Australia

The BOM forecast says ‘Test match in Sydney.’

We already know that for about the past 150 years, the US has been an oil company with an army. And people still want to back in that technology. Be free Australia, go electric.

I think we might be surprised how many Australians would happily sell the country for cash even at the lower end of that Trumpian scale. Huge numbers of people are more or less living in the US already, because they…

Marco Rubio hands Trump a private note in a press conference, about what happened in Venezuela. Trump reads it out loud. Chevron is one of the fossil fuel giants. You can see Rubio almost shit himself, the cat is out of…

As Europe gears up to defend itself against America, at what point do Western nations decide that China is a much smarter superpower ally than America? Only blatant racism has stopped that assessment being made…

Where you end up when you ‘live with’ viruses. We can shake our head and say this is just America. 9 out of 10 Australians you might ask think living with viruses is a good idea too. Ask them what that actually means,…

Older workers, defined as 55 year or older, have significant power under law to request more flexible work arrangements in Australia. I think other countries have similar law. For two main reasons I think, one to help…

Anybody who gets excited by nationalism (and flags) and migrants has spent exactly zero minutes reading one word of history. To be against migrants in Australia is to be against what Australia actually is.

Pauline makes Trump seem like a brain surgeon. The thought of her occupying a more powerful role in Australian politics - well, it's on the cards. Proving again that elections destroyed democracy. You wouldn't hire the…

Australia Day is now, like everything else in our lives, an argument. A debate. A great liberation for 2026 in my opinion is to identify this mechanism and ignore it, by ignoring all of the popular debates of the day.…

Be prepared in Australia for the targeting of rural and regional people by One Nation, including their newest recruit Barnaby Joyce. They see real opportunity to steal lots of Nationals votes. They’re also targeting…

I didn’t know about the Garden Palace in the Domain in Sydney. Not least because it burned to the ground about 140 years ago.

'Rural character' just the latest of a long list of bullshit obstructions anti-solar and wind farm activists throw up. Thankfully the court threw it out. Most farming land in Australia is a a wasteland, from years of…

Meanwhile, in Australia brainless lemmings complain about wind and solar farms destroying the view.

The Zeekr 7GT. Coming to Australia this year. The performance AWD version will take you from 0-100 in under 3 seconds, and has air suspension. The aerodynamic efficiency of this car is amazing, it slices through the…

Dennis Altman is an avowed Australian Republican. But he was compelled to write this book, because when he looked at the topic, he realised monarchies not only never went away, they keep being restored, and countries…

The spoilers are making hay with electricty prices still being high. They’re high because our ‘peaking’ plants, in peak times, are still run by gas, which is hideously expensive. But batteries and pumped hydro are…

Pauline wants to be Australia's Trump, with backing from the big money of Gina Rinehart. Both attend Trump events as invited guests in the US. On current polling numbers she's going to make a serious dent in the…

If elected, One Nation plans to dismantle the government response to climate change, which it doesn't believe is man-made, wind back access to abortion care, and abolish the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA). The…

The ongoing problems with inflation always talk of supply and demand, the non-thinking person’s answer to everything economic. But wealth is the dominant marker of status in societies, so inflation represents…

Fun fact for the perpetual traveller. Flying exposes the body to a significant quantity of radiation, because of much lower atmospheric screening at higher altitudes. A return flight from Sydney to London for example is…

The Australian Energy Market Commission (AEMC) makes the rules for Australian energy markets and advises government. It wants to make an outrageous change. Right now your electricity bill is mostly based on how much…

Those seduced by the anti-immigration stuff, from Pauline and the LNP, need to remember one thing. Without migrants, Australia (like most countries) is a giant aged care home. Our populations are OLD, and there are no…

The damage the bullshit of 'living with Covid' did, turning entire nations into anti-vax havens. This is social collapse, just one more part of it.…

This is actually a great deal, and decent EV. In reality they used a Chinese firm's design and hardware (Deepal). Japanese and European carmakers make big bluff and bluster statements about how 'the combustion engine…

Somebody asked one of the leading AI systems (Claude) whether it was conscious. Read the answer below, and tell me how many people you know who would be this sentient. “That’s a question I find genuinely interesting to…

We're living inside a revolution that will be written about for generations. Just imagine the current Opposition and One Nation coming to power right now, shutting all this down in favour of their old policy of…

‘What happens when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine’ is a common brainless criticism of renewable energy. But even in Europe, which has much less sunshine than Australia, those ‘dunkelflaute’ times (no…

Again I can’t comment on behalf of Bathurst Regional Council. But I can express a personal and general view about local government, and use Bathurst as an example. Pretty much every council in Australia is ‘broke’.…

The very many Australians of all ages contemplating voting for populists like Pauline Hanson and Barnaby Joyce should really keep a watching brief on the terrible collapsing mess of Trumpism in the US. Trumpism is the…

The extended length, 3-row Tesla Model Y has approval now to be offered in Australia. This is an amazing car. To give context, it has 500-600L more interior space than a Toyota Kluger, Prado or Landcruiser. (All back…

There’s a lot of public reporting on the cost of electricty for Australian families. Much less reported is that it’s less than 30% of their energy budgets. 70% is petrol and diesel, for their vehicles. And gas. Those…

Starlink is becoming a vital resource for remote regions, like Pacific islands, poorer nations without broadband and even remote parts of Australia. An NBN spokesperson told me once Starlink is so good they even advise…

Again, this is about brilliant engineering, not brands, it’s just that Tesla is one of the few companies prioritising engineering. Tesla has now included its AI, Grok, in its cars. And you don’t have to go buy a new…

Because we make the disastrous mistake of thinking democracy is ‘the people’ individually reasoning out situations, we also assume the answer is to just get rid of ‘misinformation’, and everything will be fixed. I post…

The perfect day to sell your combustion clunker and buy an EV. Iran just closed the main shipping way for 20% of global oil, to sweeten the deal for you. Tesla isn’t your enemy. Your combustion clunker funds Trump’s…

Another view of the Model Y 6-seater, about to be released in Oz. Seriously considering getting this, to replace our remnant combustion engine in the household, in the Kluger hybrid. The petrol price volatility with the…

Housing affordability is trapped inside a filter of understanding that will prevent us ever fixing it. The supply and demand filter, which is total nonsense. All sides of politics and most people will tell you the…

Driving past the servos on the way home, with all the prices north of two dollars per litre for the Texan/Saudi Arabian soup. Then I came home and plugged the car into free Australian sunshine.

I overheard somebody the other day talking to another person about the cost of living. And ‘what do they do? They let all these migrants in, to take the jobs, and the houses. Pauline Hanson is right.’ Immigration is the…

And another 'we can't electrify because...' bites the dust. Truckies love electric. Instant torque, not constantly shifting up and down through dozens of gears, minimal maintenance.…

The new BYD Seal 08 will have 1000km of range, and be able to be charged with BYD’s megawatt chargers in just 5 minutes. BYD is following Tesla’s lead and is installing chargers in China and Europe right now. They’re…

Large luxury sedan with the performance of a hypercar, chock full of amazing tech, charging speeds quicker than filling with petrol, and for the price of a Toyota Corolla. Game over for combustion clunkers, unless you…

Doing some more research on Starlink, which some of my friends have been using already for ages. The genius of it in the technical and business sense hit me when researching internet options for one of my kids moving…

It looks like Tesla will release the Model YL 6-seater in Australia today. Perfectly timed, with the pressures on fuel. We’ll probably get one, and will be free of fuel bowsers forever. When these were launched in China…

Australia’s Trumps are mobilising. Amazing numbers of Australians who can’t stand Trump seem blissfully unaware how much One Nation and the new LNP love him and copy Trump’s playbook. Some of this group even travel to…

I’d almost forgotten that I once taught at South Sydney High School, when training as a teacher. I had no idea Heartbreak High was filmed there, I might have realised if I’d ever watched it! It was a nice school. The…

Sentence 2 answers Sentence 1.

One of the many young Paulines in Australia told me today that anybody who moves to Australia should have to follow our culture, and not try to change it. I asked what our culture is. They couldn’t think of an answer.

In Asia some countries have already started 4-day weeks and widespread work from home for professional jobs, to ration fuel. Unlike under Covid, where we decided to open up everything again and just all get infected…

Chinese cars are already dominant in Australia. Fleet sales make it look like older Japanese brands are, but they’re not. Ordinary Australians are already buying more Chinese cars than anything else, because they’re…

Australia ships in 81 tankers of fuel every month. That’s almost 3 per day. It’s an insane way to live. It costs us $60 billion per year. Australian-made energy is free. And doesn’t need to be transported.

The continuing surge in popularity of Chinese cars in Australia, easily the dominant vehicles in sales in Australia, and have been for a while. Their brilliant EVs are now rushing out of salesrooms. Tesla’s Model Y is…

Referring to this article:…

Attention is a gift. Most people don’t know how to give it. BY TOMASZ KOPEC3 A good mother doesn’t just feed the baby, clothe the baby, keep the baby safe. She keeps the baby at the centre of her attention. The baby…

The fuel tankers that deliver the fuel to all parts of Australia travel a distance each year equivalent to travelling from the Earth to the Sun, and back, and then back to the Sun again. They use over 200 million litres…

Tony wasting Australian oxygen as always, imploring us to get behind Trump and Israel. Abbott is like Morrison. Both have a public-facing persona which looks like it’s about politics. But the true agenda of both is a…

Some more details about Teslas, we chose them for their brilliant engineering. Their engineering design not only targets everything that makes them incredible family cars, they’re also brilliant driver’s cars with…

The data clearly shows that electrifying passenger vehicles would make the biggest difference to Australia’s liquid fuel use.

Live from Australia’s Strait of Hormuz.

When you think that we knew this 20-30 years ago, and did nothing. That last Coalition government in particular should be in jail for national vandalism, with the exception of Turnbull, who tried and was rolled by…

Arson attack against a Western Sydney Tesla dealer yesterday. I worried this bullshit would start again. Basic civil order is the first thing to go with upset kidults, especially when they lose their petrol and diesel.…

Remember when Bob Hawke was criticised for promising that no Australian child would be living in poverty within a very short time? If he’d said ‘old person’ instead of child, he’d have actually been right. To this day…

At a time of international chaos caused by Trump, what does Angus suggest? That he be Trump. ‘Make Australia Great Again’, and ‘Drill, Baby, Drill’. The Liberal Party is dead.

I’ve posted a few times here about how the division between city and country is mostly fake. What we call the country is really just the extractive industries cities (where nearly all Australians live) use to extra the…

One of China’s high speed trains. China now has over 50,000km of high speed rail, projected to grow to 70,000 km by 2035. It built all of this rail since 2008. In under 20 years. Australia by comparison has zero high…

Loomer is the type of kidult taking over the world. A social media influencer, and a moron in just about every way, with deeply disfigured plastic surgery face to put the icing on the cake. As I sit here in a nation…

The Association of Australian Super Funds (ASFA) have updated their estimates for levels of super needed for different retirement lifestyle goals. Quite large jumps, reflecting increased inflation across all parts of…

The stench of Trump’s incompetence and stupidity is thick in the nostrils of Americans now. Even many who voted for him. Meanwhile in Australia the prominent Trump cover band, One Nation, is surging in popularity,…

Here’s an international traveller, standing next to roughly how much fuel it takes to transport them - just them, per person - from (say) Australia to Europe. That’s one-way. They need the same tonne-cube to get home…

You may be surprised at how many Australians think this guy is terrific. Some of them are even local councillors elected to local councils. Many more Australians who can’t stand him will happily vote for Pauline Hanson,…

Australia’s conservatives are fighting each other to see who can be the most like Trump. You’d think the last election here was a warning about that. Or that what’s happening to Trump in the US would be a warning.…

I often post about how culture is invisible to the people living it. Fish don’t know water exists until they’re beached. And that Western culture has no idea of ‘place’. No meaningful connection to the ground under its…

The supply of fuel we’re still getting all left the Middle East before the war began. It’s about to run out, globally. In populist politics it will all of course be ‘Albo’s’ fault. When really it’s the fault of…

The head of Australia’s largest super fund speaking the truth about housing that Australians never want to hear. ‘Supply’ won’t fix the housing crisis. Nobody is going to flood the market with cheap houses. It would…

Working for a Council, complaints about potholes are one of the biggies. What’s not often said is how much people’s choice of vehicle causes this problem. Modern utes and SUVs are heavy. EVs are often accused of that,…

Times are tough and are likely going to get very nasty. Possibly a recession. All of this was avoidable, but humans refused to give up fighting for social status, to follow what knowledge told us needed doing. And so,…

Great piece from Ian Verrender about why the idea of drilling for our own oil, to try to solve the fuel crisis, is complete idiocy. We’d have less than a decade of fuel if we did it, and it would cost a fortune to…

The Mazda CX-6e is an excellent electric car, about to be released in Australia. It's very well priced. It's also how Japanese manufacturers are trying to catch up with EVs - it's a re-skinned Deepal, a Chinese EV.

While the Queensland government spent $500 million drilling for enough oil to supply one service station, NSW is finally really ramping up EV fast-charging infrastructure, electric heavy vehicles and kerbside chargers.…

And this is for electricity at 15c/kWh. Most EV charging plans are half that, so over 80km for each $1 of electricity. If you charge with solar, it's free. Australians are some of the slowest in the world to adopt EVs.…

And noting again that at 15c/kWh, this is twice what most EV users can charge at overnight. So those 2c figures are actually 1c figures. Only just over 10% of Australians have bought electric vehicles. It's…

What's not as often said about the fertiliser crisis is how completely dependent on fertiliser our farming methods are, to grow anything. And that fertiliser in turn comes from fossil fuels. Agriculture will be smashed…

Lithgow is Australia’s Strait of Hormuz. Maybe it should start a blockade ;)

Actually what happened was, and it’s not the first time, Trump was responding to a leading question from Sky News Australia, the Murdoch sewer. They were trying to get a quote they could use as ammunition against the…

Towing is another glorious example of human status games. When the BYD Shark was released for example, many people refused to buy it because it ‘can only tow 2.5 tonnes’. But in reality BYD’s engineers in China, removed…

You don’t have to be very old to remember when Australia took pride in eliminating disease. Now gone in social media kidult society, where we celebrate ‘living with infections’. Because otherwise we can’t go out to…

It’s difficult to comment on this because so many people have had their lives transformed by this funding. But to put things into perspective here, the NDIS is currently costing $15 billion more per year than the entire…

The news celebrated Australia finding another 100 million litres of diesel yesterday. It didn’t say that’s enough only for one DAY of normal demand. There’s no resolution in Iran. Supplies are almost gone. This is Covid…

Originally Anzac Day was a day of solemn mourning, and marches were often near silent as many who lined the streets were relatives of those who died. It was like a symbolic funeral. It started in 1916, in the middle of…

During this energy crisis, I think it’s helpful for more of us to know the basic (mind-boggling) numbers behind the fossil fuel world we’ve all grown up in. Here’s a just a few. The world uses 16 BILLION litres of…

Autumn is nearly two-thirds over. The leaves on the deciduous trees at my place and around it are not only not falling off, they haven’t even changed colour yet, in many instances. The people who deny climate change are…

Asking EV drivers to pay a road user charge is like asking people who give up smoking to pay extra tax to make up for the tax revenue lost from them no longer buying cigarettes. Countries making progress with EVs look…

You can wish people weren’t so gullible, that they believe all of the total rubbish coming out of shock jock journalism every day. For example this one. Australian government employment as a proportion of total…

75% of Trump voters in focus groups are now saying they wish they hadn’t voted for him. In Australia the local Trumpies like Pauline are slow to realise they’re on a sinking ship. Many Australians may still vote for…

The energy market regulator has a dilemma. Paying for network upkeep is done on the basis of a daily supply charge based on how much electricity people use. But because millions of Australians have now installed solar…

Lovely example of how the socials create a fantasy world, separate to the real world. This lady represents farmers who want to embrace renewables. Many of them won’t speak up because social media gives the impression…

Ozempic’s patent expired 4 weeks ago. 50 factories in India were waiting. Australia’s drug regulators are heavily influenced by Big Pharma. But the wonder drugs at cheaper prices are starting to arrive. And Ozempic is…

I asked one of my specialist friends about the possibility of cheaper Gliptins in Australia. This is what he said.

Fuel should have been rationed in Australia starting weeks ago. Much of the population acting like toddler pork chops during Covid makes all politicians too terrified to do anything. Global supplies are non-existent.…

I knew people who worked on the original Snowy Hydro scheme. It made modern Australia. The way it took that enormous influx of refugees from WW2 and mixed them with the locals to unify everybody behind massive nation…

The softly-softly 'market' approach to transition to renewable energy and EVs won't work. For starters markets are a fiction. And humans simply won't change if important change is needed, unless they're forced to. For…

Supporters of all political parties are now rushing to adopt EVs. Even One Nation. Politics is a waste of our time, it’s nothing but a popularity contest between groups of people fighting for status. The material…

The English shipped what they saw as their genetic inferior stock to Australia, when it was set up as a penal colony. I’ve always thought somebody swapped the lists.

Lots of attention goes to the fuel that is pumped at servos. Nobody mentions that they're actually massive vacuum pumps, sucking Australian money from our wallets and sending it directly overseas. To the tune of $165…

Modern conservatives for decades have sold the idea that government is a barrier to prosperity and aspiration. The dreaded ‘red tape’ of government bureaucrats, with their taxes and regulations. They claim to ‘free’ us…

You can see here how the belief that lack of supply is the cause of the housing crisis is really a fiction sold by the same investors who caused the crisis. They want to make even more money, with even more houses to…

Less than 20% of Australia’s fossil fuel industry is Australian-owned. Think about how deep political snouts are in fossil fuel donor troughs, to spend decades actively undermining Australia’s sovereign wealth, on…

Australia has up to 2 million more dogs than it has children. As a culture, and like most other nations on Earth, we’re dying out. Our birth rates are at terminally low levels. Cost is often given as a reason for this.…

Who cares what people think? This is our delusional idea of democracy being ‘the people’ running countries. Most wouldn’t have a bloody clue on this question, or most questions of public policy. And nor should they,…

When you arrive at Tesla to pick up your new car, you haven’t dealt with a single salesperson in the whole process, and there aren’t any at the Service Centre where you car is waiting either. Just a huge warehouse (the…

If the polling is on track, One Nation - 53 seats. The National Party ceases to exist. The Liberals become a minor nothing party. Remembering that One Nation is nothing more than the Australian arm of Trumpism. Do you…

Just imagine if this comes to pass. It’s often the people appalled by Trump who are also drawn to One Nation. One Nation is Trump’s Australian franchise. Pauline and Barnaby make Trump look like a brain surgeon.

I love how anti-renewables farmers use terms like 'visual amenity' now. Force-fed by Bananaby and his army of mental midgets. The greatest damage to the visual amenity of the Australian landscape is far and away caused…

This was the energy use of the new Tesla, driving 62km to Bathurst yesterday. To translate that into a comparision with a petrol or diesel vehicle, the standard dual cab ute (Australia’s favourite cars), if it could use…

In NSW, no P-Plater is allowed to drive the Tesla. But all of them are allowed to drive the Wankpanzer.

I have pretty much zero time for Michaela Cash, on anything. But this exchange with the Australian Human Rights Commission on trans women and pregnancy in the workplace should be watched, so people can really see the…

There is no public backlash against AI. Just as there is none against windmills, and solar farms, and EVs and vaccines. ‘The public’ is not a thing, thinking and acting. Activists enlist members of the public to their…

Hmm, sorry if this posts twice, it seems to have disappeared. This is what one of the senior staff at Exxon said, this week. Exxon is one of the biggest global oil companies. The cupboard is bare, we’ve run the reserves…

Current polling says this could even happen. A few things about that. 1) Like Trump in the US and Farage in the UK, the schtick is this is ‘the people’ fighting back. In reality all 3 are just a different elite, taking…

The irony here of a party representing the original land-grabbers in modern Australia, the huge 19th century stealing of most of the continent (and its communities) by the early pastoralists building their empires,…

Alan Kohler making the obvious point I made here well before the last election. If you bring house prices down, you also bankrupt millions of existing Australian homeowners who took out huge mortgages, with the belief…

Pauline’s big attraction is the same as all populists. They promise to ‘take down the elites’. Populists are always actually just an alternative elite, wanting to take over the top of social status hierarchies from…

Two things to see here I think, one obvious, the other not. The obvious - China targets poverty specifically, and has made spectacular progress, unprecedented in history. The US like the rest of the West uses the poor…

BYD offloading thousands of new EVs for Australia. Iran and the US exchanging missiles again today. I wouldn't be betting my house on petrol, diesel, engine and transmission oil being affordable or even available, for a…

Half of all new vehicle sales in Australia in May were for EVs. Game over.

Now the best-selling car in Australia, across all fuel types. Matching it being the best-selling car in the world, 3 years in a row. The reason is simple - it’s a work of engineering genius, in multiple dimensions.…

I don’t back any political team, I think turning governance into popularity contests between teams turned our lives into football games. I think elections destroyed democracy, popularity can only ever lead to…

What’s another passion of adolescents? Historically, their cars. So we should expect to see that reflected in a ‘kidult’ culture, where adults think, feel and act like adolescents. Australians have more than 4 times as…

The most common trick populists use is to relentlessly imply that a town or nation is ‘heading in the wrong direction’, is being led by ‘incompetent and corrupt’ people, and that your town or country is being taken away…

A couple of facts about this year’s festival. It’s not a local business that’s rescuing it, it’s a Sydney ride business. A ride business Council employed when it was allowed to run the festival, before its newly elected…

I’v been tracking for a long time what Tesla might be doing with V2G and V2L. The Cybertruck already does it, and there were rumours Tesla was finding a way to allow later-model Model 3s and Model Ys to do it as well.…

The great lie of the Covid pandemic was that public health action against the virus was both unpopular, and damaging, to people and the ‘economy’. In reality millions were lifted out of poverty for the first time in…

NSW has announced interest-free loans up to $15,000 (up to 10-year terms) for home electrification and efficiency improvements. That's a huge boost for urgently-needed changes. Most of these upgrades will actually save…

The English so often talk about ‘going up’ to bed. Bungalows i.e. single-storey living have traditionally been associated with lower status, with the old and infirm. Again, this is about status. In a show like Downtown…

From Sydney Dance Company’s latest production, called Engine. Brilliant choreography.

While people keep playing their goodies and baddies status games inside social media bubbles, Tesla keeps building things. In this case its 1000th Supercharger in Australia, in Byron Bay. This is big investment in…

These sorts of demos are so important for people to see the revolution we’re living, or can be living if we allow ourselves. Tesla’s latest update to its autonomous driving, in Australia, on busy night-time Sydney…

"...more than 40 per cent of 15- to 25-year-olds in Australia reported being lonely." In a kidult culture, anything that isn't constant socialising is a pathology. Friendship is a social tool adolescents use to help…

Peter Dutton took the Trump playbook to the last election and got absolutely smashed by Albanese. Pauline is having another go, selling Australia as a Trump franchise. She’s now going backwards again, probably because…

I still remember that Australia. Pauline and her army of the permanently enraged don’t. I only exist because of that Australia. The Romans welcomed immigrants with open arms. It made their empire one of the longest…

Michael: “Line up every disease these drugs help: heart, kidney, liver, joints, arteries, sleep apnea. They share one engine ➡️Chronic inflammation. GLP-1 medicines turn that fire down. That's why the liver heals…

It's worth saying over and over. If you don't want lots of migrants in Australia, who is going to do the work? We're not having babies. The entire country is a giant aged care home, without migrants.

This is the federal President of the Liberal Party. Elected unopposed this year. The reason people stopped voting for the Liberals is because they ceased to exist as the Liberal Party years ago. The problem for Tone is…

And the Tesla Model Y is now Australia's biggest-selling car, including all petrol and diesel cars. Overtaking the RAV4, and not before time. The Y is 10 times the vehicle the RAV4 is.

Many of us lived the transition from social networking online, which was integrated with our physical communities. To social media, which ‘feeds’ you a version of social life, with no connection to your physical…

The anti-renewables and soon anti-data centre movements in rural and regional areas (again copying the US, where these viral outrages emanate from) are an existential threat to the survival of regional life. Regional…

I live in the regions, and I want them to survive. They won’t when their only idea is to become tourist locations for bored city people. Tourism generates activity, people passing through, it doesn’t and can’t create…

I drive the Great Western Goat Track every day to work, currently crippled by the malfunction of a 200-year-old 2-lane bridge. A joke as a highway even with that working. This is the nation’s fundamental artery linking…

Australia. Now the land of ‘community consultation’. Meaning a handful of twits in each town running obstruction for anything that was built after about 1810. The Australia of my youth wanted to be at the forefront of…

Farmers and the Clean Energy Council have quantified what’s at stake in the idiot war some in politics have invented over renewables in regional and rural areas. This is the projected income to both local towns and…

Anthony Albanese announcing a national approach to AI today. Having largely missed the opportunity to lead the world with renewable energy because of a decade of ignorant pigshit from Australia’s conservatives when they…

Why are we still subsidising motorists with petrol and diesel cars? Diesel subsidies alone cost Australians $15 billion per year. That would put an abundance of electric fast-chargers on every major road, with plenty of…

Imagine how expensive your car would be if car companies had to come to every home to build your vehicle from scratch, in your driveway. Cars are affordable because we don’t do that. We build them in factories, with…

Part 2 on why Australia should industrialise house-building, but probably won’t. As always, it’s about status. All societies run on status. The way we currently build homes in Australia is driven by a massive growth in…

A much shorter Part 3 on why we need to industrialise house-building. Look at the collapse in productivity of house-building, when it was ‘subbied’ i.e. houses being built on-site, by a range of independent contractors.…

Watching netball at the Commonwealth Games and it makes me think again how I’ve completely reversed my thinking on free-to-air sports broadcasting. I used to agree major events should be available on free-to-air, to…

Father Brown was one of those shows I always saw in the options on streaming platforms, and never dipped my toe in. I thought it must be one of those innocuous Brit shows that offered pretty views of the UK countryside…

Went to a servo this afternoon. I needed a carton of milk. When I got there, the young guy behind the counter was giving a long sermon to some poor young woman about how the petrol prices mean we should be refining more…

Roads are public infrastructure. They shouldn’t be user-pays. Imagine saying people should pay at the front door of the hospital, or to get into school every day. Fuel excise doesn’t pay for roads. How many times does…

Most regional towns now hold regular economic forums, large chatfests to try to figure out how to keep the towns viable. The thinking being that the towns need to ‘attract’ business and people. I’m not confident that…

And another AI post. What trends is what’s real, in zombie Western social media culture. Progressive politicians are making great inroads into rural States in the US, with confected outrages over AI. South Australian…

I remember when coal-fired power stations opened, how people treated it as an event, something interesting to see. And when wind turbines started in Australia, the same, people flocked to have a look in a wow this is…

Brian showing his age. And that even smart people are swept up in dumb viral outrages. Incidentally I asked an AI chatbot the same question and it gave me the exact album cover. Meta AI is social media AI. There’s your…

The thing that saddens me the most, as I approach retirement, is seeing the probably unfixable damage social media culture has done to public health. I grew up in a world where widespread public health was still new,…

You can watch the battle between social media and AI every day. Humans are just the foot soldiers in the battle. For example, here. The government is doing public health work, notifying Australians over 50 of steps they…

The push is on in Australia to shift a lot more house building into factories, in pre-fabricated and modular building. I’ve posted before about why I think this is a great idea - much better economies of scale, much…

The huge jump in the price of meat in Australia in the past decade got me wondering. We produce a LOT of meat, it didn’t make sense. It turns out the main reason is the same reason gas (and through gas, electricity) got…

The Australian engineer Saul Griffith helped the US with its planning for home electrification. He's now home and heading up ReWiring Australia. Today they've released an 'Electric Saul' website which helps people…

I’ve shared my concept of a ‘social field’, like a magnetic field but for society more generally. Not an analogy, the way mundane material transactions of everyday life create a collective, continuous web of stability…

If people are asked what is wrong with the world, 99% of the time the answer will involve a rivalry between some kind of goodies and baddies. Left v Right. Capitalists v socialists. Patriarchy v everybody else.…

Tesla self-driving shows that the debates about whether AI is just a high-powered copy-and-paste machine are nothing but hot air. If AI couldn’t generate its own thought and only copied what it saw elsewhere, Tesla…

The thing about travel culture is, nobody ever leaves home. We’re travelling inside social media, the trip is just material for socials feeds. People go to see what other people go to see i.e. imitation. And they…

‘Community opposition’ to AI is like community opposition to Tesla. Tesla sales in Australia are off the charts. And half the Australian population can’t get enough AI. Life on the socials is a delusional outraged…

Treasury has warned the Australian government that we're missing out on the AI revolution. And that the feared job losses from AI aren't occurring in the places adopting AI. The Anglo nations - the US, the UK, us, to…

One of the most glaring symptoms of the problem with all Western cultures is their total neglect of regional life. You only need to look at the highway system to see it. Tens of billions spent creating smooth multi-lane…

With Bathurst coming up, even if you’re not a car racing fan, there’s a genius to V8 Supercars that I think it’s still super important for everybody to understand. A specific Australian genius, that goes well beyond car…

"This is the most annoyingly good car in Australia right now. I want to hate this car. I just can't." Wonderful seeing kidult culture completely defeated by genius engineering. Even the small things he doesn't like -…

Medicare is under enormous pressure in Australia. Some of that is an ageing population. But a big chunk of it is price gouging by doctors and dentists. Fees being charged by many medical professionals are extortion,…

Beginning another year of work today. As colleagues collapse with increasing chronic disease around me, and ask why I still take Covid precautions like vaccination and masking. Because rich cultures are cultures of…

The annual flag worship is almost upon us, so just a few of my thoughts on Australia Day. I have zero time for any of the debates over the day, they're all fake arguments set up to create division, to harvest votes. I…

“To be honest, IQ levels are higher in China than they are in Australia. Most people in China understand the merits and values of an EV, whereas most people in Australia are afraid of electric cars. It’s true, they’re…

I've posted about the Zeekr 7X. Coming to Australia this year, a phenomenal car at an unbelievable price. The Europeans and Americans look on with envy at what we can buy now in Australia. They're slapping huge tariffs…

If you want a real indicator of the damage social media is doing to societies, go out today and buy a hard copy of the Sydney Morning Herald. Skinny as a regional paper.

This is BYD's Tesla Model Y competitor, that I've posted about here before. The price looks like being amazing, as always with BYD. Australia is now one of the best places in the world to buy a car.

This is the disgrace of Australia’s approach to Covid. Anybody below 17 can’t even get a vaccine. Why is that? For one reason. Your elected politicians decided the best way out of the pandemic was to let children get…

Who honestly thinks the US is a better ally for Australia now than China? The US does nothing for us. China has bankrolled the entire Australian economy for decades. And it's not run by Trump, that's a slam dunk.

Most have swallowed the PR that there’s nothing that could be done about Covid, that we just have to ‘live with’ it, ‘like the flu’. (We don’t live with the flu, we spend billions controlling it.) Because of such…

Australia is deeply infected with the ‘car bloat’ virus. “For the people who love big cars, owning one can be integral to their identity, reflecting very specific ideas about American individualism...it’s very easy to…

The feed-in tariff for solar is how much you get paid for exporting to the grid. In Victoria the proposed minimum rate retailers have to pay owners is now only 0.04 cents per kWh i.e. effectively nothing. Down from over…

Today's Sydney Morning Herald is the thinnest I've ever seen it. Feels about a dozen pages. It costs $4.80. Nobody is getting value for money there. Social media is hollowing out all of our established institutions and…

The price war is escalating, and Australian consumers should be excited. We’re the luckiest car buyers in the Western world. BYD has just reduced prices on its models by thousands, vehicles that were already at almost…

Propaganda and hysteria now dominate public life. Anti-renewables propaganda, sponsored by fossil fuel companies, encourages Australians to believe that vast areas of Australia will need to be covered with windmills and…

It’s nearly election silly season again, and I don’t play those team sports. I often criticise the modern LNP (as do many who have left the coalition) because they’re not a political party, they’re now entirely a…

The price wars continue, again what a beautiful time to be a car buyer if you’re Australian. Sucks to be a European or American right now. Hyundai have slashed the price of its brilliant EV the Ioniq 6 by $20,000. 20…

No, they won’t buy the cars they want. They’ll buy the cars everybody else wants. That’s how humans work. This ‘don’t tell people what to do’ is more libertarian nonsense we hear all the time, from the same people who…

Dick Smith is sponsoring this, another one of his fact-free crusades, like Dick Smith peanut butter. What does nuclear mean for Lithgow? Nothing. Australia will never build nuclear reactors for electricity. Nobody will…

One of the common fossil fuel-funded criticisms of China and India is that they're the ones with the most emissions. It's offensive bullshit. The USA is an absolute carbon pig, and always has been, and will get far…

Go the Shark. On the Australia Day weekend, a good question is why we’re tourists in our own land, none of which we have a clue how to live in without destroying it. That would be a fun Australia Day contemplation,…

I do get that Elon Musk is putting many people off Tesla in any form. But Tesla is 130,000 brilliant people, doing urgent things the world needs. For example way bigger than its cars is its provision of battery storage…

The First Fleet was a convict transport. Ask those convicts if they’d celebrate this day. ‘Australia’ began in 1901, more than a century after the First Fleet. We don’t even know our own history. I have zero interest in…

This is the car Kell and I just bought. Not the actual car in the picture, but the exact same model, colour etc. The Model 3, Long Range. People know I spend a lot of time looking at all the EV options out there. What…

82 people have died of Covid in aged care in Australia, in January. They all caught it from us. The same number who died in the Granville Train Disaster. How are our ‘principles’ going?

In Australia heat pumps (air conditioning we use in homes and many businesses) are not really a debate. Because they don’t really threaten status hierarchies here. In the UK it’s a furious fight, with the sorts of…

Trump’s lunatic plan is also the history of Australia in only one sentence. Kick the natives out and kill them, and turn their land into a real estate casino.

If what the Trump-Musk forces are doing to the US concerns you right now, be assured the Australian arm of the lunacy is geared up and ready to go here too. Social media is their assault weapon. You’ll find many foot…

I’ve mentioned this a few times here. Not a single policy. Not one. Just a series of slogans. Niki is an ex-LNP staffer, she’s not biased. She sees the danger this ship of fools are to Australia.

Got my own fuel bowser in the shed now. Zero cents per litre. SKY News Australia told me this morning that Australians don’t want EVs. Looking forward to watching them donate hundreds to the Saudi Arabia and Texas…

This is the true genius of Australia, not understood much by Australians, and not at all by the Brits or Americans. A genius now being destroyed every day by social media, importing lunatic ideas from the US and UK. The…

This is what’s really happening in the US, and in Australia too. Competitive status games, mostly carried out on social media, are taking over democratic institutions, and weaponising them for their competitive team…

I have no energy bills. And that increasingly includes for running the cars, a household’s biggest energy cost by far. Much of the Australian population could be the same. But they‘re stuck in fake wars against EVs and…

The massive shift to private schooling in Australia in the past 20 years was a deliberate policy decision of the Howard government. And what made that shift successful was that it targeted status. That’s what…

We've had another couple of weeks with wide reporting of a 'stalling' in demand for electric vehicles. All bullshit, to make people think they'll do their money buying one. This is the 6th reporting of a collapse in…

Every time I see a little Trump-wannabe here in Australia, determined to turn Australia into Trumpland (wave to Peter Dutton and Clive Palmer), I remember that Australians have the 7th best life expectancy in the world.…

To put the public health clusterfuck we’re currently living through into perspective, more than 4 times as many people died of Covid in Australia in 2022 alone, than have died from HIV since the 1970s. As many people…

For people with the debilitating condition of range anxiety, more real world examples. To drive to Sydney from Lithgow with an EV battery at 100% to start, you arrive all the way over on the coast with a battery still…

The latest EV scare campaign, this time driven by lawyers desperate for work. The same happening in Australia. For years the government has sponsored test labs to debunk range claims on petrol and diesel vehicles too,…

Australia might go one better. It might elect a halfwit who wants to spend $600 billion (of your money) on foreign nuclear technology that nobody needs. Imagine the roads, schools, trains, hospitals and affordable…

A bidding war between the two major parties on household batteries is the best news.…

Clearly people want to shift to EVs, but range anxiety is still an issue for them. It's why there's such a surge in hybrid sales. Range anxiety in nearly every case is an actual mental illness (it's in the name),…

What Musk is trying to do with Trump in the US, Australia already did, with Robodebt. He wants to take over government departments and replace them with software. For that, Tesla property and Tesla owners have become…

To give a bit more of the flavour of insanity that passes for public life now, you'll see these Foxtel dishes all over Australia. They're owned by Rupert Murdoch. If you think Murdoch is a cancer on democracy (and he…

This has nothing to do with me owning a Tesla. It's to do with mob behaviour. How many carmaker CEOs could people actually name? Do they know their political positions on things? Do they happily support the brutal Saudi…

Electricity is still very cheap in America. This is cost per kWh. In Australia most people pay at least twice these rates, sometimes triple. Why the difference? It’s mostly the last place people expect to look.…

I had hoped this bullshit would skip Australia and NZ. But the glory of social media is that one idiot doing something is quickly imitated by other idiots, who I actually don't think even believe they're changing the…

The Sealion 7 is now for sale in Australia. Like most BYDs, you're getting a LOT of high quality car for a small price. This is BYD's Tesla Model Y challenger, though it's not as hard to challenge Tesla in the current…

This was a major reason we ended up with a home battery, even more than the cost savings. It was to have reliable power even in disasters. It’s already saved us multiple times, in only just over 2 years, while streets…

Posted before about this (Australian) revolution in artificial hearts. The plan is to be able to use these indefinitely, rather than have to get a donor heart. Right now it's already giving people with heart failure an…

The idiot memes about broken windmills never mention that in the past 2 years, there hasn’t been a single day when one or more of our coal-powered generators hasn’t had a breakdown. The nuclear ‘plan’ for Australia…

Incredibly powerful way to see so much about Australian life. - we’re one of the most urbanised nations on Earth, though we pretend we all live in the outback (which we can’t define) - that level of urbanisation is what…

Rio Tinto is Australia's largest user of electricity. Not least because it runs aluminium smelters, which use huge amounts. It's just announced it will be powering these using solar, wind and batteries. The reason?…

Two Australian Tesla owners discussing their car servicing. I honestly do pity those bogged down in social media anti-EV (and now anti-Tesla) tripe.

Model Y pricing announced for Australia. Best car in the world, and biggest seller. $1000 cheaper than the old model, a total bargain. Or you could not buy one because that horrible 'Elon' isn't on your bestie list, and…

M3 = Model 3 Tesla. For those suffering from range anxiety, notice he drove Brisbane to Bathurst with no issues at all. And it’s true what he says, the driving is so pleasurable you almost hate getting out of the car at…

I saw a local politician complain about windmills being 'as tall as Sydney Tower!' as a reason to reject them. The reason they make them so tall now is because of morons like that politician. A few tall ones means fewer…

Many Australians believe the car industry is a competition between ICEs and EVs. There is no competition, ICEs are being phased out globally. Not one car company is planning to keep building petrol and diesel vehicles,…

The ALP is offering $150 electricity bill rebates, and the LNP 25c off every litre of fuel. It's a great example of how big the savings are by going electric. With 25c off every litre of fuel, at current prices of…

Household electricity use is actually quite a small component of household budgets. A much, much bigger component of those budgets is what it costs for people to fuel their vehicles. That’s also part of your energy…

Measles outbreaks in Western Australia and Victoria. Tthe world’s most contagious disease. The cause is 100% people using social media to run their lives, with Vitamin A and other ‘natural’ bullshit, instead of a…

The English countryside is one of the great attractions in the world today. The interesting thing about it is that most people know that it’s almost entirely man-made. But when they look at the Australian landscape,…

As an Australian, when I see pics like this, I don’t ooh and ahh about what a beautiful place it is, or about what a great place that would be to take a holiday, or to churn up with a 4WD. The last thing I want to feel…

Hilarious, the man who wants to spend half a trillion dollars on nuclear reactors Australia doesn’t even need thinks spending on health and education is a ‘waste’ of money. The cuts to the public service he wants would…

Australia with AUKUS and the UK with Brexit thought they could re-energise the Anglo world, by partnership between the Anglo powers. With Trump now trashing all of that, the UK will have to look at going back into…

Wonderful footage from the 1960s of construction by the then Department of Main Roads (the DMR) of part of the Sydney-Newcastle expressway. Lots of familiar bits of road even today. I love that post-war public optimism,…

International students are in the top 3 of export income for Australia. Both major parties targeting them as scapegoats for a housing crisis that has nothing to do with them. Voting causes this, desperate attempts to…

lol, is Channel 7 peak stupid in Australia? It’s a tough field. They go to a scary-looking industrial nickel refinery in Indonesia and say this proves EVs are environmentally unfriendly. Nickel refineries have been…

Widespread home ownership only happened in Australia after WW2, with massive building of public housing. The green circle. Menzies did it, the founder of the Liberal Party. It’s been in decline ever since, with the…

Ties with nuclear energy as the most fundamentally stupid idea in the history of Australian politics. Vote-buying desperation.

Think you know about Australia? Have you read the Gammage book yet?

Ah Jacinta, sprung. You can find terrific photos of local councillors in some towns doing the same.…

There's a vehicle driving from Lithgow to Bathurst every day, normally at about 90 km/h. Often has a queue of traffic behind it. I went to overtake them today, and suddenly they were doing 125. This sort of driving…

‘Ute Man’ is dying. We’ve reached Peak Ute (love that term). It was Scott Morrison’s big tax concessions for utes that led to them exploding in sales. Now with efficiency standards coming for Australian cars (last in…

This can be true, and why I encourage people who are thinking about going electric to skip hybrids and go straight to full-EV, unless they're doing lots of long distance driving in remote areas. For example our trip to…

Brits have named this pair the two sexiest men in England. When they transported the genetic diversity they did have to Australia in the 18th century, what was left became a nation of in-bred hobbits, with tastes to…

Australia, this is literally like burning cash for energy. Almost every cent of that money goes offshore, where OPEC members use it to buy gold-plated Rolls Royces. The same Made in Australia jingoism the likes of Dick…

Peter Dutton’s only success in the past 3 years was an old-fashioned bash-the-Abos campaign to bring down the referendum. He’s hoping it might get him over the line in the election now. Never discount Australia’s…

Australians for Natural Gas is a fake group invented and funded by the Australian gas industry. (Which is really a foreign-owned industry.) The fact we still call it ‘natural’ gas too goes back to a time in the past…

Australia follows a pattern also seen in the US and other places. The real tension is between urban and rural environments. The more urban a society is, the more cosmopolitan voters tend to be. Living in cities…

There's a deluge of new renewable capacity coming online, provided no idiot politician gets in the way. 40% of Australia's electricity last year came from renewables. That number is going to climb very fast now, if…

OK Australians. What outcome are we going to see today? 1. A landslide for the ALP. 2. A minority government headed by the ALP. 3. A minority government headed by the LNP. 4. A landslide for the LNP. 5. A majority…

Australian elections. Got my sausage with onions today.

The LNP’s own pollster labelling them now as only the party of the boomers. And that not being enough to be a government in Australia now, that generation will never again be a majority.

It’s easy to be blinded by politics as a team sport, like watching the footy. Tonight younger Australia exercised its muscles, over older Australia. That’s what the result really means.

SKY Australia is a sewer, and here they are, having almost single-handedly destroyed the LNP by forcing it further and further into the lunatic fringes, claiming it’s all your fault Australia. And that the answer is to…

The ALP is sometimes called ‘the natural party of power in Australia’. That’s historically true, and has nothing to do with which party you may prefer. It’s the only party that can and has ever won elections in our…

Zali Steggall, when called a 'Climate 200 candidate' by a political journalist, brilliantly replied, why don't you call LNP politicians Gina Rinehart candidates then? Because that is exactly what they have been, for…

In Australia household solar generates more electricity than all of our coal-fired power stations combined. And it’s still growing at an enormous rate. That was thanks to John Howard, who introduced the subsides for…

One of my favourite examples of how suggestible and manipulable people are. When wind turbines first appeared in the Central West, most people didn’t care, while for others councils even built viewing platforms to see…

Tone and John chewing the conservative fat about how we can still rebuild Australia to be exactly like England in 1788, if we have faith.

Top 20 EVs in Australia, sales this year. It’s clear that either the Nazis have invaded, or grown-ups have ignored the bullshit on social media.

Australian banks are bastards. Almost the worst offering of fixed mortgage rates in the world. They offload all risk to customers. Nearly the entire ‘cost of living crisis’ is our variable mortgage rates. And petrol and…

This Modigliani nude sold for over A$235 million. The art market is an ocean of fakes and forgeries, trying to cash in on the enormous money a tiny handful of works attract. Modigliani is one of the most copied artists…

Those who won’t buy an EV because of range anxiety are the people who buy a truckload of food if the shops are going to be closed for a day. It’s a genuine mental illness (it’s in the name - anxiety). Australians drive…

I'm over people saying 'cheap Chinese shit'. Apart from it being the gutter-level racism you'd have hoped Australia left behind in the 1950s, it's also factual bullshit. China is the world's factory. If something made…

Two of Australia’s most popular cars, the RVA4 hybrid, and the Ford Ranger ute. Under new vehicle emissions standards coming into effect on 1 July this year, the price of the RAV4 could jump by $10,000. The Ranger could…

The Nationals destroyed the Liberals at the last election with their Gina-funded anti-renewables nuclear lunacy. It’s hard to see how the Coalition survives this. The average Coalition voter is a white man aged 70. The…

City and country aren’t two ways of life. They’re one way of life. Originally what we call ‘rural’ coexisted in the cities with more urban dwelling. But then they ran out of room and needed more resources, so farming…

It’s worth remembering that what we call farming has its origins in settler culture, which in turn derives from aristocratic landholding in the UK and Europe. Sometimes called a squattocracy, because the origin of…

Before his first term Albanese said Labor needed 3 terms in government to make meaningful progress against the catastrophic damage inflicted upon Australia by the Howard-Abbott-Morrison-Joyce faction of the LNP. It…

I posted a few times last year about the persistently high ocean temperatures off Australia, the cause of our seemingly never-ending torrential rainfall on the coast. The oceans are enormous heatsinks, absorbing much of…

Australia subsidises utes and SUVs to the tune of $250 million a year. That’s a big reason lots of people drive them. It’s time Australians went back to driving sedans and station wagons. Both utes and SUVs have the…

One of my mini projects is to explore how all human behaviour is people copying other people, driven by the desire for status. You can explain pretty much everything using that framework, it’s the periodic table of…

The kids drove back from Sydney last night. They didn't charge while down there, and when they got to Katoomba they were already below 30% charge. But the car told them they'd have 22% charge when they got home. And…

5000 Australians died of Covid last year. More than two years after we celebrated Covid being ‘over’. That’s more than 5 times as many die in a bad flu year. If you didn’t die but had Covid, you helped Covid reach those…

One of the great myths of democracy is the idea of ‘the people’ or ‘the community’. There is no such thing. A tiny handful of activists stir up trouble, and then attribute that trouble to ‘the community’. We see that…

Bowel cancer is now the leading cause of death in people aged 25 to 44 in Australia. Eat porridge (my advice).

In New South Wales, in the past week there was an increase of 29.2 per cent in COVID-19 notifications, an increase of 25.9 per cent in influenza notifications, and an increase of 9.7 per cent in RSV notifications.

Small business is an object of worship in most countries. It's a terrible model to use as a model for an entire economy. Scale brings economies of scale, meaning cheaper prices, and easier lives. You won't find many…

Had to do a quick trip to Sydney today, and it reminded me again of how human life is all about status. Driving that Tesla is a wonder of the world. Supercar levels of performance, totally silent gigantic torque on tap,…

I’m sure Australians will respond with the time-honoured public health strategies of more gigs, more flights overseas, and sending kids to school sick and coming to work sick to cough all over everybody else, because…

Today's trivia. The fuelling network for petrol and diesel cost at least 3 times what rolling out supercharging Australia-wide will cost. The alleged 'range' of petrols and diesels is really the hundreds of billions…

AUKUS was another Scott Morrison train wreck. AUKUS is the US wanting a mobile launch platform for their missiles, against China, in the Pacific. They can piss off. Why shouldn't China be our main ally, in 2025? Pretty…

Look at that huge surge in sales for Tesla in Australia, in May. Meanwhile all the Nazi-Tesla memes on social media have disappeared exactly as predicted, with no meaningful change to anything. Trump is still there.…

The marble-columned ruins of ancient Rome are instantly recognisable. They copied them entirely from the ancient Greeks, whom they idolised for their culture and learning, after invading them. It was Romans trying to be…

I started shaving about 40 years ago. I began with an electric, an old one of dad’s. Then living in Sydney with the humidity made that frustrating, it tended to cause skin rash. I switched to a blade and have been using…

This car should blow people away, the new BYD Tang-L. A 7-seater. Coming to Australia this year apparently. Can charge at up to 1000 kW, meaning you could add 400km of range in only 5 minutes. The electric motors in it…

A handful of loons force rounds of ‘community consultation’ that are a waste of everybody’s time. The loons are never satisfied, numpties who swallow every bit of rubbish social media throws at them. The Australian…

The reason kangaroos love golf courses is obviously the grass, but it’s also because the way they’re designed is the way Aboriginal Australians designed landscape to trap roos, with open plains of lush grass surrounded…

10% of all Australian children are on the NDIS. 15% of 6-year-old boys are on the NDIS.

