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http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/lookupMF/ACC2D18CC958BC7BCA2568A9001393AE

You made me check my facts ... I was wrong.

In 1996, the national debt was 298.8 Billion
In 2008, the nation debt was $1032 Billion!

The states didn't remove the taxes because the government didn't let the *full* money from the GST flow through to them.

there are a LOT of people who's way of life and experience require some form of protection. A gun is one of those things.

Another thing, when you're talking about the number of gun deaths, what about the crime rate? You quote VIOLENT crime... but what about overall crime. Hmm lets look!

http://www.gunsandcrime.org/auresult.html ... wait that can't be right it says the crime rate INCREASED... in fact it says the crime rate exploded... lets look at more references... this one must be flawed...

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=AU+crime+rate+gun+legislation&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f&oq=

The first link off the google search you provided is: http://www.breakthechain.org/exclusives/australiaguns.html I'll list a few stats for you.
Armed robberies:
1995 - 27.8%
1996 - 25.3%
1997 - 24.1%
1998 - 17.6%
1999 - 15.2%
2000 - 14.0%
There was a shocking 10% decrease in the space of 2 years? how can this be explained?

The most shocking statistic (for you) is that criminals are now targeting those who cant fight back in a fair fight. Criminals are cowards so crime against the elderly has increased whilst crime overall has decreased.

Also firearm hospitalisations have decreased. http://www.aic.gov.au/media/2001/20010402.html

The number of crimes against People and households is decreasing. http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/bb8db737e2af84b8ca2571780015701e/8D4BD468F3B92E33CA2573D2001089F8?opendocument
The relevent info is under "13.4 Victims of Crime 2005" Overall crime has dropped, the only form of crime to increase are assaults, assaults are up whilst gun related deaths and gun related hosptial adminssions are down. The rise in this statistic also means that more assaults were reported to police, I tend to like the fact that if I'm attacked I'm going to live to tell about it. My wallet can be replaced, knife wounds heal, a gun shot is forever.

It's littered with the same thing. You are WRONG. Your violent crime might be down but your crime went through the roof!!!!!

*Cough*

The US has laws in place that pretty much screws anyone who shoots their gun without using their brain.

Which laws are these pray tell.

Gang violence is rife amongst many of your cities and you continue to protest that people who cant keep their guns under control are punished. Gun crime is a daily occurrence in the US, a single gun related murder is national news here in Australia

But this is exactly my point, contrary to the opinions of many uninformed Americans, guns are not banned in Australia they are restricted. I have a license, I can go and get myself a hunting rifle during lunch if I wanted to, I used to own guns but I sold them when I quit my blue collar job to further my education (they were for sporting purposes). American gun nuts tend to like bringing up the point that guns are no more dangerous then cars (which is total BS, guns are orders of magnitude more dangerous then cars, most people involved in car accidents survive while firearm accidents tend to ki

Not gonna be a clean mode of transport if you factor in where the electricity is generated from.

Probably not. But at least you can attack the emmissions problem at a couple hundred of places instead of having to do it at 10 million places. That brings the problem down from totally hopeless to meerly hard.

OT: Why do the US media sites rank the medal table different from everyone else?

There are plenty of ways to slice it depending on who you want to show up on top.

It would be good if Slashdot stories provided some perspective.

When stories about small countries are posted, it is useful to know the population. The entire country of Israel has a population like a big city. There are only 7,282,000 people in Israel. There are only 5,499,000 Jews in Israel. There are only about 14,000,000 Jews in the entire world.

Slashdot often runs stories about New Zealand. There are only 4,270,605 people in all of New Zealand, both north and south islands.

There are only 21,382,480 people in Australia.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics will provide all the data you need. Our crime rate has gone down because of effective policing and our Gun Laws ensure that our gang wars are fought with Knives and Clubs not AK's and 9mm's.

In the 10 year period crime rates have actually gone down, not by much as gun crime was never at the pandemic levels as it is in the US. As long as any Australian can remember none of them have ever felt that guns were needed to solve problems.

Spend some time on this site.

Assaults are up from ~550 per 100,000 (in 1998) to over 2,600 per 100,000 people. (in 2005)

Gun use in the assaults is technically down...from 1.1% to 0.6%. In other words the difference is less than the MOE.

The percentage where a weapon was used is also up.

I replied to this further down as response but I just spent two hours researching this and sifting through source data so i'm going to post this higher.

I really hate the intellectual dishonesty on both sides of this issue.

Here in Australia guns were effectivly banned a decade ago...we have the harshest gun laws in the western world.

Homicide rates are declining at exactly the same rate as they were before laws were enacted...
http://www.aic.gov.au/research/homicide/homicideRate2.png [aic.gov.au]
http://www.smh.com.au/ffximage/2006/12/13/gr_guns_narrowweb__300x362,0.jpg [smh.com.au]

Pro and anti gun groups estimated between 2-7 million guns in the country before the ban.

~700,000 guns were handed in.

If you dont respect the law, why would you follow that particular one?

The vast vast majority of guncrime here is, and always was, suicide.

Last year alone...

