This is an unofficial Bulletin Board - owned and run by its users. We welcome all fans of the Mighty Collingwood Football Club.
Ad blocker detected: Our website is made possible by displaying online advertisements to our visitors. Please consider supporting us by disabling your ad blocker on our website.
One obvious place to start is China's recent overtures to the Pacific Islands, which potentially rolls party differences on international relations, climate change and tensions with China into a single flashpoint.
Here's the BBC today:
Have China's Pacific ambitions been thwarted?
"China's Foreign Affairs Minister Wang Yi has been on a marathon tour across the Pacific Islands - his visit was a sign of Beijing's willingness to close a sweeping trade and security deal with 10 countries in the region.
The ambitious deal - which covered a wide range of issues, from cybersecurity to a Chinese-funded police training academy and setting up more Chinese cultural links across the Pacific nations - was meant to tie the region much closer to Beijing.
But it was revealed this week that the deal had been shelved after many of the countries declined to sign, expressing concerns over certain aspects of the agreement."
Why Australia is declaring a 'new era' in the Pacific
"You claim the Pacific Islands are your brothers and sisters, and then look away when your brothers and sisters are having trouble," says Reverend Alimoni Taumoepeau, a Tongan Australian church leader in Sydney.
"The key aggravator, some say, has been the reluctance of previous governments in Australia to act on climate change."
"While Australia's working relationships have remained strong, its image has been badly tarnished thanks to its stance on climate change, say some analysts."
"The trip came as China had earlier this year signed a broad security pact with the Solomon Islands, sparking fears of greater Chinese influence in the region, and a prospect of a possible Chinese military base."
"The Albanese government says the situation is evidence its predecessor 'dropped the ball' in the Pacific, leaving the door open for Beijing to threaten Australia's national security."
"'There'll be a lot of continuity. There's an essential bipartisanship in a lot of the way that Australian governments approach the region."
Albo and his mob are well and truly still in the honeymoon period. They're largely making the right noises, let's do the old 100 day test and see how they're travelling once they have to start doing more than diplomatic junkets.
Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down.
Agreed. Feels a lot like just after Biden took office last year: some reasons to be cautiously optimistic, perhaps even some unexpectedly positive signs, but a nagging feeling that it's all going to get pretty depressing pretty soon. That certainly ended up being the case over there, but I guess a big difference here is that, unlike Biden, Albanese will actually be able to get (at least most of) his agenda through when the new senate terms begin next month.
"Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence." – Julian Assange
Although you can already see them making excuses for why they can't deliver on their promises. It's almost like you can say anything you like in opposition but the reality of actually implementing them responsibly is so much tougher.
What's your sense of the chance of progress on climate change-related policy? As conservative as Australia is, I got the impression that Morrison and co. hemmed in the Glibs to the point they were behind public opinion on things like green tech investment and the policy to help it scale.
My main interest is socioeconomic stability and the adaptation needed to maintain it, particularly through industrial policy, decent jobs and careers, affordability, and so on, but also through the minimisation of extreme voices. So, as a first step I'm pleased to see some of the uglier and dimmer voices quietened for a bit.
People need something achievable to aim for through decent work, whether be through skilled trades, skills in demand tech industries, on-the-job training, and so on. But the policy and infrastructure has to facilitate it, so I'm curious if the ALP has any handle on this beyond vague mutterings.
Without going off topic, and I've probably had this conversation before, but with renewable energy, can someone explain to me why Pumped Hydro is even an option?
To my understanding of how it works is that its a net consumer of energy not a net producer and the benefit is basically an accounting trick,
Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down.
^I think the problems are much more about site suitability than energy efficiency. The infamous examples probably involve putting dams in the wrong place, stealing land, choking off rivers, causing flood risk, etc. Perhaps the cost is where the accounting trick comes into it?
Nah, my understanding is pumped hydro is using stored energy that was generated off peak when it's cheap to pump water uphill so it comes back down through turbines generating more energy at peak times.
You cannot create more energy in that process than you consume, that would defy physics, so it's a net consumer of energy. The accouting trick is you're using "cheap" energy to create less but more expensive energy.
Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down.
Back on topic, very early days, but Kneesy has surprised the hell out of me. So far he seems to be on track to be the first PM to be actually competent since Howard.
Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down.
stui magpie wrote:Back on topic, very early days, but Kneesy has surprised the hell out of me. So far he seems to be on track to be the first PM to be actually competent since Howard.
Nearly choked on my keto dinner: Howard competent. The tax minimisers god. Allowed millionaires to use superannuation to minimise tax, set the benchmark for Government’s lying: children overboard. Used racism to wedge in politics & set the mendacious tone for Abbott and Morrison in our treatment of refugees.
He did three things really well though:
1. Gun buyback etc.
2. East Timor
3. Lose his seat in his last (and lost) election.
“I even went as far as becoming a Southern Baptist until I realised they didn’t keep ‘em under long enough” Kinky Friedman
