Country has a large state capture problem from largely mining companies but also other special interests that have lobbied and . Anything that might threaten those interests is being pretty heavily targeted, including action on climate[0] (See "Gas led recovery", and the use of funds intended to renewables used for things like CCS/CCUS and "blue" hydrogen.). And this is bleeding into laws and enforcement.

Then there is the constant resistance to a federal anti-corruption agency as well as reducing the influence of money on federal politicians (see backbencher/ministers resolving door with lobbying firms).

The conclusion I've (sadly) come to, is that (in the short term at least) more money needs to be thrown at smaller parties and independents to try to combat this. Unlike the USA, Australia has precedent of minority governments and compulsory voting combined with a preference system means that gaining even a small number of lower house/senate seats can make a disproportional impact to the policies being set around Australia. Both major parties are so similar but just switching from Blue to Red is unlikely to result significant change in policies for some of the issues you've raised.

[0] https://www.watoday.com.au/national/western-australia/wa-cou...

This always seemed like madness to me. You can force someone to vote, but you cannot force them to vote responsibly. They may just vote "screw you" just for revenge.

The right to vote includes the right to abstain from voting when one does not care.

Forced voting sounds like a recipe for bad election results. I would expect the same from paying people to vote.

You must show up at a polling place (either prior to the election or on election day), and you must identify yourself to the polling officer, and receive a ballot paper.

You do NOT have to complete the paper: you can put it in the box untouched, you can write "screw you all" on it, etc.

So ... yeah, you are obliged to show up, but you don't have to actually vote.

The previous conservative, neoliberal PM, John Howard, said the same thing. Rationally, it doesn't make sense.

However, even he admitted that empirical, historical evidence has shown it to be a good thing that prevents either major political party from catering too hard to the extremes.

As others have said, it's an option to just submit a blank paper.

The process I experienced last time I voted in local elections was you validated where you lived and were given a one use barcode/qrcode (can't remember) which you scanned at the machine, made your selections and dropped the barcode paper in specific bins.

[0] https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Depart...

https://www.quora.com/As-voting-is-compulsory-in-Australia-a...

It has to be incredibly more meaningful to have statistics on how many people intentionally said "screw you" with a vote for "ficus" or w/e.

It's a ballot that's just been numbered unthinkingly from top to bottom.

This does indeed advantage the candidate who draws the top spot on the ballot (the positions are randomly assigned). In a preferential system it advantages the candidate in the final two that drew the higher position - it seems to be worth about 0.7% ( https://www.crikey.com.au/2010/08/02/whats-the-donkey-worth-... ).

The amount of electorates that swung, and the percentages that the winning representative (and party) received mean that's not true at all, in my opinion anyway. Happy to be convinced otherwise, but the "mandate" still exists.

I agree, you should be able to withhold as a protest, in practice it’s 100% meaningless.

We have preferential voting here, and plenty of minor parties to vote for, so your vote isn’t “wasted”. Living in a democracy means participating in voting to help decide what the country does, and honestly it’s a pretty minor requirement: the actual act is quick and easy, it’s on a weekend and anyone who has to work at is given the opportunity and the results are usually mostly finalised by the end of the day.

I think living in a democracy means the right to peacefully decline to take part.

If people don’t want to vote you should reflect on why, not use force against them.

I actually think compulsory voting brings forward the importance of thinking about the consequences of voting, and voting for candidates that have the same values. Granted this can be manipulated (and is) with ads etc but getting people use to being involved I think is far better than making it optional and creating people that either never vote or a population that does when things are "bad" and an apathetic group when things are "good".

I've gone in a bit of a voting system rabbit hole recently, and this depends on the system of voting. There are some systems where abstaining from an election can help a voter's preferred choice win: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participation_criterion

So I think depending on the election system, it could make sense to have compulsory voting, even if the person voting simply puts all candidates at equal preference.

Australia feels culturally like the closest country to the US, though, so this particular political difference is being canceled out by other things.

That's already the case pretty much everywhere since populists promise benefits to whoever elects them. So de facto you are getting paid for your vote if you are in a special interest group.

So both sides of US politics, and their surrogates in the media, are incentivised to stir up outrage against their opponent, leading to a more divided country in the long run.

Politicians and parties still attempt to create outrage as a way of attracting or sustaining attention, and diminishing their opponents.

I agree that a lot of effort goes into getting out the vote in the US, and that's much less a factor here, but the same tactics still tend to be used.

I think the cultural aspect of the _appearance_ of compulsory voting is important: not voting because it's raining and you'd rather stay in bed is very different to abstaining based on your political beliefs, and compulsory voting (in Australia) means you are less likely to encounter the former whilst still enabling the other. I would argue that this makes abstaining for political reasons a bit more explicit than non-compulsory voting (technically you can even write your reasons for not voting on the ballot paper, which would officially mean nothing but would certainly be evaluated in research on informal voting), but I do concede that this feels a bit disingenuous: the system works because you're told to vote even though you kinda don't really have to vote, but make sure you jump through the hoops to make it look like you voted.

I would say the current party dynamics are a big problem, both the symptom and cause of other problems.

One party fights for total control, with near total resistance to the other party, playing a negative sum game in order to maintain power despite demographic disadvantages.

The other party has a wider spectrum of views, and is more open to bipartisanship. But it has difficulty strategically unifying when it would make the most difference. So it often negotiates from weakness despite having demographic advantages.

As far as I can tell, this dynamic is getting even worse and infecting most people and many institutions that would be much better not being politicized.

Sure, but how is that worse than them not turning up at all?

> The right to vote includes the right to abstain from voting when one does not care.

And you're free to cast an invalid vote.

> Forced voting sounds like a recipe for bad election results.

Forced voting eliminates some variables from elections, including:

* inequality regarding who can afford to take the time to vote.

* which parties can rile up the most people so that they're actually motivated to vote.

* to some extent, the ability to disenfranchise groups of people who tend to vote against you.

I'm curious as to how it'd make the election results worse.

