Peninsular Tour

Back home for the weekend before going back up to Sydney town. Decided to go for a spur of the moment decision to stay down on the Mornington Peninsular near Red Hill. Had a really nice dinner with my girlfriend at one of the local wineries. Needed to get out of the city, tomorrow it's back to the rush... (pictured is the view from Flinders). 

Pretty Sydney

In Sydney at the moment for work. Here for just over a week, but there's a good chance i'll be here for several more.
A few things to note about Sydney
- it's very pretty with nice views
- there is lots of water (although with drinking water there are shortages, just like everywhere in the country)
- pedestrian crossings take forever even when there are no cars, obviously not as advanced as Melbourne ones
- traffic is very very bad, and even the trains don't appear to be that great
- it's far more hilly

Here is a pic of Darling Harbour I took this evening looking towards the hotel I'm staying at for the weekend before moving back to the suburbs to be closer to work.

 

Census - doomed & dangerous?

Tuesday 8th of August 2006: the day of the 5-yearly Australian census. My prediction for the future; the next census in 2011 will be the last.

Why we need to have a survey that retrieves the information requested is beyond me, gone are the days of it being the only record of how many people there are (remember Joseph and an expectant Mary returning to their place of birth?). With massive database systems for health, welfare, tax, banking, education, employment that can be queried relatively quickly - surely information for statisical purposes can be sourced through these. These databases are all being linked anyway to crack down on welfare cheats and tax evaders.

What's more, people guard personal information and are reluctant to give it out - and rightly so, some questions were very personal. What happens if in the future this information is no longer guarded by the acts we have in place now, the whole database could probably fit on a standard computer's hard drive. Then you get people giving inaccurate data such as being a smart arses to get "Jedi" recognised as a religion.

The census is a relic from the past, and in my opinion is not only redudant, but raises too much suspicion as to what the information may be used for in the future.