CalamityJoe

It's not Australian construction, it would seem to to be a Western country issue, or one potentially affecting any nuclear construction.

See Flamanville 3 ( https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-a-f/france.aspx Under "new nuclear capacity"). It was started in 2007, and was estimated to be completed in 2012, but it's still not completed. It's currently scheduled to begin operating in 2024.

Oma powerplant in Japan was started in 2010, and is currently scheduled to be completed in 2026. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%8Cma_Nuclear_Power_Plant

South Korea's new Hanul reactors look like they've taken about 10 years each. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanul_Nuclear_Power_Plant (The table in section "Reactors" might be interesting, as it shows the pre-2000 reactors taking only about 5 years to complete)

Are you able to link the source document?

However, as an example of why nuclear is seen as risky, time-consuming and subject to massive cost blowout and time delays, see Flamanville 3 ( https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-a-f/france.aspx Under "new nuclear capacity")

It's gone from being a project started in 2004 to build a 1650MWe plant costing 4.2 billion euros (in 2020 euros), to an estimated completion date of 2024, at 13.2 billion euros.

And this is France, a country that is very familiar and well-versed with building nuclear reactors.

Without the source document, this may well be the example you use from your 2nd bullet point. But I wouldn't have called this a startup.

Yep.

The best we got was that he likely won't rewarded for it.

"On Friday, a new pay determination that could seek to strip secretaries of their entitlements if they breach the public service code of conduct was signed off by the Remuneration Tribunal. "

The Guardian had a better way of explaining it.

"On Friday, the government’s salary umpire, the Remuneration Tribunal, quietly made a ruling revoking a requirement that secretaries and agency heads receive a payout if they’re sacked for breaching the rules."

Imagine that.

Before Friday last week, a Department Secretary purposely and flagrantly breaking the rules could expect a payout for doing so.

I'm sure they get to keep the money they received while on paid leave pending any inquiry, which makes the arguments for penalties and fines even stronger.

It's simply less value for money these days. And government economic policy over the last 30 years has made it very clear they believe universities are more a personal empowerment vehicle, rather than a national benefit (through having a higher proportion of the population university educated).

On one hand, it's become common knowledge having a degree doesn't automatically get you a decent job, let alone a decent job, like many millennials and gen y were socialised to believe.

On the other hand, the quality of teaching has gone down, while the user-pays cost, even if it's via HECS, has gone up substantially, at the same time that people know it's going to be extremely hard to save up to buy a home these days, even with access to the bank of Mum and Dad.

Many younger people have given up on the feasibility of owning their own home till mum or dad dies, so there's less push for those people to spend money and time on increasing their earning power. That dream of earning your own home on your own effort is very much dying.

Additionally, those that are still inclined to earn enough to afford their own home, are having to judge whether the larger HECS loans, and mandatory repayments, will affect their ability to take out and pay off the larger loans now needed to buy a home.

Our university system has Americanised to a much more user-pays system, where students are expected to take on larger loans (even if it's HECS), as the government has continually withdrawn or starved funding for the sector over 30 odd years, and universities have responded by casualising its workforce, and getting rid of tenure for academics, so that the standard of teaching has fallen badly.

Not to mention the implementation of a private company-style economic model for universities, so at the same time as being starved of funding, they're being encouraged to chase international students to make up that funding, which has affected academic integrity badly, and redirected funding from the quality of their teaching and academics, to more flashy but extremely expensive capital investments like new buildings and facilities. Which are nice if the money is available, but generally it's come from badly-needed areas elsewhere within the University.

Imagine if a new funding model was proposed for our hospitals, where government reduced overall funding, but hospitals could make up the shortfall by advertising and encouraging international patients to have treatment with them. Obviously the quality and availability of treatment for domestic patients would suffer to some degree, as focus would go towards attracting international patients to help pay for those domestic patients. But it would be very easy for hospitals to lose focus on the big picture, and instead begin to see attracting international patients as the end goal, rather than a means to make treatment for available to more domestic patients.

Many classes are taught by PhD candidates or recent graduates, who are on insecure semester to semester contracts, often signed only weeks before a semester begins, and there are reports many are expected to only allocate, (or at least, will only be paid for) 10 minutes or less per student essay, and 5 minutes or less for other assessments. What sort of valid individualised feedback and recommendations for improvement can you give within that timeframe?

I'm going to assume it's an autocorrect issue, but just for those not familiar with Australia's university student funding system and want to websearch it, it's HECS, not hex.

It's not government related at all, it's an industry-created body, formed by members of the alcohol and beverage industry, to self-regulate their advertising material.

And yes, extremely cushy. Like the article said, it's created a voluntary code with no fines or penalties on its members, and was only spurred to action by a viral story of outrage and complaints spreading on social media. Probably mostly consists of board members who attend a few days a year and one or two employees who just press yes/approve on whatever they're sent.

