Adventure Ausrama Blog

Gone are the days of local business monopolies where shops, for example, had a higher profit margin so they could keep employees in secure employment for decades. In the past shopping centers didn't exist and a firm had a local licence. Only one type of business could operate in a regional center. If a shop had the fish licence and decided to sell only fish, no fish and chips , you as a customers had to go without a quick hot meal. The proportion of casual workers is increasing every year. Just how these employees manage to build up capital for retirement is anyone's guess. Holiday pay is said to be built into casual rates, but this is a myth. Such workers hardly ever take a day off because they will not get any pay. People worry more over job security than anything else. Despite all the troubles in the world, Macquarie University found employees experience more anxiety over losing their jobs than any other issue. This affects men more than women. Seventy per cent of

Despite calls by some countries for Internet companies to had over information on citizens' searches and email, the knowledge superhighway is moving in the other direction. Information stored in the cloud are out of reach of national police forces. Gone are the days when just about everything that a suspect has done is available recorded somewhere at sometime. Data is there but it cannot be accessed. The ordinary person will not have much sympathy for police trying to "background" a suspect. They see authorities as being too intrusive anyway. For years Australian social security sent out "demand" forms for aged pensioners to provide up-to-date information about what they had in the bank. A court found that social security did not have the legal right to demand honest answers. The forms are still being sent out. Legally they are still suspect. Such is the quagmire authorities are in. Anyway, back to the case in hand. Police are saying even getting data

Hypocrisy reigns. The Australian Government is bringing in extremely tough smoking laws, yet investment in tobacco companies is seen to be alright. In 2006 the then Coalition Government set up a future fund. Its goals were to fund future costs of pensions for public servants, judges and so on. A look at the books as shown that the fund's managers deem holding shares in 14 tobacco companies to be a good thing. They obviously don't think the Government's actions to ban tobacco firms from putting their name on cigarette packets will lead to a fall in profit nor affect secure future operations. Tobacco investment is only 0.5 per cent of total investment. However, it is unethical and it goes against Government policy. While making the highest return is written into fund guidelines, the body is supposed to be monitored by the Treasurer. There seems to be a difference of opinion between the Prime Minister and Treasurer. The Prime Minister fully supports the name and logo ban initi

Could what has happened in Egypt occur in Australia? That is Turning off the internet. It is as easy as clicking a switch. A government would just contact the main telecommunications company explain the state of emergency and the telco would turn it off. Minor internet providers would follow. A major problem for a government would be cutting off internet access of journalists. Much of their system is outside of public providers. Turn off that system and you stop government agencies talking to each other. Cutting off access for major cities would be a waste of time. Television, radio and the print media could not be stopped. In a place like Australia where information transmission is decentralised there is no one person to instruct. Let's face it - any Australian government that did pull the plug would self-destruct. There is no way the people would ever trust it again. There is also the problem of "leakage" as a few minor Internet providers refuse to submit - some are for