# Accident 40
# Suicide 193
# Homicide 54
# Legal etc. 3

The Australian Bureau of statistics says that suicide by firearm has halved! Rejoice!

Oops suicide by hanging has now doubled...

http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/95553f4ed9b60a374a2568030012e707/161eb35db8be9152ca256f6a00733990/Body/0.75F0!OpenElement&FieldElemFormat=gif [abs.gov.au]

Oh Well, No matter! As long as a gun wasn't involved then that's not our problem.

On the other hand mass shootings have become non-existant.

One side says gun deaths have gone down, yay! Except those people are still dying...they're just hanging themselves or being bludgeoned or stabbed to death.

The other side says that it makes no difference, that gun crime will continue as criminals keep their guns. Yes, this is true. On the other hand your average mass shooter doesn't have a criminal mindset or connections, and wouldn't know where to get a gun if they wanted one.

So from our real world data...gun bans reduce mass shootings, no doubt. They have no effect on *general* homicide or suicide rates.

Then again in this country guns have never been anywhere near the top of the list of ways to kill someone. Knives and hands and feet hold that priviledge. 33% for knives, 18% for hands and 14% for guns (down a whopping 1% since the new gun laws a decade ago).

You've got more chance of being stabbed or bashed to death outside the bar than being shot, it's always been this way.

http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/rpp/77/rpp77.pdf [aic.gov.au]

So...
Half a billion dollars to reduce the homicide by firearm rate by 1%
BUT
No mass shootings for a decade.
BUT
Private citizens are now left merciless.
BUT
There is still probably over a million guns in the country.

Don't be fooled...by either side.

I really hate the intellectual dishonesty on both sides of this issue.

Here in Australia guns were effectivly banned a decade ago...we have the harshest gun laws in the western world.

Homicide rates are declining at exactly the same rate as they were before laws were enacted...
http://www.aic.gov.au/research/homicide/homicideRate2.png
http://www.smh.com.au/ffximage/2006/12/13/gr_guns_narrowweb__300x362,0.jpg

Pro and anti gun groups estimated between 2-7 million guns in the country before the ban.

~700,000 guns were handed in.

If you dont respect the law, why would you follow that particular one?

The vast vast majority of guncrime here is, and always was, suicide.

Last year alone...

# Accident 40
# Suicide 193
# Homicide 54
# Legal etc. 3

The Australian Bureau of statistics says that suicide by firearm has halved! Rejoice!

Oops suicide by hanging has now doubled...

http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/95553f4ed9b60a374a2568030012e707/161eb35db8be9152ca256f6a00733990/Body/0.75F0!OpenElement&FieldElemFormat=gif

Oh Well, No matter! As long as a gun wasn't involved then that's not our problem.

On the other hand mass shootings have become non-existant.

One side says gun deaths have gone down, yay! Except those people are still dying...they're just hanging themselves or being bludgeoned or stabbed to death.

The other side says that it makes no difference, that gun crime will continue as criminals keep their guns. Yes, this is true. On the other hand your average mass shooter doesn't have a criminal mindset or connections, and wouldn't know where to get a gun if they wanted one.

So from our real world data...gun bans reduce mass shootings, no doubt. They have no effect on homicide or suicide rates.

Then again in this country guns have never been anywhere near the top of the list of ways to kill someone. Knives and hands and feet hold that priviledge. 33% for knives, 18% for hands and 14% for guns (down 1% since the new gun laws a decade ago).

You've got more chance of being stabbed or bashed to death outside the bar than being shot.

http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/rpp/77/rpp77.pdf

Don't be fooled...by either side.

The linked article includes this statement:

"Twenty-six percent of English citizens -- roughly one-quarter of the population -- have been victimized by violent crime. Australia led the list with more than 30 percent of its population victimized."

I cannot speak for the UK, but I live in Australia and I can tell you that the 30% figure is utter crap - unless it includes getting wedgies in the school yard.

As for the gun lobby myth that violent crime exploded in Australia after gun controls were introduced, check out this bar chart of homicide rates for the period 1989 - 2000. The homicide rate is pretty much constant before and after gun control laws were introduced in 1996 (you can see when the laws were introduced because of the large spike in the homicide rate in Tasmania in 1996, due to the Port Arthur massacre. The gun control laws were introduced immediately after the massacre).

Maybe you will try to claim that the rates went up after 2000, however these figures show that it remained constant until 2004, the latest normalised figures I could find.

You should try getting your information from somewhere that doesn't have ads for books about the duty of self armament on its front page. Gun control laws may not have done much to reduce crime in Australia, but they certainly haven't done anything to increase it, despite a great deal of misinformation from the US gun lobby to the contrary.

Some of the so-called facts in TFA are a bit dodgy.

People who illegally download music would have their telephone and internet services cut off under a radical new plan proposed by the music industry.

About 80% of ISP end-users in Australia are using an ISP that is a different company to their telephone services provider. ARIA would have legal problems getting telephone services cut-off as well due to the requirement for Telstra(/rebadged phone provider) to provide emergency services capability to all landline nodes.

The value of CDs sold in Australia between January and March this year fell by more than 20 per cent - from $100 million to $80 million - compared with the first three months of 2006.

