They are brilliant. Those little NPR light rigids are much easier to drive than people realise. Available with an automated manual, good turning circle and great visibility. Sure at 100kmh they are pretty loud and bumpy (the little 3L 4cylinder at 2800rpm), but if your in say Melbourne or Sydney, most driving is 80kmh and below. If you do a lot of highway, the 5.2L 4 cylinder goes well with a 6 speed and much more aggressive engine breaking.

Don’t get me wrong generally I see labour policies favourably. I vote prodominantly green for context. What irks me is that it’s party first, public second. With a razor thin majority, they water down policies to not rock the boat in WA or in coal mining towns. I get it, and their strategists have a job to do, but it alienates inner city voters. As the federal government they have a big megaphone, but they run away and put things in the too hard basket. The media play that negative gearing or stable house prices is political suicide and they fall for it.

What is the Labor party, it lacks identity, and it feels like they are running on just not being Dutton. That’s a losing strategy.

Give some ear plugs to the whales

They are selling right hand drive converted Yank Tanks in Australia. They are double the price after shipping, rhd conversion and making them compliant. They don’t fit on our roads at all and are very restricted with payload and towing because of car licence weight restrictions. To tow more you need a truck license (light rigid).

They also have no spare parts here in Aus. Plenty of “overlanders” spending $25k to get it towed out of the outback, back to a major city and get parts flown in from Detroit. They are too heavy and wear out components on the dirt. They are built for highway only

If you want a “truck” in Aus, you buy an Isuzu or Mitsubishi cab-over truck which is like US$35,000 with a tray or box.

I’m calling it Labor won’t run in Griffith and Brisbane, let it go to Liberal and hope they can catch up in outer suburban seats. The majors simply cannot stomach forming a coalition with the Greens, even if they that means losing.

It’s kinda a game how much can you leave in your trolley when you press the pay button.

There’s an economic trade-off for everything. It’s not that we can’t have it happen, but roads like the Hume Highway and Pacific Highway will need to be completely redone with a widespread flattening of the road, gentler corners, constant surveillance of kangaroos and wombats on the road and a massive road maintenance workforce who can rapidly fix entire sections of the road.

This will require raising taxes or diverting funds, not worth it, especially when you have a road network that is at least 10 times the size of Germany, and with a quarter of the population.

As a motoring enthusiast, I love to go fast, but there’s a number of problems:

• a faster speed limit will not result in more cars per minute on a given road. As speeds increase, cars have to be more spread out.

• by no means are Australian roads are in a condition for ultra high speed limits. Our way of fixing pot holes is very touch and go. We have bumbs and undulations. On the Autobahn, they replace the entire tarmac, not just fill in a hole.

• a lot of our car fleet is not safe or designed to go 130kmh. A lot of older 4wds with big tyres, these were never designed to go fast. They have tiny brakes. In Germany a roadworthy is massive, and older cars are taken off the road.

• a faster speed will result in more CO2 emissions. Cars (especially SUVs), get worse fuel mileage above 100kmh as wind drag becomes a greater burden. EVs get exponentially worse range at high speeds.

• a lot of our car fleet tows caravans. That are not designed for that speeds.

• in NSW were their L platers can’t go faster than 90, this will be a massive speed differential.

• we have unique hazards such as wildlife and unlit highways that makes fast driving extremely dangerous.

• faster driving leads to more lethal crashes, especially in poor weather.

Door dasher in Australia here: after about 500 completed orders, I can say I’ve been tipped once, by this old lady like A$5.

Tipping is stupid. I’m not incentivised to do anything better. The app would just give everyone crappier orders if everyone tipped.

On country roads it is a lot less stressful for you and the trucker if you have a cb radio. You don’t need a massive areal and all wired in, just a little handheld for to communicate to a truck in front or behind.

Say you’re towing a caravan at 90kmh. You can just say to the truck behind “white land cruiser and van to linfox truck, I’m slow, in 3km there’s a overtaking area I’ll let you go around.”

The Liberal party literally wrote all their questions to the Yes campaign and they refused to answer any of them.

Lidia Thorpe is an example of someone who thinks they are superior to everyone else, and who thinks everyone owes her something.

But how did he take the picture?

Yamaha coming up their their products

I’ve ended a relationship because the girl drove like an impatient bafoon. If you have a superiority complex about a speed limit in residential areas, I’ll sit in the passenger seat railing about how you’re such a shit driver. Just drive the speed limit and gently.

Spark plugs just do them yourself. It’ll take 5 minutes. They might be trying to sell you the fancy iridium plugs, which are pointless in a 21 year old car. Brakes, if you don’t know how to to it, get a mechanic. It’s not hard, just takes a few hours if it’s you first time. Thousands of good YouTube videos if you want to do it yourself.

And people vote for Republicans? Are they retarded?

People will put change into a jar at the front of a cafe if they want, usually a dollar or so. Sometimes the money is for a charity run and not even for the cafe. At a fine dining restaurant yes you’d probably tip for great service.

At a bar for instance you wouldn’t tip. That would be strange.

If the Teals have the funding behind them of course, but because they are not an organised party, it would be difficult for them to run a campaign and gather enough support.

2022 was very good for the independents, but overall, that’s not a common result. The Teals pretty much fill the vacuum between Labour’s centre right MPs, and Dutton’s wacky right wingers

So they don’t want to get into government.

They won’t have a path to 76 seats if they can’t win back the Teal seats. Seems like they’ve given up on that, and they are trying to rally their right wing base in QLD just to keep hold of that region.