Everyone is entitled to a holiday with their family even the PM, this was pre organized at the time and was only made a big deal by left wing f#$k tards.

Well said bro. All our pollies look absolutely forlorn and exhausted when ever you see them on tv.
The CTAF analogy was in relation to doing either 3 holding patterns then intercepting final 20 miles out.
No disrespect to you ATC folk.

I think it's the next level down that's the problem. Dept. Secretaries and the like earn almost as much, if not more, than the actual Pollies. They are the ones providing advice & guidance to the elected mouthpieces and some of them live in their protected Public Service bubble, without ever realising there's a world out there where you earn your pay through performance.

Probably right buster. Only 5 weeks to go.
I won't attached it here, but if someone needs a laugh (and we need a laugh) take a look at Youtube 'Bunnings ad for Karen'.

Pollies and senior public serpents need protection from the virus. No need for Hawaii, keep them in Australia there is a airstrip at Casey Station in Antarctica

and thus...Antarctica shall benefit from Victorian's Social Inclusion'

Agreed.

Apparently the Jetstar cancellation fees at the time were ridiculous.

It would have been a complete waste of taxpayers’ money to absorb those cancellation fees while his country was burning to the ground.

After all, the unpaid volunteer fire-fighters were eating into the budget.

He had no choice, when you think about it.

The criteria for easing the restrictions should be when the community transmission is reduced to below a published level, NOT a timeframe.

By stating a time, a lot of people will take that as meaning it will be all over after 6 weeks.
If people do not isolate as much as possible and be covidsafe, we could well be in the same position in 6 weeks as we are now.
I think that the attention span has been exceeding with a lot of the population.

It kinda slipped under the radar a couple of weeks ago in all the noise but the PM finally stated/ admitted that Australia's stated goal of "supression" actually means zero community transmission ie. if you expect the borders to open, the only permitted cases would be those in hotel quarantine, and you can expect the premiers will want to know exactly what that means in other jurisdictions going forward.

https://www.theguardian.com/australi...-transmissions

Most of the world would view this regime as eradication and an unreasonable goal. However, this is the standard Australian governments appear to have set. It's become apparent from Queensland's actions in relation to NSW that that's their interpretation, particularly in view of an upcoming election. Expect the borders to stay closed for a while.

Australia's states and territories might as well be 8 different countries now. It's remarkable to see states boasting of putting "tough" border policies in place against Australian citizens. "Stop the boats" seems to have become "Stop everyone". Crazy times.

It’s not so stupid.

Eradication (of community transmission that is, excluding inbound quarantine, provided steps are taken to ensure that quarantine actually works for a change) would be way better for the economy, because as soon as you have it, you can completely open the domestic economy, and also open bubbles with countries who also have it, such as NZ.

With eradication of community transmission, state borders would open, and domestic tourism would return to near normal (less the domestic tourism by international tourists, but increased by locals who would have otherwise traveled overseas). Schools, restaurants, pubs, bands, footy... all back to normal. Just a closed international border. Yes, there might be a lag in tourism and spending by those who have suffered job losses or lower incomes in recent times (often described as a “recession”), but I think economists might be surprised by the domestic surge in discretionary spending as soon as there is a positive sign in the domestic economy, and that it is actually “allowed” again. I have many friends who can’t wait for a big holiday - as soon as they are allowed to!

International students could even gradually come back, but just at a controlled rate with intensely controlled quarantine requirements.

To make it happen would require very hard and unpleasant restrictions, but a shorter term of unpleasantness might yield an improved economy in a shorter time frame than the current ongoing neverending uncertainty, which appears to be resulting in a very poor economy anyway.

Victoria is having a go, right now, and my personal opinion is that they are not going hard enough.

NSW is doing very little, and I suspect that will hurt NSW, and by extension, Australia.

To suggest that we would be better off, economically speaking, by just “living with it”, is to ignore what is happening in the rest of the world. A lot of the rest of the world is trying to just “live with it” and their economy is tanking far worse than ours. A good economist would have a good think about that.

Now, I’m not insensitive to the fact that I am suggesting this on a pilot website. There are many pilots, myself included, who want international borders opened, so we can all get back to work.

Well, we have bugger-all chance of getting back to work until we can sort out our own country. And that means opening state borders. So let’s sort out our own country out first. Only then can we look at international flying.

If that means going hard for community transmission eradication, then I am all for it. We should have done it months ago.

Economically speaking, that is our best bet.

Derfred -

Could not agree more.

