The trick or treaters in our area were so cautious not to be a nuisance - had a skeleton in the front garden bed but many walked by unsure because we didn’t have a sign specifically inviting them to knock for lollies. Those that did were very polite and thankful.
Least of our worries when it comes to malign US influence. What really needs a smack in the mouth is our Google/Apple/etc. dependency.
Well, he doesn’t provide much insight into what Albo’s game is, but goes on to make the slightly absurd argument that subs are “surplus to requirements” because our electronic warfare aircraft are such a potent capability on their own.
Interesting morsel here though:
According to references in a book by former foreign minister Bob Carr, I was told, the departments of PM&C, Treasury, Finance and Defence all opposed the purchase of the Growlers.
Wonder what the current view is on whether it’d have been a better to have more F-35s but no Growlers.
Was a little too young to have paid much attention at the time but I remember the cultural vibe thanks to Yothu Yindi etc. Lesson in politics came with the way his call for recognition was framed as a call for “white guilt”, which Keating explicitly rejected, but is still used today in order to polarise and poison the debate.
Yep, I’m not against proper age checking as long as it’s developed carefully with a secure/private by design mentality, but this government’s self-imposed deadline and focus on ticking political boxes will effectively put consumer choice and privacy far below the interests of tech companies and age assurance industry investors. It’s looking like a familiar story - outsourcing responsibility for the practical implementation to questionable interests and promising “industry standards” and “safeguards” to protect consumers which are then poorly enforced or not practical to enforce. That’ll replicate the fundamental shortcomings of our privacy regulation more broadly which have made poor policies/practices and data breaches so routine.
Getting a 404 on the link, at least in Firefox. Seems to need the number at the end:
Just watched it and yeah, that’s an even more depressing picture of how it was covered. The headlines I’d seen were:
“Social media age verification possible but laden with risks, landmark study warns” (ABC)
“Trial of tech that could be used to keep Australian under-16s off social media finds some errors ‘inevitable’” (Guardian)
Those stories at least didn’t just parrot the government’s spin - trouble is they made the study sound more sceptical/balanced than it is and didn’t question its credibility.
Haven’t seen much scrutiny over the “landmark” report released by the government a couple of weeks ago which forms the basis for the practical implementation of this system.
It’s not an academic study from a trusted institution or even just an established think tank, but from an organisation that sort of popped up out of nowhere some years ago which appears to provide paid certification services for age assurance companies, while also evidently offering “research” for governments on the viability of implementing these schemes. They’d previously done a similar report for the UK government, which makes me rather cynical about our government’s motivations in choosing them. The news reporting on its release was a bit strange as it made it sound like the report was quite sceptical, but you don’t need to spend much time looking at it to see it’s very much telling the government what it wanted to hear (given they’d already committed to implementing such a scheme).
The companies people will be required to provide their documents/biometrics to also kind of popped up out of nowhere, and these are the sorts of folks behind them: https://bylinetimes.com/2025/07/31/the-online-safety-act-is-forcing-brits-to-hand-over-personal-data-to-unregulated-overseas-corporations-with-questionable-privacy-records/
https://www.ethical.org.au/ has info on company ownership.
Wouldn’t be surprised to hear about Australian officials having profound misgivings around AUKUS behind closed doors, but our defence policy in recent years threw so many more eggs into the US alliance basket that it’s become “too big to fail” and “too late to change”, while our politics are stuck in such a narrow comfort zone (e.g. tax increases being taboo) that the changing conditions are likely to be met with a state of denial or crossing of fingers rather than bold adaptation.
This is particularly the case with “extras cover” which is really what the article is about. Have often seen it characterised as more of a savings plan than insurance, but it serves the industry to market it as a sort of extension to hospital cover.