Recent content by Smurf1976

Boring beats entertainment I agree but I'd rather see serious action to address the situation facing many Australians at present. This sums it up well enough:

Origin has an upstream gas and LNG export business that of itself would normally be classified as energy. Then it has electricity generation plus the retail of both electricity and natural gas. This is clearly a utility in terms of categorisation. It also has an LPG (bottled gas) distribution...

The question is, what's the alternative? In 2022-23 Australia's total exports were $688.074 billion according to DFAT (Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade). Of that: $236.221 billion or 34.3% were fossil fuels of some sort (mostly coal and natural gas). $127.422 billion or 18.5% was iron...

Further to the above, Longford production as per following chart. Note that one of the three gas plants is already shut, and the big step down in 2028 is for the closure of another, which will leave one of the original three still operating. Reason = not enough gas to process, so no point...

On the shortage I can say with certainty there have been some near misses in recent times, most notably 2022, and it did indeed end up with a particular large gas user directed to cease taking gas. I'll avoid names as I'm not sure if that bit's confidential or not but the location was Victoria...

This. The problem was about rorts not the legitimate use as originally intended. In terms of the politics, had a more nuanced solution been proposed, one that stopped abuse but retained usage for ordinary shareholders (either within superannuation or outside of it) as originally intended...

Australia's middle class isn't dead, but it's taking a beating in recent times. Falling real wages meanwhile there are now fewer pathways for someone starting with nothing to get themselves into the middle class. We are after all intentionally inflating in order to fill the gap left by...

Another option is extended security updates: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/whats-new/extended-security-updates In principle I'm not keen on the entire concept of what amounts to, for most users, a forced hardware replacement for the sake of replacement. I say that since, for the...

By definition a franking credit is a credit for tax paid assuming we're talking about it working as intended. As a concept it's little different to any other situation where something has been pre-paid based on an estimate or assumption that may or may not turn out to be accurate. Once the true...

New song released a few hours ago:

Ultimately for the same reason that any tax not paid twice is affecting revenue compared to if it were paid twice. If we required payment of fuel excise at the pump, then paying it again in the shop when paying for the fuel, then that'd bring in $ billions. If we required employers to pay...

As I see it, Trump is the political "face" but there's an underlying story here much like there was last time society went through major changes. Last time it wasn't a single event but a series of events mostly during the period from 1967 - 1975 that reshaped the world, with a few outliers...

The trouble is if we put aside arguments for nuclear, fossil or renewable energy as such, just put that to the side, then the first step is to be doing each of them as well as possible. That is to do nuclear, fossil and/or renewables in the most cost effective and otherwise best manner. Same...

There's a difference between whining about something versus observing what's occurring both good and bad. Something I realised early on in my career is not all but most senior managers actually value anyone lower down who's willing to objectively and constructively criticise. Because they find...

What's the actual problem with franking credits? It's a credit for tax paid, nothing more and nothing less. Literally every employee receives what is effectively the same thing. Their employer deducts PAYE tax (Income Tax) throughout the year and at the end of the financial year when the...