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Australia’s high court has unanimously backed the government’s 2024 decision to refuse the rightwing provocateur Candace Owens a visa to enter the country.

The full bench of the court ruled on Wednesday that the minister’s denial did not infringe an implied constitutional freedom of political communication.

Last October the home affairs minister, Tony Burke, refused Owens’ visa application before a planned national speaking tour, arguing that she had the “capacity to incite discord”.

Burke said at the time the US conservative influencer and podcast host, who has advanced conspiracy theories and antisemitic rhetoric – including allegedly minimising Nazi medical experiments in concentration camps – did not pass the “character test” to receive a visa under the Migration Act.

I'm feeling a bit despairing filling out my ballot, because there seems to be so few candidates who have even a vague idea of what governance is supposed to be.

You can see the candidates here:

https://www.albany.wa.gov.au/council/council-business/candidate-profiles.aspx

I haven't studied them in detail, but of the 24 I would say less than a third have "reasonable" platforms (even if I disagree with them).

There's about 8 who are mask-off anti-trans anti-woke anti-dei MAGA dickheads, (and I suspect several more who haven't been as forthright about their views).

The remainder are just hapless idiots who very clearly don't understand governance.

Hopefully, the candidates aren't indicative of the opinions generally held by the populace.

I probably have a pretty naive / 2 dimensional understanding of politics but, I just don't understand Nampijinpa Price.

I'm not particularly well informed as to the plight of first nations peoples, but my understanding was that their interests are better aligned with progressive parties with social policies.

From her wiki:

Price's activism and views focus primarily on issues faced by Aboriginal communities, and she is a vocal advocate for conservative Aboriginal politics in Australia. She has highlighted the high rates of domestic and other violence in Aboriginal communities, and advocates for a law and order approach. She is critical of welfare dependency and "opportunistic collectivism". She opposed the proposed Indigenous Voice to Parliament, and thinks that calls to change Australia Day and the Australian flag are counterproductive to Aboriginal advancement.

All of these positions are more or less the opposite of the positions I would expect aboriginal people to take up.

The best I can surmise, is that her views are indeed a rarity amongst First Nations People, and because of that she's a highly desirable member for conservative parties to kind of have their policies "blessed" by a token First Nations Woman.

Is it really that simple? Or am I missing something ?

I'm looking for some kind of File Drop / File Upload service.

I'd like to be able to create a folder, and create a share / upload link for that folder that I can give to a customer to use to upload their documents.

I've been using nextcloud but I don't use nextcloud for any other purpose and it's a behemoth so I'd like to transition to something else.

Some of these requirements are essential (!):

• no login for customers uploading (!)
• optional password protection for uploads
• can't see / download files already present in the shared folder

I can't decide the best way to secure our front loading washing machine.

We have twins. They're fascinated by the washing machine. Lights, beeps, action... everything. One twin getting inside and their erstwhile companion starting the cycle is absolutely possible.

Obviously we keep the laundry door closed but in a way you just build up the appeal. One of them has figured out how to open doors by standing on his trike.

I could put some kind of stick-on toddler lock on the door but I worry it would be tough to establish the habit of closing the door and putting that lock on. Besides which surely it's nice to leave the door open to dry out between loads anyway?

The washing machine does have a toddler lock but that's only to prevent someone changing the settings during a cycle, it doesn't prevent starting a cycle.

My best idea thus far is a timer on the power outlet. So you turn on the power and set the timer to turn it off after however long the load takes.

The problem with this is that I haven't been able to find a count-down style timer that allows you to set periods longer than 2 hours. Most power outlet timer thingies do schedules, not count-down.

I know this maybe sounds like an easily solvable problem - just turn the power off when it's done - but that's just not how things roll in our house.

Most small rural towns in Western Australia have a Co-op store.

I'm a bit sketchy on the details but my understanding is that they're not-for-profit's, they charge a mark up on the things they sell, but really just enough to pay wages for employees. Any left over money is distributed to the people who buy things.

Why do these only exist in small towns and why aren't they a thing in larger towns and cities?

