Tau

There was actually this really cool news story that just came out about what people are actually using them for

There's been this really cool news story recently about what people are using foraged mushrooms for, better ban doing that pronto because it's clearly dangerous and there's no chance anyone else is doing it safely...

As far as I’m aware there isn’t a thriving jungle expedition scene in Victoria

You don't know what people actually use machetes for, but they look scary so lets make a snide comment suggesting there's no reason to have them. That's exactly the sort of knee jerk reaction which makes for dumb laws like this.

Agreed. Not indexing it seems a pretty deliberate move towards the same strategy as our tax brackets - capture more money each year due to inflation and occasionally make your government look good by raising the cutoff (by less than inflation).

That will either stymie a lot of people who do legitimately need one or be useless. For example I have a machete and several legitimate uses for it - clearing a bunch of running bamboo on my (residential) block, clearing blackberry etc from single track for the dirt bike, and clearing lantana etc on my grandad's property. If they require something like proof of owning rural land I would be blocked from legitimate use (if I lived in Vic), if they take me at my word what's to stop any man and his dog claiming similar and then we're back where we started but with more bureaucracy.

Nothing like a good moral panic to make people throw reason out the window. Carrying a machete without a reasonable cause is already illegal and clearly didn't stop these people, banning them altogether will just make things hard for those who would use them legally.

It's the same level of thinking as some pelican near me who was calling for a 40km/h zone due to a recent accident. The existing laws against taking illegal drugs, stealing cars, staying on the road, and not speeding over the current limit didn't stop the guy who caused it, but he sure would have listened to a 40km/h sign...

I expect they'll be back together in some form come next election, I can't see the Libs - let alone the Nationals - forming government in their own right.

I am curious as to what will happen in Queensland state level now the federal parties have split - will they split the LNP party there?

How do you actually come PM if you don’t have a party that can get a majority vote?

You convince a majority of the members of the House of Reps to agree to support you in passing bills required for operating the government (basically bills allowing them to spend money, also known as supply) and to support you if a motion of no confidence is put forward.

It'll be a bit fiddly cutting and joining but it sounds like a workable idea. To simplify things a little you could leave the original stormwater outlet configuration in place and just add a vertical pipe coming up from the lower link to a 90 degree bend and valve at the desired height for the bin outlet - the water for this will be feeding up from the bottom anyway so it doesn't have to be connected at the top.

If the top of the wheelie bin still opens and there's room to put it at that end of the tank you could even set up the lowered outlet to stick out like a tap so you can just put the bin under to fill up rather than hook up the hose.-

It seems odd that they're talking about phonics being a recent thing. At the risk of dating myself I remember a phonics based system being used when I was in primary school in the late 90s, though I couldn't tell you much more since that's a while ago now and I generally spent my time in those lessons reading rather than paying attention anyway. Did it drop out of use in the meantime or something?

Ms Saffioti said for most of the year the area would be closed to motor vehicles

That's annoying, Australia needs more tracks people can actually use. Instead we get this sort of thing and it's still not good enough for the anti vehicle crowd (who are more than happy to tell you to take it to a track but then turn around and do their best to block even use of existing tracks).

Parks does often give the impression that they'd rather the plebs didn't actually go into their parks, but I think them booking ghost camps might be a step too far given they could just reduce the nominal capacity further to get the same effect.

I would bet the vast majority of the problem is your second option of people booking out campgrounds to avoid others (with a side helping of those who aren't sure which day they want to go out so they book all options). Looking at who has a record of cancelling bookings would probably allow one to cut out a lot of this as I suspect you'd find a bunch of repeat offenders.

Closer to cities where demand is higher, the campsites are more desirable and therefore the ghost booking issue is worse. A higher fee discourages that. On the downside, you pay more for convenience of not having to drive far.

The tier system described appears to be more based on available facilities though rather than visitor numbers, while it does mention demand in passing this isn't quantified and the tier table shown works off facilities/servicing.

I would agree there does tend to be correlation between high demand campgrounds and highly serviced ones so you do have a point with high prices for higher tiers being necessary to some extent. I do think though that applying a state wide pricing system will end up with noticeably higher prices in a lot of places not near the major centres (or the major attractions).