Australia‘s 47th Parliament

Australia’s 47th parliament sat for the first time today.
The new Labor government has an absolute majority in the lower house, the House of Representatives, following the recent election.
The House will have 58 women, including 19 first-term MPs, making 38% of the chamber female. This is the highest proportion of women ever in the lower house.
The upper house Senate reached and exceeded 50% in the last parliament, and will maintain this in the new parliament.

However Labor has just 26 of the 76 seats in the Senate, short of the 39 votes the government needs for a majority.
The Senate crossbench has grown to 18 seats after the recent election.
This means the Labor government will need the support of 13 members of either the crossbench or the Liberal/National Party coalition opposition to pass legislation in the Upper House.
There will obviously be a lot of negotiations going on there over the next three years.
The Australian people also voted in nine new Indigenous representatives in Federal parliament for the current term, alongside two sitting senators. Six members are part of the Labor government, while two are returning senators sitting for the Greens.
For the Liberals it was a case of two in, one out.

The result means an extra four Indigenous voices in parliament between both chambers – three in the House of Representatives and eight in the Senate.
In terms of representation, Indigenous members will account for 10.5 per cent of the 76 Senate seats, and 1.9 per cent of 151 House of Representatives seats.
That leaves total representation at 4.8 per cent, above the Indigenous Australian population of 3.3 per cent.

Potholes 🤬

It’s been raining virtually non stop here with 1600mm so far this year.
Our average annual rainfall is 1100mm.
This means road surfaces have been deteriorating at a record rate.
Almost 10,000 drivers across NSW have found themselves stranded with a damaged wheel or tyre this month after widespread rain caused more than $1.5 billion worth of damage to roads.

Potholes are a key cause of wheel and tyre damage. Between March and the end of June, Transport for NSW repaired 65,000 potholes on state-managed roads in regional NSW and 10,000 in Greater Sydney. That is on top of the potholes repaired by councils eg. our Shoalhaven CC, on their own road networks.
Councils are responsible for maintaining 90 per cent of the state’s roads. 

The number of potholes in regional NSW has increased by 74 per cent compared to last year.
The NRMA said it had received 9814 calls for assistance from drivers who have suffered wheel and tyre damage so far in July, with almost half of them from outside of Sydney.

Mayor of Shoalhaven City Council Amanda Findley said the rain had exacerbated the road damage suffered in March and its incessant nature was hampering efforts to fix the network.
“It’s completely impossible to get on top of the task, which is frustrating the daylights out of the community,” she said.
Don’t we know it.
Driving around our area, even on the major A1 highway is like a slalom course.

COVID 19 / Australia / Update

It’s been 6 months since the last update.

In summary, the virus has been running rampant since the state and federal governments rescinded all restrictions early in the 2022.

Cases and resultant deaths have skyrocketed compared to the first two years of the pandemic when restrictions were in place. 

“It’s all over folks” is the official line.

But it’s not.

Despite 95% of the population being vaccinated ie. x2, the new variants are now predominant.

Unfortunately it is older generation which suffering the fatalities as a result.

Below are some stats bearing in mind the Australian population is around 25 million.

Three Daily Word Games

Keeping an old brain active.

Try them!

Octordle is the most challenging.

www.wordle.com

www.quordle.com

www.octordle.com