Nath @ Nath @aussie.zone

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2 yr. ago

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After watching events as they play out this year in the USA, I doubt there would be a lot of support in the electorate to remove checks on power in Australian governments.

I personally would not want to.

That means centrelink is not competent.

I am not changing my comment, except maybe to broaden it from "company" to "organisation". 😃

It's weird, I've got an overall positive view on the CFMEU as my dad was involved in the union as a rep (BLF) on several sites as I grew up. He faced consequences from employers for taking on this role, but it was an important one. In the 70's/80's, the construction industry was a terribly unsafe place to work and my dad contributed to a lot of safety changes that have since become industry standards and policies. He's proud of the work he did for the union and I'm proud of him for what he sacrificed to keep his coworkers alive.

To see what the union has become is hurtful, but I still see them as an overall force for good in the world.

Nope, I'm giving nothing the caller doesn't already have. I will confirm they have correct info if they provide it, however. This is just basic phone security - no competent company would expect a cold call recipient to start giving them information.

And if they're not competent, I have no business talking to them.

We are well-past this stage, but at least the place that our kids attended is "Meeting NQS". Which stands to reason, it was a council-run centre.

Mr Dutton said he would not detail exactly where the spending cuts would come from until after the federal election.

It's as if he knows that it'd be a whitewash if the voters knew what he intended.

Weird they chose hair products as something to sell as Australian, though. You don't exactly think of us when you think of hair care, do you?

Two Australian brands I've seen doing well overseas are Rip Curl and Billabong. Beach stuff. And yes, I can imagine people around the world associating us with beaches.

I don't even need a new phone and I'm tempted by that G75. That's an incredible bit of phone for $350.

I'm a slow starter in the morning. I have some back exercises from the physio that I start doing at that time. Check for any new signups/user reports (I'm 3 hours behind, so there are usually a couple) and check out the front page in-between reps. I probably get up 15 minutes after it goes off. I don't go back to sleep.

Also: I am usually awoken by children being loud before my alarm goes off.

I got my period the next day ...

For fairly obvious reasons, this is not a variable I've ever considered when donating. Does it take you out for long? My body doesn't even notice the 500ml. I literally walked from the donation centre back the office, got changed and rode straight home.

🎹 Bottle of red. Bottle of white... 🎶

(He wrote more than one song about it)

A small bag of Kettle chips and a TimTam. They had a whole spread there, it was a lot fancier than the last time I donated.

A slice of fruitcake, please.
While the new Red Cross spread is very impressive, I was feeling nostalgic and miss the old fruit slice they used to give after donating.

A friend in Queensland sent through this link: https://www.lifeblood.com.au/blood/blood-supply-levels

Even though I figure they're not sending blood from WA to Queensland, I saw that local supplies in my blood type were low. So I dusted off my old donor profile and made a booking.

I fell out of the habit when kids and life stuff happened. I really should have gone back years ago. The process of donating blood is smooth and streamlined. I was in and out in under 30 minutes and back to my day.

Is this a trouser snake reference? If so, then fair enough.
If it isn't, I can honestly say I have never had a python in my pants.

I have a script that generates passwords for the help desk kids to give to people. The passwords come out super easy to remember and easy to relay over the phone.

They're all like "Blue 3 Waters" and "Climb 18 Trees". The formula is "[verb/adjective] [random number] [Noun]". Surprisingly easy to remember and passes the policy as space counts as a symbol.

Hey hey hey - you can't use that word or um, the Americans will ban you!

An nobody upvote him either or they'll get ya!

I think this is like admitting defeat. It's saying 'there is no way we can make the public system as good as the private system so we're just going to take over the private schools'. Private education is stupidly expensive. I had a client who used to pay more than my annual salary to send her kids to a private school. Parents are selecting private education because they see value in the calibre of education there.

If you can improve the public education quality to the point where it is on-par with private, parents will cease to see the value in paying up to half a Million dollars sending their kids to private school. Our family has done the equivalent of this. We moved to the catchment of a top-tier public school to give our kids the best public education options available. There is as much disparity between public schools as there is between public/private. I believe there's a good middle-ground to be had where more academic-focused public schools are created. The few that exist now are so difficult to get into that loads of parents who want their kids to get a great education (we applied but our kid didn't make the grade) aren't qualifying.

There will always be a percentage who want some of the things private education offers (like religion), but enough will start sending their kids public that the remaining private students become a rounding error.

I'm also not comfortable with the idea of the government effectively saying either of the following:

1. [To parents] If you decide to send your child to private school, they stop being entitled to the education funding you are paying taxes for.
2. [To schools] You no longer own this school, we are taking over your private property.

If wealthy parents want to pay for an education that’s fine but when more taxpayer money goes to private schools than public it feels a bit off.

This is a really frequently misunderstood topic and there are plenty of people who intentionally cherry-pick the numbers to make the government look bad over it. So, I genuinely understand where you are coming from.

The first bit of confusion is that public schools get most of their funding from their state government. A comparatively small percentage comes from the federal government, usually for major works. Private school government funding comes from the federal government.

The second bit that confuses people is that funding isn't just that 'every school gets $x'. The. Amount of funding is mostly dictated by the student cohort. Rather than thinking of it as every school gets $x, think of it as the default amount per student is $x.

So yes, you get situations where a big private school with 2,500 students seems to get more money than any public school. But average it per student and account for what the state government is providing to the public school and the numbers come out far more evenly.

I sure agree that this should be far more apparent and easy to follow. Maybe the federal government should give the funds to the state education departments and have the states fund the private schools? I'd be on board with that.

I get why private exists and wouldn’t want it to go away overnight but why not properly fund public instead.

Ignoring my personal distaste for private schools for a sec, I find irony in the fact that we're discussing this topic on a post about early child care - where it is almost all private. We managed to get into the local government childcare centre, but it was not easy. And not much different in price.

we stop subsidising private schools and only give public money to public schools?
I've always disliked this idea. I'm the product of public education and my kids are in public schools as well. I believe every kid has a right to government funding toward their education. If a rich family wants to spend fees above and beyond the government allotment so their kid goes to school with a swimming pool or rowing team, I am ok with it. Those kids shouldn't lose their government education funds because they come from wealth. They are still citizens and have the same entitlement.

Besides, if the million kids currently in private education suddenly turned up at their local schools tomorrow to enroll in the public system, they would totally break it.