ThinkingOutLoud

Australia had a pandemic management plan that was updated in August 2019. This plan covers theoretical pandemics where clinical severity would be far higher than covid-19. Who'd like to know what it says about public policy?

@5thGenJack @pwafork I will take that as a “yes”.

@AusThinkingGirl @pwafork That’s nice, princess Do you always have other think for you, or is it a side effect of being an NPC?

Whoa whoa whoa, hold your horses, I distinctly remember being told that ON was only attractive to crusty old white guys who couldn’t hack it in “modern” Australia.

@5thGenJack @pwafork To be this hysterical you have to be a Greens voter.

@AusThinkingGirl @pwafork I don’t give a fuck what you think, you reactionary bitch, the subject is one nation, not labor Try staying on topic, do your clown shoes squeak when you walk?

@5thGenJack @pwafork Labor is the democrat establishment clone, using American rhetoric to convince retards that you can government-spend your way into prosperity and “fix” the world with policies that have failed repeatedly everywhere. Labor serves the interests of corrupt unions.

@pwafork One Nation is a MAGA clone, using American rhetoric to convince dumb people that their regressive garbage, zero policies, and seeking of foreign funding, is somehow good. One Nation serves foreign interests, most people are too apathetic to care.

@JossSheldon Leftists want to forcibly remove resources from the people who earned it, and redistribute it to those who don’t. They want to punish success, or luck. Nobody, and I mean literally fucking nobody, wants to “tax the poor and give the money to the rich”.

"Left-wingers want high taxes" Err, no... Left-wingers want to tax the rich. They want to redistribute that wealth to the masses, and invest in public services, to improve the lives of regular folk. Right-wingers want to tax the poor. They want to give your money to the rich.

@AvidCommentator Australians don’t vote for “competent and forward thinking leadership” (otherwise known as people who are willing to tell hard truths). They vote forever promises them the most “free” stuff. Labor started it. The Liberals followed. Now we can’t get off the ride.

Part of the problem with the current crisis is there is almost zero incentive to make long term changes. For instance, a sulphur plant takes years to build and has a cost in the hundreds of millions. This is part of why I have always supported having what can be termed as essential sovereign capabilities. The ability to domestically manufacture the essentials at home, from pharmaceuticals to fertiliser in a crisis. This absolutely has costs, frankly huge costs and it needs to be managed by people who aren't idiots, both at the coal face and in government. But all this could be accomplished for less than the cost overrun of the NDIS vs its originally projected cost on an ongoing basis. Frankly Australia needs competent and forward thinking leadership, with a realisable vision for a resilient nation capable of enduring a world of crisis.

@KosSamaras You’ve been telling everyone that conservatism is dead because there’s an unavoidable very progressive very centrist wave from the very smart very special next generation. Now you’ve changed to “well the polarizing parties from either side could now win”. Way to hedge your bets

My piece on the new realignment. The combatants are coming. Nearly every democracy is in the grip of realignment unlike anything seen in a century. The leaders thriving in it aren’t the administrators. They’re the combatants. The ones willing to name an enemy, hold ground under fire, and treat politics as something worth fighting over. The managers are being punished not because their policies are wrong, but because voters have concluded that their loyalty is to an economic framework that has produced a generation of declining living standards and structured financial stress. This isn’t just a right-wing story. Mamdani in New York. The UK Greens. LFI remaking the French left’s emotional register. The same demand is building on both sides of the ledger and Gen Z in Melbourne’s outer west is part of that story whether Australian politics is ready for it or not. We get to watch it live soon. The Victorian state election will be one of the first significant electoral tests of whether Labor in this state has read the room. The early signs from inside Victorian Labor are not encouraging. Rather than grappling with the structural forces remaking their electorate, the internal conversation has defaulted to the oldest tools in the machine politician’s kit, leadership speculation, factional positioning, jockeying for the spots that may not even be around after the election. The party is having the wrong argument at precisely the wrong moment. While the electorate is asking who will fight for them, Labor insiders are asking who will succeed whom in a burning house. The Victorian Opposition is offering no meaningful contrast either. A party that should be sharpening its ideological edge, building a combatant identity capable of capturing the realignment energy on the right, is instead running the same playbook, rolling out campaign material attacking One Nation’s lack of policies. Both parties are, in their own way, conducting a conversation entirely internal to themselves at the precise moment the electorate has stopped listening to either of them. That is not a political class that has absorbed the lessons here and abroad. It is a political class retreating into the machinery of politics at the exact moment the electorate has lost patience with the machinery of politics. The combatant turn is coming to Victoria whether its politicians are ready or not. The only question is which force, from which direction, arrives first to fill the vacuum they are so diligently creating.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ Right now, it could be Greens on the Left, One Nation on the Right. Link below.

@QuentinDempster None of this is true idiot. Regarded academics sitting at their desks running theoretical scenarios (the same morons who said renewables would be cheaper!). None of it plays out in the real world. abc.net.au/news/2026-04-0…

Australia is a diesel guzzler now (Hormuz oil shock) with direct impact on our costs of living. Electric trucks are costly at the moment but their much lower operating costs are the cost and sovereignty game changer this country needs: | The Saturday Paper thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/economy/2…

@pixeltoofar @BattleSideTim @QuentinDempster Net zero has everything to do with the price of power (and therefore the viability of many commercial operations) and the curtailment of oil and gas production in this country. The entire policy platform is getting rid of coal, oil and gas. Are you high?

