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Aussies: Football, Meat Pies, and Rampant SARS


Stubby

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https://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/rugby/international/300364063/exwallabies-star-quade-cooper-had-australian-citizenship-declined-four-times

I'm not a person who can be accused of being a Quade Cooper fan, but if even he can't get citizenship when he moved to Aussie at 13 I dunno what hope there is for NZ born people who have really only known life as a [sort of] Australian. Seems to me like a lot of NZ born people are denied citizenship when people from any other country would get it, on the basis that NZ citizens are automatically granted residency and that's enough. But of course a lot of social services are not available to residents, and of course people can more easily be deported if they suddenly become undesirable even if they have not been convicted of a crime.

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16 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

https://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/rugby/international/300364063/exwallabies-star-quade-cooper-had-australian-citizenship-declined-four-times

I'm not a person who can be accused of being a Quade Cooper fan, but if even he can't get citizenship when he moved to Aussie at 13 I dunno what hope there is for NZ born people who have really only known life as a [sort of] Australian. Seems to me like a lot of NZ born people are denied citizenship when people from any other country would get it, on the basis that NZ citizens are automatically granted residency and that's enough. But of course a lot of social services are not available to residents, and of course people can more easily be deported if they suddenly become undesirable even if they have not been convicted of a crime.

As that article says the issue here is the residency requirement which is being applied across the board. In order to get citizenship he needs to have been in the country 3 of the past 4 last years, and he's been working in Japan. Working in the University system with lots of international colleages I've know many people who have struggled to (and often failed to) get Australian PR / citizenship. I don't really think this has anything to do with his NZ citizenship, it's just that immigrating too and getting Australian citizenship is a notoriously long and (needlessly) difficult process. Largely because increasingly xenophobic governments have tightened and tightened the requirements over the years, and they make a point of not making exceptions and publicising the fact.

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3 hours ago, Impmk2 said:

As that article says the issue here is the residency requirement which is being applied across the board. In order to get citizenship he needs to have been in the country 3 of the past 4 last years, and he's been working in Japan. Working in the University system with lots of international colleages I've know many people who have struggled to (and often failed to) get Australian PR / citizenship. I don't really think this has anything to do with his NZ citizenship, it's just that immigrating too and getting Australian citizenship is a notoriously long and (needlessly) difficult process. Largely because increasingly xenophobic governments have tightened and tightened the requirements over the years, and they make a point of not making exceptions and publicising the fact.

And I think we are not much better in that regard. I must say I haven't looked too closely, but the headlines I'm seeing about how hard it has been for skilled migrants to get their families here make it seem like the govt officially wants to discourage immigration. One headline I saw is claiming skilled migrants are now going back home because they can't get their immediate family in. Frikken cruel if true.

I see NZ has just popped the travel bubble with Aus for 8 weeks. That has meant my sister has had to cancel her trip to Aus she had booked for August.

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On 7/16/2021 at 12:49 PM, Skyrazer said:

Ultimately, the blame in all this mess really comes down to the Feds and their failure to get the vaccines out there. Until we get our vaccination rate up, this is going to be the new norm.

I also blame Scomo for not taking on the Commonwealth responsibility and setting up dedicated quarantine facilities. Instead we've got this mess of hotel quarantine that was always likely to lead to leaks and escapes. 

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3 hours ago, ants said:

I also blame Scomo for not taking on the Commonwealth responsibility and setting up dedicated quarantine facilities. Instead we've got this mess of hotel quarantine that was always likely to lead to leaks and escapes. 

At the second meeting of National cabinet the states chose to run the hotel quarantine system as the states control the health services. Subsequently, the federal government set up a  quarantine system in Howard Springs, just outside Darwin which i think might be for repatriation flights. Its funny how all the ALP governed states have forgotten that happened and also blame the feds. Almost seems political.  

If anyone saw the hoo-ha about John Coates "mansplaining" to the Qld Premier telling her she has to go to the Tokyo opening Ceremony during her junket. Turns out she asked him to help her out as she felt public pressure not to attend. 

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1 minute ago, Squab said:

At the second meeting of National cabinet the states chose to run the hotel quarantine system as the states control the health services. Subsequently, the federal government set up a  quarantine system in Howard Springs, just outside Darwin which i think might be for repatriation flights. Its funny how all the ALP governed states have forgotten that happened and also blame the feds. Almost seems political.  

If anyone saw the hoo-ha about John Coates "mansplaining" to the Qld Premier telling her she has to go to the Tokyo opening Ceremony during her junket. Turns out she asked him to help her out as she felt public pressure not to attend. 

That's one interpretation. The second is they realised quickly that the Commonwealth were far more gung-ho than the states and willing to accept a much higher level of infection, so it was left in their hands. 

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2 hours ago, Squab said:

At the second meeting of National cabinet the states chose to run the hotel quarantine system as the states control the health services. Subsequently, the federal government set up a  quarantine system in Howard Springs, just outside Darwin which i think might be for repatriation flights. Its funny how all the ALP governed states have forgotten that happened and also blame the feds. Almost seems political.  

It's been recognised for awhile now that hotels are not ideal for quarantining and that we need purpose built facilities which is a federal responsibility. Really, there should be more than just Howard Springs available and the fed govt dragging its feet in building more facilities when calls were being made to do so is what they copped flak for.

With the unreliability of using hotels in populated cities for quarantining, tight oversight and control of the system was needed so it was understandable that states would've been reluctant to leave that responsibility to the feds.

