AI is absolutely being used as a pretext to cut jobs. They’ll axe 1000, say “oh whoops that was a mistake” and hire 500 back.

voting is the main way to show support to a political party and it’s platform, if you’re not getting votes it’s pretty clear people don’t agree with what you’re offering

politicians listen to votes

I don’t disagree with either of these statements. Nor do they disagree with my statement that votes are a vague message - if I tell you (and it’s the truth) that the Greens weren’t in my top two preferences in 2025 (nor Labor, nor Liberal) - what information does that give them? What would the Greens do if they wanted my vote? All my vote really says is, “I prefer this other party”, but not which policies I like, or even if it’s the policies I have a problem with. I know people who vote Liberal but are anti-privatisation! I know people who vote Liberal but are environmentally progressive! I know someone who voted for the opposition one year to “give someone else a go”! Even just the differing policies of each party are complicated, let alone other factors like personalities.

I don’t agree that voting is our biggest weapon, but it’s one everyone can use without any risk, so it’s certainly potent and important! Our biggest weapon is our labour. If you, me and millions of other people all voice a unified demand and stop going to work, that’s both a more accurate weapon (they know precisely what we want changed) and a weapon that can bring a government to its knees - look at revolutions overseas started by strikes. And it also works against companies which don’t even let us vote!

You can see the impact PHON has, even though they only got a tiny % of the pie in SA the big parties are keenly aware of them and why people are voting for them

The following quote from Labor is extremely vague. Why did people vote for One Nation? Was it frustration with housing costs? General cost of living pressures? Reaction to the firearm laws after the Bondi massacre? Opposition to Islam? A hatred of Arabic people (Muslim or not) or Asians? Opposition to all immigration, including English? Simply sending a message of dissatisfaction to the Liberals? A disdain towards conventional, formal politicians? Media exposure and familiarity? (some people can’t even name our Prime Minister, so don’t underestimate this!)

tbh the greens should really be shining right now, absolute shambles from them

Absolutely. While I do think they’re right to support activism around Gaza (even if it comes from the argument of “stop wasting our resources on foreign wars”), it shouldn’t be at their forefront.

the demands they seem to levy are egregious that have me siding with businesses going damn that’s crazy

It’s worth pointing out that sometimes (and maybe this doesn’t apply to the ones you’re thinking of) they come to the table with high demands with the intention to settle on a lower demand.

Not all unions are the same, nor are all organisers the same (had a string of bad ones until recently) so I’m fully aware that some are bad at representing employees. And it’s a damn shame. It makes a feedback loop where a bad union experience makes people dismissive of the actions necessary to improve the union. I’m lucky enough to be in one where we’ve recently managed to reorganise and volunteer enough to build campaigns where fellow employees were able to instruct us with their demands (and you bet thousands of us were asking for a 10% pay rise that we had to temper to something more realistic). But until I volunteered to help build this reorganisation, I did feel disempowered and unrepresented, and hesitated to even join the union, despite being a unionist.

The tough answer is, if institutions aren’t giving you power, you have to build it.

Everyone should have access to all the facts. That way they can make informed decisions.

I agree with the general sentiment, although on the other hand, when there are well-funded propaganda machines at play (including think tanks and corporate-owned publishers), it’s possible to flood the zone with misleading facts.

A sad truth is that, due to shortcomings in our education system and the cultural domination of propagandists, there are millions of people who, given access to all the facts, don’t have the tools to filter them and make an effective decision. Likewise, you can give me a heap of absolute raw facts about quantum physics or agricultural research or nutritional science or certain sports, and I probably won’t have the experience or prerequisite knowledge to use any of it except the most basic parts. At some point, an expert needs to curate this for a general audience and give context. Until people are empowered to process facts effectively, most of us need them selected, and if we choose our news channels poorly, we’re at the mercy of those selecting them.

I can see two sites claiming that amount, but I couldn’t find any evidence on them. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were machine-generated - it doesn’t seem to match up with what we know about Gary from interviews.

To add onto what Hanrahan said, it’s also one of our state-funded broadcasters (along with Special Broadcasting Service, which has a lot of non-English and international content like films and news) so it’s a lot less commercialised. There are plenty of good shows started there and it’s sometimes a lot closer to indie content.

It was one of the original commissioners of Bluey.

I highly recommend trying to find episodes of You Can’t Ask That (even if you have to torrent it), and if you like mockumentaries like The Office, I recommend Utopia (not to be confused with other shows elsewhere called Utopia), many clips are on YouTube to sample.

AB C you later boss

MEA A plus

CPS U legend

I also think it influences what their daily schedules were. If someone expects to be able to go to certain places at certain times via car, that may no longer be possible, but if they were never using cars for primary transport, their obligations may be at different places or different times.

edit: I was in a hurry and butchered that sentence: Those without cars will form many of their regular activities around what’s possible to do with public transport.

