Tau

That will either stymie a lot of people who do legitimately need one or be useless. For example I have a machete and several legitimate uses for it - clearing a bunch of running bamboo on my (residential) block, clearing blackberry etc from single track for the dirt bike, and clearing lantana etc on my grandad's property. If they require something like proof of owning rural land I would be blocked from legitimate use (if I lived in Vic), if they take me at my word what's to stop any man and his dog claiming similar and then we're back where we started but with more bureaucracy.

Nothing like a good moral panic to make people throw reason out the window. Carrying a machete without a reasonable cause is already illegal and clearly didn't stop these people, banning them altogether will just make things hard for those who would use them legally.

It's the same level of thinking as some pelican near me who was calling for a 40km/h zone due to a recent accident. The existing laws against taking illegal drugs, stealing cars, staying on the road, and not speeding over the current limit didn't stop the guy who caused it, but he sure would have listened to a 40km/h sign...

I expect they'll be back together in some form come next election, I can't see the Libs - let alone the Nationals - forming government in their own right.

I am curious as to what will happen in Queensland state level now the federal parties have split - will they split the LNP party there?

How do you actually come PM if you don’t have a party that can get a majority vote?

You convince a majority of the members of the House of Reps to agree to support you in passing bills required for operating the government (basically bills allowing them to spend money, also known as supply) and to support you if a motion of no confidence is put forward.

It seems odd that they're talking about phonics being a recent thing. At the risk of dating myself I remember a phonics based system being used when I was in primary school in the late 90s, though I couldn't tell you much more since that's a while ago now and I generally spent my time in those lessons reading rather than paying attention anyway. Did it drop out of use in the meantime or something?

Ms Saffioti said for most of the year the area would be closed to motor vehicles

That's annoying, Australia needs more tracks people can actually use. Instead we get this sort of thing and it's still not good enough for the anti vehicle crowd (who are more than happy to tell you to take it to a track but then turn around and do their best to block even use of existing tracks, let alone new ones).

I don't have data to base this on but would place decent bets on it being noticeably more dangerous than driving for the individual riding the scooter and noticeably less dangerous for anyone they run into. The rate would depend on how you measure accidents though - per kilometre would be a lot worse than per trip.

Escooters aren't really good vehicles for rider safety - small wheels (often with no suspension), unstable geometry, and a riding position with limited ability to brace oneself means you do have to be careful. It does require a solid readjustment coming from my dirt bike in particular (where hopping 20-30cm logs is easy) onto the scooter where hitting a little tree root raised bit of tar at 25km/h will just about throw you off the thing.

They are definitely convenient and fun though, it's a good thing that NSW is finally moving to allow them.

Slowly catching up with the times, classic NSW though having to be different to everyone else and make it 20km/h rather than 25.

Really should be allowed on footpaths (maybe with lower limit) but I guess small steps are better than the current situation where they're illegal but mainly ignored. The ACT allows both escooters and bicycles on the footpath and this works fine, so take claims it'd be super dangerous with a large serving of salt.

I was expecting Pocock to have a strong showing this time around, I wasn't expecting Jessie Price though - I hadn't really heard much about her except for the corflutes around town.

I'd probably run with a small amount of white lithium grease - that should last for a good while.

If they had a disability permit it'd be fine, the yellow lines are there for extra space. The permit should have been displayed somewhere visible though (typically the windscreen but I don't know if that's a requirement).

If it were a council carpark you could report non-permitted use to the local council, being Bunnings it's probably private land though so you'd have to find out whose responsible for their parking enforcement.

I actually saw a feral deer today while riding some single track out at the Cotter - to see one in the day probably means there's a good amount of them out and about.