Qld Border Closure - RELAX EVERYONE!!

[T1 Terry]

I see the "Health Minister" is having a go at Victoria for maintaining the lock down, maybe it's time for the states to all go their own way and eliminate the federal parliament completely because it is no longer serving the purpose it was intended to achieve, taking care of the whole country rather than states just looking after their personal interests, seems the tail is now well and truly wagging the dog ...... Looking on the up side V the down side, I'm having difficulties assembling much of value on the up side part of the ledger

T1 Terry

[Greynomad]

Maybe then we could have a look at forming a new state around Albury-Wodonga including many of the (now) border twin-towns... and revive the campaign from the 1960s for a new state of New England with Newcastle as its capital, incorporating Gosford, Coolangatta-Tweed Heads & the Gold Coast. Then there’s the proposal from the 1950s for a state of Centralia with Alice Springs as capital... (My primary school had a world globe with Centralia clearly marked! Perhaps a bit premature.)
WA is FAR too big. It could be divided into NWA & SWA at Geraldton. NWA’s capital could be Broome.
I suppose we’d then have to relocate & reactivate all the old Customs Houses...
And passports! We’d all need passports. (Not much different to today, really.)


Probably better to go the OTHER way... dissolve the STATE governments and have just Federal and Local Governments.
After all, the current problem — in fact many of our problems — result from differences between the States.
Viz: car, truck registration (including annual inspections or not); driver licences; road rules (including load limits); health care; education at all levels; shopping hours; liquor licences... the list goes on.

Compare & contrast: UK and NZ vs Australia.
Marks will be awarded for originality.

[T1 Terry]

Compare & contrast: UK and NZ vs Australia.
Marks will be awarded for originality.

Hmmm.... let's see, Australia was really just another state of the UK at one stage and NZ was just part of the state of NSW. Both broke away and tried to govern themselves to a degree but still reside under the "empire" such as it is, making self rule a bit of an oxy-moron really.
NZ had a native population that all spoke a similar language making communication between the tribes easier and eventually banded together to fight a common enemy rather than each other.
Australia has a native population with more languages than any other civilisation making communication difficult between tribes in the early days resulting in a less unified stance against their common enemy.
Both Australia and NZ natives had the same common enemy and to a degree, those identifying themselves as belonging to that country, England and British rule and the assumption the British had that all they stepped foot on became instantly their property and all previous rights were null and void ........

I bet that lot gets marked differently depending on the person reading it

As a foot note, my father was British and were my mothers family and my mother was born in Lithgow, so she was an Aussie, so am I because I was born in Wollongong

T1 Terry

[Greynomad]

T1,
8.5/10.
You have demonstrated originality of thought and analysis.
However, you lose marks because you forgot/ignored the British propensity to slaughter any indigenous peoples who demonstrated their opposition to being treated as sub-human. In this aspect, we should regard the Americans as being of British origin, and therefore share this propensity.
Otherwise a model essay.

ps. Given your parentage, you probably have a genuine claim to be indigenous, and therefore eligible for government assistance for your business.

[T1 Terry]

I thought I'd stay clear of other British colonies issue because that would have been considered a digression from the subject topic ......... I also avoided the propensity for company executives, foreign to the Australian customs but purely $$ directed, exploiting ancient indigenous sites with world significant heritage value by first seeking legal guidance to block any last minute attempts at stopping them from blowing them up to access the minerals they wanted to dig up and sell.
It seems the British don't have a monopoly on trampling all over the indigenous population or even the British/European settlers in any country in pursuit of the mighty $$, gas drilling on farmers property comes to mind and destroying the water table in a number of US states and the like.

T1 Terry

[Greynomad]

I didn’t claim that the Poms had an exclusive deal on their treatment of indigenous peoples...
Portugal, The Netherlands & Spain pop easily to mind. Again, not an exhaustive list. France, Belgium ...
Pick a first world country — any country. If it had colonies...

[T1 Terry]

I was just trying to up my 8.5/10 score
I really don't understand why a country as mineral rich as we have along with a lot of available land and the brains on how to adapt to a dry climate, hasn't made the most of value adding to any product we sell off shore. If you want it, pay for us to do our bit to make a few labour and tech based $$ from it rather than just digging it up and shipping it out.
If they want to buy it else where, let 'em, see how that goes after a few yrs when the local labour force sees the bosses getting rich while they are dying because of the poor conditions. The poms discovered what happens when you try the heavy handed tactics ... all the way back to the Romans actually, spread your armies out too thin and the whole thing caves in from the centre out.
China already has a bigger internal army to quell unrest than its foreign fighting force, just wait until the pinch that comes with lack of markets and imports ...... It's not like we could see it much tougher than those on the ground are feeling it now, only those multi-national companies will really feel the pain. Sure the local miners will feel some short term pain, but after the last down turn and then the recovery, they are a lot better off now than they were back before down turn squeezed them out of a job.

T1Terry

[Dot]

I had a call from the daughter of one of my old friends from NZ to tell me her mum isn't here for much longer maybe a couple of weeks and that the other daughter was in Sydney in quarantine before she can go to her mum who lives in Coffs Harb right on the beach on 10 acres. We were planning on staying with her when we could get on the road but looks like that won't be happening. When will they find a cure for this dam disease?

[T1 Terry]

If you ask Donald, before the election, if you ask those that seem to know about these things, it could be yrs, if you ask Scomo, by the end of the yr or early next yr, if you ask Bolsonaro, what disease? if you ask Putin, it is already been developed and being used, just not by him ......
Apparently the Russian's have had a method of stopping anyone from dying from Covid 19 for quite some time, Novichok, it is said that no one has died from Covid 19 after they came into contact with this stuff .....

T1 Terry

[Greynomad]

Could CSIRO sign a contract to manufacture Novachok?
We could then sell it to the Yanks, and demonstrate its efficacy on President Clown.