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Edition 452 – Random Thoughts

Written by Dean Robinson.

From time to time, random thoughts enter my mind. Here’s some of them:

  1. Slip Slop Slap – the campaign of the 1980’s, to prevent the emerging incidence of skin cancer in Australia, by slipping on a shirt, slopping on sunscreen and slapping on a hat was incredibly successful. Yet, in 2024, I’m noticing more children, than ever, outdoors in the Australian sun, without a hat on. It this a portent into the needs of the health system in 40 years time?
  2. A friend has a relative that is pedantic about the type of food they eat. No additives or preservatives is one of the key mantras, as they don’t want to put chemicals into their body. Except, this individual has regular Botox injections and has had multiple plastic surgery operations, including implants. Isn’t that a contradiction?
  3. In Camden, we’ve installed traffic lights and new pedestrian crossings in the main street to increase safety in a built up area. Yet, the greatest protagonists for crossing the road, away from the traffic lights, through a median garden bed and across four lanes of traffic, appear to be seniors, often who are unsteady on their feet. It seems that not walking an extra hundred metres is worth the risk of stumbling in front of the traffic.
  4. If middle income families are struggling with the cost of living, I wonder if they’re the same families that have late model, European badged motor vehicles sitting in the driveway, of which there seems to be a prevalence in the newer housing estates in our area.
  5. How easy is it to gamble in Australia? From online, to the TAB, to pubs and clubs, to casinos. Yet, what we forget is that almost every retail precinct, and every shopping centre in Australia, affords the same opportunity – it’s called the newsagent.
  6. People complain incessantly about paying a credit card surcharge when they purchase their morning coffee, which is around 1% of the transaction. Yet, the ATO reports the average Net Profit Margin of a coffee shop is 10%. My guess – if you complain too hard, and the coffee shop has to absorb that cost, you’ll have to find somewhere else to buy coffee – not because the 1% will break the bank, but that it will make the business not worth the risk or the hours involved.
  7. If your salary is $150K per annum, that buys a hell of a lot more in Adelaide than it does in Sydney. So, does that suggest that personal income tax rates in Australia are wrong, and should take into consideration the relative cost of living in each capital city?
  8. On that, the median house price in Sydney is $1.478 million dollars, whereas in Melbourne, it is $928K. In my opinion, that’s a significant factor in why Melbourne’s population growth is faster than Sydney’s, and why it will be Australia’s largest city in less than 10 years.
  9. If the take up of rooftop solar has been so successful in Australia in the past decade that there are now days when coal fired power stations lose money when they generate power in the middle of the day, does that not suggest the future renewable energy investment shouldn’t be in more solar, but in more battery storage and better battery technology?

This Week’s Tip

“Random thoughts – some interesting facts, some of it useless, and some of it key data,
for Governments and businesses to ponder, equally.”