Nath
@Nath@aussie.zone
- Comment on Favourite (least hated) and Most Hated Prime Ministers ? 18 hours ago:
WA has a decent claim to Hawke. He went to school and university here, his uncle was WA premier. He wasn’t born in WA and didn’t represent WA in parliament. But he was a good WA boy.
- Comment on Favourite (least hated) and Most Hated Prime Ministers ? 18 hours ago:
In my lifetime? Or in my voting lifetime?
If the former, Whitlam. He’s not a popular choice according to history, and he was blocked so frequently in what he was trying to do. But if you look at the actual policies he killed conscription, introduced free health care, free university, legal aid, equal rights and animal rights. Lots of these policies were unpopular with politicians at the time, but are a given in society today. He’s mostly remembered for “The Dismissal”, which is a crying shame.
If the latter, it’s a little nuanced. PMs have been more stymied by their parties in the past 20 years than I remember happening in before the Hawke-Howard years.
Rudd’s an interesting one: By all accounts, he’s a raging arsehole to work with. But, he was really trying to spread the wealth and break up the monopolies. He was just getting going when the mining companies fired him for having the audacity to suggest that was all our dirt they were digging up and the profits should be shared with all Australians. I’m still mad that his party didn’t stand with him on that one.
I think Turnbull could have been one of the greatest PMs of all time. A total technocrat who wanted to put experts in their fields into assorted roles. That was unpopular in his party and he spent his whole prime-ministership trying to manage his party instead of the nation. He also stood by his word - if he agreed that he’d support a bill if conditions were met - he did so. Even crossing the floor to support climate legislation. I’d love to see what he could have achieved if he had his party behind him.
Gillard is another one who would have been great, but she spent her whole tenure with a cloud over her head - either from the way she wrested leadership from her predecessor, alienating the electorate, or from being in a minority government most of the time, needing to do deals for everything. For all that though, wow she got shit done!
In terms of popular/least hated prime minister in my voting life, I have to give it to Hawke. He cared. You really felt like the guy was in your living room talking to you over a beer and working on your behalf. I know and acknowledge that my childhood politics was shaped a lot by my parents, and those days were very much “Labor good, Libs evil”. But for all of that, Australians really felt like the guy was there batting for us. He wasn’t all roses: He took away free university but he re-introduced free health care (Menzies privatised Medibank after Whitlam). He was deeply in the USA camp, which is weird as he was a polar opposite to Regan. He cried on TV, showing that he was human.
I really want to see how Gillard, Rudd and Turnbull went in their respective alternative universes where they had their parties were behind them. I think they all could have done great things.
- Comment on When your most obnoxious coworker starts up with their bullshit again 22 hours ago:
She didn’t even wear it correctly. The other photo I’ve seen of her this day has her stocking legs outside the costume:
Frankly, everyone should have completely ignored her. As though what she was wearing was nothing was out of the ordinary. She does these stupid stunts for the reaction. And she got it. So, she’ll do this again at some point for another reaction.
- Comment on Neo-Nazi's bank accounts frozen as private sector moves to cut off group's funding pipeline 1 week ago:
Banks are mercenary. They have zero positions they “disagree with”. They refuse to do business with companies and organisations for only one reason: It’s unprofitable.
There are Millions of people who will alter their banking behaviour over things like “Bank X is the Nazi bank”. I would. It’s the same story with porn (not so much in Australia, but absolutely a thing in the USA). A reputation of being the “porno bank” would lead to millions of people changing their bank. And so, banks won’t do business with porn providers. If the people didn’t care, neither would the banks.
- Submitted 1 week ago to news@aussie.zone | 9 comments
- Comment on Liberal Party formally abandons net zero by 2050 climate target 1 week ago:
You won’t often catch me defending Telstra, but here goes: they didn’t let the copper network fall into disrepair. They did genuinely maintain it at a standard that was pretty close to if not as good as what Telstra did. Those copper cables though were designed for telephony and never designed for the Internet. Some of that copper is over 100 years old. If all the lines needed to handle were plain old telephone, Telstra was doing ok.