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If I recall the Feds were pushing for at home isolation for travellers at the beginning of last year. That would've quite quickly resulted in covid spread into the community. There's no way the states were going to accept that.

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1 minute ago, Impmk2 said:

If I recall the Feds were pushing for at home isolation for travellers at the beginning of last year. That would've quite quickly resulted in covid spread into the community. There's no way the states were going to accept that.

If that was the case, then thank goodness the states took on the responsibility....

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  • 3 weeks later...

With around half of Australia's population now under (a fairly strict form of) lockdown, some stray observations:

  • ScoMo and other leaders keep talking up the 70-80% (of eligible people) target for relaxing restrictions and dispensing with lockdowns. I'm not sure I buy that, given that Delta will still circulate, primarily amongst the unvaxxed, at those levels. Just take Israel as an example - around 80% of adults vaxxed and they are running thousands of cases per day on a population of 9m. 
  • The Federation issues we've been having ever since COVID began are not about to ease soon. I don't know how things will work when NSW is living with Delta while other States are aggressively maintaining an elimination strategy.
  • I don't see the NSW lockdown ending in September. Gladys is trying to give people hope, but I think they're looking at later in the spring. 

Also, the recent story about ex-pats not being let out of Australia is utter hogwash. Ex-pats will still be permitted to leave, they just need to apply for an exemption. I did this when I last left Aus and it was totally fine. I chose to apply so that I didn't have to have a conversation at the border and I was speedily approved. 

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On 8/13/2021 at 7:29 AM, Paxter said:
  • ScoMo and other leaders keep talking up the 70-80% (of eligible people) target for relaxing restrictions and dispensing with lockdowns. I'm not sure I buy that, given that Delta will still circulate, primarily amongst the unvaxxed, at those levels. Just take Israel as an example - around 80% of adults vaxxed and they are running thousands of cases per day on a population of 9m. 

Yes, I think the overseas examples are quite illustrative. Israel, the USA and the UK have all basically swapped out social distancing for vaccination. It's because governments have used the release of social distancing as a carrot for vaccination, which is not a particularly good public health move. If you relaxed some restrictions, but kept the basic ones like 1.5m distance, masks, so on then you'd have much greater control, rather than just saying vaccination will do the trick and let everything else loose again. Vaccination is a big part of an overall strategy, but shouldn't be the only thing. Politically it's very tough, I suppose.

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4 hours ago, Jeor said:

Yes, I think the overseas examples are quite illustrative. Israel, the USA and the UK have all basically swapped out social distancing for vaccination. It's because governments have used the release of social distancing as a carrot for vaccination, which is not a particularly good public health move. If you relaxed some restrictions, but kept the basic ones like 1.5m distance, masks, so on then you'd have much greater control, rather than just saying vaccination will do the trick and let everything else loose again. Vaccination is a big part of an overall strategy, but shouldn't be the only thing. Politically it's very tough, I suppose.

Agreed. Vaccination may let us open back up, but as long as its posing a substantial risk to people we should continue with the safety measures that aren't particularly onerous - businesses aren't going to go under because the people in them are wearing masks, unless people are operating in a batshit reality where masks are a stupid political football. Which we are so fuck.

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21 hours ago, Paxter said:

Worrying to see COVID cases in largely unvaccinated regional and remote NSW towns. 

I don't understand how these communities have been so far down the priority list. 

Gladys doesn't care about them - no way to profit from them.

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On 8/19/2021 at 8:28 PM, Stubby said:

Gladys doesn't care about them - no way to profit from them.

Wilcannia is the one that raised my eyebrows. One of those communities that has gone through enough and could really do without a new virus. Should have already been vaccinated.

NZ dealing with its own outbreak now. Will be interesting to compare NSW’s Delta outcomes with those in Vic and NZ (the early lockdowners) in the final analysis. 

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3 minutes ago, Paxter said:

NZ dealing with its own outbreak now. Will be interesting to compare NSW’s Delta outcomes with those in Vic and NZ (the early lockdowners) in the final analysis. 

Yeah I'm interested in NZ as well. So the NT / SA / Qld did early lockdowns too and managed to eliminate, though they seemed to catch their cases far earlier than Vic or NZ. I don't think Vic will manage it this time. Too much lockdown fatigue and delta is just too transmissible.

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On 8/23/2021 at 2:47 PM, Impmk2 said:

Yeah I'm interested in NZ as well. So the NT / SA / Qld did early lockdowns too and managed to eliminate, though they seemed to catch their cases far earlier than Vic or NZ. I don't think Vic will manage it this time. Too much lockdown fatigue and delta is just too transmissible.

Yes I think Victoria may be losing control. Delta is just too hard to control even with big lockdowns.

The real problem in all of this, as far as I can see, is the limited life of vaccine effectiveness. We're seeing in the US and Israel that there is a resurgence as the Pfizer protection seems to be fairly short-lived, and that six months later it's not super effective. I'm thinking our healthcare workers etc are going to have waning protection.

Ironically it appears AstraZeneca has more longevity than Pfizer, for all of its demonisation, it might have turned out to be the better choice.

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On 8/23/2021 at 4:57 PM, Free Northman Reborn said:

Love the Talidan memes. That guy appears to be an uber control freak.

Anecdotally, an acquaintance of mine in Melbourne suggests the real hatred is reserved for Gladys. I can't imagine she's flavour of the month in Wellington and Auckland either.

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