I'm sure this will go nowhere, but it would be nice if it did. It would surely flow on to other states given right?

I worked at Franklins way back in the day and their profit margins ran at about 5%. It would be interesting to know if the profit margin has increased significantly or not.

This is probably the most important part, IMO:

Queensland Fruit and Vegetable Growers association chief executive Rachel Chambers said farmers fear retribution if they make a complaint to supermarkets.

"Growers don't trust the system that is in place that they can escalate these behaviours to," Ms Chambers said.

"They are fearful of commercial retribution, which is their entire business, their life and livelihood, so the process is broken."

Conservative politicians are dominating Facebook advertising about changing the date of Australia Day, analysis shows.

After Woolworths announced last week that it would no longer stock Australia Day merchandise due to declining demand, the opposition leader, Peter Dutton, condemned the move as an “outrage” born from the retailer’s “woke agenda” and said most Australians likely thought the same.

Now several conservative politicians are paying for advertisements on social media platforms lobbying against changing the date.

An example business I was looking up just now... In Google Maps and the first page of Google Search etc it shows then as having 4.5 star review average over 693 reviews.... But if you click and get the sidebar pop up, it shows reviews from the web which are far less flattering.

This seems to be super common. Google reviews are always glowing, but other sites are far less favourable. What's the most likely reason for this?

• Google results are more realistic because Google prompts for reviews more frequently and thus more people are likely to leave a review which gives a more realistic result? Whereas the only people going to TrueLocal and Product Review are the very unhappy customers?

• Or that Google is completely gamed by SEO "experts" who spam fake reviews for cents and thus make Google Reviews completely bollocks by overpowering any genuine reviews with paid glowing testimonials?

If its the latter, I feel Google needs to solve this cause at the moment I have zero faith in their review system.

(I've blanked the name just because that's not really the point of this post.)

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The cool-and-freeze method involves placing cane toads in a fridge for 24 hours, which puts them in a state of torpor, before transferring them to the freezer to finish them off.

She said this was more humane than other methods of killing cane toads, such as bashing them with cricket bats or crushing them under cars.

"Our learning and our knowledge have evolved since the days of cane toad golf," Ms Tomsett said.

"It's important to treat all animals humanely. Cane toads have to be removed, and it's not their fault they're here."

When the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) declared an El Niño event in September, there were warnings of a hot and dry summer.

But for thousands of Queenslanders especially — from the storm-ravaged south-east to the flooded Far North — that's not been the case at all.

As a Brisbanite, I can definitely vouch for this one. It's literally raining right this second, and our backyard is already a swamp...

tl;dr:

Over the past month, while Queensland faced record-breaking rainfall, South Australia and Western Queensland sweated through heatwave conditions as bushfires burned in the west.

Dr Brown attributed the variation of El Niño experiences across the country to an average of hot and dry conditions and not a totality.

"When we talk about dry conditions from an El Niño, it's not dry everywhere – it's dry on average," Dr Brown said.

Twelve Australians were among more than 370 people who escaped a burning airliner after a collision with a Coast Guard aircraft at Tokyo's Haneda airport.

Five of the six crew on board the Coast Guard plane died in the incident.

...

Transport Minister Tetsuo Saito confirmed that five of the Coast Guard aircraft's crew had died, while the 39-year-old captain of the plane escaped but was injured.

Imagine being that guy :-\

Good news everyone! House prices are becoming unaffordable at a slightly lower rate than previous!

Australian house and apartment values bounced back in 2023, increasing by 8.1 per cent nationally over 2023, according to new data.

...

While the 2023 results represent a significant increase in home values across Australia compared to 2022, they pale in comparison to the 24.5 per cent surge recorded in 2021.

If these trends continue, I'm only 75 years away from affording my own house 😎

I'm in Brisbane and watching the search for the 9 year old girl play out in real time via the local Facebook group was pretty rough.

From the first message saying they've wandered off, to the initial optimism of people joining the search by walking the local parks and creeks / looking up camera footage etc to see if she'd walked past, to the final post by the family member saying they'd been found deceased all within a couple of hours.

Stark contrast to the updates from other people enjoying holidays and time with family etc.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk's salary is set to increase by almost $50,000 by mid-2025 as part of an 11 per cent pay rise over three years for Queensland politicians.

The determination by the Queensland Independent Remuneration Tribunal (QIRT) means all 93 members of state parliament will receive the following three salary increases:

• three per cent from July 2023 (to be back-paid)
• four per cent from July 2024
• three per cent from July 2025

My free plecostomus I got a year or so ago. He wasn't specifically free... we just bought a tiny 15L fish tank to put some shrimp in, and when we filled it with water he appeared 😳

I'm guessing he was suckered on to the piece of driftwood and had enough moisture to survive the 48 hours or so between the seller emptying the tank, and us refilling it after buying.

Dudes fair bristly. A heck of a lot bigger now than he was when he appeared in the tank, not all that much bigger than the neo shrimp that were his tank mates.