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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 5th, 2023

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  • I think it’s bringing up a couple of good points actually, that are worth considering when crafting public policy, and observing where our current society is heading.

    1. Treating and thinking of our current public education system as “the great equaliser”, such that children coming out of it operate at a roughly similar level once they leave, isn’t actually a reality.

    2. The outcomes of children, despite going through this “great equaliser” system, is actually still significantly affected by parents, meaning parents, and the way they interact with their children, still have a massive role in children’s outcomes.

    I think a lot of people, and teachers, have observed that parents appear to be increasingly farming out non-academic responsibilities onto the school system and teachers (e.g. discipline, life lessons, social expectations), let alone give time to help their child academically.

    And I imagine a lot of this is due to themselves being overwhelmed, under financial stress, or simply having to work more hours less securely to cover rapidly rising living expenses.

    All of this adds up to a picture that creating the conditions in our society where parents are under less pressure financially and mentally (presumably similar to conditions experienced by university educated and CEO parents) is likely to improve children’s educational outcomes, and their future outlook and experience in life.

    TLDR; it suggests easing life conditions for low socio-economic parents, such that it enables them to spend more time with their kids, would have more of an impact in improving their children’s life outcomes, rather than focusing money and resources entirely on the education system to do the same. Admittedly some assumptions in there. But worth investigating.

    And another reading could be that putting resources into making university more universally accessible, and something that is encouraged to be taken even by those pursuing careers not requiring university, and structured in a way to more easily and unobtrusively allow that, so that more parents had university experience, could be a better way of improving children’s educational outcomes than putting the same resources purely into public schooling and children.


  • ‘May’ is used, (in addition to other reasons) because otherwise it creates a legal obligation on the Voice, to make representations.

    Then that would have to be regulated by parliamentary legislation, stating exactly when and how often the Voice legally has to make representations (once a year? Twice a year?) and when exactly.

    Even your example of ‘the legislature and executive “shall receive” representations from the Voice’ sets up the necessity of creating parliamentary legistion to regulate, as they would be needed to define how often and in what form (Email? Formal oration to shared session of HoR and Senate? Document submitted to Cabinet? Oration to Cabinet in a specific ceremonial format? Or to Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet?) those representations are to be made, in order for parliament to “receive them”

    And “shall receive” still puts the legal/constitutional obligation on the Voice to come up with and present those representations, (even if they’ve nothing important to say at that time, or need more time to discuss an issue) and then obey all those parliamentary regulations in order to fulfil the constitutional obligations you’ve just created.

    The current wording allows that a formal constitutional body, calling itself the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice, may make representations to Parliament and the Executive, and therefore that those representations will be formally recognised as coming from a constitutionally enshrined and recognised Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander entity. The current wording doesn’t force them to make representations, and more importantly, doesn’t mean the creation and the Voice having to follow strict rules about when, how, and how often those representations are made.

    With the current wording, if the Voice decided they wanted to present their representation as a handwritten piece of paper hand-delivered to the Prime Minister, they could. Because any legislation that blocks the Voice from making a representation to the Executive would be found unconstitutional. And any legislation moderating and regulating how the Voice can make those representations could be potentially challenged in the High Court if they negatively impinge the Voice’s ability to make those representations.

    Basically, the current constitutional wording allows for the creation of an ATSI Voice that can’t be told to shut up.

    And also importantly, can’t be closed down and discontinued through a legislative act of parliament.


  • As pointed out in the link by spiffmeister, that’s concocted misinformation.

    More so though, even if one wasn’t able to accept that those points were false or misinformation, those points aren’t being added to the constitution by this vote.

    The wording is very clear. Nothing will be added to the constitution that relate to any of the points you raised.

    Your response would be like Australians in 1900 refusing to ratify the proposed constitution because they objected to the line in section 24 that the House of Representatives be “directly chosen by the people of the Commonwealth”, since one day, one of those “directly chosen” people might make outlandish, farfetched, or incendiary suggestions during their time in the House of Representatives.

    Or a local council refusing to allow a bakery to open in its township, because of the possibility that one day, a baker from that store might bake bad bread. Even if that bread was never sold, and never affected anyone, the mere possibility that bread might come out the oven bad within the next 20 years, is enough to convince the council they should never allow a bakery to open.


  • Or on purpose, in this case.

    Rebranding at this level sounds very much like purposeful destruction of an existing resource and company, rather than an attempt to make the company any better, successful, or more profitable.

    I’m starting to wonder if the Saudis have told him they’ll reimburse any of his personal losses from his stock buy, in return for sinking and destroying the company.

    It just seems like the Musk buy, once it happened, has been too effective a means of destroying a platform that was previously used extensively by protestors and activists to organise mass group activity against governments and authorities.

    It would certainly be my answer now to those regular Reddit questions like “what’s the one conspiracy theory you actually believe is true?”


  • Yep. I wasn’t aware that I had a habit of just ending a conversation with co-workers and walking away (and honestly believing and remembering it had finished) when it was getting into difficult or emotional territory.

    Several years later I found out I had undiagnosed autism, but at the time, was confronting but extremely helpful when the supervisor scheduled a meeting with me and a co-worker to make me aware of that behaviour, and especially that this particular co-worker considered it extremely rude and disrespectful towards her. It had never occurred to me that walking away might be taken that way, but also more importantly, that those conversations weren’t actually finished.

    The co-worker felt much better after learning that it wasn’t disrespect towards her, but me apparently not being able to deal with difficult or emotional conversations, and my brain appearing to completely excise those memories of the end of those conversations at the same time as removing me from the situation.

    If I’d found out about it by social media, or overhearing others calling me a misogynist (probably because it was the female coworkers that tended towards emotional or confronting conversation) or weird, I can imagine getting instantly defensive and me not believing them, or thinking that they were over exaggerating, misinterpreting etc. Basically, that the problem was them, not me.

    It would have been an impossible leap, while feeling attacked “socially” and indirectly, for me to realise on my own, and then admit, that my brain was doing something weird and unusual, and that I couldn’t trust it’s recall in those situations.