We’ll never know whether Telecom would have gone to the Internet at all, as they were a telephone company. I can see Telecom in that alternate universe being all-in on mobile Internet though. It’s an interesting thought discussion.
- Comment on Discussion Thread 🪴 Friday 14 November 2025 2 weeks ago:
Apologies, I’ve been doing Friday night things. Um, at a glance, you’ll need lemmy.world admins to help with a lemmy.world account. I’ll take a better look tomorrow, I’m not really in a position to drive cars or admin access just at the moment.
- Comment on Liberal Party formally abandons net zero by 2050 climate target 2 weeks ago:
Ha! I was going to say it’s against the rules, but there’s no actual rule in the sub about editorializing news headlines.
- Comment on Liberal Party formally abandons net zero by 2050 climate target 2 weeks ago:
I mean, we mostly already have. What I think they should be doing is looking at this simple fact and asking themselves what they can do to make themselves more attractive to the electorate. I don’t think they’re doing that, and that’s a pity. I happen to want multiple viable choices for government. By taking themselves so far off the table as a choice they’re limiting everyone’s options.
- Submitted 2 weeks ago to australianpolitics@aussie.zone | 32 comments
- Comment on The Whitlam Dismissal - 11 November 1975 | Constitutional Clarion [50 year anniversary] 2 weeks ago:
Rage at who? Kerr? Fraser? Whitlam? Everyone’s long gone.
The 1975 dismissal is a wonderful case study in both the importance of Government checks and balances as well as the requirement to ensure they are used correctly, so that past mistakes won’t be repeated. It’s also why Australians even today get a little nervous when one party controls the senate alone.
But rage? No. I have nobody to rage at.
- Comment on Discussion Thread 🛼 Saturday 8 November 2025 2 weeks ago:
Seven months later and these 200g packets are New Low Price. 😀
They used to be $2.59 for the old size and now they’re $2.29 for the new. I’m pretty sure they’ve still gone up, but I’m not going to figure it out on the phone in the aisle.
- Comment on With the Social Media Ban coming in next month what's the plan? 3 weeks ago:
I’m not against this being a method people can employ for verification. But it won’t be the only method. I’m not going to ask a recovering alcoholic or a Muslim to walk into a pub and buy a beer.
Also: it’s users under 16. Not under 18. While I’m not aware of any users under 18, we did have a 17 year old last year.
This method has been considered, but it wouldn’t catch everyone.
- Comment on With the Social Media Ban coming in next month what's the plan? 3 weeks ago:
Tbh I would be amazed if anyone in the government knows that Lemmy exists.
It would be unwise to base any sort of response on this assumption. Section 13 of the legislation is pretty clear:
(1) For the purposes of this Act, age‑restricted social media platform means:
(a) an electronic service that satisfies the following conditions:
(i) the sole purpose, or a significant purpose, of the service is to enable online social interaction between 2 or more end‑users;
(ii) the service allows end‑users to link to, or interact with, some or all of the other end‑users;
(iii) the service allows end‑users to post material on the service;
(iv) such other conditions (if any) as are set out in the legislative rules; or(b) an electronic service specified in the legislative rules;
I’ll cover these “legislative rules” in a sec.
Most of the lists of affected sites you see flying all around the place are misleading, because they’re being used by the media to get engagement rather than helping people to understand the actual law. In short: every site that meets section 13(1a) above is bound by the law. Which includes aussie.zone.
Services that eSafety considers will not be age-restricted social media platforms
These exception lists are important. For reasons, the government has included a provision in the legislation to exclude sites from section 13(1a). There are a whole bunch of provisions in the overall legislation that hang on the magic words “legislative rules”. There are in fact 24 references to legislative rules in the legislation. If you read the thing all the way to section 240 (yes that’s not a typo), you’ll get to this bit:
240 Legislative rules
(1) The Minister may, by legislative instrument, make rules (legislative rules) prescribing matters:
(a) required or permitted by this Act to be prescribed by the legislative rules; or (b) necessary or convenient to be prescribed for carrying out or giving effect to this Act.
In other words, the communications minister can ad-hoc declare that any site/service that meets the criteria in section 13 is exempt from this law whenever she likes.
