Latham was ahead of his time. His alpha male aggressive ego led to the perception of bullying when he was opposed to a fragile elder statesman in John Howard, but a Latham vs Abbott election campaign would have provided interesting viewing as those two butted heads.

Latham was, and is, a ratbag.

What normal person breaks the arm of a taxi driver in a disagreement?

Just one I wanted to chip in for the fun of it:

A week or so ago I was listening to ABC Radio whilst driving to work, and they were talking to a certain Greens senator from SA, about the work she was doing on the committee into the way forward for the electricity infrastructure issues in South Australia. If you weren't aware, the entire South Australia state was blacked out for several hours in the middle of a storm last year, so the issue is a bit of a sore point. Long story short, the high percentage of "renewable" energy sources being used in SA meant that there was not enough baseline power generated to keep the lights on when the "renewables" dropped off line (i.e. no daylight = no solar, and no wind or too much wind = no wind turbines)

Anyway, the committee is intended to decide how best to ensure that there is enough baseline generation available, and of course there are those who want to build power stations (coal or gas fired) to provide that baseline power.

So back to the Green Senator. When questioned on how the committee was going, she immediately went off on a tirade about how far some people would go to promote their own agenda on the use of nasty environmentally unfriendly coal and gas, when instead they should be concentrating on more and more renewables.

Ogre; Which confirms my admittedly (only) slightly cynical view of the 'Watermelon Party' and its SA Senator to whom you refer.

The Greens platform is;

Dig nothing up.
Chop nothing down.
Build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything.

And everyone should be forced to walk to the Centrelink Offices to receive their dole cheque;

Then walk home to freeze in the dark!

:mad::mad:

But doesn't Australia have significant deposits of uranium?

Loads, which makes a stack of cash every year by being dug out of the ground and sold overseas......

Just don't suggest a Nuclear power station, even though it has zero carbon emissions, long term energy stability and those nice scientists in Greenpeace actually quite like the idea of......

New Australian citizenship test to be announced today

kiwis need to brush up

What are the colours of the Australian Aboriginal Flag? union jack red white and blue
Which official symbol of Australia identifies Commonwealth property? centerlink
What happened in Australia on 1 January 1901? they invented the wheel and fire.

:E

Haha.

Next they'll ask : "Who won the VFL Grand Final in 1966,what was the final score and who won Man of the Match ?"

If you don't know,back on the plane !

All the bogans down the back of jetstar or virgin will know that...outbound to Bali :}

THE TAX SYSTEM EXPLAINED IN BEER

Suppose that once a week, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this..

The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay $1.
The sixth would pay $3.
The seventh would pay $7.
The eighth would pay $12.
The ninth would pay $18.
And the tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.

So, that's what they decided to do.

The ten men drank in the bar every week and seemed quite happy with the arrangement until, one day, the owner caused them a little problem. "Since you are all such good customers" he said "I'm going to reduce the cost of your weekly beer by $20". Drinks for the ten men would now cost just $80.

The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes. So the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free but what about the other six men? The paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his fair share?

They realised that $20 divided by six is $3.33 but if they subtracted that from everybody's share then not only would the first four men still be drinking for free but the fifth and sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer.

So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fairer to reduce each man's bill by a higher percentage. They decided to follow the principle of the tax system they had been using and he proceeded to work out the amounts he suggested that each should now pay.

And so, the fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (a 100% saving).
The sixth man now paid $2 instead of $3 (a 33% saving).
The seventh man now paid $5 instead of $7 (a 28% saving).
The eighth man now paid $9 instead of $12 (a 25% saving).
The ninth man now paid $14 instead of $18 (a 22% saving).
And the tenth man now paid $49 instead of $59 (a 16% saving).
Each of the last six was better off than before with the first four continuing to drink for free.

But, once outside the bar, the men began to compare their savings. "I only got $1 out of the $20 saving" declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man "but he got $10"

"Yes, that's right" exclaimed the fifth man. "I only saved $1 too. It's unfair that he got ten times more benefit than me!"

"That's true!" shouted the seventh man. "Why should he get $10 back when I only got $2? The wealthy get all the breaks!"

"Wait a minute" yelled the first four men in unison "we didn't get anything at all. This new tax system exploits the poor!" The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.

The next week the tenth man didn't show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had their beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important - they didn't have enough money between all of them to pay for even half of the bill.

And that, boys and girls, journalists and government ministers, is how our tax system works. The people who already pay the highest taxes will naturally get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy and they just might not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas, where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.

david1300, may I borrow that please?

You certainly may. I received it in an email :ok:

I do wonder where, in your parable of the ten men drinking in a pub, our upstanding corporate citizens like Chevron, Apple, Google, and IKEA fit?

They were paying the salaries and superannuation of the blokes who went to the pub?

