Well put Graham. I give thanks continually that I have been lucky enough to live through the very best that civilisation had been able to develop.

We had it tough after the war when you couldn't get so many things, from butter to building supplies, clothes & cars to cosmetics, it was all in short supply. However we still had freedom, access to the truth, & the opportunity to make things better.

To day our kids have everything readily available, lulling them into a false sense of security, but are fed a regular diet of bullsh1t as their freedoms are surreptitiously eroded. God help our grand kids if their parents don't soon wake up.

Hasbeen, we used to make stuff here but can't now due to the enormous cost of energy.

Energy is implicated in everything we do make or move! Adds to the cost as it rises. Now fuels all inflation! Those with the least doing toughest. But that ain't you, is it? Given your comfortable financial status.

Not everybody has your start or opportunities. A stable home/decent hard-working parents.

Had I stayed in one place and attended the one school, could have won a uni. scholarship on my ear.

My father was a mongrel of the first water, left after he'd fathered four kids, suddenly found he was expected to support same. Plenty of war time babies had only one parent and like me had to work from the day we were old enough to be legally employed.

Mine and my brother's wages paid my board initially and helped pay the mortgage of our first family home. I regularly did a seventy-hour week of hard manual, just to make enough for that task.

You claim you did it tough. How about a dawn to dark gut-bust out in the paddock throwing bales of green lucerne up on to a flatbed. Or deep in the bowels of a mine, hand-trucking two-ton ore trucks to the surface. Used to be done by horses, but that was considered animal cruelty As it was so arduous.

You sit there all smug and bombastically brag about your achievements, none of which would have possible if left exclusively to you! None! And you got several important breaks which helped you along.

Our environment and adversities along the way make the man we see today. And you're not much of an empathetic human, are you?

No, I don't envy you; I'd rather be me and with what I achieved through sheer guts and endurance with a never quit attitude than to be you with your un-earnt fat-assed privileged attitude.

Contribute to the topic or just put a sock in it. Had a belly full of the. I love me, I'm mad about myself, stuff.
Alan B.

I'd love to buy an Australian built computer & phone, alas !
In fact anything made in Australia would be preferable but Australian businesses thanks to a hideous Tax system are too impatient for profits for any such industry to get off the ground.
So, things just keep on getting made in Asia !

This morning, wall to wall mainland labor governments! And the last election a race to the top and a small target contest of ideas.

Folk have had a bellyful of negative campaigns and the hard right infiltrating the liberal party.

The lesson? Simply saying no to everything and insane privatisation of energy has had consequences as had the move to the right by the coalition!

The coalition needs to retake the middle ground and fight on back pocket issues and climate change. That's where nuclear energy as MSR thorium shines!

Our best years were just post-war when we were the third wealthiest nation and a creditor one at that! And we did that on visionary ideas (the snowy mountain scheme) that were implemented and cheap as chips energy.

Today we need nuclear power and rapid rail/the complete electrification of the economy! And we can finance all of that internally! Then just allow the massive economic growth that follows to draw down debt as we did, post-war!
Alan B.

Just for your information Alan, I attended 17 different schools, 4 of them during the war as mum fought to find us somewhere to live, while dad was overseas. As an orphan she had no parents to fall back on. After the war dad was sent all over 3 states to sort out branches in trouble. The worst was 3 different schools in 7 months in Townsville. Fortunately dad Quit that & we stayed almost 4 years in one town as I finished school.

Don't always assume someone else had it easy, just because they succeeded Alan, quite often they succeeded by virtue of growing tough fighting adversity.

due to the enormous cost of energy.
Alan B,
Yes that too however, the unaffordable part is labour. Wages are too high to be competitive but too low for the cost of living.
This is a dilemma only the Govt & Unions could sort IF they wanted to. I have long said that Public Service salaries are way too high in comparison to wages as are manager salaries in private enterprise.
Tax is also a huge hurdle. Pays need to reflect performance instead of simply being there in a certain bracket.
Now that we have wall to wall Labor we should actually get to see solutions from the oneness in Australian governing !