A World Turned Upside Down: Australian News

Wanderfound · July 30, 2021, 10:21am

Isn’t it nice to know that the guy who bought himself parliamentary representation is also too dim to figure out how to tweet for himself. And too cheap to hire competent minions.

Wanderfound · July 30, 2021, 11:58am

Give. The. Money. Directly. To. The. Fucking. Workers.

Which is what everyone who wasn’t a corrupt piece of shit advised the government to do from the beginning.

Because this outcome was so obvious and predictable that the only reasonable conclusion is that it was intentional.

Wanderfound · July 30, 2021, 10:10pm

The working-class heavily-nonwhite Western suburbs get cops and soldiers and surveillance.

Meanwhile, the mostly-white yuppies of Bondi got a boozed-up street party to amuse themselves between visits to the beach.

Wanderfound · July 31, 2021, 1:07am

I lived in several different houses within a few blocks of here. Erskineville/St Peters; the less-gentrified, more industrial side of Newtown.

Sydney Park (just off to the right of camera) was where we’d have the monthly punk’s picnic. Also a good spot for midnight psychedelic rampaging; lotsa cool scenery and no people in earshot.

Wanderfound · July 31, 2021, 5:23am

Wanderfound · July 31, 2021, 6:20am

Remember this?

Wanderfound · July 31, 2021, 6:23am

Wanderfound · July 31, 2021, 7:39am

It’s been a year and a half since Covid was loose in Tas, and we intend to keep it that way:

Meanwhile, over in Chicago, their daily infection rate is about the same as what’s happening in Sydney.

So, of course, they’re hosting Lollapalooza.

Lucy_Gothro1 · July 31, 2021, 3:05pm

Wanderfound · July 31, 2021, 11:00pm

The USA ain’t the only white supremacist settler colony.

Lucy_Gothro1 · August 1, 2021, 12:18am

There’s Canada too, so don’t get…er…smug?

Wanderfound · August 1, 2021, 3:14am

Let’s have some Pine Gap history again…

Wanderfound · August 1, 2021, 3:50am

Wanderfound · August 1, 2021, 7:56am

Wanderfound · August 1, 2021, 8:34am

Ed Peter, the American chairman of Duxton Water, the only publicly listed water trader in Australia, claims that the Murray Darling Basin (MDB) is set for “supply and demand imbalances which are so perfect, you couldn’t make up a better story,” in an investor meeting with market researcher MTS Access.

Duxton Water has looked to the California almond industry for inspiration. In the US, almond farmers are able to make a profit despite water which costs as high as AUD$30,000 per million litres (ML). Currently in Australia, the most expensive water which can be bought are high security water entitlements which range up to A$8,000.

The Australian almond industry has grown by 1500% since 2000, with 30% of the almond trees planted in the south Murray Darling Basin being planted in the last 5 years. These most recent plantings are not yet mature.

When they do mature, current almond orchards in the Murray Darling Basin will need approximately 700 gigalitres (GL), or 700 billion litres, of water annually when they reach maturity. This is equivalent to 32% of all high security water entitlements available to irrigators in Australia.

According to Helen Dalton, the Member for Murray, there are little to no regulations or planning surrounding planting of almonds. “You don’t even need a DA to set up a nut farm” says Dalton. Where Victoria has put in a moratorium on permanent plantings, NSW is still “rolling out the red carpet to these international investors”.

Due to the impact which nut farms have on the environment and the price of water, being able to plant as much as you like is akin to “building a skyscraper in the middle of a Melbourne suburb, without any checks and balances”.

According to Peter, this is “what’s fun”, as all permanent agriculture crops such as nuts, vice grapes and dried fruits, require 700GL of water annually. When they reach full maturity, they will need approximately 1,250GLS.

During the last drought there was only 1100GLs of available freshwater in the whole of the lower Murray Darling.

This suggests that under extremely dry conditions, such as those of the millennium drought, the lower Murray Darling Basin may only have enough water to meet 40% of the existing permanent horticulture water demands, according to Duxton’s analysis.

This is the “unbelievably beautiful story” which Peter is holding out for, “We’re going to have the next drought, not if but when, and there’s going to be one heck of a fight for the marginal supply of water” in Australia, he told investors.

.

BTW, guess where most of the foreign ownership of the Australian economy comes from?

Those numbers are rarely mentioned in the constant media scare pieces about Chinese investment.

Wanderfound · August 1, 2021, 9:30am

Speaking of which:

Wanderfound · August 1, 2021, 10:47am

I’m not in close contact with any medical folk these days, so I couldn’t say for sure about the experience of nurses.

We do have our share of Covid-denialist fuckwits, and they are being encouraged by the most extreme factions in Oz politics. Hanson, Canavan, Kelly, Bernardi.

However, I don’t think that sort of thing has quite the degree of mainstream support that it does in the US; it’s the most extreme fringes of the Lib/Nat Coalition, not the core of the party [1].

.

[1] They’re all still evil, but mostly in ye olde semi-rational capitalist bastardry manner rather than completely-demented fascist style.

Lucy_Gothro1 · August 1, 2021, 2:00pm

I really do think these folks get more coverage than than the “sane” folks. Thanks for the info!

Wanderfound · August 3, 2021, 1:56am

Wanderfound · August 3, 2021, 2:51am

Shall we criticise the Morrison government for opposing the patent waivers that have done much to exacerbate the crisis in places like Kazakhstan? Will we show solidarity with the large proportion of our supporters who have family ties to countries affected by such issues? Should we raise a discussion of the actual reasons for why Morrison’s management of Covid has been poor?

Nah, let’s just make a cheap and cliched racist joke instead.

Every fucking time.