"Alcohol Beverages Advertising Code had given pre-approval for Hard Solo as an appropriate product." Only to backflip quickly under actual political and media scrutiny once it's release became public knowledge.

Even it's response to one complaint's suggestion that hard solo sounds like Han solo - and therefore potentially evoked associations with stars wars in the minds of some kids - was petty.

"the packaging doesn’t appeal to minors by having “a similar name to [a] Star Wars character”. How do they know that? I myself saw Han Solo at first glance, and thought of the fairly recent Han Solo movie -with black and yellow stencil font- before re-reading it as Hard Solo.

Given they didn't detect anything wrong with mimicking a soft drink before, I don't think they have any legitimacy to arbitrarily dismiss other potential associations, especially when the colours pretty much match exactly the title schema of the Han Solo and Star Wars movies.

Anyway (I got distracted sorry), the article itself has people stating this is why industry self-regulation doesn't work, and why an actual government body with a mandatory code and penalties should be in place.

But, its much cheaper for government not to, since then government would need to fund the new body and it's employees, and spend time drawing up and debating relevant legislation and regulatory powers, whereas ABAC is funded by its member companies.

Haha yeah, in 200 words summarising an 800 word article, it's managed to skirt around all the meat of the article, so we don't actually know what the issue was, just peripheral mentions that Centrepay is somehow involved, a fair amount of money and customers are possibly involved, and the company doesn't want to comment, essentially. None of which tells us what was going wrong. We get more of an idea from the original title!

Very bad bot!

That's the one.

"See, they are McDonald's, I'm McDowells... They got the golden arches, mine is the golden arcs.They got the Big Mac. I got the Big Mick... But they use a sesame seed bun. My buns have no seeds."

Think of it like subsidised medication.

If your medication costs $10 a month, and easily accessible at any pharmacy due to being subsidised and controlled by government regulation, it's unlikely the average person will skip medication, prescribed by a doctor, intended to improve your health and wellbeing. There is a low barrier to compliance.

Now if that medication isn't subsidised, and costs you $80 a month, or only available at very few pharmacies, there is now a high barrier to compliance. It's more likely the average person will skip a month's medication here and there simply because of the cost of complying. People have to exercise high levels of personal responsibility and clear-headed, logical decision making, weighing a tangible immediate loss ($80) that may put other essentials at risk (food, housing, etc) vs an intangible possibility of future health deterioration. Individual health suffers, and national overall health and wellbeing decrease as well.

A mandatory law or regulation banning, or restricting access to a good, (like engineered stone) creates a low barrier of compliance to the individuals exposed to the potential health risk. Customers are not allowed to demand they use the product. The product is not easily available as a cheaper alternative to other products. A boss can't demand an employee use it. The question and decision making over its use is taken away from the individual.

Whereas if the produ t is legal or unregulated, and you're a tradie, and a customer demand its use, or it's significantly cheaper to purchase, and/ or highly available in the supply chain, there's a high barrier to compliance, since all that decision making is on the individual tradie to resist a tangible, immediate and easily accessed financial benefit, over the intangible potentiality of severe health issues 10-20+ years into the future.

Humans are generally not good at weighing tangible immediate vs intangible future issues against each other, especially when subject to immediate stress or strain from financial, housing, medical, customer service, boss/company expectations etc.

Examples of bad grammar.

I definitely had the Enterprise/Faith of the Heart intro as the most discordant and off-putting combination I've been subjected too...

Until I started trying to watch Britannia. You'd be watching ancient Roman soldiers talking or swording it out with Celtic Britons and scarified druids against backdrops of mud daubed huts, thick untouched forests, primitive villages etc, and suddenly...you'd be hearing this upbeat folksy 1960s Beatles-like The Hurdy Gurdy Man.

And then you'd go straight back to the ancient Roman soldiers, druids, swords and Celtic style clothing and background.

This is a good example of that discordant transition https://youtube.com/watch?v=GNG9EU8eZj0

I also noticed the article seemed a little vague regarding ideal goals of an FTA between Australia and EU.

Seems like the EU mostly wanted Australia to agree to their geographical indicator rules (e.g. not allowed to use feta, Prosecco etc names) and for Australia to agree to much more ambitious climate action and sustainability targets.

So that kind of explains why they aren't too fussed about reaching an agreement with Australia (plus Australia upset France by withdrawing from its submarine deal the way it did), whereas Australia had a lot more to gain.

• Reducing or eliminating the current excise levels (7-12%) across industrial goods,
• increasing or eliminating altogether the allowed currently very restrictive quotas of agricultural goods that can be exported to EU, and
• building towards mutual recognition of professional licensing and registration, so workers can more easily move between EU and Australia.

But the EU being almost half a billion people vs our 26 million, we were never going to have very effective leverage I think.

(This link had better details https://www.claytonutz.com/knowledge/2022/july/free-trade-agreement-between-australia-and-the-european-union-back-on-the-table-with-some-caveats)