Of course, the fall in CD retail prices due to price pressure from online music sales has nothing to do with this. People can now buy just the tracks they want instead of getting an album-load of crap on CD.

Overall, CD sales revenue in 2006 fell by more than five per cent, yet ARIA focused on the growth in legitimate digital downloads, and the strong showing last year by home-grown acts.

Of course, competition from online music sales has nothing to do with this. People can now buy just the tracks they want instead of getting an album-load of crap on CD.

Ms Heindl said research showed 18 per cent of Australians engaged regularly in file-sharing, downloading an average 30 songs a month illegally.

Australian Bureau of Statistics Census figures show that only 18 percent of Australians have internet access. According to ARIA, now, every single Australian with internet access is a music pirate.

Some of the so-called facts in TFA are a bit dodgy.

People who illegally download music would have their telephone and internet services cut off under a radical new plan proposed by the music industry.

About 80% of ISP end-users in Australia are using an ISP that is a different company to their telephone services provider. ARIA would have legal problems getting telephone services cut-off as well due to the requirement for Telstra(/rebadged phone provider) to provide emergency services capability to all landline nodes.

The value of CDs sold in Australia between January and March this year fell by more than 20 per cent - from $100 million to $80 million - compared with the first three months of 2006.

Of course, the fall in CD retail prices due to price pressure from online music sales has nothing to do with this. People can now buy just the tracks they want instead of getting an album-load of crap on CD.

Overall, CD sales revenue in 2006 fell by more than five per cent, yet ARIA focused on the growth in legitimate digital downloads, and the strong showing last year by home-grown acts.

Of course, competition from online music sales has nothing to do with this. People can now buy just the tracks they want instead of getting an album-load of crap on CD.

Ms Heindl said research showed 18 per cent of Australians engaged regularly in file-sharing, downloading an average 30 songs a month illegally.

Australian Bureau of Statistics Census figures show that only 18 percent of Australians have internet access. According to ARIA, now, every single Australian with internet access is a music pirate.

They only managed to do that in the US.

"For the purposes of the law, the criteria of religion are twofold: first, belief in a
Supernatural Being, Thing or Principle; and second, the acceptance of canons of
conduct in order to give effect to that belief, though canons of conduct which
offend against the ordinary laws are outside the area of any immunity, privilege or
right conferred on the grounds of religion."

In comparison between Australia and the US the ratio of gun related deaths per million is about 2 (AU) to 10 (US). Australia manages about 40 gun deaths per year (21 million population). These were based on statistics provided by the Australian Bureau of Statistics http://www.abs.gov.au/ based on statistics between 1995 and 2005.

Our assault rifle ban was introduced in 1996 after 30 people were shot and killed at Port Arthur (there were only 2 wounded) and if you take away the 30 people killed in Port Arthur there was not major shift in crime or gun related deaths in the between 1996 and 1997). In fact the only real difference outside of normal fluctuations of crime (0.5% if I remember correctly) was a doubling in gun deaths caused by 30 people being shot on one day in 1996. I'd just like to debunk that myth before we get started

This being said as an Australian gun owner, Licensed with registered weapons, the US's biggest gun problem is with idiots that have guns. I get the impression that many Yanks dont know about gun safety and that safety laws such as ensuring a weapon is unloaded during transport or is stored in a safe that meets specifications (these two are Aussie laws) parent really enforced. So we have "rednecks" and "ganstas" (detestable people, I can at least tolerate rednecks.) that run around with guns doing stupid things like carrying loaded weapons (you shouldn't load a weapon until you are ready to fire it), pointing them at people and storing them loaded or in insecure locations. It these people IMO that would contribute to the majority of firearm deaths. Over here in Australia you need to get a license to own firearms which ensures you have at least some safety training (a bit of common sense doesn't hurt either).

A copy of an email I wrote to my federal member of parliament. I don't have much faith that it will be acknowledged let alone acted upon.

***********
I am writing to you as my Federal representative on a matter that has caused me some concern and distress. Our household has been selected to take part in the Australian Bureau of Statistics Time Use Survey 2006, and we were informed of this in writing roughly two weeks ago. On Monday October 23rd, an ABS employee named OMITTED came to our house and asked
my partner questions for roughly 40 minutes, and left us with diaries which must be filled out on Sunday the 29th and Monday the 30th of October. I have no issue with providing the ABS with answers to questions which are of statistical significance, and taking the time
and effort to do so accurately, however the nature of these diaries are
extremely invasive.

The diaries require that we report, in five minute increments over the entire 48 hour period the following information (quoted from the diaries):
- What was your main activity?
- Who did you do this for?
- What else were you doing at the same time?
- Where were you?
- Who was at home, or with you away from home?

The two example pages provided are very detailed and list personal main activities like "Had shower" and "Toilet". While intimacy and love making aren't explicitly included in the examples they are certainly implied since the following more mundane family activities are also listed: "Said goodbye to partner", "Dressed children", "Got kids ready for bed", "Read children a story".