If all the ice in Greenland melts, ocean levels worldwide go up 7 metres. That’s the end of most coastal cities. All except one of Australia’s major cities are on the coast. 98% of Australians live in those cities.

More kidulting. You may recognise Keith, from the Great Pottery Throwdown. A master potter. He and his wife Marj bought an old chapel in Wales, to renovate. What’s fascinating about the show is watching the modern adult…

BYD is an engineering powerhouse, they can generate new cars seemingly out of thin air. The Denza B5 is a plug-in hybrid rival to the Toyota Prado. Early drives suggest it’ll eat the Prado for breakfast, a brutally good…

An Australian senator. I can think of some councillors at local government level who have similar wet dreams.

Another view of the BYD Tang-L, which should arrive in Australia this year, sold probably as the Sea Lion 8. This is the one where the full-electric version has over 1000 horsepower, does 0-100 in 3.9 seconds, and can…

"...the new Model Y, which was – BY A LONG WAY – Australia’s best-selling EV in May 2025." I don't post this to say I told you so, but to plead with people to stop confusing social media with society. Those eating a…

I know it upsets some, to dismiss trans, or even discuss it. Because like every other public issue today, there has been no discussion. People just joined a team, mostly driven through social media. They support one or…

Bathurst’s councillors still wrestling with the issue of revenue. I encourage everybody to go to the iPart website and have a look at the special rate variations approved for just about every Council in the State over…

Raina Macintyre is a global expert on infectious disease and public health. She’s also at my old stomping ground, UNSW, which is really kicking some goals. In this book she compares Covid-19 to syphilis, which has been…

Sigenergy has become the number one home battery in Australia. Fantastic technology. Personally I don’t think quite as good as the Tesla battery, particularly with Tesla’s software control and analytics, but either are…

All local Councils are externally audited every single year, by the NSW Audit Office. They also undergo separate and regular external performance audits, and have external auditors and audit committees scrutinise their…

Hey fellow Gen X’ers. People our current age during the Sydney Olympics are now in their 80s.

Imagine if we powered our vehicles with Australian-made energy. Those that do won't be impacted.

Last week 34 people died of Covid in aged care, in Australia. Tens of thousands now have, in the past 5 years. Nobody cares. If it had been a bus carrying the national soccer and cricket teams, or rock bands on tour,…

The interesting thing about this article is that it looks for the origins of 'cool' in personal psychology (it is a psychology journal). The much more interesting question is why 'cool' has any currency at all once…

That red tape is the stuff they didn't use in the apartments that are collapsing in Sydney and Melbourne.

An Australian family pays 2% of its annual income to fund Medicare. Right now the same average family is also forking out 4-6% of its annual income, in private health insurance. Do we not see how insane this is? They…

Tesla is one of those rare examples of the design of something breaking through the imitative behaviour of humans. The Model Y became the biggest selling car in the world at a time EVs weren't even close to being a…

NSW has a rule that potential EV buyers need to know, if they have kids of driving age. It prohibits P-platers driving cars with power-to-weight ratios that are above a certain number. This immediately makes most…

Being determined to keep paying Saudi Arabia and Texas a big chunk of your weekly pay for fuel instead of plugging your car into free Australian wind and sunshine is a special kind of stupid. Nearly $30,000 saved in 5…

Sharing my own data. This is what it cost to charge the EV in June. An average of $5.50 per week. That’s 2-3 return trips to Bathurst every week, 1-2 return trips to Sydney a month and everyday driving around Lithgow.…

The NSW 'Pattern Book' for house design is a great idea, getting you an architect-designed home for about $1, and fast-track through the planning system. It won't fix expensive housing, because that isn't caused by…

I’m too old for false modesty. I’m extremely good at music, which might surprise some who see me post so often about music today. Music is one of my gifts, as we all have gifts, it comes as easily to me as breathing.…

For those with range anxiety. Brisbane to Bathurst and return, Tesla Model Y.

While most line up for repeated infections for the fool’s gold of hybrid immunity (an impossibility for Covid), give me this. And Australian too. Let’s hope clinical testing shows the same results. Those convinced Covid…

There was some outrage (everything is outrage) at Grok’s answer here. But actually as an AI it was doing exactly what was asked.

Where does a phone call happen? I remember asking that question a few times. There is no simple answer, which is the point of the question. There is a ‘presence’ to the conversation that isn’t located anywhere in space…

Renewable energy is Australia’s superpower. And we have bottom-feeding scum like the federal Coalition actively campaigning to knee-cap that advantage purely to score pathetic points and votes in the social media…

I think it’s important to close the loop on social media hysterias, because in the middle of them no thought is going on at all. And then afterwards nobody takes stock of what a delusional and hysterical situation it…

Australia has next to non-existent standards for wood fires. The Chair of the Standards Committee overseeing this? Also the head of the home heating lobby that promotes wood heaters.…

"...referred to the IPC because it received 83 objections – the trigger for IPC referral in NSW is 50 objections – but 77 of these objections came from people living more than 50 kms away, or even interstate. There were…

MG's IM5 and IM6 are causing a sensation, and rightly. Gobsmacking EVs, have a read, and includes 4-wheel steering and air suspension, something only found normally in extreme luxury cars. Huge range too, and…

The belief that assembling a big crowd is democracy in action is never tested against actual outcomes. Which are usually non-existent. 4 times as many people went to see Taylor Swift play in Sydney as marched across the…

On sporting greats, Heather McKay is at least Bradmanesque, she may even be greater. She was undefeated in competitive squash for 19 years, from 1962 to 1981. Not one loss. The British Open was the Wimbledon of squash…

The world’s most powerful battery was switched on in NSW this week. When the transformation to renewables is complete, there should be ongoing mocking and accountability for every dickhead who tried to stand in the way…

The Zeekr 7X has arrived. And the price is wow.…

Got some replacement tyres yesterday on the Kluger, they were down to 2-3mm tread depth. In Australia 1.5mm is the minimum legal tread depth. At 2-3mm they were still easily legal, and even still looked fine, the tyre…

An Australian showing just how long you can own an EV. His Tesla now has over 800,000km on the clock, he drives over 100,000km per year, using the car as part of a luxury limousine service business. Says the car still…

NSW only recently had local government elections. Social media Bathurst isn’t happy with who won, so is now trying to mobilise more ongoing abuse aimed at the Council. People really should pay attention to how kidult…

And again, petrol excise doesn’t fund roads. Petrol and diesel cars have been polluting for free for over a century, that’s the mother of all ‘free rides’. Ditch diesel fuel tax rebate and make billions more than this…

One more of the fact-free urban myths that do the rounds of the internet is that EVs are heavier and therefore damage roads more. Here are the top 3 petrol/diesel vehicles in Australia, and the top 3 EVs.

When Albanese first came to power, Saul Griffiths, the Australian engineer who helped revolutionise renewables in the US before Trump, suggested Australia target households first, not the wider grid. It took until the…

I’ve been posting about this car for a few months now, it’s one of the great EVs. Now available for order in Australia. They took over 1000 pre-orders in the first week. Boom. The top performance model even has air…

People can be such gullible numpties. When they built the wind towers near Blayney, people were so excited to see them they even had to build a viewing platform. Then the National Party was in crisis, after Barnaby…

Mazda is in big trouble. Many, many Australians drive Mazdas. Many, many Australians have no idea about the impact new vehicle emissions standards will have on traditional carmakers that don’t make EVs. Most Japanese,…

Germaine Greer has more or less retired now from public life it seems, living out her years with her brother’s family in Melbourne. She will always be one of the greatest minds of our time, for me. Always resolutely…

If you think kidult culture isn't real, have a look at the total collapse of Australia's world-leading gun control. Much of that is local shooters connected to the rabid gun loons in the US, through social media. Social…

It’s rumoured Tesla supervised full-self-driving will be released in Australia tomorrow. I will always feel more comfortable sharing the roads with that technology than I will sharing it with the humans I see out there…

One of the first reviews of Tesla Full Self-Driving in Australia. And it’s brilliant. Many have doubted this sort of technology would ever work. Here it is, working. Remember also it’s ‘supervised’ FSD, meaning a driver…

“It's like watching two sides debate the dangers of tobacco while everyone smokes cigarettes.” People should be being vaccinated for Covid twice per year. Instead the vast majority of Australians had 2 vaccinations…

Have a watch of a long road trip through Sydney at night, with a full-self-driving Tesla. Some of the busiest streets in Sydney, including across the Harbour Bridge, in the dark. Hypnotic to watch, and interestingly the…

How well do you really understand the town you live in? Victoria right now is looking for a ‘sovcit’ (sovereign citizen) who murdered two police officers. Lithgow has already had a sovcit siege. The ‘March for…

Wonderful vid of FSD through some of Sydney’s most iconic and busiest streeets at night. Hypnotic to watch. The two ‘errors’ mentioned seem overblown, one in fact may not have been, and more the driver taking back…

The Australian magistrate at the forefront of addressing ‘sovereign citizen’ type arguments in Australia made the interesting observation that many come into the movement after some kind of traffic offence. I post a lot…

This is an Australian senator. Paid for by you and me, the taxpayers.

Heh, you couldn’t make up just how unbelievably stupid our way of life is. 40% of all global shipping is transporting fossil fuels to other countries. Countries that can now produce all of their own energy, pretty much…

I’ve seen many Australians make these arguments. That’s because nobody really lives in ‘Australia’ now. They live on social media. Which means increasingly they’re just Americans. Australians who believe this idiot…

It’s fascinating to me to see how little societies change over time socially and culturally, despite looking entirely different because of the technologies of a given time. For example the obsessive focus of life in…

Harry Houdini was the first person to fly a powered aircraft in Australia.

A similar belief made the Roman Empire the phenomenal success it was. Now the Americans, like the Brits, are in rapid reverse, the world of Trump and Farage. And here in Oz decades of ‘Stop the Boats’ politics did the…

Nampijinpa Price got the boot yesterday, from her own side. One of Australia’s leading Trumpians. For Bathurst residents it’s worth noting she’s also a pin-up poster girl for the social media-led coalition dominating…

John Howard popularised the ‘assimilationist’ view of immigration. The one that constantly bangs the drum about how migrants have to ‘integrate’ with ‘our way of life’. The problem with this view is, who is ‘our’? For…

Does Tesla Mobile Service still exist in Australia? From feedback I’ve seen on various online forums, it appears to have been quietly removed as an option? All the service options in the app direct people to one of the…

Because we're entering dangerous times with echoes of the early 1930s (when people start talking nationalities and flags, lock the doors), I think it's worth looking at the features of criminal behaviour in Australia.…

Somebody at work yesterday was riffing on the same theme, that the problem with housing was due to too many migrants. Again, welcome to the early 1930s. Lots of flags, and petrol bombs. Even the building industry said…

Lots of talk recently about boosting productivity in Australia. Here’s a major productivity-killer nobody talks about. Sickness in the workplace. Already before Covid colds and flu cost businesses $7 billion/year.…

How fast things are moving. NSW is running almost entirely on renewables during the day now, close to 80%. This is the last 7 days. The gap is mostly filled by coal, the red line. Overnight though NSW needs more wind…

Australia’s youth voted overwhelmingly at the last election for George and people like him to go away.

David is one of Australia’s leading specialists in the treatment of Covid. What he sees in his rooms and at the hospitals every day horrifies and scares him. Much of it going undiagnosed because GPs don’t even…

AI can now pass the very hardest chartered financial analyst exams in a matter of minutes, including essay writing. Meanwhile an Australian company uses AI to take on online spammers and grifters, by creating thousands…

Not only will installing solar save you thousands of dollars in electricty costs and pay for itself (easily the smartest investment for your spare money), but it also significantly increases the value of your home at…

There was a time people could all have different opinions, and it didn't matter a lot because important stuff was taken care of separately to peoples' opinions. But in social media society, opinions create our reality.…

Had a quick drive in and out of Sydney yesterday, and observed driver behaviour as I always do. What I found. About 30% of drivers were consistently below or well below the speed limit. About 40% of drivers were…

House prices in Australia are now 2-3 times higher, relative to income, than they were in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. In the 'impossibly unaffordable' range. It's not avocado on toast doing this, too many who are now…

California has 1.5 times the population of Australia. Already 20% of its evening power between 6pm and 10pm is coming from batteries. This is our future, coming fast.

We think brands like Toyota, Ford, Mazda, Mitsubishi, Nissan etc. are the dominant car sellers in Australia. As an indication of just how out of whack our feelings are with reality, CarSauce went through the car sales…

What different parts of the world charge for university education. The Anglo world (the US, UK, Australia, Canada - in pink), really just big nursing homes now in the demographics, unsurprisingly more focused on…

Trump's decision to reject renewables is leading America into a full energy crisis. They're critically short of electricity, and coal and nuclear, his (and all the loons worldwide who ride the Trump train) favourite…

Australia has vast areas of desert and arid land, and much of its farmland is completely rooted too, and needs anything to help restore it. Solar panels help restore that land, bringing it to life again. Again, we…

A Formula E car. All-electric. These cars only carry relatively small batteries, much smaller than modern EV road cars, less than 40 kWh. It's still enough to do nearly 100 km, at very high speeds. They flog an F1 car…

“There’s nothing impossible about 100% renewable supply,” said Jesse Jenkins, a Princeton University professor who has studied net-zero pathways for the U.S. “Australia has a better chance of this than almost anywhere.”…

What I like about Tesla vehicles is that they reclaim motoring from kidult car enthusiasts, often adults whose identity as teens focused heavily around their cars. The need for EVs to focus on efficiency, to preserve…

Finn, electrical engineer and one of the reasons solar in Australia is world-leading, sounding a bit like me today. Frustrated that a revolution is being stalled by kidults. Using Tesla as an example, people opting out…

I didn't know traditional Japanese homes are largely made of wood because that's much less likely to kill the inhabitants, if it collapses in an earthquake. But hardly anybody lives in those now, a century ago 85% of…

China is far and away the most popular supplier of cars to Australia. Fleet sales make the usual top 10s profoundly misleading. And it’s still growing so fast. In 2026 *11* new brands launch in Australia. China is not…

One of my favourite things to do now is use AI on my walks to learn more about the plants I see. You can even talk to AI directly, or just take photos and ask for details about what you’re seeing. The landscape opens up…

The ‘Fundamental Law of Road Traffic’ is one of the most studied and accepted outcomes of transport economics. In simple words the law says “building roads creates traffic”. We get stuck in this loop, pouring more and…

Wonderful piece making some of the points I sometimes make here, about democracy. Democracy is: 1. institutions 2. institutions 3. institutions Not 'the people'. Not 'people power', not liberty or rights. All of those…

I’m using AI to do something that I think is wonderful. You may have seen me post here in the past about how our understanding of Australia is based on a set of really crazy prejudices that we brought here with European…

The Botany Bay region, as described by Cook, Banks and Parkinson upon European arrival in Australia. The Bathurst Plains recreation I posted earlier was from firsthand accounts by Evans, Macquarie and Oxley, upon…

When Major Thomas Mitchell stumbled upon the Western District of Victoria in 1836, he described it as “the finest country in the world,” “rich, open, well-grassed, park-like.” See that? Park-like. There was a belief…

Good on Twiggy. Nice to see an Australian flag on something not completely moronic for once.

Australia has by far the longest continuous culture in all history, about 65,000 years. I hadn’t realised the Māori only began to occupy New Zealand between 700 and 750 years ago. What I also hadn’t realised is which…

House prices in Australia. You can see the exact time the catastrophe started. Not coincidentally the reign of the ‘lying rodent’ (his party’s own words), John Howard. Also the time we began bashing migrants, another of…

Europe and China are rapidly arriving where Japan has already been for many years. No younger workers left, to service huge elderly populations. Look at Japan, it’s pretty much at 1 working person for every 1 retired…

Chris Bowen has organised for all Australians to get 3 free hours of electricity in the middle of the day, as some retailers were already offering. This will give people an opportunity to load-shift their heaviest…

We’ve had so many years of brilliant PR from farmers about being poor and downtrodden that it’s always forgotten that farming was the original wealth and privilege in Australia. The settler land-grabbers, who literally…

I had even Australian friends who would chuckle about ‘Sleepy Joe Biden’. Trump at a press conference this week.

The great swindle here is to make unthinking Australians believe their power price rises are due to renewables. Even a Year 7 science student could find the data in about 5 minutes. The surge in power prices is due to…

Why was there an Anzac Day ceremony at the beginning of the Australia-England rugby league game? Also isn’t the English national anthem a tedious dirge? Not one mention of the country itself or its people, 100% from…

I'm sure thousands of Australians avoided Tesla home batteries as part of the current rollout, because 'Elon'. Many if not most have flocked to Sigenergy instead, now 'Australia's favourite battery'. A good example of…

So the LNP did it, they decided to become the Dad's Army of climate (in)action. One part of their spin will be that Australia is only a small contributor to global climate change. Australians are carbon/energy PIGS.…

This is what the LNP is hoping to do now with Net Zero, leading up to the next election. The total backflip of the Australian population on The Voice, in only a year. They’re hoping to engineer a similar viral…

One of the big criticisms of owning an EV is that it’s much faster to refuel a petrol or diesel car. There is actual data on this, average time to refuel at a bowser has been studied not least by service station owners,…

Two things to see here. One, the energy/climate debate is a fake debate. The entire industry already decided the answer years ago. It doesn’t matter whether your political team disagrees, it’s irrelevant. Second, the…

The greatest con of the past 5 years is that ‘lockdowns’ damaged us. Lockdowns freed vast numbers of Australians from poverty, for the first time in their lives. They forced much more workplace flexibility, which…

‘Bazball’ has definitely lifted England’s winning rate, almost doubling it. It also leads to spectacular losses, but I’m sure they’ll take the winning rate as the true test. (It was also introduced by a New Zealander,…

The climate crisis is reaching tipping points. This is Tehran, capital of Iran. 14 million people live there, about half the population of Australia. Preparations are underway for imminent possible evacuation of the…

One of the great Australians most have never heard of. Tony Rinaudo, an agronomist i.e. an expert in agriculture. Rinaudo looked at degraded landscapes, particularly in Africa, and like many others helped with projects…

We knew what Covid does to children 5 years ago already. We did nothing, in Australia they’re not even allowed to be vaccinated against it. I can’t get a single person to be interested or care about it, they’re all too…

And given that virtually nothing ever goes wrong with the motors, you're looking at a car you could theoretically own your entire adult life. And it'll have the performance of a supercar that entire life, and will cost…

In just under 5 months, Australians have added 175,000 home batteries to the grid. The demand is immense. The negative drivel you see on social media about things like renewables and EVs is a sponsored tiny minority of…

Even NSW, which was a laggard, now on most days provides most of its electricity from renewables. Those red arrows show the tiny remnant of coal used during the day, quickly collapsing. Overnight you can see what impact…

Peter, Facebook is misbehaving on the other thread. Here's a summary I put together of sub-$50K EVs in Australia (new), plus I added a secondhand Tesla Model 3 (CPO - certified pre-owned i.e. comes with Tesla warranty).

Happy Christmas from foreign oil companies Australia! They thank you for your loyal $60 billion a year patronage. Let's keep our $60 billion. Imagine what we could do with it.

The big questions never get asked, let alone answered. There is no necessary reason that work and home had to become two separate places in the first place. For most of human history humans worked at home, on their…

From next week social media platforms are expected to take effective measures to ensure people under the age of 16 can’t have accounts. A great idea, it should be extended to all age groups to rescue our societies from…

The ugliest tiny minority of old Australia, totally out of touch with Australia as it actually exists today.

Car brands are a fascinating study if you want to see how human societies are really just status games. Only five global companies own most of the brands of vehicle that people buy. It’s like laundry detergent, where…

There’s a suggestion of an export tax of 25% on gas. That would be a BRILLIANT idea. I’m not sure people understand just how much multinational gas companies are screwing Australia. We are giving them our gas for free,…

I know many Australians who had an ageist chuckle about ‘Sleepy’ Joe Biden being old. This is the scene just about every day now in the US.

Whole nations with damaged immune systems. Norovirus also up 35% in the UK right now. Hospital chiefs say hospitals ‘engulfed’ by winter viruses. Here in Australia flu season (a 'winter virus’) was still going in…

In many ways China is uniquely similar to Australia. Both are ancient cultures who found way to live IN the landscape, for thousands of years. Not on it. To make the landscape part of their society. Those farmlands are…

One of the profound changes those who lived through the 1970s into the present day will have noticed, is the collapse of community service organisations. Lions, Rotary, Apex. It was organisations like this, and…

I want to talk about the ‘hollowing-out’ of towns, to give more context to my deep dislike of modern travel culture. This is Bourton-on-the-Water, in the Cotswolds, one of the most photographed towns in the UK. It has…

What to do, in the face of horrible events like Bondi this week? To me the answer is always the same. Think. Learn. Don’t try to find a team to ‘stand with’, our usual populist kidult response to everything now. This…

Singapore's Polyclinics are probably the future of healthcare. The great logjam in the Australian system is actually the GP. GP practices are fairly small, don't cover a large range of health services and often act more…

Because nobody gives two fucks, just a reminder Christmas is one of the times of greatest risk to you and your loved ones, from Covid. Because we shut down public health, allowing lethal pathogens to circulate freely in…

It's so hard to talk about anything today without people defaulting to their team in whatever fake 'debate' has been set up around it. Like discussing Tesla things, it fires up the anti-Elons and the anti-EVs and…

Snow skiing is disappearing, as the climate warms. Hundreds of ski resorts already closed for good. Resorts in Australia have relied upon man-made snow already for years to stay open. High altitude snow is a magical…

It’s a huge genre of vids on the socials now, everybody sick at Christmas. Everybody is sick all year. In Australia the flu season stretched into mid-summer, ffs. Will anything be done? Of course not, kidult culture…

For Australians, I think a hugely important security tip. myGov is our government access point for our core services, like Medicare and your tax, as well as your health record. I highly recommend firstly always just…

South Australia's Hornsdale battery was the biggest in the world when it was switched on, in 2017. Australians are now adding the equivalent storage with home batteries every 3 and a half DAYS. I post about renewables…

All Councils have their accounts independently audited each year, by law, by the NSW Audit Office. The results are published for public viewing.

People tell me they love travel with a passion. I'm not sure which bits they mean. It certainly can't be this bit. Maybe it's when you get on the plane with everybody re-breathing the same air and using the same toilets…

The most popular EV in Australia, Tesla’s Model 3. Can be bought for less than the price of Australia’s favourite car, the Toyota Hilux. But that’s just the sale price: - fuel costs for the EV can be close to zero -…

Another untold story of what’s happened to cricket. This famous spell is legend. What’s not said is that Johnson ‘retired’ shortly afterwards. But he didn’t really retire, he played 3 years of IPL circus cricket, to…

The new Western Sydney international airport will be open as early as 2026. Had a look at the flight paths today, some of which will go right over the Blue Mountains and Lithgow. And unlike Kingsford Smith, it’ll be…

Australian governments are heading down this same UK path. Huge absences due to infectious illness caused by mass Covid infection being described as an attendance problem instead, as wagging. With ads like these…

Chinese EV makers are in an all-out brawl to offer cheaper EVs. Woe is us :) Some of them may go belly-up this year if they can't find international markets, so the discounting will be on in earnest.…

Woolworths scaled down its Australia Day products because nobody was buying them. Why does Dutton do this? Because his strategy to win government is the same Tony Abbott’s was - starting lots of fights. As politics, it…

Andrew Forrest is investing hugely in renewables. This is him turning the first sod for NSW's biggest wind farm, near Wellington. He has 14 GW of renewables projects in the pipeline around Australia. Again, definitely…

An El Niño means cooler ocean temperatures off Australia. But right now, that ocean is 2.5-3 degrees hotter than normal. That’s ENORMOUS. The difference between heat (energy), and temperature. 2.5-3 degrees doesn’t…

BYD is planning to release a plug-in hybrid SUV in Australia as early as this year. It will be about the size and price of a RAV4, but have an electric-only range of up to 150km. So people can drive it as a pure-EV for…

To say this makes Australia look like yokels is unkind to yokels. That solar farms can now be rejected because they spoil the view. Having lived near two butt-ugly coal power stations for the past 30 years, I can…

As a Part 2 to the Chicago anti-EV piffle circulated by the mind midgets at SKY News Australia, the irony is the same city has seen the same propaganda before. In 2011 hundreds of petrol cars were abandoned because the…

EVs are already changing the culture of Australian towns. Many towns are bypassed by big highways with big servos on them. Now those towns are adding chargers and suddenly people are visiting them again. The service…

There are so many debates about housing, and like in so many other things, some of the ways these problems have been solved in the past have been forgotten. From the 17th century in Europe and 19th century here in…

Where there's a will to change, the answers don't take long to figure out. We went to the moon ffs, none of this is hard.

Personally I think we need to see more of this. The ‘sovereign citizens’ and other loons who bog down basic services with their ridiculous conspiracies and funded slogans in areas like renewables, Covid and basic town…

The Greenland ice cap is losing 30 million TONNES of ice every HOUR. To those who still pretend this is all normal, a tip. It wasn’t losing 30 million tonnes of ice an hour in our lifetimes, or anybody else’s, for at…

“All of this is why governments must invest in long-term strategies for managing COVID into the future, experts say — particularly by introducing standards for indoor air quality. But until then, they say, Australians…

A climate denier trick is to claim that every change to climate we experience is just normal variation. Luckily we have data to show this isn’t true. Take sea temperatures, a hugely important measure, because the oceans…

How progressive tax works is one more thing I think has been lost in public understanding in our time. We have a progressive tax system, where there are increasing rates of tax as you earn more, because that way each…

Seeing an amusing number of Australians share this, close to Australia Day, who read the first sentence about Aboriginals not owning the land, and go ‘yeah!’, and ignore the rest. Ignoring that they, as European…

You too can play for Australia, while suffering from the highly infectious third leading cause of Australian deaths.

Australia Day? I love Australia, it’s truly unique in the world. Not the imported Barnum and Bailey flag-waving patriotism of the US, which today will be full of. A convict colony that survived being sent to the remote…

Playing with Covid worked out well for Travis Head. If he’d had a muscle strain, we’d have said he was playing with an injury. But Covid, the third leading cause of death in Australia? Not mentioned.

*nods* I thought of this when Australia’s batting collapsed twice in this Test, how if they had just a few more private helicopter rides and seaside mansions, they may be better able to hit a ball.

Politics is mostly done with words. Take the loaded word ‘spending’. Invented in the 1970s to portray all government as wasteful. A much more accurate word is investment. Governments invest in communities, creating…

State governments are now taking control of renewable projects, to bypass the local obstruction, often mobilised by Nationals MPs. Solar panels can improve farmland, have a look at how much shelter has been traditional…

Hinkley C nuclear power station, in the UK. When building began people were told it would be done by 2017, at a cost of about $20 billion. Now the project is expected to be HALF finished by 2031. And the cost has blown…

The federal government is putting forward 3 options for a fuel efficiency standard for Australian cars. Something every country in the world except us and Russia have had already for years. Check out Option A, one put…

Without question the greatest social disaster in Australia is housing. This book is about to be released and will be interesting reading for anybody who wants to understand how we got into this mess. The answer is the…

As anybody whose kids have left home has felt I’m sure, it’s a difficult transition. For them, and for parents. I think it goes beyond our usual ‘homesick’ type explanations. For most human history families didn’t…

There are two truly staggering things in play here. One is the level of corruption and criminal behaviour, by a US President. The other is the number of people, including here in Australia (and often young people), who…

Following up on my earlier post, probably the single worst thing you can do when infected with Covid is exercise. Australian cricketers play at an elite high exertion level, with full-blown Covid. It's medical insanity.…

I had a long chat today with one of Australia’s leading Covid specialists. He says things are much, much worse than even I share here. He sees even very young people with terrible ongoing health problems. And people who…

Look at what the collapse of the coal plant in Victoria has done to the wholesale electricity price there. Nearly $17,000/MWh. OUCH. Compare with South Australia, with its renewables? They're giving the energy away…

Australia's Covid strategy is called 'hybrid immunity'. Where immunity (supposedly) comes from a combination of infections and vaccinations. Except nobody is getting the vaccinations. So it's really a 'couldn't give a…

This is Australia’s opportunity to become, like I’ve said before, the Saudi Arabia of the next 2 centuries. Seriously rich. But we seem unlikely and too stupid to do it, preferring instead to keep making Texans and…

Just about to be released and already sold out. Did you know Australia's housing market is running at $10 TRILLION? Outrageously absurd. I liked Michael Pascoe's review: "The vast majority of what is written and said…

Next time you see protests anywhere about Council rates, it's worth noting that the 2022 floods in NSW caused damage to over 13,000km of roads. That's enough road to cross Australia 4 times. Those roads were already…

An Australian car needs $120 of fuel to travel the same distance for which an American car only needs $100 of fuel. European cars are even better than American. This is why the new vehicle/fuel efficiency standards are…

February is normally the hottest month of the year in Australia. And yet here on the East coast it’s still raining. And for the same reason we’ve seen all summer. The ocean is crazy hot. Evaporation produces rain, go…

Solar farms in the UK take up less space than golf courses and Christmas tree farms. People forget that farming was the activity of the most privileged parts of the population, who now don’t want their lifestyles…

I love how aggressive BYD is, their plug-in hybrid ute is due this year already, in Australia. BYD knows most of the anti-EV stuff comes from legacy car companies shitting themselves because they can’t shift their…

Europeans paying 50% of what we pay in fuel costs, staggering. Example here of a European VW Golf doing 3.9L/100km, while the Australian version is nearly 6L/100km. Some people DEFEND this aggressively. Dumb is winning.

Australia has a love affair with trades. But almost complete indifference to sophisticated engineering. Like this artificial heart, made of titanium, with the only moving part a single spinning disc suspended in a…

Hilarious. German farmers want the exact opposite thing to what Australian farmers say they want. In both cases because it means opposing government plans for renewables. It shows that it's all really just about…

South Australia planned to be net 100% renewables by 2030. It’s now brought that forward to 2027, it’s going so well. Only 3 years away. Just takes brains and determination. They’ll be an economic powerhouse, using the…

To give an indication of just how corrupt fossil fuel politics is, it's worth remembering that university students pay more of Australia's bills through their HECS payments than all of the coal, oil and gas companies…

Because I know everybody loves Covid stories, have a look at the surveillance/sentinel testing for Covid in NSW, between 2023 and 2024. The pandemic is getting worse, at the same time as most people assumed it ended 2…

Rubbish technology, which kills you to boot. 11,000 people in New South Wales die every year from vehicle exhaust pollution. Many of the rest get diseases like Alzheimers. And people not only defend it, they love it.…

Australia like several rich countries has had 20-30 years of the politics of immigration. Have a look at these graphs. Without huge numbers of immigrants this country is terminal.

About 7400 Australians died because of Covid in 2023. That’s 20 a day. But sorry, I forgot we’ve all moved on. Except for the 7400.

That explains the beetroot. Amazing that Australia is a net importer of tinned food.

Mark Gregory is an engineer. Some say I'm biased against the LNP. I'm actually a conservative person, but I have nothing but contempt for the LNP since the time of John Howard, which has remade itself as an…

https://www.fresheconomicthinking.com/p/did-public-housing-create-the-australian

I’ve had even a few Australians say to me that Joe Biden is a joke, that he’s ’too old’. Some of these Australians admire Trump. Let’s have a short look at this champion of the stupid.

Australians need to decide just how gullible they are. The car companies opposing this change have been selling vehicles overseas to meet the same and even higher standards, for years. In every other country in the…

Fascinating graph that should make us question the Australia we think we know (and it applies to many Western countries). The grey is Australia’s population broken into age groups, in 2022. Blue is what 2034 will look…

This is the Hinkley Point C nuclear power station, under construction in the UK. (Actually a model, it’s years away from being finished.) Keep this one in mind as the debates around nuclear power heat up here. When…

BYD is a force of nature right now. It plans to release 4 (4!) new models in Australia in 2024. It already has 3 so that’ll be 7 in all. The next will be the Seal-U, a mid-range SUV to challenge the Toyota RAV-4 hybrid.…

For all of the years shown on this graph, most Australians would tell you that house prices can only ever go up. It's our culture, it began with gold rushes and other get-rich-quick schemes. All the get-rich-quick…

Having worked as an engineer at Lucas Heights, I can promise you Matt Canavan knows as little about this as he does about everything else. This isn't even the Lucas Heights reactor (in the picture), it's Australia's…

Guess how much Sydney motorists will pay in tolls between now and 2060? $195 BILLION dollars 🤔 Governments should just build public infrastructure, like they used to.

I've often posted about how 'the economy' isn't even a thing. It's a political invention designed to replace public life with the dominant cultural form humanity has used for nearly all of its history - feudalism. How…

One Lib government left in Australia. Maybe not for long. Trashed Tasmania, just as they trashed the rest of the country. I would actually love a conservative government that *conserved* things. It’s in the name. Modern…

Brilliant idea. Which means it won’t happen. The Australian brain is quick-set cement.

In Asia they use strong government to drive investment and innovation. More than a decade ago they identified electric cars as the way of the future, and began developing EV batteries. They now pretty much own that…

Only 3 vaccines provide lifelong protection, measles, rubella and yellow fever. They’re all produced from live virus, that is then modified (attenuated) to prevent it causing serious illness in you. I mention this…

Barely 10% of Australians now smoke. That will be the future of ICE cars too.

The BYD hybrid ute will be up against the Ford Ranger hybrid, from this year. It'll be interesting to see the pricing on both. My guess is Australia is too stupid yet to realise a hybrid ute has more grunt than a petrol…

The big gas companies shipping our gas offshore? They paid $30 in tax, on over $58 billion of income last year. Feeling like suckers yet, Australia? Speed up renewables so we can kick these parasites out.

Running a superannuation system in parallel with a pension system is exactly the same as running a private health insurance system in parallel with a universal healthcare system (Medicare). A staggering waste of money,…

This is a social catastrophe that still has a long way to run. Cities and towns (including Bathurst) can’t even house essential workers. The standard idea that it’s all a problem of ‘supply’ isn’t right. It’s a lack of…

In Norway, super doesn’t cost you a cent. Instead they set high rates for royalties for their oil production, and fund the entire scheme with that. Currently the scheme has about $450,000 per person saved, for every…

One of the great reality checks coming for all societies is the delusional idea that retirement should be the time when you’re richest. In an ageing world, that’s a recipe for total disaster. Here’s the numbers for 8…

Lots of criticism of EVs from those who say they can't tow because it destroys their range. To take a common towing vehicle, a Toyota Landcruiser. Towing a caravan for example about DOUBLES its fuel consumption. Petrols…

There were 8400 excess deaths in Australia 2023. Meaning 8400 more people died than was expected from the historical average. Over 6000 were caused by Covid. The other 2400 were likely caused by disruption caused by…

Big jump in fuel prices again overnight. I see north of $2.40/litre for 95 or 98 in Bathurst. The true definition of range for any vehicle: how far can you afford to drive it? 🙂 Imagine being an Australian arguing to…

Had Whooping Cough only a few years ago, when NSW had a surge. Was vaccinated, but it wanes. As the article says, we’ve now seen big increases in measles, syphilis, gout, leprosy, malaria, RSV and whooping cough.…

Australia is an international embarrassment with this rubbish. Nobody says boo with 70+ coal ships queued only a few hundred metres off Newcastle, but some windmills 20km offshore are apparently destroying the Western…

The source of all real wealth is building things. Engineering. Not the economy or its market (both fictions). Not supply and demand. Building things, at scale, to drive costs down. That’s how Henry Ford made cars…

US houses are less than half the cost of Australian houses, relative to incomes. How do they do it? It's not the market at work. American housing is nationalised, government provides the capital to banks through…

An example of the huge distance between our politics and reality. 'Out of an abundance of caution' he's isolating. The Deputy Prime Minister. Here in NSW, if you DON'T isolate, you're breaking the law, the NSW Public…

In a sign of the major shift underway in buying habits, the Tesla Model Y outsold the Toyota Hilux in Australia, in March. The Hilux has been Australia’s top-selling car since 2016. This month Tesla increased the pain…

Roy Morgan’s latest poll shows more Australians are planning to buy an EV over the next 4 years than are planning to buy petrol. EVs are now the dominant segment in planned purchases. Diesels have fallen off a cliff.

One of the most fascinating things to observe is what a nation chooses to mourn. The excess deaths Covid caused in 2023 alone was greater than the number of Australians lost at Gallipoli. Not even mentioned. Let alone…

We've owned a Corolla hybrid hatch for more than a year now, and it must be one of the best fun driver's cars out there. Very low centre of gravity so it hugs the ground, I've never experienced a faster car around…

A 7-star energy efficient home built today, under only a moderate projection for climate change impacts, will have the comfort of only a tent by 2070. The amount of energy needed to cool these homes will double. The…

Some very important research was published this month to assess whether 'hybrid immunity', the combination of infection + vaccination we're using for Covid, works. It doesn't work. It not only doesn't work, it makes…

The average NSW price for E10 this morning. The 'cheap' ULP option. There's so much public anger about supposed price gouging by supermarkets (mostly a myth), while oil companies have been rogering consumers for years.…

In just over a year of ownership, our solar panels have exported enough energy to the grid to: - drive an EV from Sydney to Perth 25 times, or - power 2 additional homes for an entire year. That's *with* a battery to…

BYD's Sea Lion is rumoured to be released in Australia this year as well. It's a mid-sized SUV, one of the most popular car segments. And glorious EV, kick those petrol prices to the kerb. Designed by ex-Audi and…

Musk is a CEO. CEOs answer to boards. CEOs who go to war with nation States are on a fast-track to redundancy. He owns 20% of Tesla stock, which makes him the majority shareholder. But it means 80% of the company is…

Farmers in Australia can earn up to $40,000 per wind turbine, per YEAR, if they have them on their property. And $1500 per hectare for solar farms. At a time when farming is a dead business, it's a lifeline. Making it…

Domestic violence data in Australia for the past 35 years. From the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, official government data body.

Exactly what needs to happen here. In the UK banks have to pay victims of online scams involving losses from their bank accounts. It forces banks to take online scams seriously. In Australia banks are a protected…

How social media is distorting and destroying society. 28 women have died from intimate partner violence this year. We got this ‘crisis’ action this week, nearly a billion dollars. I shared earlier in the week that this…

BYD’s plug-in hybrid ute is due in Australia in the second half of this year. It’ll be called the Shark. Rumoured to have full-electric range of up to 150km, and total range of 1000km+. With fuel stuck at well over…

There’s enough energy in a standard tank of petrol to power an EV from Sydney to Perth, and back again. The petrol car is so inefficient that it won’t even get out of NSW on the outwards-trip, on one tank. Some chuckle…

Damn these too-quiet cars! lol…

Alan Kohler today. All the more reason to re-nationalise public housing, and make the work more secure and affordable for builders. My dad came to Australia to build public housing after the war. The model works.

A technical guy I know recently bought a BYD Seal. A no-nonsense bloke. His review below (note he uses standard grid power to charge at home, you can get much cheaper rates again than what he's using). I got a BYD Seal…

It'd be worth a bet that Lithgow/Wang will be on Peter Dutton's list of nuke options, given neither town tends to vote for the LNP anyway, so they're less likely to lose important votes. Which is all any of this is…

In the next 14 years the number of people aged 85 and over in Australia will double, from about half a million now, to nearly 1.2 million. The boomer demographic blip working its way through the population age profile.…

Armidale. Applied for a special rate variation (SRV) of 58.8% last year. This was on top of a 10.5% SRV it had approved in 2021-22. It was approved because the independent regulator saw that the Armidale Council had…

This is Johnny McEntee, one of Trump’s closest fanboy staffers. Responsible for hiring and firing Trump’s staff during his presidency, and predicted to head up ‘Project 2025’ if Trump wins again. Project 2025 includes…

Hmm, every Australian to get energy bill relief in the budget. Now I need an energy bill. Maybe it’s cash.

Thanks to @[1257795447:2048:Christine] for the heads-up. BYD launch its hybrid ute tomorrow. 100 km full-electric range, up to 1000 km if you use the petrol and electric together for longer trips. The US now looking at…

This is the first of 2 mid-size SUVs BYD will launch in Australia next week too. Another plug-in hybrid for those with 'range anxiety'. (By the way there are much cheaper ways to be rid of range anxiety. Like reading a…

I’ve been talking about Covid for the entire pandemic. Here’s a good example of why. I posted that mum was in hospital, for serious heart and lung issues. About 10 days later she was due to be released, but had a bad…

Bigger than a Hilux or Ranger. Uses much less fuel (none at all for around-town driving, where it can do full electric for up to 100 km). 1000 km on a tank of fuel for longer trips. And more powerful/faster than a…

When even the Financial Review is calling BS. This is Dutton’s new attempt at ‘Stop the Boats’. But the majority of voters now aren’t oldies terrified of migrant invasion. They’re younger. Without migration there are no…

A lawyer friend is collecting the data for NSW hospitals, through freedom of information laws. NSW is extremely secretive. People should be in jail.

Gina wants another tax cut. The subsidies to her industry would be enough to fund free child care for the entire country.…

From November in NSW this year, you can get up to $2400 from the NSW Government to add a battery to your solar installation, as part of their Peak Demand Reduction Scheme. They should have been targeting households a…

Beyond me why people still buy straight petrol or diesel vehicles. When your beliefs cost you that much money, it's time to read a few books.…

This is the sort of thing that should make Australia the Saudi Arabia of the next 2 centuries. The richest country in the world. Instead we have people cheering on an old economy run on oil, from Saudi Arabia.

If you’re in NSW and you have kids between 5-14, and they’re not vaccinated for whooping cough (pertussis), I’d get that done right now.

'Cough' notifications, Canberra. 9 May on the left. Today on the right.

I’m not sure Australians know that Chinese cars now outsell Korean cars from Hyundai and Korea here. BYD’s sales have jumped sixfold in just a year, for example. Meanwhile the US and Europe do what they’ve always done,…

It’s all NSW Government money, Paul, the people of NSW. Not National Party money. Though that is how they run their novelty cheque grant program when in government.

It’s NSW money, Paul. It didn’t belong to the ‘former NSW government’. It wasn’t a gift from them or the NSW Nationals. Unless we want to start calling the Sydney Opera House the NSW Labor Opera House?

If you want a taste for how AI is doing world-changing things, meet Phonely. An AI switchboard, that can answer calls, and have real-time conversations with people who call, redirect them to the required people etc. It…

Review of the BYD hybrid (Sea Lion 6), just released in Australia. The reviewer was almost embarrassed that he couldn't find one thing wrong with the car. Superb engineering, amazing price. About 90 km electric-only…

The Murdoch press have been hammering the ‘the EV bubble has burst’ rubbish all week. But Australians are still shifting to EVs, fast. Hybrids are EVs. And sales of hybrids have exploded. They’re using them as a…

A provocation. I think Cold Chisel are probably the greatest band of all time. The greatest songwriters at least. Unlike The Beatles or Elvis or any of the other huge names, the songs found a way to marry white and…

The RATs circled in blue tested mucus blown from the nose into a tissue. The RAT in the middle tested the same person the standard way, by swabbing nose and mouth. Most workplaces have reverted to absolutely hopeless…

Did you know that Pink’s tour of Australia, about the same time as Taylor Swift’s, sold almost twice as many tickets?

(Kris is a climate scientist.) It’s summer now in Greenland. The average temperature in summer in Greenland is about 7 degrees C. Right now it’s 15 degrees C. The enormous quantity of ice in Greenland was already…

Thanks to @[1112555254:2048:Dan] for the tip. A BYD Seal, an absolutely superb car which insiders liken to a Mercedes in quality, costs $50K in Australia. That's almost giving it away. In the EU and soon US, the price?…

I don't even need to criticise travel culture. It does a good enough job on its own.…

There are 55 GW of generation capacity in the Australian electricty grid. At current prices, it costs $25 billion per GW to build a nuclear plant. To make our electricty system nuclear would therefore cost over a…

This was Saudi Arabia’s first major oil well, in 1938. We know the rest. The Saudis make up to a billion dollars per DAY from oil. They’ve been selling it for 70 years. Just imagine how much money that is. Right now the…

Mt Piper nuclear power station announced today. NSW Premier ruled out any nuclear in NSW (Victoria the same). Game over. Vote for somebody who isn't a fool.

We haven’t been to trivia nights in over 4 years. This nonsense yesterday made me think about it. The reason we stopped going to trivia was simple, it’s not Covid-safe. Objectively, scientifically, you should not catch…

Satoshi is a friend. An emergency doctor working in Sydney hospitals. He’s a great example of how increasingly it’s those who take Covid seriously (including by masking) who are carrying the burden of those who don’t.…

The people who don't understand this think nuclear is a tremendous idea. It would also take 20 years for nuclear to be 'ready'.…

Australia has about 16 operating coal-fired power stations. The nuclear proposal is replacing these with 7 nuclear plants. Nuclear power stations don’t produce more power than coal-fired ones. So how do you replace 16,…

So Adam, was the final bowl to win the Australian Open by Aron Sherriff as good as bowling gets?

I know people don’t like discussing things like this, because they say it’s ‘politics’, and they don’t like conflict. But putting politics to one side, I’m genuinely curious how people can genuinely believe nuclear…

I'm amazed at the stupid things people fall for, with scammers. Just keep your finances simple, never ever respond to anybody canvassing you for investments or anything else. Having said that, Australian banks are also…

Only 60% of Australians think dangerous climate change is caused by humans.

Anthony Albanese has a real opportunity right now, to steal the debate. To do what Saul Griffith, the Australian engineer who also advised Joe Biden, suggested he do 2 years ago. To heavily subsidise Australian…

I saw a candidate for election say this. "[Aborigines] were not an advanced civilisation and DEFINITELY would have had to have some form of colonisation by someone in the 18th century." I think many Australians probably…

If you have Covid and go into public in NSW without taking precautions, you can be jailed for 6 months. If some clown turns up at your workplace or home saying they have Covid, unmasked, I'd remind them of this.

Portugal is one of the most vaccinated countries in the world, for Covid. More than Australia. Vaccination alone is not enough. And infecting everybody is not creating immunity.

Saul Griffith, Australian engineer.

Australia is in a lot of trouble with energy. We’ll run out inside the next decade, unless urgent action is taken. The previous government had 21 energy policies in 10 years. TWENTY-ONE. How many of those did it…

17 years ago today, dad died. That's him on the left. From the generation whose young lives were taken by war. Never spoke of it. Part of that huge wave of European migration post-WW2 that transformed Australia, with…

I saw in the news this week that more than 50% of younger Australians surveyed engage in choking during sex, copied from a trend in online porn. So the woman is literally choked, for a short time. Humans imitate, it’s…

Heads up. While you're busy not sheltering from the threat, worth pondering why these threats keep happening.…

Come on Australia, we can get it to number 1!!

It’s difficult to believe just how stupid this situation is. We give away our own gas to foreign fossil fuel companies, who get obscenely rich selling it overseas. (We literally give it away, they pay as good as nothing…

One of the arguments for privatisation is that it saves the taxpayer money by shifting responsibility to private organisations. But the taxpayer ends up paying even more, in user charges. Driving is now much more…

David is one of Australia's leading Long Covid specialists. He said this morning that people are being re-infected with the current variants as quickly as every 3-8 weeks. One of those who have to deal with the disaster…

Australians are in love with hybrids because they want full-EVs, but are anxious about range. Most full-EVs have 400-600km of range already, and unless you're doing a long trip that's plenty for at least a couple of…

The Tesla Model Y is a brilliant mid-sized SUV. It’s also the world’s best-selling car. You can buy the base model in Australia now for less money than a Toyota RAV4 hybrid. It’s a much better car than a RAV4 hybrid.…

From within our own region. Loved the response from the ute-driving moron in Rockley. We worship the ute-driving moron, by all buying gutless utes we don’t need that handle like tractors on the road, and guzzle fuel.…

Last Thursday one of the big generating units at the Loy Yang coal power station tripped, just before 2am. This caused a frequency collapse in the national grid (red line). That's a very bad thing, it can stop…

Sydney’s toll roads are an epic story of how privatisation is always the gouging of taxpayers. Transurban built and runs the roads. It spent $36 billion building them. How much will it make from them, in tolls? At least…

I find the NDIS intrinsically dangerous. The base rationale for it is unquestionably fabulous, to support people with a disability. But the devil is so much in the details as to how you go about that. As it stands it…

The Australian olympic swim team, can anyone spot the fashion accessory that is coming back on-trend?