I guess the frustration from my point of view is that leaders were running around spruiking "suppression, suppression, suppression" from March until mid-July but what did that mean? 10 cases a day, 50?, contact tracing and localised lockdowns? No-one in the broader community had any idea what that actually looked like until it was explicitly stated a couple of weeks ago. That's the first time I ever heard the phrase "zero-community transmission" and, like many of us, I've been following this pretty closely. I don't have any particular problem if eradication is the goal but the government should have made clear to the public early that its stated goal of "suppression", really meant eradication.

We may well have been there in early June with several days of zero cases reported in all states and territories, but systemic failures brought us undone. Worryingly, it means that everything needs to be perfect from here on. Harsh lessons have been learnt in relation to hotel quarantine. New Zealand fortunately dodged a couple of bullets in that area of vulnerability too. If the public are not on board, for example, if 15% of positive cases are still failing to self-isolate as evidenced by door-knocking in Victoria last week, then we are in for a very difficult time indeed.

Well said Derfred!

Although Dangerous Dan of Victoria will be judged harshly and rightly so, mostly we have seen good leadership by the authorities here while other countries encumbered with incompetent leaders have been a train wreck - the USA being the classic. Mistakes in the early days were made by all, as no one really understood the full impact of the virus until it already got a hold, but we learned quickly. All except some in Victoria anyway...but they have long suffered from a disproportionately lawless society.
ScoMo has had the good sense to back away from insisting that W.A., S.A. and Tas need to open their borders.

Victoria went harder than all States (fining young people having driving lessons etc) , but the carrying out of its Hotel Quarantine policy, refusal for offered military assistance, weak response to BLM demonstrations (that caused a “it must be alright” attitude amongst the general population) let it down.

Your premise that They are not now doing enough doesn’t ring true. There are no international arrivals needing to be quarantined, there is a nightly curfew, permits are required if you need to go to work, you can only leave home for an hour a day to exercise, you can be arrested for not wearing a mask and employers will be fined if you needlessly go to work.

i wonder what more you think should be done....perhaps 24 hour lockdown, Tanks in the street, armed soldiers patrolling with orders to shoot those out and about?

Your comments re Scomo being on Christmas break during the Fires (they were State responsibility btw) actually give good arguement for getting rid of State Government's, that episode showed that a Federal response is far more effective than that led by the States in their individuality.

It is an interesting exercise to compare the headlines with what is actually happening in the world.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/t...hs-per-million

Sweden vs. US

Uk vs. Brazil

Australia vs. Venezuela...(Venezuela wouldn't under report, would they?):hmm:

Victoria went hard at it in name only. There was a lot of tough talking without substance to follow it.

On the ground, some sectors of the community were ignoring the requirements and were not being punished for doing so.

Some other states took non-compliance much more seriously than Victoria. The crackdown has come in Victoria but it was too late.

For all the negativity that was flung at WA, it has made the right decisions.

WA has made the right decisions for WA only, and to hell with the rest of the country.

McGowan was whinging about all those positive results from "the eastern states", without mentioning that the vast majority of international arrivals came through those eastern states after he had a dummy spit about the number of arrivals through Perth and got that cut back to some ridiculously low percentage. He is now, effectively, holding several of my colleagues hostage in WA as if they were to dare leave WA to, you know, to maybe be with their families they haven't seen since February/March, they will not be allowed back into WA. No entry = no work = no pay, conversely, there are several more of my colleagues who want to get in to get back to work, and you guessed it, no entry = no work = no pay. Never mind the fact none of them are in a Covid hotspot, "they're from NSW/Vic so they're carrying The Pestilence"...

About time WA realised they need to carry their share of the load.

Think they are doing their share of the heavy lifting actually... someone has to keep the lights on.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o..._state_product

[QUOTE=Square Bear;10857042]
I wonder what more you think should be done....perhaps 24 hour lockdown, Tanks in the street, armed soldiers patrolling with orders to shoot those out and about?


Does have that East German feel to it. Nothing like trying to jump that wall into NSW/QLD. Our Charlie is now check point Albury.
On a serious note at least cases are starting to drop slowly in Vic. Last 6 days the trend started at 714, then a series of low 400s, 386, and today 323.
What is that community transmission reduced published level? What model is Dan basing his numbers too? Wish he could tell us.
The numbers in Mexico (that's the real mexicans; people) have gone absolutely nuts. Yesterday was 6500 cases and 700 deaths.

Once again, he's holding onto the modelling...

Some strange cats in WA. Don't mention you're from the East Coast if you want to make friends anywhere North of the 'big smoke'. Just say you're from down South and they'll assume PER.