ABC Weather Rearranges Geography                                                                                                             

ABC News' 7:00pm weather report consistently shows St Lawrence as existing somewhere between Gladstone and Rockhampton on the Capricorn coast instead of its actual location North of Rockhampton. I have written to the ABC pointing this out, but for reasons only known to their weather forecasters, they've taken no action following my communication.

 

AFL Morality in Question                                                                                                                                 

Lachie Neale recently had his suspension for striking overturned by the AFL Tribunal, calling into question their stance on unnecessary violence in football. Video footage of the event clearly showed Lachie coming from behind to strike the unsuspecting player in what any reasonable person might deem to be a cowardly punch. 

In overturning his suspension, the Tribunal accepted his defense that in previously playing over 300 games he had never been charged with striking, and his good record should therefore be taken into consideration.

This defies logic. If his argument were to be extended to common law, a murderer could argue against his conviction, claiming that over the many years of his previous life he had never before murdered anybody and his good record should therefore be taken into consideration. 

 

Raiding Superannuation                                                                                                                                          

Compulsory superannuation was introduced into the financial mix to provide Australians with a secure retirement lifestyle. If commenced early in one's career and managed well, it has the capacity to replace, or at least supplement, the old-age pension. This not only benefits the recipient, but in reducing reliance on the pension, allows treasury funds to be diverted to other worthwhile taxpayer-funded areas such as education and health.

As I write, certain political parties are pressuring the government to allow money to be withdrawn from the accounts of people currently experiencing financial hardship, their main argument being that this money belongs to the people concerned and they should have the right to determine how their money is managed.

The premise they base their argument on, that this money 'belongs' to the people concerned is incorrect. They do not own the superannuation monies. 

These funds are held in trust for the person they will become when they retire from the workforce and should continue to be held in trust for that purpose.

 The Tobacco Wars                                                                                                                                                

 

As I write this piece, crime syndicates are currently flooding the Australian marketplace with illegal cigarettes. Avoiding excise duty, they deprive the government of revenue and, pitched at a price well below legal smokes, they threaten to reverse the downward trend in smoking rates. Adding to the concern, firebombings of retail outlets are threatening lives and property as criminal gangs fight for dominance. 

Some argue government excise should be drastically cut to make legal smokes competitive, but this would only play into the hands of the criminals who would most likely lower their prices and still make a profit.

I suggest the following to clean up the mess.

Scrap the excise and replace it with a GST type of tax at the retail point of sale. This tax would be set at a level that maintains government revenue and would be imposed on all cigarettes sold, whether legal or illegal, thereby giving illegals zero price advantage. 

As a consequence, crime syndicates would be deprived of a viable enterprise, firebombing would cease and high prices would continue to discourage smokers.

This strategy of course would be extended to all forms of nicotine such as vapes and other tobacco products.

This suggestion was submitted to the federal departments of Prime Minister, Treasury and Health on September 9, 2026.

 The Middle East Conflict                                                                                                                           

As I write this, Israeli armed forces are fighting Hamas forces in the Gaza Strip, Israeli hostages are being held in Gaza, Hamas rockets are falling on Israel and there is death, destruction and misery on both sides of the border.

At the same time there have been repeated marches and protest meetings around Australia with supporters of Hamas blaming Israel for this devastating war, whilst Israel's sympathisers blame Hamas.

What is there to gain in these mass demonstrations? Support for Hamas simply encourages them to keep fighting whilst support for Israel does likewise for the Israelis.

If Hamas and Israeli leaders around Australia got together to organise mass protests that didn't blame one side or the other, but in fact condemned the fighting and urged both sides in the war to sue for peace, they would be putting pressure on the combatants on both sides to seek a peaceful resolution to the conflict.

If the organisers of these rallies in Australia's relative calm can't get together to push for peace, how on Earth can they expect Hamas and Israel, locked in the throes of battle, to do this?

 EVs and Road Taxes                                                                                                                             

The Federal Government currently funds road construction and maintenance by imposing an excise tax on vehicle fuels. Whilst this regime is problematic in some regards, up till now it has worked reasonably well on the basis that the amount of fuel used roughly proportional to the number of road miles travelled.

However, with the future pointing to petroleum powered vehicles being supplanted by Electric Drive Vehicles (EVs), this method of raising road funding comes into question - with EV owners paying no excise - and the government is scrambling to develop new methods of taxing EVs to compensate.

This is going to prove an extremely difficult exercise because:

• The tax couldn't be applied to the vehicles themselves because some EVs might be travelling extensively on the roads every day, whilst others are only used for short trips or are garaged for lengthy periods - ie the tax would not be proportional to road usage.
• The tax couldn't be applied to the amount of electricity used because it would be impossible to determine whether electricity consumed had been for domestic or commercial use, or for charging vehicles. To address this the government might legislate special vehicle charging plugs that monitored power usage, but that would create a whole new industry in illegal charging facilities and home-grown special charging stations which in turn would require government inspectors to root out those cheating the system.

The obvious answer would be to introduce a Roads Maintenance levy in the Federal Taxation system (similar to the Medicare levy). Whilst some might argue they use public transport and don't drive a car, they  nevertheless consume products that transport companies have to deliver by road and are therefore beneficiaries of the transport network. 

People also all have to pay via taxation for some things they might never use, but are required by the rest of society - the electricity grid despite some people having solar and being off-grid, Universities for people who will never require tertiary education, NDIS for people who don't need daily assistance - there are many things we pay for that we as individuals don't need but are essential for the successful functioning of a democratic society.

 Who discovered Australia?                                                                                                                        

Aborigines have been living in Australia for thousands of years, so how could anyone claim it was discovered by Captain Cook when there was a whole race of people who already knew it was there?

What are we to make of these claims?

The problem lies in the fact that people are viewing the situation from the perspective of prior knowledge. They are in effect saying "we saw it first, therefore we discovered it". An example of this would be as follows:

'I'm late for work. After I rush out of the house, my wife notices that I left my lunch behind. Later that day I discover I've left my lunch at home.' - Surely no-one would object to my using the word discover in this sentence - even though my wife made the discovery first.

Statements of this nature shouldn't be viewed from the prior knowledge viewpoint, but should be considered against the background of context.

The aboriginal community are quite right to claim that Cook didn't discover Australia because that is in line with their thinking. But by the same token, when viewed from the standpoint of British (or colonial) history, it is also quite right for historians to claim that Cook did discover Australia, because no-one in Britain at the time knew of its existence, and his claim to finding it would have been, by any definition of the word, a discovery as far as the British were concerned.

The argument really boils down to a semantic dilemma which is readily solved by considering the context in which the statement is made.