Which one of those would you rather live near? And why do they get held to different standards?

A lot of our coal power plants are just a hundred metres from suburbs full of homes. We also have rules that allow The coal plant below was across the highway from an entire town (thankfully, shut down and did so ahead of schedule because it was too expensive to be financially viable).

The smoke coming out of the coal power plants is known to be toxic and kills an estimated 8 million people per year globally. Australia allows coal plants to emit those toxins at 10x higher levels than other countries and we regularly fine coal power stations for exceeding the limits placed on them.

The second one is well within 2km (NSW’s new limit) of some farm houses which protested their construction, supposedly because they’d get cancer. There wouldn’t be many places in Australia that have suitable winds without being within 2km of a house. Realistically the only real potential problem is a power plant might fall over and land on a cow. One of them caught fire once… but all of the fire was at the top of the tower and it didn’t reach the ground. They do make a bit of noise, but less than, say, cars driving down a road.

They have a draft map of suitable locations for wind turbines and then filled the map with shades of green. Where green, for some reason, is a location where your application is likely to be denied.

They are supposedly using red for sites that are “desirable” for wind turbines… supposedly because that’s just according to the key on the map. There is literally no red on the map that I can see.

Keep in mind most of NSW doesn’t even have any reliable wind at all - probably the grey area of the map. To me it sends a clear message NSW just isn’t planning to allow wind power at all. They are going to keep burning fossil fuel as long as they possibly can.

I don’t think the ATO has such a list. They do maintain a list of payroll software but it’s ridiculously long (MYOB alone has dozens of entries) and I suspect it’s not a complete either.

https://softwaredevelopers.ato.gov.au/product-register

They don’t list wether any of it runs on linux, or which ones even work at all… and in particular if you have employees then you need to be careful as calculating the wrong amount of pay (or superannuation) could be classified as wage theft, and you can go to jail for that.

If you’re just doing your own tax, then it’s a lot easier and the penalty for an honest mistake is reasonable (often no penalty at all…). You could just do it all on paper without any issues, or an openoffice spreadsheet, or free/open source software like ledger-cli.org.

The critical feature of MYOB (and Xero), that’s largely missing in other options, is integration with the Australian Taxation Office.

You can easily enter all your business activities, then when it’s tax time double check all your data and simply click a button to file it with the government.

Aside from those two, the only options I know of are a lot more expensive and intended for use by full time accountants (employees or external contractors). MYOB doesn’t work on Linux and Xero, which is web based, is sadly lacking features. MYOB also has a web based version but as far as I know it’s even more basic than Xero.

This. Housing is definitely a human right and it is generally provided in Australia.

Where it gets more complex is how much should housing cost and what quality of housing should people get for their money? For example can you afford a house to yourself, or do you need to live with other people and share the rent? Maybe even share a bedroom?

Australia doesn’t have a shortage of housing, what we have is a shortage of affordable housing. As in, some people aren’t able to pay for the houses that they want to live in and they aren’t willing to live in the ones that they can afford.

Domestic violence is the leading cause of homelessness in Australia. Victims of that often do have a home but it’s not a safe one, so they’re actually better off on the street. With help, these victims can find a home (and help is available).

NBN should take over wireless networks. Telstra starts at $62 - which is far too much especially since everyone has wifi most of the day, and nobody else offers reliable service.

The particular foreigner was hardly polite company… he actually had a visa until he was found guilty of a crime that, if he was a citizen, might have sent him to prison for life.

I didn’t even know it was happening until the news stories about interest rates potentially rising on the day of the race.

Not sure about other states, but in QLD you are required to “request consent” from the body corporate but it is illegal for them to say no. The only option the body corp has is to instruct you where to put the panels and even then, they have to be reasonable - for example if there’s no space on the roof above your apartment, maybe because it’s full of panels already, they have to allow you to put panels somewhere else such as on common property.

My roof is over 30 years old and has shade, installing solar was cheap (they took 4 hours) and despite the shade generates more power than I can use.

At this point I think you’re crazy if you don’t have solar on the roof. Why buy electricity when you can get it almost for free?

Even rentals - landlords are allowed to raise the rent by more than the cost of installing the panels, and tenants will save thousands of dollars on their electricity bill, meaning they stand to gain just as much financially as the landlord even after paying extra rent.