@BattleSideTim @QuentinDempster Nothing that is being done in with the renewals area has anything to do with us potentially running out of oil (due to the war). They haven’t stopped oil and gas production in Australia. They have approved a huge number of new gas and coal projects since the election in 2022.

@QuentinDempster Government puts policies and imposes costs that make something unviable. Government (and retards) then claim that it’s a private market issue. An enormous problem is the cost of labour and power (both government), Clown world.

@Undoomed This experiment has been run. Farms seized and attempted to be run by either the state or people who had no idea what they were doing. Food shortages and famine followed. Farmers have valuable knowledge.

"Food comes from the super market not farmers" These morons don't understand the level of automation that exists in farming now. They believe there's an army of glorious workers harvesting grain with sickles, just like the old Soviet propaganda posters.

@MarkoMatvikov I may also be biased as it’s one of my pet issues, but I think the problem of power prices is also finally starting to catch up to liberal & labor. The renewables jig is up. Everyone has their $$$ bill in their hand. Power is so important, I think those lies have cost big.

@MarkoMatvikov Yes. People who are worried about feeding themselves and their kids and keeping a roof over their head don’t have a second to worry about whatever the omnicause is peddling at the time. Did everyone really think closing the world for two years was free?

The story here isn’t what One Nation is doing right - they’ve been around for almost 3 decades. The story is what are the others doing wrong for voters to turn to a party that’s never been in power?

@MarkoMatvikov A lot of people see Liberal and Labor as two sides of the same dumb coin. So they’re turning to someone, anyone, who will promise them something radically different. I’d love to hear from the lockdown panic parrots (they’ve all gone quiet), was it worth it?

@MarkoMatvikov It’s the economy, stupid! (😁) It’s always the economy. We doubled our money supply during Covid, most people are too silly to understand what that means. The piper is here and he needs to be paid. Everybody feels poor. It’s as simple as that IMO.

@stephhodginsmay Putting a tax on something never gets you more of that thing, nor does it make the thing cheaper. You want less and more expensive energy during a supply crisis? 🤡

A minimum 25% tax on gas exports would raise an estimated $17 billion dollars a year. That's money that we can use to protect domestic gas supply, and fund the renewable energy transition to ensure energy sovereignty and security in a chaotic world.

@barua_ashish Explain why what he said here is wrong.

Milton Friedman didn’t just influence generations, he misled them. And those same recycled video clips are still doing the damage today. What he pushed on inflation and government spending isn’t sound economics; it’s a carefully packaged narrative designed to scare people into accepting austerity and blind faith in markets. If you take his words at face value, you’re not learning economics, you’re absorbing a distorted, one-sided doctrine that ignores how modern monetary systems actually work. This isn’t education; it’s fear-mongering dressed up as expertise.

@SkoomaBoofer You feel poor because the value of your dollar has been eroded (and continues to be eroded) by an increase in money supply. Aka money printing. Aka government spending. You retards support such spending and your own demise. This is a criminal being a criminal. Nothing more.

“All you had to do was pay us enough to fucking live” The capitalist class - after decades of gutting labor unions, stripping worker protections and generally committing social murder - has forgotten that this is what happens when workers are left with no other way to negotiate

@antipovertycent Because we do need to be able to defend ourselves and our allies but don’t need to be funding criminal fraudsters and their pseudo-businesses or paying for ex cons to hire hookers?

Labor backbenchers have been lining up over the past week to lay the ground for the government to cut the NDIS to ribbons at the budget. Why is there always enough money for war machines and never enough to support, house and feed people who need it?

@R4dicalCentrist @AvidCommentator It’s pretty bad when your developed country will soon have a dollar that’s worth about as much as the Vietnamese dong.

@AvidCommentator This is much worse for Iran than it is Australia. Probably not good to be a developing economy that doesn't develop.

This is pretty funny. Australia's per capita GDP has grown roughly at par with Iran's since the GFC in relative terms....

@Kevinak70097231 @TonySheldonNSW What does “underpaid” mean? People chose to work there for an agreed rate. If you think you can get more elsewhere, leave. If you can’t get more, it’s because that job isn’t worth more. Government enforced wages are never good, all it does is increase prices.

@AusThinkingGirl @TonySheldonNSW The EBAs I know of that got deemed unfair were Cole’s Woolworths & domino’s pizza. They successfully underpaid staff for 12 odd years increasing their profits giving them an advantage over other business. Look at the workforce of the 3. How much job choice is really available.

Labor passed multi-employer bargaining laws so working Australians can push for fairer pay, better hours, and have a real voice at work. The billionaires behind Chemist Warehouse have fought this every step of the way - just like the Liberals, Nationals, and One Nation who voted against our workplace laws from the start. A big congratulations to the @SDAunion for fighting hard to make this happen.