"You participated in the process."

Like building Ikea furniture, you now think that the process is better and more valid. Less civil unrest that way. Of course, you are still allowed to say whatever you like about how stupid any politician is in any role - even the PM. But you are more likely to accept the authority invested in them by the process when you are part of it.

Thirdly, you can still donkey vote if you are desperate to make your vote meaningless.

How does this not also apply to similar civic obligations, like jury duty?

(I've always mentally put compulsory voting in the same box as compulsory jury duty. In both cases of course it's not really compulsory to take part, just to attend).

Anyway, I've gone to live overseas a couple of times now. The most recent time was to the US 11 years ago. I'm still here.

As many problems as the US has, the one big selling point it has is career opportunities and earning potential as a software engineer. Like... it doesn't even come close. I'll take what my US compensation buys me in NYC over whatever compensation I could get buys me in Sydney (in particular).

Property in Australia is like a game of musical chairs but the music stopped in Sydney in 1978 (in Perth and Melbourne it was more like 2003).

One thing I like about the US tax system is there is no negative gearing (mostly). Specifically if you earn over a certain amount ($150k but it starts sliding down at $100k) then you can't offset ordinary taxes with passive losses. I really think Australia desperately needs this system but negative gearing is so ingrained in Australian culture now that it's political suicide to try and change it. I believe Labor made noises about this in a recent Federal election and suffered the consequences.

It's a shame because Perth and even Melbourne used to have a relatively low cost-of-living and high quality-of-life. I honestly don't know how anyone does it now.

As for the politics, it's a bit of a mixed bag. Australia doesn't have the crazy evangelicals that the US does, for example. Like when the gay marriage issue was decided even the highly conservative former PM Tony Abbott basically came out and said the matter was settled and it's time to move on.

As for climate change, while I believe in it I also don't think anything will change out of pure altruism by any large group of people. And that's anywhere. It's not unique to Australia. Look at what's happened to the price of solar in the last decade.

I'd say the ugliest side of Australian politics and culture in general is actually the treatment of refugees and the so-called (this name still sends shivers down my spine) Pacific Solution.

Oh and we can't forget Australia's most pustulent export: Rupert Murdoch.

I'm British and have just moved to Perth. I am looking at being able to get a house 2-3 times as large here compared to the UK, for similar outlay.

Add to that the weather and the sheer space... the QoL here seems so much higher than back home.

I have spent time in some parts of the US (about 4 months in Texas, probably about a year in other parts in total), but haven't lived in NYC. It always seemed nice, if you like the big city, but I had my fill of that in London some time ago.

Now over east? Yeah housing seems utterly inaccessible in Sydney and Melbourme. But out west here it doesn't look that insane by my (British) standards.

(I say, 'grubby' not 'dirty', because I don't know whether the UK is actually dirty. Eg all the buildings just look dirty and drab compared to Australia. Perhaps it's a leftover from centuries of burning lots of coal?)

I think partly it's the light - it's so bright here in Aus that things look cleaner anyway, but also the light and the heat keep things a little cleaner, UV sterilises and the sun bleaches after all.

Aus doesn't have as much of a legacy of concrete brutalism, either, lumpen concrete buildings in the UK that started out grey and end up brown, water-stained from all the rain and oppressive-looking.

And also I think better care is taken. Visiting London after having lived here in Perth for a couple of years about ten years back, I was struck by just how often as I walked around my nostrils were assaulted by smells of rotting rubbish or just plain urine.

So yeah, bunch of things, but it does feel much cleaner here.

You are right about the smell of urine and pot in London.

1. What do you do for a living in Perth? What I guess I'm really trying to determine is what income bracket you're in.

2. Where in Perth are you looking at renting or buying? and

3. How much of your ability to buy is because you sold a house in the UK so have a huge deposit to put down?

I've known quite a few British people who have moved to Australia and pretty much all of them had (3).

I would say that QoL is generally much higher than the UK though. Houses and blocks are of course larger. Earning potential in London at least is pretty high though. But if you want a house you're probably commuting for an hour each way when the trains are running, which they generally aren't. Crossrail will be interesting.

Australia recognized same sex marriage in 2017. That was 3 years after after the USA did. I'm not sure I would call Australia as being progressive by that measure.

What you have to realize about the US is that the Supreme Court deciding these issues is... controversial. Many view it as undemocratic (although it's worth noting that many of those same people don't feel the same way about the Supreme Court's pro-2nd Amendment interpretations of modern times).

We're still seeing the ripple effects of Roe v. Wade being decided almost 50 years ago.

As others have pointed out, Supreme Court precedent is only that until a later Supreme Court comes along and changes it and that could very well happen with the current court composition. And you need look no further than the Court's refusal to stay the Texas abortion law pending a full judicial review.

So the date this was decided doesn't really give any moral superiority here of the US over Australia for two reasons:

1. Australia's position was decided by a democratic process; and

2. With 62% (IIRC) of people approving of the change, the matter is effectively settled. No one can complain about it. As such you don't see any real conservative Christian blowback like you do in the US as witnessed by the statements of Tony Abbott and others.

Abortion is far less of a political and cultural hot potato in Australia than in the US. While no doubt some of that is due to other cultural differences – for whatever reason, conservative Christianity has never been quite as strong an influence in Australia as in the US – I think a big factor is the difference in how abortion was legalised.

In Australia, there is no constitutional right to abortion. And yet abortion is legal nationwide. Its legality was achieved through a gradual process, involving state legislation, and state court decisions – those state court decisions were not based on constitutional law, rather the state courts simply decided to reinterpret the existing criminal laws against abortion to not apply to medical procedures. The federal courts stayed out of it completely, and constitutional rights never came into it, only statutory law – if they wanted to, the state parliaments could have overturned the state court decisions effectively legalising abortion, but they chose not to.