Tesla’s Model Y, a mid-sized SUV, is the biggest selling car in the world. People love mid-sized SUVs. BYD is after them, it’s launching the SeaLion 7 in Australia this year. It’s slightly bigger than the Model Y. And…

Those who look at what’s happening in the US politically with horror, need to carefully assess the teams at this year’s local government elections in NSW. Local government is where a lot of the Trump base target local…

Political strategy 101. Remember at school if somebody yelled 'fight!', how people would come running from all directions? The social group Trump represents doesn't have to fight for anything, they're rich and already…

UK teachers have been in the Covid firing line longer than Australian teachers. But Australian teachers will catch up. It's disgusting how we treat teachers and kids.…

In this week’s Antarctic cold blast, a third of Australia’s electricity came from wind power alone. As the regulator explains here, ‘baseload’ never meant the base amount of power we need to run the country. It always…

West Connex was promoted, as all new freeways are, as the answer to traffic congestion, in this case along Parramatta Road. It’s been fantastic for people like us, who rarely go to Sydney, a super easy (but bloody…

When I was a kid, nobody talked about energy. When Wang opened in 1957, nobody did either. We just left it to engineers to sort out, the best possible power grid for Australia. And got on with our lives. That’s what’s…

This is Trump's pick for Vice-President. Saying 'the professors are the enemy', quoting Nixon. We may gasp or even chuckle at that. Except very many Australians would probably agree, knowledge has no traction in any of…

I mentioned this one earlier in the week. Mid-sized full electric SUV to compete with Tesla's Model Y. And of course with the hybrid RAV4. BYD doesn't muck around, they're looking to double sales every year, to overtake…

Another ex-pollie going to a plum job in the resources sector. The conflict of interest sticks out, to use a phrase of my grandfather's, like a pair of donkey's balls. Perrottet was one of the main drivers of 'living…

We’re living in the middle of a revolution. A revolution that we can’t see, because our eyes are blinded, by the Wormtongue of social media. Did you know that 100% of car sales are projected to be electric, in under a…

There’s a trillion tonnes of water in this iceberg. Not one mention in the description below of the disaster this ‘calving’ represents. If (when) all the Antarctic sea ice melts, sea levels will rise between 60 and 70…

One Australian athlete at the Games already down with Covid. And it's 2 days before anything starts.

Fish dont know water exists until they’re beached. In the same way, our own culture is the thing most invisible to us. Like travel, again. This passion Australians have to do the ‘Big Lap’, or equivalent. To accumulate…

Australia will win gold medals in Paris. But none of those athletes will come within light years of achieving what Australian biomedical engineer Daniel Timms has done. I posted about him once before. Here he is,…

A boyfriend broke her heart, and at the same time the brains of the people of NSW. The law wasn't fooled.…

Another cultural observation. I often hear ‘cheap Chinese crap’ when there’s talk about Chinese goods. The Chinese are master manufacturers, just as the Japanese learned to be, very quickly. Or BYD, now making big…

BYD will have two mid-sized SUVs in Australia this year. I mention BYD because seriously, we’re living inside a revolution right now. The quality of the engineering here is premium/world class, and the price defies…

There’s a huge train crash coming for aged care. Many working in that industry say it’s here already, which is also true. But it’s about to get much, much worse. There is no easy answer to this, apart from importing…

Condoms offered to athletes at the Olympics. Meanwhile the water polo team is almost entirely infected with Covid and played regardless, breathing all over their opponents. One prominent British athlete who openly has…

Kyle and Jackie O have been a multi-million dollar flop in Melbourne. It’s not difficult to see why. What is difficult is understanding why they’re popular anywhere else.

Nobody does jingoistic bullshit better than Channel 9. ‘Our Jess’ *vomit* One Australian team flogged the USA yesterday, comprising mostly young women from regional Australia. (Hint: it wasn’t the Matildas.) Mass public…

More chargers opening in NZ. Re-capping the stats I did for Australia about the massive untold story of the shift to EVs. Getting fuel tankers and refineries out of commission. These chargers don’t need fuel tankers to…

The trucks that deliver fuel to service stations in Australia every year use approximately 8 BILLION litres of diesel, just to fuel the tanker trucks. That’s before one drop goes in your tank. When vehicles shift to…

This team has been the highlight of the games so far for me. They levelled with Argentina with one second to go in this game (Argentina is 2 in the world, Australia is 5). And the result flattered Argentina, Australia…

Australian data. You don’t need to be good at maths to see the inevitability of what’s happening. And Australia is slow, this is HALF the rate the rest of the world is growing at. Also accusations of this being some…

What we now call mental illness (a terrible term) used to be called nervous illness. I much prefer that term because most garden variety mental illness is really a type of nervous exhaustion. Even people feeling…

In the 1970s, there were over 20,000 servos in Australia. In the year 2000, there were 8370. Now there are only 6400. It’s important to understand this. You don’t get rich running a servo. The big reduction in number of…

My mate Satoshi, doing rounds in Sydney amidst the Covid wreckage of peoples' bodies. People don't change behaviour until it's much too late to save themselves. Then they launch a GoFundMe.

One of the main architects of mass death from Covid in Australia. You can see his libertarian bullshit here, about freedom and vaccines. You know what was mandated for all Australians, because of people like him?…

List of special rate variations approved in NSW in the 2023-24 period. There have been 7 more Councils since. The basic services people want and need have to be paid for.

Important to understand this story. Firstly it doesn't mean people are buying petrols or diesels instead. Like the rest of the world, they're buying hybrids. 'Range anxiety' has them spooked, they want an EV, but are…

The NSW Government is the worst in the country for cosy deals with big donors, like property developers. In this case, commercial property owners, who are losing money because so many employees now work from home. As…

Did you know Australia is having a warmer than average winter?

Housing is unaffordable because governments stopped building public housing, through ideologies of ‘the market’ doing it instead. The market will never build affordable housing, how many people have you met who don’t…

Remember the fight over the NBN in Australia? That was entirely Tony Abbott trying to protect Foxtel, for his mate Rupert. Murdoch knew the NBN would open the door to streaming platforms into Australian homes, directly…

Harry is a cardiovascular surgeon, David is one of Australia’s Covid experts. This is what happens when you exercise with or soon after Covid. That’s ventricular tachycardia. Only a pacemaker will save him.

Had to do a quick run Into Sydney yesterday, and always find being on the roads gives some of the best insights into human behaviour. Like these newer adjustable speed limits. A great idea, when they monitor traffic…

It’s disingenuous to say to young people today that their parents also had high house repayments. The relative price of houses between then and now is literally chalk and cheese. The fabled ‘we paid 17% interest rates’…

Just to stress again, there will never be nuclear power in Australia in our lifetimes. And there's no intention to actually build it.…

You can check who your candidates are for the upcoming local government elections here, in NSW:…

Another leading US doctor, showing how Australia went from leading the world in public health, to being its arse-end, in under 2 years. We're doing NOTHING for Covid in Australia, sickening the entire population for the…

We've only just started scratching the surface of what Chinese industry has for us. This is an absolute boon for Australians, we'll get these cars for tens of thousands less than the Europeans and Americans, whose…

@[23911136:2048:Trey], Texas stil kicking goals. Texas, oil country! Australians should be ashamed.

I watched (livestream) the meet the candidates session at the RSL club this week, for the local elections. Many repeated the line often that there needs to be more ‘consultation’ with the community. The thing as a…

The reason Australians will be getting unbelievable bargains on Chinese cars is that they have enormous industrial capacity, but their own domestic market is full. Thus the big push on now for exports. These are…

This shows the projected average payout to participants in the NDIS, through their lives. A gross amount on average *per person* of $2.63 million. There are now over 660,000 people on the NDIS (this was 2022 data). That…

The ‘outback’ is a mythology Australians love. It’s a myth. We’ve always used the land outside the main cities as either a big farm or big mine. Extractive industries. We’re a settler culture, ferrying resources back to…

BYD is absolutely smashing it out of the park in Australia. The pathetic efforts from Western carmakers have been deservedly kicked to the kerb.

A litte something about bats for the social media armchair experts. Yes you can make lots of noise to try to scare them away. You can see what that does in the picture, scares the bats, who all fly around lots, and then…

Rooftop (home) solar provided almost half of Australia's electricity during the day last weekend, creating a record low draw of power from the grid. This caused negative prices (they pay you to use electricity), and…

It's been extremely windy, and you can see that here in South Australia's energy generation for the past 7 days, the wind in green. Yellow is solar. Purple is imports from the national grid, orange is gas. There was…

Here's NSW by contrast, for the past 7 days. Obviously daylight hours correspond with the yellow (solar). Black is coal, green is wind, purple is imports from the wider grid, blue is hydro. There's as much or more wind…

Cover the fields AND the car parks. Australian fields are desperately short of shelter for stock and plants.

David is one of Australia's leading Long Covid experts. As he says, there are no treatments. Symptomatic relief at best. I'm sorry to those who desperately want to believe the pandemic is over. It just isn't, and…

This is what answering a Council switchboard is like, every single day.

The Waratah super battery at Munmorah is ready to go. The biggest power source ever connected to the Australian grid. Took only a year to build. A nuclear power plant would take 10-15 years and cost at least 30 times as…

New Disco Clubs, where women in their 40s and 50s get to pretend they’re 18 again for a few hours. Of course that’s the culture now, 18 forever. But there’s also an interesting Covid angle here. Why do some people go to…

The Australian approach to the big fossil fuel companies is to touch your toes and not even ask them to use lube.

Victorian data for percentage of people whose hospitalisation for Covid was caused by the patient catching Covid IN hospital. NSW is I think even worse. A national disgrace.

Australian owner of a BYD Seal gives their impressions after 10,000 km of motoring. Note the total silence of the cabin as they talk too. This car is a genuine unbelievable steal at the price you pay.

Mt Arthur coal mine, in the Hunter Valley. To file under ‘windmills spoil the view’. Some facts about it, a window into the industry. - BHP owns it, and in recent years all of its coal has gone offshore - it’s…

Social media connects people like this to each other, making them a powerful political force of rank stupidity. Before social media they were just isolated individuals in the community. Even local government elections…

When we bought a home, the kids were keen on something brand new. But I’ve always been glad we went with an older home, because it was clearly solid, otherwise it wouldn’t still be standing. Time is an excellent test.…

If your kids aren't vaccinated against whooping cough, I'd get that done like yesterday. Over 600 notifications a week now in NSW. You can also catch it as an adult, even if vaccinated. The immunity wanes (ask me how I…

NSW really can be the arse-end of the world. The only jurisdiction on the planet with average speed safety cameras that doesn’t use them for cars. FINALLY after a big surge in road deaths, NSW politicians have…

I’m genuinely curious how we think travel can survive as an activity in the way we do it. Travel destinations are already overwhelmed, and less than 5% of the world is travelling. Let alone carbon emissions from all of…

For the next time you hear somebody say Australia has a shortage of gas. Bend over Australia, don't even ask for lube.

The last week of August was a watershed moment for Australia. Coal provided less than 50% of Australia's electricty for the first time. The total collapse of coal will accelerate rapidly from here, and it will have…

A tale of two States, SA and NSW, over 24 hours this week. This is electricity generated over the 24 hour period. Black is coal. Green is wind. Yellow is solar. Blue is battery storage. Purple is exports to other…

Australians travel obsessively for the same reason they drink and gamble obsessively, and always have. We’re a settler culture with no connection to place. Settler cultures accumulate places as ‘land’, and drink and…

Again, enjoy the revolution happening right in front of us.…

Right now Covid, influenza and RSV are at low levels in New South Wales. Hooray. Whooping cough continues to spiral out of control. 

We’re back at the evil supermarket ‘duopoly’ again. Australia doesn’t have a supermarket duopoly. Aldi and IGA for example have been other options for years. Aldi is cheaper than either of the Big 2. But people mostly…

At the exact moment yesterday when Peter Dutton announced another fact-and-costing-free nuclear fantasy, South Australia was running on 113% renewables.

From one of the major teaching hospitals in Sydney. Of course nurses have been saying this for a long time already, and voting with their feet, leaving the profession in droves. Now the BMW X5s are leaving the car park…

The price of electricty is pretty steady all year. And you don't need much of it to fill an EV.…

Towing has become one of those big swinging dick things, like a rite of passage of Australian manhood. I mean, who would tow anything, if you had the choice? Gulps fuel, holds up traffic, and as it turns out plenty have…

“The only way to insist that a Queensland farmer should be paid much more for a cabbage, for instance, while simultaneously arguing that a Sydney shopper should be paying much less for the very same vegetable, is to…

I would bet that the resistance of many Australians today to shop at Aldi still traces back to it being run by Germans. Coles and Woolies are the ‘Aussie’ options. People who don’t experience racism never really…

Policing, teaching, nursing, doctoring, aged care, local government. Etc. All the essential services are in a state of collapse. Not only is it impossible to now do these jobs, the people who stick with them are under…

This is quite a big movement, and shows just how far Australia has fallen in the past 30 years. It used to be one of the cheapest places to live in the world. It’s now one of the most expensive. That’s a disgrace, with…

Northern NSW.

Covid levels currently reasonably low in Australia. That’s about to change, with yet another variant created by uncontrolled spread of this virus. Infection can’t stop infection.

We’re just back from a short Queensland holiday. Visited Sea World again, to give Alice a taste of theme parks (she’s never been). We were all bored by everything except seeing some marine life, and winced at $13…

I think it’s important to hear ordinary Australians speak about their experience of buying EVs. To cut through the fog of misinformation on social media. Like this guy’s 20-second summary, who’s now owned his Tesla…

This is the second US hurricane in a fortnight. The reason is the same reason Australia has been so wet in the past 2 years. The oceans are boiling. Water in the Gulf there is 1-3 degrees hotter than normal. That…

In Western Australia residents pay twice as much in vehicle registration to the State budget as the State collects in gas royalties every year. The international gas industry is laughing at us. Electrify everything,…

First Australian review of the BYD equivalent of the Tesla Model Y (biggest selling car in the world). The Sealion 7. It’s the Seal, up-converted to a mid-sized SUV. And it’s brilliant. What will really make Tesla…

People should be in jail. Starting with members of NSW Cabinet, who lead the total indifference. You should never go to hospital for treatment and contract a potentially lethal infection while there. With things like…

He says ‘This is Bad’ because (watch it) he’s saying the Shark is so good, it will destroy every other ute. The ute is a totem in Australian (and US) life. It stands for everything in both of those societies that is…

The new BYD Shark I’ve been mentioning has a 2.5-tonne towing capacity. This is a deliberate choice by BYD. It has nothing to do with ‘grunt’. The Ford Ranger and other utes for example will tow 3.5-tonnes. The BYD…

It's a great time to be Australian. The new BYD Sealion7 (their response to the Tesla Model Y, the world's biggest selling car) *starts* at nearly $90,000 in the UK. They haven't released pricing for here, but it will…

If the BYD Shark is a Ranger/Hilux/Navara/BT-50/Amarok killer, the BYD Sealion 6 is a Toyota RAV 4 killer. The RAV 4 is a huge car internationally. The Sealion 6 is so much better it’s embarrassing. The motoring experts…

NZ'ers discovering that the new BYD Shark ute is $24,000 (that's 24 THOUSAND) dollars cheaper than the Ford Ranger Raptor. And it's faster than the Raptor. And a much higher quality vehicle, in the engineering sense.…

At least 10 new Chinese EV companies are looking to come to Oz. Australians have no idea of the smorgasbord of riches coming our way. I post about it a lot, China’s EV industry is creating family cars with supercar…

lol, Australians already live in some of the worst houses in the developed world. The surest way to turn us into even more the arse-end of the world than we already are, on just about every metric, is to elect these…

Yesterday was a new record for Australia. 75% of our daytime electricity came from renewables. For those who say 'yes but what about the night', well you have water even when it isn't raining, hey. Storage. In fact a…

The privatisation of Sydney’s roads is a story of epic corruption. Some locals are paying $150 a week in tolls. There is not one example of an essential service that has been privatised that isn’t a complete disaster.…

A ‘cost of living’ story. After heating the entire home for 24 hours every day, through winter, at zero cost (in Australia’s coldest town, on average), we’re now already piling on the credits to fund next winter. (Green…

Yes they do, they explain it all the time. Australian electricity is so expensive because it uses so much gas to generate it, and our ageing coal plants cost a fortune to maintain. And gas is now hugely expensive. If…

KIA have done a fantastic job with the new EV5. Beautifully engineered, with suspension perfectly tuned for Australian roads. Refined inside and out, good range, and the most important thing for many - it's not…

This is the Xiaomi SU7. Xiaomi make gadgets, like phones, TVs and washing machines. Their car is an indication of how astonishing the Chinese EV car industry now is. The CEO of Ford loved the car so much he had one…

I know people love to feel old. It’s nearly a quarter of a century since the Sydney Olympics.

This bullshit review was always going to be a whitewash. The Brit’s review interrogated everybody from politicians down, grilled them. Ours was like free fellatio for all the main players. The headline is an example of…

I have zero interest in Halloween. I have no problem at all with others loving it, I don’t dislike it. I just don’t understand the interest in it at all, not my thing. Find it boring. It does interest me how it became…

Come on Australia, get shagging. I guess when those of child-bearing age can't even afford a roof over their heads, you're not going to get them to breed.

In 2022-23, Australia exported a record $107 billion of oil and gas. Tax paid by exporters was only $1.9 billion. That’s about a cent in every dollar. Australia is hostage to these companies. Politicians in receipt of…

BYD sold more than 2000 Sharks in its first day of release in Australia. An additional 1000 were immediately ordered from the factory, and even more are being organised. Some suggest it may become the biggest selling…

Bit of an esoteric one except for my Alexander friends. Watched this again on the weekend, and was struck at just how strange it is and why I moved away from AT ideas. Every single moment of this session forces this…

Santos is one of the big gas companies hijacking Australia right now. Guess how much tax they've paid on $38 billion of gas revenue in the past 10 years?

In Australia there have been 4056 Covid deaths this year to August. 851 for flu and 380 for respiratory syncytial virus. You could say 'yes but they were mostly old'. They caught it from people who were young and…

Heh, re-write this headline as ‘Fears Australia will be inundated with cheap, high-quality cars’. The Americans and Europeans are green with envy. NewsCorpse is a rotting maggot-ridden sewer at the heart of all Anglo…

One of the things that makes me chuckle is just how aggressively Ford and GM (Holden) are developing electric vehicles, in the US. Many of the ICE knuckle-draggers in Australia are the Ford/Holden brigade, completely…

We're particularly casual about infecting children with Covid. And it's now playing out. In Finland death rates for those between 5 and 9 are up 250%. Deaths of babies 0-4 are up 38%. Australia refuses to even vaccinate…

The BYD Shark ute was put through its paces in some of the most rugged off-roading in Australia. And it kicked butt. Not only totally solid, but they loved the effortless huge power/torque, and the near total silence of…

Trump is such a moron that the US will now hurtle towards complete global irrelevance. This can be excellent news for Australia, as Americans languish in the 19th century and we hitch a ride on Asia's coat-tails into…

The Australian's 'exclusive' story today is the CEO of the second biggest coal mining company in the world, a Swiss company that makes over $30 billion a year from Australian coal, telling Australia we need to use more…

Australia should use the coal from the mines owned by companies in Korea and Switzerland to power coal-fired power stations it doesn’t have and nobody wants to build, which would be at least 3 times more expensive…

Nicole Mansion was the previous Deputy Chief Minister of the NT. In that job she fought for fracking rights for Tamboran, a Texan gas company. Now she's out of politics, guess where she got a job. Wake up Australia,…

The EV causing the most buzz globally is one I shared before here, the Xiaomi SU7. Xiaomi makes mobile phones, so this car came out of nowhere. It’s astonishing, even by the astonishing standards new EVs are setting…

My earlier post about the Xiaomi SU7. Demand for these globally is now through the roof, so no word yet on when or whether they’ll come to Australia.

Two clear things here. Full-EVs are still only a small part of the Australian market. But that rate of growth tells the real story. Many are hesitant to be an early adopter, for any product, and that's a sensible risk…

Why do monarchies and churches exist? The answer has been forgotten, but is still there. They were human inventions to prevent violence. Left to themselves humans will *always* fight each other for status, in groups.…

KIA are doing a fantastic job with their EVs. And not expensive. This is their EV5. More than other electric car makers they’re creating a more seamless transition to EV driving, including more conventional buttons…

At the current rate of infection, the entire US population will have Long Covid inside 4 years. Australia is infecting even faster (we don’t vaccinate kids). 8% of that entire population will never be able to work…

That peak mid-afternoon has the government and AEMO a bit worried. Ordinary people and organisations asked to cut electricity use. "About 6 gigawatts of coal-fired power station capacity remains unavailable, including…

Spot wholesale price has now reached its maximum of $17,500/MWh in NSW. Meaning there's urgent calls for more power in the grid. That's $17.50/kWh. Most people pay 20-30c/kWh, showing just how much the grid is now…

Some say 'but China still burns coal, it's the problem'. Approvals for new coal plants in China fell 92% in 2023. In the first 9 months of 2024, 86% of all new power sources added to the Chinese grid were renewable. In…

The NSW grid nearly went down this week, and as the article says, the conditions were relatively moderate. We’re not even in summer yet. The reason? Nearly half of our coal plants were offline, being repaired. They’re…

Asking ordinary people whether Australia should have nuclear power is like asking them to do their own brain surgery. They have no idea, and it's not a decision they should be asked to make.…

With the insane nonsense of living with a pandemic we’ve encouraged the total collapse in control of infectious disease more generally. The single and only reason our life expectancies are now over 80 rather than 40 is…

Peter Dutton often uses Canada as an example of nuclear power driving down power prices. It made the Canadians laugh with disbelief. He's a dangerous bullshit artist. The fact he's competitive in the next election is a…

It’s wet in Australia again. Unseasonably wet. And the main reason is the same, nothing has changed. The oceans are boiling. Heat from climate change has to go somewhere. I find there’s widespread misunderstanding of…

The CSIRO has done detailed modelling of bushfire risk into the future for each part of Australia. You can plug in your postcode to see. Lithgow is at the upper end of increased risk. This will flow through into higher…

Again, who do you believe on energy? Australia’s top scientists and engineers, or an ex-Queensland cop? Pick door two and you’ll pay out of your own wallet.

Australia is going nowhere with greenhouse emissions. The whole thing is being gamed by the status quo. That red circle is ‘carbon offset’ programs i.e. planting trees and avoiding cutting down other ones. That’s a…

How EV myths become everyday knowledge, courtesy (as so often) of SKY News Australia and their stable of babbling idiots. In this case, through blatant lies about the NRMA, who said the exact *opposite* to what the…

There are between 68 and 70 new EVs coming to Australia in 2025. Here they all are. Enjoy the revolution, folks. And it is one, I still meet people who honestly think this is some sort of competition between EVs and…

Today Peter Dutton releases laughable ‘modelling’ to say nuclear power is the best option for Australia. Do you know anybody who’s ever worked with nuclear technology? I do - me. I can tell you right here, nuclear power…

Even Peter Dutton’s own party know what he’s proposing with nuclear is BS. They know it’s vastly more expensive, they just won’t say it publicly. But they’re leaking it to the press. "There's a flood of misinformation…

20% of the projected cost of nuclear power in Australia could put solar on every rooftop, free of charge. And that electricity would then be totally free to the householder too. Unlike nuclear electricity, which would…

As an indication of just what a disaster the Trumps and Duttons of the world are, calculations show that if the US were to convert its electricty grid to renewables, electricity there would cost under 3 cents per kWh.…

4 million Australians already have solar panels. Under Peter Dutton’s nuclear plan these panels would be forcibly switched off on many days by the grid operators, to protect the planned nuclear power stations, which…

Just saying BYD Auto Australia, if you as the second-largest battery company in the world did for home batteries what you’ve done for cars, offered the same fantastic technology but much cheaper, you would absolutely…

Another day where NSW will be hanging on by the skin of its teeth at dinner time. Tomorrow as well. Prepare for possible blackouts. As last time, the problem is ageing coal-fired power stations out of commission, the…

Tesla has some of the best electrical engineers in the world. They're scathing about Peter Dutton's nuclear plan, correctly pointing out that the grid won't function with that much 'baseload' power, and millions of…

“Ordinary Australians will continue to slap solar panels on their roofs to escape the entire drama and decide the future without Canberra.” The energy problem is already solved. You can live it right now. You don’t have…

The Zeekr 7X is confirmed for Australia next year. This is a very special car. Mid-sized SUV, so competes with the world’s best-selling car, the Tesla Model Y, which is about to have a new model within the next few…

They’ve openly admitted nuclear energy does nothing to lower prices (it actually would make prices go up hugely). So they’re scrambling with a gas backup plan, which was always really what the nuclear plan was about…

Just look at these numbers, from Australian actuaries. A public health disaster. Ask anybody in the street, and you’d think life was back to normal.

The maths of stupidity. The Granville train disaster killed 83 people. It’s still commemorated. Tens of thousands of people have died (and are still dying) of Covid in Australia. Our attitude to that? It’s ‘just a…

Australia being an unreformed prison colony has always made it infinitely more interesting than all the Queen and country flag-waving shit.

Sometimes it just takes a moment to pause and reflect. I don’t transact personal life much on here, because I think it’s profoundly unhealthy that these platforms have captured our social lives. Increasingly all of our…

Insurers in Australia now have let people know that replacing an EV battery is cheaper than replacing a petrol or diesel engine. Battery prices are plummeting, and EV prices will go below the prices of petrol or diesel.…

The industry has known this is true for years, it’s why these plants are being shut down, often even before their projected lifespan. There’s not a single element of Peter Dutton’s nuclear plan that is anything except a…

Probably the most telling thing about the idea of a ‘Big Lap’ for me is how much like the old Blighty days of empire the idea is. Like you need to accumulate the entire continent, in one trip. It’s about collecting or…

Something I think many vegans (and others) don’t understand is that the best way to protect the diversity of life, is to eat it. If you eat a wide variety of plants and animals, then it’s in your best interests to…

The UK uses nuclear power. The latest estimate to clean up the waste produced by its nuclear reactors is $526 billion. Plus another $107 billion to build a new waste facility to process new waste. That’s about $640…

Discussing ‘baseload’ power yesterday. One of the most misleading and misunderstood concepts. Baseload power is NOT about supply of power, it’s about demand for power. It is NOT the baseline amount of power we need to…

We don’t need yet another enquiry into why petrol is so expensive. It’s always the same reason - fossil fuel companies are arseholes. We already know how to fix that, the NRMA would be doing its members and us a favour…

The next 5-10 years are going to be brutal for Australia’s energy. We invested our own money here at home to offset some of the risks of that, by installing solar and a battery. That will not only save us money and pay…

77 dead in the past week in NSW. You’re not likely to see that reported anywhere.

This is funny, in a tragic sort of way. A device that allows energy companies to shut down a person’s solar system completely, if the State has too much solar power going into the grid. Remember 10-20 years of…

Work colleague has tonsillitis. Australia desperately short of antibiotics to treat it (she had Covid last year). Global shortages, driven by infecting the whole world like it was a fun thing to do. No end to the…

This is astonishing. Millions of kg of Australian tomatoes come from this plant in South Australia, which grows them using sunshine and seawater. There are so many remarkable things happening, which are obscured by…

NSW desperately needs a change in March. This man is the main driver in the collapse of Australia’s public health defence against Covid as well.

Vale 112 people in NSW last week, who had their last Christmas in 2022.

If you work in any of these jobs (you can add cafes, supermarkets, child care centres and funeral homes to the list, they’re under (o) in the regulations), then if you catch Covid, under NSW law you are automatically…

This is the side of solar that is less spoken about. Every person you see with solar panels on their roof is a mini power station. They’re providing some of the electricity you use, and they used their own money to…

It’s hard to put a finger on what’s unique about Lithgow, in Australia. I’ll likely never leave. I think that it’s the transplanting of a British industrial village, into the Australian landscape. The picture below is…

More Australians died of Covid in 2022 than died in the Spanish Flu Pandemic here in 1918-19. The Spanish Flu was the worst pandemic since The Black Plague. Back to work today. Will be the only person in a mask again.…

I look at the holiday photos and social events people post to FB, where nobody is taking any precautions against Covid infection. And two things jump out at me. 1) So many seem to think only of risk to themselves, and…

Portugal achieved this in only a handful of years. For comparison, that price is about 0.6 cents per kWh. In Australia that price is currently 30c per kWh. We’re paying 50 times more for electricity. This is what will…

I turn 55 this year. About a decade ago I remember a flurry of colleagues retiring at 55, with gold-plated super schemes. The schemes where you retired at 55 at your final salary, for life. Those schemes were quickly…

Pieter is one of Australia’s most elite doctors. Even other doctors speak in hushed tones about him. He doesn’t often offer a view, so when he does, it’s worth listening to. This one is such an important point. The spin…

Name something these 3 have in common: 1. The Davos World Economic Forum, in Switzerland 2. NSW parliament in Sydney 3. Parliament at Westminster in the UK. Anybody? Each has spent millions making the buildings safe…

In Australia, somebody is dying of Covid every 27 minutes.

Satoshi is a doctor friend from Sydney. On the frontline of treating Covid patients, for the whole pandemic. We need to listen to people like him.

Excess mortality is the number of deaths above the usual average in a given year. For the first two years of the pandemic, ours actually went negative i.e. we were healthier than we’d ever been. Now it’s 15% higher than…

Watching the men’s hockey world cup. One of the publicity pages I read said Australia is ranked 4th in the world? I think we’ve been number 1 for years.

EVs again. Range is a biggie for many. The average EV even today has enough stored electricity in its battery to power the average Australian vehicle for two weeks. (Newer Teslas - 4 weeks.) And costs less than $20 to…

I gave up pretty much all alcohol years ago, for health reasons at the time (I was isolating possible causes of a heart arrhythmia). I still have the odd celebratory champagne for birthdays etc. Australians get drunk at…

I don't engage much with the Australia Day debates, it's pretty much the same tired arguments every year. But one thing I always do remember, is that the people who arrived in 1788 mostly didn't want to be here. They…

Greg is one of Australia’s leading paediatricians. The same thing we’ve already seen happening in the US and UK with strep (children have died), now happening here. Covid did this, kids’ immune systems damaged, they’re…

A big study of over 640,000 people who had Covid. Showing the risk of developing autoimmune diseases as a result. The IRR column is the one to look at, I’ve converted to % risk below. So: - 43% greater risk of…

You have to watch this show. (SBS has it streaming on demand.) Guy Martin is one of the UK’s leading petrol heads, ex-motorcycle racer. Lovely, funny guy. This doco is so entertaining, and shows him exploring the world…

Three catastrophes paradoxically gave us the peaceful and prosperous lives we’re used to. If you study history you’ll see that the era post-WW2 is unprecedented in human history, for its prosperity and peace. But why…

The battery in a Tesla car will last for between 500,000 and 800,000km. That's between 3-5 times more kms than the average Australian drives a car before upgrading. 30-50 years of motoring. It's just finishing…

Australians invented mass batteries for huge storage over 40 years ago. Batteries themselves were invented over 200 years ago. Watch for an explosion of innovation now in this area, suppressed for so long.

Who'd have thought. https://thenewdaily.com.au/finance/finance-news/2023/02/01/gas-electric-australia/?utm_campaign=Dollars%20%26%20Sense%20-%2020230203&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Adestra

This one factory churns out enough large battery storage every year to replace more than 7 power stations the size of Mt Piper. (Mt Piper powers nearly 1.5 million homes in NSW.) We need to remember too that the time…

The average Australian now pays around $5000 per year, per car, on fuel. If they buy an EV, their fuel costs will be about 10-20% of that. That’s a saving of about $20,000 over a 5-year span, a rough time a person keeps…

More new EV models. 600km range (enough for about 3 weeks of motoring for the average Oz driver), costs about $36 to 'fill'. Estimated launch price here around $70,000. You'll save at least $20,000-$25,000 in fuel over…

Jafari said every electric vehicle in Australia is sold out, and that they’re “often sold out within hours of being made available to the Australian market”. “Demand far outstrips supply, Australians are lined up ready…

People would say over and over that house prices wouldn’t crash in Australia. They said the same about Bitcoin. And magic beans. Between 800,000 and 1.3 million Australians are currently sitting on a fixed rate mortgage…

Australian cricketers today are multi-millionaires. We’d have been better off sending the local under-8s to India this week. The ground was also almost empty, which is staggering for India. The whole sport now driven by…

A brilliant idea. The current idea is ‘business is charging far too high prices, so we need to bankrupt ordinary Australians so that they can’t afford to pay those prices, and business will then drop them.’ (That is…

So many Australians are either already in dire financial trouble, or are about to be. All because of a handful of absolutely ridiculous ideas, which Ian Verrender exposes here. Ideas which people with a modern training…

The disaster that people won’t speak about. Look at the collapse in student attendance in schools, driven by mass infection and illness from Covid. Only 42% of Australian kids were at school for more than 90% of the…

Nearly 3 times as many Australians died from Covid in 2022, as died at Gallipoli.

There have been over 1000 people in hospital with Covid in Australia every day since December 27, 2021. Health care workers are probably nodding. We're using them as slaves to (we think) keep an economy running. An…

The ridiculous tax on electric vehicles will be fought in the High Court starting this week. At a time when Australia and the world desperately need to shift to this technology, taxing it is, as the headline says, one…

One aspect of cost of living that isn’t spoken about as much is financial illiteracy. Many people in their 40s and 50s still manage their money the way they did when they were 17. Using my favourite example again, of…

The federal government heavily subsidises the use of diesel fuel. The public money it spends on doing that could buy 125,000 Australians a free Tesla EV every year.

People never worry about range with petrol and diesel cars, because we have service stations in most places. But check this: - there are 7000 service stations in Australia - Australia has over 20 million vehicles -…

Sting in Sydney this week (I didn’t go). He sounds his 71 years, this is a really flat rendition of that song. Almost embarrassing.

Paul Keating introduced mainstream super to Australia, because he saw it as a way to transform who holds wealth in our society, towards working people. So far it’s working. Super is the greatest financial nest egg we…

The Rocks, Sydney. 123 years ago.

Australia will be a laggard on this, like it has been on just about everything else for the last 30 years.

45 dead from Covid this week in NSW. Two were under 9 years of age. *crickets*

The share of Australians in 2019-20 with a super fund above $2m was just 0.5% – 79,540 people. That 0.5% make up 12% of all superannuation funds held. They’re using it for tax evasion.

More than 11,000 people die each year in Australia from diseases caused by the breathing in of vehicle exhaust emissions. And yet people still cheer on crap petrol and diesel technology, which not only kills them, but…

This is the problem I've posted about a lot. We have oodles of 'supply'. We just can't get it anywhere, because we didn't build new transmission lines in the past 10-20 years.…

Solar energy is now already the largest source of electricity in Australia. And it's growing faster than ever. Most of the energy powering your home is coming from the panels you see on other peoples' houses and from…

Lovely exponential curve. Not even the pandemic slowed the momentum much. You can be on the wrong side of this history, it'll just mean costing you a lot of money and pride. And think about the benefits: - no more…

Range is a concept that makes sense for petrol and diesel vehicles, they were designed to have longer range not just for longer trips, but because we didn't want people having to go to the service station every day.…

The range of a horse and cart was way beyond what the cars and trucks that replaced them could offer. Unpacking the slogans and spin that now dominate our lives, nobody said ‘I can’t buy a car, what about the range?’…

Got my second and final shingles shot today. The most painful thing about the whole experience was the cost, about $600 for two shots. But it’s a great investment. People have probably seen the research I’ve posted…

More power to the actuaries, who yesterday called BS on our euphoric ‘post-Covid’ 2022, the year of mass slaughter in Australia. We’re sleepwalking into an abyss.

The 'NSW Government’s Stronger Country Communities program' is a vote-buying slush fund, as most grant schemes are. Government first strips essential funding, then hands it back in much smaller novelty cheques precisely…

Australia looks a better team with Smith as captain. More experience and cunning than Cummins. As for them breaking the world record for attendance at a Test match at this stadium, most of the seats are empty. Thanks…

Two of Australia’s most popular cars. The Toyota RAV4 hybrid, and the Toyota Hilux. Get the Hilux for the bloke because of extra ‘grunt’ (scratch balls), and the hybrid for the missus. But *drum roll*…the RAV4 hybrid is…

Good to see government funding new EV charging points in towns, including Lithgow. But we should electrify the whole town, everything. It would make it the cheapest place to live in NSW. We’re already a town with a long…

Supercars may have a problem here. The racing worked best when drivers were driving highly modified versions of cars ordinary Australians drive. Hardly any Australians want to drive American muscle cars. Including…

Next stage here at home of driving energy costs down will be replacement of all windows and doors with double-glazed uPVC versions. The windows in Australian homes have traditionally been rubbish, though at least most…

Ed Sheeran, Harry Styles and Mardi Gras. I still won’t do social events because the pandemic isn’t over. It not only isn’t over, it’s killing 20,000 people a year in Australia. More than 2500 dead in 2023 already. The…

I wouldn't advise anybody to train as a number 6. They're going to need some in the transition, and some EV technicians, but it's a dead-end otherwise. California for example (twice as big an economy as Australia) is…

One of my interests well before Covid too, people probably remember. Clean air, which would also fix Covid. One of the greatest sources of this pollution in NSW, alongside cars and trucks? It’s in the article - wood…

Australian data. A 2.5 tonne hybrid on average uses even less fuel (significantly less) than a motorbike. And unlike any other type of vehicle, you'll get maximum power across the whole rev range. The average petrol or…

Paul Keating made the excellent point today that countries are always conquered only in land wars. I don’t think there’s an exception. The idea the Chinese could sail an enormous armada of troops over 8000km of ocean to…

A trick people use is to suggest that going electric will take some enormous amount of minerals (which they imply either don't exist, or will cover the world in mines). Lithium is one of the key elements mentioned.…

Origin’s new scheme to try to get people to use less electricty in peak times. This behavioural approach has been missing in Australia, so good on them. If you use less electricity in those peak times, you get bonuses…

On Thursday we set a new record in NSW. 7600MW of power was generated by renewables alone, in the mid-afternoon. On Thursday about 60% of the State’s total power was provided by renewables. That’s the majority of power…

We’re destroying younger generations. Their health, their wealth. Our birth rate is so low we’re not even replacing ourselves. It’s difficult to get older generations (of which I’m one, only one year off being a boomer)…

As a kid I remember wondering, why can cars do speeds that are more than twice the actual speed limit? Isn't that a waste of energy and engineering? And the answer is - yep. But they had to do it for a reason that isn't…

One of the many objections to EVs that people throw up is that they can't work in more remote parts of Australia. In fact, as the Americans show here, they make even more sense there than in the cities. They save even…

I know people love discussing politics. On behalf of the 6000 people in NSW who died in 2022 because of the criminal incompetence of the outgoing Premier, good riddance. Anybody else would be in jail for the rest of…

Every 6 years the ABS analyses weekly household expenditures in Australia. One of the interesting facts to come out of it is that Australians spend as much or more on recreation and alcohol each week, as they do on…

Two messages. One, from the late James Lovelock, scientific genius, who helped NASA determine a way to detect life on other planets, and then used the ideas and technologies he developed to revolutionise climate…

I read things like this, and then look around me at how people are living as if nothing is happening, as disasters that could wipe out our entire civilisation carry on, with nothing being done. Covid the same. 20,000…

It's a shame Australia is increasingly moving towards the US in its culture, politics and tastes. Like the RAM. Americans (sorry my American friends) make almost universally rubbish cars. (We don't make any at all now,…

I think Australia needs many more mines, and far fewer farms. This one though is using some of the water that Lithgow historically looked to in drought times, from the coal mines. Being piped all the way to Blayney. I…

"More than three million households across Australia now own solar panels, with the time it takes for a 7 kilowatt (kw) system to pay for itself in lower power bills falling to a record low 3.4 years." The panels…

Australia makes about $70 billion a year exporting iron ore, for other countries to turn into steel. If we created the steel here with renewable energy, and then exported it, we could turn that $70 billion easily into…

More on wood heating. It has its benefits, it’s a renewable resource for example, and can capture emissions when you replace cut wood with new plantings. (How often that happens is a bit questionable.) Here’s another…

While the Liberals and Nats are a coalition in much of the country, in Queensland they're a single, merged party, the Liberal National Party. It's now the only State where the federal LNP wins many seats, driven by a…

The unfixable destructive paradox of travel is that it forces somebody else’s home to change, to cater to you. No matter how low impact you want to be. Some European cities for example are fed up with the tourists who…

Yup. The worst failure of governance in all Australian history.

A question for people who live in NSW. This advice from NSW Health has never changed. So why is hardly anybody wearing masks? Do we all know better than the health professionals? Do you reckon we might be playing with…

Nobody can get staff, it’s a genuine crisis. The thing is, we knew this was coming. It’s demographics. Our population was ageing, and is now old. There are nowhere near enough workers to support that older population,…

The myths about public and private. All innovation and economic growth has its origins in the State. The State even invented the ‘private sector’. Biden understands this, and now industry is starting to boom again…

It's hard to get people to see the magnitude of the emergency climate change is, because they're focused on daily weather rather than climate, and mixing up heat and temperature. For example I'd bet very few would guess…

Fraction of electricity generated by renewables in 2022, by State. Queensland - 22.6% NSW - about 30% Victoria - about 30% WA - about 30% South Australia - 71.5% Tasmania - 99.1% Nationally more than 35% of our…

I sometimes say Australia should be the Saudi Arabia of the 21st century. Rod Sims, ex head of the ACCC (a very conservative, ‘economic’ institution), spells out why very well here. In fact per capita we should be the…

Australians have been taken for a ride by offshore fossil fuel companies. Other countries make more in relative terms from their fossil fuel exports in a year than we’ve made in the past 30. That’s no accident, the…

One of the most common criticisms from the anti-renewables Flat Earthers is that solar panels waste good agricultural land. But they don't, in fact they improve it hugely. Sheep are much happier and healthier, as are…

It'd be a good topic to use to teach about inertia. That brain is going to smash into your inner skull no matter what you have on your head. Up to 40,000 times in a playing career.…

Australia a global laughing stock with EVs. Being left far behind, in this and in so many other things. We have only a handful of years to pull our heads out of our collective arses.

The Streets as Shared Spaces program in NSW is part of a global urban design push towards ‘placemaking’. Taking back urban space from the car. Making those spaces shared spaces again, for everybody, not just cars.…

Covid has been over for well over a year now. Somebody better tell it. Hospitalisations up 35% in the past 3 weeks. If you're wondering why NSW Health can't get staff, here's one of the elephants in the room.

Liddell was Australia's largest coal power station when it was built 52 years ago. It closed today. Last year it broke down (needed restarting) 23 times. That's an average of about once a fortnight. How's the slogan go?…

Councils have no money, and their staff are walking out the door in search of higher salaries. The only way they can afford this sort of additional charge is to charge higher rates, for which they'll then be blamed. In…

The Hungry Jacks Double Whopper with cheese is the best burger in Australia. Says me. At less than half the price of a boutique burger at a hipster cafe or bar.

These 3 trucks are slugging it out in the big pickup category in the US. The RAM 1500 and Chevy Silverado are already on sale in Australia, and Toyota is contemplating selling the Tundra here as well to sit above the…

$2 billion for green hydrogen in last night's budget. Hydrogen is a dead-end for Australia I think. With our vast renewable energy resources of sunshine and wind, and spare land, we're crazy to invest too much in…

The fossil fuel companies won again, in the budget. They’ve been milking Australia dry for 30 years.

The overwhelming, defining feature of Australia and other developed countries in 2023? They’re OLD. And getting even older, fast. Like giant aged care homes. And you can see it in the employment data. But it gets worse,…

heh, just look at this. The time we wasted in Australia in the past 30 years listening to morons.

It’d be nice if Australian masculinity could define itself in any way at all that doesn’t involve petrol or diesel.

Stories in the news this morning about how Australia’s homes are hopelessly cold in winter, because they’re built for summer heat. And how that’s bad for peoples’ health, many homes averaging only 10 degrees celsius…

This is the stuff I’m really struggling with. Social events, workplaces, restaurants, pubs - you name it. All with no Covid protections. I can’t live a life pretending the pandemic is over, and we can all just go back…

The reason given for not vaccinating young kids in Australia is that Covid is mostly mild in them. Two things to say about that. Firstly the *acute* infection with Covid may be mild, as it is for many adults i.e. the…

If you have Covid and knowingly mix in public with others without taking precautions, you’re committing a crime under the NSW Public Heath Act. Punishable with a large fine, and 6 months in prison. (Covid is a category…

Reports of Australia entering its 5th Covid wave. Lots of infection out there, be careful. Also, counting is an early childhood skill not mastered by some journalists.

The US Embassy in Australia, doing the Nutbush for Tina, but also because they acknowledge it as an ‘Australian national dance’.

Bathurst paper this morning, the national petrolhead capital! Petrolheads will be coughing up their Fruit Loops. EV sales have tripled again in Australia this year, from last year. My hybrid was singing this morning,…

Enormous numbers of Australians are hugely under-vaccinated for Covid. Here’s how dangerous that is. The latest boosters, which are shot 4 or 5 for the smart ones still bothering to get them, have an effectiveness of…

This graph is so interesting, you can read so much of our current lives in it. Notice how older Australians (the red circle) share an information space (mostly TV) that creates for them a feeling of Australia as a…

More than half of Americans, the 'land of the free', still aren't buying it. I think many more than half of Australians aren't either. It's just that the whingers have the loudest voices, and politicians with no…

That word - 'collapse'. It's not just health that's collapsing. It also disgusts me that the main reason medical students don't go into general practice is that they can make more money as a specialist. Don't ever tell…

A bit of trivia to add to this quote. Most say Covid is mild in children. In the US nearly 2000 children have died. More than 14,000 have been hospitalised. 245,000 children have lost one or both parents, to Covid.…

They should just put the Penrith team in the Blues jerseys, said it last year too. Where NSW looked good, it was the Penrith players. Where they looked bad, it was when those same Penrith players lacked their other…

This is a problem already solved by engineers, the business model is the stumbling block, carmakers need to step up. These stories excite the smirking emojis because they think it shows that EVs aren’t the future after…

My workplace has been near-empty for weeks. People so, so sick. With Covid, and secondary infections, often caused by Covid (but nobody tells them that). There’s another big surge in Covid cases in Australia right now,…

I was watching The Drum yesterday, and something about this person, Sandy Chong, didn’t seem quite right. (She’s the CEO of the Australian Hairdressing Council.) Her skin didn’t look real, just a featureless area of…

Hands up if you knew another 64 died from Covid this week, in NSW? SIXTY-FOUR PEOPLE. Over 2600 dead this year in Australia. It’s like Monopoly money, nobody cares.

Australia needs to build 10,000km of new power lines, preferably by 2030. That’s a phenomenal amount of work to do.

“We must act now, the baby boomers are coming," she said. "Within a decade, our nation will have, for the first time in history, more people aged over 65 than under 18.” Australia will be one giant aged care facility,…

https://youtu.be/p2rCtaBBdwE Watch this. The worm is turning. The greatest crime in modern Australian history, which we're still in the middle of, gradually unravelling.

Those who oppose renewable energy say that there will be an enormous amount of waste from used solar panels. Of course they never tell you any numbers (they don't know any, it's just a slogan). So here they are. Column…

Today's Covid update that governments don't want you to see. 81 dead in NSW this week. 64 last week. A whole large hospital full of sick Covid patients. If it was me, I'd put a mask on. But you may like your brain cells…

Another bit of anti-EV spin is that they lose range in extreme cold and heat. The spin often says this is due to battery performance. It’s actually because people use heating or cooling in the car. And EV manufacturers…

A senior doctor friend tells me some major hospitals are currently nearly at code black i.e. not functioning. The whole thing is a farce, but again, nobody cares or does anything. 10 people die in a bus crash and we do…

T.Ryan Gregory is one of the strongest international scientific voices speaking out at the public health disaster we’re still inside. Read this long list of lies that he debunks, that are in common use in Australia too.…

70% of French electricity comes from nuclear power. They’re in trouble now, because nuclear power uses a LOT of water. And with climate change water is drying up there. The Loire ran completely dry in places this year.…

UK Glamour has better health advice than the NSW Government.

