From Individual -

You state - Culture is not changing in Australia. Culture is starting to put its foot in the door here.

We as Aussies, welcome ALL cultures and have always have, and yes we are ALL watching....we all note your point.

I don't have a problem with wealth or the bright people using their minds and their ideas to build wealth.

Except when they need to A: Brag about all the things they're owned and are so full of themselves. B: You'd think they were the only people who've ever worked their tail off to earn a quid?

John Laws Is/was not a poor man and as an Opinioned shock jock was able to bring a degree of fairness and balance and a whole lot of unsung behind the scenes Christian charity, and never once told us what he did or didn't have. Even though he drove a ROLLS to work!

Albeit, off-air had a mouth like a sewer, but some of his lewd stories were at least funny. And His mind remained active and he rooted for the underdog and his fellow Aussies!

And my kind of conservative. And not one with the closed mind who takes comfort in always knowing he is right and a horizon that rarely sees past the front gate?

If we in this wide brown land truly embraced cooperative capitalism we'd do a number of things, we'd rely almost exclusively on a business model that almost alone survived the great depression largely intact.

Second of all sounds the death knell of unions!

And thirdly, is the most cost-effective form of business available and the only one that will allow us to compete with the emerging economies for a much larger share of the global market.

And is almost totally reliant for that successful and robust fair competition on the world's cheapest power!

That old folk just want to shovel coal and burn it in foreign-owned or controlled power stations seems to me to be both unaustralian and Just plain dumb.

Time some of these doddery dictatorial decision makers were held to account for the mess they've made and created.
Alan B.

Alan B, now I get you a little better.
I agree with you on most of your points.
I don't brag, as I abhor the idea.
If I have ever been guilty of what you speak, it was not for personal embellishment, but in response to someones question/s.
Even though I have a collection of the type of cars you speak of, I don't drive them.
Most are un-licensed anyway.
I too am guilty of 'judging a book by it's cover'.
If I need a contractor for any reason, I take note of the vehicle he drives up in.
A little thing I learnt many years ago.
If he turns up with a new or late model car or ute, or a down trodden rust bucket, he has already lost the job before he even turns off the engine.
My 'daily driver' is a 2000 AU Falcon 1 Tonner.
Alan the reason I don't drive my 'other' cars is because of people like yourself who took it to the next level called 'road rage'.
You want to complain about the Aussie scum, well you take your car out and get spat at or run off the road or given the finger or had abuse hurled at you, just for driving a poxy Rolls Royce or Bentley.
No mate you don't know what your talking about.
You are part of the problem and part of this sh!t culture you hold so dear.
It makes people like you happy in the knowledge that you've just maligned a person for doing something YOU find offensive or are envious or jealous.
I don't care, take your pick.
I am the one who deserves a break for having been born in a country of negativity and entitlement.
I NEVER asked for help or loans or any assistance from any govt body.
Just forked out money, a lot more than yourself and most other Aussies, so instead bagging those who YOU seem to think, don't deserve their financial status, you try and create some new idea and see how far these turds will let you go.

we are ALL watching....we all note your point.
SAINTS,
note or get ? It's as different as Greed & Need.

Well, there you have it? I was speaking in broad and non-personal general terms and used a well know public entity to make a particular point and Altrav saw only what he clearly considered a personal attack on him.

Why?

Because he could deny that we'd gone backwards since an unprecedented period of post-war prosperity! Basically, because the political class old the joint down the river rather than dump the ideological idiocies that they've lumbered the nation with and they come from both sides of the isle.

Be they the extremely authoritarian far left greens or those boneheaded numbskulls of the far right. And praise greed based individualism as if it were gospel? All while ignoring factual examples that proved them so wildly off the mark to be in orbit. e.g., the economic miracle that was post-war Japan. which used enviable social unity and their own internal resources, i.e., people, to rebuild a war-torn shattered and bankrupt economy to become the world's second-largest economy.

Only turned that around and went backwards by adopting the greed is good individualism doctrine of the ultra-right boneheads.
TBC Alan B

Cont: Then there was Singapore our near neighbour and ally and source of foreign funds and investment. Started from a worse post-war position than say Japan, which at least had a sizable post-war population.

Singapore adopted inclusive social democracy without including the nanny state culture of Europe and most Europeans. Ditto South Korea and Taiwan.

China has a similar story of adopting pragmatism that allowed them to de-communise their economy, that lifted over a billion people out of endemic generational poverty.

The Celtic economic miracle was similar in many respects that invested in its own people and their better ideas and given it emphasised cooperative capitalism over the destructive nonsense of greed is good extreme capitalism, succeeded beyond their wildest dreams!

Until self-serving boneheads allowed debt-laden foreign speculators to have almost unfettered access to their real estate market. In the mistaken belief that a few troglodytes could make an unearned fortune that others essentially earned for them.

Although our own resident boneheads will see that as proof of an economically flawed model.

When the only flaw was the deliberately created and unnecessary over-dependence on foreign capital as investment in the bricks and mortar of a massively successful modern economic paradigm

This then brings us to modern day Australia, with all these economic miracles learned and acted upon?
TBC Alan B.