The first problem with the last election was primarily that Murdoch went on an unrelenting attack on Labor. Coverage was so skewed that it wasn't funny.

The second problem was that there were too many back room preference deals. More people voted for Labor than the Liberal party but because the Liberal party had a lot of preference deals with smaller parties they received enough to get them _just_ past the post.

Voter apathy is still a huge problem in Australia and our mandatory voting system is part of it. I still prefer our Instant Runoff Voting system but the 2013 election is a good demonstration of how no system is perfect.

I've actually lived in a Muslim country, in fact the largest Muslim country in the world.

I lived and worked in Yogyakarta, Indonesia for 6 months. There were bars I could get beer in (in fact they were open longer than bars in Australia were permitted to), bacon was never hard to find. I was never forced to convert, people were friendly, I'd have no hesitation about going back to Yogya despite it being predominantly Muslim.

What the anti-Muslims dont want you to realise is that 99.9% of Muslims just want to get on with their daily lives. They've got jobs, families, homes, friends and dont really care that much about holy wars, much the same as 99.9% of Christians, Taoists, Shintoists, Atheists, LeVeyan Satanists and so forth. Using a few nutjobs as a representative of all Islam is like condemning all westerner by analysing the KKK.

Oh, and before someone trots out the old "well why dont they do something about the crazies, blah, blah, blah". They do speak out against them. I was in Yogya when 7/7 happened in London, every single person, regardless of creed was appalled, the problem with crazies is that they dont listen to sane people. Beyond this, I find those who are the first to point fingers at normal Muslims for doing nothing tend to be the last to act against the radical elements in our own society, mainly because they tend to support that radical element (so pot, kettle, black).

Actually most cars sold in Australia aren't built here.

Also an Australian made V6 Camry (we call it the Toyota Aurion) costs the same as it does in other countries. So Holden/GM are a really bad example especially considering that Australian made cars aren't really exported (Holden have exported less than 10,000 VE and VF commo's, Ford exported 0 Falcons in the same time).

Price differentials are due to car manufacturers deliberately pricing cars higher in Australia, not the minimum wage.

Honda is a better comparison (but doesn't support your theory). Holden is not Chevy. Most of the Holden fleet is being supplied by Opel (Germany) or Daewoo (GM Korea). None of the American made cars are available here and when local manufacturing ceases (good riddance, the subsidies and protectionism can now stop) Holden are replacing the Commo with the Opel Insignia OPC as GM America have plainly said we're not making the Camaro or Corvette in proper hand drive.

Which is entirely due to the manufacturer.

A Holden Barina spark does not cost any more to import into Australia from South Korea than a Chevy Spark does to import into the US.

In fact you'll find the Spark costing approximately the same in both our nations, around $13,000 USD. Same with most Kia's, Toyotas, Hyundais and so forth. Its only certain manufacturers (*cough* euro *cough*) who jack up the prices for Australia. This is the reason that grey imports for cars are likely to be approved in the near future.

Actually its the other way around. Finance and accounting tend to think IT workers are amongst the better people with money. Most IT workers have more discretionary funds than other forms of workers and tend to make better financial decisions. We tend not to rack up stupid debts and fall victim to "buy now, pay later" or "no money down" scams which end up being huge money sinks.

Now you would have had a point if you said "marketing and sales people" but being told that a marketing and sales person thinks you're wrong is a pretty good complement.

Nope, Its a mechanism by the Republican party to prevent voters from voting Democrat by giving them something else in the Republican party to vote for.

They really should have called it the "I can't believe it's not the Republican" party.

Australia has something similar called the National party. Because the Liberals (our conservatives) continually screw over rural Australia but rural Australia are too thick and pig headed to vote against them they vote National and pretend they aren't voting for the Libs.

Thats an example of the system working. The last thing the UK needs is a party like UKIP dictating terms to a hung parliament.

Price reserves are a price control.

Besides this, tenders are better as you aren't legally bound to accept an offer you dont like. Tenders have the advantage of not telling the purchaser what you will accept, so a purchaser may offer far in excess of what you wanted, also Auctions can turn against the seller when buyers refuse to bid (which is why you have to have a reserve).

Most insurance companies will not care if they had a job or not if it can be demonstrated that they were recently using the car for commercial purposes.

Definitely in Australia, if you had just finished an Uber job and run into the back of a Mercedes SL, even if you hadn't accepted another job your private insurance will legally be considered null and void as you were using the car for commercial purposes for that trip. The insurer of that SL will be permitted to come after you and Uber for the costs with no limitations.