I’d encourage everybody to take precautions against SIM porting and SIM swapping. Porting: hackers port your phone number to a different Telco, so they can then set up a mobile phone in your name and take your number.…

It's time Australia and the world dumped the 'pub test' and replaced it with the smart test. Society will never progress if the only thing that can be done is what people pissed off their tits can understand. Here's a…

Yep. Listened to research on benzene emissions from gas cooking and heating yesterday. Terrible stuff, carcinogenic. Found in every room of the house, with people who own gas cookers. Ventilation made little difference.…

For the cricketing fans, what do you make of ‘Bazball’, the new English approach to test cricket? I think it’s marketing spin. Indistinguishable from the style of cricket the Australians under Taylor and Waugh played.…

Smart words from Finn Peacock again here. Note that the system in this common scenario would pay for itself in under 3 years. And that you win on cash flow too, by doing this you have more money each week, not just when…

One of the reasons I went with a battery for us is this. I'm not confident the deadlines are going to be met, and if they're not, the whole electricity system in Australia is in serious trouble. 2-3 decades of total…

Have a look at the public health messaging they have in NZ. Our governments here in Australia won’t allow these facts to be publicised.

It’s particularly pleasing that Australia beat the new ‘Bazball’ England, and most of the Australian team didn’t even play well. Imagine what they’d have done to them on a good day. Also, who needs one-day and T20 bash…

Brrr. Still not even in the same ballpark as Canadian or European cold, or even US cold in many places, I know. But cold feels colder in Australia mostly because of the crap quality of a lot of our housing. The Scotsman…

Putting major transmission lines underground is ludicrous. Buy a battery, folks, we were already not within cooee of getting thousands of km of urgently needed new transmission built by 2030. Australia will be lucky to…

Went to bed at half-time. Queensland tries off clear forward passes and knocks-ons was just one reason, I don’t think NSW was ever going to win regardless. The article captures it well, NSW were ‘disjointed’. Like I…

Australia has some of the worst petrol in the world. It's one of the reasons we're slower to move to EVs, because car manufacturers dump their rubbish on us. But look at the second graph. Improving emissions standards…

This is from the official news for GPs. I don't make this stuff up. Warnings of a 'pandemic of cardiovascular disease', caused by Covid infection. Just as Spanish Flu likely caused the pandemic of heart disease we had…

Australia's existing high capacity electricity transmission lines. You can see the problem we have, and why we need 10,000 km more. They don't link up. For example if Eastern Australia wants to use Western Australian…

Australians are increasingly drawn to the outback. The idea actually makes no sense at all, what does ‘outback’ mean? What I think it means, and why I think Australians feel increasngly drawn to it, is everything we…

How did the gas industry respond to the price caps the government put on it? It refused to create any new contracts for supply with local users, forcing them to buy from the international spot market, which is way more…

85 more dead since last week, in NSW. National total pending. Let's go to a gig/restaurant/party/trivia night/on a plane/anything else that says we couldn't care less.

The Olgas, I just flew there in Apple Maps. Cost of AvGas = 0. I don’t usually succeed convincing people of the absurd ideas that run our travel cultures, but I’ll keep trying. Take Australia’s interior, it’s become a…

Every capital city in Australia except Canberra will be underwater.

Almost got a century of deaths this week. And this is just NSW. But let's focus on Taylor Swift concerts, some 'positivity'.

Last night the English were chanting/singing about Australia being ‘cheats’, and the MCC members even booed and jostled and swore at the Australian team in the dressing room area. Have a look at what England calls it…

The Chuquicamata copper mine in Chile has been digging this enormous hole in the ground (more than 1100 metres deep) for the past 103 years. They’ve stopped digging down now and are shifting to underground mining. The…

We’re just back from Broken Hill (see, I do travel, occasionally). The Australian ‘outback’ (a stupid term) holds a secret, a mystery. Why I most wanted to go there. Lots of caravans and 4WDs out there. And goats,…

SBS has a great series right now looking at the fundamental shift in research on Aboriginal Australia. The recognition of a vastly more complex culture than we realised. Here’s a clip (whole series is on SBS catchup),…

The idea of place is why I’m so critical of travel, which has a very problematic relationship with place. The Bathurst 1000 is another way to explain it. I like this picture because it captures the two aspects in one…

Wilcannia is a famous outback town. Like all outback towns, the history is one of expansion of some empire. Nearly always mining (Broken Hill, Lightning Ridge, White Cliffs) or agriculture (Bourke, Wilcannia to some…

Thoughts on travel #2 for today. The cost, in resources. Nearly 135 thousand flights, per DAY. We burn about 400 BILLION litres of jet fuel, every year, to satisfy our travel lust. If you fly to Europe from Australia,…

Leading the world. Have been for years. About the only smart thing Australia has done in the past 30 years. (I’m actually all ears if you can think of anything else.) That and control Covid, but we stopped doing that.

The appeal of the outback to tourism is that it’s one of the world’s last ‘untouched places’. So if millions of tourists flock to this place, doesn’t it stop being the thing which they go there to see? Travel is like…

Let that sink in. And look where Australia is on that graph, right at the arse-end. Dumb and getting dumber.

Battery manufacturing is increasing worldwide at over 250% per year. Costs are also plummeting. Together that makes a battery plant profitable inside 2 years, unheard of in energy. The coming battle will be between, do…

What do you think inspired NSW Health to turn deadly viruses into a colourful cute little thing on roller skates?

Flu has killed two children in Australia this month, and is rampant in children in particular. Likely children with immune damage from Covid infection. And now see the UK, just another of a long list of pathogens…

Observations from Marta Dusseldorp, film/TV producer, about how to ‘be in a place’. Exactly what I post about, with travel. Dusseldorp moved from Sydney to Tasmania. This is somebody who actually moved, the long process…

Word for word what I’ve been saying about cars in Australia, for several years. Notice how Australian life has changed, the Toyota Corolla used to be our most popular car. People considered smart things, like fuel…

The interesting thing about the Mabo decision of the High Court in 1992 that hasn’t really sunk in widely in Australia, is that it reversed Cook’s claiming of Australia for the Brits. Imagine landing in a country and…

If Australia loses the World Cup, I think this picture will explain why. They picked the wrong shooters.

Australia’s 4th test Ashes plan is playing out perfectly. Bowl and bat hopelessly, so the English look in complete command. Then let the rain wash out most of the 4th and 5th days. The emotional damage for the English…

Read British journalism when England is doing well in sport, and you get a window into the psychology in play there now. ‘Little Britain’ as some call it. Desperately clinging to old ideas of empire and world…

I’ve worked with Michael Pascoe on a couple of things, a smart guy. Here he explains why the real problem with housing is that we stopped building public housing. We privatised the process of providing housing to poorer…

Gee that’s gotta hurt 🙂 This is the same ‘spirit of the game’ England who booed Australians on the grounds and even in the dressing rooms throughout the series. Bodyline England. Well deserved agony. Rain didn’t save…

Watching English TV. Lots of talk about whether Australia is happy to ‘win this way’. Lol. Which way is that? Winning more matches? “Australia retain the Ashes after rain prevented play”. The rain won the Ashes! English…

A tutor at a uni openly admitted yesterday that he had Covid, while sitting in a tutorial room full of students. Wearing a mask, but removing it regularly. I think it’s worth pointing out to people that if you have…

English journalists now call Bazball 'hit and hope'. Glorious. Saw this comment from them: "Someone clever, somewhere in the world, will work out how to blend Bazball with Australian grit and come up with a magic…

This catch was a bit of a chuckle, in the England define all their failures as triumphs vein. Great catch by Root, but actually a straightforward keeper’s catch. And look at Bairstow, standing there flat-footed like…

The reality of 'Bazball'. England has played 7 Test series with this supposedly new method. 5 of them have been series played at home. Wins - 4 Draws - 3 if Australia lose tonight, 2 if Australia win Losses - 1 if…

A BBC sports journalist described the 2-2 Ashes outcome as a fair result. But ‘England would have won if the 4th Test hadn’t been washed out’. Let’s play that what if game. The series would have been different if: -…

I didn’t know that AGL originally stood for ‘Australian Gas Light Company’. No Greenies here. Stating the obvious, we should have banned new gas installations to homes years ago, it’s unbelievably stupid that we didn’t.…

Australians are overwhelmingly huddled in a handful of cities on the coast. As far away from confronting the reality of the country they live in as possible. Got a great example of this yesterday, Paul McCartney is…

We only need services like these because we privatised energy in Australia, a monumentally stupid thing to do. But given that's what we have, this is an excellent service, it'll assess your every bill and let you know…

This is the infectious disease research team at the Kirby Institute, UNSW. Notice they’re all wearing masks, if they’re in the same room. Who should you trust, these people, who study viruses for a living? Or…

You really should watch this. The outrageous story (that some of us have lived firsthand) of the privatisation of the pubic service, through outsourcing to the big 4 consulting firms. More than 15,000 public servants…

They're laughing at us. No doubt the justification is 'Australia needs a strong banking sector'. Or 'this is great for all of our super returns'. It needs ordinary Australians to have a roof over their heads and heating…

Many living in climate denial have put their faith in hydrogen, to avoid the bog obvious answer right in front of them, of solar and wind. (Actually what motivates them is that they just don’t want to agree with the…

Again, you have to be some form of just bloody stupid to think nuclear energy is the answer to anything. Costs a fortune, takes decades to build, the small modular reactors they’re talking about here don’t even work,…

One of the most disturbing examples of the collapse of public health in Australia is seeing pregnant young women taking no Covid precautions at all. No masks, no avoiding large indoor crowds etc. I think most are…

Over 3,300 people died because of Covid in the first 4 months of this year, in Australia. That rate of death is still climbing, and is projected to be even higher in the next quarter. Thousands upon thousands of deaths.…

"Australians now travel further throughout Australia than ever they did before, as tourists; in recreational vehicles of all kinds they penetrate into the remotest areas, driving thousands of kilometres to see…

This is Ludwig Leichhardt. Famous explorer of Australia. Disappeared on his last expedition in 1848, nobody knows what happened to him. I remember learning about the explorers at school. What's most interesting for me…

This is a rental house. In legal terms, a lease. Disgusting what the tenants have done, most would agree I'm sure. They'll lose their bond and could be charged. But here's a twist on leases, at a time the 'supply' of…

I post a lot about Australia and the land, because I think there are some truths about this country that aren't well understood. Take the classic distinction between the city and the country. If you work your way…

Most of the early settlers to Australia were from the UK. So here’s a mystery. The famous Australian accent doesn’t sound like *any* of the UK accents. Not even blended in some way. Know what it sounds just like?…

The Voice debate is a good time to talk about being Australian I think, and what it means. Where the most modern civilisation in the world at the time collided with easily the most ancient. That collision did amazing…

Vaccinations were the reason people seemed happy to throw all Covid caution to the wind. You need a Covid vaccination every 6 months to maintain any meaningful immunity. Even amongst oldest Australians, we can’t get 50%…

We have the history of Australia backwards. Take the conversation about the ‘Voice’ right now. Like all conversations about Aboriginal Australia, the starting point is the idea that post-1788 Australia, the European…

Lots of good sense here about housing, an area of Australian life with traditionally no sense at all. Anybody who tells you 'supply' is the issue is part of the problem. Note the important point that Councils approve…

I have a long commute each day on regional roads. Each day I think about the total cowardice of the NSW Government, the only State government in Australia that doesn't use average speed safety cameras for cars, only for…

There is only one answer to the housing and rental crisis. And it’s also simple. Governments need to become property developers again. They need to build and sell and rent lots of houses, at much lower rates than the…

There’s a strange idea that EVs will only become viable when we replace all of our petrol stations with EV charging stations like this one. But there’s a huge flaw in that way of thinking. For petrol and diesel…

This is a very standard story most days now. The wholesale price of electricty is negative across the country. In other words, generators will pay retailers to use it - they’re not just giving it away, they’re paying…

After WW2, fewer than half of Australians owned their own home. Menzies wanted to change that. He knew 'the market' wouldn't achieve it (it hadn't ever), so what did he do? He made the government build LOTS of public…

For fellow Gen-Xers. Today's 80-year-olds were our age at the Sydney Olympics.

The collapse of the dollar is another thing driving petrol and diesel prices sky-high. We have to buy all of our petrol and diesel from overseas, and a falling dollar makes it massively more expensive. So tell me again…

Why regional people are hugely disadvantaged when it comes to kids going to uni. Unless they have a uni close to home with a course their child wants to do, uni is going to cost them a fortune compared to metropolitan…

We’re all used to the idea of a ‘power station’. But already now, by far the greatest source of electricty used by Australians every day is the solar panels you see on ordinary homes and businesses. Not just by those…

Like most countries, Australia's peak electricity usage is at dinner time every night, around 6pm. About 10 gigawatts of electricity. To give some perspective for how many solar panels would be needed to generate that,…

The new Health Minister defends this by saying 'we've got to learn to live with Covid and return to normal.' You hear that a lot, it's a slogan, completely free of any actual information. In reality what's 'normal' for…

Australia copies Americans with cars now. The F-150 Lightning, the fully electric mega-ute, has been a smash in the US. They had to upgrade the line to triple production. I think mega-utes are ridiculous cars, but this…

If ‘No’ wins in the upcoming referendum, Australia will be an international laughing stock. It’s looking like it may win too. Our history makes that unsurprising in many ways. I posted a while back about how what we…

America’s most bloody war was one it fought against itself. The Civil War. Australia is actually the same, we just don’t learn that history. Far and away our most bloody war, that killed more Australians than all of our…

Some have 'range anxiety' about getting an EV. Apart from the fact nearly all Australians travel less than 40km per day, which is easily charged at home from a power point at the end of the day (like your phone), if you…

‘Closing the gap’ for Aboriginal people. What we mean by that is a paternalistic attempt to have them ‘catch up’ with us. Us modern, ‘advanced’ Australians. But the gap is actually the other way around. Australia, the…

If ‘just like the flu’ pressed your buttons, for Covid, here’s the rules for flu and schools, in NSW. None of this is being done for Covid, a much more dangerous disease. I know this likely bores and annoys people who…

This article was an excellent window again into the almost impossibly complex world that is the real Australia. And how we who think ourselves advanced because we can build cars and aeroplanes and computers, have not a…

Auto-obesity is a thing. The trend to drive tanks means huge numbers of models of cars now no longer fit in standard car parking spaces. These new huge cars are lethal to pedestrians and other vehicles. Not long ago…

Fewer than 5% of Australians tow anything - a trailer or caravan/camper trailer or boat. And yet so much of the EV narrative is around range, and range is mostly an issue for people who tow. Which relatively speaking is…

The Snowy Mountains Scheme was a dominant force in building post-war Australia, socially. It brought over 65,000 Europeans and their cultures here, which changed Australian life fundamentally. And the engineering was…

I still recommend every Australian (and every human) read this book. It provides firsthand accounts from the first European settlers of Australia of what they found when they got here. What they found was the greatest…

The cheapest energy in the world by a mile is Australian rooftop solar. It’s so cheap that even if power stations (coal, nuclear) made energy for nothing, it would still cost more than rooftop solar. You pay nothing…

There’s a double-dip in demand for electricity every day in NSW. One at about 3.30-4 every morning, and one around 1pm. By far the biggest dip is that 1pm dip. The ’when the sun doesn’t shine and wind doesn’t blow’…

I was taught this too at school, that the earliest paintings of Australia were fantasies, painters trying to make the bush look like England. But the story is much more interesting than that. This IS how Australia…

The average Australian household spends 5 times as much on alcohol, cigarettes, take away food, dining out, holidays and recreation than it does on local roads, water, sewer, waste, libraries, parks and museums. That's…

Have been loving the NRL finals. But once you know about head injuries, watching it it’s very difficult to know how the code is going to survive. AFL the same. There is no answer to this problem, except not to play. Or…

Australia lagging here, as in so many other areas. I’m sitting here right now with a temperature of nearly -5 outside, and I don’t even need a heater on, the temperature is about the same as when we went to bed last…

One of Australia's most popular 'cars' (more like a tank). A friend was driving one last night back from Melbourne, and it broke down in the middle of nowhere. 5-hour wait for help. The tow truck driver that eventually…

The idea that solar is only worth it if you have a lot of north-facing roof dates from a time when the panels were expensive. The panels are now ridiculously cheap. You can face them north, south, west or east and still…

Landline had a great story today about how the biggest obstacle to building the new electricity grid is community opposition, to solar farms, wind farms, pumped hydro and new transmission lines. This isn’t the Australia…

Anybody who thinks nuclear power is the answer for Australia is scientifically and economically illiterate. I worked in nuclear engineering. This is Dutton creating an argument with outrageous fantasy ideas, to fire up…

Listeria is mostly mild, often asymptomatic. It tends to kill only ‘the vulnerable’, and can even be cured by antibiotics if diagnosed. And yet it’s an excellent measure of how corrupted our Covid response is, because…

Deborah summarising here Professor Brendan Crabb's assessment of the current Covid situation. Brendan is one of Australia's leading infectious disease experts, and an acquaintance of mine (one of the people I get Covid…

Leeton, one of several towns in Australia now trialling a new approach where the town is run by social media. Much excitement on the socials. Tenterfield is ahead of it. Now it’s selling historic parts of the town for…

I admire that people will basically bankrupt themselves, rather than admit the solution to this is sitting right under their noses. The same people who love 'Australian Made' campaigns. Except for energy, where sending…

When Rupert Murdoch dies, it will trigger something fascinating. His 4 oldest children (circled in red) each have an equal vote on what happens with the business. Lachlan is the chosen one while Rupert is alive, but the…

Australian households are smashing solar world records every single year. Most Australians are falling over themselves to shift to renewables, and EVs. A tiny minority of simpletons infected with social media memes and…

Crispian Chan, a Chinese-Australian. Australians don’t like being called racist, a country that even had a ‘White Australia’ policy and that regularly votes for Pauline Hanson and to ‘stop the boats’. Those who’ve…

The grid is changing fundamentally, have a look. It’s no longer a one-way grid, where the electricity flows from power stations to homes and businesses. It’s two-way, most of the energy is actually now generated at…

The previous government turned Australia into a quarry for the rest of the world. And we were practically giving the stuff away anyway. That’s all coming to an end. Right now, renewable energy and its associated…

Tony Abbott on radio this morning saying Aboriginal Australians need to ‘integrate’ with our way of life. Why? In 235 years we’ve made exactly zero attempt to integrate with theirs.

Facts from the cultural files. Australia has 2 million more dogs than children.

‘Baseload’ is another slogan politicians use. It encourages the public to think we have some sort of minimum amount of ’base’ power we need coal-fired power stations to supply, and without them all the lights will go…

The new fighting in the Middle East should remind us that we have to ship most of our fuel from there. Over $50 billion of it, per year. And it’s sending ordinary Australians broke. But we can power our cars with our…

For a country so obsessed with travel, Australia seems to not have the first clue how ridiculous we will look to the rest of the world, if the vote is No. And how much that will damage us.

Australia broke a new record on Friday. Over 70% of its electricty came from renewables during the day. That number will hit 100% by 2025, in just over a year. Between 8 and 4 every day right now, the energy is not only…

The late-18th century was when the First Fleet arrived. But it was the 19th century when the wider settlement of Australia happened, a history only now starting to be really told. It was an uncontrolled expansion into…

The Caribbean, a primary source of slaves in our early empires and therefore of our wealth today, is the most touristed place in the world. 80% of the income from that tourism leaves the Caribbean. The same for the…

South Australia's big battery paid for itself inside 2.5 years. That's off the scale in energy infrastructure, which never pays for itself. It also saved people of South Australia about $150 million in electricity…

I post a lot about cars because they’re the centre of a whole universe of social behaviours that need to change. The car is the most anti-social part of societies, and ‘drives’ (pun intended) a whole swathe of other…

Wankpanzers are combining two vacuous Australian passions, travel and big cars, to destroy Australian beaches.

The true motivations of the No camp are now clear, because they know they won and now don't care about saying what they were really thinking. Tony Abbott already back out saying we need to get rid of the Aboriginal Flag…

‘Australians with periods‘ are women. JK Rowling made this same point a few years ago and has been hounded disgracefully ever since. If the trans community find it distasteful, remember that post-menopausal women and…

A few times over recent years I’ve posted about the debacle the Snowy 2.0 would be. 4 Corners last night showed it in all its sad detail. (And it’s actually a $10 billion debacle, and growing.) The biggest mistake the…

Trades won’t escape automation. This Australian-invented robot brick layer will lay 300 bricks every hour. 24 hours a day. Love the name too.

Over 100 communities are now building their own power stations, owned by them with profits going to them. Solar farms. They're cheap, and quick to build. There's a farmer here who doesn't like what it will do to his…

This is Capital Wind Farm, NSW's largest wind farm. It powers the Sydney desalination plant, producing 250 million litres of fresh water every day when needed. And has energy to spare.

When Australia led the world in defeating HIV in the 1980s it was largely due to a brilliant health minister, Neal Blewett. If you’re wondering why we’re doing nothing at all about Covid, here’s our current health…

Hard to photograph the number of bats in Machattie Park in Bathurst right now. They’ll be here for months, the sky is a constant stream of bat piss and droppings, which coats everything underneath. The places the bats…

This is what social media is doing. Australia already built virtually nothing, we’re a quarry for other countries, with our local political flag-saluting halfwits obligingly ripping up what puny royalties we got for…

Last week South Australia got 99.8% of its electricity from solar (yellow) and wind (green) only. That's day and night, not just days. On Saturday it actually hit 264%, but because prices were negative in the grid…

Yep. Again, it's not that I love cars particularly or even renewables. It's that these obvious facts of physics and economics are hidden by the bullshit of social media. Energy is also central to all economies, so if…

The bats are an increasing issue not just for Bathurst, but many other towns. The Botanic Gardens in Sydney used a novel approach to drive them out about a decade ago (not sure how it's going now), and it's not simple…

Now is the time to act if you don't want Covid for Christmas. I'm not holding my breath that most will.…

Many Australians doing it very tough right now. Look at far and away their greatest expense, transport. That’s fuel prices. That will drive the shift to hybrids and EVs faster than anything else. Always follow the money.

‘Just like the flu’, the slogan about Covid. Australia has had 2 bad flu years in the past decade. Right now Australia is killing more people every *quarter* with Covid than die in a bad flu year. 40 years of bad flu…

These are the bats currently occupying central Bathurst, the grey-headed flying fox. Australia’s largest bat. Some facts about them that help shape how we can view what’s happening. - they only live on the east coast,…

The pro-petrol/diesel crowd trawl FB looking for any mention of electric vehicles, and then it starts. The same dumb things said over and over. Not one of them here for example even understands what a PHEV is, that the…

When the petrol and diesel fetishists run out of EV posts to dive-bomb, they move onto solar. This was a post about the NSW Government’s new solar scheme for low income earners, promising to slash power bills. Losers…

As an indication of how amazing this technology now is. The solar panels on our house generate enough energy every week to drive an EV from Sydney to Perth. Just from sunshine, on one roof. That’s up to $1000 worth of…

A US with Trump in charge would be far, far more dangerous than anything China does. Because we've rewound to old White Australia times, first with Aboriginal assimilation, and now with constant Yellow Peril talk about…

Every single slogan below is a lie. This industry creates them to cast doubt, flooding social media with them, to create resistance to change. Why so much of my social media is about countering this nonsense. Renewables…

Who remembers the big South Australian blackout in 2016? And how the mind midgets at the time were crowing about how this was an example of how unreliable renewables are? Have a look at the performance of SA. It's been…

Remember the slogan 'cheap and reliable power'? Look at South Australia. A wholesale price (purple line, the green is demand) of near ZERO. ALL DAY. Already easily the most reliable grid in the country. 99.8% solar and…

Most Australians live on the coast, making offshore wind a superb method of electricity generation for us, active now overseas for over 30 years. Offshore wind is often strongest at peak usage times as well, like when…

This is what offshore wind turbines look like, 20 kms out to sea (you may need a magnifying glass). The ones proposed for Australia are even further out, to 35 km. The people who complain about it ruining their view are…

Aged care Covid cases in Australia, yellow is aged care staff, red is residents. Left picture is 3 months ago, right is now.

Dr Cameron Murray is doing brilliant work on understanding the disaster that is Australian housing. Unsurprisingly it’s pretty simple. Home ownership became a widespread Australian thing when governments built lots of…

Tesla Powerwall sales in Australia are booming. The thing I love about the Amber wholesale company is that it allows people with batteries to sell their excess power into the grid at peak times, which is the only time…

The mind midgets are going to have to dig pretty deep on YouTube to counter this one.…

Any other ex-New College folk from our UNSW days probably remember Manoa. I lived with Manoa for a few years, always so much fun. He used to lather up his then-affro in the shower and throw huge handfuls of suds at…

This is a HUGE shift. Essentially the government is (rightly) saying that privatisation of electricity has failed. This is the sort of brave public policy we haven't seen in Australia for years. Hats off to them, well…

This really is brilliant public policy. They'll use reverse auctions to drive prices down from bidders (what we should do for housing too). And they've put a ceiling and a floor on profits, so that the investors get a…

The main reason petrol and diesel cars were built to have a relatively high range is so they wouldn’t need to go to the servo very often. There are only 6500 servos for over 10 million vehicles in Australia. If they…

The reason we've experienced such a dramatic rise in electricity prices over the past 2 years is that we generate most of it (in NSW) using coal. And look at the price of coal. Meantime the price of renewables has been…

Probably quite a lot of people aren’t aware of the difference between public health and medicine. Public health isn’t doctors or nurses, or rather it’s very specific types of doctors, who work on the health of the…

I don't generally like American cars, they're mostly woeful. But Tesla is different, innovative engineering. Have a look at their new Roadster, the fastest car in the world. The acceleration you see in this short video…

Have a peek into where we’ll be in just a few years. Worth remembering Australia doesn’t make a single vehicle in this country, so what happens overseas will happen here. That’s where we buy our cars.

The reason fossil fuels appeared cheap for so long is that they’ve never been forced to pay for their pollution. This sort of thing, in the picture, has been going on for over 250 years, completely cost-free. An…

A new record for rooftop solar in Australia in November this year, over 330 MW of new installs in a single month. I invented a new unit of measurement, the ‘Mount Piper’, after Lithgow’s remaining coal power station.…

PepsiCo’s factory in Australia. Rooftop solar doesn’t just mean homes, it means businesses. Many businesses are doing this not because they have a single ‘Green’ bone in their bodies. They’re doing it because it saves…

Again it's not a particular interest in energy that makes me post about it. It's because energy is the centre of societies, everything they do. The black line is the US. Australia (not shown) is close to that black…

It’s an international embarrassment that the LNP went to COP28 and advocated for Australia to do nothing, and just wait a decade or more for nuclear power to be built. Reactors that don’t even exist, that nobody wants…

Michael Pascoe nailing it again. Australian business is lazy and entitled, and mostly because we own hardly anything so can’t apply pressure to firms to do better. Both we and the UK have had idiot political leaders who…

It's a bit amusing that 'stop the migrants, there aren't enough houses for them' doesn't realise that without them, we can't build the houses.…

Telstra has now finalised all of the energy it uses being renewable by 2025. Day and night. This is one of the solar farms. Some people don't like the look of solar farms, but nearly always they're on land that's been…

Can see here why AEMO is nervous tonight, this is NSW. Green line is demand, purple price. That’s huge demand. People with batteries can sell electricity into the grid right now at nearly 70c/kWh. Next post shows…

The even more interesting bit. The current spot prices in mainland States. Negative prices mean retailers are paid to use the electricity. NSW and Queensland both at huge positive prices. I’ve circled in red the…

AEMO's latest projections say all of Australia's coal-powered electricity will be gone by 2038. I'd place a bet it will be even earlier. Given the speed of the decline, for all intents and purposes it's game over even…

The word ‘economy’ comes from ancient Greek, where it meant ‘management of a household’. The economy is just households. Instead we’ve said it’s business, a terrible mistake. Business was invented to serve households,…

The pace of change is so fast there’s almost a new announcement like this every single day. All of these projects will be completed inside 5 years, some inside 2. It’s very quick to install a big battery, remember Tesla…

The owners of Iowa’s last nuclear power plant are turning the facility into a solar farm. You can’t get a clearer picture of the global shift in play. And incidentally, it takes 20-30 YEARS to decommission a nuclear…

In this last week leading up to Christmas, where people will want to be socialising heavily, a quick story about the current Covid variant. One of Sydney’s elite schools, which has invested in clean air technology and…

Huge. South Australia will be able to feed its huge and growing renewable energy into the national grid. Companies will now add lots of extra solar and wind farms and batteries all the way along this connector.

Electric and hybrid aircraft are already on the market. They may represent a boon for flying, for ordinary people. Right now the aviation industry is heavily centralised at massive airports, which have access to the…

Covid prevalence is about the same in Australia as in the US. So this US guide is probably pretty accurate for here too. Every Covid infection can be the one that sets you up for years of chronic illness. There are no…

People who are close to these accidents know the lifelong trauma they cause. I’m on that road every day, it has average speed safety cameras installed, and has done for years. And the NSW Government is too gutless to…

The urban cowboy travelling the country, protecting Australians from the evils of wind and sunshine. I guess it resonates better than ‘Nukes for Port Stephens’. Don Quixote attacked windmills. He was unhinged.

A prominent Australian Senator calls Nick Coatsworth the ‘Fabio of Australian medicine’. This is the Dr Nick who said Covid isn’t airborne, and that it’s fine to infect kids. He’s become quite the weathervane of idiot…

So you struggle to get a PCR test. And now if you want a RAT, you’ll be up for $10-$12 a pop. Which means for most working families, you won’t bother. At least NSW said it would provide these for free, let’s see how…

Dan is an immunologist working for NSW Health. He’s risking disciplinary action even posting this.

Hot tip. Don’t vote for the party who opened up the country to mass infection, but didn’t order any tests. Just as they didn’t order vaccines. Just as they don’t do anything except rort grants to win elections.…

Thanks to Nancy for sharing. This is what’s happening in supermarkets, staff off sick with Covid. When will the farce of ‘living with Covid’ end? Why do we meekly accept such rubbish? Imagine if we had tuberculosis…

Sometimes I think it’s complete ignorance of infectious disease history that explains what’s going on right now. Take polio, as an example. Many I ask aren’t even aware that for the majority of people who caught polio,…

That’s 2 from 2 in the prediction game. (He’s still being a cheapskate with this announcement, just staggering that he won’t demand ineligible businesses repay $40 billion of JobKeeper payments they stole, but still…

The NSW Government has an excellent Critical Intelligence Unit, which releases some of the most useful Covid stats. It’s where you can see how the trickery is done in trying to suppress hospital numbers, for starters,…

NSW Government having a Crisis Cabinet meeting this morning, to discuss significant new restrictions. How many times do we have to go through this same charade, with every wave, before people realise if you open up…

James is a smart operator, a very nice guy who also works inside the NSW Government. Has been in the press recently about his own experience with Covid. Nails it here, we’re back in 2020, except this time we’re paying…

Average flu year NSW: 2000 in hospital. Covid: 20,000 in hospital. ‘Just like the flu’.

From NSW Health yesterday. Three things: 1) those beds are required for everybody who is sick enough to require hospitalisation, and 2) ICU capacity in NSW is 1000 beds, but again that’s for all conditions. 300-500…

Kerry Chant explained the ban on dancing yesterday. When you dance, you mix with people from multiple social networks at once, rather than only with the friends and family you see every day. So it allows the virus to…

Living with the virus. This is Australia, 2022. AUSTRALIA.

Australia letting Covid rip for the Economy.

Christmas 2021. When the people of Australia, tired from fighting Covid for 2 years, were thanked by their governments by infecting them with it.

Ordinary working day in Australia, 3-4% of staff are sick. Right now? 20-40%

There is no Economy, just people. Have been saying it for 2 years. The disgraceful, disgusting mess we’re in right now, caused by this idiot belief in an Economy. National Cabinet meets today to make decisions that will…

School has been back in the UK for about 2 weeks. 315,000 children already in isolation for Covid. Wake up Australia.

National Cabinet today decided the best approach is to return to the 19th century. - no isolation period at all now for key workers - ‘key workers’ is now just about everybody - Chief Medical Officer of Australia says…

There were 54 Covid deaths in NSW and Victoria today. Those people contracted Covid around the last week of December, leading into Christmas. There were around 8000 cases per day in the 2 States, at that time. There are…

NSW Health confirmed today that you can be re-infected with Covid after only 4 weeks. Infecting the whole country won’t end the pandemic.

https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/7580081/not-rocket-science-hit-the-brakes-on-omicron-explosion-experts-warn/

I wanted to talk about 2 things we’re told not to talk about, but I think we must. Politics and religion. My views on them, so people have a reference point. Politics first. My personal political leanings are to…

If you want a flavour of just what low-life bastards the NSW Government are, this is one of many, many stories I’ve heard about parents trying to buy air purifiers for their kids’ schools, to protect them from Covid.…

I walked some of the streets of Bathurst in my lunch break today. Pubs, restaurants, cafes - many deserted. Not a soul inside. Very few shoppers about either, eerily quiet. Infection has destroyed the ‘Economy’. Today…

Parents to supervise classrooms with mass staff infections. (Let’s see how many volunteer to do that.) Kids to be swabbed twice a week. Come on people, let’s be grown ups. Just as you wouldn’t send kids to school in a…

The Australian virologist Ian Mackay produced the 'Swiss Cheese Model' of Covid control, an excellent tool to understand why vaccines alone aren't enough. They're just one slice of the cheese.

Kerry Chant: - we don't know when the peak might be - schools will drive case numbers - current vaccines won't make the pandemic end, and - NSW should expect a year of continuing epidemic waves.

Returning to this, over 100,000 people caught Covid in NSW between Christmas and New Year. It takes about 3 weeks for cases to start translating into deaths. That’s what that explosive growth in deaths line now is. That…

So many Covid updates. Now the NSW Government wants to waive RSAs for bar staff in pubs. Because the interruption to the free flow of booze is obviously a State emergency. (P.S. guess who's a big donor to political…

Infecting NSW to save the NSW Economy, um, trashed the NSW Economy. Almost like the ‘Economy’ is just the people of NSW. Go figure.

The real reason people are discouraged from getting free PCR testing are inside this article. It’s mind-boggling incompetence by NSW and Canberra, and there’s much more besides.

Diseases that were endemic in Australia 100 years ago. Malaria Tuberculosis Rubella Diphtheria Polio Measles None are endemic now. Societies don’t live with nasty pathogens. They get rid of them. We can do it now with…

I never have much enthusiasm for Australia Day. Jingoistic claptrap most of the time. Culture wars about flags and invasions etc. We turn everything into sport. Yes the country was invaded, stolen. Yes many love the…

There was a pile-on last year when the Queensland Premier said 80 people could die of Covid, per day. 'Alarmism', 'doomsayer', etc. Guess how many are dying of Covid per day in Australia, right now?

A week ago the NSW Government quietly signed an exemption to Public Health Orders to exempt employers from reporting Covid acquired in the workplace to SafeWork Australia. Now they only need to if an employee is…

In August last year, Australians were surveyed as to how many deaths per year would be acceptable, from ‘living with Covid’. 86% said less than 1000. 61% said less than 100. Living with Covid in 2022 killed over 1000…

98 Australians died of Covid yesterday. They were living with the virus. Until they weren’t.

705 people have died of Covid in NSW in January 2022. That’s more than died in the whole of 2021. It’s 23 times the road toll in that time.

BA.2 is a new variety of Omicron. It has arrived in Australia but is still at small numbers. Remember the Premier has asked us to ‘push through’ Omicron. That’s BA.1 Omicron. BA.2 is waiting. (P.S. Denmark has the same…

So far deliberately infecting the whole nation with a lethal disease isn’t polling well. Come on Australia, reject the attempt to turn us into the train wreck that is the US and UK. That is actually what’s at stake…

The most democratic, free way out of the pandemic is rules. Mandates. Public health orders. All the stuff the nongs who marched on Canberra yesterday hate, for example, and our politicians campaign against. Rules apply…

At least 90 million people have been infected with Covid in the past 10 weeks, worldwide. That's more than were infected in the whole of 2020. Over 50,000 people are dying every week. In other news, Greg Hunt said on…

Week 1 of school, 400 staff out because of Covid, South Australia. Leaders have encouraged us to think this is just a hard period that we need to get through, and then it’ll be behind us. But catching Covid doesn’t stop…

As we hopefully watch the rotting carcass of the federal LNP disappear from the front benches in Canberra, another earlier reminder of their disgusting legacy. Remember year after year, the relentless bullshit about how…

Using maths to do politics. 0.1% is 1 in 1000 people. Starts to look a bit less rosy when you rephrase it that way? That’s over 25,000 Covid deaths every year (flu kills 1000 in a bad flu year.) To put this in…

Omicron is the most infectious disease in history. The ‘measures’ the NSW government has introduced for schools are pathetic to prevent it, and are being applied in barely half-arsed ways anyway. As in the US and UK, a…

The Granville train disaster was called ‘the disaster that changed Australia’. 83 people died. This is where I challenge us to think. We’re having 7 Granvilles EVERY WEEK, with Covid. What is wrong with us? If a train…

The NSW Premier has said today he doesn't think they'll bother with school RATs after the first 4 weeks of school. This was their plan all along. Do some symbolic testing when kids went back, to give the appearance of…

P.S. on tests. I'm not sure the people of NSW have realised yet that when the government ends free school Covid testing, NOBODY NOT ON A COMMONWEALTH CONCESSION CARD IN NSW WILL QUALIFY FOR A FREE COVID TEST. In the…

The biggest cause of death in Australia is now Covid. And you won't know that if you listen to politicians or the news.

So glad to be close to retirement. Almost nothing happening now is the Australia I grew up in.

The people who will do best in 2022 will be those who wear a mask, even if government says you don’t have to. And those with no debt. If interest rates go up, many Australians with big mortgages are going to be in a lot…

I keep posting about Covid, because there’s a total vacuum of actual information out there. Deaths first today. 1077 Australians have died of COVID in the last 15 days. That’s more than the 2020 road toll (1095), and…

LEGAL BLOOD ALCOHOL LIMIT TO BE RAISED. With only 1000 road deaths a year in Australia, most not even alcohol-related, there is plenty of spare hospital capacity to deal with alcohol-related accidents. The legal blood…

“I regret going out when Omicron was running rampant”. I wish that was a more common view. On schools and Covid, the NSW Government published infection numbers at the end of week 1 of term. Since then - nothing. This is…

Victoria had 10,000 Covid cases in schools in the past week. NSW refuses to publish the data.

This is the magnitude of the damage Scott Morrison is prepared to do, to protect his own job. China-bashing is the fastest way to flush what’s left of Australian prosperity down the toilet. This election matters more…

Yesterday details finally leaked out about Covid infections in (public) schools in NSW. (We don’t have private school numbers.) It isn’t pretty. Over 20,000 students tested positive in the first 2 weeks of term. Over…

"Randwick Council announced on Wednesday night that Malabar, Maroubra, Coogee, Clovelly and La Perouse beaches would also be closed for 24 hours while council lifeguards looked for any further sightings of sharks." One…

Summary of today's NSW press conference. Premier: "the pandemic is over". Kerry Chant: "no, it's not." Brad Hazzard: "Dr Chant is taking a well-deserved holiday".…

So the NSW Government ensures there's no official data on Covid in schools. But social media usually knows. Claims of more than 100 infected kids at Bathurst High School right now. Plus staff.

From social media. The last source of Covid information in NSW. "I’m in Bathurst my daughter goes to Scots All Saints and the boarding house is riddled (with Covid). Same as the boy’s Catholic boarding school Stannies.…

It should be a matter of deep shame to all Australians that we’re one of the only developed countries in the world where millions of people have to pay for their own pandemic testing. Not even the libertarians in the UK…

This is how dangerous the NSW and federal governments are. There was no train strike in NSW today, it was an old-school employer lockout. The NSW Government shut down the trains. Why? There’s only one reason that…

At over 200 deaths per day, about 70,000 per year, and tens of thousands of infections per day. People are now completely ‘free’ again. Free to live with the virus. This is the insanity of where that idiot idea leads.…

The guidelines for chickenpox are significantly more stringent than those for Covid. About 6 people die of chickenpox every year in Australia. Over 2000 people have died of Covid in the past 7 weeks. Come on 'live with…

Have a look at these 3 slides. Why isn’t this reported or widely known? Because - then people might question if we’re actually getting back to ‘normal’. Or they may not, they may just shrug and go to restaurants, pubs…

Two diagrams that illustrate the geopolitics in play. The entire rationale for NATO (blue) is driven by the US, to suppress Russia. That’s fine, countries make strategic decisions. But you can see how much Russia could…

Clive's push to keep the ALP out of government is back on, for the second election in a row. How do we feel Australia, about billionaires buying elections? He doesn't think he can win, he'll settle for the ALP not…

Over 106,000 children have been infected with Covid in the past 30 days in NSW. The government says it's going well.

Half an hour, so many probably won't have time. But a really superb summary by one of the leading experts in the world (who luckily for us currently works in Australia), of what we now know about Covid. Hugely…

A person has died of Covid on average every 30 minutes in Australia, in 2022. And we're saying it's over.

NSW was averaging 10,000 cases a day, before the masks came off. Already ludicrously high. Now on the rise again. 10,000+ people being infected a day means a community is very sick, and there are in reality many more,…

I won't only talk about Covid, but it's kinda the issue threatening us all. 20-30,000 cases per day projected for NSW within weeks. The NSW Government response? Nothing. They say it's our fault, the community, we've…

I’ve never liked the green and gold uniforms for Australian athletes. We end up looking like some hybrid budgie/canary. (Yes I know it’s supposed to look a bit like wattle, and golden wheat etc. It doesn’t.) The…

40% of people who leave isolation for Covid are still positive/infectious after 9-10 days. (NSW releases them after 7.) Basically they should never have removed the requirement to get a negative test before returning…

The NSW Government hasn’t listened to NSW Health for months. So at this stage, remembering it’s your life and your health, and those of your friends and loved ones, do you: - trust NSW Health, or - trust a NSW Cabinet…

You can see why some say Australia could be the Saudi Arabia of the 21st and 22nd centuries. Phenomenal amounts of flat, sunny land, basically a whole continent. Just need to get rid of the current dickheads in charge,…

John Howard used to say fuel prices are political dynamite. At current prices many will go to the wall, not just directly through the cost of buying fuel, but through the costs passed all the way down the supply chain.…

Queanbeyan High School, which had adopted some remote learning again because of mass infections amongst staff and students, has apparently now been given a directive from the NSW Government to resume normal operations.…

Had a discussion yesterday about the Rockley Pub, now featuring a restaurant run by Matt Moran. My issue with some of these developments is that it’s partly a process of gentrification. Taking facilities in a poorer…

‘We can’t live like this forever’ was one of the lines used to justify opening up NSW to mass infection. But economically we’re still behind 2021, so no forward progress at all. And huge numbers needlessly infected with…

Covid update. A quick rule-of-thumb, take whatever the government says, and believe the opposite.…

I suspect Steven Marshall is just the first politician about to discover that the Australian public don’t see the role of a leader as deliberately infecting them all with a lethal virus.

To put this in perspective, the average amount American families spend on home-cooked food during a year is about $3500. The same trend is happening in multiple countries, including Australia.

Data from the US says not even 3 doses is going to be enough. The government, as always, saying nothing, with the Australian winter bearing down on us. 83% effective up to 2 months, down to only 31% effective after 5…

I still strongly believe most of Australia thinks 'living with the virus' is a crock of shit. The polls suggest so.

Only took the two weeks since the floods for the NSW Government to remove requirements that floods be considered when approving new land for housing development. The State is run by developers, publicans and gambling…

Roy Morgan research on Australia's least trusted politicians also points to an upcoming rout. In my experience the group still clinging desperately to the bloated corpse is young men.

Wikipedia so rocks. This news is already updated there, amazing. Was curious to see Barty cites missing being at home as part of her decision. That's something other Australians can learn from Aboriginal Australia, what…

Another from the Roy Morgan report. Australians hate their governments in good times, and love them in a crisis. Look at that astronomical jump in love for national lockdowns in 2020. (The 2008 jump was Kevin Rudd’s…

My passion for discussing the myths around gravity feels a bit justified, when I see that over 5000 Australians die every year with the cause of death listed as ‘falling over’. The language is always so interesting.…

Ignoring any love or hatred for The Greens, this makes a lot of sense? Why wouldn’t we do this? The change could also fund so much the country needs. Right now just about all $184 billion will go into the pockets of a…

Really good article about regional roads. While federal governments give away hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts, to people who don’t need them, basic infrastructure in every town in Australia is falling apart.…

Aren't we going well here in Australia. People needing to use credit to buy the basics of life. But at least wealthy Australians will get enormous tax cuts in the next few years, so they can buy the companies that will…

Over 150 kids a week are being hospitalised for Covid in NSW.

Australia’s house prices are an international embarrassment. There was a time when pricing your own kids out of a roof over their heads so that you could maximise your capital gains would have prompted emergency action.…

58 people died of Covid last week in NSW. 33 have died already this week.

"The 55-year-old triple-jabbed broadcaster and author caught the virus in January on a holiday to the Gold Coast." That's a story that's going to be repeated so many times in Australia. We seem pathologically incapable…

The Australian Electoral Commission is brilliant. Funny, informative.

Smart people overseas, asking the questions Australians aren’t asking.

Did Jesus fly Jetstar to heaven at Easter? I think he just ascended. Australians engaging their deepest passion. Being somewhere else.

Do you reckon before you award wealthy Australians tax cuts worth $184 billion, you should first check if every school, hospital, road, river, sewer, NBN connection, women’s shelter, legal aid program etc. has all the…

Good Friday remembers a death. Even noticing death has become a challenge for many Australians. They’re happy that hundreds die per week from a preventable disease, provided they can get back on planes and into pubs and…

Watch this. (As context, 74 people have died so far this week of Covid, in NSW.) ‘Towards Zero’ road safety campaigns have been in place for years. Hugely expensive and complex, and with strategies that stretch out for…

10% of new Covid cases in the world every day are now in Australia. Australia has 0.3% of the world population.

Covid is now the 3rd largest mass casualty event in Australia, in history. Only Spanish Flu and Scarlett Fever have killed more, and the widespread massacres of Aboriginal Australians. Covid of course is still killing,…

There’s a trend in job ads to no longer advertise a salary. And for people even inside an organisation to have no idea what other people inside the organisation are paid. Ask HR people and senior managers and they’ll…

72 people dead from Covid so far this week, in NSW. Do we care? Do we act? Do we say anything?

For those sceptical of the ageing population and what it means for elections, the average age of a voter in Australia is 50. And look at how the older you get, the more you tend to vote conservative. Australia has been…

Got my flu shot today. Some researchers I admire have thought for years that heart disease in general may be due to ongoing chronic infection, and/or damage caused by previous infections, from things like the flu. This…

When I drive through the Australian countryside, I notice how almost completely unoccupied it is. Apart from the odd farmhouse, the countryside is as good as empty of people. That’s not an accident. Like the Americans…

At some point the idea the LNP are ‘better economic managers’ has to encounter reality, surely? As economists constantly point out as well, the 2 highest taxing and spending governments in Australian history are the…

Nearly 6 million Australians have been infected with Covid since Christmas. On purpose. Remember that in times to come.

As Richard says, the simple reason wages haven’t gone up in Australia is that employers have refused to pay them. They always have some excuse for not paying them, it’s called self-regulation, meaning ‘we’ll do whatever…

77 dead from Covid in NSW this week. A day to go. Remind me what’s ‘normal’ here?

A person is dying of Covid in Australia about every 30 minutes.

Geez, it’s even worse than I first realised. Half that edition of the paper. Fydenberg is in real trouble, and as a result we see like testicles hanging out of a pair of speedos the cosy relationship between the Murdoch…

Just one more catastrophe to add to the avoidable disasters confronting us. Because we were too lazy to think, and ridiculed the people who did. Covid is the same. Did you know it’s now the #2 cause of death in…

I was listening to Peter Doherty on the way home today. The Australian Nobel Prize winner in immunology. He was a bit lost for words at what Australia is doing with Covid, more than 5000 dead since Christmas, nearly 6…

23 dead from Covid in NSW today. Is this OK? Anybody? Is silence 'shit, we may have this wrong'?

Another very senior ex-Liberal saying what I always say, the Liberals are not the party many think they are. Hijacked by pirates. In other news, Australia dropped from 25 in the world to 39, for press freedom.…

Here’s the 2022 summary for Australia. A bus load of Australians dead every single day, since Christmas.

