Peter Dutton concedes he has lost his seat of Dickson
www.abc.net.au
The leader of the Liberal Party, Peter Dutton, concedes he has lost his own seat of Dickson in Queensland. His loss leaves the Coalition without its leader in a defeat that represents a disaster for the party.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/29061644

We’ve done it, we got rid of another soulless right wing politician!

Peter Dutton first made his party lose this election and now also lost his own seat much like Pierre Pullover

We’ve still got a government that green-lit new coal power plants in it’s last term, screwed over the Aboriginal community with a poorly run referendum, and still doesn’t give a shit about climate change, but baby steps hey.

  • JackFrostNCola@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5·
    6 days ago

    I dont know the actual justification behind it but i would say:

    1. The Liberal party here love protecting business interests and giving pretrochem companies huge incentives, tax breaks, etc to take our resources and they probably get hard for how much more fuel they can sell here.
    2. Australia has inexplicably bad fuel standards, as such car manufacturers dump their shittest engines here which run on this low grade fuel and every time we talk about reforming this the manufacturors run a scare campaign about how much extra cars will cost if they have to meet these standards and the Libs have been jumping on that.

    As to the big cars thing, we have typically had quite regular sized cars and our typical tradesperson vehicles (called “Ute’s” here, “trucks” in the USA) were significatly smaller than their american equivilants, but local manufacturing shut down and now we buy from whats available on the market. Also the laws around taxing work vehicles is worded in such a way that bigger cars get taxed differently and incentivises people buying these cars and slowly our car sizes are increasing and more and more giant ‘Yank Tanks’ are appearing on our roads. And couple this with car manufacturers slowly changing the publics idea of what a ‘family car’ is from a large sedan to a small suv to a full blown suv or 4x4 7 person tank.

    • merc@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      2·
      6 days ago

      (called “Ute’s” here, “trucks” in the USA)

      Pickup trucks in the USA. “Truck” is a more generic term that covers just about everything from semi trailers (a.k.a. articulated lorry, heavy goods vehicle) to vans.

        • merc@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          1·
          3 days ago

          Are those the trucks that are only able to move 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 11 or 13 things at once? (I’ve never heard that term before)

          • JackFrostNCola@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            2 days ago

            Yes, it makes logistics a nightmare doing the maths.
            Its basically a class of truck that is for moving the biggest loads, like road trains (truck&+ trailers) or moving giant mining dump trucks,dozers,etc.

            In one version of the transformers series optimus prime is actually a prime mover too

            • merc@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
              1·
              2 days ago

              English is pretty bad at naming these things. In North-American English they’re often called "Semi"s, which is short for either “Semi-Trailer” or “Semi-Truck”. Why? Who knows, I’m guessing it’s because the trailer part is only half of the whole. The front part with the engine and trailer hitch is sometimes called the Tractor Unit. But, that’s confusing because “Tractor” mostly means the thing you drive around on a farm. The purpose is basically the same, and the name comes from the fact it’s focused on something that pulls, but farming has such a hold of the “tractor” name that that’s what people think of when they hear that.

              18 wheeler makes sense for the whole unit together. It’s also good because it identifies the thing that is instantly visually unique about these kinds of vehicles, all the various wheels. But, I’m sure there are many cases where it’s not 18 total wheels. And, when they’re used as road trains with more than one trailer, I’m sure it’s much more than 18 wheels.

              The Brits like “lorry”, or “articulated lorry” but where does that come from? And sometimes shortened to “Artic” which makes it sound like it’s really cold.

              Other names include “HGV” for “Heavy Goods Vehicle”, but that’s confusing because it’s not clear whether it’s the goods that are heavy or the truck. Presumably they’re also used for light but bulky goods.

              Oh well, dumb language, we should start over with Spanish, I’m sure their name is better.