The fact that the process was much more gradual, and had greater democratic legitimacy, has helped make it less of a controversy. And since it happened through a series of state laws and state court decisions, opponents of legal abortion don't have one single highly visible event to focus all their opposition upon, like Roe v Wade is in the US. Almost every American has heard of Roe v Wade – even many non-Americans have – by contrast, few Australians know about the Menhennitt ruling (which de facto legalised abortion in the state of Victoria in 1969) or the Levine ruling (which did the same in New South Wales in 1971). American opponents of legal abortion focus most of their energy on trying to get justices appointed to the Supreme Court who will overturn Roe v Wade – the main purpose of this latest Texas law is to get a case before the Supreme Court which will give those justices an opportunity to do exactly that – its Australian opponents don't have any national focus, which in practice makes them a lot weaker.

It is totally consistent to support legal abortion, but to also think that Roe v Wade was a strategic mistake.

I wouldn't call the US morally superior here anyways. In fact, i think anyone after the US is really late to the party. The first US law was MA legalizing gay marriage in 2004. It took 11 years of fighting after to get to supreme court.

The recent ruling on the Texas heartbeat law might make a dent in that, although I doubt it.

Changes made by pure fiat don't last. Gay marriage in the US could absolutely turn out to have been temporary for just the reasons you explained.

The US was only the 17th country in the world to allow same-sex marriage nationwide; Australia was the 23rd. Still only 28 out of 193 UN member states have it fully nationwide – less than 15%. Only a 3 year gap, when any country having legal same-sex marriage is just over 20 years old. If we look at this in a global and historical context, both countries are very progressive on this particular issue. To argue that the US is in some significant way "more progressive" than Australia just because it got there a few years earlier, you have to be looking at things from a rather narrow perspective.

"Fully nationwide" above is only counting the main national territory of the country, not overseas territories. Even for the US, same-sex marriage is not legal in the territory of American Samoa – the territorial government of American Samoa claims that Obergefell v Hodges doesn't apply to them due to some legal technicalities, and it appears nobody has yet challenged that claim in court. Likewise, Netherlands, New Zealand, and UK all have legal same-sex marriage throughout their main national territory, but not in some of their overseas territories.

So if you want to be hyper-pedantic about it, the US still doesn't have legal same-sex marriage (throughout all of its territory), Australia does.

The USA recognized same sex marriage in 2015, but we did so via a Supreme Court ruling. The Court's composition has changed since then, and the new Court has signaled a willingness to overturn settled precedents.

While our current detent may persist, I would imagine that an action taken by the Australian Parliament would tend to be more durable.

I'm curious to understand why you'd think a law passed by elected lawmakers is more durable than a verdict by judges who have their position for life? Obacare was surely very controversial, but despite the best efforts by the conservative and an ideologically hostile Supreme Court, it remains in place after ten years.

Those efforts were actually pretty half-hearted. They talked a big game, but they don't actually want to abolish it. (Reminds me of how the UK doesn't really want to face up to a no-deal Brexit, despite lots of brave talk. Or how no government in the UK has so far re-nationalised the railroads, despite re-nationalisation perennially polling high with the general public.)

Legally, Parliament could repeal it tomorrow and ban same-sex marriage again. Politically, that would be impossible without another plebiscite, and there is no reason to believe a new plebiscite would deliver a different outcome; it would almost certainly return the same result, and likely by a bigger margin.

No conservative politician in Australia wants to talk about this. I'm sure some of them are still personally opposed to same-sex marriage, but they all realise trying to repeal it is hopeless, and so they'd rather talk about things that they have some hope of achieving.

The realignment of the Court, plus this Court's willingness to overturn settled law, together signal that a new law prohibiting same-sex marriage might be allowed to stand if brought before today's Court, returning the US to a country where same-sex marriage is not universally legal.

So I would regard our current regime around same-sex marriage, civil rights, etc. to be subject to not being directly challenged at the Supreme Court.

One of my major gripes is that education here is not at all egalitarian.

> Property in Australia is like a game of musical chairs but the music stopped in Sydney in 1978

Can you explain this analogy?

So in my analogy, the last round ended in Sydney in 1978 meaning if you weren't sitting then then you didn't get another chance at a seat.

I remember seeing property shows in the 2000s and there'd be a young couple in their mid-20s with a baby looking at houses that were up to $800K. You'd really need to be earning $200k+ then to afford that or, more realistically, $250k+. Not a lot of jobs in Australia (even Sydney) paid that then (and still don't for the record).

So how were such people affording houses? The Mum and Dad Bank is how. Their parents who were sitting down in 1970s were now sitting on considerable unrealized property wealth and this gets passed along to the children.

So when I say Sydney became unaffordable in the 1970s, I mean what people viewed as Sydney back then, which is inner Sydney, the North Shore and coastal suburbs. But these have now been so out of reach for people who aren't wealthy for so long that people don't think of them as Sydney anymore.

Now when people talk about the affordability of Sydney they're talking about the areas where "normal" people buy. Sydney has expanded far to the West, basically to the Blue Mountains (eg Penrith). It's also expanded south (eg Campelltown). But somewhere like Mosman isn't part of the normal person's mental picture of Sydney property where it was 40+ years ago.

This reminds me of something that happened to me in university. I mentioned to someone the suburbs I'd be staying in over the summer when university was out and they literally said "la di da" like it was fancy. To them it was because they were part of a newer generation who lived very far north (I remember they took 3 buses to get to university). To me, it was just where my grandparents lived and had done so for 40-50 years. When they bought that house it was literally the edge of the city, as in the other side of the street was bushland.

You see it on the train too. When I went to university the one where all the students and twentysomethings lived was 5 stops from the CBD. 15 years later it was 8-9 stops.

At least that's how I interpret it.

Its even more so right now, if you're up for contracting. $1000+ a day is common. Kind of nuts, but hey its been good for my wallet.

But, more importantly, Big Tech senior engineer total comp is rapidly pushing to $US500K+.

Is it really though? I'm looking on glassdoor and it's saying average is $130k with high at $180k. And yes I realise that just salary not total comp.

levels.fyi is widely known to be accurate.