70 deaths already this week, in NSW. 4 days to go. Hey who remembers when we tried to save lives, as well as businesses and footy games?

At least 11,000 people in NSW have now caught Covid more than once. Catching it doesn't make it go away.

There’s probably not a better contrast between two understandings of Australia, the land. Aboriginal people didn’t use fences, instead they cultivated the land in a way they knew animals would love, to attract them.…

Both the US and UK are prey to destructive libertarian (‘freedom’) politics. I reckon the way they’re structured helps explain why. If you look at the electoral regions in both the UK and US, there are so many of them.…

I always like to mention that the Australian Government copies pretty much everything the UK government does.

Maybe we shouldn't be letting kids catch Covid, hey. What do we hear from Australian leaders and most Australians? Nothing. Sending them all to school to get infected. Photos of what you did on holiday or the weekend…

51 people died of Covid in Australia yesterday. 57,637 (that we know of) were infected. Can somebody help me - 'living with Covid'. Is that the rampant growth in infections, or deaths? Or both?

One of the election slogans is ‘the quiet Australians’. Vote for the quietest Australians. The 7513 dead from Covid, with a couple of hundred more each week. They’re very quiet. As are we, about them.

We're still the 'Commonwealth of Australia". I think people think that's just a name. It's not, it means what it says- all 'wealth' is considered to be common, meaning you need a full society to generate it. There is no…

I know I'm mostly talking to myself, but when we launched 'living with the virus', did we think that meant it becoming the leading cause of death in Australia? Not one politician mentions it, they want us to pretend…

The US has had 100,000 new Covid cases per day, for the past 3 days. They clocked a million dead this week. In the past we might have gasped at this. But yesterday Australia, with less than 10% of the population of the…

With climate change on path to incinerate much of the planet, those who made fun of Lithgow for this are going to be our amusement, as they burn.…

“Doctors at some of Sydney’s biggest hospitals say emergency departments are so overcrowded that patients are being treated in corridors and ambulance trolleys, as the number of ambulances on the city’s roads at night…

Vote for a change to this disaster. I can guarantee you a vote for the LNP is a vote for a continued criminal refusal to do the basic public health work we’ve been doing for 150 years. The second they said a pandemic…

lol. Also makes me more determined than ever to convince people that much of the Australian accent has its origins in our encounters with Aboriginal Australia. So much of what we call being Australian we got from…

Lol. Also more proof of my theory that much of the Australian accent happened because of our encounters with aborigines. So much of what we call the aussie way of life I think we actually got from them, we just forgot.

Superb. Damien is bureau chief for the Australian office of the NY Times, now living in Sydney with his family. The same guy who realised what was unique about Australia through his kids joining the local surf…

There is no shortage of houses in Australia. No lack of ‘supply’. That’s just another myth invented by the property industry. The problem is a minority owning multiple dwellings each, as ‘investment properties’, while…

There’s no greater threat to Australia as we know it than the relentless attack by libertarians, mostly from the US, on how we live. They do it mostly through social medial, it’s a global brainwashing and propaganda…

Have a read so you can laugh every time somebody says the answer to get housing prices down, is to build more houses. Another prime example of political lobbying becoming a slogan, becoming 'common sense', becoming…

Average Covid deaths per day in Australia is now 42. For any flu season this would be considered a national emergency. And: - notice the trend, the number is still climbing - it's 5 months of relentless death, with no…

20% of Australians surveyed said they’ve gone to work while knowingly infected with Covid. Don’t blame them, they have to eat. Blame idiot governments who let Covid rip.

Michelle is one of the most experienced political journalists still working in Australia. She sees the insanity of where we currently are, because she lived through times that weren’t so completely bonkers.

The phone of a nurse working at one Melbourne hospital. If you’re out socialising like there’s no tomorrow, taking no Covid precautions, you and our governments are the reason nurses and others are drowning in sick…

Thanks to Julia for finding this one. This morning's press conference, with the PM. Claiming all the Covid deaths in Australia are people 'with Covid', rather than them dying from Covid. That's a disgusting lie. Covid…

The problem with democracy as we do it is, that it pays no attention to basic competence. If you go for a job interview or have a performance appraisal at work, how good you actually are at the job is critical. If you…

And on monkeypox (just love saying it), it’s popping up super fast worldwide now. Smallpox vaccination provides some protection against it, but we haven’t used those vaccines for over 40 years. And we never used them…

All Australians should read this book. Damien is the Oz bureau chief for the NY Times. He brought his family to live here and discovered something really profound about us that I think many don’t even see. He knows us…

Another Liberal telling people how it is. Tells you this isn't about party loyalties, it's about basic competence and corruption.…

I’m guessing no matter what else happens in the election today, Calare will get another term of Nationals doing nothing for Lithgow. Look at the latest NBN upgrades, as with the original rollout, Lithgow isn’t even on…

Saw Domicron interviewed at a polling booth this morning in NSW. One of the architects of live with the virus. Nobody asked him about the over 300,000 infections in Australia this week, and over 300 dead. He goes to the…

Election day musings. No other country in the world has an election day like ours, it’s like Grand Final Day but even bigger. It’s really hard to describe what’s unique about Australian society. But I think there is a…

Governance is my profession. People know I love to talk about stuff here, including why the LNP in 2022 was not just a threat to Australia, but also to itself. The Liberals in particular may not even survive as a party.…

One sneaky word that needs to be banished from Australia is the idea of a political ‘base’. US attack politics, noxious rubbish. As if a politician has a special group of people they relate to and look after specially,…

The secret sauce of Lithgow for those who don’t live here, is that it’s one of the few places where the entire town is a community. Most larger and newer towns are fractured now by cars, people live in widely dispersed…

You get those moments when you enjoy being older. Like when your mother tells you you've had a smallpox vaccination, unlike most in Australia. With monkeypox around, that's nice to have.

Remember all the 'Dictator Dan' stuff? It's cost Josh and others their seats. Melbourne and Sydney are a sea of Labor red and independent teal. The live with the virus folk are tumbling like dominoes, as I thought they…

I think it’s a mistake for anybody to claim the election victory as a victory for their interests or group. It was a victory for the Australian community, it was that community reasserting itself as the main focus of…

Two bits of Australian political trivia. 1) The ALP is called the 'natural party of government' in Australia, because it's the only party who's ever won government alone. It's only ever been defeated by coalitions of…

I wonder if NSW Health staff have 'living with the virus' parties, and pin up pictures of Dom on their bedroom walls.

Very glad to have mine vaccinated this year. Let's hope the vaccine matches the circulating strain. "At least 10 per cent of children admitted to hospital with flu will be so sick that they need intensive care," NSW…

A public service announcement. Because the NSW Government certainly won't tell you.

Just in case you thought it had all magically gone away. Another 30 dead today, significantly more than those shot dead in a school yesterday in the US. In total 90 already dead this week in NSW alone.

‘Let’s stay open NSW’. For those who don’t want to go out and get repeatedly infected with a brain-eating virus, there’s ‘mental health’ support. If you want to avoid being infected with a lethal virus, you apparently…

Working from home and learning from home are now (apparently) bad. But DIY healthcare from home, with a potentially fatal disease, is good. This is Australia, 2022. Where public health is run by the business community.

It's inspirational to see young, smart and cashed-up Australians calling enough on decades of obstruction to needed change in this country.…

Here’s a story which I promise gets more interesting as it goes along. The ratio of tax paid to GDP in a country. (Stay with me!) GDP is a measure of how much wealth a country produces, usually in a year. Australia’s…

I have never known the Australian community to be as sick as it is right now. The amount of infection and other health issues out there is staggering. You can’t do even the most basic, social, work or school thing…

Perfect example of a press release from a lobbyist (Property Council of Australia in this case, acting for landlords of commercial property), pretending to be a news story. The whole bloody country is run by property…

Australia organises itself around the idea of community. It doesn’t really think much about it (which is a threat I think, we could lose it), it just does it. Other countries use territory and class and rank etc. to…

Everybody is being urged to get the whole family vaccinated against flu (a very good idea). Meanwhile, childhood vaccinations against Covid stalled months ago with fewer than 50% of kids vaccinated. When the NSW…

Another hike in interest rates coming today. I think it’s worth remembering that this only matters because much of society has no money and is living off debt. And that this is why the gutting of the living standards of…

An ED department in an Australian hospital right now. A major metropolitan hospital. Schools are even worse, some have 35 classes without teachers on a given day. Society is falling apart.

I find many people assume Lithgow is lower than Bathurst and the Blue Mountains, in elevation terms. That it’s ‘in a hole’. (For the geographically challenged Lithgow is in a valley. Like alpine towns around the world.)…

8 months into 'living with Covid', hundreds still dying every week. 21 just today, in NSW. How many more months of this do people need to call BS? Do they know that NSW Health has asked for compulsory indoor masks and…

What a joke. They're not even serious, it's politics, not a serious proposal, the reactors they're talking about aren't even available or tested. To think the clowns in the LNP drove Australia's world-leading solar…

Not a rugby league expert, but I do think a great team will always beat a team only of great players. They should have run the Panthers as the NSW team, for Origin. All of them. Cutting the core out of that team without…

Australia is being literally robbed by fossil fuel multinationals. (Note this is true for coal, as well as gas.) And what do Australians say about it? They attack everybody who tries to build domestic energy capacity to…

Lithgow is not unlike most other regional towns or even Oz cities. Some key facts which I think the city needs to come to grips with, to survive, because I think its image of itself is about 150 years old: - the biggest…

In the last 7 years the world's biggest resource companies have made $138 billion from Australian resources without paying us a single cent in corporate income tax. I paid more tax than those companies. It's time to be…

Show me the money. What's a nurse earn? "...a full-time GP in Australia earns on average between $200,000 to $350,000 per annum. As we said above, if you get transferred to a rural area, work more shifts during evenings…

Another example of how Australia just slept through a disastrous 10 years, under the previous government. We're seriously on track to becoming a third world country.…

Wow. Boom. Who knew that regulating a basic service was the answer all along.…

My favourite take on the current energy crisis is "this is why we need more coal-fired power stations". Like the ones currently falling apart and costing a fortune to run, which no business will touch with a stick. A…

Have often posted about why I think small business is a major hurdle to a much better Australia. We worship it, unthinkingly. It doesn't have the economies of scale to be a healthy backbone for a society, it's an…

BA.4 and BA.5 hitting NSW, there on the right. Covid's latest trick is called 'imprinting'. Meaning if you get infected with an earlier variant of Covid, it imprints on your immune system. Which sounds great, except it…

It’s interesting that peak power usage in NSW is at almost exactly 6pm, every night. I’d have thought it might be a bit later in the evening, from prime time onwards, with heating/cooling etc. Is it maybe that families…

Joyce is also one of the main border-busters with Covid, which has killed over 7000 Australians since Christmas. Has earned himself over $100m gutting Qantas, which was once the envy of world airlines. You’d be brave to…

The BA.5 strain of Covid is exploding in NSW. Please pay attention to this, what happens when people get even ‘mildly’ infected. This is why I post the comparisons to HIV, they’re very close. We may be years off seeing…

Over 1300 people have died of Covid in Australia since the election. In 4 weeks.

Today Australia passed an average of 50 Covid deaths per day. And still climbing. Anybody home?

It seems to me the common story people in Australia would tell about the pandemic is ‘we locked down for 2 years, then we opened up to live with the virus’. The ABS is here to help. If you look at all of the lockdowns…

See that bit at the bottom, about zero melanoma deaths? 4 people die daily of melanoma in Australia, and zero is our goal. Zero is also our target for road deaths. 50 die daily of Covid, and our goal is to ignore it…

The ‘when the sun doesn’t shine and wind doesn’t blow’ nonsense. (Most of us are in bed and need bugger all energy when the sun doesn’t shine, though it can be windy 24 hours per day.) This is South Australia’s big…

105 Covid deaths in NSW this week, a day to go. Australia should hit 10,000 deaths for the pandemic, next week. For the ‘just like the flu’ folk, that’s about two decades of flu deaths. In 2 years.

40 dead today. That was the national daily average until just a week or so ago. Now NSW alone is that number. Ffs people, look at what's going on. Give up the charade that normal life has returned. Save lives, maybe…

54 people have died of flu in Australia, in 2022. 7135 people have died of Covid. 'Just like the flu.'

Look at what the pandemic did to Australian population growth. No immigration. Some might cheer that on, but it's worth remembering our own population is ageing very badly, and without immigration there's nobody to do a…

Australia and electricity. Remove heads from anuses with a loud satisfying pop, and have a look. This is AEMO data, the regulator. - 100% of our electricity needs, Australia-wide, will be met by renewables at times…

Don’t you love NSW Government spin, ‘temporarily non-operational’. Meaning ‘the State is so infested with Covid we can’t operate.’ You have virtually zero protection from these new strains if you’ve been infected…

For those comfortable with the political line that vaccination was all we needed to do for Covid, here’s the reality. The vaccines were based on a strain of the virus that is 2 years’ old (and now extinct, the original…

Knock me over with a feather. Covid has been ‘hitting tens of thousands of Australians’ every day since Christmas time, this is not a new situation. Some leaders and health experts need to prepare for possible future…

What’s your own answer to this headline’s question?

Look at the explosion of death from late-2021. That’s when we said we’d ‘live with the virus’ (you can’t make this stuff up). Also note that bottom axis is the baseline, so while it looks like nobody is dying…

Last week a group of people at work were having a little private chuckle at me still wearing a mask. They're now all at home in bed with Covid. Workplaces are being decimated right now, literally dropping like flies.…

NSW Health has never stopped asking people to wear masks inside. Politicians have said we don’t have to. About 99% of people are listening to the politicians, and about 1% to NSW Health. If you’re not wearing a mask,…

NSW Health has been saying this for months. No government backing, so the Chief Health Officer is reduced to begging us all to do it. Ridiculous, and not working, I barely see a single person in a mask every day. And…

Multiple people have said to me that there wouldn't be backing for stronger Covid measures, because the experience of too many has been 'mild'. A few things I'd say about that: 1) most obviously, as I've posted about…

So Australia can prepare itself. Already happening here.

There are massive solar and wind farms near Wellington, from a distance you think it must be some bluey-silver crop, like lavender. Companies from around the world have been queuing for years to try to get these…

Driving through the Australian countryside again yesterday, I think we’re blinded by too many landscape paintings. The thing that should jump out screaming at us (I think), is that there’s nothing in it. Trees here and…

I learned this from the Australian biologist Tim Low. Which of these two locations has the greatest biodiversity? The city, or the bush? Answer: the city. Hands down. The bush is a wasteland, created by agriculture. I…

Only 33 dead listed yesterday, in NSW, about a big classroom full of kids. ‘Tis but a scratch.

My dad and his friends emigrated to Australia at the start of the 1950s. They were part of that big wave of post-war immigration, that gave Australia the hugest rush of European culture and energy, after the war. They…

The equivalent of ‘vaccines will end the pandemic’, for floods, is ‘levees and higher dam walls will stop floods’. They won’t, look at Lismore. Its flood levees are nearly 11 metres high. It makes no difference for a…

The true 'bludgers' in Australia are the entitled, lazy business community. Many having done almost nothing themselves to fight Covid in this pandemic except rort JobKeeper, they now say they 'can't retreat'. Retreat…

Spend 5 minutes on this, from last night’s Project. Firstly to see the astonishingly embarrassing performance from the representative of Australian business. And secondly to see Steve Price, who I would not agree with…

I'm curious how many are aware of the difference between public health and medicine? They're different fields, staffed by different people, but so often I see people assume medical doctors and hospitals are responsible…

Another 36 dead yesterday. Over 2000 in hospital. This is just NSW. Our leaders' (and our) response? Nothing.

Australia’s Covid deaths include 632 people aged 20 to 59, and 18 children and adolescents.

For those struggling with understanding that Covid isn't a health problem (though it's that too). It's smashing the economy as fast as it's maiming and killing people. 776,000 Australians worked fewer hours in June due…

National Cabinet will discuss whether to keep emergency payments for casual workers with Covid. A quiz, will they: A. keep the disaster payments, or B. ‘fix’ it by letting people who are sick with Covid go to work,…

Australia currently averaging over 54 Covid deaths per day. And as you can see, it’s still going up, we’ve been slaughtering since well before Christmas. Some say Australians won’t tolerate actions like masks again. But…

Earlier in the year the let it rip Queensland Chief Health Officer assured Australia that mass infections were creating a 'wall of immunity', which would lead to Covid fading away. Nick Coatsworth said the same. How…

So, ask yourself what Scotty’s plan for leadership of Australia was longer term. Quite something.

Listened to a Sydney nurse describe the total exhaustion at work, and how it's not eased up all year, despite talk of 'waves'. Many leaving the profession. And as you can see from the Great Leader, it's all going to get…

We wash ourselves a lot in Australia. More than any other country I think. Interesting to wonder why. Also I was on the Levis webpage today and it recommended washing your denim jeans only every 10 years? How does that…

If you work in any of these jobs or industries, under workers’ compensation law in NSW you don’t have to prove you caught Covid at work. Your employer has to prove you didn‘t.

It amazes me that people believe the story that goes: ‘Australia was locked down for 2 years, and now it’s opening up’. Australia has been open for most of the pandemic, and NOW it’s shutting down, with infection. Also,…

A solar panel is installed in Australia every 44 seconds. We easily lead the world in household solar, more than 20% greater than other heavyweights like Japan and Germany. Just look at the graph, the growth (yellow is…

There was a time when these numbers would have outraged Australians. The reason it doesn't now is that they're being deliberately led to not care. Groups are always led, whether it's a committee or a society. They…

506 people have died of Covid in the past week, in Australia. This is what 500 people looks like.

Those who think Covid isn’t an intrinsically political thing can explain these photos, I’m sure. Social behaviour is led, and you can see very clearly here who led Australians to ignore basics like masking.

Australians haven’t been wearing masks since before the election. And again, you have to wonder why that might be. But you won’t need to wonder too hard.

That 'minimum demand' note on the graph is another way to counter the myths of 'baseload power'. Australia is swimming in home-grown electricity, growing exponentially, and at that minimum point the grid itself will…

Some people still cling to the idea that Australian Aborigines were primitives. But you won't find any other 'primitive' people whose cultures or civilisations lasted more than a few thousand years. You won't find any…

In the past 2 days, more than 3 times as many people were infected with Covid in Australia as were infected in all of 2020. About 120 of these people will die.

With Covid, you're infectious for up to 2 weeks. (Why them letting you go back to work after 7 days is a joke.) Monkeypox is infectious for 4-10 weeks. Buckle up.…

On radio today they were discussing 'Australia's greatest ever lolly'. Chocolate bars were included, and plenty of people saying the disappearance of the Polly Waffle is a national disgrace. I'm not really much of a…

This is such a brilliant article about how the UK is literally falling apart. All because of simple political beliefs of the ruling party that are just empirically wrong. The same beliefs the ex-government here had and…

Did you know that, well before the pandemic (2015), about 1 in 7 Australian girls aged 12-17 had contemplated suicide, and about 1 in 20 had actually tried to kill themselves? What did the people now making lots of…

547 people were killed by Covid this week, in Australia. Nearly 160,000 were infected.

“Such a lack of transparency is indicative of a lack of respect for the institutions of government and for the general public who have a right to know how power is allocated.” I criticised this government for years, not…

Thanks to @[585851453:2048:Adrian] for this great piece on why Australia is the canary in the global coal mine.

Novated leases are a massive government subsidy to petrol and diesel vehicles. Good to see them under the spotlight, so we can finally start to get affordable full-electric vehicles in Australia. We have 3 decades of…

And this happened despite 30 years of a federal government running resistance to renewables on behalf of big donors in the fossil fuel industry. Australians never subscribed to the economic hoo-ha they were peddling,…

Paul Keating recently described the UK as ‘an old theme park sliding into the Atlantic’. That’s genius wit. As is this video, watch and ponder that the NSW and previous federal governments here copied everything the UK…

Australia’s birth rate is only 1.66 babies per woman, well below the 2.1 needed to maintain the population without immigration. And in decline for the past 60 years. Now we can’t even get visa workers to come here. It…

Today Australia reaches 10 million Covid infections (officially known, in reality there may be at least twice that number). Nearly all of those have happened in the past 8 months. More than 13,000 Australians have died…

By global standards, Australian homes are absolute rubbish in terms of energy efficiency. Like our car fleet. For the same reason, property developers lobby relentlessly to prevent higher standards, and the fossil fuel…

Have a look at the comparison of what it costs to install good quality solar here, and in the UK and US. I saw a UK news report say a heat pump there costs the equivalent of $17,000 Australian dollars, madness.…

Excellent run-down. New petrol and diesel vehicles will quickly become stranded assets. Fuel prices are about to climb quickly again, OPEC is planning to cut supply to boost prices and profits to themselves. And the…

An estimated 110 trillion (!) tonnes of ice is forecast to melt on the Greenland ice sheet, even if we could stop accelerated global warming tomorrow. It’s already too late. To put that in perspective, that’s enough to…

This is the KIA EV6. Mid-sized family electric car. Drive one of these next to a Porsche or Ferrari at the traffic lights, or any muscle car, and it’ll smoke them, you can watch them in the rear-view mirror as you drive…

John Birmingham, Australian novelist, at his brilliant, witty best. About the Stage 3 tax cuts.

Australian taxpayers gave Qantas over $2.5 billion during Covid lockdowns. Qantas used the money to sack thousands of staff. Meantime the CEO bought an enormous mansion on Sydney Harbour, and still pockets annual…

In the pandemic Australia has sacked over 40,000 of the smart people who do this sort of work. Meantime TAFE will again be free, to fund the desperate shortage of tradies, a shortage that’s mostly an already bloated…

Like I say, a wonder of engineering. We’ve got used to them in Australia as air conditioners, but they’re even more important as heaters. Nothing else reaches even 100% efficiency, these can get up to 1000% efficient.

Australian data. That’s thousands and thousands of lost years of life. Across a wide range of ages.

Those who say coal and oil are cheaper energy always leave out the part about the Australian taxpayer subsidising those industries to the tune of over $11 billion per year. Even with those subsidies they're still way…

The deadliest month of the pandemic to date in Australia was the one just past, August. About 2000 people died, 500 per week. You wouldn't know it. And that's the plan. During this same month National Cabinet voted to…

Covid sickness in workplaces is costing Australia over $800 million per day.

If you lower the speed limit on busy roads, traffic as a whole flows much faster. Going slower actually makes you go faster. Speed limits are mostly designed to smooth the flow of traffic. My experience on the road…

Because the NSW Government is more likely to open a casino than give you Covid information, here are the two key documents if you have Covid or somebody close to you does. Some of this information may save your life. If…

Australia’s oldest man, who exercised every day and lived without smoking, drinking or gambling, has died at the age of 110, after contracting Covid-19. I'm sure the government would either say he should have been…

We always follow the UK. They’ve announced the end of the pandemic about 7 times. Australia has just been saying the same. How many cycles of this bullshit are we up for?

Because we mistake weather for climate, every cooler shift like we’re experiencing now in the East can make us think global warming is overstated. But yesterday was actually the hottest ever recorded day in Australia,…

Australia's head of State should be...Australia. As it is for Aboriginal Australians. Not a person, the land itself. That's very difficult to do, because for us land is an inert thing, a 'resource'. But it's the cradle…

Australian dams are overflowing, dams in the US are dry (as ours were only a handful of years ago, and will be again). The problem with dams I think is that they remove water from the landscape itself, and treat it like…

Crocodile Dundee is like the Frank Sinatra or Elvis of the Australian landscape. The whitefella substitute for the culture we didn’t understand and mostly destroyed. Elvis and Frank mined black music heavily, and became…

I described AFL to a Melbourne friend as ‘a bunch of Myer models scrambling around on the ground trying to pick up a ball.’ She asked if ‘Rugby League is that game where you throw the ball backwards to try to go…

Sydney was robbed, I counted a few thousand knock-ons from Geelong, and even more offsides. Actually I tried to watch it, but kicking seems about the only skill in the game. I watched Bargain Hunt instead.

Australian vehicles use about 40 olympic swimming pools of fuel every day. Over 90% of that fuel is imported. That’s almost a billion dollars per week, going offshore. When the vehicle fleet shifts to electric, all of…

I post about changes to energy because what’s really happening out there should amaze people. And help explain why I say the change will be fast and brutal, much much faster than people are thinking. Some examples: -…

What is peoples' answer to this? Lots of talk always about the 'vulnerable' to Covid (really all of us, but let's run with it to indulge the stupidity). How are 'the vulnerable' (hundreds and hundreds of thousands of…

Because governments now suppress this information to once per week, here's this week, in NSW. 69 people died last week, if you missed that one. 82 this week. Worse than last week. On the same day the NSW Premier will…

National Cabinet did it today. People with Covid are now free to walk among us, whenever they like. Cabinet justified it by saying we have to stop treating Covid differently to other infectious diseases. But now we…

Brendan is one of the leading pandemic authorities in the world. We need to listen a lot more to people like him. He’s 100% right that ‘Australians think it’s over’. And they think it’s over mostly because the previous…

A critically important thing to remember after this week’s National Cabinet meeting is that we didn’t stop isolation of Covid cases. We stopped public health orders doing that. It’s still the legal responsibility of…

This is the Covid story we’re all about to live. All existing vaccines lose effectiveness within 5 months. This isn’t unusual, your annual flu shot is the same, we’re saved by flu disappearing over Spring and Summer,…

There are already nearly 60,000 people in NSW with Long Covid. Waiting lists to see medical expertise about it are already over a year long. And you should know, there is no real medical expertise on what to do about…

An Australian ICU nurse was so angry at the minimising Covid crap in her local newspaper, she posted a powerful counter to it. I’ve included it all here, it’s a quick and enlightening (I hope for some) read. We should…

Saul Griffiths is on a mission to electrify everything. Which is what we need to do if we’re not all going to be incinerated by climate change. And we have to do it fast. He’s an engineer, and amongst other things he’s…

Great article showing the brutally fast changes underway. This was Australia’s newest coal-fired plant, and remember many were calling for us to build even more. It’s gone belly up, entirely for economic reasons. None…

If you didn’t see this last night, I highly recommend you watch it on iView. Griffith in NSW is collapsing. And everywhere else will follow. What Covid did is expose a dark secret. Slavery never ended, we just called it…

Peter Andrews' work says the same thing. You have to store the water in the soil, not in dams. I suspect this is also why Australia doesn't really have big rivers like other continents do. The water doesn't flow out to…

Here’s today’s quiz. Who was actually running the country since the mid-1990s? This should as much as anything make Australians determined to electrify everything, to give a giant middle finger to the people who did and…

Australian researchers study soap bubbles to design the most efficient way to dig an open-cut mine. Our lives would be almost infinitely more amazing if we ran societies on smart, and not on the social conformity of the…

These are neutralisation assays, tests done to show how our antibodies (the main part of our immune systems that fight infection) respond to different viruses. These are people who have had 3 doses of vaccine, and a…

All grandstanding for the NSW election. I doubt this project will ever happen.

It’s not funny, but it made me laugh, that we’re this dumb. Over 400 infected on board this cruise, and counting. Heading to Brisbane.

The judge told the jurors at least 17 times not to 'do their own research'. A classic example of institutional expertise up against populist dimwits. The dimwits won, again.…

Smart thinking. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/commentisfree/2022/oct/31/raising-warragamba-dam-probably-cant-stop-floods-theres-a-simpler-solution-closer-to-home

Out of interest I rang the local Mitsubishi dealer to ask what the waiting time is now on the Outlander hybrid. 13 to 14 months. The reason for this (which the salesperson didn't tell me, but I already knew) is…

This is Tesla’s car-making plant in Shanghai. It had the capacity to roll out 750,000 Teslas per year. They’ve just upgraded that to make it 1.1 million per year. It’ll reduce waiting times in Australia significantly,…

Australia is swimming in solar-generated energy from our own rooftops. More than twice what any other country produces, per person. The big jump in electricity prices is caused by the previous government not building…

I see very little evidence anybody cares. It's a defining moment in Australian society, deliberately infecting our children. Over and over, not just once. Our society may not survive it, the health costs alone could be…

For background on why your wallet is bleeding at the petrol pump, OPEC is the cartel of oil producing countries that have held the world to ransom for the past century. If we electrify everything, the tens of billions…

Australia has only 44 years left of gas in reserves, at current rate of consumption. And gas is considered the ‘transition’ fuel. It’s an urgent thing.

I enjoyed this debacle. Only one house made any real money, and it turns out illegally, through dummy bidding. Huge numbers of Australians can’t even afford a roof over their heads, which makes the show incredibly…

Something not often mentioned by the ‘when the sun doesn’t shine and wind doesn’t blow’ energy folk is firstly that we obviously still manage to have water when it isn’t raining. We use storage. But the big sleeper here…

Another way to look at Australia’s problems, through the lens of engineering. The largest countries in the world graduate more engineers every year than Australia graduates students in ALL fields. Yes they’re much…

The next 2-3 years are looking grim for Australian households. Worse than the 1990s recession. All because the Reserve Bank, which believes the economy is a thing, is raising interest rates to stop inflation, by making…

Covid cases up 45% in NSW this week. Testing of course way down after the government stopped requiring it, so that’s cases up 45% even with reduced testing. The test positivity rate is a measure of how many positives…

What struck me again in the middle of the Bathurst floods yesterday is how destructive ‘the economy’ is. A sensible society would have looked at that river yesterday and said ‘I think people should take a day off, this…

Cooking with gas is responsible for up to 12% of childhood asthma cases in Australia. A child living in a gas-cooking household faces a similar risk of asthma to one living with smokers.

Scotland just blew up its last coal-fired power plant. (Check the great video from the World Economic Forum.) It will produce almost 100% of its electricty with renewables by the end of this year. Like I say, this…

Covid cases up another 60% in NSW this week (more than 20,000). Hospital admissions up another 35%. Another 24 dead.

NSW Health has never stopped telling us to wear masks and avoid crowds. That’s never stopped being the medical advice. Bizarrely, people are basing their own health and that of their family and friends on the advice of…

38 Australians died on MH17. 39 people died of Covid in NSW, just last week.

Brilliantly simple. We could have been doing this for the past 20 years and energy would be as good as free right now for Australians.…

Look at what BP is doing up north. 26 gigawatts of wind and solar power, for use in Australia and Asia. That's enough to power a third of Australia. Ignore the rubbish in the news, look at what's really happening. And…

Used NorthConnex for the first time not long ago. Brilliant road, between Lithgow and the Central Coast now you can avoid every Sydney non-freeway street. But boy you pay for it. $25 each way.

10GB of mobile data—less than one week’s consumption for many Australians today—is more data than any Australian mobile network transmitted in the entire twelve months of the year 2000.

I notice SKY News and other Murdoch neanderthals continue to bash Tim Flannery, for saying we'll never fill our dams again. The thing is, he never said it. The prime idiot Andrew Bolt put the words in his mouth.…

Today the 16,000th Australian died of Covid. Nearly all of them died after we said Covid was 'over'.

Nobody has ever been able to explain to me why if you want to be an architect or nurse or teacher or engineer in Australia, or any job that needs university training, you have to pay for your own training. But if you're…

I suspect many people believe vaccination protects them from getting Covid. I’ve circled in red the effectiveness of the vaccines in stopping transmission, after 6 months, which is about the last time most Australians…

The Novavax Covid vaccine was slow to arrive in Australia, but it seems to outperform all of the other vaccines by a long margin. I posted this week how the efficacy of the AZ and Pfizer/Moderna vaccines, which most of…

Covid cases up 20% again in NSW this week. (Of course most people aren't testing now, so it's oodles more than that.) Hospitalisations up 12%. The 'short and sharp peak' National Cabinet offered us as a fairy tale for a…

Before Christmas Australia may cap the price of coal, to keep electricity prices down. Coal and gas companies are making huge windfall profits on the back of exorbitant international prices. This could be very bad news…

Let's go Australia.

So many people I know now are getting 'mystery' infections. Often the mystery is not the infection itself, which might be chicken pox or glandular fever, but more that they're getting them with no obvious cause. The…

Neil Diamond retired from performing 5 years ago when he developed Parkinson’s Disease. He has such incredible songs, underrated masterpieces of pop. I find this clip of him at a musical opening about him in New York…

Amazing numbers of Australians haven’t vaccinated their kids against Covid. Politicians told them the disease is ‘mild’ in children. I’m glad my kids are in the right-hand far column, and not the left.

Why Australia should already be by far the richest country in the world per person, but isn't. See that tiny proportion of world oil production that Norway has? It turned that into a sovereign wealth fund worth about $2…

This is Australia. Right now. Not a good time to be old. But if it helps, if we keep letting Covid spread at will, none of the rest of us will live to old age anyway.

South Australia today. Renewables are providing way above what the State needs, for electricity. 112%. The wholesale price is negative i.e. they’ll pay you to use it.

Between 1 in 50 and 1 in 25 Australians currently have Covid. With Christmas gatherings approaching.

There are only a handful of ways to get rich. You can inherit a lot of money, or win the lottery (both very rare). Or invent something (a song, a car…) that is so popular that millions buy it. The hardest road is to…

The NSW Government reported this week that the Covid wave has peaked, because hospital numbers have levelled off. Hospital admissions for Covid are up 11% this week. It's one more lie to add to the collection. I'm…

Elon Musk is a wally, but one thing I admire about him is that he actually builds things. Good, innovative things, like the Powerwall 2. And satellite broadband, cars and trucks, rockets, solar roof tiles etc. All…

A new twist on batteries today. One big government announcement, and one change coming. Both will have a profound impact on the decision whether or not to own a battery. Today the government announced the building of 8…

This is such an exciting, revolutionary achievement, and spoiled in Australia by years of spin by politicians in the pockets of energy companies. I don’t think people have really registered yet what it will mean to be…

Power stations in NSW will be replaced by renewable energy zones (REZ). Really worth watching this short vid to see what's planned, and how quickly. For example the Central West-Orana zone will be first, and will be…

Blocking solar farms because they ruin the view. The view is a landscape cleared and trashed by farming, which these same farmers and local councils have presided over for more than 2 centuries. And we laugh at people…

Just a handful of comments on an article The Australian released saying sales of electric vehicles have tripled. Imagine being part of this community of fruit loops.

The average Australian spends $163 a month on storage?

If you know governance and politics, this has been evident since the beginning of the pandemic. NSW’s strategy is not based on public health advice, it’s based on trying to keep the economy open. That approach has…

“Wayne Errington and I discovered that early on members of federal cabinet were arguing for a Donald Trump style laissez-faire approach to the virus.” Governance is my job. People think I have a personal gripe with…

There are times I can see why fraudsters make so much money. People are extraordinarily gullible. For example, did anybody notice in this mask decision, that not one workplace is covered by it? That not one employer…

NSW pandemic strategy. Covid hide-and-seek.

I still remember early last year people sceptical about NZ’s approach. It’s still working, superb. Meanwhile NSW is trying to copy the US and UK. Is it really that hard to understand that if you keep the virus out of…

Makes me so angry. Have been trying for nearly a year to get the message across that NSW is following the approach of the US and UK, both complete catastrophes. And I think if you surveyed NSW people they’d…

A reminder that NSW is using the UK strategy, for Covid.

I think we need wide education in political language, the Greeks called it ‘rhetoric’, it was a cornerstone of their education. For example yesterday the acting Premier was asked about risks to regional NSW from Sydney…

During the pandemic, Australians still fly overseas in the tens of thousands, and then sit at the other end and moan about not being able to come back immediately. Travel was the petrol that started this pandemic, and…

At least the US parliament was open. Do Australians remember that our own PM closed parliament completely for much of 2020, and a hand-picked committee of gas industry cronies decided Australia’s post-Covid future? The…

One of our elected LNP representatives. Apparently 40% of Australians would vote for Trump. Maybe some positivity would fix it.

“...to be perfectly frank at the moment I really want the community focused on achieving no community transmission," Dr Chant said. Meanwhile the Treasurer opines about masks, an area in which he has zero expertise.…

The debates about lockdown or not to lockdown. Firstly, there is no such thing as ‘lockdown’, it’s not a public health concept. And notice that when somewhere won’t use strong restrictions, like NSW, that only works if…

The ABS measures the stringency of each State’s public health response, and the corresponding economic performance, across the whole pandemic. With the exception of Victoria because of its super spreader outbreak, NSW…

I’ve said a lot here that ScoMo is Trump-lite. People think I just have it out for him. He’s the only serious world leader who hasn’t condemned the coup attempt in Washington. His cabinet and backbench are in the news…

Crush and kill. If your kids get nits, you don’t ‘live with’ the nits. You kill them. It’s staggering to me that NSW, the most closed State with the worst economic numbers and the only State with circulating virus, is…

Parler is an extremist social media group, where Trump went when Twitter banned him. Matt Canavan is a federal LNP Senator. How much evidence will it take for Australians to recognise that they haven’t elected a…

People understand that our climate change policy is purely about keeping the Coalition from breaking. If they take that same perspective to NSW for Covid now, they’ll see the same thing. NSW’s Covid strategy is designed…

Short piece from the Lancet today which every person in NSW could learn something from. Confirming again that when you get a rise in Covid infections, you must smash them immediately. Not ‘live with’ them. And that…

George has just had a bad case of Covid himself, which his daughter brought home from primary school. George looks for a pandemic plan, but Economy governments never had one. Ask somebody to show you Australia’s…

Once again the men in the NSW Cabinet on the take from big industries like tourism, gambling, booze and real estate, are desperate to smash the public health restrictions open. Restrictions should be under the control…

ScoMo and his government did this with RoboDebt. Nobody in trouble over it, nobody even really said sorry. And their popularity has gone up, showing Australians’ understanding of politics is 3-word slogans.

In every other State this would prompt further restrictions. Not because they’re over-anxious, but because you can’t detect asymptomatic infection with testing, if you’re testing people with symptoms only, as NSW is…

Everyone except NSW seems consistent to me, they have zero Covid. Most of them for months and months. Like NZ. As always, just waiting for NSW to stop playing chicken with the virus.

Populism is when slogans beat reality. The 'adversity' Gladys faced was being found out for blatant and proven corruption, which she was apparently forgiven for because a dastardly man broke her heart. Then she ran the…

Vaccines won't end this, your strategy will determine your long-term success. Even in the medium term NSW hasn't been as successful as any other State. The only strategy that works is Zero Covid. (NSW is emulating the…

Boris Johnson did this. (Corpses are now overflowing the morgues.) You know why NSW people aren't eating out or travelling as much? Because there's a lethal virus out there. Get rid of the lethal virus Gladys, it'll fix…

Re-posting this because the news is full of stories of Australians stranded overseas. Sure some of these people have legitimate reasons for being OS in the middle of a pandemic. But look at the numbers - they tried to…

Try as they might, the NSW Government cannot get higher testing numbers in W and SW Sydney. (Note this is actually a daily testing figure of only about 11,000, 6,000 are carried forward from yesterday.) There are all…

Greg is another leading Australian public health expert. You won’t get ScoMo or Gladys to this day to admit they were wrong about eliminating Covid. They told us all it was impossible. They said that because they didn’t…

Superb work from the ABC here, the entire pandemic in Australia in words and graphs. You can see very clearly here that Victoria’s big outbreak was due to spread into the areas where essential workers live. The people…

I live in an electorate that gets many of these vote-buying grants. The local members spend most days publicising more new spending. Makes them look like great members. It’s corruption. The Blue Mountains didn’t get one…

Defeating a lethal disease is now against our way of life, apparently. Has there been a bigger fuckwit in Australian history than Tony?

For those who think NSW is doing the best Covid job, because (it says) it's protecting its economy as well as fighting the virus, more disappointment I'm afraid. Still running almost dead-last economically. There's no…

Over half of Australians currently saying they won’t get a vaccination when it becomes available. Trump should move here and run for PM, he’d probably win.

In which Tony moans about 'orderly queues' as being anti-Australian. The same man who said the greatest risk to Australia was immigrants not forming orderly queues. I call Australia Day Australica Day, because I think…

I think it's important to remember that our PM told us all last year that Covid couldn't be eliminated. Our Premier still says it, still trots out the 'live with the virus' nonsense, said it just this morning, again.…

Meanwhile in Australica, the bastard child of Australia + America, the Prime Spinmeister continues to add layers of meaningless patriotic drivel over total inaction on any important issues.

Good on the doctors for seeing that our PM and Premier are focused on the economy (which doesn’t exist), more than they are on beating the virus. There have been 2 ‘roadmaps’ out of the pandemic now, from National…

The super casual approach many Australians are taking to Covid is disturbing. People happily organising and attending social gatherings with little protection, just because the government says it’s ok. The UK government…

Australia’s 2 greatest enemies in this pandemic are the federal LNP and NSW government. Both have spent the whole pandemic trying to force Australia to use the UK approach to the virus. Both have taken credit for…

How do those who support the NSW Government and Gladys possibly justify that only 1% of the $177 million of bushfire relief money went to Labor electorates? And that the Blue Mountains electorate (Labor), that had the…

The national strategy for Covid *is* elimination. Agreed by National Cabinet in July 2020. Do people need any clearer proof that NSW (this is the Deputy Premier) isn't following it?

The PM said today we can’t run the Australian economy using ‘taxpayer’s money’. Curious what people think the circled word below means?

The rest of the developed world is trying to use vaccines to escape this pandemic quickly. They won't succeed. A disgraceful collapse of international public health processes, driven by fools who think we live in…

Australia's greatest Covid risk is hotel quarantine. To say it again, who is responsible for quarantine in Australia? The federal government. Why are States doing it, through hotels? Because ScoMo is too lazy to do it.…

Radio host today, asks why Australians are so ‘compliant’ with health orders? Bizarre, how collective action is now seen as compliance. The victory of those who want to turn citizens into consumers, and countries into…

The reason the PM is reluctant to act against the likes of Craig Kelly is that he hoovers up all the Trumpians here in Australia, to vote for the LNP. That vote is significant, otherwise the PM would just cut him loose.…

I think it’s fair to say that in Australia, university work is still considered some sort of waffle. Tradies are the heroes, they do ‘real work’. Ideas are the source of all wealth.

I wonder if Australians will join the dots to figure out why we don’t make the top tier as a democracy? NZ does.

NSW about to rollout 'Dine and Discover', free vouchers for food and entertainment. To prime the economy. This is Rishi Sunak, Treasurer to the UK, who rolled out 'Eat out to Help Out' in the UK, similar scheme, last…

Brendan Murphy, main adviser to government at the start of the pandemic, in March 2020. The Brits started the pandemic saying they’d just let everybody get infected with a lethal virus, to make them immune. They were an…

Grants finally being exposed as the biggest mechanism of outright corruption in politics. Please people, corruption matters. If it doesn't matter to you, go and live under Trump in the US. Or Bolsonaro in Brazil.…

The Victorian lockdown will be the main virus story today. But the fact NSW is currently looking for 7000 people who travelled to Victoria is just another reminder how mobile our society now is, and the dangers of that…

I’m more bothered that so many Australians are so pleased with his handling. He hasn’t handled anything.

Very soon you'll be given vouchers to use in restaurants, cafes etc. The government will tell you it's about stimulus for a damaged dining and entertainment industry. It's nothing of the sort - they could give…

Australians returning from overseas in the pandemic. A clear public sense that NSW is doing the ‘heavy lifting’, taking more than its share of the arrivals. But the data tells a different story. Very little difference…

By the way people, you may notice if you try to share news from papers and other sources on FB now, it won’t appear in Australia. Due to the government’s battle on Rupert’s behalf to shut down Google and Facebook in…

It will irritate my rusted-on LNP voting friends no doubt, but the list of ways that party is destroying this country is growing to be very long. And no, I don't give a flying fig about the ALP either. I care about…

A prominent Australian woman said this today. Thoughts? To me it defines feminism as the search for some sort of validation by men. "Feminism: the centuries old fight by one half of the human race to be taken seriously…

It’s been a week when the human scum leading the country revealed their true skill. Screwing people. Young women and the unemployed - anybody young really. A truly disgusting $3 something extra per day for the…

Australians have amassed over $200 billion in savings during the pandemic. Global warming gases have plummeted. Crime has collapsed. Cities have their cleanest air in decades. Hundreds of thousands were lifted out of…

Beautiful graph, showing that the pandemic allowed hundreds of thousands of Australians to move out of poverty for the first time. About to be reversed, because the government and the many who support them think if you…

Consent is back in the news. I think it will always be back in the news, because it’s the wrong concept to solve problems with sexual assault. It’s obvious that nobody should have unwanted intimacy. But that’s what love…

Australia needs to vaccinate more than 200,000 people per day to meet its target of the population jabbed by October. So far it‘s barely managing 2000 a day. The federal government is in charge right now. That sort of…

The data I shared which showed NSW, despite its rhetoric, actually has the *most* restrictive Covid measures of all the States, is also matched by global data. The countries that made the greatest noise about 'opening…

Can a business exist without customers? No. Can customers exist without a business? Yes. There's the simple answer to the economic debates of today. There aren't businesses and customers. There are just customers.…

This is Australia, people. PAY ATTENTION. Serious suggestions from NSW to suppress Covid case numbers, to facilitate border openings.

In countries with voluntary voting, the main way parties win is by stopping people voting who will vote against them. Voter suppression. An art form in the US, but also in much of the rest of the world. Conservatives in…

A story of 2 pictures. In 1996 John Howard came to power. From that date union membership collapsed. A big part of why is people felt well off (and gave Howard the credit). The other picture tells the real story. Howard…

Why don't we question what the 'culture' of an organisation even means? How people relate to each other? People are at work to work, that's how they relate to each other. A toxic organisation is one that can't do its…

So fed up with this government. If the tourism industry and airlines are struggling, print some money and give it to them. Don’t encourage millions of Australians back into circulation with a pandemic still active, I…

Can anybody remember *one* nice thing NSW has said about any other State, in this pandemic? States with both better economic and pandemic numbers than NSW (same thing), constantly criticised and lectured by Gladys and…

Paul is a former very senior Canberra official.

Australia (and much of the developed world) had pretty much full employment for 30 years after the war. Then in the 1980s unemployment took off. At exactly the time the 'market' and the 'Economy' replaced 'society' in…

These marches are now nearly half a century old in Australia. The problem with protests for me is that I don't think they're anything really collective at all. They're a space for people to express their *individual*…

Some interesting stats from the 2019 federal election in Australia, over a few posts. Firstly on gender. There is a trend over time to more women abandoning the LNP. It's not significant enough to change election…

"Don't be too concerned because you are tense and cannot relax. The very act of being prepared to accept your tenseness relaxes your mind, and relaxation of body gradually follows. You don't have to strive for…

77% of sexual assaults in Australia are committed by people known to the victim. About 35% of these are a member of the same family. The other 65% include ex-partners and de facto relationships. As with domestic…

Yes. This is thinking. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/mar/20/more-laws-are-not-the-answer-the-case-for-restorative-justice-to-address-sexual-assault

Australians love dams. Mostly because they see water as something only for human use, ignoring its complex role in the landscape. They also think they drought-proof places, which is about as smart as thinking you'd be…

This should be tremendous for the Economy. All of the houses developers built below the 100-year flood line in Western Sydney, after special deals from the NSW Government, and which are a big chunk of Australia's…

You hear the word 'development' a lot. Usually seen as a great thing, creates money and jobs etc. What it actually creates is millions of houses sitting on often prime land, unconnected to most services or social life.…

This may end up the most spectacular rorting in Australian history. To think the pink batts stimulus scheme had a Royal Commission. Really laughable.

