The store will, consequently, change name from SupaIGA (the branding used for larger IGA stores) to SupaExpress (denoting smaller Supabarn stores).

Watson IGA with half of its external branding changed)

None of the internal branding has changed yet, and it is unlikely that much of the product range will change later on as both IGA and Supabarn use Black & Gold as their generic brand. There is, however, a notice at the checkouts informing customers of the change, noting specifically that the staff will not change, but the IGA catalogue which is delivered to households in the area will no longer be applicable in the store.

It is not currently known whether the Supabarn catalogue, which is also distributed in the area, will apply to a SupaExpress branded store or if a separate catalogue will apply.

One thing which is certain though is that the little yellow price tag stickers will not all need to be changed as Supabarn has used the same style of price tags for many years.

The expansion of Supabarn in to smaller suburban supermarkets continues a recent trend of expansion of the main Supabarn brand in to Sydney, which came after most Supabarn stores were taken over by Woolworths in the 1990s.

Samuel

The New South Wales Government has proposed the banning of a number of things on people’s own apartment balconies including smoking and, wait for it, drying underwear! Apart from the obvious fire hazard of forcing both activities indoors, and the potential of having smoke waft through air conditioning between apartments if people smoke indoors, I can’t help but worry about the seemingly unnecessary intrusion in to the goings-ons in private property by the state. What worries me even more is that people are seemingly willing to cede authority over what happens in private dwellings to the state, rather than dealing with it themselves or through existing means.

SMOKERS could be banned from lighting up on their own balconies under proposed changes to NSW strata laws.

Thousands of submissions were made in the first public consultations on a sweeping review of laws governing strata schemes, and were dominated by complaints about smoking.

Residents also wanted to ban balcony barbecues and the keeping of snakes “given their propensity to escape”. But they asked to be allowed to dry clothes on balconies “except underwear, which should be dried on racks out of sight”.

A report to the government, to be used to create a discussion paper, said smoking “was a significant bone of contention”. “The overwhelming majority of correspondents strongly objected to being subjected to second-hand smoke in strata buildings and demanded smoking be banned from communal areas and open air balconies,” the Global Access Partners strata laws online consultation report said.

(h/t Vikki Campion of The Daily Telegraph)

The snake one I understand, but we already have laws about how domestic animals have to be kept. We can amend those if necessary, but it’s silly to legislate about such a thing in unrelated legislation about management of apartment buildings.

The smoking one I find bizarre. I live in a unit, and occasionally I receive wafting smoke from my neighbours, but if you are going to live in an apartment then you are surely accepting that you are living in close proximity to other people and, as such, will be less immune to the activities of these people. It’s a situation which calls for a bit of common courtesy, not government legislation and intrusion.

In my case, a quick word with the neighbours resulted in an understanding that they would make an effort to prevent smoke from drifting towards my place, although it was understood and accepted that it would not always be possible. To the same extent, I make an effort to prevent the two doggies from making too much noise. Obviously they’re going to bark when they’re concerned about noises or when they’re chasing a ball, but I try to limit such barking when there is no threat to the security of the property, and by limiting their playtime outside of daylight hours. It’s just common sense that when you live in close proximity to your neighbour, that you need to be mindful of what effect you are having on them.

If people living in an apartment complex can not reach an agreement, then there is a body corporate to whom they can take their disagreement for judgement. Through this process, people retain the right to decide on what is and is not allowed on their property by virtue of the fact that they have an ownership stake in the management of the complex by the body corporate and can vote against a manager or a decision if necessary. Ultimately living in an apartment complex does provide less freedom than living in a property which does not share walls with neighbours, but that is a choice made by people when they decide to live in an apartment instead of a house. This freedom however, should not be further curbed by governments making blanket decisions about all apartment complexes instead of allowing residents and owners to make decisions which suit their own needs.

As for the other idea which was floated of banning the outdoor drying of underwear. Why? What possible reason could people have to be offended by underwear? And why should somebody be forced to pay more to dry their underwear indoors in a dryer or near a heater (which the Fire Brigade regularly tells us is a bad idea) when they can do it for free in the sunshine on their balcony? If somebody has offensive messages on their underwear, then this is something which can be taken up with them or the body corporate, but is not something which requires legislation. I am of the view that underwear should be worn and not seen (I think that underwear visible above or outside pants while being worn in unsightly, but I don’t want to legislate against it, and oppose such legislation in places where it has been introduced), but even I accept that in order for it to be cleaned, it has to be seen. And what about the underwear which is sold in shops? Are we going to put it in locked cabinets like we have with cigarettes?

And how in the heck are we going to enforce it? Are we going to have government-employed building inspectors checking balconies for underwear? Who’s going to pay for that, and what good will come of it? Taxpayers, and none…only a further diminution of freedom.

If we are going to try and prevent inter-apartment offence, then I don’t think that we will stop at underwear, especially if the underwear and smoking ideas are being touted primarily for the “benefit” of young minds and bodies. I can see this progressing to bans on televisions displaying M rated (and higher) material near windows in case a youngster is prying. Perhaps even curtains could be regulated, as we wouldn’t want curtains bearing the Collingwood Football Club’s logo to offend a West Coast supporter, or vice-versa, would we?

Fair dinkum! For a country which allegedly likes freedom and a fair go, we certainly don’t seem to embrace it when we think it would be easier to just get the government to do the thinking for us.

