> those who crack the codes could discover "some wonderful, uplifting messages".
Let’s hope that one of them was, “Australia should be a republic”
Let’s hope that one of them was, “Australia should be a republic”
Not that far from where I live at the intersection of two busy roads there used to be a tall concrete Besser block wall with spray-painted graffiti scrawled on it in large black lettering which read:
"The Australian people are bloody-minded sheep."
The truly remarkable thing about the graffiti was that in over 20 years no one covered it up or spray-painted over it. (And it would have been easy as there was a bus stop right nearby with easy pedestrian access.)
The wall has gone now as it has made way for apartments (I had always meant to photograph it but had never gotten around to doing so). :(
Two observations: that no one had bothered to tamper with the message or paint over it (and, say, the Council could easily have, it being on a public thoroughfare and that removing graffiti was a policy) says something rather profound in that amongst the population there's a general acceptance of the fact.
Second, the Australian electorate is remarkably politically conservative. With the exception of a few minor instances, it has never done anything radical and that's essentially been the case right back to federation in 1901 (that was when Australia became an independent state after Britain gave it its Independence).
Thus, as a nation, Australia has always kowtowed to Britain and after WWII it has done so with the US.
When a law is enacted in Australia one can bet top dollar that it's already been enacted in Britain or more latterly the US (but to a lesser extent). Originality doesn't exist in Australia's political DNA.
That's why Australia is part of the Five Eyes agreement, without Britain and the US it'd behave like a lost child at a country fair.
Trouble is everyone knows it, especially so the Chinese who've essentially enslaved the country economically.
You don't need to actually backdoor the targets device, just the platform they use. Who cares about jurisdiction as long as your friends are willing to hand over data in the interest of international security.
...And it did so without a squawk!
Edit, it sort of proves my point, doesn't it?
It really doesn’t help that we have very few constitutional rights with which to push back with as any sort of “inalienable” baseline.
> The truly remarkable thing about the graffiti was that in over 20 years no one covered it up or spray-painted over it. (And it would have been easy as there was a bus stop right nearby with easy pedestrian access.)
Everybody who saw it probably thought "yeh, it's a fair cop, mate".
It's likely the SEA region will cool off, the action will move up north and all those subs we bought will go from AUKUS to AWKWARD.
Aus just needs to cut costs and forward into quality (koalaity?) manufacturing and science. Or we could just keep ripping up the ground like a bulldozer on a bender and hope China doesn't tank the iron ore price.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strait_of_Malacca#/media/File:...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISHHe1Hu6d4
Skim this video, it shows slowly and clearly the potential change of routes.
The northern sea route is not given the same scrutiny as the strait in that video though. Clearly if western allies were blockading China's sea trade at choke points, the sea route has some fairly obvious problems.
It's the defensible inland routes which will be the most important. To that end, the push to expand NATO into Ukraine almost could not have gone better for China if they had orchestrated it.
Reckon if we got into the Tardis and went there it'd take a research effort to recognize that we were actually in the same country!
I think of it as a chinese mining province. The long period of growth was merely the long period of Chinese growth. And that growth was good for the country, but also terrible: the "dutch disease" of high commodity prices gutted manufacturing and other businesses.
And de-incentivised governments to really think about what the nation needed, as middle class homeowners continued to see their net worth rise, thus "what, me worry?"
To do that it would've had to have said "Remove this grafitti immediately, sheep!"
Let's not even think about maybe tweaking the powers of the role, or even codifying that any exercise of those powers should be transparently reported to the electorate (as per a recent/current scandal).
The fact that the political class controls the process of defining all these rules, and no-one trusts the political class to do what's right for the country (vs. right for them and/or their backers), means we're stuck with the current system, which is at least a more-or-less known quantity.
https://immi.homeaffairs.gov.au/visas/working-in-australia/r...