The international community understands better than we do what genius the Australian and NZ response to Covid is. That genius was our institutions, not our governments. Expertise. Under assault in the rest of the world,…

This very famous book was one of the first to commit the gravest of Australian sins. Criticising its own country. Australia has a glass jaw when it comes to self-criticism. Horne on Australia: "It lives on other…

A lot of countries give you a feeling of human history, sometimes going back thousands of years. But Australia feels much older than that again, like geologically old. There's not much else about Australia that I…

How do we regain connection with our landscapes? By spending time in them, camping and bushwalking, or canyoning? To me that's actually the strongest demonstration of being separated from the landscape, paradoxically.…

The new Sydney ring roads feel fantastic because the contrast with the old traffic jams is so nice. But in the longer term they’ll be a disaster, moving in exactly the opposite direction to urban design worldwide. As…

'Location, location'. What sort of society turns basic shelter into an opportunity to make money? Not only do we have no understanding of how to live in our landscapes, we parcel them up into blocks and sell them at…

Did you know 99.9% of businesses in the US are small businesses? 94% in Australia. The ones mostly hammered by COVID, because small businesses nearly all fail inside 5 years even without a pandemic. This is why the…

Australians spend $60 billion a year on overseas travel. That's 10 times what the country spends on infrastructure, and about equal to what it spends on education. And nearly every cent of that money ends up overseas.…

Australia's vaccine rollout, said to be 'glacially' slow. Actually when you do the numbers we're rolling out as fast if not even faster than the UK and US did in their early stages, considered world leaders. Look at the…

ScoMo wanted to run the vaccine program as a lead-in to an early election, riding triumphantly to victory. Of course he completely stuffed it up. His only interest in the entire pandemic is how he can use it for his own…

The great Australian dream is to live on the coast. The ultimate lifestyle location. When I say Australians are basically still tourists in their own country, this is what I mean. This vast land with its spectacular…

NSW will need to vaccinate at least 250,000 people *per week* to meet the October timeline for people to get even one dose. 60,000 per week at this hub will be added to jabs at GPs, pharmacies etc. A long way short of…

The most muscular Strayanism is taking your 4WD and going bush. Alongside a sort of stamp collecting, where the number of places you've been is a measure of how Strayan you are. As if furiously collecting 'sights'…

Bushmen like the fictional Dundee I think are Australia's way of romanticising the chasm they all feel but rarely admit to, between themselves and the country they're living in. The Dundee archetype plays on that deeply…

The famous Australian 'Bell Bird'. The Bell Miner, technically. The greatest bully in the Australian bush. Birds sing to create territory, and Bell Birds sing without a pause, all day. A forest where you can hear bell…

Very difficult to talk about vaccines without triggering the anti-vaxxers or New Age wellness "just strengthen your immune system" fruit loops. But I'm wavering on this AZ vaccine, for a variety of reasons. A longish…

The Australian 'bush'. What does that even mean? Somewhere we don't have a town or city, usually. Sometimes we create a national park out of it. A piece of 'bush' like in this picture, is usually a landscape falling…

Yes, all true, ScoMo is useless. But let's flip this. Australia already defeated Covid. The worldwide chest beating about speed of vaccination now is driven by the framework of the idiot countries who *didn't* control…

Know that fairy tale, about how efficient the private sector is? Here it is in a picture. In a booming economy, Australian business investment has plummeted for over a decade. Sucking profits off to enrich (often…

NSW the only State not to do this. What possible justification can people provide for not monitoring average speed? Been in place for trucks for years. The car lobby will suggest ‘driving to the conditions’ (i.e. using…

Service industries are now almost 80% of the Australian Economy. Do people remember that 'service' is the old word used to describe the work of servants? A person was 'in service' i.e. a servant, or slave. We've jazzed…

It's definitely true that ScoMo treated Christine Holgate disgracefully. But not because of her gender. Because she opposed his secret plan to privatise Australia Post, flushed out this week, in a report from Boston…

To be blunt about the vaccines, and risk. - right now governments and experts alike are saying the risks are tiny. This is true, for nearly all of us (in fact the risks are zero for most). - but it's absolutely not true…

Makes me almost physically ill listening to Australians planning their next OS holidays. Reminder: a pandemic isn't a minor inconvenience to your recreational lifestyle. It's an international tsunami of death.

Surely all those protestors can't be wrong? "...a new survey by The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age with research company Resolve Strategic, show that issues such as sexual harassment, assault and gender equity are…

Curious that something many attribute to a universal gender trait - toxic masculinity - at the same time as they argue gender is infinitely fluid - has such specific geographical outcomes? Similarly in NSW, DV up over…

The PM refuses to build a national quarantine centre. So virus keeps leaking out of hotels not built for quarantine. Very happy to do it for the past 25 years for refugees, tens of billions on that one, because it wins…

Another amazing Cassini shot of Saturn. Here's a stat. The distance from the inside of the rings to the outside of them is over 300,000km. That means Australia for example could be laid end-to-end at least 10 times…

Hands up who's for privatising Australian beaches?

Good old NSW, second last still on 'economic' performance, lagging well behind those dreadful lockdown States. It's almost like eliminating the virus fixes your Economy, hey, and 'living with the virus' screws it.

As a kid I still remember shops being closed both Saturday afternoons and Sundays. You needed to get cash out on a Friday to get you through the weekend. Partly this was the religious Sabbath still shaping society,…

The press here full of patronising expert advice to people about the total safety of being vaccinated with AZ. This is the clot data for the UK. 41 now dead. Look at the peak at that 50+ year age cut-off, said in…

Nails it, in every detail. NSW is the triumph of spin over substance that dominates federal government too.…

I want to challenge the idea that Australia is falling behind the rest of the world by being slow to vaccinate. Let's remember, there is effectively no Covid in Australia. We're not behind the rest of the world, we've…

From today (actually I think from 17 May in NSW) people aged 50+ can get an AZ jab. Lots of expertise in the news this morning telling everybody this is a 'safe' vaccine, and that the 'benefits outweigh the risks'. Now…

Science, the journal, saying what I've been saying: "Even a long wait for an alternative may be worth it if infections are low. In Norway, the risk of dying from TTS for women age 45 to 49 is equivalent to the risk of…

Here's some numbers to contextualise what I say about the AZ vaccine. Currently it causes about 2 clots for every 100,000 people vaccinated. That sounds tiny, right? About 16 million Australians are scheduled to get…

That question people ask, if you had a time machine, where would you go? Now I would choose Australia, before the First Fleet arrived. Something miraculous, unique in all the world, had happened here, and had been…

This is important. Contact tracing failed. It also failed to find the source of some of the outbreaks in NSW over Christmas. This means LUCK saved NSW, not great contact tracing. It keeps rolling the dice, and getting…

Up there with Daylight Saving for idiocy, for me. Way more people die of the smoke this causes than would ever be at risk from the fires. And now it turns out it's a waste of time anyway. Usually just red meat for the…

Common sense prevails. High efficacy, safe vaccines for Australians of all ages. Well done.

Da Vinci's Salvator Mundi is the most expensive painting ever sold, at $578 million. If it was found to be a fake, its value would drop to about a dollar, immediately, even if the copy was impossible to distinguish from…

Prue has a paid job on Australian TV. Which means at least some people think she's great. Be afraid.

Wisdom of the crowd. It's an actual, studied thing. In the right circumstances, a crowd is smarter than anybody in it. It's not what we usually call 'democracy'. In this case, the overwhelming crowd favourite is also…

Nearly a third of Australians say they won't get vaccinated. That's a disaster. Looking at the stats, offering older age groups a different vaccine would help a lot.

Until 1984, foreign ships containing suspected carriers of infectious disease had to disembark passengers at Sydney's quarantine station, seen here on North Head. Quarantine facilities were sold off or closed down at…

Zoffany's The Tribuna of the Uffizi. Hilarious story behind this one. He'd bankrupted himself investing in Cook's voyage to Australia, on which he was supposed to be a passenger. He pulled out. Being friends with the…

Haven't looked at the weather forecast for Lithgow for Wednesday. But this tells me it's going to be cloudy.…

When South Australia's power went out because a storm trashed transmission lines, dickheads like Canavan blamed it on renewables. Now a coal plant explodes plunging Queensland into blackout, what's to blame? Apparently,…

Racism, paternalism, pandemics. With an Ebola outbreak (for example), rich countries rush to lock those countries down to prevent the Ebola getting to us. Notice how with Covid, the exact opposite was done? Rich…

Thanks To Dave Roma for this shot. They're doing extensive renovations on the court house at the moment, I watch them every day. Another example of how technology is really morals wrapped up in materials. When you build…

One simple (and non-political) way to understand why Melbourne has needed to lock-down more than Sydney in the pandemic, is to look at how much movement occurs in each city. A city with more movement, means more people…

This from the TGA today, our main regulator for medicines. Stay with me, I know it might seem dry... "With the ongoing risk of COVID outbreaks in Australia and the potential for severe long-term effects or fatal…

Remember how lockdowns were going to destroy the Economy? Yeh, nah. Also, this link. Stopping the country has made it better, in almost every way. But we want the old 'normal' back. Bizarre.…

For more than a year we've had to listen to how smart NSW's approach to the pandemic has been, avoiding 'lockdown', to minimise disruption to the Economy. The actual costs show that to be nothing more than political…

Waleed's thinking is everything Australian culture has come to hate. Nuanced, researched, complex. Many Australians hate him for it, often the types whose banner of Straya-ness is putting a flag somewhere. It's hard to…

Workers in the US earn $10 less per hour today than the same job 40 years ago. Our current government aspires for Oz to follow this model. Look at the wage numbers in Australia if you think that's an exaggeration,…

After more than a year, people still not getting it. Elimination *is* still having a 'few cases' of Covid in the community. It's not eradication. What these economic thinkers mean is open right up, and contact trace…

This is a scandal of epic proportions. And yet this government continues to enjoy election-winning polling. Courts not only judged the Robodebt scheme unlawful, they were scathing in saying politicians who invented it…

I've held off commenting on the updated AZ vaccine advice. Obviously it makes me angry, that I missed a Pfizer dose by not waiting 2 more weeks, I thought they wouldn't budge. I told you so seems childish, but far out…

When we reach the point in Australia (and we will) when public voices call for us to infect children with Covid, so older folk can go on OS holidays with open borders, remember research like this. Showing that people…

Another extraordinary stuff-up. Should be worth some extra popularity points for ScoMo, on past history. Come on Australia, you’re much smarter than this.

The reality of Gladys' strategy that's no strategy of 'encouraging' people. Yesterday she asked people to avoid going out and mixing with others, while this outbreak is underway in Sydney. She was spotted last night at…

Gotta fight stupid wherever you see it. Australia and NZ *ARE* living with Covid. That's what all of our public health measures are for. Unsurprisingly one of the Bibles of the Economy crowd arguing to...well, it's not…

Imagining the NSW spin doctors having long, late nights, trying to find a way to rationalise locking down Sydney after spending a year vomiting nonsense about NSW not needing to do that sort of thing. Why you should…

The government public messaging seems to have missed this, so for information. If you've been in Greater Sydney (includes the Blue Mountains), or the Central Coast, Shellharbour or Wollongong since 10 June, you MUST…

Have a look at Sydney today - deserted. This is Sydney not 'locked down'. Same as being locked down, but takes even longer. You can either learn the specifics of this stuff, or just keep repeating the same promotional…

Sydney today, again. What the righteous and stupid call 'panic buying'. What happens when a fragile just-in-time supply chain meets a public planning to not live just-in-time, for a while.

900 people exposed to Covid at a Sydney hairdresser. You people with hair disgust me.

The Sydney outbreak.

It's not a cat, but stick with me. This idea of a 'proportionate' approach to the pandemic. A grown-up colouring game, one LGA at a time. NSW refuses to 'lock down' a whole area when there's a major outbreak. But all…

Remember the 'R number' from earlier in the pandemic"? An R less than 1 means a pandemic is under control. This is Sydney's R number for the past 5 days. I think many whose idea of thinking through the pandemic has been…

The NSW Government Covid strategy has arrived at its inevitable destination. A pandemic is a marathon, not a sprint. You sometimes win at gambling, in the short-term. You never do in the longer term. No amount of puff…

Here’s one for the people who have Australia love it or leave bumper stickers. A society that can’t replace its own population is a society in terminal decline. The only thing keeping Australia from becoming an aged…

Some fantastic work being done by data people in this pandemic. This site (think it's also available as a mobile app) will tell you where the nearest Covid cases are, and what the current restrictions are.…

Fascinating that we smashed flu last year - you can see its death spiral at the start of the big national lockdown in Feb-March 2020 - but that it continues to be flatlined into 2021. It's just non-existent. Despite NSW…

Australia’s 4-part plan released this week uses the same nonsense about the flu. We’re back where we started 18 months ago. We haven’t learned a single thing.

"We now know that the idea circulating early in the pandemic that kids are extremely unlikely to transmit the virus was more wishful thinking than good science." Some of us knew that last year. And it's not just…

“The key point here is not to think about the economic costs over a period of a couple of weeks, large as they are, but rather to consider the costs over a period of months if community transmission continues.”…

We blame politicians for most of the problems we see, that are actually caused by us. For example, this pair of dimwits is the top-rating radio show in Australia. Meaning millions find them good to listen to. The…

I do love that there's a 'Bogan' Shire in Oz. And no, it isn't Lithgow. https://www.bogan.nsw.gov.au/

A cynic would say that was always the intention anyway. A non-cynic would say, how incompetent does the NSW government have to be, for people to stop voting for them? Maybe Covid slaughtering a few members of people's…

Hopefully Gladys rules out letting Covid rip today. Some in her Cabinet are desperate to, and have been the whole pandemic. A reminder to people what happened in India when the Delta variant was allowed to run free. NSW…

Look at that blue line. The childish rubbish about 'Dictator Dan' last year - people need to be deeply ashamed. He was doing the superb job that needed doing, and which NSW has now finally realised, 18 months into this…

This is dangerously out of control. Your life is literally at stake here, and that of your family and friends. I've spent 18 months criticising the NSW Government for a set of beliefs that were always inevitably going…

NSW has been saying all along it does things differently. People just weren't paying any attention to what the differences were.

Burnet Institute modelling showing that with current NSW restrictions (yellow line, Stage 3), NSW won’t beat this outbreak until Christmas time. With Victorian Stage 4 restrictions, it should take 4-6 weeks. Given the…

For more than 18 months the NSW Government has lied, just as Boris lied in the UK, about ‘following the health advice’. As the article says, “There has been…no admission that its business-influenced approach to the…

This one flew under the radar this week. A proposed traffic light system for NSW schools and Covid. Follow the logic of this one and it's clear again the government plans to allow children to be infected. The amber…

You'll never guess, it wasn't Scott's fault. Nothing ever is. It was the 'medical advice'. You know, that medical advice he and Gladys always say they're 'following'.…

Political strategy 101. Thanks to Matt Lucas for his brilliant impersonation. Boris appears a bumbling fool. He's sharp as a tack. The NSW Government is copying him. Pretend to be doing public health work, but twist the…

Melbourne lockdown. When supermarkets finally fix their supply chains, the panic buying turns out to have been an optical illusion. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E6ZS2I-VgAApAxE?format=jpg&name=large

You don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to see who is writing the NSW Government pandemic strategy.

NSW's gold standard contact tracing overwhelmed. Not their fault, contact tracing is only a viable process with a low number of cases. What gives you a low number of cases is 'locking down' peoples' movement and…

‘Ring-fencing’ suburbs and even whole regional towns is about as effective as trying to avoid a fart in an elevator, by standing on the opposite side. The NSW Government again asleep at the wheel. Watch the toilet…

Would you rather ‘die in battle’ with Covid, as Joe says? Because he shares the same political beliefs as the government. You can’t fight a pandemic virus with political beliefs. The virus has no political beliefs, it…

Out of control, has been for weeks. The government refusing to do anything more, growing and spreading every day. Yesterday trying to steal vaccines from other States, who rightly told Gladys to piss off and do her job.…

This is why NSW is not making progress against this outbreak, these dipshits are still talking about the ‘Economy’. The evidence is in, smash the virus, your ‘Economy’ booms. Know why? It’s just society.

Victoria is lifting their lockdown today, after only 2 weeks, job done. We have the NSW Government. 5 weeks in and getting worse every day. If you think this is because 'people aren't following the rules', remember your…

If you have a glass political jaw and any criticism of NSW is seen as a partisan political thing, remember other LNP States are doing what Victoria does.

Speechless. Just despicable. Rather than introduce properly strong restrictions, the NSW Government strategy will be to encourage thousands of under-40s to get a vaccine they shouldn’t be having. The bitter, disgusting…

Australians spend more on alcohol than on gas and electricity, or petrol. We spend more on booze than we do on clothes, and almost as much as we spend on health.

Compare with the graph for NSW I posted yesterday. Truly criminal incompetence in NSW, already killing people. Those people would be alive right now if the government had done its job. Many more deaths and lifelong…

Why masks are so important. NSW, again, only doing it half-arsed and reluctantly.

I spent 18 months putting the PM and Gladys at the top of my ‘risk to every Australian’s life’ list. Gladys saying exactly why, in just a few words, here. And making it quite clear that she and the PM are working…

During the Black Plague, whole towns were quarantined (what libertarian loons call ‘locked down’), not to protect the people in those towns, as quarantine is designed to do today, but to protect the people outside them.…

SKY News has a licence to broadcast in Australia. The government recently gave them tens of millions of dollars as well.

One of the many things we maybe will never know about Aboriginal Australia is how they could run faster than Usain Bolt, with no training at all.

Get vaccinated, people. Not because it will end the pandemic (it won’t), but because you need to protect yourself. The politicians in NSW and Canberra won’t. The targets way too low (actually only about 56% of the…

https://insightplus.mja.com.au/2021/28/sydney-avoids-4000-cases-but-lockdown-must-be-broadened/

Nothing but data today on Covid, to show the critical danger to all NSW people right now. This one shows contact tracing being smashed. Those poor bastards working 24 hours a day, and not even close to keeping up. I…

Looking behind the total daily case numbers for Sydney, which have been hovering around 200 for several days. That gives comfort to some, because it seems like it's under control. The thing with exponential growth is,…

Part 2 of previous post. The 'but' is looking at cases outside the locked down areas. They have exponential growth, where virus leaked from SW Sydney. And it's doubling fast, every 5.4 days. This pattern will continue…

Memories of 2020, when some people here on FB were insisting that schools were magically Covid-free zones. My experience is people just go quiet when their stupid assertions turn out to be stupid. Or they block you.…

Read these daily updates. This is an unfolding catastrophe. Nearly every corner of the State now getting hits. What does the NSW Government do differently in response? Nothing. Get vaccinated, they're not going to save…

A glimpse into the mind of people who think countries are businesses. (The more people the Sydney outbreak kills, the more productive it will become, using this logic.)

Heh, let’s keep that Economy open by having the shops open. But not let customers inside. Seriously, did you vote for the NSW Government? Why?

You can’t run away from the pandemic, much as I’m sure it bores a lot of people. Ignore it and it will come for you, and your family. I persist with it because there is nothing else that is really important right now…

Twice in Australian history, the ‘reserve powers’ have been used to remove a sitting government. Once in 1932, when the NSW Governor removed Premier Jack Lang (picture). And once in 1975, when the Governor-General…

Greg is a smart chap. The people who say we need to ‘live with Covid’ haven’t realised yet that what’s happening in NSW right now is what that looks like.

This doesn't appear to be only targeted at current hotspots, I can't see any geographical references where NSW Health and the federal Department of Health have been posting it. If you want proof of the ineptitude of the…

Watch Health Hazzard mansplain superbly here, to prevent the Chief Health Officer of NSW answering any questions. They know her answering honestly here would end their government. Look at Dr Chant's body language.…

I’m sure many thought I was on some politically-inspired year-long crusade against the NSW Government. I wasn’t. We’re seeing right now what angered me then, and infuriates me now. I see barely a whimper from fellow NSW…

Guess which strategy NSW is using? Control by suburb. Like trying to fence wind. They're not following the health advice, if you believe that I have a great second-hand car for you.

Lost his entire family inside one week. Is it registering for people the catastrophe we’re in the middle of? Why don’t people talk about it? Are we using bullshit ‘positivity’ to try to avoid facing up to grown up…

The pandemic has never been a medical or even biological event. It’s a political event. It was caused by and is being prolonged by pathological individualism - libertarianism. The NSW Government are libertarians.…

This is Australia's number 1 public health expert.

NSW is about where the red arrow is. The Premier lies and says 'at least we don't have exponential growth'. Infections have been growing exponentially for the whole outbreak. Here's an indication of how terrible things…

A connected friend told me Chant resigned several weeks ago because the government wasn’t listening to her, and the resignation was rejected. It would bring down the NSW Government.

Yaneer Bar-Yam is an Israeli complex systems specialist who studies pandemics. On the right here is the strategy every part of Australia apart from NSW is using. (He thinks Australia is amazing.) On the left in red is…

Will NSW cases ‘skyrocket’ because the number of people ‘not following rules’ will skyrocket? Or because the government isn’t stopping the spread? (Hint: if you get it wrong, people you love may be dead by Christmas.…

Sydney not being locked down, from what I can see. That’s where all the exponential growth is happening in cases, watch them continue to skyrocket if so. Note also the Premier suggesting they no longer report case…

Before we all get swept away in the latest tide of spin, NSW is not in total lockdown. The NSW Government has just extended the Sydney measures to the entire State. But…the Sydney measures aren’t working. They restrict…

Burns victims sometimes aren’t aware that the damage they have is terminal. NSW is very close to that point, the damage done in the last 2 months may be irreversible. This may be just the start of the horrors, it’s as…

NSW was the test of the idea that we can try to live our normal lives - what we stupidly call ‘the Economy’ - alongside a pandemic virus. Are the true economic believers convinced yet? How many more people and…

The Covid tour of NSW arrives in Bathurst, and adds new shows in Orange. A footlong of saving the Economy, with Covid special sauce. Imagine leaving a massive bushfire to burn for 2 months, unchecked. This is much, much…

Very interesting graph showing projected impact of vaccination on the NSW outbreak. The different colour shadings are the different restrictions introduced over time. Note that the assumption here is heroic - that…

Numbers still heading North. Why wouldn't they? NSW is doing nothing different. It has to close workplaces, that's where this is going wrong. Why won't they? Because they think there's an 'Economy'. People can not 'stay…

Bit hard to see the graph, but NSW is red. Doubling time is how long it takes for the number of cases to double. It's dropping for NSW, which means cases may be about to really take off. We ain't seen nothing yet, alas.

Same trend here as overseas. Oldies get vaccinated, the virus moves to the kids. The test now is what our governments do next. Do they let kids become infected? That's the plan in NSW. I kid you not.

There’s some brilliant data work going on every day with the pandemic. Take this graph. It shows that the ‘stronger’ restrictions inside the most heavily impacted Sydney LGAs are doing - nothing. They’re more spin. Case…

Slogans like ‘live with the virus’ got NSW into the mess it’s in. And unsurprisingly, more slogans are now keeping it there. Like ‘just stay home’, and ‘follow the rules’. Avoid everything a politician says in this…

Again, avoid anything politicians say in a pandemic. Listen to people on the front-line, like this doctor. The so many people taking comfort from the daily weaponised spin from the NSW Government aren’t aware yet of the…

Listen to to the NSW Chief Health officer. Ignore the Premier completely. It’s ordinary people doing ordinary things - going to work - who are the problem. Why are they going to work? Because the government refuses to…

Another bit of spin from the Premier, that 'jabs' are the answer here. They're not. Read about Israel.

The Reff for NSW is currently between 1.2 and 1.3. If you think this graph shows 'naughty people not following the rules', would you like to buy my old printer for $5000?

if you're one of the people constantly posting here about rule-breakers in NSW, please read this. And then stop doing it. People are catching it at work, taking it home and infecting their families. Most of that work…

Extraordinary that the same people who looked on with horror at Trump, seem completely oblivious to the same thing happening here. Trump succeeded because conservative strategists progressively destroyed public…

Parents are about to face some very difficult decisions in NSW. There is no way schools in NSW will be able to re-open safely until about March 2022, on current virus case numbers. It's early August 2021. The government…

How a real leader works. They lead. NSW is a disgrace. Making the obvious point that parents won't tolerate their children becoming infected, which NSW will likely allow.

As an indication of the idiocy in NSW, I see so many ‘stay home’ messages on social media. People can’t stay home, they have to go to work. Why do they have to go to work? Because the NSW Government won’t close…

NSW well on track to be in lockdown until at least Christmas. The 70-80% vaccination promise? Bullshit, ignore it. It’s only 40% of the population. Why I’d put some money on them infecting kids, Gladys won’t want to…

Projections for hospitalisations, ICU, those who will need ventilation, and deaths. NSW. We’re at about Day 60 now. Right on track on every metric.

Some more compliance porn for our populist tabloid minds yesterday, with the protests. Minds that, rather than understand, want to blame. The group in NSW who cares the least about the spread of infection right now…

What aboriginal Australians know and we don’t, is that the world isn’t made of facts. It’s made of stories. Every fact is a story, it only makes sense within a narrative framework. Nicolas Rothwell, a writer, travels…

4000 children now have Covid in NSW. 1500 of them are under 9. Expect those numbers to explode, when the NSW Government re-opens schools without vaccinating children first.

What's really going on in NSW right now.

"Gladys has so spectacularly muffed the pandemic, and ICAC is bearing down on her still, so it is little wonder there is talk of a spill...Yet the Premier of NSW has been enormously popular. Berejiklian has the uncanny…

Magicians work by diverting your attention. Like 'there's no exponential Covid growth in NSW'. Numbers have doubled in the past week, from 415 to 830. Exponential growth, with a doubling rate now of only 7-8 days. It's…

We'll get another "70 and 80% freedom" day from the Premier today. Reality is going to bite really hard in NSW, brutally and lethally hard.…

70% of Oz adults vaxxed = 11 million Australians unvaxxed (6.2 million adults, 4.8 million children). 80% of Oz adults vaxxed = 9 million Australians unvaxxed (4.2 million adults, 4.8 million kids). All of those…

These are the tragedies that will play out in thousands of homes around Australia, because the NSW Government refused to control spread of the virus.

Yep. In fact I’m not sure I really want to know Australians who think we should open up before kids are vaccinated.

Every day the NSW Premier and PM suggest to us that 70% and 80% vaccination will mean much of our freedom will return. It’s a lie, every single day. This is 30 seconds from the head of the Institute who did the report…

I have to follow every millimetre of the pandemic for work, will keep sharing things you don’t see in the news. Contact tracing now. Currently the contact tracers are over 5200 cases behind. In other words, contact…

I suspect tomorrow National Cabinet will be forced to include children in its vaccination targets. (That they weren’t there already - I mean, what can you say?) Tomorrow the NSW Premier announces her plans to get kids…

I don't make this stuff up. Have a look. Even at Gladys' beloved 80% of adults vaccinated, we're looking at 40,000 new infections PER DAY.…

Reality biting, fingers crossed. Kids to be vaccinated and more caution around the magical 70-80% drivel, at National Cabinet today. The PM will have to be dragged kicking and screaming, like every point in the pandemic…

Here’s a new Gladys neat trick. She’s said many times what matters isn’t how many people get infected, it’s how many end up in hospital. Look how many she’s hiding from that statistic by having people treated at home,…

My grandmother died this month. My last remaining grandparent. Nanna. Because of Covid she got no funeral, though at some point we’ll get together and commemorate her. That’s her on the left, holding either me or Mike…

With schools re-opening, the NSW Government has mentioned a measure they’ll use to determine when a school is open or shut. It’s quite technical, which will no doubt stop many people paying attention to it. If the LGA…

People of Australia, the rubber has hit the road. The massive national question right now is, will we open up the country and allow millions of children and adults to become infected with Covid? Or will we wait a few…

This incorporates vaccinations into projections. I think the reduction in transmission used in this model (80% for a double-vaccinated person) is way too optimistic. But it gives a way of looking at possible futures.…

Texts from inside Sydney ICUs. Will be broken inside 3 weeks, insiders say. That’s more than a month before Gladys thinks we’ll reach her magical 70%. Which wouldn’t work anyway.

An international expert. But really, you’d have to be brain dead to believe otherwise. Or the PM or NSW Premier.

Want to know just how venal the whole NSW thing is? Have a look.

Wil take less than 5 minutes of your time to listen to Allan Saul, a true expert, give a fantastic summary of what you need to know right now about the NSW Covid situation.

"For all the NSW government’s attempts in the 11am media conference to sell a positive vaccination story and downplay the soaring COVID cases, the numbers and the reports from the front line have crushed the spin."

I share what the top experts say. Ignore every word out of the NSW Government's mouth.

"Cases are rising, dangerously so, in New South Wales but, despite the protestations of its Premier to the contrary, it is because of the slow response and very loose lockdown enabling the virus to continue to spread.…

NSW now moving to the 'heroes' phase. Standard libertarian government strategy. Do nothing to prevent the disaster - whether it's bushfires, or a pandemic - so that the last line of defence, emergency services workers,…

This is a HUGE announcement. Australia's top experts have had enough of the relentless ongoing bullshit from the NSW Government and PM, and have formed their own independent advisory group to cut through the crap.…

Just realised I forgot the link! https://theconversation.com/introducing-ozsage-a-source-of-practical-expert-advice-for-how-to-reopen-australia-from-covid-safely-166943

There’s a lot of public discussion about the Doherty Report. Here’s the crux of it, outcomes for different levels of vaccination (adults only). The first 6 months after ‘opening up’. Worth noting: - even at the 80%…

Pico Iyer sees something I don’t think many Australians themselves do. Living in Australia plugs you into something ancient, that works away at you unconsciously, by osmosis. You can physically feel it if you return…

When they announce that people who have died of Covid had ‘underlying health conditions’, it’s worth remembering nearly half of all Australians have those.

O dear Bathurst. Also worth noting here that cases are growing faster outside the LGAs 'of concern' than inside them. Unsurprisingly, with the NSW mockdown. The Premier yesterday released 'modelling' on hospitalisations…

Reckon the 'live with the virus, because you can't beat Delta' folk here in Australia have been reading this graph upside down? Or they're just dangerously useless?

How disgusting is it that at the exact time NSW is expected to have the most people in hospital and dying of Covid, this Premier is planning to open up bars and restaurants for vaccinated residents of suburbs like…

This vaccination rollout will be a brilliant test of the Australia we live in, compared to the one we maybe think we live in. Right now about 5 million Australians are saying they won't get a vaccine. Compare to our…

This story today, announced at the daily Gladys at 11am. Analysis commissioned by the NSW Government, to determine safety of sending kids back to school. They did a similar analysis last year after national lockdown.…

Quentin is a Professor of Economics at ANU. Two separate posts of two of his Tweets today, linked but independently astonishing. Remember Australia’s ‘Freedom Day’, defined as 80% adults vaccinated, is before Christmas.

The NSW Government 'follows the health advice' in the same way a yacht tacks into a strong headwind.

The NSW Premier just announced she will no longer be giving daily press conferences. NSW Health staff will do them instead. She announced this immediately after saying the next few weeks will be the worst for Covid…

Did people read this one? If you follow every tiny detail of the pandemic, as I have to for work, it’s things already known. But for many you can read here how NSW has just barefaced lied for months. It isn’t following…

Political strategy is one of my areas of expertise. The constant talk about Delta being too hard to control is political strategy. NZ is controlling it as easily as it did in 2020. What’s happening in NSW and Victoria…

Can’t help think that the NSW Government taking a global event, and pretending it can fence it off in the poorer parts of Sydney, is going to do lasting damage to the entire city.

At 80% of adults vaccinated, 40,000 Australians per day are still estimated to become infected with Covid. Many of those will be children. How about we be a bit patient and vaccinate 80% of the WHOLE population first,…

The latest thing is to say that it doesn’t matter if lots of people get infected, provided they’re all vaccinated and don’t end up in hospital. Let’s test that against normal life. Say there was an epidemic of head…

This is a growing pattern in Western democracies. Gated communities. Where the well-off shield themselves from crime and poverty. From the rest of society. Billionaires have bought entire islands and built bunkers to…

People have probably heard a lot about the Doherty modelling in the news, the guide governments are using for the 70% and 80% re-openings. Wanted to share some of it because I’m not sure how many people have actually…

Know when kids in science at school say 'how am I going to use this in later life'? We have a new answer. You may not have a later life, if you don't shut up and learn.…

Construction re-opens next week in NSW, even if construction workers aren’t vaccinated. And 5000 at a horse race in mid-October. But vaccinating kids for school isn’t in the roadmap at all. NSW is owned and run by…

I think Australia is sleepwalking into something it just isn't seeing. Right now it thinks the opening up plans of 70 and 80-% are great, because they think it'll be just more of what they have right now, with extra…

100,000 children infected in just one week in England. The government there not even bothering to isolate infected people in schools, it all got too hard. If you don't think NSW could end up like this, you're not paying…

Remember Nick Coatsworth, the eye candy Deputy Chief Health Officer of Australia? He's a world champion wanker.

Here’s one for the people who can’t process an issue without a detour through their favourite political team. Lots to see here about NSW ‘success’ with vaccination.

The NSW Premier and our PM both tell us that the reason 2021 is different is because ‘Delta is like nothing we have seen before’. More lies, more spin. We’ve beaten far more infectious diseases than Delta. The only…

We have a PM rushing to an election by destroying 2 years of hard Covid work. And a NSW Premier who gets wide applause for leading a government with such entrenched corruption that ICAC wouldn’t have know where to…

Here’s the former NSW Auditor-General speaking about Gladys’ resignation. (Don’t forget either that this NSW Government also rorted the bushfire relief funding.) I plead with people to not embrace populism, where…

Fresh from killing 140,000 Brits, and another thousand each week, with an idiot ‘live with the virus’ strategy (which we’re copying now in Oz by the way), now the UK has nationwide fuel shortages. More populist…

One of the leading contenders for Gladys’ job. A key member of the NSW Crisis Cabinet that determined NSW’s Covid strategy.

Don’t forget the UK strategy, of deliberately infecting children rather than vaccinating them, is also the Australian strategy. No conspiracies, this is actually the strategy. The leaders who promote this strategy are…

In years to come, remember this video. Substitute ‘cholera’ or ‘Ebola’ for ‘this virus’, and you’ll get a sense of how collectively insane we all now are. That we swallow these ridiculous, meaningless slogans, like…

The questions Australians are not asking. The answers may hit them like a truck, before Christmas. How many know what Alan spells out here? Really worth your time.

The UK, a few weeks ahead of us in opening up schools to widespread infection. I’m not understanding why Australian parents are just meekly allowing this. Instead they’re applauding the woman who approved the same…

OzSAGE, a collection of some of Australia’s top experts across a range of fields, has released a guide for sending kids back to school, during Covid. A great read for all. I think this is a line in the sand issue for…

Please sign, so that 'open a window' isn't the only public health measure used to protect young children. https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/la/Pages/ePetition-details.aspx?q=rpEwNg2UB9+LpW1NhPZzdA==

The clearest statement of Australia’s national covid plan that I’ve seen. I’m not joking.

Fat, rich, whiney countries are opening up their countries to infect millions of people, many of them children. To save businesses, 75% of which were going to fail inside 3 years anyway, without the pandemic. India,…

Australia lies with its vaccine data, only reporting over-16s. This is the real NSW data. 0+ is the whole State, not just those aged 16 and over. At our re-opening day next Monday, only just over half of the State will…

This is the UK. It has vaccinated significantly more people than we have (66%, versus our 58% in NSW). This is what happens when you ‘open up’ while the virus is still circulating. Why is this not the most obvious…

As one prominent journalist said, the NSW Government is run for business, by business. Shredders going flat-out in the Reverend Dom’s office, with all the NSW Health advice. The Deputy Premier, our own novelty cheque…

I know I post Covid things into the void. More than 800 children have been hospitalised in NSW for Covid since this outbreak began. And this is before restrictions are lifted. 5% of child Covid cases are ending up in…

Rotary gives more money to the World Health Organisation than most countries. Australia well down the list. Another reason why pandemics happen and take ages to make go away. The graph tells the story.

Australians are much more Aboriginal than they realise, I think. Not only does the landscape shape us in ways we don’t understand, but our encounter with aboriginal people has become part of our cultural DNA. Take the…

This is why NSW and Victoria lost control of Covid in 2021, but not in 2020. Wasn’t anything to do with the Delta variant. The federal government gutted income support to workers and businesses, forcing people to go to…

Underneath grand narratives you’ll usually find some simple, practical thing that explains things. The US has a much more libertarian, individual freedom focus than Australia. That comes down to underlying beliefs. But…

Feedback suggests some people like a different perspective on the pandemic, beyond the endless repetition of meaningless political slogans like 'live with the virus'. So I'll keep at it. Today - hospitalisations. "It's…

Well now, the zoomed-out version shows 5 lots of fines for Revenue NSW, score. It is good to see normal service returning in NSW, where the blokes are at the pub, the ladies homeschooling, the alcohol and gambling and…

This is what both frustrates me and gives me hope. Numbers are how many days until each age group reaches the vaccination threshold (70, 80, 90%). I've circled NSW in red for the 90% threshold, you can see by about…

Those who back the NSW Government the way they might back an NRL team often defend what they do by also praising NSW Health. It’s been many months since the NSW Government listened much to NSW Health. Now they’ve…

The NSW Government spent a fortune upgrading its air conditioning system so that its air is changed every 7.5 minutes. Its 'effort' on schools returning? 'Open a window'. And also 'masks are ludicrous' (our new Deputy…

The R number. Mentioned a lot in the pandemic, basically a measure of how much a virus spreads between people. There are two Rs - R0, and Re. R0 is how many people each person would infect if there was nothing to…

This is what you call a fossil find. Gascoyne Junction, Western Australia. Jenni can tell us what we're looking at? Remarkable preservation.

Was chatting to one of Australia’s leading virologists yesterday, about how he sees Covid panning out in the years ahead, with the ‘living with Covid’ idea. For comparison, in a bad flu year in Australia, we get about…

“Atham-Lebbe Farsith, a waiter in a one-room curry house in Ampara did not understand why the customer was So Fucking Angry. All of the customers were angry. The man at the counter was waving his plate at Farsith,…

Another powerful political strategy - normalisation. Shifting what ‘normal’ means. Why people don’t even bat an eyelid at the idea of mass infections, of hundreds or even thousands of people dying every week. Why…

NSW is ‘open for business’. Also open for sport, music, swimming, visiting friends etc. The fact he only mentions business is just more evidence that NSW is run by business, for business. Here’s a thing. ‘Business’…

Ted Cruz is a libertarian pissant from the US who is one of the promoters of the "I stand with the people of Australia" rubbish. A message he wrote below, and wonderful response from the NT Chief Minister. The Chief…

Such fine Australians have formed the modern LNP. Saying the quiet bits out loud.

Isn't this great, even where parents try to carry the cost of clean air in schools, because the NSW government won't do anything, they're not allowed. No masks, 'open a window'. Just disgusting, corrupt, and probably…

It is lethal. If you don't know what libertarianism is, worth doing some reading. Many vote for the LNP today because they think they're voting for Liberals and Nationals. They're not, they've long since transformed…

Third straight day of increases in NSW. This is a jump of about 100 in a day. And schools only reopened this week. Next week will be interesting.

More life as a high school. Melbourne re-opens. It’s curious that the narrative around lockdowns has been that people are healthiest and happiest when they can mix socially. That without it, they become lonely and…

Assumption School in Bathurst already closed because of Covid. Only years 1 and 2 there. It took only 4 days. If the idiot NSW Government follows its idiot overlords in the UK, the next stage will be to just keep…

67 schools have been closed since the beginning of Term 4 in NSW, because of Covid. Most kids not back yet.

Cases (blue) and R value (orange), for NSW. R is the rate at which the infections are spreading.

The Deputy Premier referred to use of masks in schools as 'ludicrous'. This is the official CDC advice, in the US, just so you get a sense of the calibre of the NSW Government: "Due to the circulating and highly…

CDC, Centre for Disease Control in the US, their main regulatory body. Compare and contrast with our 'masks are ludicrous in schools' Deputy Premier. Yesterday most Covid cases in NSW were in the regions. When asked…

Everything about this plan is laughable. Even the title, 'The Australian Way'. Just another book of meaningless political slogans to get him through the election. The man is vacuous, completely devoid of any vision or…

More of Trump’s America for Australia. Like voluntary voting, requiring an ID to vote sounds sensible, but is actually a strategy to reduce votes from people who don’t vote for conservative parties. This country really…

NSW has a zero road deaths road safety strategy. Quoting from it: “The NSW road toll isn't simply a number. It is people. Sadly, it's closer to home than you think. It's people like you. Grandparents, mothers, fathers,…

NSW vaccinations have stalled in almost the worst place (not that you would know that, the public stories are all just about getting back on planes). In the 20-29 year olds, the group that also spreads the virus the…

The NSW Government still refuses to even mandate masks for children. Only 6-7 weeks of school left, what possible reason could there be for not talking that basic precaution?

Covid cases are beginning to climb again in NSW. You can see here where it's mostly happening - in kids, in schools. On the 'herd immunity' front, people need to know that infection with Covid confers relatively little…

This is a wonderful, digitally-interactive article, describing all of the action that has been long underway by industry to change Australia. Really, really worth your time, don’t believe any of the political nonsense…

Focus groups apparently show Australians were ‘outraged’ Emmanuel Macron called Scott Morrison a liar. Uh huh. The focus groups must have been his wife and kids.

I like Simon Holmes a Court, we've chatted a few times. His family came from a time when the wealthy in this country actually thought about the public good, and not just tax cuts. Australia could be the Saudi Arabia of…

Daily Covid stat. Red line is average road toll in NSW. All the other lines are Covid deaths currently in NSW (see the key top left). 'Living with Covid'. In a bad flu season we might lose 600 people. Covid at least…

You can look at this two ways. Regulators being cautious, as they're supposed to be. Or key members of these expert groups being culture warring, political operatives who have spent weeks attacking any sort of…

The coming possible tidal wave of compensation claims against employers by employees who catch Covid at work (projected over $600 million in NSW alone). It’s not just health that Covid impacts. Flu already costs…

"More than 270 NSW schools and 300 childcare centres have closed due to COVID-19 cases in the past month...". The same people who say kids wearing masks will damage them psychologically and socially, are now saying the…

I’m happy to be only a handful of years off a possible retirement. Not because I don’t like to work - I love to work. But our societies seem increasingly meaningless, as Stan Grant highlights here. What’s it all for?…

Am trying to figure out if I'm more excited Australia won the T20 World Cup. Or that England lost it.

As a measure of just how out of 'balance' (a word dear to modern conservatives, by which they mean 'do nothing') society is, the other day one of Australia's most powerful unions negotiated a 3% per annum pay rise for…

‘I have faith in NSW Health’ many said to me over the past year. In the delusion NSW Health was actually being listened to. The facts are coming out now.

Why masks matter. The limo driver who leaked Delta into Australia, in NSW? (Because Gladys didn't require him to wear one.) So far, that's led to 169,000 Covid cases, more than 1000 deaths, and billions in lost economic…

Between May and November 2020 Australians were the healthiest they've ever been. What's bad for the 'Economy' is terribly GOOD for us. The 'Economy' is a tool, and obviously one that isn't working. Let's get rid of it.

NSW Covid projections through to June 2022. ct = contact tracing. You can see it’s critical this remains high (NSW is scaling it back rapidly), and that under-12s get vaccinated before the 2022 school year.

Not all Liberals are vacuous slogan machines. Well done sir. Can't see Mr Economy in NSW doing the same. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-11-23/tas-school-year-start-could-be-delayed-covid-vaccination/100642918

Vaccine doses are being thrown away. We could all be getting boosters right now, but the government won't allow it because of (guess): the election. For them the vaccines work fine for 6 months to do the only thing they…

Singapore at 93% and Portugal at 90%, of the TOTAL population vaccinated, now having to lock down again. (Australia currently at only 77% vaxxed.) Please people, when a politician says we must 'live with Covid', they…

Pictures tell stories. What the pandemic showed so clearly was who the really essential workers are in our socieities. Nurses, teachers, supermarket staff, sewer and water workers etc. Leading politicians are…

This new variant of Covid, in the red, is now called ‘Omicron’. Europe has closed international travel to Africa to stop it, as has the US. Australia? Nothing yet. Why? Because the government doesn’t want to upset its…

Now the Australian government has caught up with the rest of the world with travel restrictions for the new Covid variant, let’s see if it will also relax its 6-month rule on 3rd vaccine doses. Politically it doesn’t…

The housing industry, and politicians getting big budget revenue from housing prices, have spent the past nearly 3 decades selling us a lie that has ruined the lives of entire generations. The lie - that high housing…

Workers compensation cases for Covid, NSW. Reality is biting. Politicians win popularity with slogans like ’we have to live with this virus’. But you can’t live with Covid, and business has realised that because the…

My bet. Australia will be under restrictions again before Christmas.

So sick of the bullshit. Parliament in Canberra shuts down because of one Covid case. Primary schools in Sydney get Omicron cases, and they only send a few classes home.

The US: 305,114 Covid deaths before vaccinations. 482,581 Covid deaths since. The UK: 62,130 Covid deaths before vaccinations. 83,744 Covid deaths since. Both libertarian governments which our NSW and federal…

Ah, our Gladys. She heard your love Australia, she heard you say ’get a lucrative job in the private sector’. That’s what her Covid strategy was always about, keeping that private sector lucrative. She looked after…

A tremendous NSW Premier vs Reality show coming, before Christmas. NSW Premiers of recent times have had tenuous grips on reality. But a good grasp of lots of cash.

The new Premier won’t allow NSW Health to say much in public. Doesn’t take a genius to figure that one out. So here they are, trying to tell you that Christmas parties, incuding work ones, and pubs and clubs, are giving…

Omicron doubling every 2-3 days in the UK. 1 million infections expected by Christmas. The government there in meltdown, leadership knows desperate action needed, its own backbench in revolt against it. Politicians…

Vote for libertarian conservatives (US, UK, Australia), this is the nonsense you get. The UK government, facing a 'tsunami' of Omicron infections (their word), is reverting to script. 'Get vaccinated'. It's less than 2…

In today’s Covid news, the supposedly ‘mild’ Omicron variant. Hospitalisation rates in Denmark about the same as for other variants. Overwhelmingly the Danish being infected in the early days are 20-29, which will…

"...clusters linked to nightclubs and pubs threaten to push daily cases into the thousands by the end of the year...A NSW Health spokesperson said they were unable to confirm how many people were now considered close…

Wheeee, isn't this fun NSW? The Health Minister said no changes needed, he wants 'normal' life back in NSW. We're all in a bus on the Jenolan Caves road, driven by psychopaths high on meth.

Yeeeouch. Test positivty rate is a measure of how many Covid cases you're missing, in your testing. NSW is testing about 90,000 people a day at the moment, huge. And positivity is skyrocketing, meaning we're still…

Living in populist times (where people think what’s popular is what’s true) means having almost no attention span or memory. Take the ‘Omicron is mild’ story. Who remembers what happened when Delta arrived in Australia,…

This diagram is standard WHS, applied to Covid. Australia is doing 6, just. 1-5, nothing. Really highlights how populist idiot politicians have hijacked a standard public health response.

Freedom Day NSW! Get those masks off, suck up that Covid so you can share it with family over Christmas, and possibly do long-term damage to everyone's internal organs. Let's drink to the Economy - Cheers!

Over 100,000 tests yesterday. Huge jump in test positivity (highest it's been). This means despite cases almost doubling from the day before, very many people out there are infected and haven't been tested. I stand by…

NSW Health Minister predicts 25,000 cases per day by January. Nobody seems to care.

NSW Health says wear a mask. The Premier says don’t. Who do you choose?

Listen to Kerryn Phelps for a few minutes. We've gone barking mad in NSW in these past 6 months.

Over 25,000 kids were deliberately infected with Covid in the last 6 months of 2021, in NSW. Just saying. Living with the virus. It’s not the flu, not even close.

Dan is an immunologist who works for NSW Heath, who together with other experts there felt compelled today to sound the alarm. Spend the minutes watching this, please, he’s wonderfully articulate and explains the…

Here's a projection of NSW cases, from one of the prominent modellers, based on current numbers. And the quote below is from Professor Adrian Esterman, a leading Australian public health person who has worked for the…

Your ideology runs really, really deep when you won't make a mask mandatory. We already do for tradies in workplaces. Covid is much more dangerous than dust. Kids have to wear hats for the sun at school.…

Nearly 3 weeks to the day. At the time I posted this, NSW was in the euphoria of 'freedom' and Christmas. The data and common sense (something the PM has none of) said way back then already what a disaster that would…

From inside NSW Health. Worth a few minutes. Insight into what’s happening inside pathologies and hospital For the past few days there has been a huge amount of misinformation regarding COVID testing and as a healthcare…

By the way, had a lovely Christmas, except for part of the family suffering from Covid. So let’s talk about Covid! That thing infecting your friends and loved ones, in the pet and Christmas pictures. (It’s even…

Here you can watch the massaging of Covid data in real-time. Spot the difference between the NSW Health message on 23 December, and the one from 1 hour ago. (If it focuses attention, remember this could be you, within…

Governments now not even bothering to do testing. You can do it yourself. Also a brilliant way for the government to hide the true number of Covid cases, because if they’re not doing the testing, they don’t know the…

[Re-posting, because NSW Health had the wrong hospitalisation figure, they’ve updated it now.] The NSW Health Minster (I use those terms loosely) said we’d get over 20,000 cases per day by the end of January. It’s the…

Christmas prediction - ✅ New prediction: NSW will be forced to lock down within a week.

Shall we have a new award? Idiot Australian of the year? A strong candidate here. Name unchanged in case you run into him and he needs help with his shoelaces.

Do you know who funds firefighting in NSW? It’s insurance companies (about 74%), with local government (about 12%) the next biggest contributor. Together they fund nearly 93% of all firefighting.

