Isn’t brave enough to stand up to developers? He acts like he’s on their payroll. He’s effectively privatised public housing in Victoria:
First they spun off Homes Victoria from the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing to manage public housing.
Then they creates a not-for-profit company called Building Communities and contracted out managing new “social and affordable housing” to them for the next forty years.
They are now demolishing public housing and replacing it with this “social and affordable housing”.
In some cases, only one third of the new residences will be “social housing” (supposedly similar terms to public housing but not managed directly by a government department), while the rest will be “affordable housing” which in practice is meaningless.
Thousands of people are being displaced from their homes, communities, and support networks.
Calling it “Building Communities” is a bad joke when they’re in the process of destroying communities. It’s sickening. In privatising public housing, Andrews has done what even Kennett wouldn’t dare to do.
Dan’s been far too eager to help out the property developers and construction companies. The extension on CityLink tolls that Transurban got as part of the West Gate Tunnel project was just too good to be true. Meanwhile, Vic Labor is running up more debt, which will inevitably lead to another Kennett being elected when servicing the debt becomes crippling. But this time, there won’t be anything left to sell off to pay down the debt.
The lines are at capacity already, and they've cancelled the signaling upgrades for the western lines promised before the last election because they can't afford it. They've also cancelled building additional track to Melton to increase capacity (yet another broken promise). They're saying they'll extend platforms to allow 9-car trains, but I doubt it will be enough.
You must be joking. Passenger volumes on the Ballarat line just keep increasing as they build more dormitory suburbs along the corridor. Morning peak trains are routinely at crush capacity before reaching Melton, making it very difficult to actually catch a train to work in Melbourne from Melton.
They’ve effectively privatised it. They’ve established a non-profit company called Building Communities they they’ve contracted out building and managing “social and affordable housing” to for the next forty years. The government will still own the land that the buildings are on, but housing will no longer be managed by Homes Victoria (which itself was spun off from the Department of Families Fairness and Housing Victoria to manage public housing). It all stinks, and it’s going to lead to worse outcomes for everyone.
It was never going to be affordable given how much security would cost with it split across regional areas. It was always going to saddle the regional areas with the cost of maintaining sports facilities they’ll never fully utilise.
Telstra has almost completely switched to a pre-paid direct debit block model. It’s very difficult to get a pay-as-you-go plan unless it’s a business account with multiple services. The way it works is:
Pre-pay some fixed amount per month
Includes unlimited national calls and text messages within Australia
Includes a certain amount of “fast” data in Australia, and unlimited data throttled to a lower speed after exceeding the “fast” data allowance
Includes an allowance of international calls to selected countries
Additional international calls or calls to other countries require pre-paying for blocks of calls
International roaming costs $10/day for calls and text messages, charged daily
International roaming data requires pre-paying for blocks of data
Telstra switched to this model in the last year. Optus switched to a similar model as well.
The reason was they were having huge problems with dishonoured direct debit transactions. They’d have to try and chase the people for the payment, then disconnect them if they still wouldn’t pay. There was a lot of cost involved.
Switching to a pre-paid direct debit model makes it simpler and cheaper for them. If the transaction is declined, they cut off service immediately, and it’s the customer’s responsibility to sort it out before service will be restored. It greatly reduces risk for them.
I understand why they switched to this model, but It frustrates me as someone who always paid their bill. You can’t just leave your phone on roaming in case you receive a text message, and you need to commit to a certain minimum amount at a time for international calls rather than just paying for what you use at the end of the month.
That's not true any more. They now charge $10/day for roaming whether you use anything or not. It's getting very hard to get an actual pay-as-you-go plan any more. Everything had shifted to pre-paid monthly plans. Blame it on people not paying their bills or whatever, it's still annoying.
Isn’t brave enough to stand up to developers? He acts like he’s on their payroll. He’s effectively privatised public housing in Victoria:
Calling it “Building Communities” is a bad joke when they’re in the process of destroying communities. It’s sickening. In privatising public housing, Andrews has done what even Kennett wouldn’t dare to do.
Dan’s been far too eager to help out the property developers and construction companies. The extension on CityLink tolls that Transurban got as part of the West Gate Tunnel project was just too good to be true. Meanwhile, Vic Labor is running up more debt, which will inevitably lead to another Kennett being elected when servicing the debt becomes crippling. But this time, there won’t be anything left to sell off to pay down the debt.