Tiny economy, barely a nation held hostage by tycoons

Australia's recent gas crisis, real or imagined, is another example of how Australia is barely a nation and being held hostage by the tycoons who are busy negotiating for and selling off its assets. There's a grand film I've watched a couple of times called Australia (2008, Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman) where a WWII cattle baron is buying up all competitors by hook or crook. Of course beautiful Nicole Kidman and her handsome cattle drover Hugh Jackman are the underdogs fighting injustice and saving the day by spoiling the cattle baron's plan to charge premium prices for cattle to feed WWII troops. The underdogs are also not racist, while the evil cattle baron denies his own illegitimate rape-fathered son (SPOILER ALERT). And so... the gas companies.

If the tycoons are to be believed, the gas problem is all because New South Wales and South Australia are squeamish and have put the throttle on fracking (locally referred to as coal seam gas). This points up another barely-a-nation aspect of Australia - is there a national energy policy or do individual states decide whether the free market, hostage-taking, or government fiat prevails? In the US, the current power swing is supposedly back to states' rights (except where it suits business interests), with some states desiring a return to slavery.

Never mind that rivers and tap water are catching on fire from fracking gone awry (if the environmentalists are to be believed). So why shouldn't Queensland be allowed to honour its low price contracts to Japan, while Japan is getting the gas so cheap it's oversupplied and re-selling the gas at a profit, while NSW and SA are paying much more for gas in a so-called shortage? And THIS: The government has also promised key crossbench senator Nick Xenophon it would fund a feasibility study into building a new gas pipeline between the Northern Territory and South Australia. Because... well ok, gas supply is as important in today's economy as hospitals (infrastructure). Yet NSW says it can't afford to build hospitals, so it's allowing private (mostly British) companies to do it with a guaranteed profit contract? But building hospitals is state business (making deals with British companies?) while a cross-nation pipeline (when these areas already have gas underground?) would be national business (though supposedly needed because of a cross-state spat over selling off local assets?)

Malcolm Turnbull has proposed that I need an extra four years to fully understand Australian values before citizenship might be granted. Yes - loudmouth, obnoxious American. I'm originally from Mike Pense country (Indiana), where citizens are encouraged to imagine that the business of government is just too complicated - leave it to the experts. But I spent a lot of time in California, where ballot measures meddle in all aspects of government. The Australian values of which Malcolm Turnbull speaks are more in the Donald Trump and Mike Pense vein - keep your mouth shut and don't question the ruling elite - and you'll get along just fine. Oh - and you need to dress, act, and speak like a proper Australian - or get out. And as for how much you pay for goods and services? Don't ask; just pay. Welcome to the Southern White House.

Australia's Broken Nursing Education

From the article: "It's just unconscionable that the university is taking these peoples' money and making them pay for a course and they're not getting the proper placement experience," she said. "Some of our students are single mothers or are working and they're organising their lives to go on placement." While the attached article seems to be a hit piece on University of Newcastle and an advertisement for University of Technology, Sydney - the truth is that both schools have the same problem: hospitals are not properly incentivised to train university students in a way that complements their coursework.

At University of Technology, Sydney, clinical placement facilitators have a huge variation in quality - from experienced professors to temporary contract employees hired at the last minute. Some students assigned to paediatric nursing rotations are sent to child day care centers rather than medical facilities since there are insufficient positions available. Students without an Australian accent are subject to abuse by the less professional facilitators. Students are assigned to follow staff nurses who have not been allocated time for training students.

Legally, students are only supposed to perform tasks involving patients when they are being directly supervised. However, students are routinely expected to perform checks of patient vital signs and wash patients without supervision since these are basic skills taught in the first semester. Since the law is routinely broken, the situation should be acknowledged and the law changed or the law should be enforced and programs and attitudes changed. More importantly, clinical experiences should be acknowledged as a vital component of training. There should be better integration with curriculum as well as adjustments to the budget and staffing of teaching hospitals.

Reference article: University of Newcastle nursing school still in turmoil due to placement shortfall and an exodus to UTS.

Miss SF

As the friend living in Seattle who posted this said, "I miss about 500 of these things.

Things I miss about San Francisco

Independent thinkers?

For whatever reason, I felt more at home while visiting New Zealand than living in Australia; subtle cultural differences that may parallel this discussion of northern Japan. Of course, some of that could be related to being just a visitor rather than spending an extended amount of time as an immigrant. I might add that my thinking tends to be more wholistic and collective than that of the typical American; however, I also feel a fair amount of hypocrisy and paternalism in Australia's pandering to collectivism.
---the vast majority of psychological subjects had been “western, educated, industrialised, rich and democratic”, or ‘Weird’ for short---
How East and West think in profoundly different ways

Just not Cricket

As White Australia and The Empire goes, so goes cricket. Someone is trying to resuscitate it. Old boys' private club is steadily killing international cricket

Bye Bye Macca's ?

Wow - this photo was taken in the Campsie mall - and _this was once a McDonald's_. I hadn't been to this mall since we moved to a different area. This McDonald's *always* had a line (ahem; _queue_), so I'm sure it didn't move for lack of business. This is the second McDonald's I've seen close around Sydney - the other one was in Cronulla, which was also a busy location. The linked article below may have some clues... _burgers are becoming more popular in Sydney!_ This trend cannot come too soon for my tastes. I am boggled at the number of mediocre to poor gyro shops trying to compete for business. There are two categories where immigrants seem to get into business with little interest in what they're selling - gyro shops (Middle Eastern / Mediterranean immigrants) and bakeries (Vietnamese / Chinese immigrants). Come to think of it - there are a lot of businesses in Australia where the proprietors don't seem to give a shit about what they're selling - it's just a living for them, and I'm amazed they're able to stay in business with their attitude towards quality. Burger wars: McDonald's makes rare exit from Sydney CBD

Colonial burden

After encountering a psychopath and a highly positioned incompetent, I've come to the conclusion that England's colonial experiments are still playing out. To the new lands of North America went religious fanatics and businessmen who chafed under England's hierarchy. To the new lands in the South Pacific went not just criminals, but authorities who had taken their power a bit to far and engaged in questionable practices and pompous authoritarianism. After all, dealing with criminals required a degree of authoritarianism, and what safer place for pedophiles than in a colony containing only adult prisoners? (never mind the local savages)

Fast forward 250 years... [Former Headmaster Ian] Paterson stated that he was not aware that it was a crime for a teacher to grope or sexually proposition a student. ...current headmaster John Weeks stated that the school had changed considerably since the end of Paterson's period in the role and that Knox's Paterson Centre for Ethics and Business Studies would be renamed. [Weeks] was questioned over why he had not sacked the teacher who was arrested in 2009 despite having received allegations in 2007 that the teacher had behaved improperly with a student during the 1980s. -Royal Commission Hearings

In the United States, I have worked for some rather lackluster businesses who investigate complaints of wrongdoing by Supervisor X by going to Supervisor X and asking "Are you having any problems?"

Of course Supervisor X says, "No - no problems! And I know who reported this, I'll take care of them." The messenger is shot and the company continues its slide into less than mediocrity. Imagine an entire country whose bureaucratic heritage and ongoing despotic lineage is composed of those who were politely asked to leave England. ‘He Touched Us All,’ Knox Grammar Pays Tribute To Paedophile Teacher

Disease burden is the impact of a health problem as measured by financial cost, mortality, morbidity, or other indicators. It is often quantified in terms of quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) or disability-adjusted life years (DALYs), both of which quantify the number of years lost due to disease (YLDs). - Wikipedia