History will judge this government harshly for not taking a stance earlier.

Corporate banks can go suck an egg. There are multiple good member owned banks whose directors are accountable to you and not shareholders.

Shoutout to Tasmania though…

For crying out loud, never ever ever do this, god, if there is a crest then you can’t even see once you pull out. Don’t do it.

I have also driven extensively through mainly country WA and elsewhere and briefly worked as a truck driver in the NT, in my experience there is no consistency in understanding of these signals, as pointed out by the article, and I’m sceptical that it is consistently applied by truckies.

I do believe that there is an understanding among experienced truckies and some(a majority???) of other road users that there is a system but it is not universally understood by cara-fucking-van drivers, or apparently school bus drivers either.

As a car driver I have on at least 2 occasions had a truckie indicate it is safe for me to overtake(indicating L-L) in a situation that would have caused an accident. The only time it is safe to overtake is when you as the driver can be satisfied it is safe to do so. Relying on potentially ambiguous signals that are not universally understood is a literal accident waiting to happen.

I have been slightly obsessed with this since being quite outraged at a clear signal to pass being so dangerous and I’ve raised it with several truckies over the years, I think a small majority of truckies assume it’s universally understood but a large minority never indicate to pass as it is dangerous/raises liability concerns. A clearly non random sample and I may have been asking leading questions…

You make a good point that for the truckies safety there is a need to indicate that it is unsafe but if people are misunderstanding this then I don’t know what the solution is.

– several edits for clarity –

I think the debate on this issue is blown out of proportion.

First, giving a small amount of money to someone in need is a very direct and human act of compassion which makes it worthwhile, if you gift someone money it is their prerogative what they do with it and the idea that it is harmful is blown out of proportion.

Second, giving money to a local charity is also worthwhile, if you don’t feel comfortable for whatever reason.

The idea that one approach is good and the other is actively bad is at best a distraction and at worst an excuse to do nothing at all

The fact is that even in Australia, which by world standards has a not bad safety net, it is not possible for most people to get crisis housing and waiting lists for public housing are rarely less than 6 months, welfare payments can be cut off for trivial reasons and public mental health services are overwhelmed. These are the problems that successive governments have refused to tackle.

If you can make someone’s day with a small gift then please do.

I’m sad to say I have no advice for you but I feel for you, it must be a very hard time. Don’t be afraid to lean on those close to you for support.

They’re only willing to call out a generation defining genocide with subtle things like this rather than average making a statement that might make a difference.

I swear I’m tearing my hair out at this government, there are several people at a high level, including Albo himself, who seem to have good instincts and want to do good but are so terrified of being called socialist or radical that they end up doing nothing or pushing a conservative platform.

Again. I am answering in good faith assuming you will do the same.

I am perfectly willing to concede that I may have understated the size of the initial attacks and for the sake of argument I will concede your claim that there are 10s of thousands of Hamas terrorists in Gaza.

The issue at stake here is that at least 180,000 civilians have been killed to say nothing of the injuries and other traumas. The IDF has deliberately targeted civilian populations who had nothing to do with the attacks.

Again, I may not be opposed to a proportionate response but to killing hundreds of thousands in response to what you claim was a crime of 6000 people is not proportionate, it is brutal and unnecessary and likely to be counterproductive to any hopes of reducing violence from either side in the future.

Do you have a position on this specially? Do you deny the death toll, or do you assume that all 180,000 killed were terrorists?

I am genuinely interested in your response.

Certainly there is a justification for a strong response against Hamas. What you need to grapple with is that the response has been against the entire Palestinian population and has caused an enormous death toll of civilian non-combatants.

If I may take your example of the Taliban, a clearly reprehensible organisation. It would not be appropriate for opponents of the Taliban to indiscriminately attack the civilian population of Afghanistan in much the same way that it is not appropriate for the IDF to target the civilian population of Palestine using the crimes of Hamas as justification. Indeed during the Afghanistan war the US and allies took precautions to target fighters and minimise civilian deaths and were rightly criticised when they failed.

Over 10 years of the War in Afghanistan the civilian death toll in Afghanistan was most years less than 4000, in Palestine the civilian death toll is 40 times that in 1 year.

There is no double standard here, no one is saying Israel shouldn’t have responded in a proportionate way to the initial Hamas attacks but what Israel is doing is targeting the civilian population in response to the (admittedly reprehensible) actions of, yes, a few dozen people.

I am genuinely interested in hearing your response here, please don’t take this as a personal attack but I hope you understand my perspective here.

Original MJA article here

[Young voices, healthy futures: the rationale for lowering the voting age to 16

](https://www.mja.com.au/journal/2024/221/10/young-voices-healthy-futures-rationale-lowering-voting-age-16)

I am answering here assuming you are commenting on good faith. Please give me the same courtesy.

The fact is that the Israeli government chose to respond to actions of a few dozen people by occupying a nation and routinely killing masses of civilians including the bombing of hospitals and schools.

The initial attacks were abhorrent and arguably justified a strong response against the perpetrators, it is difficult for many of us to understand how you can justify punishing an entire nation for the actions of a few dozen people, it is this that draws claims of genocide

The civilian death toll in Gaza is now estimated at more than 180,000. Any argument that this is a proportionate and appropriate response must be either ignorant or in bad faith.

I am happy to respond if you disagree or want to challenge my response here.

I just searched the app store for it.

Hmmmm. Not sure, opened it from Google News.

Found it

Emperors of Rome: Episode CVIII - A Lesson in Latin II Starting from: 00:08:02

Episode webpage: http://www.latrobe.edu.au/marketing/assets/podcasts/emperors/181128-latin02.mp3

Media file: http://www.latrobe.edu.au/marketing/assets/podcasts/emperors/181128-latin02.mp3#t=482

deleted by creator

Emperor’s of Rome podcast addressed this in a Q&A episode.

From memory the answer is that top level generals would almost always speak Greek and Latin, mid level commanders would speak either Greek or Latin adequately as well as the local language of the troops they were commanding.

Respectfully, I am very confident you are misreading this situation. The thought patterns displayed in the original post are almost textbook typical of major depression and would be extremely atypical of someone who is a genuine emotional manipulator.

Other posts here have given genuine good advice, unfortunately I have to agree that while I am sure you are well meaning, you are being quite unhelpful here.

Apricots, upside down pears, Easter eggs, those teeny tiny sealed shot glasses of UHT milk you get in hotels, those big marbles we used to call Tom bowlers in primary school, eye balls, a large toy ant(assuming 6 holes in the holder rather than 12, otherwise 2 large toy ants)

The possibilities are endless!!!

This is true, an egg won’t last long unrefrigerated after its opened ;)