I understand that this survey is compulsory under the Census and Statistics Act 1905. Section 14 provides penalties of $100 per day for refusing or failing to answer questions or fill out forms when requested to do so by the ABS unless one can cite religious beliefs. Section 10
specifically outlines the authority of the ABS to require that forms be filled out. Section 15 provides for penalties of $1000 for making false or misleading statements.

http://scaleplus.law.gov.au/html/pasteact/1/580/to p.htm
http://scaleplus.law.gov.au/html/pasteact/1/580/0/ PA000200.htm
http://scaleplus.law.gov.au/html/pasteact/1/580/0/ PA000210.htm
http://scaleplus.law.gov.au/html/pasteact/1/580/0/ PA000160.htm

I have also been reading documentation on the ABS web site that household surveys can be done anonymously and that I am not required to provide my name. Documentation we were provided with also states that we are not forced to give the ABS staff member our names, nor allow entry into our home. However the ABS staff member did ask for first names, and the diary my partner and I have been provided with clearly includes our first names on the front page. When I called the number listed on the Time Use Survey documentation and asked how I could remove my name, I was told that my only option was to scratch it out. I was also
explicitly told to leave all other information (which in connection with an address easily identifies me) in tact. Please see question 2 in the link below:

http://www.abs.gov.au/websitedbs/d3310114.nsf/4a25 6353001af3ed4b2562b760d9c9fca2571060079d60a!OpenDo cument

The information I have collected certainly seems to indicate that to
comply with the law those included in the survey must provide detailed information on a wide gamut of things of a very personal nature including intimate dealings with others. Until recently I had no idea that a citizen not convicted or su

Sorry to have offended, but with barely what -- five cities for your entire continent -- there is still some way to go on developing. Indeed, you only have just over 20 million residents... Anyway, what is your fertility rate down there (the children per sheila component)?

Similar, actually, goes for Canada -- their lands are vastly underpopulated. Although comparable in size with US, the country has only 33 million people or so...

You sure have electricity (and your own power plugs), but you don't have enough population density :-)

It is still legal to own a firearm as long you're
1. Not psychotic
2. Can get a license (see point #1 for details)
3. Have somewhere safe to keep it, which is a lockable safe bolted to your houses foundations (this prevents accidental shootings, the whole you're more likely to get shot by your own gun thing).

The ban on assault weapons came after the Port Arthur massacre (look it up on wikipedia, I'm not doing everything for you) where our national "death by firearm" rate tripled in one day (up from 10 per year to 30 in one day). Also, there were practically no wounded from the port Arthur shootings, only fatalities.

Australia is a safe place to live (please see only 10 shootings per year nationally), most Aussies people don't feel the need to carry guns (most Americans cant understand this, until they have lived in Australia for a while) and its easy to get a gun license so long as you are not psychotic/completely stupid which are exactly the kind of people who we don't want getting guns.

BTW, in the 10 years since the ban, there has been no 30 people massacre and no rise in crime it's remained around the same level regaurdless of the ban, if you don't believe me please look on the Australian Bureau of Statistics website for the relevant information
http://www.abs.gov.au/.

Average income, USA = approximatly $35,648.55 (2004)

Average weekly pay, New Zealand $586 * 52 weeks = $30472 (2005)

Now that I see it worked out, thats sorry reading. Thats a pitiful average income. I wonder about Australia.

Australian average weekly income $816.80 * 52 = $42432 (2006)

Oh! Thats a bit better! Maybe I should move to Australia rather than the US. I was thinking about working in the US for a little while, but Austalia doens't seem that bad and it isn't that far away.

Anyway, my point is that I (on average) earn less than someone in the US, dollar for dollar, but videogames are twice as expensive.

This will be a bit long, and I can only draw the dots for you (my conclusions are too inflammatory). If you are on this page, you are concerned about you privacy and security, and you deserve to know enough to make your own mind up about whether you are being well-served or not.

I feel able to comment on this because of my previous lives as:

1) Designer of well-known loyalty programs, both in Oz and other countries, both market analysis AND transactional. This was crossed with census data.

2) A former public servant who had MAJOR fights about non-compliance with privacy and accessibility of web sites.

3) I was competent enough in the 1980s to be invited to be the tech lead in an electronic warfare project, which I refused, and I've seen hints that Oz agencies have been snooped on by non-allies (hint May 2001).

Whether or not there is "Big Brother" malice by our double-plus-good government, very few agencies are up to the task of good data custodianship - and this opens things up for abuse. It's worth considering the commercial value of census information......

OK, the first thing to realize is just how small a Census Sub Sub District (CSSD) is, and what this allows an unscrupulous person to do. It's pretty easy to narrow things down to a single household unless most of the people in your half-block have the same number of adults, same number of kids, similar relationships, etc. You won't be sure you know who the stats belong to, but you can guess. An analogy is with an employee database, when you aren't allowed to query an individual's salary, only averages and totals for groups - but you can select a group WITH and WITHOUT the person of interest, and then it is just simple maths.

Combine this with the generally poor recordkeeping, data custodianship practices and technical competencies in many agencies, (I'll tell you how to figure out how good an agency is at dotting i's and crossing t's in a minute or two), the number of contractors now in agencies (who don't realize they have a regulatory requirement to act just like a public servant, and may have other agenda), poor governance, and you might begin to see the problem.