I do fear that housing here is going to end up like the other major Aus cities though. I think Brisbane house prices are rising at like $500 a day or something. An amount I couldn't have fathomed paying in rent weekly when I first moved to Sydney.

But a simple example that shows how lucky I and others are: I can rapidly, from $0 (if I was silly enough to have no savings for this exercise) save up a deposit within a year or two, less if one has a partner.

Any of my friends and acquaintances, unless they also went into high-paying jobs and industries here in SEQ, or unless they have parents well-off enough to help them, are writing off being able to enter the property market for years or decades.

Its worrying, for sure.

Comparatively it seems like contractors in the USA get punished by the tax system.

$1200 a day puts you into the top few percent of salaries here in Australia. I don't really care what a "brisbane sized city in the states" might be doing, because moving there means I have to live in a country that I'm not a good fit for culturally.

The senior ministers of the ALP came to a similar conclusion. Mid this year they announced no changes to negative gearing or capital gains tax offsets.

For the non-Australians following along, this means both major parties support rampant speculation on the residential property market.

If there were no "negative gearing" for investment properties, then either there would be fewer such properties, or people would have to form businesses to perform such investments (which adds an extra bit of friction with accounting and tax).

Making it possible to deduct "expenses" from "revenue" of a person doing the investment makes sense.

From a quick Google, it looks like companies are not entitled to CGT discounts. This means that forming a business would increase the tax you pay for almost everyone.

>If there were no "negative gearing" for investment properties, then either there would be fewer such properties, or people would have to form businesses to perform such investments (which adds an extra bit of friction with accounting and tax).

This doesn't sound like a bad thing. It would discourage people from speculating on the property market and outbidding owner/occupiers (which is a net negative for society) and encourage them to invest their money in productive businesses (which is a net positive).

Negative gearing only works for those who have a high level of income with the corresponding high level of taxation.

Why it works so well for these individuals is they can greatly reduce their tax liability by using the property deductions negatively gearing has to offer.

As a secondary benefit, those same investors also win on the capital gain side of the equation as these negative gearing tax incentives create massive demand for property.

Your 'average person' living on the average wage can't benefit from negative gearing as their wage bracket does not attract a high enough level of taxation.

In fact it hurts this group of people only because those higher property prices also means they are priced out of the housing market.

The experience of living in Melbourne in 2000 as someone not on the property ladder is very different to now.

In 2000 it was possible to be on the poverty line and still live within an easy bike ride of the CBD. Now everyone I know lives increasingly on the fringes of the city.

This change is not unique to Melbourne but I can't help feel something is lost when you go to a house party and the only people you meet are ones who can afford property.

I'm increasingly assuming anyone who buys in Melbourne is doing so with the assistance of multi-generation wealth.

I suspect there is a big difference between the long term wealth implications of buying a house vs buying an apartment. There are never going to be more houses in outer-inner-suburbs. There is going to be a constant supply of new apartments as we move towards higher density living.

People who have wealthy parents are in the best position to make better housing investments.

Sounds like Vancouver

This has happened before. Dubya largely got reelected in 2004 because Karl Rove tied the campaign to blowback against states and plebiscites in favour of gay marriage.

If this is the only accessible form of financial gain - why wouldn't they?

I strongly suspect that in order to have a dynamic economy a weak housing market is a pre-requisite. Given the choice it's much easier to plunk money down in a house and watch cash magically appear than it is to start a business or do anything creative.

It's not that they shouldn't care about their property portfolio, but it shouldn't be the only thing they care about.

For example, the AU government has given away millions to polluters with no appreciable return (https://australiainstitute.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/12...).

It also has a terrible track record on human rights.

And that's just the last things I read... there's plenty more (this mandate for instance).

I can imagine that many people feel quite helpless.

It's lasted more than my entire lifetime so far. Is anyone predicting a reversal?

The 220~ days (and counting) that Melbourne has been in lockdown has certainly worn me down, but even before C19 the political climate, attitude towards technology, cost of housing and the impact of increasing bushfires has taken an enormous toll on the country over the past decade that I've been here.

Generally speaking New Zealand is far more socially liberal than Australia, however there are greater financial / job opportunities in Australia due to it's size.

In New Zealand you're less likely to own a fancy new car or have has many expensive possessions but to me at least it didn't feel like you "need" them as much as in Australia.

There weren't many tech job opportunities in New Zealand given its small population, however I suspect the global rise in remote work coupled with New Zealand's relatively capable internet infrastructure may be changing this.

Entertainment wise New Zealand hands down has more stunning, enjoyable, accessible nature and outdoors - while Australia pre-covid has a far more international offerings (musicians, comedy etc...).

Property prices are absolutely insane in both countries if you want to live in city / inner suburbs.

It's hard to explain but I've always felt that if Australia was socially and politically the USA, New Zealand would perhaps be somewhere in Scandinavia.

What's stopping me from moving back to New Zealand? - My life (friends, work, cat) is in Melbourne, if I was offered a good job opportunity back in the South Island of NZ and moving costs covered - I'd certainly be considering it.

Of course this is all highly subjective and only based on my experiences / observations.

</rant>

This comment reminded me of the concept:

> In New Zealand you're less likely to own a fancy new car or have has many expensive possessions but to me at least it didn't feel like you "need" them as much as in Australia.

[] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tall_poppy_syndrome

New Zealand's economy and cost-of-living is markedly weaker and higher than Australia's; the property-is-the-only-investment idea is somehow even worse in NZ, at least lately

The day-to-day life in NZ is lovely though. At least where I'm from in Northland.

Australia and NZ are more similar than they are different, I feel.

Both places are are similar in that:

  - They have good access to nature/beaches
  - Property prices are nuts, most people see property as their primary investment vehicle. This is a big cause of wealth inequality
  - general populace has a relatively easygoing disposition

NZ has a better human rights record, much cleaner grid, and doesn't seem to have the authoritarian bent that Aus does. It's like the slightly hippie/socialist/woke little sibling.

