Looks as though cultural differences are causing a problem with the bewilderingly stupid submarine contract between Australia and France.

Clashes are occurring, according to News Media. "Not everyone thinks like the French," (thankfully) said said Jean-Michel Billig, contract director; and they (the French) will have to make an ‘effort’ to understand that Australians don’t think like them. The differences vary from how Australians and the French view the importance of eating, to language, to punctuality.

The French admit that the might have to actually listen and show some humility! They are going to run “intercultural courses” (on top of doing some actual submarine work).

French personnel working here will have to be taught how to behave, and Australian personnel in France have to send their children to expensive private schools because of the language difference.

How much better things would have been if we, a) built the things ourselves or, b) stuck with our own kind in the Anglosphere. The U.S has a perfectly good ready-to-go submarine.

Apart from export/import, tourism, diplomacy and defence pacts, we should all stick to our own kind. Immigration, apart from that vitally needed by Australia, should cease

Dear Bazz,

Humanity, as I wrote earlier, cannot afford
to have fundamentalists with their fingers
on the nuclear war button.

One of the saving
graces of the Cold War was that it was conducted by somewhat
rational people in Washington and Moscow. Christian fundamentalists
did not gain control of the White House during the Cold War, and
the Soviets for all their wrongdoings believed in life on earth
because that was all there ever could be in their atheistic world.
There is no greater reason for living
than accepting that this life is the only one we have.

Today we have people who will destroy and kill to accelerate
their embrace by God in the hereafter. These are people
we cannot stop by reasoned discussion.

I certainly don't have the answers for you as to what we
should do. All I can suggest is that we concentrate on
electing rational people as our leaders, who can come up
with policies that will give us the safety net that we
desperately require.

For me Morrison is miles ahead of Shorten in character and policy. Pity though I will be putting Fraser Anning above him as he has bowed to pc correctness by putting the toxic Australian hating Greens above Anning.

Here is a link on Australian immigration and what
the data tells us:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-21/australian-immigration-what-do-the-numbers-tell-us/10919970

runner,

I have chosen my '12 below the line' Senate candidates. Not a LNP, Labor, Green or anything to the left among them. Still not prepared to vote for any of the fools nominated for the lower house in my electorate.

ttbn, I have not seen an how to vote card or a senate htv either.
Perhaps you know re the senate paper; if you vote above the line and
you wish to vote below the line for a particular group do you also
have a number above the line for that group, or is it left blank ?
Does the sequence of numbers go across the top down the column where
you wish to change the order and then continue across the top.
I suspect not, but nothing I have read makes either of those queries
clear.