I saw this headline and had a brief moment of confusion. How on earth could the black economy make Victoria lose $620 million a year? Was all the money going abroad or interstate? I read on to find out and it wasn’t long before the answer was apparent. Victoria isn’t losing $620 million a year at all. A report by the Australia Institute think tank says cash-in-hand payments are stripping…
Cracked! missed one on their recent list of the 5 Biggest Pussifications of Schools, and while it’s probably not unique to this place the recent example comes from a school just south of Melbourne. No touching. Parents claim they were not told directly of the new rule, which extended a ban on contact sports … Yes, they’d already gone that far, and that depressingly common policy is touched on in…
Read this quote carefully as there may be questions later. Mental Health Minister Helen Morton said as there was no evidence to prove that even small amounts of alcohol were not healthy for pregnant women, no alcohol was the best advice. I’ve read that a number of times and I really can’t spot the connection between the observation that there’s no reason, none at all, to think that a small…
“If the boy responsible doesn’t own up then the whole class, and I do mean the whole class, will stay behind after school.” I have no idea if teachers can still do this but if not I’m guessing that those of us past out mid 30s can probably remember hearing it at least once, and unless we happened to be the boy – or for the sake of equality, the…
Peter Threlfall is a man after my own heart: he wants to migrate to Australia. Okay, in fairness it must be said that he wants to move to South Australia where, I am reliably informed by Mrs Exile, they’re all a bit weird (no idea, I think it might some long standing rivalry over who’s got the best arts festival or something). And also he wants to be a cop,…
Back in February I wrote a very angry sweary blog post about airport scannersand about how the Australian federal government had decided that they’d be installed at all Australian international airports, and I explained, not for the first time, how that would influence my travelling decisions in the future. PASSENGERS at airports across Australia will be forced to undergo full-body scans or be banned from flying under new laws to…
Normally I play Devil’s Advocate with the legal profession. I understand that the crime does not have a cookie cutter nature and that juries and judges, both of whom have access to more information than the rest of us reading newspaper reports, may make decisions we can’t easily understand or accept. I understand that the system is designed to allow guilty people every chance to slip through the cracks and…
I wish I could say that I find the reaction of this politician surprising. Google has refused to explain why it paid just $74,176 in Australian tax last year, despite making an estimated $1 billion in revenue from the Australian market. The opposition communications spokesman, Malcolm Turnbull, said yesterday the growing digital economy was creating headaches for lawmakers. He said corporate giants like Google were able to generate billions in…
… but things do seem to be tilted in their favour sometimes, as two stories this week about policing in different parts of Oz illustrate. First, over in the west, yet another example of the law punishing the innocent and guilty alike when it comes to impounding cars for speeding, though in effect the innocent party receives the bulk of the punishment by being deprived of their property while the driver cops…
Police, at all times, should maintain a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent upon every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence. Readers who take an interest in police activities may…
ANZAC Day has come around again, and it’s become something of a tradition for me to mark it by blogging on the topic and finding some appropriate poem or piece of prose or quote to finish things off. It’s not that it’s a public holiday and I can have a lie in and a break from work, but because I have huge respect for the people whose sacrifices over a century…
It’s that time of year again. No, not Mother’s Day (or it it Mothers’ Day, I’ve never been sure if it was for mothers in general or just one), which down here is in actually in the middle of May anyway. No, I’m talking about the beginning of the Formula One season, which means over the past several weeks Melbourne’s Albert Park has gradually been closed to local residents, the…
This is Tony Mokbel, and for the benefit of everyone not living in Australia and who’ve never heard of him (unless they caught the excellent TV series Underbelly) a brief précis of his Wikipedia entry is that he’s been linked to Melbourne’s gangland wars, people like convicted murderer and more recent murderee Carl Williams, and the meth trade, and was a few years ago successfully extradited from Greece to face…
Rage warning – the article that prompted this post provoked one of the Angry Exile’s periodic descents into red mists, from where only the sound of his his almost incessant swearing could be heard. This post therefore contains greater than usual quantities of foul invective and horrible oaths. Oh, great. PASSENGERS at airports across Australia will be forced to undergo full-body scans or be banned from flying under new laws…
Some things don’t mix well, we all know that. Street luging on public roads is one, and we saw yesterday how that makes it a restricted activity you need to get permission for. Another is alcohol and, well, if you took the opinion of every nanny and wowser out there alcohol and practically anything, including life and happiness, don’t mix. Certainly at least one will tell you that alcohol and…
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