The Netherlands has rubbish weather for 2/3rds of the year and not a single mountain/hill/beach worth mentioning, but is extremely liveable. Income/CoL ratios tend to be higher than the Bay Area for a given quality-of-life, although you might be earning less in absolute terms. Cities and Towns are very well designed, even Amsterdam (outside the center) feels like a cosy village but you still get access to big-city things. Probably more socialist than NZ, with things like this happening https://nltimes.nl/2021/09/02/dutch-cities-want-ban-property...

Ultimately I can't live in a country where people are religious so that leaves only North Europe and the Netherlands is the most antichrist of them all.

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/datablog/ng-inter...

I’ve seen how quickly a country can erode (Syria, Ukraine, Hong Kong) and am questioning the future of this country.

Syria has always been a somewhat dangerous place. Ukraine got invaded by Russia. Hong Kong was taken from China by the British, became it's own nation and is currently being ... taken back against its own will in a sense.

Not that it couldn't happen. But Australia is not really a place I would imagine a violent uprising happening compared to most other places. I think we have too much social cohesion, even between those who are politically opposed.

The result is still a very attractive place - lots of resources, educated people, safe, little poverty comparatively, etc. But people take it for granted and its sleep walking into a Corporatocracy with fast growing wealth gap.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lucky_Country

The internet here is an actual joke, the politics are biased towards conservatism, don't think about owning an electric car but... the pay is quite good and it's a nice place to go out. Lots of nature and you can find nice apartments to rent if you look.

New Zealand by comparison is great but it's remote, expensive and has a low salary when compared to other western countries. It has been a while since I was there last, but public transport is hilariously bad - but if you enjoy nature and silence, it's there in abundance.

My company has offered to relocate me to NYC, which is interesting. Looking on YouTube at what the city looks like and it's pretty ugly if I am honest. Apartments seem to be small and you don't get modern style apartments even 45 minutes from Manhattan via public transport. I am concerned that my lifestyle would suffer living there.

Hey Canada, how you doing?

This is a great opportunity that you'd be silly to pass up because of some YouTube videos. You have to at least visit in person to give it a fair shot. NYC is the largest city in any western country. I guarantee you can find parts of it you'd like.

> Hey Canada, how you doing?

Pay in tech is way, way higher in NYC than in Canada.

Just gotta wait for these borders to open back up.

Hope it goes well for you wherever you choose to go, although I don't think there are many places left that aren't like that, at least not any places that have an acceptable standard of living. Something about a city having a future at all makes the real estate vortex come to life.

Know of a place? Tell me, dear reader, I'd love to hear it.

Maybe the sample average of the people you hang around is quite different from the population average.

The average Australian can't even afford to have a property portfolio, let alone caring about one.

Net migration rate provides a more objective view of whether a country has an 'average future'. If you look at the global net migration rates, Australia and particularly the capital cities have some of the highest rates in the world, despite being far away from anywhere.

The factors driving this may not align at all with what you personally want from a country or a city, which is fair enough. But your comment seems like quite a generalisation to make from a very specific position.

2. The moon

3. Mars

Fucked up quarantine, fucked up vaccine rollout, fucked up climate policies, fucked up the news media bargaining code, and fucked up numerous policies just to prop up the housing market. And it'll be the younger generations that will certainly pay for these fuck ups.

I really hope we have an early election and Australians choose Labor over Liberal this time.

I keep hearing this every now and then, but the incompetent leadership does not come from nowhere nor has conceived itself. The country leaders have been legitimately elected, which means the leadership is the direct reflection of the country people's will. People consciously elect incompetence that bears the incompetent leadership, for that is what they desire for one reason or another. There are a few progressive, young parties that could steer the future of Australia in the right direction with progressive policies that make sense in the 21st century. Guess what? An average Australian does not care about the progress, they care about their real estate portfolio in maintaining the status quo for a change is scary and frightens people. Politics have become a career ladder excercise with public servants serving their own self-interest rather than working out differences between differing views and opinions and working towards a modern future of the country. Australia has been become mired in complacency, pipe dreaming and discussing how Labour is better over Liberals (or the other way around) whereas both parties are more or less the same in the grand scheme of things.

Counterpoints: 1. Australia's two big parties are closer to an oligarchy than an egalitarian system, these parties recruit from university politics so there's a whole pipeline that will seed out people who have non-party views. Having mostly uni-people will automatically restrict the party to a small percentage of the population.

2. Incompetence can be hidden from the voting populace. If you consume only Murdoch content (i.e., most private TV news, most published newspapers, public TV station boards are also getting packed with government people) then you will probably think that things are running great.

> the leadership is the direct reflection of the country people's will.

Every 4 years you get to influence the politicians for a few days and they do their best to make you happy. On all the other days, the lobbyists and party factions get to influence them.

I don't disagree. Although influencing the people's will is a lot easier when the main stream media is monopolised and heavily biased towards one political party. If we want a government that truly reflects the people's will we need a diverse media landscape. Also a reason why I support Kevin Rudd's push for the Murdoch royal commission.

  "Mean old Newscorp didn't force Labor to vote for increased surveillance, to leave negative gearing alone, or to go soft on coal lol."

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/249062912_The_ideol...

It used to be better, but Fairfax which had some fairly decent papers got bought out by Nine Media, whose chairman is retired Liberal party Treasurer Peter Costello. The paper's reporting has shifted to a very pro-Liberal Party bias since then. The News Corp papers were always politically slanted towards the Liberal/Nationals. ABC has been cowed by funding cuts and undermining by the Government appointing terrible board members and chairpersons, and they have literally pushed people out because they didn't toe the line (like Nick Ross, because he reported accurately on how bad the Liberal Party's policy on the NBN was, or Emma Alberiche because she reported on the fact that corporate tax cuts generally haven't been shown to increase economic growth when corporate tax cuts were basically the only policy the LNP had).