It would be amazing to only pay cost plus wages for your groceries.

Since the recent election there's a lot of commentary saying the Liberal party needs to reconsider its policies and re-align with its core values which, when enumerated sound very centrist.

I just watched ABC's q&a, there was a few interesting points. There was a strong consensus that Trump style culture wars are toxic in Australian politics, and that it's unlikely future candidates would take that route.

I don't want to gloat infront of the seppos, but I think what's happening during this aftermath is very salient for all of those "both sides are bad" Americans.

In October last year there seemed to be a lot of users saying that they didn't want to reward the dems with their vote, and that the only way to communicate with the party was to withhold their vote.

I think what's happening right now in Australia demonstrates the importance of voting.

Labor might not be left enough for you personally, but each time the libs are defeated they need to move to the left to be viable, and Labor will have to move further left to differentiate themselves. That is to say, the spectrum of acceptable opinions is moving to the left in an observable manner, right now.

There's a post about it.

That post explicitly says it's not a place for debate or participation from users of other instances.

I'd like to respect that but I think events like this need debate and discussion because it helps to develop and evolve the culture of lemmy and the fediverse in general.

The post says:

This post is "FYI only" for blahaj lemmy members. It is not a debate, and is not intended for non blahaj lemmy users to weigh in and offer opinions.

I recently received reports of a feddit.uk user espousing transphobia. Specifically, this was a feddit.uk user refusing to use the word cis, repeating the "adult human female" dog whistle, and claiming that trans women are not women. I approached a member of the feddit.uk admin team and raised my concerns and sought clarification of their stance on posts like this, where the transphobia is mostly dogwhistles, and "civil disagreement" on the validity of trans folk.

I was told by the feddit.uk admin that their preferred response is this kind of transphobia is to "sort it out through discussion and voting". However, the comments in question are currently more upvoted than downvoted, and little "sorting out" has occurred. The posts remain in place.

At this point, the admin stopped responding to my messages despite being active elsewhere on lemmy. When it became clear they were ignoring my messages and had no intention of removing the posts in question, I made the decision to defederate the instance.

I know some folk agree with the feddit.uk admins approach of pushback through discussion and voting, but this instance is not designed to be that kind of space. Blahaj lemmy is meant to be a place where we can avoid the rampant transphobia universally visible on nearly every other social media platform, and where we can exist without needing to debate our right to do so.

The wife of a wrongly deported Salvadoran father living in Maryland was moved to a safe house after Donald Trump’s administration posted a court document that included her address on social media.

In an interview with The Washington Post, Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s wife Jennifer Vasquez Sura said she began fearing for her safety and the safety of her three children after the Department of Homeland Security shared a protective order from 2021 that prominently featured her address to the department’s 2.4 million followers on X.

“I don’t feel safe when the government posts my address, the house where my family lives, for everyone to see, especially when this case has gone viral and people have all sorts of opinions,” she told The Washington Post. “So, this is definitely a bit terrifying. I’m scared for my kids.”

Labor announced it would allow first home buyers to purchase homes with a 5 per cent deposit. It also pledged $10 billion to go towards building 100,000 new homes over eight years — exclusively available to first-time buyers — by way of grants to states and territories, and zero-interest loans or equity investments.

The Coalition's policy would see interest payments on mortgages taken out by first-time buyers on newly built homes be tax deductible for five years.

Economists have been quick to give scathing assessments of some of the latest policies, which they argue will drive up demand, and in turn, housing prices. Chris Richardson labelled the major parties' platforms a "dumpster fire of dumb stuff", while Saul Eslake called the Coalition's planned tax deduction "candidate for dumbest policy decision of the 21st century".

But housing experts say the policies are missing the crucial issue driving the housing shortage.

As an 80s kid, I remember saying this word... a lot.

While other colloquialisms seem to have hung around this one seems to have vanished from common vernacular.

I have some questions ...

Did everyone say this, or only my siblings and I? Is it Western Australian? Australian? or Global?

Where did it come from? Does it mean or refer to anything or is it just random syllables?

Where did it go? Why did this word fall out of favor while others are still in popular use?