Cont. The Australia I want is one that just doesn't export its best people and their better ideas! Doesn't export its manufacturing sector to the biggest coercive bullies on the block and instead accepts foreign investment/ownership/control, in return for peanuts or an allegorical, forty pieces of silver?

The Australia I want is one where reticulated energy costs the consumer a cent PKWH or less! And where the most tax we any o us pay above a generous tax-free threshold is never ever more than 15%! And where water is supplied at actual cost from space-age desal. And pumped wherever need with new solar-powered inline innovation! That reduces the cost of pumping to cents rather than the dollars now committed.

The Australia I want is predicated on the principles of cooperative capitalism. Given the future already visible is one where automation takes care of all distribution and all but eliminates the paper shuffling, profit demanding middleman from the distribution chain.

And as with all automation, to be successful relies on the lowest costing energy!

As for, can't be done?

Can't died in a cornfield over a century ago. It's just his cousin, Nosir I Won't, that is alive and kicking, in spite of extreme old age and dribbling dementia.

And we know when he's on the level, given he invariably dribbles equally from both sides. TBC.
Alan B.

Dear Foxy.

I also worked hard from dawn to dusk! And often in return for pitiful pennies. And was often too tired to even eat the evening meal. But fell asleep in it

I didn't complete a single year of high school yet managed as graduating Medic, a result that broke a long-standing 70-year record and part of a validating public record.

I've earned a living as a self-taught chemical engineer where I was praised as the best they'd had!

And as an assayer who was used as the referee between waring chemists as to percentages of supplied mineral. And on the day I gave my notice, had the plant superintendent asked me, under what terms and conditions I would reverse that decision!

And lastly, employed as a (my dream job) science assistant for a power authority.

I never suggested that you or your family didn't earn their income. It's your kind that I truly respect!

And people like the legendary Helen Keller who overcame the disability of profound deafness and blindness to advocate for the poor and downtrodden and those afflicted with disability!

These are the people I identify with and speak for, given the talent that's there and currently spurned/wasted! People need to be judged on what they're still capable of, not what they can't do!

I am currently confined to a wheelchair but I believe, my greatest and, I believe, world-changing achievement beckons. And given I survive long enough to see it done, will have done more for my fellow man than just about anyone you can name. And I assure you that I'm not simply big-noting.

All that prevents, is current severe lack of capital. TBC.
Alan B.

What are we doing wrong, too much bleeding heart stuff is the problem. In the 50s you were expected to get on with it. There weren't all these people telling you you were hardly done by, you were told to suck it up & get on with it.

Tell people they are poor downtrodden folk, who should be given more help will only have them believing it, & accepting the role. What they need is a kick up the backside, & be told to go work for a living. This did happen in the 50s.

We have hundreds or perhaps thousands of farmers & fruit growers plowing in crops & fallen fruit for the want of pickers. It is time to tell the bludgers & no hopers to go pick fruit, or the dole will be cut off. This is what happened even into the 60s.

There should be no unemployment payments while there are jobs crying out for workers. Hell it might be time to lift the pension age a year or two, at least while there is work not being done.

I was there in there 50s. There wasn't much money. Some kids still didn't have shoes even in cold Bathurst, but there was opportunity. It must have been a better place, there was never any worry, or danger, with me & other kids doing paper deliveries at 6.00 AM on our bikes, or riding off to town to our cleaning jobs at night.

I was eleven when I turned up at home one afternoon with the pony I had bought with my earnings. It must have been a shock to my poor folks, but they helped me find somewhere to keep her. I never could afford a saddle, but mum made a rug for her out of flower sacks.

Yes it was a much tougher world, but to my mind, a better world, where people did what was needed, rather than feel sorry for themselves & demand more handouts.

Hi ttbn:- both of your first two comments are spot on.

Hi Foxy:- I couldn't identify with anything the author wrote apart from the homelessness & poverty.

The loss of community, destruction of the family, homelessness & poverty was caused by diversity, multiculturalism & marxist femi-nazism.

Please explain to me how we can export jobs, import more workers, put women into the workforce at the same time, without creating more unemployment with more poverty & more homelessness?

More diversity = More of the Same = More Poverty & More Homelessness.

Hi Alan B:- You do realise that EVERYTHING you complained about is Labor, Liberal, Green & National party policy don't you?

Hi Hasbeen:- An excellent, accurate comment as usual.

Here is a thought everybody...

ABS stats AND international stats CLEARLY shows that Australia has been getting sadder, sicker, angrier & poorer EVERY year since 1972.

We have had MACRO economic growth with MICRO economic shrinkage.

On a per capita basis, individual poverty has been increasing as the economy has grown.

The ruling, left wing elitists have been getting richer & EVERYBODY else has been getting poorer.

Changes in law & policy have made EVERYTHING get progressively worse for decades.

The good ship Australia & all who sailed in her were getting happier, healthier & wealthier in 1951.

The sinking ship Australia & most of us who sail in her are getting sadder, sicker, angrier & poorer in 2021.

The science on this is settled.

I'm more optimistic about Australia than some of
you guys. I have to be. I write children's and
young adult stories. I believe in their futures.
And in this country. Life would be miserable
otherwise.

Ah so, whatever improvement there is, is the result of superior right-wing management? And all the increases in poverty and poverty growth etc, are down to left-wing mismanagement?

Sorry but some of you dummies need to fact check before you put your moribund comments on paper. And instead of have the world merely suspect you are fools, open your mouths to remove all doubt. It's Polly want a cracker stuff that makes the parrot look like the intelligent adult in the room and explains why a nation once third wealthiest nation on earth and a debt-free creditor one at that had already slipped down to below thirty, already with record foreign and domestic debt and before the pandemic!

Simply put, around thirty per cent of us understand economics.
Another thirty per cent who understand politics.
With the remaining forty per cent who understand neither. The latter cohort is the one that decides all elections.

But, are an aging demographic being replaced by more thoughtful younger better educated demographic and the only hope this country has of not being mired in unrepayable debt until the twelfth of never.
Alan B.