@ash007It is awesome that you like Niall Ferguson because he is...

@ash007

It is awesome that you like Niall Ferguson because he is one of my favorite thinkers. The "civilization: is the west history" series is the single most important documentary series I have ever come across and should be mandatory viewing in Australian classrooms.

Just on what you were saying about millennial's, in addition to the generational aspect there is also a growing divide between the country folk and the city folk. Increasingly the city folk are living in some ignorant bubble where mining, smelting, gas extraction and farming do not need to exist. Below is a stacked graph showing the top five exports are IO mining, coal mining, metal production, oil and gas and farm exports.

Collectively they make up around 20 billion a month in export earnings, now as Barnaby said to that dimwitted reporter the other day. How are these city folk going to afford fancy cars, appliances, PED's and clothes if we cannot export anything? Where will we get the foreign currency to pay for it all?

I have seen the strip mines of the hunter valley from a twin prop and it is absolutely hideous, but it keeps the lights on and allows us to bring in the best goods from all over the world while having truly great standards of living. This is the reality, if they kill mining then they will kill everyone's standard of living. A prime example are the petro-states of Norway, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, I have stood at the foot of the Burj Dubai and I can tell you that city would not be able to scrape together enough wheat to feed a village if it wasn't for oil and Norway is no different and neither are we.

We come from the land down under, where women glow and men plunder. We plunder the land and sell it to the world (we always have) and unfortunately too much of that wealth (created in the outback on the sweat of hard men's brows) gets plundered by the city folk via the thieves in government and their apparatchiks. Only for them to look down on the country folk as some kind of redneck vermin. They truly have no idea how the world works and don't deserve any profit from our mineral wealth, we should bring back the free city state idea and keep mining royalties in the regions where they belong.

End Rant

Anyway I love Telstra, can't say enough great things about Telstra and going for broke into the 5G paradigm and I hope we release the damn phones soon because the competitors are not sitting idle and the ACCC may have a surprise for us soon. GLTAH