We'll see what happens this election. Murdoch might temporarily switch sides for a couple of months like they did in 2007, because he hates backing a loser (and I think Morrison's and the rest of this terrible Government's incompetence is a bit too obvious despite the protection racket the papers and TV news try to run). But if they do, almost as soon as Labor gets in, it will likely be back to attacks and undermining of Labor and pro-Liberal/National party bias...

I think this is only true if the Australian voting system is Condorcet based. Otherwise I think technically you can elect someone overall less popular, but that has a very strong base of dedicated voters.

In terms of the Liberal and National parties (who are in coalition Federally, and the two state branches merged in Queensland), while they are slightly left of the GOP overall, there are definitely a fair few MPs and senators in the party that are just as far right-wing. For the 'moderates', they're mostly captured by business interests (especially the resources (coal, oil and gas) and property lobbies).

For Labor, the shift right is because a massive media campaign spread lies about some of their slightly more progressive policies last election, so instead of trying to correct it, the leader of the opposition who replaced the one who ran at the last election just decided to drop the policies. Also, Labor have voted in lock-step on all the mass-surveillance laws, censorship laws. Finally, despite being on about climate, they have voted for increasing grants and subsidies to new coal and gas exploration, such as in the Narrabi and Beetaloo basins, against the wishes of much of the population, farmers in the area, and the First Nations traditional owners of the land.

They are definitely the "lesser of two evils", but where I would have laughed at the thought of not voting 1st for them ten years ago, now I give my first preference to a minor party or independent (preferential voting is seriously a good idea, by the way).

It's possible I'm just splitting hairs though.

Federally the two parties are in coalition, so it's basically the same anyway, even though they are technically different parties in the other states.

Do you think? I'd have pegged things like Green New Deal, fairly strong consensus around fossil fuels and renewables, as strong US Democrat party line -- compared to AU's Labor being still wedded to a fossil fuel future, still keen to satiate Murdoch and co.

What broad policies / positions are you suggesting indicate AU Labor is more left than US Democrat?

Here's the 2021 Labor party platform https://alp.org.au/media/2594/2021-alp-national-platform-fin...

Here's the 2020 Democratic Party platform https://democrats.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/202...

> ... universal health care, how strongly they are in favor of nuclear disarmament, gun control, etc

As I understand it, US Democrats are keen on those three, and in Australia, we've already embraced all of those.

Are you suggesting there's a policy mis-match, or that one of the two groups leans even more strongly towards these principles than the other group?

Either way, I'm not sure how this strongly differentiates them.

> ... the US itself has been pushed further to the right by a conservative dominated supreme court.

The USA's supreme court arrangement is indeed a curious artefact, for those of us outside its domain.

AFAICT it's been 'pushed' in one direction by political appointees in the previous presidents' term.

But it (as you observe) does not reflect 'the party policies' - simply the current elected leader. And while that's obviously important, it doesn't necessarily define policy of either party of (current) administration.

The fact it's at odds with what the majority of the rest of the party would advocate speaks to my earlier claim / question.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/australias-hacking-bill-passes...

> The House of Representatives on Tuesday passed the Bill, with a total of 60 amendments, and while Labor has thrown its support behind the Bill as a result of the amended document being a "better Bill", the Australian Greens have not.

I'm leaving early next year. A surprising number of my friends are planning to leave soon too, particularly the highly skilled and employable ones.

Or at least it can be a good thing, as long as the process ain't mismanaged too badly. Governments seldom do the simplest thing of just auctioning off eg a state-owned business or plot of land to the highest bidder.

Most of the time they insists on beauty contests where politicians want to judge bidders' plans. That's a recipe for corruption and cronyism.

Or they only sell off eg a business piecemeal, making a turnaround in private hands much harder.

s/Australian?/US American?/g

An undiversified export economy, out of control house prices, a job-market primarily focused on two cities, a government intent on selling all public assets, very limited political interest in positive climate policies. The latter is simply addressed with "technology will help us out when we need it to".

And you suggest New Zealand?!

- Australian housing is a bargain compared to NZ ones.

- NZs job market is focused on one city, which is smaller, more expensive, lower wages and more crime than Brisbane or Perth.

There's a reason so many New Zealanders live in Australia and not vice versa.

Observation: at least in NSW it seems that most people trust the government and cooperate with government orders (Digital Tran formation for public service is on the right track, see the delivery of digital driver licence and all other perks and all other self-service integrated services, at the cost of giving up some personal info and privacy (state government says that we can trust them for securing the data/info)...

I have been living in Sydney, Australia since 2008. Agree that country is facing tough and worrying economic outlook for the 2020's. It was seriously `lucky country` (mining boom, Rise of China, etc.) when I first landed in SYD, however, with the deterioration of Australia-China relationship, and the undiversified economy structure (mining, education, tourism, etc.), the "lucky country" is going downhill towards the "luckin coffee" direction LMAO.

The country is run by politicians holding law and/or accounting degrees with no social responsibility or morals (in comparison with Germany and northern Europe), who are good at making taxation (or similar) laws but with no vision for the country's future (geopolitical influence, economy, etc.). Most people underestimate the stupidity of government and central banks, keep printing $ (QE) and pump the money to the banking system, making the asset bubbles bigger, while failing to stimulate the real economy, most $ went into the construction industry)

All bubbles pop, there is no exit strategy for QE... Recently watched "The Big Short" again and seriously history is repeating itself, so similar. Good luck to the people live in the "lucky country", keep doing what you believe is right, manage risks well (I know many family highly leveraged into investment properties), stay healthy stay sharp ;-)

"The world is sinking, people ware partying."

  Housing "un"affordability will cause negative consequences for the society: psychological problems -> family problems -> community problems -> social problems. Politicians don't care, only focus on winning the next election, they they come and go, they've got their exit route well covered...

So dystopian weird idea follows:

What if "they" are 'cleansing' Australia to make it clear for the oligarch elites to come in and claim the land!