Well perhaps not cooda. Those companies pay little to no company tax relative to their operating profit. Far less than other large companies that also employee the men at the pub, while managing to contribute themselves, reducing to the price of beer.

In david's parable I daresay they represent someone who gets the chauffeur to park the Rolls in the next block, changes into rags and asks to be included in the group of gents getting their beer paid for.

I appreciate your deliberate oxymoron :ok:

It certainly is true that the actions of the immoral and downright criminal (I'm not saying these oraganisations are criminal, but I do believe they engage in immoral, and arguably criminal, actions) are always steps and years ahead of the legislature.

The parable does not state that these 10 drinkers are the only taxpayers; it merely illustrates the potential actions of each of them when faced with these circumstances.

Cooda.. probably has the correct answer ;)

Hmm... the last poster was david1300 on the 1st of May.:ooh:

Has everyone lost interest?:confused:

Of course. With the Libs in Government the permanently outraged are far too shy to stick their necks out (no matter how badly Sir Malcolm is travelling).

You’ll have to wait for the next Labor government before you see this thread add some more meat to its arthritic bones :rolleyes: (although I’m surprised the ‘Yes’ vote didn’t drag some dire condemnation from our resident knuckle draggers telling us the country is now doomed...)

To add something relevant to the aforementioned, I note that Victoria today became the first state in Australia to legalise euthanasia....

So good to see Hempy using the right word instead of the euphemistic 'voluntary assisted dying' that's often used to make the concept more palatable. What a slippery slope has been embarked upon?

I once read some commentary somewhere, written by a surprisingly disinterested Journo (Using the word disinterested in its correct term) who mentioned that someone had once described euthanasia to him as

'..let's put Grandma/Grandpa out of our misery...':hmm:

FWIW, I tend to agree that this is indeed a slippery slope.

Given the stipulations in the legislation it’s no more ‘slippery’ than the Mad Monks citizenship status.

Oh......wait....

https://www2.health.vic.gov.au/Api/d...B43AB83AB21%7D

Well hopefully you will never be in the position to require use of such a law, but why deny it to someone else? It's taken 20 years to get up again. Hopefully it will last longer than the NT's attempt.

Bound too. Canberra can't override state law. It will require the Victorian Parliament to rescind it. (Unless the Victorian Governor chooses not to sign the Act into law.)

The way things are going up here, I won't be surprised if we eventually lose Self-Government too.

The long march of progressive theory is unraveling our society faster than down south; because it has less historical inertia and cultural homogeny to overcome.

Vote in Queensland
 

Time to vote, maybe One Nation is the team, unless of course you vote Laberal.

As for the Youth in Asia question, lets kill all the babies, then kill all the old folk - or maybe as Billy said, "Kill all the lawyers first"
Or if you are a servo, just kill everyone.

Good to see Malcolm the village idiot crash and burn in Ipswich. What a shame!

Not exactly correct, appears that the major parties are the over all losers. Folk are fairly jaded with the laberals to the extent that a lot of votes went to third parties and independents, the new compulsory preferential voting system as always will favour the major parties. It may be some time until a definitive result is declared, appears that there will be no majority of seats for any party.

Except that the last time the state elections went like this the LNP came back and won at the federal election.

Where the hell did you learn your politics? Preferential voting has always favoured minor parties - look at the Senate results and the number of times the winner in the House of Reps has also won in the Senate for example. My home state of Tasmania is even more extreme with its Hare-Clark voting system which is a form of preferential voting.

Yes, the bum boys have been validated. Equal in their own minds, at least.

A disgraceful turn of events for the country.

Bet you long for the days when sodomy was a criminal offence, eh?

Don't worry, it's still illegal in the Middle East.

Someone’s got the sadz :)

HAF, thankfully your type is a dying breed. What's disgraceful is the fact that we had to spend $120million on a survey to tell us what we already knew to pander to zealots on the religious right. That is an utter disgrace.

Playing devils advocate, you could as easily say we spent $120 million pandering to the feelings of a vocal minority.

Yes, $120 million pandering to the outspoken vocal minority and then he didn't even vote! Same-sex marriage bill: Tony Abbott didn?t vote
http://cdn.newsapi.com.au/image/v1/d...f523430e374e25

Spot on de_flieger.

The silent majority spoke and the stats show if you are against SSM chances are you an immigrant living in Western Sydney! Maybe the RWNs are right about a failure to integrate with Australian values after all.

$120M to survey the nation was entirely the Coalition's doing. Nobody else wanted it.

So how does that explain Sydney Anglicans?

Where on Earth did you get that crazy idea Chuboy?


https://scontent-syd2-1.xx.fbcdn.net...e4&oe=5AD604D0

Wasn't 2013 four years ago? Did you lose track of time or just forget that political parties can change their view?