How lucky, or well off are we?

[Sturdee]

Australia's constitution seems to be a mix of prescription and "" Let's leave this to the courts"".
Our laws are basically derived from acts of parliament. Well that's my small understanding!

Our constitution is basically an agreement by the original separate colonies (now called states) to form the Commonwealth of Australia to do specific acts as a united country rather then the individual colonies.

Thus it outlines the duties and powers surrended by the states to the Commonwealth whilst the states retain all residual powers and any questions or disputes about this is solved by the High court.

Thus the constitution does not give any rights to the people, nor does it derive its authority from them like the USA. Our only guarantee is the vote at elections for the members of parliament enabling us to toss out a government that turns out to be useless.

Peter.

[artme]

AndrtewOC's post happened to come at the right time!!

Ana and I just had to go to Bris. - again!
Stayed with some friends in suburbia. They own a very good house and are paying off an investment property _yes, negative gearing does help them but they are in their 70s!!!

Just driving around the general area I was struck by the number of vehicles per residence. Mostly 2, very often 3 and sometimes 4 or more. Was also struck by the young age of the car fleet.
Another point was the number of houses with boats and/or caravans.

I would say that these are pretty fair indicators of the amount of disposable income floating around.

Other pointers to good income levels are the quite extensive renovations on existing homes and the number of good quality new homes under construction.

I was also struck by the number of people traveling. A straw poll shows many were simply off from Bris to the Sunshine Coast, Bribie or Redcliffe for the day.Hardly the sign of a struggling population!!

[Bushmiller]

Arthur

Thanks for putting up this thread.

You are of course quite right in what you say: How lucky we are to be relatively safe and secure in our lifestyle despite the fact that we are always bemoaning our lot for one reason or another.

Brazil, which I have not visited but my wife has, in some ways is an excellent country with which to compare Australia. For example it is the closest country in size to us, although it is a tad bigger. However most similarities end there.

There are apparently two Brazils. There is Copacabana Beach and the shanty town on the hills behind.

A young friend of one of our children returned to Australia from Brazil where he had been living. I asked him whereabouts in Brazil he was living. He said Belo Horizonte. I had never heard of it so I asked him if it was a small or big town. He said it was five million people: That was twenty years ago. I have just looked it up and it is the sixth largest city in Brazil. He also said he lived in a house with a walled yard to keep the bandits out.

It seems to me that in counties that are described as impoverished there is a huge disparity between the haves and have nots. This yawning gap between the obscenely wealthy and those starving on the streets can only foster extreme discontent, violence and corruption. It is a universal recipe for unrest and civil commotion and ultimately revolution.

It will have to get quite a bit worse here in Australia for us to fall into that particular abyss. However, just occasionally, we do see pockets of this. The Redfern riots and the Palm Island debacle come to mind as examples, albeit triggered by situations (that is all it takes) but there have been others.

I hope your relatives continue to enjoy what we enjoy every single day.

Regards
Paul

[artme]

When I finish going through the courts, and if I am so inclined, I just might write my experiences - we shall see.

Not wanting to be smug or wanting to lessen the importance of whatever you have going on in court Cava but There will always be dissatisfied
participants as the result of court action.

The real problems lie with the law in most cases and not the courts themselves.