stevenjohns

The entire political position of the Greens starts and stops at the 'think of the children' line and regularly makes deals with the major parties even though they have hostile positions. This is most clearly demonstrated in the ongoing attacks on trivial things like recreational fishing and the extremist positions the Greens takes on firearms ownership. Keeping in mind that this position on firearms includes supporting draconian-level surveillance powers being given to police, which essentially vetos their at-face position against digital surveillance today.

Some of their other positions include wanting to tax fast food, additional taxes on alcohol and forceful reacquisition of private service providers. This goes as far as giving the UN powers over Australian legislation and directly reducing Australia's sovereignty -- even for military defence[1]. Again -- hardly interested in civil liberties.

Nonsense. The problem is that the minority parties who oppose overreach like this are treated as dirty (Liberal Democratic Party) and the major parties all support crap like this. And we'll stay in this situation until the focus turns away from trying to ban recreational fishing[0] and steers back towards civil liberties. Of course, any mention of civil liberties today has you called an extremist in Australia by almost every single political party from Labour to the Greens.

> "Mitchell Baker, Mozilla's top executive, was paid $2.4m in 2018, [...] Payments to Baker have more than doubled in the last five years."

> "Mozilla recently announced that they would be dismissing 250 people."

Israel in and of itself is a "basketcase" country that continues to operate the world's largest open-air prison, flaunting every international directive with complete disregard for the UN and operates an apartheid-like system that sees it constantly at war with almost every other nation in the Middle East. It has been entrenched in civil war since its inception but somehow that's not enough to be considered a "basketcase" -- apparently.

> I saw more people wearing masks on Sydney trains at zero cases than I did in a US supermarket at the peak

That's because NSW had legislated the wearing of masks on trains until a couple of weeks ago. It wasn't voluntary, it was either wear a mask or get fined. And since the mask mandate was taken off -- surprise, surprise -- the overwhelming majority stopped wearing them on trains.

> Australian’s have made sacrifices for the greater good of all in the past (giving up guns for example)

"Giving up guns" never happened, what did happen was the forceful buyback of self-loading weapons from law abiding people who followed the law and turned them in. The people who didn't follow the law -- that is, the people who are actually responsible for the violent crime in the first place -- kept their guns and that's why self-loading firearms continue to be seized today from drug dealers and gangsters.

For some general statistics:

1. The number of homicides (and all violent crime) went up after the 1996 firearms buyback[0] and didn't go down until the police took actual action against crime in 2001

2. We have more firearms in 2021 than we did in 1996[1] and, surprising only some, less crime

The major difference in the Australian mindstate is how both major parties are centre-left so it's rare for major issues to be politicised, instead we just have politicians supporting the same things and bickering over otherwise trivial implementation details.