I have no doubt insurers in other nations have similar regulations.

I wish we could get away from the "we need regulations, because what if *this* happened!" model of legislation.

Sigh,

Is that any worse than "we need regulation because this *has now* happened.

As much as you dont want to admit it, the scenario the GP used is not a "once in a million years" event. In fact its quite likely to happen even if we remove the "hopped up on stims". Hell, just a 4 hour shift without a break is enough to produce enough fatigue that it's the equivalent of driving with a BAC above 0.08%. Now consider an 8 or 12 hour shift.

It's a simple appeal to emotion

Your logical fallacies are stereotype threat and appeal to probability.

The problem is you're dead wrong with the appeal to probability.

A rational argument might analyze not only the possibility of this happening, but also its *likelyhood*.

A rational person will analyse it. The problem you have is that the numbers dont add up for you.

The risk of having an accident is not a fixed thing, it increases with the number of hours you spend on the road. In Uber's case it also increases with the number of drivers. Ordinary transport companies have mitigation procedures to reduce this loss ranging from additional training and increased insurance to punitive measures like employment suspension and termination and in many nations professional drivers are subject to higher punitive measures than private drivers (the penalty for a truck driver speeding is 3-5x that of an ordinary driver in Australia).

Uber is not doing anything to improve the safety of its drivers, so as more drivers spend more time on the road, the likelyhood of a fatal accident becomes ever more likely. Given that Uber drivers are not professional drivers, this increases the risk significantly.

So the risk of being injured or killed by an Uber driver is a real threat and has already surpassed the chance of being injured or killed by an ordinary private driver (which is greater than being injured or killed by a professional driver) by the simple fact that Uber drivers spend more time on the road, increasing fatigue. We'll ignore the extra pressure caused by time constraints, talking passengers and so forth for now, I dont really need those to make my point.

It's a simple case of "market liquidity"

Again you're wrong here. Uber is not competing on the same terms as ordinary taxi companies. They pay no tax, they dont pay for insurance, it is a false economy and the problem with false economies is that they always fail in the end. In Uber's case, we're just waiting for that one fatal crash in a country with decent liabilty laws. Taxi companies here are protected because they pay tax, license fees and insurance so this limits their liability, Uber receives no such protection so when that one fatal crash happens, insurance companies will be allowed off the leash to tear Uber to shreds. Uber being killed by regulation would be a far kinder death.

Because you like to drive.
Because you want to just pick up and drive somewhere.
Because you dont want to wait 15 minutes to take a 10 minute drive to the shop.
Because you live out in the suburbs or just outside of town.
Because you have kids and dont trust someone being paid less than minimum wage to drive safely.
Because you dislike the mafia-like organisation that illegal taxi operations inevitably become.

Those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head.

Ubiquitous and cheap taxis decrease the number of cars on the road. Medallions limiting taxis increase cars, not the other way around.

Reality disagrees with that assertion. London for a long time has had minicabs (private cars for hire) as well as an excellent public transport systems, London is truly a city where you can live without a car and they've still had to introduce congestion taxes to reduce the number of cars because people want to own a car, there are significant benefits to owning a car that outweigh the cost of car ownership.

If you wish to speak of morals and ethics, I suggest you go and live where illegal taxi services have been operating for decades. There are good reasons for taxi regulation and they've been quite effective at preventing illegal taxi services becoming organised crime.

No problems, I start at $80 per hour plus fuel. I start charging from the moment I leave my house.

BTW, you'll be getting picked up in a 2001 Nissan Silvia S15 that has been modified for performance with comfort not being a factor. It gets about 12L/100KM.

In my car, you may not touch the stereo or the air-conditioner. If you have strong opinions on politics, religion or immigration you are well advised to keep them to yourself.

What, you dont want to pay me to drive you in my car under my conditions... Remember that I enjoy driving, if you dont want to pay to share in my joy that's your problem.

Modular? Yeah not so much. I run a company that makes wire harnesses for the auto industry.

I think he meant computer wise. Talking about electronics such as wiring harnesses and the like, yep you're completely right. Even for manufacturers that try to get as much commonality across models as they can (Kia, Huyundai, Ford, GM) there is still huge differences that cant be avoided.

However when it comes to microcontrollers like ECU's, ABS controllers and so forth, very few manufacturers make bespoke hardware, most ECU's are from well known manufacturers like Bosch. Software is another story however.