MIND YOU, MANY PROBLEMS COULD BE AMELIORATED SIMPLY BY A TEN-FOLD INCREASE IN FUNDS TO THE AUDIT OFFICE (www.anao.gov.au), BUT FEW IN POWER WANT THAT?

So, the trick is to see just how competent an agency is. How do you do that from the outside? Well, examining the web pages of a site (don't hack, just LOOK at what they send you during normal activities) will give you some indications. Compare what the agency DOES with what the MINIMUM requirements for websites of agencies (or government owned businesses, or agency work sub-contracted out). You can find these requirements at www.agimo.gov.au/practice/mws and use the theory that "if there are cockroaches at the front of the restaurant, it will be REAL bad in the kitchen where customers don't go". As "The Economist" said, website quality is a good proxy indicator of the quality of the company or agency that owns the pages.

DO THESE TESTS MANUALLY, ONLY TEST DATA THE AGENCY KNOWS THEY SEND TO THE OUTSIDE WORLD AS PART OF NORMAL ACTIVITY, AND YOU CAN'T GET DONE FOR HACKING.

How do you tell an agencies committment and competence in technology and contract management?

A. Do they know HTML, the basic language of web pages?

If a website cannot give you error-free HTML, which is pretty easy, then there is little chance they are doing the hard stuff in the back office, which you cannot see. So, how many stupid errors does the home page have. Check it out using http://validator.w3.org/ and type in the web address you want checked. Compare the number of simple syntax errors between agencies and companies. For starters, http://www.abs.gov.au/ has 48, http://stream0.census.abs.gov.au/eCensusWeb/ has 1,

This will be a bit long, and I can only draw the dots for you (my conclusions are too inflammatory). If you are on this page, you are concerned about you privacy and security, and you deserve to know enough to make your own mind up about whether you are being well-served or not.

I feel able to comment on this because of my previous lives as:

1) Designer of well-known loyalty programs, both in Oz and other countries, both market analysis AND transactional. This was crossed with census data.

2) A former public servant who had MAJOR fights about non-compliance with privacy and accessibility of web sites.

3) I was competent enough in the 1980s to be invited to be the tech lead in an electronic warfare project, which I refused, and I've seen hints that Oz agencies have been snooped on by non-allies (hint May 2001).

Whether or not there is "Big Brother" malice by our double-plus-good government, very few agencies are up to the task of good data custodianship - and this opens things up for abuse. It's worth considering the commercial value of census information......

OK, the first thing to realize is just how small a Census Sub Sub District (CSSD) is, and what this allows an unscrupulous person to do. It's pretty easy to narrow things down to a single household unless most of the people in your half-block have the same number of adults, same number of kids, similar relationships, etc. You won't be sure you know who the stats belong to, but you can guess. An analogy is with an employee database, when you aren't allowed to query an individual's salary, only averages and totals for groups - but you can select a group WITH and WITHOUT the person of interest, and then it is just simple maths.

Combine this with the generally poor recordkeeping, data custodianship practices and technical competencies in many agencies, (I'll tell you how to figure out how good an agency is at dotting i's and crossing t's in a minute or two), the number of contractors now in agencies (who don't realize they have a regulatory requirement to act just like a public servant, and may have other agenda), poor governance, and you might begin to see the problem.

MIND YOU, MANY PROBLEMS COULD BE AMELIORATED SIMPLY BY A TEN-FOLD INCREASE IN FUNDS TO THE AUDIT OFFICE (www.anao.gov.au), BUT FEW IN POWER WANT THAT?

So, the trick is to see just how competent an agency is. How do you do that from the outside? Well, examining the web pages of a site (don't hack, just LOOK at what they send you during normal activities) will give you some indications. Compare what the agency DOES with what the MINIMUM requirements for websites of agencies (or government owned businesses, or agency work sub-contracted out). You can find these requirements at www.agimo.gov.au/practice/mws and use the theory that "if there are cockroaches at the front of the restaurant, it will be REAL bad in the kitchen where customers don't go". As "The Economist" said, website quality is a good proxy indicator of the quality of the company or agency that owns the pages.

DO THESE TESTS MANUALLY, ONLY TEST DATA THE AGENCY KNOWS THEY SEND TO THE OUTSIDE WORLD AS PART OF NORMAL ACTIVITY, AND YOU CAN'T GET DONE FOR HACKING.

How do you tell an agencies committment and competence in technology and contract management?

A. Do they know HTML, the basic language of web pages?

If a website cannot give you error-free HTML, which is pretty easy, then there is little chance they are doing the hard stuff in the back office, which you cannot see. So, how many stupid errors does the home page have. Check it out using http://validator.w3.org/ and type in the web address you want checked. Compare the number of simple syntax errors between agencies and companies. For starters, http://www.abs.gov.au/ has 48, http://stream0.census.abs.gov.au/eCensusWeb/ has 1,

Computerworld didn't RTPR (Read The Press Release) and got the story wrong.

There won't be any inclusion of census data or linking of data to the smartcard. See http://www.abs.gov.au/websitedbs/d3310114.nsf/4a25 6353001af3ed4b2562bb00121564/3f66b0f18ba6dd0dca257 1be0006834b!OpenDocument

The Australian Bureau of Statistics is tin-foil-hat-league paranoid about protecting the confidentiality of information that it gets from its surveys and censuses.

Disclaimer, I work there.

(Oh, the online census form works fine on Firefox/Linux in case you are in Australia and need to fill one out...but not before the 8th of August, ok!)

Australia has a population of 20,507,800.
http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/94713ad445 ff1425ca25682000192af2/1647509ef7e25faaca2568a9001 54b63?OpenDocument
This is just a minor quibble, in the future please get your statistical information on Australia from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (www.abs.gov.au) the CIA's reputation for reliable intelligence is less than stellar (plus its insulting).

Besides in another country, 295,734,134 (http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/rank order/2119rank.html) people elected the wrong leader. Doesn't that compound the error about 15 times

Yes I know it's a cheap shot but you left yourself wide open. At least in Australia if our head of state is crap, we have the Queen to turn to.

Right, nobody else has any titanium ore.

http://www.nap.edu/openbook/POD140/html/23.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titanium#Occurrence
http://reference.allrefer.com/world/countries/sier ra-leone/geography.html
http://reference.allrefer.com/world/countries/indi a/geography.html
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ in.html
http://www.mixcorp.com/stcharles.htm
http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/Latestprod ucts/582B60B066B26906CA2570DE00173BBD?opendocument

Rubbish. The overwhelming majority of Australians are descended (in the main) from more recent immigrants. Indeed, nearly a quarter of Australians living today were born overseas.

Funny thing ( or not ) is that there are about 3 times as many sheep in Australia as in NZ [1]. What's more I hear there is a shortage of women in rural Australia, for example in many parts of WA it's 3 men for every woman. My cousin does occupational health around rural NSW and Queensland and can confirm similar issues there. All those sheep, all those isolated places, so few women... you do the maaaa-th ;-).

BTW, the number of sheep are steeply on the decline in NZ [2]. The main methane producers are cattle, whose numbers have increased greatly recently, particularly for dairy. There's still way more of both in Oz though.

[1]http://www.abs.gov.au/Ausstats/abs@.nsf/0/a3328 a1f1ca80e9dca2568a9001393ff?OpenDocument
[2]http://www.farmtofarm.co.nz/nz.html

Regards,

Jo Meder

Well, if the overall aim is to preserve human life - then I don't see gun ownership beyond the practical purposes as benefiting society.

But you raise a valid point. So I'll spend a few minutes looking this up.

Ok.

There's this report that says there were 308 homocide victims in 2003-2004. And this report shows the trends since 1915. The caption reads: The percentage of homicides committed with a firearm continued a declining trend since 1969. In 2002, just under 16% of homicides involved firearms. The figure was similar in 2001, down from a high of 44% in 1968.

Now, given that we had 20,008,700 people in December 2003 that means your chance of being a victim of homicide in Australia during that time (ignoring demographic issues obviously) roughly one in 66,304, or about 0.0015082%.

According to an FBI crime stats report there were 16,204 murders in 2002. The report says that's a rate of 5.6 per 100,000 - a percentage of 0.0056%. That's about 3.7 times our rate here - not catastrophic, and I do apologise for the sensationalist quip about "not even a fraction". But at least significant.

The report also says roughly 2/3rds were committed using firearms. In Australia it was "just under 16%".

The real question is: can you meaningfully compare these two sets of statistics? Does one country's crime rate really compare when you're talking about different cultures? More importantly, if you had the situation with gun restrictions here over there in America, would there be less murder victims or would the killers just use alternative means?

I don't pretend to know for sure the answers to these questions, but I'm leaning to the "in theory, if you didn't have so many goddamn guns there might be less successful murders".

I say "in theory" because it seems that change is impossible. Gun culture seems to be deeply entrenched - I doubt any politician would commit political suicide by attempting such a thing.

Speaking of political suicide, I saw a documentary about Falcone et. al. recently trying to clear out the mafia in Italy in the 80s/90s. That was literally political suicide; along with his colleagues he was asassinated.

Mafioso - terrorists you can trust.

Anyway, our murder rate here is less but not shockingly less, I suppose. But it is at least a counter-argument that you need personal gun ownership to be safe from violent killers.

Largely agricultural economy? Maybe in 1900. Well I'm not quite sure what classifies as 'largely', but given these stats, I'd say Australia's economy is minimally agricultural. 3.7% to be exact. And the government subsidises that heavily (explicitly because of politics, and implicitly through idiotic short-sightedness, such as cheap-as-hell water for rice farmers, that's right, rice in the second dryest continent on earth). Some say the subsidies outweigh the real contribution to our economy. Maybe the best thing for us would be to have this sector destroyed, then we can get to cleaning up the mess they've created over the last two centuries, such as salination.

Bachelors level degree holders: North Dakota: 22.0%
Australia: 21.0%

Nothing much there to choose between. If North Dakota is the cream of the US crop, the rest of your country must be in pretty desperate shape.

Someone acting as an agent for another person, to sell that person's goods in exchange for a fee.

Given that agent still isn't acting as an auctioneer, just hiring Ebay to do the job for someone else, your point's still irrelevant.

No they're not. See AusStats. Though the poulation did crash after colonisation, from maybe 300,000 to a minimum of about 60,000, it's now steadily growing and currently over 400,000 (depending on your definition of "Aboriginal"). However, Tasmanian Aboriginals (pureblooded) were wiped out, though some with partial Tasmaninan ancestry survived. They were racially distinct fomr mainland Australian Aboriginals.

The Australian population centres are not between Sydney and Cairns.

Australian population density

The earth's orbit is eliptical, bringing the earth closest to the sun (perihelion) at the time when it is summer in the southern hemisphere. The southern sun is hotter.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics begs to differ on the supposed "rapidly rising crime rate".

The Australian Bureau of Statistics begs to differ on the supposed "rapidly rising crime rate".

I know it seems like there are a lot more of us around at times but there are only around 20 million aussies. http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/94713ad445 ff1425ca25682000192af2/1647509ef7e25faaca2568a9001 54b63?OpenDocument This bill is introduced by one of the minor parties and the current conservative party in power will soon have a majority in both upper and lower houses. Who knows what will happen then. .... Resistence is futile

We only have just over 20 million people http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/94713ad445 ff1425ca25682000192af2/1647509ef7e25faaca2568a9001 54b63?OpenDocument.

Thus I have upgraded your compliment from "not bad" to "a bit of alright"

That is because it is easy for Canada to piggy back on the US satellites. A satellite that covers the US will also cover a lot of Canada. Our common language makes it easy for us to share shows as well.

Except that we don't piggback on US satellites. For example, the Nimiq satellite that I get my signal from is owned by ExpressVu, my provider, and operated by Telesat. And last time I checked most Australians share that common language.

Canada even has HUGE as it is the population tends to cluster. I think Australia tends to be evenly spread out.

You'd be wrong again. Like Canada, Autralia's population is concentrated in several big cities.

Anyway, population density shouldn't matter. In Canada, Canadian TV networks buy the redistribution rights for American network programs an then air them here, broadcast over satellite, cable, whatever. We usually get to watch the shows at the same time as they are aired in the US, if not before. How come the Australian TV networks can't do the same thing?

Rates per 100,000 (15-24 year olds ~1990)
Male Female
Iceland: 61.0 4.9
Finland: 42.2 7.3
New Zealand: 37.9 7.0
Australia: 26.7 6.4
...
US: 22.2 4.2

stFuck the children.
So have the cops come around to seize your computer yet?

Hey, where's my fridge magnet? I thought Alston had quit, why do we have to have more internet blocking blah blah.

I mean seriously, if the set this thing up, how are we going to catch those those that are actually nonces (I've been watching the Bill)? And why should Christians decide what is and isn't appropriate for a country where less than half the population is christian. And in any case 39.2% are Catholic and 30.4% are Anglican (see nice graphs here). The churches are in Abbott's back pocket anyway.

Fundies like this dont really have much of a say in politics down here
Sure, they probably won't win a lot of seats, so it doesn't really matter. Unless there's a hung parliment (which let's face facts, it's so close it could be) then Family First could become a bit of a problem. Oh... they're only going for the senate... hmmm... they will get killed by the Democrats and Greens... I'm no longer worried... Aww... they've got a geek (sorta) running in Victoria. I might have to vote below the line...

Can't wait till the Jedi population increases (2001 0.37%). Then we can get goverment funded lightsaber grants.

As far as Australia is concerned, your claim is, quite frankly, bullshit

From the Australian Bureau of Statistics
(Note: gun laws were further tightened here in 1996)
"During the period 1995-2001, the proportion of murder victims who were attacked with a weapon peaked at 78% in 1996. Since that time, the proportion of murders involving a weapon fell to about 60% in 2000 and 2001, and the murder victimisation rate involving a weapon fell by 21% (graph 11.12). The overall decrease in weapon use largely reflects the decrease in the use of firearms: 16% of murder victims in 2001 were killed by a firearm, compared to 32% in 1996."

Motor vehicle theft decreased by 13% and unlawful entry with intent decreased by 10%. Victims of robbery fell by 6%, with armed robbery falling by 9% and unarmed robbery by 5%. Other offence categories to record a decrease included other theft (6%), homicide and related offences (4%) and assault (1%)." and for crimes against persons "a 19% decrease in the number of victims of manslaughter, a 12% decrease in attempted murder and a 5% decrease in murders"

"In 2003, the victimisation rate for unlawful entry with intent (1,778 per 100,000 population) and motor vehicle theft (497 per 100,000 population) were the lowest since national reporting began in 1993. The robbery victimisation rate of 99 per 100,000 population was the lowest since 1997."

But hey dont take my word for it http://www.abs.gov.au/Ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/76C 8926BD8A12E1FCA2568A9001393F2

Thirdly, there is much evidence in England and Australia that the outlaw of weapons invariably leads to the criminals being the only ones that own them. Their home-invasion rates are also through the roof.