- Comment on With the Social Media Ban coming in next month what's the plan? 3 weeks ago:
We have had zero guidance from the government on what “reasonable steps” to ensure users are over 16 looks like. Frankly, I don’t think the government is ready for this law to come in. I won’t be at all surprised if we are given a new date.
All I know is what we won’t be doing:
- We won’t be pulling a 4chan and totally ignoring the law.
- We won’t be asking for people’s ID. We are not equipped to deal with that.
- We won’t be introducing IP blocks from Australian IPs like some sites have done to the UK.
- We won’t be closing down.
I know this isn’t really answering the question. But our stance hasn’t really changed from ‘wait and see what everyone else does to comply’. I have something of a game in mind, I’ll go that way if our hand is forced on short direction.
- Comment on Discussion Thread 🪤 Tuesday 4 November 2025 3 weeks ago:
It’s a regular work day for everyone outside Melbourne. So I’ll be doing that.
- Comment on Discussion Thread 🪼 Monday 3 November 2025 3 weeks ago:
Isn’t it always?
- Comment on Discussion Thread 🪼 Monday 3 November 2025 3 weeks ago:
Did Kerry Greenwood get a book in the works before passing?
Shhhhh! Nobody tell my wife. That’s Christmas pressie fodder, that is!
- Comment on Discussion Thread 🥁 Friday 31 October 2025 4 weeks ago:
I’m having a two-day week after a five-day weekend. I did almost nothing, just went for a ride each day. It was amazing.
- Comment on Outage Sunday Oct 26 4 weeks ago:
I’m not sure what metrics those sites adopt to determine whether the instance is up or not, but clearly they’re in error regarding us being offline. I can’t even get the second link to show instances to find us.
- Comment on Discussion Thread 🧵 Wednesday 29 October 2025 4 weeks ago:
I can absolutely help with that. But not from here.
I’ll get into this when I get home in a couple of hours.
- Submitted 4 weeks ago to news@aussie.zone | 0 comments
- Comment on Discussion Thread 🧵 Wednesday 29 October 2025 4 weeks ago:
Cash economy is strong. I’m moderately sure my first few employers were paying me cash but not paying taxes/super etc. I was a clueless teenager getting cash envelopes and didn’t know better. I’m probably owed a couple hundred dollars in super from each of them.
- Comment on Outage Sunday Oct 26 4 weeks ago:
I have no intention to help you do either of these things. Maybe possibly feed you in a pinch, but absolutely not the other one.
- Submitted 4 weeks ago to meta@aussie.zone | 10 comments
- Comment on Julia Gillard endorses Donald Trump 5 weeks ago:
Bold of you to assume we model our politics on yours. Politically, we resemble the UK more than the USA. We love you guys, but we don’t want to be like you, politically.
- Comment on Julia Gillard endorses Donald Trump 5 weeks ago:
When the comments are better than the article! 🍿🤣
There have been questions raised recently over whether we should be tagging Betoota/Chaser/Shovel/Belltower/etc articles as [Satire] so people aren’t confused. I’m torn. I don’t want people from outside Australia seeing these articles and being misinformed (For anyone not Australian and unfamiliar with The Chaser: Julia Gillard does not endorse Donald Trump - we promise). This article is written for Australians as a bit of fun. I do however love seeing people who know nothing about the headlines/creators leap into the discussion with strong opinions.
Australians are not a serious people. We genuinely enjoy laughing at the world and at politics in particular. Genuine discourse often comes from satirical posts. Take a look at the top ten posts in this community:
Nearly half the posts are satirical.
- Comment on Discussion Thread 🎪 Monday 13 October 2025 1 month ago:
Mini metro but with roads. I prefer the original, I’d have included it in my list, except that it came out several years later than the other games. The titles in that list are all from around 2008-2010, when that sort of game was the norm.
- Comment on Discussion Thread 🎪 Monday 13 October 2025 1 month ago:
Unfortunately, Fieldrunners is one that loses its appeal once you have figured out how to reliably beat it on the hardest difficulty.
I’ve just remembered there was a pocket version of Civilization. That one got played so much!! And very re-playable.
- Comment on Discussion Thread 🎪 Monday 13 October 2025 1 month ago:
