As is the case here in Queensland, some are confusing allowing free travel between states after 70 and/or 80% have been fully vaccinated, with allowing free travel now. At the moment nationally we have about 30% fully vaccinated and 50% partially; a reasonable way to go to reaching the desired numbers.

Apart from maybe a few posters on this forum and elsewhere, no-one is suggesting W.A. open it's borders to everyone now, but once a consistent vaccination coverage of that magnitude has been reached then let's start to relax the borders and manage the virus so we can become a productive, cohesive nation again, not one that seeks an 'advantage' for the sake of (largely) political gain alone.

Fuhrer now stating he wants 90% AND then two months afterwards before opening borders.

This is one downside to mandatory voting. If voting was optional a low voter turn out could remove any mandate as it shows voters saw no options they liked. In Australian politics the turn out is always high, because you are forced to vote, so with singular options it looks like you have a mandate of numbers. It's very hard to know whether people agree with his policies or just voted as he was the lessor of the evils. Opinion polls can be manipulated by just polling suburbs you know will agree with your views, so even those can be misleading. Maybe we need another option on the voting cards marked "all options are imbeciles", although I think Mr/Mrs Imbecile will probably get voted in.

Well NSW didn't have too, we are only supposed to be returning Australian Citizens, still about 40,000 to go, maybe NSW should focus on them instead. I note she did say "wouldn't that be wonderful" if we can do that by Christmas. But then that can be viewed as failure recovery action.

Sorry, cannot agree. We are forced to turn up and have our name signed off as voted. What we write or do with the ballot paper is up to us. Plenty of opportunity to register lack of approval. Ultimately we know we have to vote for someone or else the system will fall apart.

I've explained my reference to Hitler.

If you wish to feign scepticism and call me a liar there's bugger all I can do about that, fill yer boots.

https://www.idea.int/data-tools/data...pulsory-voting

Not sure what falls apart when you remove the random votes by people that don't really care who wins and just cross anything or the first on the list. Look at the map and see how many countries on that list are strong democracies and apply compulsory voting. Australia is about the only stable democracy on it that practices such.

Well that would still be a vote :) informal voters just drop a blank unmarked ballot paper in the box, but most just have their name crossed off and walk out.

Looks like McGowan is secretly hoping that covid will sneak in so he won’t have to make a decision.

Or… he’s doing his bit for Albo.

Wow! You really are a savage. NSW which I agree should be letting residents return home. It’s on the inside their passport also. I really hope WA stays closed well into next yr and the price of the ore tanks to $50 tonne!

It would be interesting to see what voter turn out would be without the mandatory system, and what changes it would bring to candidates. Overseas the voter turn out is used heavily to show how much interest the public has in policy and direction and political engagement.

It's funny that number has been 40,000 since March LAST year. It's stayed at 40,000 every time they mention returning Australians, so it's either a BS number or they are letting as many Aussies leave each time they bring some back. Either that or some of those overseas Australians are multiplying like rabbits in boredom.

Well that's more likely to have a bigger impact upon Australia more than the people of WA.

That will also have a big effect on the Federal Government’s revenue and the extra money they can pump into COVID relief. A shift of $10 per tonne for iron ore, hits the federal government by about $2b.

$2b per annum? Chump change for the biggest spending federal government in Australian history.

A short dose of running its own defence force and 'stopping the boats' itself would be very 'character building' for WA, I reckon.

More technically it was 80%-90% and a grace period for any stragglers to get a shot.

The rate of vaccine uptake per day is about 0.7%, so it’s quite possible once hitting 80% the time to high 80’s could only be about two weeks, basically I think they’re going until the rate of increase begins to level off (ie you start running into the anti-vaxxers). This is probably what all states with low Covid at the moment will aim for, Tasmania, ACT and NT have pretty much said so too. Once all’s said and done it’ll probably only be an extra a month or so.

But the supply of vaccines is increasing too, Moderna coming online soon so the supply is going to increase to two million per week (from about 1.3 million per week start of August) which should bring the dates to hit targets forward considerably.

Even with a grace period I think a nationwide Christmas reopening is possible.

They've been printing money since 2013 when they said "back in the black". 200m net debt from Labor government and about 800m since 2013. I don't think they're worried about extra money anymore.

I have always wondered what money is actually, is it really worth anything, if the world collapsed, money would be the very last thing anyone would want to trade with, so what is it really worth.

As long as you don't print more money than what others are printing who cares. The US has given up trying to curb spending since Trump got in, problem is, who's going to collect on the debt... China on the other hand just prints money, and then fixes its currency value to stop it going high enough to affect business, so presently, cash currency is worth almost nothing in reality as no one is holding it to any value at all. There is most likely a big shake up coming that will force a change in how wealth is determined, but who knows what, when and how that will manifest.

All money does is make things with no value have perceived value. I can buy a litre of milk for $1, but a 400ml bottle of water is $4... now would you swap 4 litre of milk for 400ml of water? but we effectively do that each day in millions of transactions.

Interesting isn't it, if you want my wheat, lamb, wool, beef, pigs, milk. I want your, fruit, vegetables and any manufactured products I need, if you can't trade with anything I want then you need to be a part in producing those things I do. This provides some insight to a post apocalypse world. Skills and Knowledge rules.

Petrol prices in Australia are a good example of being played for fools, they make the price artificially float up and down up to 40%. Therefore there is no direct price for any individual service station to compete on, the consumer gets sick of playing the game of waiting until its cheap and just fills up whether its 50 cpl or $1.50 pl. It's a mass unofficial collusion that the gov don't want to touch for whatever reason. What is a litre of petrol worth, well apparently somewhere between $1 and $1.75 at the moment, funny that the price of oil or processing has not changed much... Imagine if the price of milk floated between $1 and $2 a litre, milk gets processed and transported by trucks the same way petrol does and the price does not fluctuate.

The other one that doesn't make sense at the moment, Beef farmers are getting record prices for meat. Abattoirs and butchers are going out of business, so what is failing? Why are the farms getting record prices but the processing is failing?