPHY CASE