:-)

I understand the need to keep some "thought-bumpers" to prevent reddit-ization of HN (ironic given that HN is the seed of Reddit) -- but FFS lighten the heck up.

The populous of Australia are fat and happy, and therefore unbothered by the extremely worrying creeping authoritarianism, an economy teetering on total collapse and incompetent local governance. I had real Brave New World vibes living over there.

"Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second rate people who share its luck."

written by Donald Horne in 1964. These words were true prior to 1964 and are still true in 2021.

What saves Australia is the word "mainly".

There are some first rate people in Australia, mostly not in positions of authority, who stop the ship from sinking. Examples are solar power, quantum information and medical researchers, pockets of the Public Service but less so in 2021, people like Donald Horne, ... Mostly things are second rate, but sometimes something first rate breaks though.

(I've lived in Australia since birth.)

- Manning Clark on the settling of Australia.

As a result the general population is blindly letting the government erode our rights and are too pre-occupied with their own lives to actually realise what's happening.

what else are we supposed to do? how do you stop the government from doing that?

The current LNP are so actively corrupt with their corporate interests, religious interests, repeated exposed in-house scandals, etc, yet the majority of the population continue to vote for them because they ignore it all and just keep supporting 'their team'. The Labor government tries to suggest that they're different, and end up with their own dramas of a similar style, but are kind of not as bad. Kind of.

There are other options out there, but we're all lead to believe that only the 'big parties' can form government. Which only remains true due to the self-fulfilling prophecy of people only voting en masse for the big two parties (and the preference system that funnels votes into those parties).

The likelihood of that changing? Low.

The other solution would be to dismantle the corporate media monopoly that glosses over the actual issues the country is facing, but that's probably even less likely to happen.

Is it possible that the LNP are constantly in power because they are corrupt?

Protest - particularly direct action

Challenge them

Ultimately what is one supposed to do in a democracy (never mind Australia for a moment) when you’re just not part of the majority opinion on something?

I think the only option is to emigrate. I didn’t and still don’t agree with most of the government policies in The Netherlands (regarding immigration, climate, EU, etc), but most Dutch voters apparently do. Eventually the best option is just to cut your losses and leave for greener pastures.

At least this way I am not forced anymore to have my hard earned money taxed on issues I don’t support.

If you do hope to move to The Netherlands in the future, if you believe it's a better place for you, I hope you can succeed. I would agree based on the news from Australia, that The Netherlands seems the better option of the two.

In spite of the tendency for part of the US electorate to wish to federalize all government functions, there's still a lot of difference between US states.

That seems to work out pretty well. It isn't like California is identical to Arizona, at least currently.

Otherwise, I forgot which philosopher said this, but the only real freedom is the freedom to choose where to live and the choice of many places with different viewpoints and social norms. That way each individual could pick what matched their preference best and move there.

Unfortunately the freedom to choose where to live is not really something the world provides. So you might be stuck where you are, but if you're lucky, you might manage to get into another place you prefer.

If that doesn't work, your last resort is the activist route. Make your case and change people's mind. It's happened in the past, but it's a tough road.

By giving up the opposition you create totalitarian state.

The culture helps too. In Australia the "democracy is majority rules" meme (which is a lie) is very strong. Just ask the Australian Indians.

Fun fact: Māori people had the right to vote in Australia from the start, Aboriginal Australians (just how racist are they when there is no word in Australia for the first people?) did not get that right until 1967.

It is a tough fight for the Australians.

I don't have much idea what you mean here.

> Just ask the Australian Indians.

Uh, could you explain what you mean here?

> Aboriginal Australians...did not get that right until 1967

I thought that too until recently, but not true.

On the history of Indigenous Australians’ right to vote: https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/indigenous...

On the 1967 referendum:

While many people think that the Referendum gave Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples the right to vote, this wasn’t the case. Aboriginal people could vote at the state level before Federation in 1901; Queensland and Western Australia being the only states that expressly prevented Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples from voting.

It wasn’t until 1962, when the electoral act was amended, that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples were given the right to register and vote, but voting was not compulsory. Full voting rights were not granted federally until Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were required to register on the electoral roll in 1984. ...

When the Constitution first came into being in 1901 there were only two parts that referred to the First Peoples of Australia: Section 51 (xxvi) gave the Commonwealth power to make laws with respect to ‘people of any race, other than the Aboriginal race in any state, for whom it was deemed necessary to make special laws’; and Section 127 provided that ‘in reckoning the numbers of people of the Commonwealth, or of a State or other part of the Commonwealth, aboriginal natives shall not be counted’. ...

On 27 May 1967, Australians voted to change the Constitution so that like all other Australians, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples would be counted as part of the population and the Commonwealth would be able to make laws for them. A resounding 90.77 per cent said ‘Yes’ and every single state and territory had a majority result for the ‘Yes’ vote.

https://aiatsis.gov.au/explore/1967-referendum

Voting is important, but much more important is the rule of and access to the law.

"Australian Indians" means the same thing as "Australian Aborigines" Indian and Aborigine are synonyms.

You schooled me on the right to vote! My prejudice leaked out!! I will not let it become bigotry. But I think it is at the federal level. At federation (I thought it was 1905) they really wanted NZ to be a state, and in NZ Māori electorate was a thing, not a particularly democratic thing, but a thing. So to make NZ a state Māori had to able to vote at a federal level.

> "Australian Indians" means the same thing as "Australian Aborigines" Indian and Aborigine are synonyms.

Uh I'm not sure where you are, but in Australia it sure doesn't mean that. No-one here calls aborigines "Indians", and far as I know never has.

Hehe it's ok, I think most Australians probably believe that 1967 thing, if they know the date at all, I'm not sure why. The truth is somewhat complicated.

Gee, I had no idea NZ was involved in the pre-Federation conferences in Australia, although sounds like NZ just wasn't very into it. A wise decision!

https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Depart...

Compulsory voting with good preference system already in place which means we have a ~90-97% participation rate.

