# Australia is doing well!



## Guest (Nov 1, 2011)

I've been used to some negative comments about Australia over the years, especially from music-lovers (surprisingly). So, I submit this little news item which shows why so many people from all over the world are trying their hardest to come here to live:

http://www.smh.com.au/executive-style/luxury/australians-the-worlds-wealthiest-20111101-1mt2r.html


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## Chris (Jun 1, 2010)

CountenanceAnglaise said:


> I've been used to some negative comments about Australia over the years, especially from music-lovers (surprisingly). So, I submit this little news item which shows why so many people from all over the world are trying their hardest to come here to live:
> 
> http://www.smh.com.au/executive-style/luxury/australians-the-worlds-wealthiest-20111101-1mt2r.html


All this wealth is a poor compensation for being overrun with man-eating spiders


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

Chris said:


> All this wealth is a poor compensation for being overrun with man-eating spiders


The flies, man, the flies. I was there only a month or so, and I had the Australian salute down pat.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Yeah, we are doing well overall, but the gap between rich and poor is & has been widening for a while now. This line from the article kind of says it all - "The report also says Australian wealth is highly skewed towards real estate assets." This is an issue, the high cost of housing in our cities, esp. on the East coast, as well as the fact that there's a housing shortage, etc. The article is kind of simplifying things but yes, it's good to be positive about where we compared to the rest of the world (eg. Spain & Greece, where (poor) financial management has left a lot to be desired to say the least)...


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## Guest (Nov 1, 2011)

Sid, don't forget the good old USA which has the "working poor" - people who go to work to get the same as folk in Australia on unemployment benefits. Australia and Switzerland are top of the wealth tree at the moment, no 'ifs' or 'buts'. Real estate, shares or lottery - wealth is wealth. (I'll tell you more via PM.)

I loved the jokers in the earlier comments about the man-eating spiders and the flies..oh yes, those flies...why do you think I'm living in Vienna?!! I must return in a little over 6 weeks after 11 months in Vienna and neither flies nor spiders nor wealth are incentive enough for me to feel cheerful about giving up what I've experienced here!! All good things must come to an end...


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## HarpsichordConcerto (Jan 1, 2010)

"The widening gap between the rich and poor" ... 

Well, of course. There is only a finite bottom level of wealth the poor can have, which is $0.


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## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

It was Australia where Ridge punched Rick into the snout for going to far with Phoebe and Brooke broke their marriage plans because if that, you call this "doing fine"? I HATE YOU, AUSTRALIA, FOR SPOILING RIDGE'S HAPPINESS


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## Tapkaara (Apr 18, 2006)

I am SOOO happy that Australia is doing well.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

I love it in Australia, but I wish they had more water fountains.  Where I live there are water fountains next to every bathroom pretty much so you don't have to fork over 3 or 4 dollars whenever you are thirsty. On top of that, my kidneys are bad too so I need more water than the average person.


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## HarpsichordConcerto (Jan 1, 2010)

violadude said:


> I love it in Australia, but I wish they had more water fountains.  Where I live there are water fountains next to every bathroom pretty much so you don't have to fork over 3 or 4 dollars whenever you are thirsty. On top of that, my kidneys are bad too so I need more water than the average person.


Water tastes noticeably different between our States and Territories. I think Sydney water tastes the most "fresh" even after boiling (I avoid tap water where possible). It's probably all perception. But glad you liked our water. :tiphat:


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## Amfibius (Jul 19, 2006)

So many people are trying their best to come here? Unfortunately it is mostly asylum seekers and people from third world countries who are trying their best to come here. Our best and brightest go to Europe and the USA for better opportunities. Not me, i'm stuck here ... that's because i'm second rate


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

CountenanceAnglaise said:


> Sid, don't forget the good old USA which has the "working poor" - people who go to work to get the same as folk in Australia on unemployment benefits. Australia and Switzerland are top of the wealth tree at the moment, no 'ifs' or 'buts'. Real estate, shares or lottery - wealth is wealth. (I'll tell you more via PM.)...


I agree that comparable to places like the USA eg. in terms of less marked social division/stratification, it's good here. But in other comparisons, eg. the cost of living, Sydney is amongst the most expensive cities to live in on the planet. Depends what you compare, we can compare anything we want. Job security is also a thing of the past here, largely. Just look at the recent strikes with Qantas, our national airline.



violadude said:


> I love it in Australia, but I wish they had more water fountains.  Where I live there are water fountains next to every bathroom pretty much so you don't have to fork over 3 or 4 dollars whenever you are thirsty. On top of that, my kidneys are bad too so I need more water than the average person.


