Adventure Ausrama Blog

The right wing Australian government continues its usury of welfare recipients. It treats them like trash, sorting them and throwing out who they deem to be ripping off society. Like treasurer Joe Hockey says, the welfare state has ended, while he continues to take a $1,000 handout each month for a house his wife owns in Canberra. Is there a link between the illegal use of the drug ice and those on Centrelink payments? There obviously isn't! However, the government plans to test all those receiving money. All Australians do not have equal rights. If you have a job you can continue to work being powered along by crystal methamphetamine. Drug taking will never be stopped despite the war by police instigated by government. In ancient times only medicine men and in some cases women had the knowledge of how to "potion-out" mind alternating chemicals. Their distorted "dreaming" was mistaken for contact with the afterlife. Today, everyone can easily

It seems odd to me that Tony Abbott has not exempted Catholics from the new compulsory  vaccination law. The only church outside of the new regime is the Christian Science church. Scott Morrison the Social Services Minister tried to keep this a secret. He was stupid to think he could do this. Nothing is secret in politics! Any exemption is folly. People will be queuing up to join the church but never attend services just to get their children in school. There must be a back down on this decision. Just a letter from the church exempts children of members. Court cases are expected by followers of other churches. A court will allow exemption across the board because the decision is discriminatory. Health professionals say the new rules will not work because all children have a legal right to attend school. Can you imagine the uproar if parents just choose to take their children out of school and plant them in front of the TV? There are only 1,400 Christian Scientist

Bank staff are to be allowed to monitor the bank accounts of the elderly to see if relatives, friends and carers are stealing money. At first glance this may well seems to be a good thing. However, banks staff swear to keep all bank information private. Instant dismissal is the penalty for telling others about a customer's financial status. The thought of bank staff having the authority to pass on private information to government is frightening and will, no doubt, be challenged in court. Of course people with dementia will have someone managing their bank account. Reporting a carer just because a customer is permanently incapacitated is stupid. You don't need special training to see someone has decreased capacity to manage their own affairs. Smart Sparrow's who are developing the app to do this are wasting their time. Society will not accept bank tellers snooping into their affairs. It will not be allowed. Tremendous damage will be done to families on me

The present federal government has a policy of the market will solve all problems : we will get rid of regulatory bodies and legislation. This would be good if it was right and it isn't. Private industry will not build roads, for example. Getting rid of regulation on investment advisers was a mistake. Thankfully it was resurrected and defeated in the Senate. If it had stayed, advisers would have pulled the wool over the eyes of the poor in society - those who do not know how the system operates. The government is trying to abolish the body that reviews charity organizations. Senate opposition will put an end to this. Why is the government wasting its time and taxpayers money throwing legislation at the Senate that clearly will not get through? There is no debt problem in Australia contrary to the wild obsession put forward by the Coalition. Australia has only 17 per cent debt. this compares to over 90 per cent for most other Western countries. The econ

The invention of the polymer banknote was a disaster for Australia. Costs involved in continually replacing them are enormous. Let's face it paper and cloth are quite substantial materials. They can stand up to a lot of wear and tear. The main problem with polymer is that once folded it cannot be straightened out - a permanent crease prevents stacking of notes by banks and neat storage in consumers' wallets. All ATMs give brand new notes. It is impossible to do otherwise because they need to be tightly stacked. You would be wasting your time just trying to put used fifty dollar bills into an ATM.  Replenishing ATMs is a major cost in the modern age.  Government should be looking to save costs here. Considering the saving from fewer forgeries is a pitiful A$50 million, the extra cost is not worth it. Anyway, if people get a forgery they always pass it on, as giving it to a bank results in nothing in return.  Government should take the loss for forgeries.  Then

The Abbott government has a clear policy driving its actions : it strongly believes in the free market mechanism and is "trying" to balance the books like a successful business. However, a government is not a business. It operates to benefit its people. You need a heart to understand what your citizens want. Unfortunately, Abbot does not have a heart. He is selfish in forcing his beliefs on the Australian people, because that is what they are - beliefs. The market will not provide a fair health care system. In the US market health care runs riot over the welfare of the people. This is what Abbott wants to foister on Australians. Tony Abbot is not interested in democracy. Belly aching about not being able to get his $7 GP co-payment through the senate was laughed at by delegates at the G20 conference. How obsessed can one be? He is definitely too selfish for words. He wants to force his views on the country like John Howard did. Note, Howard not only los

Microsoft is unhappy about a country that does not like government data stored overseas. It is jumping up and down about this policy in Australia. The question that must be asked is - Why is the big data giant so miffed about it? The loss in income for Microsoft cannot be that great. There must be another reason. Like Google, is Microsoft collecting data to use for its own ends? It is so upset it refuses to launch the Office 365 service in Australia. Microsoft is aggressively lobbying the Coalition government to change the rules and open up the market. It must be after something more than profit. Everything put into the cloud can be accessed by the cloud's owner. These services already hold data from many countries. If say a major government could get its hands on such data think of the power they would have. It seems only reasonable that countries should consider national security to be more important than reducing costs. Internet by Ty Buchanan http://www

The toads cannot be stopped - cane toads that is. Some do-gooders are pressing the United Nations to act to stop the vermin from moving in to the Northern Territory and Western Australia. This won't do any good, Territories, states and the Federal Government have given up already. Even annual kills have not reduced the population one iota. Because the pests are moving into the Purnululu National Park, the Wilderness Society is pressing the World Heritage Center in Paris to take action. The Australian Authorities would welcome any extra funding they can get, but it is common knowledge that nothing can be done. World Heritage rules hold states, territories and national governments responsible to control pests in protected parks. In this instance it would be foolish for legal action to ensue. Trapping and fencing will not work. Australian laboratories are working on a biological control mechanism. Other countries with similar problems are working on a similar solution. Until an a

Tony Abbott is planning to include Aboriginals in the Constitution as the original "owners" of the land of Australia. This is like like Kevin Rudd's speech apologizing for the lost generation of Aboriginals forcibly taken from their parents and put into institutions or brought up by White people. Talk is cheap. What Australia needs is a planned development program to make life better for Aboriginals. The right for men to receive unemployment payments was taken away by a still paternal federal government in the Northern Territory. It was taken on the premise of bad treatment of Aboriginal children. This was a blatant lie. No Aboriginal has ever been charged for ill treatment of children. Money is needed to spend on Aboriginal communities. Tony Abbott has no money to spare, particularly with his right-wing policy of reducing taxes for wealth whites. How is Australia going to decrease the deficit with such a policy? The only thing that government can do is r