>Protest - particularly direct action

Agree, but increasing using/changing laws to reduce this (declaring environment activists as "terror" groups).

>Challenge them

Not even sure what this means exactly but more people are organizing support for independents/minority parties over the major two. This combined with the ability to form minority governments I think is the best chance for progressive change, but a lot of money is being spent to keep the status quo.

An appropriate time to look at where we draw the line is when their choices put others in harm's way

In a pandemic there is no "street far from you". We are in thios together

Do you even understand what a right means? Rights, be it as defined by the US constitution or the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, are inherent moral rights, it's not something the government can freely suspend based on some arbitrary utilitarian justification like case numbers. The whole point of those declarations of rights is protecting people from authoritarian governments; if the government has the power to suspend those rights, you have no rights!

Tell me in which declaration of rights is there a right to have armed police attack and lock up people peacefully assembling on the street?

And if you don't believe in rights, believe anything is moral as long as an elected government makes it law, then consider this. Would you still feel that way if the democratically elected government decided it was okay to rape worik's wife/daughter/mother? Would you still feel that way if the democratically elected government decided worik's ethnic group should be sent to gas chambers for cleansing? If not, then clearly you do believe in absolute rights.

What the hell? Nobody sitting at home in their house has the right to prevent other people meeting peacefully on the street. People like you are what's wrong with Australia, you authoritarian monster! Nobody has the right to stop other people meeting because they might spread a virus to eachother with a 99%+ survival rate that might somehow eventually find its way back to them.

It is also worth noting that people can still protest. They just can't do it while violating health orders. Yelling maskless at police on lockdown days is going to get you arrested. Other protests on non-lockdown days with people maintaining social distancing have proceeded fine apart from grumpy words and fear mongering by politicians.

This is a good start.

Dudes strongmen literally attempt to kill the (15 year old) kid which can be seen in another video, so you know the act cuts deep as a form of protest...

The irony being that 30% of the population was born outside of Australia with a decent part of that in countries which have experienced recent hard times.

https://www.abs.gov.au/media-centre/media-releases/30-austra...

At a state level, in many states, rules for dual citizens are more complicated, but result in a similar situation.

I can understand the need for this legislation, but it does tilt the balance in favor of 3rd+ generation Australians (as many 2nd generation Australians can inherit their parent's citizenship).

Yes, if your country of non-Australian citizenship allows you to renounce it, that is recognised in Australian law. But it can be a complex process, with little value unless you have political ambitions (or maybe complex tax issues ;-) ).

Massive amounts of people are unable to work, and a lot of us haven't seen our interstate family in almost 2 years.

A few months before Covid started, 180,000 km2 of Australia was burned to the ground, enshrouding our capital and major cities in smoke, making breathing outdoors almost impossible, causing a mass shortage of P2 masks. Many people died. Many more lost their houses.

What sort of additional hardships do you want to prescribe for Australians exactly?

No, you don't get to blame Australia's insanity on the US. They're fully in control of their own destiny and are one of the richest, most privileged nations in world history. Australia will have nobody else to blame if they plunge further into fascism from here.

In 1997 they banned “defensive” firearms. The guns you want because they work well. Semiautos, center fire handguns, pump shotguns. Bolt actions are still possible to get, but not great at self-defense, or overthrowing your government.

Side note… in 1997 these guns were banned, and crime fell. As it turns out though, not only was crime already going down, but there was an increase of 2x police per capita, and curiously crime in the USA fell at a greater rate with no gun ban or large increase in police, crime was high in the 90s for some reason, some people say lead paint bans but the causation is weak.

Also, you forgot Paul Hogan. And Kylie Minogue. And Nick Cave.

Also, while absolutely nothing sticks in my mind about either, the names of Kevin Rudd and Kim Beazley have been retained in my memory.

If there's places Americans want to go, it's Canada, Europe or Asia, though I think their opinion of Europe is a little overrated if anything.

Or sometimes they just kill each other in cycles of violence spanning generations.

> Good times create weak men.

Or they enable amazing things like the internet, modern medicine, and empires that last 1000 years.

Sorry, but I've seen this pithy quote before and I wish it would go away - it's simply not true.

The internet (FAANG if you want a concrete definition) and modern medicine are both multi-trillion dollar industries; for very fundamental reasons. I'd argue their relative success would probably occur in both good and bad times.

Strong men fought for our rights, fought for the allies and which led to long lasting peace and security.

These are the times that breed weak generations who have no moral compass and have been squandering basic rights and civil liberties.

What type of la la fantasy histories have you been reading? Fat happy people maintain the status quo. Hungry desperate people innovate.

Anyway. The world wide web is probably what you meant. And yes, universities and science and medicine makes progress during peaceful times, and ultimately the quote is facile and glib. There is a nugget of truth there, however.

Establishing a frontier in human well being has historically required limiting the power of the state in ways that support the relative liberalizing of its culture. States historically require blood sacrifice before any power is ceded. It takes strong people to achieve and hold progress., and the quote encapsulates the notion that there is a place in the natural order of things for strong individuals to shake things up. For principles to be held to at great cost, however inconvenient or even fatal it may be for others who just want to perpetuate "good enough".

The fallacy is that good times can't produce good and strong people, which is wrong. It's just a simple matter of conviction being stronger when provoked by trauma than abstract rationalization.

Nikola Tesla, Thomas Edison, Alan Turing, Albert Einstein, Robert Goddard, Werner von Braun, William Shockley, John von Neumann, ... those just come off the top of my head, I could keep going for pages.

Yeah, a bunch of hungry desperate people there.

I mean sure, some were deeply flawed or had tragic lives, but that wasn't from being hungry and desperate. They were not poor, and they were supplied with ample resources to pursue their visions by governments or private companies.

That quote is just too much of an oversimplification. The real situation is far more complex and nuanced, and like I said in the other reply it matters a lot how you define strength and how you define good times.

Please look into the etymology of a word before making whimsical arguments.

You’ll have an awful time with Chinese where words have many different meanings depending on context.