There were more drinking fountains here a decade or two back but they were constantly being vandalised, probably by goons hired by nearby business owners in the dead of the night. That's when bottled water came in in a big way, strangely enough. I'd hazard a guess that due to increasing costs of maintenance, local councils gave up the ghost with water fountains. Not good for many reasons, tap water is better in some ways than bottled, eg. the latter lacks flouride which prevents tooth decay, a lot of young people who hardly drink tapwater now are getting tooth decay due to that in part...


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## HarpsichordConcerto (Jan 1, 2010)

Amfibius said:


> So many people are trying their best to come here? Unfortunately it is mostly asylum seekers and people from third world countries who are trying their best to come here. Our best and brightest go to Europe and the USA for better opportunities. Not me, i'm stuck here ... that's because i'm second rate


And who pays for their stay before they get jobs? You guessed it. We should simply turn the boats back. It would deter the illegal activity of people smuggling and solve a lot of these problems. Most are of them are economic migrants coming in the illegal way, not genuine refugees.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Amfibius said:


> ...it is mostly asylum seekers and people from third world countries who are trying their best to come here...


Um, the biggest group of people staying here illegally are those who overstay their visas & end up living here. Yep, they're not "people of colour" to be politically correct, they are from mother England (eg. the UK). If we want to do the comparing game properly, Europe, UK, USA get far far more refugees from third world countries (eg. the Mexicans in the USA) than we do. We get a tiny proportion of what they get. But it's fodder for our tabloids and talk back radio shock jocks, so it's all good, ain't it?...


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## HarpsichordConcerto (Jan 1, 2010)

Sid James said:


> Um, the biggest group of people staying here illegally are those who overstay their visas & end up living here. Yep, they're not "people of colour" to be politically correct, they are from mother England (eg. the UK). If we want to do the comparing game properly, Europe, UK, USA get far far more refugees from third world countries (eg. the Mexicans in the USA) than we do. We get a tiny proportion of what they get. But it's fodder for our tabloids and talk back radio shock jocks, so it's all good, ain't it?...


The majority who overstay their visas _do_ end up leaving the country eventually because of limited opportunities as an illegal. At least they might well be spending some money in the country while they are here, rather than be leeches and absorb resources coming in here by boat when the arrive. Cost of running the detention camps, the adminstration that run them and when they do get released into the country approved, what next? Communities out west in Sydney are now forming that cost the locals more than ever given the already dire straits of say, local infrastructure, schools and hospitals.

Illegal entry and overstay are both evils.


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## Amfibius (Jul 19, 2006)

Sid, I think you will find that the Mexican illegals do contribute to the US economy. And, if they are caught, they are deported. The U.S. equivalent of a border policy like Australia's at the moment would be to tear down the fences, abolish deportation, and offer public housing, free health care, free lawyers, welfare, and the right for the family to migrate for anybody who manages to gain entry illegally and claim to be an asylum seeker. 

I am not saying we shouldn't do our bit to help. Of course we should. If I walk past a beggar in the street, I sometimes drop him money. I contribute to charities. But God help one of them if they broke into my house and demanded to stay ...


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

What about the environmental/climate change situation down under? I read a pretty frightening article in Rolling Stone a few weeks ago. Droughts, floods, the Great Barrier Reef dying, etc...


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Amfibius said:


> Sid, I think you will find that the Mexican illegals do contribute to the US economy...


Basically, they're cheap labour, and now the trend in the USA has been to shed a blind eye to Mexican and other illegals from south of the border. It's economically expedient in some ways.



> ...The U.S. equivalent of a border policy like Australia's at the moment would be to tear down the fences, abolish deportation, and offer public housing, free health care, free lawyers, welfare, and the right for the family to migrate for anybody who manages to gain entry illegally and claim to be an asylum seeker...


Well, it happened after the Vietnam war, Vietnamese refugees came here by the boatload. The government had to accept them no matter what, as our troops were there fighting that war. Once you do this, you have to accept the consequences. Same now with the refugees coming from Afghanistan and Iraq, where we are involved with the war.

You can't have it both ways. The shock jocks who don't like the boats coming here, with a lot of people from those countries, are the biggest supporters of our troops being there. So you can't have your cake and eat it too. Once your troops invade a country, it is like an unwritten rule that you'll have to accept their refugees. Or maybe it's a written rule, I don't know. This kind of thing has been the situation in the post-1945 world.

In any case, I think these opinions of it being open slather for the refugees is being extreme. It's just another form of racism - do you know about the _White Australia Policy_? In any case, ask many people here & they're pretty p*ssed off at the antics of British backpackers. Eg. I lived in a house once adjoing a house full of them, they partied every weekend and I couldn't sleep. I know other people who are like this, they're fed up. Of course you don't get the shock jocks talking about this, because these people are white.

