Astronomer

I didn't necessarily mean that our actual laws were good, but I meant the way our constitution operates and how the government is elected works well. I think our constitution is fair and allows for freedom of the people and of opinions. I'm definitely not saying that other countries who are republics don't have this fairness and freedom, I'm just saying that since we have it, why change it?

What more specific bad things have you heard about Australia? Because I can't really relate to any of what you have said as being bad for me personally. Some bad decisions have been made in our laws, in which people have complained about, so the government has then tried to rectify their decision. I think this shows that the way our constitution works is fair. Like I said, I wasn't talking about specific laws but more so the way our government operates.

The fact that several of our cities (and NZ's cities to be fair) beat any places from the US or the UK into the list of the world's most livable cities (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World's...livable_cities) shows that we have a good system in place as these surveys take into account: safety, hygiene, public transport, education, recreation, availability of goods and services, low personal risk, effective infrastructure, crime, tolerance, pro-active policy developments, and healthcare. I really don't think there is anything bad about our society and government and how they operate and this should act as a reference to show this. I consider myself very lucky and really don't want to change something that is already great.

I've heard much worse things about the rest of the world, where things like the healthcare system and education system (which are much more important IMO than public transport and telecommunications) get a lot of criticism and I know I would certainly prefer Australia's system.

There is nothing wrong with how our constitution operates, so why change it. We are a happy, free, and fair country, so why try to fix anything that's not 'broken'? That's all I'm saying.

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OceanAndSilence

yes

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Ronnie Jane Devo

Yeah, Australia really does seem like a great place overall, and the U.S. probably is a political shithole in comparison, I just wanted to challenge you a bit on your "works well" claim since there didn't seem to be a lot of justification behind it at first. Now to explain my statements:

The censorship thing I'd heard about from someone else, and only now just read up on it here. It's really pretty minor as it currently stands, but still the government has no business banning works of art.

The public transport issue I heard about from a guy on another forum who lives in Melbourne and described the situation there as "fucking terrible" and "getting worse every year due to population increase in the inner city and poorly managed privatisation". Here's what he said about it:

The telecom privacy thing was also hearsay, and I haven't actually found any texts online to back it up, so I guess never mind that.

So yeah, certainly some room for improvement, but hardly a big deal compared to problems in the rest of the world.

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Astronomer

Yeah, that's fair enough. I agree the Internet Censorship thing is bullshit, but a lot of people have been up in arms about so they are looking to review it, which is promising. And public transport is also a joke, but I can understand how difficult it would be organising transport in a country which is so widely spread apart in terms of population.

So yeah, you're absolutely right in that there a variety of issues that need to be addressed and that aren't running particularly smoothly. But no doubt you get small issues like these in every community! Generally, in terms of major things like health, education, and employment, I think we're doing pretty alright and I think the government operates in a really fair and free way.

Which is why I think it'd be silly to review how we operate as a country when there is nothing major that is wrong. Like Vanilla said earlier, there are way more positives to being associated with the British Commonwealth than negatives, so why change that?

Edit: I'm also not saying that other countries like the US don't have this freedom and fairness, because no doubt they do! Australia is by no means 'better' than anywhere else. I'm just saying that since we have achieved it in our constitution, there doesn't seem any need to review it/change it, if you get what I mean.

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Ronnie Jane Devo

Looks like things in Australia aren't quite as rosy as I first thought:

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSSGE61805120100209
http://www.smh.com.au/business/dont-...0219-8c6e.html

It appears there's close to $2 trillion in private debt in Australia, twice its GDP. You guys may be on your way to the same credit crunch followed by massive layoffs and housing foreclosures that the US has been experiencing, while your government conveniently ignores the problem.

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bubu

The situation in Australia is probably a good testament to the situation all over the world.

Nevertheless music will continue unscathed so we're still happy

Ronnie Jane Devo

Well yeah, pretty much every Western government in the world right now seems to be allowing its banks to pillage and defraud its citizens while either saying nothing about it or offering misleading 'solutions' to the problem. And because international institutions like the UN and EU are gradually becoming more and more powerful, I assume that trend is only going to continue.

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Barnard17

The UN and EU aren't removing a nations sovereign ability to curtail wanton banks. And on the same coin if the representatives in the EU decided to use the powers their electorate voted them to have they could also do something about the situation. Don't use the situation to negatively sensationalise globalisation.

I'm afraid the problem is that the Western world states are subversive oligarchies in which the sovereign government lies cuckold to the interests of Big Money.

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TheBig3

Wendy?

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lucifer_sam

That's easily how I would describe the PRC, not so much the rest of the world.

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