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Come visit the new community over at !AusPublicService@aussie.zone

For what it is worth it was a great day out. Tasty food and people running around in dino and unicorn costumes. What more could you need ?

Yup, it is no longer the race that stops a nation.

I find most people are indifferent these days. If it wasn't a public holiday in Victoria I think it would slip into obscurity.

There are lots of Nup to the Cup! events coming up, some a bit too fancy for our tastes. I hope the campaign grows and kills the racing industry.

Between April and October, local residents reported ongoing issues

It is ridiculous they allowed her to continue being disruptive to neighbours for so long.

It's funny how neighbours that doorknock you or leave you a note about their upcoming event are never a problem.

But the douchebags at number 5 who like revving their bikes/trucks and must have doof-doof wherever they go live in a world surrounded by people pissed off at them. Must be nice.

I do wonder what the legal threshold is? And what sort of discretion can be applied? Someone cranking out bohemian rhapsody has to get a decent dB leeway over old mate with the Nickelback discography.

Assisted by officers from the EPA, police obtained a noise decibel reading high enough to warrant entering the premises and placing the woman under arrest.

I'm sure the massive stack of previous attendances made all the difference to the response, but I do find the idea amusing that this lady was playing her music loud enough that the cops actually went in and arrested her for it - must have been jolly loud...

Like that day when the neighbours' boy announced that he planned a party for his 18th and warned that it could get louder. I told him if they got too loud, I'd just get some real speakers on a truck from our companies' rental stock and would drown his party in old peoples' music.

Wasn't necessary, though. They were amazingly civilized at this party.

There is truth in that, as someone who also went to such a school (numbers dropped very noticeably in yr 11, either towards TAFE or simply leaving education as soon as legally possible).

Combining CIT and UC would indeed be a hard task to manage without scaring off those who are sick of schooling as they know it and desire more practical experience. The other end would have its own issues too as prestige does still play into people's university choices and the combined edifice would have to spend efforts on maintaining its reputation for research/academia to not scare off those prospective students.

I feel like, having grown up in a low socioeconomic school in NSW, that TAFE was a lifeline to so many students that did not want further academic study and could go there to learn a trade and not just fuck around for year 11 and 12. A good number of them should have left in year 10 for it imo. I'm not sure they would have had the same sentiment if that education was attached to a university where the norm is considered to be written assignments and exams.

University is just a word, and I'm sure it's possible that it could be well implemented by UC (likelihood of that is a different equation), but people will care about the name and what it implies.

Amazing how advanced economies can develop and organise the most complex of systems when it comes to money markets, surveillance and war weaponry but have been stumped for decades by plastic waste management. Can you tell where the profits are and social responsibility is not?

As far as I know, most compostable plastic is only compostable in a digester. It behaves like any other plastic in a landfill.

Regardless of the service availability, it's so complicated to determine what can be recycled/composted in an area that the vast majority of material ends up in the landfill stream. The only solution my employer has found is to have a team go through all the trash after each event to sort it into the correct streams. That, plus using durable vessels that get cleaned between events, allows a venue to have minimal landfill output. We only have one client that is willing to commit to that level of effort and cost.

Even if it does end up in a landfill on the end, it decomposes faster and more cleanly. It's still a net positive.

Now you work on the next part... Increasing that recycling and composting availability.

That seems to be what they're working towards here. The ACT already does do land tax for some blocks (basically residential that's not a PPOR) and I wouldn't be surprised to see them expand that at some point to cover the loss of stamp duty.

Yes! Abolish stamp duty. Tax land instead.

I am going to have to try that, it will be very amusing if it works.

You'll have to shout 'Hey Frog' next time!

Keeping fingers crossed for them. I'm cross-posting the article to Aussie Enviro. I really liked finding out that

It will be some years before scientists know how many released frogs have survived to breed.

But the technique to find out is a very simple and noisy one.

"We're very lucky in that one of the characteristics of corroboree frogs is that they'll respond to a loud sound," Dr Hunter explained.

"So we essentially just walk around yelling out, 'Hey frog!' and if they're there they will yell back to us."

The male frogs are the ones that return the call in mating season, allowing scientists to then count the number of eggs in the male's nest and calculate an estimate for the female population.

Not sure if they still have it but Tidbinbilla's visitor centre used to have a tank with corroboree frogs in it, they really are tiny little things (much smaller than the impression I'd previously had of them). Never seen one in the wild but I've been around a bit of the Brindabellas and Firey Range so it does make one wonder how many I've been past.

2 all stop trips a day. A lot of the trip time is spent at stations. More trips and express like services? Booking a seat is an issue as most seats seem to be booked by people closer to Sydney so more services are needed.

Be nice if they had a more convenient rail terminus than Kingston too

It was a pain running my suitcase a few dozen blocks from the bus stop when the last train out to Sydney's almost gone.

And add cheap, easy to buy tickets, integrate with opal or myway or something simple. And add a station in a more accessible Canberra location. And do more than 2 trips a day....

Pipe dream.

Under 4 hours. It's 3 hours by car. It's criminal that a rail upgrade now can't manage to beat cars

Some work there seems well overdue, the train takes a lot longer than the bus trip let alone compared to driving yourself. Plenty of talk about high speed rail lines in the far future but even just ok speed rail would attract more people. Be nice if they had a more convenient rail terminus than Kingston too but I can't see that changing anytime soon given how expensive it would be to extend the line closer to the city.