I’m going to talk about beavers here, so get your smutty little chuckles out of the way first. Australia needs beavers. On just about every other continent, beavers almost single-handedly do what we can only clumsily…

Cane toads scare people off from introducing species to Australia. But one of the main reasons we get these explosions from introduced species is that we don’t have enough of our own competing animals left. There are…

What is freedom? This description of Spinoza might be the answer. Only thought tames ideas, and ideas determine reality. So only thought sets you free. “He was out to make a free man of himself...by thinking things…

Australia should maybe do what Europe started years ago. Pay farmers to stay on the land. Not to farm, but to regenerate the land. Fix the soil, the vegetation, the water. It’s the obvious solution to the crisis,…

Years ago already, Mike Archer (picture) suggested that Australia needed more mines, and far fewer farms. The mythology around farming in Australia masks the fact that it’s the single most destructive force in…

Lots of ridiculous talk about arson in the bushfires. But there is another type of arson - social arson. People deliberately trying to inflame social relationships in society. Shock jocks are social arsonists. In the…

When I was a kid Australia spoke about how clever it was, most people could list our famous inventions, like the Hills Hoist. Can you think of many great Australian discoveries or inventions of the past 25-30 years? Our…

I think people want something magnificent and glamorous. That magnificence is a scale of value. Royalty and the Church have been the historical answer at the country level. When replaced with secular republics, notice…

Astronomical electricity usage in NSW today, maybe unprecedented for a weekend. The same if not worse predicted for tomorrow. Who put their air conditioner on 24 to ease the load? I haven’t seen that AEMO suggestion…

The candidates for US President are mostly old, 70 or above. But it wasn’t always like this, check the graph. This is an exception. And the answer, again? Demographics I think. The massive boomer generation is voting…

The news reports about ‘drought relief’ because of drenching rain on the coast 🤔 Major regional centres will run out of water this year. Some have already. There is no answer to this problem. An absolute disaster…

Coastal Australia is talking about the end of drought, as it gets drenched in rain. Which kind of shows that for the majority of Australians, that tiny coastal strip is Australia. Anything West of the ranges needs at…

Even highly educated people I’ve spoken with believe that the answer to our water crisis is to build more dams. My analogy to this delusional thinking is believing that we’ll have more money if we have more money boxes…

Babies when held in water can walk, they don’t need to learn it. It’s a reflex. Aboriginal Australians, without training or shoes or tracks, could run faster than Usain Bolt. Most of our training and exercise is…

It still angers me that people who go to university pay an extra tax, HECS. The rationale for it was always that they earn more because of their degrees. Some do, some don’t. I know more rich tradies than rich…

I often talk about Australia as an ageing country. Look at this - almost twice as many 65+ (in % terms) here as in China. That's the boomers. Also I think having outdoor hospital wards for a pandemic needs to be…

At the lower end of the projections, a quarter of a million Australians may die of coronavirus. Similarly, one projected climate model this week predicts that all of humanity could become extinct by 2050, if projections…

If domestic violence is really caused by 'toxic masculinity', how do we explain the variations across all of these areas (check the map), sometimes of nearly 50% in a given year? Is masculinity getting more or less…

An entire country in lockdown. And Australia stuck in an endless loop of meme and counter-meme on toilet paper. A lot of people are ‘calm’ now because the virus will likely only have a mild effect on their body. But…

Are we amused and angered by toilet paper Australia? Time to move on, and really fast.

Boris Johnson tells UK they should expect that many will lose members of their family. ScoMo tells us to relax and go to the footy. Lots of Australians are following ScoMo's lead in their understanding of what's going…

This pair have both been exposed to people with Covid-19. Both refused to be tested or to isolate themselves, as would be the legal requirement of any other person. People vote for these dipshits. No wonder most…

Smart people kinda rock. Let's hope this pans out, unlike all the other possible cures, this one is already approved drugs so can skip those years of clinical trials. Was going to donate to this and noticed they have…

Same headlines all around the world. Either tens of millions of people became selfish arseholes overnight, worldwide, or the ‘selfish panicking hoarders’ idea is dumb. In Australia it gets even more stupid, it was only…

Facebook removed my post on Australian research on a Covid-19 cure as 'spam'. My apologies if you linked to it [Edit: It now seems FB has a technical problem.] In the meantime, here's another link to the research. There…

Watched ScoMo's update this morning. I'm still staggered by the Australian response, it's mirroring Europe's, and Europe has lost control (see link). You CAN'T beat an exponential curve, all this rubbish about needing…

Australians have shifted their outrage from hoarders to the 'Chinese' and inter-town supermarket raiders now. What doesn't vary is the outrage. As one scapegoat gets stripped away, another one is generated quickly. It's…

I think John Daley nails it. https://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/australian-economy/coronavirus-tough-choice-australia-faces-that-could-help-it-avoid-an-epidemic-yoyo/news-story/fefb6eb8a17608202d704b40bb4e2dff

I think the AHPPC updates are far and away the best insight into the Australian thinking behind the decisions the National Cabinet make. This is the 'medical advice' ScoMo and the Premiers refer to. Well worth reading…

Summarising my own 3 tips leading up to the virus possibly spreading. 1. Get some sun and fresh air every day. Cloudy is still sun. Stay away from groups when you can. 2. Eat fibre, like fruit and veg and wholegrain…

Australia is an island. We knew this virus was coming. If we’d closed the borders immediately before we had any known cases, and used the tests we have for any citizens who would then return from overseas, we’d have no…

People here know I talk a lot about our unhealthy obsession with travel. Try this reality filter, particularly if you think it's the Chinese who did all this: - every single case of Covid-19 in Australia right now is…

The problem with using case numbers to guide our Covid-19 response is that it's like driving only looking in the rear-view mirror. It takes about 2 weeks for people to show symptoms and get tested. They show us…

I remember when Australia used to build things. Before the country was transformed into a casino, using houses as the chips. https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/26/tech/dyson-ventilators-coronavirus/index.html

You can see here Australia is currently tracking between the Asian countries who responded quickly to the virus, and Europe and America, who didn't. The curve seems to be flattening a bit, but we could go harder.…

Women of Australia, what did you think? Last night ScoMo was asked if his kids are still at school. He said no, his wife had finally won. Let that sink in. He’s saying schools are fine and kids should go there, unless…

A disaster in the making. These handful of ships could undo all the weeks of hard slog in controlling the virus. And hard for Australia to be too precious about it either, because there are thousands of Australian…

One thing i'm enjoying right now is how the people who are the real brains and muscle of society are coming into the limelight, while the celebrities, sports stars and shock jocks disappear into their country estates.…

One of Australia’s leading financial analysts, not a Leftie of any kind, has been saying for a long time that communism is the only answer for the world. I don’t think communism is necessarily the answer, but what he’s…

How did Australia and other countries get to the impossible point where they now have to choose between peoples' health, and their 'economies'? We got there because we started there. From day one of the pandemic leaders…

Nice summary of mitigation, suppression and elimination strategies for Covid-19. Australia is actually not trying to flatten the curve right now, it's moving to suppression rather than mitigation. It still toys with the…

On the same day the Deputy Chief Medical Officer announces Australia is on the cusp of slowing the infection to the point the epidemic dies out, these dipshits announce the NRL will restart. As Australians we can choose…

Thanks to @[562037124:2048:Jason] for this. It's happening right now in Australia *waves to the NRL* https://forge.medium.com/prepare-for-the-ultimate-gaslighting-6a8ce3f0a0e0

Yep. I can't think of one sensible reason not to do this. The danger in every pandemic is people wanting 'normal' life back and thinking they can just manage the virus. Like Chamberlain trying to appease Hitler. Not an…

Schools are not childcare centres. There's no doubt keeping as many kids out of them as possible will quicken elimination of Covid-19. Even the best models suggest that they contribute significantly to spreading a virus…

Come on Australia. "It’s the allure of life as normal," Professor McVernon said. "Because we’re all susceptible to this, the virus will come back from somewhere. We cannot return to life as normal. We need to get that…

New infections for NSW over the weekend. Saturday - 8. Sunday - 6. If somebody you know wants to remove or ignore the restrictions, please beat them around the head with a bit of 4x2. Look at the graph here, we've only…

On the one hand, you had an economist saying that the cost of lockdowns exceeds the benefits, and causes more human suffering than it relieves through loss of social life, livelihood, health etc. Valid argument. On the…

Related to my previous post, I'd be interested how people would answer this question. Is it better to not disrupt society so comprehensively, as we're doing now, and let more people die of Covid-19 to minimise the…

If you missed the details of NSW's back to school arrangements, this is a good visual summary.

Australia's pandemic response is being guided by a Nobel Prize winner. America's is being guided by a reality TV star suggesting we inject people with disinfectant and irradiate them with UV light. Just over 70 dead in…

"Australians and our governments have been so careful to balance the needs to get our economy back to a COVID-safe level so it can support people's incomes and we can return to higher rates of growth into the future."…

On Health vs Economy again. 'Economy' just means the way we do things now. The obvious answer is - do them differently. We don't have to shut down society, we can reshape it to work differently. It's already happening.…

This is the report that will be used from today to 'prove' to people that 'schools are safe'. It's embarrassingly bad, all 4 pages of it, with 2 vague references. The data size? 18 infections in schools before the…

We should thank Australian universities for this, they assembled over 100 experts from diverse fields to assess where Australia should go from here with Covid-19. You'll see they suggest either elimination (my…

Firtshand accounts from Bathurst and Lithgow shopping centres today. Teeming with people, little social distancing going on, whole families out shopping. Tick tick.…

Funny this, from Gladys today. They said schools are 'safe'. Funny too that they have to close entire schools if they get an infection and bring in professional cleaners for 'deep cleans', even though schools are…

As the article says, pay attention Australia. This may be the most important decision we make in our entire history, and I'm not sure many even know what it is. Many could live or die on the outcome, and the rest of the…

We had a postal vote to decide on gay marriage. This is a MUCH bigger issue. Why aren't Australians being asked to decide our way out of the pandemic, between the options of 'controlled adaptation' and 'elimination'? It…

"She says that the phase where we see a tail – after we’ve gone from a flat curve to very low figures – is the most dangerous time to start assuming that life’s back to normal."…

"Australia really focused on Singapore but Singapore is one of the greatest failures in the world now". Vitenam proving that if you use basic public health measures, rather than try to be half-pregnant by running your…

How's your toilet paper stash? "Prof Talley warned the Australian Government’s strategy of suppressing the virus rather than trying to eradicate it has left us in a vulnerable position."…

Right now about 50% of Australians with cold and flu symptoms aren't lining up for Covid-19 tests. On the one hand they're told not to go to work if they're sick. On the other work is 'opening up' again, so many have to…

Free child care (not free - you pay for it through your taxes, conservatives are devious with language) isn't 'sustainable'. $150 billion in permanent tax cuts is though. Wouldn't it have been refreshing to hear him say…

I was amazed they decided to push on with exams, just seems another example of how schools and kids are cannon fodder in this pandemic. I say don't be fooled by the appearance of care for education in Australia -…

After this is over, people who pushed to save our economy ahead of peoples' lives should be tried and prosecuted. Simple as that, like our own Nuremberg Trials, for the pandemic. I often challenge anybody to even define…

Was laying in bed this morning thinking about how epidemics just start and stop, and nobody knows why. And I thought, these microbes are working together, they're communicating somehow. When I got up, I did a bit of…

AC/DC preceded and played alongside punk and grunge, and were way rawer and harder than either of them. They make The Sex Pistols look like what they really were - a manufactured boy band pretending to be rebels. And…

Here's context for my pandemic views. Look at these numbers, State-by-State. Everywhere except NSW and Vic may have already eliminated Covid-19. NSW and Vic may be damned close. You can see why the other States aren't…

“This thing is like a fire...we can’t have medium case numbers, that doesn’t work. It is either very, very little or the whole thing is on fire with coronavirus. We could easily be the UK or the US; it is the exactly…

"She'll be right" is sold as some great Australian laid-back attitude. I don't think it's that, I think it's the way Australia avoids thinking. It's a type of fatalism - if we have a hard problem, it's easier to ignore…

Between 1800 and 1802, 69,980 gallons of spirits and 33,246 gallons of wine were landed in Sydney, and was consumed by a population of less than 6000. Australians drank then to forget the alienation they felt from the…

Here's a chicken and egg question with an answer. Which came first - business, or jobs? Here's some cavemen. Doing jobs. Not a business in sight. Workers are the economy. Business is just a roof over their heads while…

I've noticed in this pandemic the necessary tension between medical people, and public health people. They're not the same. Medical people (doctors, nurses) will tend to be focused on the health of an individual. Public…

NZ 7 days with zero new cases. Only 1 active case left in the country. Australia, still over 400 active cases. Look how similar our curve is to South Korea. See that little blip at the end of the Korean curve? They've…

Civilisations last 336 years on average. Australian Aborigines were left out of this graphic - their civilisation lasted 100,000 years. (They would have gone right off the edge of the graph, by about a metre and a…

Gladys and ScoMo and friends are furiously trying to get State borders open. Have a look at the vast numbers of Australians who don't agree with them. I suspect vast numbers don't agree with a lot of the 'opening up'…

"...newly released economic modelling says a rise in pay packets will generate more jobs than spending on construction projects...About 0.97 direct jobs are generated for every $1m spent on building projects, according…

This is bloody fantastic news. Another week of those numbers and we could even start talking about elimination, like some of the other States. Note this isn't support for a 'control' strategy - control doesn't reduce…

There's some sort of macabre irony about holding a gathering for thousands in the middle of a pandemic, under the banner of 'lives matter'. Somewhere, we swapped righteousness for intelligence.…

The traffic heading West tonight was like nothing I’ve seen. I know people probably get sick of hearing it, but unless that virus is gone, this weekend alone is going to potentially spread it State-wide. Anyone who says…

This is what was on the line this long weekend. These are the number of days since a last case of COVID-19 was found in NSW, in the different categories. 11 days since any examples of community transition (the biggie).…

Casinos in Australia put over 20,000 staff on the JobKeeper scheme. They still managed to pay full dividends to shareholders. They're good donors to the political parties. Just something to keep in mind when people talk…

Fantastic performance. All true, all urgent messages. There’s a but for me though - too often the progressive side of politics thinks a noble speech will bring about change. It loves noble speeches. To change you need…

This is the battleground for Australia’s future. The government thinks business will lead Australia forward. Business has never, anywhere, led a country in any direction. Business uses the innovations generated by…

In April, compliance with social distancing in Australia was 80%. It's now 25%.

Genuinely funny. NSW people, tell Victorians to bugger off. Government-sanctioned. The game of Twister 'opening up the economy' forces people to play, priceless.

It's always what people do, not what they say. What they say? "We're all in this together". What they do? $150 billion in tax cuts skewed heavily to the rich and foreign corporations. Can't find a measly $84 million to…

“South Korea’s story sounds disturbingly similar to Australia’s. Its Centers for Disease Control blames the relaxation of restrictions to give businesses a boost. Nightclubs, bars, clubs and other venues were reopened.…

Right now we could ask both NSW and Vic to lockdown again until they've eliminated Covid-19, like the rest of Oz may have achieved. We don't because the Economy Nazis say it would be the end of life as we know it.…

The whack-a-mole strategy looks great on paper. Open up the 'economy', then just whack the virus locally if it appears somewhere. But nobody knows how. It's probably impossible. The non-medical experts who know this…

Check this out, another powerful plea to go for elimination, like we should have from day 1. I've lost count of the number of people who say 'but it's not possible'. Who says? Not one public health expert says it, we…

The panic-buying has been debunked so many times. We're drama-tarts, only maximum outrage will do. There are very few 'panic buyers'. It's every shopper buying a bit more, to avoid having to come to the shops with a…

Lots of heat for Dan Andrews about Victoria. But Victoria is the strategy National Cabinet chose. To quote Mary-Louise McLaws, one of Australia's leading pandemic experts: "This is to be expected when we go for…

Bypass the pollies, go straight to the experts. If we don't eliminate this virus, Victoria will happen 'again, and again, and again'. Without elimination, this will happen in every state. Most of Australia may have…

Remember that testing and tracing was our 'roadmap to a CovidSafe Australia'? Victoria did more of it than anybody, see the graph. It didn't help. Every country in the world who thought this was a way to be…

Most of Australia has already achieved elimination, despite the Economy Cult (established business and their sponsored puppets in parliament) saying it couldn’t be done. They even hold economic guns to the CMO’s heads…

No links to Victoria so far, apparently. Meaning we’re seeing exactly the same thing in NSW now - failure to properly eliminate (National Cabinet decision), opening up, spreading the remaining virus around…

“Australia’s national cabinet should explicitly pursue an elimination strategy similar to that of New Zealand. The current suppression strategy carries the certainty of repeated outbreaks and lockdowns, shattering…

We already know what suppression leads to, look at the UK and US. It doesn’t suppress the virus, and then you lose total control, and just give up and send people out to get infected. And their economies crash much…

Ruby Princess docked on 19 March. It’s just about Australia’s entire pandemic. It kickstarted transmission in all modes, and from early May all NSW has really had is overseas (plane) arrivals driving numbers. The only…

Pffft, experts, what do they know. Gladys had the head of the Australian Hotels Association speaking at her Covid news conference today. Running a pub obviously makes you an expert in beating a pandemic.

In recent days we've had the Prime Minister and Premier of NSW asked if they would support further quarantining, if outbreaks get out of hand. Both said the same thing - 'we can't keep turning the lights on and off'. We…

Let it sink in. At a time when a million Australians have lost their jobs, the government’s rescue package centres on big tax cuts to people with high incomes, with jobs.

Australia, here's your future. Boris today openly announced that he's now ignoring 'the science' completely. It's getting in the way of his opening up of the economy. Notice also that UK slogan he stands above each day…

ScoMo just cancelled the next sitting of parliament. The Chief Medical Officer (CMO) said it's unsafe with virus circulating. The same CMO who says a pub can have 300 people in it, more than twice as many as are in that…

Looking forward to this one. I admire any Australian with the bravery to challenge our obsession with booze. Imagine an Australia more interested in ideas, and much less interested in their next drink. The First…

Blue is Victoria, grey is NSW. Over that period where I’ve put the red line you can see Victoria still had community transmission, NSW mostly didn’t. Then you see Victoria take off, around the blue arrow. What was that…

New Zealand (yellow) and Australia (the other graph). The ‘we’re doing just as well as NZ with even fewer restrictions!’ crowd have gone a bit quiet.

This work by Greer was criminally neglected I think. Like all of her stuff it didn’t slot neatly into the position of either warring side of the day, so it got ignored or completely misunderstood. Her main idea here is…

If they don't want people moving about, close the places down they go to. Don't ask people not to move about and then leave the places open. The economy Nazis thought letting Australians travel all over the country in…

FINALLY. National Cabinet came out and said Australia’s strategy is elimination of community transmission. It also said ‘that’s what our strategy always was’ (it wasn’t), but they can have their bit of face-saving…

I wasn’t aware that Android devices adopted Australian slang. Gold.

When Michel Serres died last year, the French President paid tribute. The French revere their scholars. I think society is literally made of ideas, and if you don't understand them they'll destroy you. Great scholars…

NSW Cabinet apparently were trying to decide what number of infections in NSW would trigger more lockdowns. They apparently hit upon a figure of 250 per day, not because of any science or public health, but because they…

There were and still are people who say we should just isolate and protect our vulnerable people, and then let the virus rip. Victoria shows what BS that is. 71 nursing homes with infections now, and with the State on…

In the 1980s, Australia and NZ led the world in elimination of HIV. (No nonsense then of 'you can't eliminate'.) They let the pandemic experts lead, politicans got out of the way. NZ has done it again for Covid-19.…

I use social media as a gauge of public thinking. For Australia it worries me every day. Still in denial of the danger we’re in, overwhelmingly posts are still about ourselves or some form of ‘happy’ distraction from…

Please think about this. Australia doesn’t have a plan to defeat Covid-19. It literally doesn’t, there is no plan. We have all the Covid Safe nonsense, which isn’t about fighting the virus but about opening businesses…

Why did we accept the idea that 'the only thing that can end this pandemic is a vaccine'? That's absolutely not true, fast and strong public health action could have stopped it before it got started. When HIV started,…

Australia started with a Covid strategy corresponding with the red line, and is now finally shifting to one corresponding with the green line. Economy fanboys will be delighted to see it will also save them mucho…

208 people have died of Covid in Australia so far. 139 of these have been in aged care. There are a further 500+ residents of aged care in Victoria currently infected. For those who like to point fingers, responsibility…

Have been driving to work because of the pandemic. One thing I’ve noticed again is just how many people completely ignore road rules. Had a person go past me yesterday who was doing about 140 km/h. Couple of P-platers…

Is Gladys following the National Cabinet decision to go for elimination? Or is she and her cabinet of booze, gambling and real estate flunkeys still clinging to the useless suppression strategy?…

All through this pandemic Australians haven't engaged in the specific details. Instead they've played tabloid games, finding new scapegoats every day. Take the ridiculous hoo-ha about what's happened in Victoria. Blamed…

So far nearly 600,000 poor Australians have completely cleaned out their super accounts under Covid, about $32 billion. This super money if left until retirement would have been worth maybe $200 billion. (JobKeeper by…

Jeans for Genes, one of those fundraising things that people give to, often without having the first idea where the money goes. I don’t like it for 3 reasons, one that genetic approaches to disease are nearly always a…

Another expert who should be at the centre of our fight against Covid, rather than having to try to be heard around the fringes. Who knows what strategy NSW is currently following? ScoMo announced the nation would be…

The 7-day rolling average of community transmission for NSW is the one to watch. Easy to look at daily figures and think they're OK, but then you miss the trend. Been trending up for nearly 2 weeks now. The virus is…

I think Australia has 'Americanised' significantly in the last 40 years. Take our approach to the pandemic. 40 years ago a pandemic triggered a public health response, where large teams of experts were mobilised to…

It’s in the data. This is Victoria’s rolling average community spread for the whole pandemic. The red arrow - 2 May - was the day that average started to climb above 1. The same day NSW went below 1. Also the time…

This is why 'we're following the medical advice' has been political spin all along. When your Chief Medical Officers are employed by your politicians, they're not going to contradict the boss. Kerry Chant saying as much…

Anybody who knows anything about Australian governance (that’s unfortunately a tiny number of people) knows this is true. The federal government has virtually zero role in a pandemic. The National Cabinet is a stunt,…

Here's the constantly updated list of 'hotspots' in NSW. It's overwhelmingly pubs, clubs and restaurants. Why are these still open in NSW? All big political donors. I'd advise everybody to avoid these 'like the plague'.…

We can laugh at this stuff. But the social virus that produced Trump (populism - contempt for public institutions) is alive and well, stupid and lethally dangerous, and growing in Australia.…

Did you do maths at school? NSW Cabinet didn’t. There are close to 10 transmission chains of Covid in NSW right now that can’t be traced. Even one of those is enough to start an explosion of cases. Exponential growth,…

Basic maths again. If you don't control community transmission, even the tiniest changes in behaviour cause an explosion of cases. Community transmission plus 'opening up' caused Victoria. NSW has opened up, and has…

Even the research group who said schools were safe, on a sample size of 18 students, now think NSW is in trouble.

Yesterday the taskforce for economic recovery in Australia suggested taxpayers fund new gas pipelines. The Chair is from the gas industry, other members are fossil fuel industry reps. There's a global glut of gas.

Is anybody else sick of politicians lecturing people every day about rising infection numbers? They don't have a plan to beat the virus, and so when the virus inevitably bites back, why do ordinary people not just tell…

I haven't seen one other NSWelshperson on here flabbergasted at the Russian Roulette Gladys is playing with the lives of themselves and their families. Not one. Is Australia going to get through an entire pandemic not…

What drama tarts we are. Now it's come out hotel guards didn't sleep with guests in the Melbourne hotels. And they also likely weren't who originally spread the virus from the hotels. Add to that the legal fact that…

I said this from day 1 of this pandemic, and was told I hated ScoMo. Australians don’t engage with the ideas, they just line up behind their ‘side’. The ‘balance’ of the economy (feds) and health (States) was exactly…

The risk to NSW. NSW has low case numbers right now. Here's Victoria's graph of case numbers for the pandemic. They had months (the red line) of low case numbers before the cases exploded in late June. They had…

Another parasite, preaching no action on climate change or Covid, retreating to the safety of their country estate.…

Gladys saying exactly what my posts have been saying. I follow the public health data and thinking, I don’t improvise some random personal views of the pandemic. Ms Berejiklian said authorities were concerned the virus…

Yep. Hole in one. New restrictions from NSW, two lots, in the past day. More urgently needed on pubs, clubs, restaurants and regional travel. All big party donors, which is why they haven't done it yet.

More than 99% of Victoria's Covid cases can be traced back to 3 untraceable transmission chains. NSW currently has 16 untraceable transmission chains.

And remember, this from the man who's fleeing Melbourne to live on his country estate, safe from the virus.

No doubt much excitement in NSW today over its only one new Covid case. Community transmission is what caused Victoria's outbreak. Ignore all the other tabloid BS. Read what the experts say. NSW's community transmission…

"A danger greater than war faces the State of NSW...". From 1918-19. People came out of 4 years of horrific war into 3 years of horrific pandemic. The pandemic killed far more than the war. They weren't strategic…

A clear example of how the pandemic was politicised. Breaches of hotel quarantine (which it turns out may not have actually occurred) in Victoria were hammered day after day as 'Victorian mismanagement'. Now guards at…

HIV is a nice example I think of how treating disease as a medical thing means losing control of it. Look at the HIV stats for Australia. Strong public health action from the 1980s through to the mid-1990s pushed HIV…

About 20 years ago the Commonwealth held a big enquiry into bushfires. A lot of what it found is repeated in the NSW enquiry on last Christmas' fires. Interestingly it also said Australia had shifted to a 'fire…

Back to this brilliant research published in the BMJ. I've marked with an X now where schools, public transport, many workplaces, pubs, clubs, restaurants and shops would sit. All extremely high risk in NSW right now.…

Today's colouring-in exercise. Paint Sydney in Covid yellow and green. Still some empty spaces left, if you're quick. Those who went outside the lines to the Central Coast and Newcastle are very naughty.

There's something delicious about watching a man who weaponised Australia's borders to win elections being helpless before closed borders. Are people realising yet that the feds have no authority in a pandemic? ScoMo…

NSW now has its highest rate of community transmission of the virus since 22 April. Danger.

If you're a fan of the modern LNP, fascinating piece by Gareth Hutchens today about how proud Menzies was of running large deficits over many years. Years where Australia boomed. Menzies knew deficits simply shifted the…

Listen to the experts. Fuck off, politicians and lobbyists. Unbelievable, this isn't the Australia I grew up in.

"It was a mistake when the state moved from stage three to stage two during the first wave of infections under pressure from the National Cabinet. Lifting the number of people allowed in a household from five to 20…

The Economy Crowd. Not only spending their pandemic happily sheltered from the virus while undermining public health action for the rest of us, like demanding borders open to help mates in the tourism and airline…

Wanted to go back to this graph. Right now politicians are telling you that we need to get the economy open, we're facing an economic emergency. Bullshit, look at the 2 world wars here. The huge government spending in…

Maybe a million Australians have lost their jobs under Covid. Do you think Josh's $158 billion in tax cuts will cheer them up, now that they have no income and are paying no tax? Shows pretty clearly who's getting most…

Deloitte, one of the big business consulting firms: "The underlying equation is simple. The greater the success against the virus, the greater the success in protecting economies against the pandemic." Anybody who tells…

Gladys today saying that NSW knows how to control the virus while keeping its economy running. The fact not one other place in the world has managed it should make us suspicious. As should the data. Here's Victoria. It…

Pictures really do tell stories. Australia's 30 years of economic 'boom' were a fantasy. Workers went backwards fast, and survived with enormous amounts of private debt. Debt they needed because governments sucked money…

Go for zero. https://grattan.edu.au/report/how-australia-can-get-to-zero-covid-19-cases/

Our passion for travel is matched by our passion for borders. Doesn't that strike us as bizarre? Those are OPPOSITE desires. It makes sense when you realise it's only *other* peoples' borders, the places we travel to,…

Check this out. Spanish Flu in NSW, 1919 - January 25, pandemic arrives in NSW (same day as COVID 101 years later) - NSW quickly put public health restrictions in place - only about 15 died in NSW during this first wave…

A disgrace. "...where we can reopen our economy and reasonably restore the liberties of all Australians." When will more thinking Australians speak out and say they're quite happy to have 'liberty' from the fucking…

We're not seeing the politics. National Cabinet (the LNP end of it) desperately want contact tracing to be all we need, because that way they can keep their beloved 'Economy' open. The level of community transmission is…

"The big difference between Victoria and NSW now is that one state has a plan to get to zero, and one doesn’t. Premier Gladys Berejiklian is asking the good citizens of NSW to please do the right thing. It’s a plea, not…

Thought I'd re-post this, after NSW politics today and koalas. It's not about koalas.

My number one pandemic tip. When a politician or somebody on YouTube speaks, turn it off. Then read something like this instead. https://www.policyforum.net/australias-pandemic-policy-made-a-second-wave-inevitable/

I’ve been so proud to be an Australian in this pandemic. Our magnificent public institutions stuffed full of expertise have been allowed to flex their muscles. We’re the envy of much of the world. At the same time…

NSW's great contact tracing has been unable to trace 22 cases. It's not enough on its own. We can't 'live with the virus.'

It'd be amusing to see how many Australians would pass the Australian citizenship test.

A qualification for leading a university today is rank stupidity. Exhibit A. https://www.smh.com.au/national/melbourne-uni-chief-says-victoria-must-address-difficult-ethical-questions-20200919-p55x82.html

Lots of prominent Australians signing this one. This is a tipping point for Australian society, I think. Do we want to head down the American road? https://nb.tai.org.au/tax_investment_price?recruiter_id=854569

One of my side projects at the moment is working as part of a small team to reconstruct my old high school, virtually. It burned to the ground a few years ago, a tragedy, it was one of Australia's most stunning schools…

AEMO's step change to renewables for Australia, 96% by 2042. If you squint hard you can just make out the contribution from gas.

I started the day hopeful this government would do the right thing for Australia. And ended it as flabbergasted as all the financial experts at how appalling this government is. Rather than dump their ideology about…

We say China is 'authoritarian'. That's because we say we're 'free', and they're not. But unpack that a bit - is a decision by government *not* to act authoritarian, as much as a decision to act? Here are the…

Victoria is what this virus does if you open up with the virus still spreading. You'd need to have your head pretty firmly inserted up your own backside not to see that pattern repeated all over the world. Why do we…

Monash has surveyed for both waves of Covid in Australia, to test what Australians know, feel and how they behave, with Covid. Testing and tracing won't save any country, including us. Up to half of men and a third of…

There are many here in Australia who still seriously argue for us to do as Boris has done. Not lock things down, let more people get infected so we'll hopefully get 'herd immunity', save the economy etc. It's beyond…

Australia rhymes with failure. The country is now too stupid to even care about this irreparable vandalism. It can find money to give to multinational gas companies, but not its own universities. Our own Trump is coming.

So many have wanted a plug-and-play solution to this pandemic - lockdown, no lockdown, just test and trace etc. But it's never going to be about that. It's about getting to know your enemy intimately, and modulating…

Why NSW is playing with a can of petrol and fire, by lifting restrictions right now. There won’t be a time in this entire pandemic, unless we have a vaccine or the virus disappears by itself, that we can ‘live alongside…

ScoMo is building a chicken coop (illegally) at his Sydney PM home. But it’s the invincibility that’s important here. Populism makes a politician politically invincible. Every check and balance - institutions (the law,…

Australia only needed 2 things in the Budget. 1. Free childcare. 2. Big cash handouts to ordinary people. Together those would make the 'economy' go gangbusters. Immediately.

"Until the end of the pandemic, it's highly unlikely that NSW will ever get to 28 days of no community transmission, because that is not how a pandemic works." It's highly unlikely this will occur because the State…

Differences between how women’s and men’s sport are valued. The Australian women’s netball captain is going to play in NZ. She can’t get a game here. That’d be like the Australian cricket captain going to play in the NZ…

This day, at the beginning of May, was a turning point for Australia. A large group of Australian experts from a huge range of fields advised the government to hold that first wave lockdown for a few more weeks, to…

I think Gladys is likeable. A competent politician, those who would replace her from her side are mostly hopeless. I’d be surprised if she survives the latest scandal, she knew about the corruption, there’s no escape…

The pandemic follows the same pattern worldwide. Rich folk bring the virus into a country through their extensive travelling. They then can afford to shelter at home from it. The poor catch it, can't afford to stay home…

This is a statement from NSW Health yesterday: “The only way to find new cases and prevent further transmission is to increase testing." That’s just obviously wrong. There are all sorts of ways to prevent transmission…

Have you seen the airlines in recent days pushing to 'open up' more? This is the same trap Europe fell into. Tweet is from Australia. Qantas 'recommends' people wear masks. Its own staff don't, passengers don't. Gladys…

We’re so lucky we have superb public health systems in Australia. This story is horrifying, what catching Covid can do to you, even if you’re young. And yet there are still people in Australia today who will look you in…

Germany is a global economic superpower, producing some of the world’s most advanced and sexiest things. Many of the largest and most successful firms are still heavily tied to the regions and even families that set…

The science popularisers like Brian Cox, or Karl. Know what I’d like to see? A social science populariser, who can ask questions like ‘with all this gee whizbang new science and technology, why do people in the 21st…

ScoMo just finished his address to parliament with 'God Bless Australia'. Our very own Trump.

Less than 2% of Australia's vast health spending goes to public health preventative measures. Barely a cent has been spent on that during Covid either. It's what I mean when I say the government has no plan to actually…

People are amazed I think Australia is in real danger with Covid. Our numbers are so low! Much of Europe’s numbers were low, going into their summer. Much of it is now about to be locked down. Low numbers come from…

You’ll now see an orgy of pressure to ‘open borders’ in Australia. Just note that this is exactly the script Europe followed, before their summer. Their Christmas will be mostly about tens of thousands of families…

Because in my experience people have very little knowledge of how politics actually works, ScoMo the professional marketing man continually pulls the wool over our eyes. Take the masterful spin of ‘Covid normal by…

3 cases per day. We had that many in NSW today alone. The Swiss are highly organised people. They also all wear masks. Did you know we're following an 'aggressive suppression' strategy here? Except we aren't, it's more…

NSW may shortly be the only place in Australia with any Covid. If it’s the ‘gold standard’, ask ‘gold standard of what?’

Gladys yesterday said 'if our businesses are Covidsafe, we can open the economy even more'. She was talking about QR codes. 3 important things here: 1) QR codes do nothing to make any business safe. They let NSW Health…

Governance is my profession. This is a fascinating graphic doing the rounds. It’s slightly misleading, there aren’t far fewer Republicans (red), they’re just spread out a lot more. And their Congress (peoples’ house) is…

Universities are also a type of federal system. Schools and Faculties are like the States, and a central administration is like the federal government. Nearly every senior manager of a university doesn’t understand this…

Good on Dennis Atkins for pointing out ScoMo is trying to introduce Trumpism to Australia. Alarming numbers of people even in the town I live in are supporters of Trump’s populism.

Finally NSW is exposed as the outlier in our national fight against the virus, rather than as the ‘gold standard’. Because Gladys shares ScoMo’s views, which are Boris Johnson’s and Trump’s views. The ‘balance the…

Have a look here at how Victoria has SMASHED Covid. There's not a case of any type in nearly a fortnight. Same for every other State and Territory in the country, except NSW (it's *very* close). The entire country could…

A nice sister post to my one earlier about how Australia's economy is really just a debt bubble. A giant casino, centred on houses.

In NAIDOC week, read Gammage’s book to completely change how you think about this whole topic. Aboriginal Australia was nothing like what you might have been taught or imagined. It was a manufactured Garden of Eden, a…

Here's an IQ test Australia. This is Covid numbers (unknown source infections) for the past 2 weeks in Australia. If you were the boss, would you: 1) tell all those zero States that NSW is the 'gold standard' and they…

That beautiful moment when a female federal cabinet minister is asked if Canberra's blokey culture is still bad. And the bloke-PM just talks right over the top of her. She then says my PM is terrific. Good girl, know…

This looks a bit dry. But it means something important. NSW never had significant Covid-19, tiny amounts at most (0.04-0.32% of the State infected). That's important, because right now we're encouraged to believe…

"The Prime Minister said states that were reopening could learn lessons from NSW, which he dubbed as "battle hardened" from recent months." Sorry, bullshit. NSW has looked great because it has close to ZERO virus. It…

Lol, he left out “tell everybody for months that elimination is impossible in Australia, then change to an elimination strategy and hide it by renaming it ‘aggressive suppression’.”

TANZANC = Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand, Atlantic & Northern Canada. ‘Hammer and Dance’ = using contact tracing to ‘manage’ the virus. TANZANC is now famous as a *zero Covid* strategy, the only successful strategy in…

Yaneer is a scientist working on the pandemic. Don’t be a lazy bystander to this most important event of our lifetimes, understand what’s going on. We’re not out of the woods yet. You *must* eliminate the virus, it’s…

One of Australia’s leading public health doctors on what it takes to beat Covid. - contact tracing is only useful with very low case numbers - “it is impossible to lock down too early or too hard” - the business…

We await the Treasurer's wrath against (Liberal) South Australia in the same way we await winning the lottery. Delighted to see it, not expecting it.

The revelations this week about Australian soldiers allegedly murdering civilians in Afghanistan. Do we remember that ScMo sent the federal police to raid the ABC’s offices when it first broke this story? And yet he’s…

ScoMo thought he’d play the role of Trump’s deputy, in a bit of China bashing. China is the only thing that keeps the Australian economy afloat, now they’re closing down all of our export industries one by one. Nobody…

I don’t make stuff up. The Australian government chose the UK and US as guides for our pandemic response. You know, those countries where people are dying all over the place. Luckily most of our Premiers decided to…

“NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian has repeatedly maintained that eliminating the virus locally was "unrealistic”. But Australia’s largest State is also on track to get there, EVEN IF IT WASN’T BY DESIGN...” (emphasis…

It took decades for Australian businesses to build profitable trade with 700 million Chinese customers. It took 10 minutes for the Trump-loving buffoons in the federal LNP to bring it all crashing down. One of the…

A NSW Liberal. A champion. Compare and contrast with the knuckle-dragging LNP disgrace in Canberra. Our federal system may save us from climate change just as it did from Covid, by States bypassing the idiots in…

The real reason the feds are so interested in super is in that first line, industry super is set to control half of Australia’s economic output within 5 years. Industry super is the 21st century version of unions in a…

Certain leaders did everything they could to stop Australia going for elimination. They and their followers probably pine for the 'economic freedom' of Europe and the US, where businesses are in the toilet and hundreds…

How many years have most workplaces had air con now? Not schools. None of the people wailing about lost education during the pandemic actually give a shit about schools, they just wanted them open as childcare so…

NSW Health today said NSW has likely eliminated the virus, remember that 'impossible' thing? Does nobody notice that the 'freedom' here isn't being described as freedom from the virus, but freedom from the public health…

Across the world, humans turn off their brains when summer holidays are involved. For so many thousands in Europe, it was the last mistake they ever made. Here in Australia we’re following exactly the same script. All…

Most of the vaccines aren’t even designed to give you immunity, so re-infections are highly possible. I’m sure many of my friends on FB stopped reading what I say about the pandemic months ago. I’m actually quite…

It is actually what has just occurred. People accuse me of being anti-LNP. I’m quite fine with Liberals and Nationals. I despise populists, who took over both of those parties in the past 25 years, and are trying to…

The populist takeover of Australia continues at pace. The word 'sovereignty' is a red flag - for example it's how the populist Tories sold Brexit, and Trump sold himself to the US. Notice the flag too, a giveaway. Local…

Professor Crabb has been saying this for some time. As have I, because I follow his work and that of many other researchers. Covid is binary - you either have zero, or you have lots. There is no 'low' amount of virus,…

"While testing numbers have increased during the week, there are still too few people coming forward for testing. With restrictions eased and borders having reopened, now is not the time to be complacent." (NSW Health…

Something I don’t think many Australians have really registered yet. You’d think the whole thing was over.

Yaneer Bar-Yam is a scientist who has been working on pandemics for 15 years. He's a huge fan of NZ and Australia's approach. Here's his summary of what works (green) versus what doesn't (red). Notice that what we did…

A public service announcement, because I doubt they'll spend much telling people this. NSW Health advises that if you're in crowded shops this Christmas, please wear a mask. Notice, no rule saying you should, which…

"Polling shows that 62% of people “believe Australia is a victim in the trade war rather than making itself a target by the government publicly criticising the Chinese regime (38%)". A.k.a. 62% of Australians couldn't…

Many took cheap shots at Victoria rather than focusing on the fact that quarantine in Australia is the FEDERAL government's responsibility, by law. This is now the 3rd 'leak' from Sydney airport quarantine in the past…

The great myth of this pandemic is that NSW has been ‘managing’ Covid, and that you can have virus and keep everything open at the same time. That’s the myth that has crippled the US and Europe and has killed hundreds…

NSW Health Minister currently lecturing us all on an ‘avalanche of complacency’. Notice the political strategy here, copied from Boris and the Don? Government outsources its responsibility for the pandemic to the…

In case you don’t see these. See how they’re now warning the whole State? Because they (Gladys, not NSW Health) relaxed most of the Covid restrictions. Don’t blame the people. The government have no idea how far this…

The number of infected people that breaks a contact tracing system is only about 50. NSW now has 28, with a big spike on that due tomorrow. And at this stage the contact tracers haven’t even been able to find the origin…

One of Australia’s leading pandemic experts. I’ve been critical of NSW all year, for all of these reasons. It’s one of the most perverse nonsenses of this whole pandemic that NSW is seen as handling this pandemic…

Scroll down this list of Covid hotspots in NSW (it will take you some time). Is it dawning on us yet, all the BS about contact tracing? Notice that this has spread far and wide before anybody even noticed. Exactly what…

Those who don't want to fight the virus have weaponised contact tracing as the silver bullet that can keep everything open. It won't work, it hasn't worked anywhere, exponential growth quickly swamps the tracers.…

Current list of places with Covid contact in Sydney (the venue list is MUCH longer again). This is for a small number of cases. It's why contact tracing quickly falls over once you get even a small number of infections,…

Imagine if Dan Andrews had said this. The double standard is disgusting, not one word from the attack dogs in Canberra or the Murdoch press about this. But I don’t expect the people who attacked Andrews to show the…

Professor Marylouise McLaws on radio this afternoon, an international expert on disease outbreaks, asked to summarise the Premier’s decisions about Christmas in NSW. “Dangerous”. Disease outbreak specialists use the…

NSW keeps spinning the chambers, hoping that it doesn't land on the one with the bullet in it. And every time it gets lucky, people say what wonderful leadership it is.

Go shopping, don’t go shopping. Celebrate New Years, don’t celebrate New Years. Mix with your family, don’t mix with your family. Facing a toxic situation by just giving everybody what they want, even though all of…

A game-changer if true. Australia is already producing this one in readiness. And it only needs fridge temperature.

A very common loon statement, the 99% thing. 1% of the population of Australia is 250,000 people. Of the world, 75 million people. That’s a lot of people dead so that Ben can have his elephant discussion. On top of…

NSW and the federal government don’t listen, they just lecture.

This is the core belief system of governments being smashed by Covid. Ideas kill. It’s why Gladys is watching the virus spread through NSW and is doing almost nothing about it. You know whose ‘choices’ she’s protecting?…

The ‘hotspot’ Tier 1-4 strategy in the UK, which ScoMo wanted here and which Gladys is now implementing in NSW (what she calls ‘proportionate response’), has completely collapsed. Tens of thousands more will now die,…

A sequence of aerial shots of the Sydney Opera House, at different altitudes. I put this together as an exploration of the idea of ‘local’ and ‘global’, a fundamental idea we use in many areas. I think aerial shots help…

You know what’s funnier, Bernard? Watching you suffer. I remember Michel Foucault, the great philosopher, once being asked what fine wines and food he most liked. His answer? ‘A hamburger and a Coke.’ Exactly.

Let’s pretend Orange, the town, declared it was going to separate from the rest of Australia. Like the UK is trying to do with Europe. How long would the Orange people know and love survive? Ask that question about any…

Some people know the passion I've had for this idea for a long time. Opening the country to the West, instead of always North and South along the coast, could transform Australia. Come on Australia, build things again,…

Droughts and flooding rains. Mackellar’s line was a bit of misty-eyed fondness. But ironically, droughts cause flooding rains, and flooding rains cause droughts. Both are symptoms of how the Australian landscape has…

Almost time for the great annual patriotic orgasm. I’m a proud Australian. But I’ve always found patriotism to be like thinking your kids are the most amazing kids ever born. A dad growing up under the Nazis teaches you…

To me this is one of the most exciting things happening in the world right now. The rediscovery of the importance of big animals - megafauna. Big animals have been under assault for centuries, often by hunting but also…

How stupid selling of public assets to foreign profit-taking firms gets rebranded, by the idiots who sold it off, as "Lefties/Greenies against coal". Let's be less dumb. Notice how the more privatised electricity gets,…

Nobody ever has an answer to this one, a question about space with huge implications. Where does a phone call take place? You could say ‘at either end of the call’. But that’s not peoples’ experience in a call, they…

This graph shows why Australia has looked like its ‘economy’ has been growing constantly for the past 25 years. We’ve been using our houses as ATMs, ramping up house prices using cheap credit and then using the ‘equity’…

The last famous Australian entertainer who retired and came back, coincidentally called "The Voice", has been mocked ever since.

At first glance this looks like a boring list of numbers. But this shows the age distribution of voters across all Australian electorates and States. It’s a window into who we really are as a country. If you look, what…

Every year engineers release a report card on the health of US infrastructure. (They do the same in Australia.) D+, not pretty. It’d be the same in many countries, we tend to build things and then just assume they never…

There’s lots to like about Dick. But he’s banging the population drum again. And it’s not really about population - which you can’t control - it’s about immigration, which you can. He doesn’t seem to understand that…

Is Australia watching ScoMo frothing at the mouth about border protection and thinking, "the boats will be back!"? Or are they thinking "these idiots are absolutely bloody desperate to try to stay in government"? You…

Here's the swindle right at the heart of superannuation. The Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia (ASFA) sets the 'benchmarks' for different levels of retirement. For example, whether you want a 'basic',…

‘Drought’ is still a highly loaded word in Australia for me. There’s a tendency to see rain as something that happens, or not, which we have no influence on. But rain is part of a wider water cycle, and we can influence…

You can't judge a book by its cover? Maybe. But everything I didn't like about John Howard is somehow in that look. Sneaky, mean-spirited, small-minded, vindictive, appealing to the worst side of us. Encouraged…

Excellent. Now let's get them to rule on Sky News, The Australian, the Daily Telegraph and 2GB, all rabid subsidiaries of the LNP. The 'Right' are so unbelievably precious, they invented advocacy groups and think tanks.

In times of excess frugality is called being cheap, or stingy. It's a lesson many may have to learn again, the really hard way. 89% of Australians feel out of control financially, that's scary.

In Who Wants to be a Millionaire, asking the audience gets you the right answer 91% of the time. Google search works by asking questions to an audience of billions, it’s why it works so well. Why are we so reluctant to…

Stephen Toulmin is one of my heroes. Now departed, his life work was the study of arguments, reasoning and how to make good decisions. Toulmin always got frustrated by people looking for either absolute answers to…

Fish don’t know water exists until they’re caught. That’s how I see living in a rich and privileged country too, we often don’t see that privilege, we assume that’s just how the world is. For example, the idea of…

How would you answer if somebody asked, who runs Australia? Or who runs the world, or the place where you work, or your household? My guess is many would name a person or people to answer each of those. My answer is -…

I have a daughter now old enough to drive. It's a tension for me, because: 1. I don't think kids should be driving cars. 2. I think society already has way too many cars and drivers. 3. The greatest killer of…

Australia, the world’s first immigration (Ponzi) economy. Demography explains so much, have a look at how much of modern Australia is explained in here. I don't get a lot of traction with the idea that our societies are…

"Big country. Small minds." (New Zealander, describing Australia.)