Which organisation?

From what my friends in ABC, MEAA and CPSU have told me, they can easily afford it. Their funds got restored under Labor as well, it’s not getting passed along.

You’re absolutely right that Australia-extraction is an absolute shocker, although we can’t pretend it’s a good excuse for this problem.

Have QLD still got 50c fares? Sounds like a dream to us.

Exactly. " “Work from home is a viable option for many, many people, and they’ll make that call,” he told ABC News on Monday. ", oh it’s certainly viable but we’re being forced in anyway.

Mates and I are headed to one of their offices to cheer them on at the 11am walk-out tomorrow (I can take an early lunch break for it). I also heard there might be some action on Thursday, I’ll try my best to get to that.

(If anyone else is able to support them in person, let me know and I’ll get the details and forward them)

I just found the MEAA strike fund page, share it around and throw something in if you can: https://www.meaa.org/news/support-abc-staff-standing-up-for-quality-public-broadcasting/

No, but you could clamp 'em!

I don’t know, I was too young to know what AC or DC were, and the motor wasn’t exposed anyway - I believe the fan was one pre-made component. It was made to be very child-safe.

When I said components, what I really meant was there were alligator clip wires to connect whole pre-made objects “here’s a fan, here’s a light bulb”

over my dead body do i want phon in, but how do i tell labor what i want? i did that putting greens first previously, am i not right to do the same here?

Voting is an extremely vague way to “tell Labor” anything, whether by voting Green, Reason, Shooters, Socialist or PHON. I assume their reaction to a rise in PHON would be to double down on anti-immigration rhetoric, not to repress Islam. (I’m not exactly sure what you envision, policy-wise, when you say “anti-Islam”)

But you raise a great question - how do you tell Labor what you want? Voting doesn’t send a clear message, nor are any of our votes individually worth much at all. And specifically to Labor, their own rank-and-file majority have been overruled by the Albanese leadership on some very significant matters. If their own members are struggling to be heard, I don’t recommend that as a way to sway Labor either - I believe some other “left” parties have working representation, but from discussions I’ve had with Labor members at pubs, I don’t have faith in their internal democracy. It comes down to other forms of power.

So, we organise to gain power for ourselves - for Labor in particular, a major example is through worker unions with the power to combine resources and ultimately to withdraw labour. In fact, this is how major historical wins were made in anti-racism laws here, or eviction protections for renters, and even lots of Whitlam’s infamous social policies - governments did fuck-all until unions put pressure on them. Same with other wins like the Green Bans. And it’s not just worker unions, but other forms of collective action, like Erskineville’s Road Wars which have probably saved many lived by now.

The bottom line is obvious: telling a gigantic political party of millions what you want requires more than just voting.

Did you read the article? This comment seems to be jumping to an extreme conclusion.

published five years ago btw.

The Panhellenic Animal Welfare and Environmental Federation requested that the court annul an exemption in a law that allowed religious slaughtering practices to take place without anesthetic.

The courts ruled that the religious preparation of animal products did not outweigh those animals’ welfare, and decided that the exemption was a violation of the law’s requirement to slaughter animals with anesthesia.

Fair call. Religions and other traditions should not be above anti-cruelty standards. This law, while in direct contradiction to a traditional practice, does not appear to be intended as harassment or persecution. If a culture is incompatible with anti-cruelty standards, drop the practice from the culture. I’d expect the same if anti-discrimination legislation outlaws the sexist enforcement of 1 Timothy 2:12, 1 Corinthians 14:34, 1 Corinthians 11:4-5 among unliberalised Christian organisations.

I wonder if these laws encouraged vegetarianism, rather than breaking diet requirements.

I don’t have any on hand, but there are plenty of references online for trying to deradicalise cult members, and many of the factors in play here are similar, so those skills can be used to try and open these people to other ideas.

This could have some, I haven’t checked in depth: https://www.reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/wiki/resources/ (if you’re not already familiar with QAnon conspiracies, Wikipedia article)

An important thing is to not aim for immediate change of mind, but to empower them with an alternative framework which is ready for them to consider when they face a contradiction in their worldview and the world.

Maybe only tangentially related, but my primary school had a science kit buried among the other toys, with various electrical components. And I remember there was a very small fan and a solar panel I connected up, and it was pretty impressive to me that it would just keep running without a battery so long as it was somewhere with direct sunlight like a windowsill, where it was allowed to stay for a while.

A school should be a catalyst for education, not just of a syllabus and for the workforce, but exposing people to the tools of the future and the ‘magic’ we’ve created so far. Especially in a word where more and more menial or low-skill tasks will be automated or offshored.

Presenting themselves as an alternative creates higher expectations, I’d guess.