This is blatantly wrong.

The following passages were taken from the link below.

http://www.abs.gov.au/Ausstats/abs@.nsf/e8ae5488b5 98839cca25682000131612/76c8926bd8a12e1fca2568a9001 393f2!OpenDocument

"Overall the number of victims recorded by Australian police declined in most offence categories in 2003. This was particularly the case for offences involving the taking of property. Motor vehicle theft decreased by 13% and unlawful entry with intent decreased by 10%. Victims of robbery fell by 6%, with armed robbery falling by 9% and unarmed robbery by 5%. Other offence categories to record a decrease included other theft (6%), homicide and related offences (4%) and assault (1%)."

and

"A firearm was used in 6% of robberies recorded in 2003, the equal lowest proportion since national reporting began in 1993. The proportion of murders involving a firearm in 2003 was also at its lowest on record at 13%. Firearm use in murders peaked at 32% in 1996, but has since declined steadily. For attempted murders in 2003, a firearm was used in 20% of offences, marginally above its low of 19% in 1998 and well below its high of 32% in 1999."

Enjoy
Shitdrummer :-)

At least i don't tried to use Holliwood examples, like in Jurassik Park, Mimic or Godzilla, those examples would have been definatelly less serious than using Simpsons episodes.

And about controls, yep, the released rats could be sterilized, have some way of controlling/contain them, but, you know, shit happens and murphy rulez.

It helps get a sense of perspective to realize that Australia has a population of 20,000,000.

...they have less than a third of the prison population that the US has...

According to web sites such as
this and this, the prison population in Australia was approximately two orders of magnitude less than that in the US. The total population is also an order of magnitude less.

Australia?

(Being that Australia was originally a British penal colony, and the extimated population of Australia is 19,896,826; according to this article there are 57 million US P2P users, by this article, so maybe the coast part of Australia isn't large enough, anyway.)

57 million. Unbelievable. That's just a little short of half the people who voted last Presidential election.

Okay, I went off on a bit of a tangent there.

Last I heard, the Australian government owns approx. 49% of Telstra, a major telco. I believe the previous poster is correct in that the AU gov is looking to liquidate some of its shares.

Talking to Australians who live in Toowoomba, Dalby, and Longreach (L. is near the edge of the 'outback'), the residents feel that a fully privately owned telco would not provide adequate (or any) service to those living in the countryside. Granted that this is a small amount of the population (and problems like this also exist in the rural US), the purpose of being publically owned is in the intrest of ALL people. So that all Australians can communicate.

Yes, [A]DSL sucks there now, but consider that the entire population of the contry/continent of Australia is about the same as the population of New York State.

From other posts in this topic, sounds like alternatives are slowly becomming available.

I remember back in high school, there was this economics simulation game we all played in class where every team owned a pen company and competed with the other teams. One of the first lessons that we learned is that 1000 pens at $1 each actually nets you mor emoney than 1 pen at $1000. It sounds like they should be the same, but in the $1000 pen case, you either get it all, or get nothing, but in the $1 pen case you can still make some money even if you don't sell everything.

The problem is broadband in Austrailia is that the monopolies cannot understand this fact of business.

The current population of Australia is about 20 million people. So at a 2% adoption rate, even if they could really, REALLY gouge thier customers at say $500 a month(!) then they stand to gain $200,000,000 a month, gross. Now, if by charging $25 dollars a month they could get a 50% adoption rate, then they will actually make $50,000,000 MORE a month than they did charging $500. That's a 20% increase in income and a 2,000% decrease in price! Everybody wins!

That's right, you can charge less of a price and still make more money, it really is possible... Even a hard core monopoly should at least care about making more money. If you can make more money as a company AND provide better service to more customers, then do it! It is absolute blind, and stupid, greed, and probably a little misanthropy mixed in for good measure, that they don't spend a few days to crunch the numbers and actually see that it's possible to make more money and more happy customers doing things a different way.

It wasn't on April the 1st, was it? ;)

NZ had less than 45 million sheep last year - according to this link, Aus had 111 million in 2001 according to this link.

Cheers,
Shuane

If you view those statistics for legal immigration in light of the existing populations of those countries, Australia has a more open door than the US does.

Besides, the original post referred to Southeast Asia - the "leaky boat" scenario - which was a phenomena during the epoch of the killing fields, but not now, so recent statistics are besides the point.

As to your second paragraph, I don't see your point. Is there some particular significance to Indian immigrants? There may be a Commonwealth issue for Australians, but the US doesn't much care about that. Each immigrant is counted only once; some with certain temporary visas have been physically present in the US for some length of time, in effect delaying their enumeration- but all that affects is the timing of the count. I hope you'd agree that such immigrants should be counted at some point, and I think the time when they get permenent residence status is the correct choice.

Comparing to the 1996 numbers, Jedi's ~70,000 puts it close to "Churches of Christ (75k), "Jehova's Witness" (83k), Salvation Army (74k) and Judaism (80k) and ahead of Hinduism (68k) and the ever popular "No religion" (69k)