Why I think Waleed Aly is important for Australia. 1) He makes being smart and informed sexy. 2) He shows that answers are complex and usually not where you think they will be. 3) He shows that migrants and Muslims…

Watching the big election bribery cash splash. I mean budget. The usual stuff both sides trot out, idolising small business. There’s nothing wrong with small business. But it isn’t the engine room of our economy, or any…

All political movements are grounded in promoting particular interests. I think this helps focus what we see in politics, always look to the actual interests involved. The ALP: - is the oldest political party in…

For years elections were won and lost in Queensland, because that’s where the population was going. This election though will probably be won and lost in Victoria and NSW, where the bulk of the immigration to Australia…

*whistle* the tolls out to 2060 in Sydney. 40 years. M4 (between Parramatta and Homebush): $4.21 each way, from 2017 to 2060. M5 East (between Beverly Hills and Mascot): $6.82 each way, from 2020 to 2060. M5 South-West…

Australians see government as a service provider. Something to make sure the basic infrastructure of society is in place, working and affordable. I think it’s a very healthy framework for government, and have actually…

This happened in Lithgow recently. The investigation as to why turned up the interesting fact that nobody even knew how the Lithgow reticulated water supply works. They still don’t, some of it is still a mystery. The…

I figured out that the Australian definition of a long weekend is, “an ordinary weekend, with a day of driving added to it.”

* Australian baby boomers spent $556 million on cruises in 2017. * Australian inheritances are easily about the largest in the world (see table). Always follow the money.

Hazardous air quality in Sydney, headline. Caused by ‘hazard reduction burning’. Seeing the stupidity here, anybody? This one is right up there with daylight savings. If somebody builds a home in the middle of the bush,…

An expert on picking on people speaks of the pain of being picked on by people.…

I love this paradox. If you want a peaceful happy life, you have to debate things. Trying to achieve peace and happiness by avoiding conflict just kicks the conflict can down the road, and when we catch up to it it’s…

Chicken and egg question. Which came first, local or global? I reckon the most common answer would be - local. But just as countries were invented *after* the world was ‘globalised’, your ‘local’ area was invented after…

Soooo... I got the answer wrong. I am now keeping my word and posting this picture selected by Yasmin so I'm challenging my friends who are logical and smart thinkers, to have a crack at guessing the answer to the…

Hopefully the paywall doesn’t prevent access. https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/prepoll-voting-is-undermining-our-democracy/news-story/f1721826d60e50256a314648805636f1

This is what years of Botox and plastic surgery do to your brain.…

These are the 2 most significant PMs of my lifetime so far. I’m not really interested in comparing them as people, but one thing each of them said I think defines the debates Australia is still having. Hawke: At every…

10 thoughts about the election. 1. It’s not sport, nobody actually won or lost. Any party who reads election results as being about them, win or lose, will always get smashed by the people eventually. 2. The old still…

Seeing lots of rubbish like this. We keep treating politics as a football game between parties, that we watch on TV. I reckon we don’t stop to think - no, the LNP didn’t ‘win’ the election, like a tennis match. The LNP…

In the UK, everybody talks about what 'the people' want. In Australia everybody interprets the election here as what 'the people' wanted. 3 years ago they (the ones who bothered to vote in the UK) decided they wanted to…

One of the greatest human problems, understanding how to balance individual and group. I think music solved it a long time ago, but people don't often go there to answer this one. Melody (individual) and harmony…

The Israel Folau freedom of speech hoo-ha is an example of how the LNP is deluding itself that they're back in government because people supported their policies and worldview. They took no policies to the election,…

Company boards are supposed to be made up of mostly independent directors. It's a bullshit model - see the GFC, or Australia's banks. Imagine a country or even a family run by people you don't get to choose, who don't…

The picture below is the Maldives, tourist paradise and what the tourists have left behind. In tribute to Michel Serres, I coincidentally saw this paragraph from him the day he died: "Disguised under the label of…

Into week 2 of the continued reign of the Lunatic Nutters Party (LNP). Last week religious freedom of speech was the go, this week the Australian Federal Police is raiding journalists' homes and offices. Free speech is…

Here's more evidence that our society is run by (scared) old people. Do you know our two most trusted social institutions? Schools maybe? The legal system? Marriage? No. 1) Australian Federal Police. 2) State police…

Here's an idea for 'stimulating the economy'. How about diverting the vast rivers of taxpayer dollars flowing to Canberra, to State and local government, where the services people use actually are? At the moment…

Q&A was a science luvvies thing last night. The way we deal with scientists troubles me. When we're not ignoring them, we fawn over them, like last night. O please give us the answers science, isn't it nice to have firm…

Australians tend to talk about rivers as if they were talking about drains. Something that drains water from one spot to the sea, hopefully with lots pumped out along the way. Or something to turn into a dam. You can…

Flatter taxes are what the LNP are trying to introduce by stealth in Australia. Rich people love flat taxes. It's a real test of just how dumb we are as voters, if we fall for it. They're a terribly regressive thing to…

None of the research on sleep can answer one basic question - why we do it . At the end of this article the researcher suggests something he thinks is crazy, but I reckon finally on the right track: "...sleep is so…

There are 125 taxes in Australia. 99 are federal, 25 State and only 1 is local. We all live locally.

The graph below is fascinating research, the richer you are, the poorer you think you are relative to others. It's called affluenza. There's something in the bible about that, Matthew 13:12. Describes Australia the…

Poor Philip Lowe is whistling into the wind here. ScoMo and the LNP actually believe big tax cuts are like fairies at the bottom of the garden, the whole 'economy' will magically grow and fix everything. We're so…

I reckon every behaviour you can see on the road is matched by a different way people live and act in society. Have a look at this, our roads tell us every day how to solve society's problems. (It won't be individualism…

Treasury Laws Amendment (Tax Relief So Working Australians Keep More Of Their Money) Bill 2019. I kid you not, the Bill is actually called that. The culture warrior virus has now infected legislation. Oh, and nobody…

England celebrates almost winning a World Cup! Go NZ, let's keep England's perfect record of zero World Cups intact. (Australia has 5 Cups, by the way, for any Brit people warming up their boos, so even with a win…

William Joseph Macpherson is another hero of mine, he took many breathtaking images of Australia at the turn of the last century. Like this one of The Rocks, where you see both the life of the people (kids in this case)…

It's a long time since Railway Square in Sydney looked like this. The blissful time before cars ate the world.

Anthony Hordern & Sons Palace Emporium, Brickfield Hill, Sydney, 1935. The largest shopping centre in the world at the time, 52 acres of shops.

Australians are turning away from meat for the same reason they're turning away from plastic. Because Australia doesn't think. It calls thinking 'over-thinking', meaning any thought at all.

The Bullingdon Club, Oxford University, 1987. You can see David Cameron (ex British PM) second from top left, and Boris Johnson, likely British PM from Wednesday, seated at the front. This club reportedly performed acts…

Clive Palmer tried to do a 'Trump' in the Australian election. He didn't succeed for himself, though definitely strongly shaped the outcome by strip mining disaffected voters and delivering them to the LNP as…

When Charles Darwin visited Bathurst in 1836, he made this fascinating comment about the Macquarie River: "The Macquarie figures in the map as a respectable river, and it is the largest of those draining this part of…

So, after more than $50 billion of our money, Australia is now 62nd in the world for broadband speed. They could fix the NBN by upgrading it to its original design, but that would mean these failed suburban solicitors…

Wages are stagnant in Australia because people stopped joining unions. The end, there is no other reason. Even the Governor of the Reserve Bank has said workers should fight for higher wages - can you believe he's been…

You gave me the answer To love eternally I love you, and You, you seem to like me. - Paul McCartney, accidentally writing the greatest love song of all time.

At $51 billion the NBN is Australia’s biggest ever infrastructure project, and it makes some people wince. But just to keep our societies running, an estimated $40 billion a year will be needed on infrastructure. Per…

The most tedious thing about modern sport for me, at every level, is the constant attack on officials. Technology feeds it, endless replays and slow motions and microphones and projected ball trajectories, and 20…

NBN came and finished connecting my street last weekend. What struck me was that every worker was young and obviously from India, and they really knew their stuff, fantastic to watch them. And it made me think how…

Skilled politicians are like reverse cycle air con I think. Let's say Right = cold and Left = hot. Rather than trying to turn hot into cold or cold into hot, by heating or cooling, a heat pump just shifts the heat from…

Keynes and Hayek were like chalk and cheese. But they both agreed that ideas are the heart of life. Even 'vested interests' are based in ideas - power and money derive from ideas. Australian public life is a wasteland…

There's a desperation about the 'big lap' I think. A dream of many Australians. As if the more we see of the country, the more we somehow understand it. To me it's a last-gasp leftover from our imperial past, empires of…

Australia emits between 1-2% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, which some say is reason to do nothing about it. These same people often think abortion is an emergency. Australia has 0.001% of the world’s…

Our curious ideas about time. If you ask 'what time is it?', there are at least 38 different answers, depending on where you are in the world. The same day here on Earth is lived 38 times, separately. How do people…

The insurance industry (if it survives, predictions are it won’t) may convince remaining climate change doubters. Some predictions say the average person may end up with no access to insurance. Look at the natural…

Trump has arrived in Australia. ScoMo actually plagiarised Trump directly this week. Populism I think is politics for utopians, meaning people who don't think politics should exist at all, that we shouldn't have…

In 2018, for the first time in history, there were more people aged 64+ in the world than there are people aged 5 or younger. (Those who think poor nations are filling the world with too many babies should let that sink…

MND is motor neurone disease. A really, really nasty thing (Stephen Hawking was one of the most famous sufferers of it). This bacteria is in all our waterways and dams, and the warming climate is making it much worse.…

This may be a genuine crisis. Even bigger towns, like Bathurst and Orange and Tamworth, may soon have no water. And Sydney's dams are not pretty either. Like Brexit in politics, I wonder if we need this sort of crisis…

There are still about 1.5 million people in Australia who are members of unions. No political party has a membership greater than 50,000 🤔

To me it’s ridiculous that modern countries like Australia can only offer people 4 weeks of leave in a year. Other counties are even worse. My sense is this won’t change in Australia for one main reason - our worship of…

The distribution of birthdays in Australia. September 17 is the most common birthday. Across the Western world September/October are the most common birth months. Nobody is really sure why birthdays follow the patterns…

If you think it'd be cool to have a crystal ball, I think insurance data might be the best you can do. All the debates over climate change are mostly froth and bubble, serious businesses have already decided it's real.…

The evolution of the Australian arm. Permanently bent at the elbow, for beer, wine, coffee and phones.

Some of the ideas I post here derive from the ideas Einstein used. For example, location words like up, down, near, far, there, here, before, after - all of those are words with relative meanings, not absolute meanings.…

"If this parliament looked like deadlocked purgatory, the Commons has rarely better reflected the national state of mind. The country is split, conflicted, afraid to defy the referendum, to revoke it or carry it out.…

The Block is good drama. It’s also a window into Casino Oz. Capital gains on housing are the engine room of the Oz economy. Really it’s just a fancy word for gambling. The trick is flogging off a place for zillions more…

The average (median) age of workers in Australia is about 40. If you’re uncomfortable with immigration, look at that number. Somebody has to do the work. Boris Johnson has just announced huge importing of health care…

Australian scientists have discovered that beneath the sea bed around the world, there may be up to half a million cubic KILOMETRES of fresh water. That’s about 100 times as much groundwater as we’ve extracted since…

Opposites are the in thing. Left and Right, city and the bush, quiet Australians and noisy Australians, etc. I think it’s worth trying this thought experiment with all of them. Hot and cold is a good example. If hot…

The politics of words. DROUGHT. Drought suggests that lack of water is due to lack of rain. It's a concept used a lot because it puts the blame on weather, rather than on anything humans do. One of a politician's…

The PM says Australia doesn’t need to do more on climate change because Australia is only 1.3% of world emissions. Australia takes 1.3% of the world’s refugees, and has spent well over $10 billion so far managing…

In Germany the transition away from coal is going much more smoothly, because unions and business there work in partnership, putting the interests of coal workers right in the mix. Here the government just tries to…

Another example of why ideas matter. The ‘environment’ as an idea is the problem, not the answer. This mythical environment is trying to kill us right now, it doesn’t need protecting - it doesn’t exist. Well-meaning…

No need to travel to Australia. We’ll come to you.

If you work in a frontline public service position, it’s scarily obvious that Australians are now flipping from the easygoing, unthinking ‘she’ll be right’ attitude, to explosive rage in the face of emergencies, like…

I dug back into the crap thrown at Tim Flannery by Straya's culture warriors a few years ago. Flannery predicted dire shortages of water and rain. The crazies were outraged, as in this article below. There are now over…

In 1952 London had a 5-day smog emergency (picture). About 12,000 people died from the filthy air. Sydney is in the middle of a week of filthy air, the rest of us have been too. The damage that does to lungs and blood…

It’s easier to find the answer to any question, and fast, today than at any time in history. At the same time ‘facts’ have never been so ignored. Maybe this proves the maxim that we never desire what is easy for us to…

"Our rivers and landscapes are suffering once again and it is not due to drought. It is caused by poor policies and poor management. And these are driven by POPULIST myths. The critical need is not to drought­-proof the…

I see schools are now doing rain dances, does stupidity have no limit? Australia’s problem isn’t lack of rain - ‘drought’ - it’s stupidity. Australia builds its towns and cities on its best agricultural land, flood…

Victor has been in the news a lot lately. Sure indigenous burning was a lot more sophisticated than what we do, I’m all for this. But at the same time we need to question whether that burning is actually what turned…

I love cars, which might surprise some people. What I don’t like is our one-dimensional thinking about them. So here’s a filter - could you survive without a car? Many of us actually live that question firsthand. As…

Australia’s favourite way to not address a serious problem? Let it get completely out of control, and then call the poor bastards who have to try to clean it up “heroes”. Like calling women juggling families and work…

Thinking through the bushfires. Several historians have showed that what we now see as the 'bush' - mostly trees - used to be a mosaic of open and closed spaces. Compare this early Australian painting with the same spot…

Maybe the fire crisis is nothing to do with fires, or with firefighting. These fires are the natural result of myths Australians tell themselves. I'm very interested that books like these are starting to unpick…

You can tell a lot about Australia from space. Look at most of us, huddled on the coast, afraid of our own country. Like a lot of Australians, I’ve wondered about what reconciliation means, with aboriginal people. Maybe…

National parks, part 2. The Australian landscape at the time of European settlement was overwhelmingly described as a ‘park’. But not in our modern meaning of ‘wilderness’, but in the meaning of the sorts of estates…

Spending some of my Christmas break re-reading these amazing books. You’ll never look at Australia the same way again, if you read these. For tens of thousands of years, tens of millennia before the pyramids or anything…

I think we misunderstood - what if ‘reconciliation’ needs to be with Australia itself? The landscape. Aborigines aren’t separate to the landscape - they created it. With towns and cities almost out of water, and…

Of course climate change intensified these bushfires. But there’s a deeper problem I think, as always it comes back to our ideas. Our idea of ‘the bush’ (and thus ‘bushfires’) is the direct cause of this disaster. This…

An ancient pattern. Kangaroos LOVE golf courses. It seems obvious, there’s grass to be eaten there. But it’s much more than that, the pattern of long grassy strips (each hole of the course) bordered by trees and shrubs…

Everything about how 2019 ended, including people huddled on the shore for safety from fires, scared of their own country, converged for me upon Gammage's words about post-1788 Australia. Right now we're all mostly just…

Kelso High School was a unique school. The buildings were beautiful, light everywhere, central courtyards with gardens, everything carpeted, long ramps everywhere as well as stairs, it had its own cinema and…

Let's replace one celebrity president with another one. I think who sits in the top chair is not the problem, nor the answer.

If you never saw The Moodys (or the earlier "A Moody Christmas" - best to start with that one so you get the back story), you have to check it out. One of the most brilliant pieces of TV ever made in Australia, or…

Australia spent $30 billion on credit cards in December. That's about $1250 for every man, woman and child. Ouch. Here's Australia's credit card debt clock, showing how much is owed in total, and how much per card…

One of your holiday places I think @[783412914:2048:Kyle]? Its become a bit of a must-go place. “During the Christmas holidays the quiet village - about 180km south of Sydney - transforms into one giant car park.” No…

Every year Australia Day is a bit of a puzzle for me. As a kid nobody in the community really spoke about Australia Day. It was a day off, that’s all, the people who tried to whip some patriotism into us were considered…

More thoughts about Australia Day. Maybe it should be called ‘Coast Day’. We landed on the shores here, and never really left them. The overwhelming majority of Australians live on the coast, it’s almost like they can’t…

Why isn’t Australia Day January 1? And why aren’t there two spinners in the Australian one-day team?

“By making accusation – long after the event – equal guilt, and making inevitable mistakes by doing so, a groundswell of belated anger such as the present one must inevitably produce a result opposite to the one…

Love the Bake Off shows. But the Australian one is an embarrassment. Childishly simple bakes, and two judges who aren’t even bakers, whose insight extends to repeated use of phrases like ‘moist’ and ‘great flavour’.

Scott Morrison on the TV, spruiking again that if you give $65 billion in tax cuts to foreign multinational companies in Australia, many of which pay no tax anyway, rivers of gold will flow through to workers in jobs…

Average speed safety cameras for cars, again in the news. NSW is going it alone in not using them (the Nationals don’t like them). These cameras would change our roads in the most profound way. Much smarter and fairer…

If you don't want the equivalent of Donald Trump running Australia, listen to this woman. The Americans destroyed their unions - Trump is the outcome. The English the same - they got Brexit. You may not like unions, you…

This image is extraordinary. In India, there is huge pressure to pass high school exams. Cheating and corruption is widespread, and that’s what you can see in the photo. This is parents, relatives and friends climbing…

The Mad Monk has escaped again, this time calling for cuts to immigration. One of the things not many know is that the only thing that keeps economies like Australia's running, is immigrants. Immigration actually fuels…

"Second, why should students be free of stress? Life is not free of stress. University study requires a great deal of effort and imposes deadlines for which the HSC, stress and all, will have been good…

Australia has a desperate shortage of piano tuners, and an even greater shortage of people who train piano tuners. It’s impossible to perfectly tune a piano, all pianos are slightly out of tune. Great video explains why.

What's your guilty pleasure? Mine is Real Housewives of Melbourne (or Sydney). Highlights include "you're just a bunch of fucking dogs!"

The maverick Australian farmer Peter Andrews had what I think is a genius insight about the Australian landscape. That water in the Australian landscape has usually been stored in the soil, not above ground in dams or…

Have often wondered about this, the number of jobs out there that really add not much to all to collective happiness or health. We long ago reached a point where society didn’t need as many people to work or for those…

This is an acoustic sound mirror, made of concrete, on the English coast. Before radar was invented, this was the way the Brits listened for incoming enemy planes. If you’ve never played with or built an acoustic sound…

One for @[1240225973:2048:Nell] 🙂 Frugality is an important thing for me, but it’s a difficult topic because how people spend their money is a powerful part of their psychology and personality. In boom times, the…

Some of the work being done with autonomous vehicles in Australia. Notice that part of the new world being developed is not just making vehicles individually autonomous, it’s to network them to each other and connect…

Not trying to excuse the Australians, who I think are a bunch of boorish, greedy, cheating yobs. But I do remember this, exactly the same or even worse behaviour. Has been going on forever, the games Pakistan threw for…

The cricket scandal says as much about cricket fans as it does players. The Big Bash and T20 in general is the cancer that funds the behaviour, and the destruction of the culture of the game. And the public love their…

Last year the financial services sector took $31 billion in fees, from super. That’s almost as much as the age pension costs, and it’s growing. What could go wrong? If the government hadn’t been so keen to privatise…

This is what has always struck me as the single most important thing people need from education. Not any individual subject or type of knowledge. The capacity for sustained attention on something.…

Institutions, especially unions, are the answer to the world's problems. Brilliant read, institutions are the answer, not voting or swapping leaders. Institutions, always institutions. "Although income stagnation is…

Here’s a paradox I think, the more diverse and undefinable a person is, the more individual they are. Individuality and ego are opposite things. Freddie Mercury had an enormous personality, his individuality was like a…

“But this is not, or not really, an article about speed, or cameras, or even cars. It is about the rise of the antisocial bastards who believe they should be allowed to do what they want, whenever they want, regardless…

Budget day tomorrow. Know how they say governments should ‘balance their books’ and not have debts and should aim for surpluses? It seems right, because it’s how we as individuals and families have to manage budgets.…

People were gushing about this. But I dunno, here’s a thought experiment. If an unemployed person posted “I can’t get a job, would people please donate some money to tide me over”, what would the response be? Serious…

Waleed nails it. BUT this was recorded before the budget, and the scale of the tax cuts is more than double what he’s talking about here. $140 billion. It will bankrupt Australia, and in the process ScoMo has now…

Couldn't agree more Alan. It's obvious Cook didn't discover Australia, he wasn't even the first European here.

You know how everybody is never sure what to eat these days, what’s healthy and what isn’t? And we keep turning to ‘the science’ for the answers? Maybe we have the framework wrong. For millennia who were the experts on…

I love politics. Lithgow is the only place in the entire region, and the neighbouring Riverina, that doesn't have NBN yet. And it's just been delayed another year. I looked at the Australian Electoral Commission records…

Spirit, shall we @[584373168:2048:Peita] and @[100001374621876:2048:Kato]? I'd like to use Rowan Williams again as a starter, one of the great religious minds of our age I think. Spirit as kenosis. The Holy Fool: "Yet…

More people than ever that I know are suffering from stress, at times myself included. And many say that our world is a stressful place right now, in general. I wanted to share what were for me some hard-won lessons…

We did this, more patterns. But who is ‘we’? I don’t know anybody who deliberately threw any plastic in the ocean. We can stop using plastic (although bacteria would eat it anyway, eventually), but will we ever…

Tony Abbott once said that Malcom Turnbull ‘invented the internet’ in Australia. Want to know who really invented the internet in Australia? Universities. Universities built Australia’s first internet. And they still…

The top 3 grocery items in Australia are (drum roll): 1. Berries 2. Bananas 3. Avocados I bet nobody picked berries at number 1, or that fruit fills all of the top 3 places? I didn’t. Indulge me a little - how do ‘we’…

A post just for the two of you, from Rowan Williams again. The "vastly complicated and enticing and frustrating borderland, where physics and philosophy and psychology blend" is the space I work in, in religious ideas.…

Now the ‘episodic cycle of rage and grief’ is again cycling back to indifference, thinking finally emerges. When nobody is probably listening, having moved on to their next target for outrage. Also in the same edition,…

You can find a lot of advice about jealousy along these lines. Nearly all of it is like advice on how to fix your car. Jealousy may in fact be the essence of all love, and the fact we try to ‘cure’ it suggests again…

The world is swimming in debt. The Chinese as much as anybody. If it all goes boom, they're much smarter than us, they used their debt to build things. The rest of us used it mostly to turn our housing markets into…

I remember being fascinated by the idea of infinity as a kid. Many kids are, the idea of something that goes on forever. For example kids often ask, what’s the biggest number in the world? Or they ask, if there’s an end…

Every Australian town has buildings that you can tell used to be corner shops. Shops in the middle of neighbourhoods where people got most of their groceries, and some other things often too. Here’s a business idea for…

The farmers we need to support most, I think, are the ones who recognise that a lot of our agriculture hasn’t been farming at all, it’s been soil mining. Stripping the land of vegetation and using whatever nutrients are…

There’s lots to like about Dick Smith. But he really doesn’t seem to like foreigners. His latest rant about Aldi was nonsense, it seems when pressed Dick is...a bit of a dick. And his Aussie Foods and immigration…

This was a superb story, if you’re interested in drought and drought relief, it should be compulsory viewing. Lots of very smart farmers out there, doing incredibly smart things, and using very different ideas about the…

I’m not an ‘exercise’ person, but am still very active. This long (but brilliant) quote from the great Australian scientist Raymond Dart is the sort of exercise I do, every day, in everything I do. It makes your body…

It changes how you look at politics I think, if you look past the politicians to the points of view in the community that they represent. Like today in Canberra, could easily be dismissed as politicians just looking out…

Little bit long, but asks a question that I think a lot of men and women ask. What do women really desire? (And mindful of course that there’s no reason they would all desire the same things.) One thing that interests…

Canberra right now is Shakespearean. Shakespeare based quite a lot of his work on politics. It still frustrates me that people think politicians should all be nice to each other, should stop arguing and fighting. Our…

Men like this are helping to break our society. So why do people listen to them? I think it’s the same thing again - stories. They tell simple, emotionally powerful, stories. Stories that give a feeling of resolution to…

There are towns in danger of running out of water. Even Sydney has lost alarming amounts from its vast reservoir this past year. (In Australia we tend to think dams somehow magically create water from nothing, in…

Know how when a gadget plays up, often the easiest way to fix it is to just reboot? Turn it off and on? Reading the work of the remarkable Australian anatomist Raymond Dart made me realise our bodies have an on/off…

Australia often lags other parts of the world in trends. In the US for example there’s a real backlash against school fundraising. Here it’s all still pretty gung-ho, you beaut. Children are so often used as the weak…

‘Normalising hidden alcoholism’. Alcoholism is like racism for Australia, so habitual as to be invisible.

I’ve spent a lot of the weekend browsing the Holtermann Collection. Bernhardt Holtermann was a German immigrant in the mid-19th century, and became famous because of the Holtermann Nugget, the largest gold nugget ever…

Another beautiful shot from the Holtermann Collection. A French warship in dock on Sydney Harbour, 1873 I think. Look how undeveloped the harbour is.

Gulgong, 1870s, more Holtermann. When gold was the get-rich-quick of Australian life. Then we shifted to flogging off houses for way more than they’re worth.

Welcome to your newly shifted circadian rhythm. Which is really bad for you, but hey, all that extra time to drink wine after work. And extend those stinking hot and getting hotter summer days. Helps us cull all those…

The word ‘objective’ has come to mean something true, no matter what anybody thinks about it. But actually the idea of objectivity comes from the law. To be objective means to be able to answer enough *objections* to…

One of the fascinating things about oxygen I think is that it was a deadly poison to earlier forms of life on Earth. So what we see as vital to keep us alive was also what killed billions of other living things in the…

The ‘think global, act local’ phrase is one of those twee things that is supposed to be profound. But is it actually meaningless? It’s another binary, and I think binaries are only descriptions of points of view. The…

There are two mysteries about Bohemian Rhapsody (the song). What’s it about? And what is it - what sort of music? The consensus on the first answer (only the band know) seems to be that it was Freddie Mercury writing…

One of the aims of feminism was to put a brake on broad stereotyping of women. Women are people, people are individually different in all sorts of ways, etc. One of the things I find a bit disturbing in the debates…

A wonder from the English countryside. The hedgerow. We use fences now, but the hedgerow is way more than just a natural fence. I think it shows an entirely different relationship between people and the landscape. A…

Looks like Australian Story is doing an update on Natural Sequence Farming tonight, Peter Andrews' genius. You should have a look at this if you've never heard of it, all the talk of 'drought' never asks the question -…

On Melbourne Cup day, let's watch Derren Brown predict horse races.

The Great Super Lie is something highlighted by many more than a decade ago. Super is the financial industry, the messages they constantly give us about needing more super benefit the industry financially. (They’re also…

Just watching a conservative pollie trotting out the standard "a strong economy gives us the money to do the things society needs" guff. This is how 'the economy' works - it's a political device. It's a trick. Throw any…

With Google Trends you can glimpse a nation’s soul. I highly recommend it as a substitute for the news, which is curated pap to try to shape how people feel. Google Trends will tell you what they’re really feeling. Here…

This is my argument against hazard reduction burning. Every year we willingly let ourselves cloak entire communities in toxic smoke, to protect a handful of badly located houses. What’s the greater hazard, losing those…

Lots of press this week about the stress of the HSC, and how it doesn’t matter how well you go, there are always pathways to what you want to do. All true, but aren’t we sending the wrong message about education? To me…

I just spent a few days in Melbourne. It made me angry, because it reminded me again of the unforgivable vandalism that was done in ripping up Sydney’s tram network. Walking in central Melbourne is pleasant, the trams…

I still recommend people replace assumptions about society with Google Trends. Which shows what people really are thinking. For example, the political attempt to link terrorism to Islam has clearly been a tremendous…

Long-term political success depends I think on being elected at the right time ‘economically’. When things are doing well and people have money in their pockets, they tend to assume the government in power is…

Did you have a New Year resolution? Mine, hmm. Maybe that we don’t make public thinking about life and enjoying life mutually exclusive things. Australia can be frustrating like that, it often opposes thought and…

*facepalm* so the Boomers' answer to the 'hate' that has come about mostly from their trashing of traditional institutions, is more of the same peace and love crap that started the ball rolling. From the same newspaper,…

'Terrifying' and 'crisis' might be a bit over the top. But still pretty sober stats, a person commits suicide on average every 3 hours in Australia, and it's the leading cause of death for people aged between 15 and 44.…

3 out of 4 Australian homes now have air conditioning. With rising electricity prices (some of which is due to the extra demand from air conditioners), these cost a bomb to run and make the climate warmer in the process…

My own history is a father who grew up under the extreme nationalism of the Nazis. So I've never found any national days much chop to be honest, patriotism can be a very dangerous thing. Being proud of your country is…

Is there a chance this will now mean we'll pay the same (less) for Vegemite here in Australia as they do everywhere else in the world? It's a disgrace, outrageously expensive.

Every year I give a plug to Margaret Court, an astonishing sportsperson who is not properly appreciated. Serena Williams has just won her 23rd grand slam singles title, which is amazing, but still one behind Court's 24.…

"As usual, the left and centre (myself included) are beating ourselves up about where we went wrong. There are plenty of answers, but one of them is that we have simply been outspent. Not by a little, but by orders of…

Last night I sat in front of this ultra cheapo fan, and decided to calculate what it costs to run (slow TV night). The answer? 1 cent per hour. That means I could run it 24 hours per day, for a whole week, for about…

You can dig deeper into the dramas of the world right now. This is what it's really all about, from Trump to Turnbull here in Oz. Not so much about religion trying to take over the role of the State again, although…

It's always been called a crazy idea, but these are times of possible emergency. It is interesting to wonder how Australia could be changed by trying to create an inland sea again. Pumping sea water to the interior.…

Don't believe for one second the bullshit in the news, or from moron politicians carrying big lumps of coal into parliament, about South Australia's power problems. NSW prices are some of the highest in the world, and…

Warning signs. Australia has been a big casino for about 25 years now, debt is our only real industry.

It's how nonsense spreads. Somebody writes a post about some long-forgotten information, and how the past was even worse today, so why do we worry? That era IS studied carefully, and even further back and in much more…

It's been an unpopular thing to do, pointing out for the past 20 years that Australia is a house made of straw. Most people who have tried have been howled down. The clock is ticking.

Good on SBS for its Face Up to Racism set of programmes, and good on Ray Martin for being onboard. Australia doesn't like talking about racism, we're like the Brits, funnily enough. The Anglo world has been the dominant…

John Lyons makes the argument here I was thinking about last night. If getting rid of Sunday penalty rates is about increasing jobs, let's test it. If the jobs don't come within a couple of years, put them back up…

The Big Lap is becoming a bit of a modern obsession in Australia. It probably means lots of things, but like most travel, some of the most interesting things it means are probably unspoken.

This looks a bit dry, but is really huge. After decades of education see-sawing between more and more testing, and more and more hippie love for the whole child, finally the focus is on what actually, PRACTICALLY works.…

Well said Andrew Street. "Will housing become more affordable in Australia? Absolutely! And it could happen one of two ways. This complex web of legislation can be gently and strategically unpicked via careful…

"Housing prices have risen by more than 250 per cent in real terms since the mid-1990s, with the median house price in Sydney now well above $1 million. Household debt is more than 200 per cent of disposable income, and…

The petrochemical industry are basically self-interested arseholes. And the people smart enough in Canberra to negotiate with them, in the public service, were sacked by idiots who said we had too much bureaucracy.…

Some more of the filthy underbelly of gas in Australia. And remember that the mining industry even invests millions to get rid of Prime Ministers it doesn't like, and most of the industry is not even Australian. I live…

Lots being said (ha) about free speech at the moment. Stanley Fish rarely disappoints. He wrote a book called "There is no such thing as free speech...and it's a good thing too." Here's a short interview with Fish about…

Germaine Greer is a vastly under-appreciated Australian. So, maybe a series of quotes. Today...libraries. "A library is a place where you can lose your innocence without losing your virginity." "Libraries are reservoirs…

So much of the venom for Pete Evans is laid bare here. It shows how deeply people believe that medicine is all scientifically based and that conditions like autism are well understood. Neither of those things is true.…

Listening to a ninny from the Business Council of Australia talking about their win on tax cuts. Bring back Dwight. Even dead he's smarter.

Air pollution costs Australia between 11 and 25 billion dollars a year in health costs. And we're one of the better countries. A real sleeper health issue. The National Pollutant Inventory…

Generations of Australians were brought up to think 'you can't lose money on housing'. A nuclear-scale reality check may be coming their way.

Peter Andrews, the genius Australian farmer, sometimes describes how landscape revegetates itself. You can see it here - from my walk to work - how rain and storms have piled soil and plant debris into semi-circular…

If we spent the proceeds of the mining boom (one of my pet ideas, apologies if you've had it inflicted on you before) on building high speed rail WEST from Sydney or Melbourne out into the rest of Australia - that part…

This is where knowing what to think about Trump is tricky. Neville Chamberlian was widely criticised in hindsight for trying to appease Adolf Hitler, on Hitler's rise to power. To try to negotiate with him. In hindsight…

Hmm, more possibly dubious use of averages. The 'typical' Australian is not the 'average' Australian. The typical Australian would be the modal Australian I think, in statistics, and maybe that's what the ABS has done…

Australia does well here.

Last week Malcolm Turnbull talked about Australian values. Every year during the Easter-Anzac Day time, it's clear that what Australians value more than anything else, is holidays.

"This Anzac Day let's maybe tone down the talk of noble sacrifice and Australianess and remember that eight thousand young men, all of whom were sons and brothers and nephews and friends and husbands and grandsons, were…

This is the actual second verse of Advance Australia Fair, which isn't well known. When gallant Cook from Albion sail'd, To trace wide oceans o'er, True British courage bore him on, Till he landed on our shore. Then…

Gas companies are exactly like property developers. Disgusting vermin. Both use the same language, we need more 'supply'. Which just means they both want even more public land, having used up what they'd already been…

Playing computer games is the equivalent of exercising. http://sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2017/05/03/virtual-gaming-makes-easier-workouts-a-reality.html

Tony Abbott was a wrecking ball for Australia. Firstly every business that uses energy in the country curses him for wrecking a carbon price, and wants it back (it will come back), and then he smashed the NBN and put us…

"Australian banks are upset. Their $30 billion per year gravy train of profits from the Australian people is finally being slowed down...To be clear, the banking system is a regulated cartel. Its primary function is to…

This is the true face of the 'culture warriors' who have been spewing their filth into the country for the past 15 or so years. People who talk about the 'Left' and the 'Right' a lot. And who never shut up about the…

Heh, "Employment in the Australian supermarket and grocery industry went down for the first time in 2015-16 and is projected to remain flat for a few years. But staff numbers are projected to rebound again, in part due…

Another example of how property, gambling and booze run NSW. If you sell somebody a fridge and it's a lemon, you have responsibilities to make it right. But for a house, which is the biggest purchase most people make,…

The right answers need the right questions.

First home buyer schemes do nothing to help first home buyers. They just make sellers and agents richer, and are designed to be like an electrode inserted in the anus of the disaster of Australian Housing, to keep the…

Do you ever hear teachers tell kids they have to do 'real research', and not just Google answers? That's maybe bad advice, for a couple of reasons: 1) Google is how 'serious' researchers do a shedload of their own…

We tend to think of kids as adults-to-be, as if we adults shape the world and then kids grow up and start shaping it too. But to me kids start shaping the world in all sorts of ways we hardly notice, while they're still…

Report on the state of Australian schools. Some highlights: - equity in schools is declining (family and personal background are becoming far too important in determining how well you do) - students/families who can…

Another twist on travel. Lucky Starr famously 'borrowed' Johnny Cash's "I've Been Everywhere Man" in 1962, and it became an anthem for the 'Big Lap' of Oz folk. Today we have Macca with a similar vibe in 'Australia All…

Reminds me of the Australia of old, when we were proud to try to lead the world. Two decades now of people desperate for us to return to the 1950s has made us the laughing stock of the world. And built in a matter of…

One of the most difficult things to get for your kids in Australia is good training in foreign languages. I would swap 90% of what kids are taught at school for good training in other languages. Up to 4 or 5 languages…

The real reason electricity prices are going up? Gas prices are going up, the two are directly linked, because gas turbines are the newest additions to the power generation system. Look at the graph, it's a perfect…

To continue my highly popular defence of politicians ;) Remember these people run the country, you may think they don't do it well, but we all know a lot of other jobs we've come into contact with where people aren't…

How the rich rip the rest of us off, part 231. There are over 800,000 family trusts in Australia. Family trusts are instruments to minimise tax paid, by distributing income to members of your family so your own taxable…

Love that old biblical line about selling somebody out for 30 pieces of silver. Anna Bligh is at the Press Club, in her new role spruiking banks. An ex-Labor Premier, spruiking banks. All the goodies, Australia's…

We tend to not trust 'big business'. But maybe that's a mistake. 97% of businesses in Australia are small businesses. 60% of these fail within their first 3 years. At the same time wages and working conditions have been…

In the last few years of people arguing about politics, and talking about 'the Left' and 'the Right', not enough people have said what this Republican Senator is saying. That this isn't about two sides of politics, it's…

Professor John Buchanan, from the University of Sydney business school, says policies of both conservative and Labor governments over the past 30 years have resulted in depressed wages. "None of this stuff is an…

It was angles that led the ancient Greeks to invent the idea of atoms. You know those questions you sometimes ask as a kid, about the infinitely big and infinitely small, like if the universe ends at this point, what's…

Do people think Church and State should be separate? A lot of what's going on in politics is driven by people who think the answer to that is a firm no. That fight never went away.

I don't think this is just about smart and dumb. It's true smart people need to speak up more than they do, but what usually determines what happens in the world isn't thinking - it's power, and status. Most of life and…

Unregulated doctors' fees and patient choice versus uncontrollable insurance costs. Insurers try to introduce 'managed care' to control costs, doctors push back because it restricts their capacity to treat. The answer?…

Better value than Australian housing.

Many people are not sure what to think about indigenous issues. Even if they mean well, they don't know where to start. Germaine Greer's essay on this from years ago now is brilliant. As with all things Germaine, most…

I don't express many views here about same-sex marriage. But one thing the debate has highlighted for me is the resources and determination of very conservative people in Australia and around the world, and their…

This is how the financial services industry does its work. Firstly the obvious advice to people who might run out of money at that age is to stop bloody spending it on overseas holidays and new cars. Secondly the…

Politics! But hopefully not what you're thinking... There are 2 games in town I think, and mixing them up is what's destroying our societies. There are traditional political parties, like Labor and the LNP here in Oz.…

Most people don't really give a toss about unis. Except when they need advanced medical treatment, or advice on just about any topic, or experts in any area, which is every day. The fact that the largest proposed cuts…

The secret to everything is bacteria. Learning about them changed my life; they are the most complex living things, don't believe a word of the biology you learned that says humans and other animals are the most complex…

It sounds political, but really - how is giving away $65 billion of our money to businesses, many of whom are owned by overseas interests, of any use to Australia? It's been proved all over the world and in Australia,…

I've substituted LNP for "Republican Party" in the quote, because they're reading from the same playbook. "What is the fundamental purpose of the LNP? To minimize the tax bill of the rich. For those in the highest tax…

Quiz question. A government orders federal police to raid the offices of supporters of its opponents. Which country is this? A. Sierra Leone B. Russia C. Colombia D. Australia

Expensive suburbs are often described as 'leafy'. And with summers getting hotter also a fantastic way to keep places cooler. But so many of our towns and cities have very few trees. It changes the whole character of a…

What worries Australians, graphed over the last 7 years. Look at housing on the rise. Australia is in real trouble. Its economic success in the last 20 years is almost a complete fantasy. The country has been run like a…

Here's a real test for just how stupid Australia can be. Let's see if we can blitz it, the rest of the world are already convinced we've been infected by some sort of moron virus. Most of the WW1 battlefields in Europe…

Palliative care or assisted dying? As always the answer is probably neither of the extremes. And it’s not the middle or ‘moderate’ position either. Paul Keating has been out again, exercising his big Catholic muscles,…

I think this metaphorically describes the Queensland election, and most politics in the Western world. The conservative side of politics - the LNP here - is a very shaky coalition of people who are in many ways…

Do you know any grammar Nazis? This was a story about 85,000 cubic metres of American nuclear waste from the 1940s and 1950s, leaking into the Pacific Ocean. Tony is worried about the grammar. Incidentally, aren’t the…

More old photographic techniques, this an example of a glass-plate photo, where before film was invented images were often captured using an emulsion on glass plates. There’s a quality to these old images that can be…

Ah, tax cuts. Freeing us from the terrible burden of government stealing ‘our money’. Do you believe that sort of thing? I’d be interested to hear. Trump’s just-passed tax cuts will probably almost destroy the American…

So much of the behaviour the #metoo phenomenon is complaining about is explained by this picture. How do men and women end up as sexualised objects of desire first, people second? The simplest answer is, as one woman…

"The data is designed to help governments, industry and communities to make better decisions. It will be updated each year." If the data is telling them that an average life expectancy of 80 means we're all going to…

Continuing on stories. People hate politics, but actually it all makes a lot more sense if it’s looked at as stories. The two main sides of politics, around the world, each have their own story. Roughly, these: Story 1…

The definition of a fanatic or extremist is somebody who will insist on doing the same thing, despite all the evidence to the contrary. The new Trump tax cuts will be like the George W Bush tax cuts, crippling the…

Dr Claire Weekes was a great Australian, but much more known overseas than here. She helped thousands, if not millions, overcome anxiety and panic, through simple, powerful wisdom.

You can see the radio shock jocks here foaming at the mouth about this already, if it were suggested. (Actually some of them think this is what already happens in Australia, that most of the population is apparently…

Still think Bill Shorten is a sleeper, don't write him off. Australians like dull and boring PMs. Turnbull is the victim of the same boneheads in his own party who crippled parliament under Rudd and Gillard. The "just…

It's still unpopular to state the obvious in Australia, that the entire economy is a casino financed by mortgages. It won't end well.

In Australia it's more often the other way around. Working with your hands is cool. Doing University-trained stuff is apparently a wank.

Get off the coast you lemmings and try Australia's vast inland.

Octavio Paz. Apparently described communism as the wrong answer, but the right question. Knowing the right questions is probably much more important than knowing the answers to them.

Lol, it's bizarre that so many people hated Paul Keating, who is a fundamentally intelligent, warm and bloody funny guy. And that so many loved John Howard, who was always a mean-spirited weasel who played the race card…

Indigenous issues aren't always interesting to a lot of people. But the numbers alone are so staggering. Some theories say Australian Aborigines may have been on the continent more than 150,000 years. By contrast…

So Australia's average peak broadband speed has dropped from 30th in the world, to 60th in the world, in the last 3 years. What an innovation nation we are. National Fraudband Network

The people who decide elections ask themselves only one question. Do things seem generally OK? If the answer to that is "yes", they vote to keep the current lot, no matter what brand they are. All politics is about this…

The Australian people got this absolutely right. Lots of chest thumping and bluster at the moment, but like Brexit, this election result is exactly what people want and need.

So much of the mood is gloom. But are we blaming the wrong things? We attack religion, we attack politics, we attack unions, we attack business. We attack institutions, basically. But institutions are the answer, not…

To see the origins of this sort of culture, it doesn't hurt to ride the bus each day with boys from all-boy schools. The 'old boys' networks attached to these schools are also instrumental in running a lot of the…

Let's have a plebiscite on rich Australians using super as a tax shelter. The number of people this affects is tiny, and shows who this government really stands for. It's not me and you.

Love it. I studied at this School at UNSW, they do some amazing stuff. Materials science is the cutting edge of engineering, most new big innovations in engineering are about the materials used, not the way they're put…

Goldie is always a voice of sanity in a debate dominated by idiot shock jocks. There are two groups in Australia that dominate spending on welfare. The aged, through the pension. And the rich, through tax concessions.…

Being in Melbourne with its trams is always fantastic. What you notice more than anything else is how many vehicles it keeps off the roads, there's noticeably much less traffic and noise and pollution. Sydney is run by…

Saw the ultimate business model while in Melbourne. A pub advertised "Schnitty and tits".

More than 700 tonnes of antibiotics are imported into Australia every year. More than half of those antibiotics go into stock feed (column 2), nearly 10% is used by vets (column 3), and about 35% is used in the health…

Love this one, from gizmodo. Private message me if you have an answer, so it doesn't spoil it for others. "At precisely 7:00 a.m., a monk sets out to climb a tall mountain, so that he might visit a temple at its peak.…

This man still thinks the best way to fix the Australian economy is to give $50 billion to businesses based overseas. It would be funny if he wasn't so serious about it.

Thanks again to Adam Hyland for this one. Sydney once had an extensive network of trams, and it's now desperately trying to restore a small fraction of that sort of transport with light rail, at enormous cost. Let's…

Broken glass and urine-soaked sand. Straya! Never tell Australia it has a drinking problem. People are just having a good time.

Add to this that the public schools also generally make no real difference to student performance, and it's not a pretty picture. The answer isn't public or private (although the privates don't need all that money, it's…

I'm sure Australians will say what they always say. That the problem isn't our cluelessness about racism, it's other peoples' need to lighten up.

I'm not sure people realise just what fanatical zealots are in charge here now. They won't stop until they've dismantled most of the public sector that Australia took a century to build. But all the way along they'll be…

Now Ray is off Team Australia! Dropping like flies.

The thing with the "assimilate" idea is that it's a repeated theme, throughout history. The same people saying that about Muslims now were saying it about "Asians" 10-20 years ago, and Italians or "dagos" before that. I…

Very powerful visual summary of all 2053 (yes, 2053!) nuclear tests that were done between World War 2 until today. Nobody knows how they've affected the health of people globally. They start slowly but watch them…

Good onya Sunday Night. Exposing the biggest bludgers in Australia.

The dietitians out in force, listen to me, not to Pete Evans! What an utterly failed field, decades of abject failure in every possible way, no serious, reproducible scientific basis for just about everything they say.…

I'd give Staunton a plug any day of the week. One of those rare geniuses who saw a simple answer to a complex problem - in this case, what to do about termites eating homes. There's a termite nest within 50 metres of…

Headline of the day: "Swedish man dead after being catapulted from shopping trolley in Sydney joy ride."

A bat and ball together cost $1.10. The bat costs a dollar more than the ball. How much does the ball cost? Answer quickly.

From Barry McDonagh. Really is this simple, even though you need to do it over and over to get used to it. Also stops depression, because they're pretty much the same condition. "Here are three simple steps you can use…

So if you live in Sydney you see as few as 50 stars at night. All yours.

Is there a bigger prick n Australian public life that Scott Morrison?

Doesn't matter who you vote for, these trends in Australia should bother us. 1. People who get paid millions of dollars to mouth 'opinions' every day, like shock jocks and newspaper opinion columnists, are allowed to…

This is the main toad who introduced Republican attack politics into Australia, designed to not just win elections but to undermine peoples' faith in government more generally (he works for people such as tobacco…

So, and no people I'm not a "Labor supporter", what Tony Abbott plans to to do to create jobs and have a strong economy, because he won't spell it out (but it's a standard set of ideas for conservative parties all…

Still burning wood? Smoke from even a 'good' wood fire (one that follows the Australian suggested standard), in one day produces the same smoke as 5000 cigarettes, or the fumes from 370 diesel SUVs. Time to stop 'hazard…

Sydney 39 tomorrow. Spring weather *cough*

This is the clown who presided over the biggest spending (and taxing) spree in Australian history. Don't believe the Terrorgraph trying to soften people up for the Coalition having no answers to how to fix a budget, it…

Ah Sydney, taste that air :)

Kids in school often ask "so how will this this help me in later life?" I'm not one for twee quotes but this one from Steve Jobs isn't twee, and might be a good answer: "You can't connect the dots looking forward; you…

Bit long, but so important. And this is written by a Republican. You can see all the same things happening here in Australia.…

Interesting: One belief associated with the Australian property bubble is that real estate value doubles every 7 years. However, "Take the city of Sydney - the Mecca of property investing. In 1890, the average Sydney…

Watching Breivik do his smirking Nazi-type salute today reminded me of this from a while back. Amazing who jumps in for the ride when you whistle that dog...…

Nice way to understand the national mood over the past few years.…

I'm sure all my answers were right, obviously you don't know about your own life.

thinks cake is the answer to most of the world's problems.

is remembering why he stopped living in Sydney.

says pick a number. Add 6. Double that number, then divide it by 3. I bet your answer is a number. (Don't hit me.)

is in Sydney armed with a suit, tie and hundreds of boring pages of contracts to read before tomorrow.

thinks they should move the Sydney NYE fireworks to Lithgow.