In the big end of town, up where most of the money is, superfluous argument over total insignificance, actually extracts the food from the mouths of the other end of humanity that call a bridge a home! Shame on you!

Dan

When is a threat no a threat? when it is never ever made or uttered!

Albeit, a threat that's made can be withdrawn if made in haste and under this or that duress! Along with contrite apologies etc-etc.
Alan B.

Dan, I’m guessing you agreed with Scot Morrison when he made the following speech back in 2017 during a debate over the abolition of 18C.

“I know there are a lot of people who are interested in this issue. As a senior figure in this government...I know this issue doesn't create one job, doesn't open one business, doesn't give anyone one extra hour. It doesn't make housing more affordable or energy more affordable. I don't see any intersection between that issue and those priorities.”

Edward Carson

If you read carefully what I said, the meaning of it is exactly contrary to Morrison’s dismissive quote.

Dragging people through court for examples such as this article uses as case study, is counterintuitive to justice.

All this leads to the question of “what is justice if it isn’t spread equally through society”?

Example: My sample person reduced to living under a bridge, would make empty threats daily as a survival tactic. But the man living under the bridge is irrelevant since he has no resources to mount a legal defence to such claims against him.
In justice terms he is irrelevant!

Here is another example of injustice by the justice department.
An acquaintance of mine mentioned in conversation recently, his fraught efforts to gain access to his children through the family court.
He has ticked up $200k in legal expenses so far from his own resources, with no legal aid assistance.
The disturbing aspect of his situation is, his is not the uncommon experience he assures me from contacts he makes in the course of events.

There appears to be a $200k ceiling to be reached before the situation begins to show signs of progress.

If you are a seperated parent attempting to reunite with your children through the family law courts, the “bribe” to be paid is $200k. minimum.

Dan

It wasn't a threat because, as Massoud explained the other person was too young & inexperienced so therefore was not in danger.

Edward Carson. I agree with much of what you say. Especially on the topic of energy. One simply cannot forget Treasurer Morison in parliament with a lump of coal he used as an illegitamite prop.

And his endless obsfucation on energy policy since. Or that various public channel presenters have jumped on speakers to virtually censor sensible discussion on nuclear power as an option! And it has to be an option and on the table, when the cost of energy becomes higher than the wages bill and forces major industries offshore!

Automation will, as it is rolled out ASAP! Cause the loss of countless occupations/jobs, jobs, jobs. And taxpaying taxpayers!

As Morison and others turn a blind eye/kick this can a little further down the road! Even as we rack up eye-glazing debt levels that will need to be repaid by massively increased production and the export of volume manufactured exports!

And the only real prospect of that is linked/welded to the world's cheapest energy and real, long overdue tax reform/decentraliseation!

For peaceful purposes, nuclear energy, is not a threat ! Nor an implied threat to anyone, except the abysmally or wilfully ignorant, but rather, a rescue from the very real threat of a mass extinction event caused by unstoppable climate change!
TBC.
Alan B.

Phillip, as a person who deals with "law" on a daily basis, no doubt you are familiar with the 2 systems of law within the 'adversarial' system in operation here. System 1 gives justice to those with means to employ solicitors/barristers to represent them and the other, System 2, hands out sentences/judgments to those who have neither connections nor money to employ said legal "representation". It has been that way since the common law rights of citizens went overboard with the anchor dropped in Sydney Cove on the morning of 26th January, 1788. That you refer to American cases (which are only ever considered when System 1 defendants/plaintiffs are before the bench) says to me we have well and truly become "Americanised" in our knowledge and interpretations of our bastardised version of a legal system. No doubt we have the silver screen, TV and the Electronic Whorehouse to thank. Ask most the Joe Average or generations born after 1980 and they can rattle off the 2nd Amendment of the US Constitution chapter and verse, but very few, if any could actually tell you much about our own Australian Constitution. Thus it is given one or maybe 2 units, in any Bachelors degree course in Law, Jurisprudence and legal studies.

When is a threat not a threat? When it is not actually a real threat! Real threats that cannot be discounted as actual and real include a mutated coronavirus, that like many antibody resistant pathogens is not killed by antibiotics! Or like HIV ave already mutated so none of the current antivirals are at all effective! And to the point are so contagious and lethal they spread like an unstoppable wildfire that simply kills all who are infected, even those who are vaccinated and have had their boosters!

This is why ideas like learning to live with this virus are dangerous and threats to our existence.

I believe we need to embrace ideas the intellectually challenged decision-makers have avoided on entirely idiotic ideological grounds? The first being island quarantine the second is rapid testing. The third, getting really serious over non-compliance and idiot protest marches in our streets. Which is a real threat to the rest of the compliant community!

Me? I'd have met them with body amour and beanbag ammo the first time and real ammo the next. albeit aimed at legs when using real ammo. Why legs. Well, what better way to stop the marches in their tracks or prevent them from running away from the legal consequences of the dangerous activities/super spreader events? And just as liable as those who knowingly spread HIV!

That said, the most dangerous threat of all is idealogues that are welded to idiotic ideologies and top that by being recalcitrant in the extreme! With some examples treating climate change or a pandemic as little more than economy hurting left-wing conspiracies! And I know you know who I'm talking about!

Yes, I understand livelihoods could be on the line? As they are via droughts, floods and other extreme events. And where w need to do what is doable and just cop what cannot be avoided, on the chin! TBC.
Alan B.

When is a threat a real threat? when we are threatened by decision making recalcitrant idealogues welded to idiotic ideological imperatives! Like the coal lobby and fossil fuel industry? And or those that see the future through the narrow prism of pure, financial self-interest and the devil take the hindmost/the rest!

And consequently avoid real tax reform and the world's cheapest power, i.e. MSR thorium and or tax reform that taxes income rather than a shrinking cohort that earns wages!

And the above threat compounded by the stubborn resistance to new and far better ideas by the born to rule, privileged elite! And I know you know who I'm referring to!
Alan B.

Our inherited system of "law" is all about winning rather than justice! And winning is usually reserved for those with the deepest pockets and the privileged elite? That's why it needs to be reformed to remove the impediment to justice. The first being financial outcomes for the justice industry, an oxymoron if ever there was one!
The second being injustice for those who cannot afford to pay for preferential outcomes!

That some folk believe in this antiquated ancient system tells where they come from. Certainly not from any cohort that puts real transparent justice outcomes ahead of personal financial reward?

Real justice would be immeasurably rewarded by treating cases before treaging truth and justice tribunals equipped with covertly deployed, unbeatable, space-age lie detection technology!

And because this is so? Reform resisted to the last generic man in the justice industry, where the real imperatives, I believe, are financial rewards for the practitioners ahead of all other considerations, including real justice outcomes?

If management teaches just one thing!? It teaches there is always a better way! Particularly one which is welded by tradition to a medieval system of BS justice? Which is assisted by the salient fact, we the people do not have a guaranteed bill of irrevocable human rights!
Alan B.