Anyway, I'm not going to argue anymore here. It is divisive and counter productive. I just wish that people would think instead of reading tabloids and listening to talk back radio which are basically serving certain vested interests and ideologies, while of course hypocritically claiming to be on the side of the Aussie battlers. Well it doesn't wash with me to be honest, or many of those whom I know...


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

starthrower said:


> What about the environmental/climate change situation down under? I read a pretty frightening article in Rolling Stone a few weeks ago. Droughts, floods, the Great Barrier Reef dying, etc...


Again, ask the writers of the tabloids and the shock jocks on talkback radio and climate change is a myth. Esp. since the government introduced a carbon tax, the deniers now have a political target, for good or bad reason. I don't know if it was the right way or right time to deal with the issue, or if they had a firm mandate, but something had/has to be done. Denial is not a solution, imo. But anyway, I hope this doesn't start the ball rolling for another endless thread powered mainly by those sprouting various political ideologies as against simple commonsense.

I think up to a third of the Great Barrier Reef is "dead" now...it's predicted to die out totally by 2050 if things continue as they are now...


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## HarpsichordConcerto (Jan 1, 2010)

Sid James said:


> Well, it happened after the Vietnam war, Vietnamese refugees came here by the boatload. The government had to accept them no matter what, as our troops were there fighting that war. Once you do this, you have to accept the consequences. Same now with the refugees coming from Afghanistan and Iraq, where we are involved with the war.


Not quite. Many of the boats are from Pakistan, Sri Lanka not Afghanistan and Iraq (although boats do come from there). Economic migrants who pay thousands of dollars to get on the junk boats.


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## HarpsichordConcerto (Jan 1, 2010)

Amfibius said:


> If I walk past a beggar in the street, I sometimes drop him money. ...


I don't. If they speak to me to beg for money, then I respond with a valuable advice: "go get a job".


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

Sid James said:


> Again, ask the writers of the tabloids and the shock jocks on talkback radio and climate change is a myth. Esp. since the government introduced a carbon tax, the deniers now have a political target, for good or bad reason. I don't know if it was the right way or right time to deal with the issue, or if they had a firm mandate, but something had/has to be done. Denial is not a solution, imo. But anyway, I hope this doesn't start the ball rolling for another endless thread powered mainly by those sprouting various political ideologies as against simple commonsense.
> 
> I think up to a third of the Great Barrier Reef is "dead" now...it's predicted to die out totally by 2050 if things continue as they are now...


It's unfortunate that people are still buying into these phony debates. Right now much of the northeast US is paralyzed by a massive power outage due to a huge snowstorm. A huge snowstorm in October that dumped up to 30 inches in places like Connecticut. I've lived in New York all my life and I've never seen this kind of thing before. The past two winters dumped huge amounts of snow on Virginia and Maryland. In September we had a hurricane that flooded Vermont, and parts of New York State. Massive ice shelfs are melting in the Canadian arctic, yet people are still in denial. I don't get it?


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## Vaneyes (May 11, 2010)

Let's all just hunker down and listen to CDs.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

^^^^^^^^^

Might as well! It's not like civilization is going to grind to a halt to save the planet.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

starthrower said:


> It's unfortunate that people are still buying into these phony debates...


Yes, but what angers me greatly, although I'm not able to do a thing about it (except not listen to them or read them) is that the shock jocks and tabloid editorialists do not disclose their conflicts of interests. Eg. that they are literally sponsored by various corporations and are hob-nobbing with those from the big end of town. This was revealed about 10 years ago when the "cash for comments" scandal happened, some of the shock jocks were exposed and fined for doing advertorials and not disclosing their sponsors, they were saying things to support them as if it was just "real" opinion, not paid for opinion. Of course, this is their life blood.

Some shock jocks do give back to the community - eg. Alan Jones here, he has done a lot for various charitable causes, so that's good, but I don't think he cares about the environment, environmentalists are all a bunch of enviro-nazis in his book.

I'm saddened to say that even some members of my family believe this rubbish and when these issues come up in conversation I have to bite my tongue big time. It seems if you speak the truth or commonsense, people get angry...


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## Almaviva (Aug 13, 2010)

"And, if they are caught, they are deported." (Re: Mexicans in the US)
That's not exactly true. Mostly, only the criminals are deported. The vast majority of hard-working and otherwise law abiding (except for immigration law) undocumented Mexicans who are caught are released back to the streets with a notice to appear in court (which of course, they don't do). The reality is that the US lacks enough enforcement agents to deport all cases so they focus on those who have a criminal background.


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## graaf (Dec 12, 2009)

Which reminds me of the fresh episode of South Park (you can watch full episode on their official website).


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