They pretty much got ejected from Tasmania entirely... Which is baffling considering the fish farming debacle that's going on there that Jaqui Lambi went full noise on.

Having a Temu Trump that looks like Lord Voldermort... Was a shot in the foot for the party, stupid issues like Nuclear Energy when the country has always been Anti-Nuclear, Welcome to Country, working from home policies while opposing tax cuts, investment to health and education... Was icing on the cake.

The only thing wrong that Labor did incorrectly in the last 3 years, was a failure to provide a $275 reduction in energy bills... the dramatization was otherwise nonexistent... And that's in stark contrast to the constant drama and turmoil the USA has had to endure in just 100 days.
...And that also meant that Murdoch media (Fox, Sky News etc') had no real dirt on Labor, they could only do their childish smear campaign.

What will be interesting is if Labor can secure a 3rd term, that would be a truly historic moment.

Either way, thank you Trump for keeping Australia on track.... You helped keep a police officer who has managed to accrue millions and millions of dollars worth of assets somehow, out of power.

There is always room for improvement.

But I have always been happy with things Australia got right like Universal Healthcare, Voting and Gun Control.

Some people never mature.
I would trust some 18 year olds over some 50 years olds.

I don't think we as nations are that far a part, we are both Commonwealth nations with strong European ties, history and ideals.

But where we tend to be a little different is that culturally Canada is more Americanized, where Australia is more British... Canada trades far more heavily (Or used to) with the USA, where Australia doesn't need the USA as we trade with China and Asia.

New Zealand to Australia is probably what Canada is to the USA I guess.

Maybe our Youth here needs to grow up pretty quick as everything tries to kill us the day we are born, it's truly chaos, death and carnage.

People who advocate rolling back voting rights are never doing so from a position of good faith. They are almost always doing it because they disagree with how the targeted demographics are more likely to vote.

I first voted when I was 18, in the 1996 presidential election, where I cast my first vote for Bill Clinton. I did so out of pure disgust for the so-called "Republican Revolution" of 1994 as well as a greater degree of disgust for the Republicans in the state I lived in at the time. 

There are an awful lot of immature, foolish people who have gray/thinning hair and faces full of wrinkles out there. Many of the ones I knew actually seemed mature and wise in their younger years, only to degenerate into myopic populism. 

Hopefully there isn't some dumb Liberal schmuck who's willing to torpedo his political career on Dutton's behalf, as Damien Kunek is doing for Poilievre in Alberta.

Nuclear was the red line for me; I already decided not to vote Liberal due to Dutton being a piece of work and their lack of compelling policies, but their pro-nuclear stance would have cost them my vote even if I'd liked their leader and the rest of their policies.

No way in hell do I want our country to end up the next Fukushima or Chernobyl, fuck right off with that shit.

I am a hazmat technician and I get flown across the nation for incidents.

During COVID we had a van stopped at the border of South Australia/Victoria... Which was then searched.
Low-and-behold they found undocumented uranium.
Let's just say from a firefighters perspective, that shit is the last thing on Earth I want to be dealing with in my regular day job.

I have enough hazards that I need to keep on top of rather than add Nuclear/Radiation as a PRIMARY risk... I already have secondary risks to Radiation with mine sites like Olympic Dam.
Thorium reactors are a potential viable choice as they cannot maintain a chain reaction and are less prone to a traditional nuclear meltdown... But that's not what the Liberals were proposing.

In saying that, modern reactors are far far far safer than what we saw with Fukushima or Chernobyl, but Nuclear is extremely water intensive which is not a good fit for the driest inhabited continent on the planet. It's a stupid idea.
Especially when we have oodles of solar and wind capacity, more than any other Nation which we can backup with Hydro, Batteries, Solar Thermal and Geothermal for base load.

China is making a desert Thorium reactor that doesn't require water.
https://www.mining.com/china-makes-thorium-based-nuclear-energy-breakthrough-using-past-us-work/

But no idea whether Australia has Thorium reserves and how safe that is.

You do have all the room in the world for Solar and Wind, it's just a question of maintenance and energy transport.


Nuclear fusion has been promised since I grew up, although then there was still the hope (and hoax) of cold fusion.

In 1989, scientists Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann claimed to have achieved nuclear fusion at room temperature using electrolysis of heavy water with palladium electrodes, a process dubbed "cold fusion".

Not reproduceable and doesn't seem likely. Nuclear fusion did reach a net gain result in 2023 but it's still going to be 2050-2060 before any real reactor can be ready.

Anyway roof tile solar should become standard in building, that would help a lot, but adds a lot of cost. Some scheme where the home owner doesn't pay for installation while the electric company credits you for half the energy made until paid off could work. Solar roadways are also having some promising results.

It just makes more sense to generate electricity right where its needed.

Something like 1 in 3 homes in Australia has roof top solar.
We have had schemes like Government rebates to subsidize rooftop solar roll-outs... And recently a "Virtual Power Plant" scheme where you get subsidized electricity rates if a power company is allowed to install solar on your roof that feeds directly into the grid, rather than your home.

We have (Like most other minerals like Iron, Copper, Uranium, Rare Earths etc') one of the worlds largest reserves of Thorium.

Nice! I see Australia is aiming for 82% clean energy by 2030. Currently at 40%, quite a goal!

We're at 70% renewable energy, most from Hydro, nearly 60%. We could do more with solar panels. Roof panels aren't common here but some farm fields have been converted into solar plants and you see these around more.



It does feel like we've stagnated the last couple years. But we still have a goal to reach a net-zero electricity grid by 2035.


It will be great to join the list of countries that are already there

Albania (98% hydro power), Bhutan (100% hydro power), Nepal (98.6% hydro power), Paraguay (100% hydro power), Iceland (75.5% Hydro Power rest Geothermal), Ethiopia (96% hydro power), Democratic Republic of Congo (100% hydro power)

If the poorest countries can do it... (Hydro power is the big one of course)

For comparison the US sits at 24.2% renewable energy.

As long as it works for you guys down under, then all the power to ya.

Our water spins the opposite direction, so we'd be bound to have to adjust something to make it work...

Sure, there are always exceptions, but would you trust a minority to Govern the Country? There are more older, mature, wiser people than there are young. Could always have another test for say, 18-21, where the minority who can pass it can vote earlier than the min age, of 21 lets say.

We're still similar, but Canada is more Americanized than most realize. It's part of the reason why some Canadians went so crazy as to the whole 51st thing. There's enough truth to it that it really rubbed them the wrong way because we're integrated enough that we're partially joined at the hip, so what America does, we're almost always tied to, to some degree.

Our youth, much like American youth, have been taught for generations now, not how to deal with issues and problems, but how to tattle and run away from everything. Heck, when running away became a problem because they were running into hard edged corners, our society decided we should start rounding and/or padding all those corners.

What's hilarious now is watching the idiots on Sky News and the rest of the Murdoch media now claim that the Liberals lost because they were "not conservative enough" and that they need to move further to the right to win in 2028.

Personally, I kinda hope they do, as it would mean they'll remain unelectable and continue to wander the political wilderness for the foreseeable future.