• 153 Posts
  • 84 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 13th, 2023

help-circle





















  • There’s some nuance missed here.

    The “observation program” mentioned here, was a $1.2 billion program that was announced in the last days of the previous government.
    There were no contracts, no tenders, just a vague proposal with a nebulous tax funded dollar figure attached.
    The sector as a whole was using that announcement to entice investors in their own startups.
    Now that it has been axed, the startups are struggling to gather further financing in what looks like a shaky industry.













  • I remember having to do the maths once upon a time, and decide that I didn’t want a shift in my part time job, even though I could use the money, because it would effect my payments.
    I had to reach an agreement with my employer where they promised to offer me at least X hours a fortnight (I can’t remember what it was, and there was no guarantee, just a verbal promise), because there was a point at which I was not only losing the centrelink payment, but I’d lose the rent assistance, and health care card and all the other things, necessitating my reapplying for everything.
    To someone on that knife edge of paying rent and eating, with electricity for heating… That was a bit too dangerous to play with.





  • Question for locals: do you need gas connections?

    Opinions on this are going to differ a lot.
    I really like cooking on gas, but acknowledge it wastes a useful resource, is environmentally bad and potentially harmful to my families health.

    Side question: do you have fireplaces, gas or otherwise?

    It’s becoming less common.
    My last house, we had an internal combustion (wood) heater as the primary form of heating.
    I know several people who have gas powered whole house ducted heating.
    Both of these things are becoming prohibitively expensive to run compared to decent reverse cycle (heat pump) split systems.

    Like everything, there’s more layers than an onion to this.
    Older houses had decent insulation as heating and cooling were hard.
    Houses built from the 70s on have shit insulation, as running a heater or cooler year round were cheap and easy.

    Back in the 00s, the federal government tried to kill 2 bids with one stone here - stimulate the economy whilst improving the insulation of most houses through what became known as the “Pink Bats” program
    This itself become massively controversial as the program was rorted to hell, and even some deaths, leading to a royal commision.

    The whole “ban new installs of gas” is a bit of a Green initiative, but it’s becoming more common across the country, starting with Australian Capital Territory, which banned it in June.