Samuel

• Rather than all of these spending programs, Wayne Swan would be better off delivering a corporate tax cut as the benefits would reach everyone through lower running costs for businesses creating lower prices through competition, plus increased business profit, and higher tax revenue as a result of the increased economic activity. Instead, Wayne is giving some people money directly, money which is being confiscated from many individuals and businesses through taxes. This creates the likelihood of price rises and inflation.
• Wayne Swan claimed that he tried to get a business tax cut through the parliament, but was blocked. This is only partially true. The government tried to tie other tax increases to the business tax cuts, making the package unacceptable and therefore unpassable.
• On the topic of the surplus, it really is a budgetary trick. The proof of that is twofold:
1. Some spending was shifted forward from 2012/2013 to 2011/2012. This make the deficit for this financial year higher than expected, while allowing next year’s bottom line to look healthier. Without this trick, 2012/2013 would probably be a deficit. The really interesting thing about this trick is that, if performed in business, it's called fraud.
2. When a government is in debt and they have a surplus, they reduce their debt, or at least that’s what normally happens. To the same extent, when you have less debt, you generally have to pay less interest. So, what is to be made of the government’s forecasted interest payments? 2012/2013: $7 billion. 2013/2014: $6.8 billion. 2014/2015: $7 billion. 2015/2016: $8.2 billion. Interest payments are going back up by a significant amount, so debt will be going up too. Wayne Swan’s statement that “the surplus years are here” seems like a prediction of a shortlived period of time.
• The Defence cuts seem unwise when there is so much economic and political turmoil in the world, and terrorist threats still being uncovered on a regular basis. We should be keeping a strong defence force.
• As expected, the carbon tax’s cost on people appears to fall short of the compensation payments by a very long margin…not to mention that the problem with a “tax and compensate” scheme is that it is rebranded “tax and spend” socialism, with all the problems that brings
• Oddly, the Bureau of Meteorology is being given $300,000 to trial advertising on their website. This has to be the only time in history when selling advertising space has lost money rather than made money. It makes no sense. On what is this money really going to be spent?
• Wayne Swan muttered something about funding for the government's electronic health records scheme. I would like to know if this is an optional or mandatory scheme? I'm quite happy with my paper records NOT being on a government database. I can see how this could benefit some people, but I’m quite capable of having my medical records released to whomever needs them without the government doing it for me, and I would like to keep it that way. And if we’re digitising existing records, I pity the poor clerk who has to decipher my doctor’s handwriting, and I pity the patients who suffer as a result of errors in the deciphering of their records.
• More one-off payments in this budget. How many times can you make “one-off” payments before they’re no longer “one-off”? As long as they’re on different budgets, forever it seems.
• One thing I did like, subsidies for “green” buildings have been slashed. Pity the carbon and mining taxes weren’t slashed too.
• Away from actual budget issues, Wayne Swan repeatedly addressed the acting speaker Anna Burke as 'Mr Speaker' at the start of his speech. It took him a while to recognise the error and to start addressing her as “Madam Deputy Speaker” and variants thereof. Was it in written in his speech, or does Anna Burke look like Peter Slipper to Wayne?
• I was watching ABC News 24′s coverage with the sound muted, while listening to the excellent coverage of 2GB with Ross Greenwood. I noticed that during Wayne Swan’s speech, the ABC only displayed tweets which contained a positive opinion of the budget. After the budget the majority of displayed tweets were positive, but some critical tweets were displayed. Interestingly, the critical tweets were rushed through quickly, with most being given barely enough time on-screen to be read in full, whereas the positive tweets lingered on the screen for ages. Green Party people Adam Bandt and Christine Milne were also given lots of air time with their tweets. Twitter was much more evenly divided than the ABC would have you believe.
• There are some interesting claims about the government allowing some TV stations and ABC radio to report select details of the budget from 5pm, which for everyone else were details which were embargoed until Wayne Swan’s speech at 7:30. This was apparently done so that the ongoing Craig Thomson and Peter Slipper sagas would not get as much airtime in the pre-budget news bulletins, so as to not distract from the government’s message. Leaks are nothing new as they happen every year, but allowing embargoed details to be reported early as a distraction from scandals, well that’s a new one.

As you can tell, I’m not impressed by the budget, but it is at least roughly what I expected. I am concerned about the economic consequences though, and I fear that it may take quite some time for future governments to undo the damage being done by this government…and this budget is just one part of the mess.

Samuel

(image credit: Heritage Foundation)

When people drop out, they are not counted as unemployed, hence the reason the number of people out of work has soared, but the official unemployment rate has not.

Notice too that the big decline started after Obama took office, not before as his reelection campaign would have you believe.

Official statistics can be manipulated in so many ways, and official unemployment seems to be one of the favourites of governments.

Samuel

An email to 2GB’s Andrew Moore

Good morning Andrew,

I see that Wayne Swan is reportedly going to start handing out more so-called “one-off payments” after tonight’s budget.

I remember when the federal government was not in debt and claimed that the best way to stimulate the economy was to plunge the government in to debt by sending everyone a one-off $900 cheque, along with the various other spending debacles like the pink bats, school shade cloths and overpriced digital set top boxes. It didn’t help…the Australian economy is worse now than it was in 2009, mostly due to the government’s actions.

Now the government is in serious amounts of debt, and Wayne Swan promises a surplus which might make the surplus smaller, except for the fact that most, if not all, of the surplus comes from budget tricks rather than actual savings. But instead of doing the responsible thing and paying off as much of the debt as is feasible, he wants to hand out more one-off cheques…he must sense an election coming soon.

It just proves that these payments, like the stimulus payments, had nothing to do with responsible economic management, and everything to do with bribing voters to overlook serious incompetence in the government. I’ll tell you right now Andrew, the man who once told Alan Jones that “traffic jams cause inflation” will not be the Treasurer once the people have had their say at the ballot box, no matter how much money he borrows to bribe the voters.

Regards,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
Canberra