Tom MacDonald

Even for a temporary visa, the guy's been living here for at least a few years. I think it's reasonable to expect a more clearly defined set of criteria than "don't catch the minister's attention" for punting people out of the country once they're resident.

Looks like those numbers are inclusive of major crimes etc which I think are a bit more clearcut than cancellations on noncriminal bad vibes (if still touchy for the reasons you mention).

Cheers, and whew - that's far more cancellations than I'd have expected. Would be fascinating to learn more about how the power's being used, although I get your point that it'd be hard to gather the info

Is that actually the case? Committing crimes can definitely get your visa revoked, but the point is I don't *think* this guy has actually broken the law.
If there's a sane way to make it illegal to be a nazi without spilling over into proscribing all sorts of other stuff, great - let's do that.

Got recent examples? I wouldn't be at all shocked if you're right, but the only comparisons that come to mind are visa denials (not cancellation) for the Kanyes of the world and a few ISIS-ish deportations that I *think* had actually committed crimes.

Not sure "the Minister can cancel visas and send people home if he doesn't like their politics" is necessarily a good precedent for the left - what do you reckon?

Something highly unusual about the Redbridge/Accent poll is that the ON vote is so enormous that Labor would get just under half of 2PP preferences. L-NP and ON would win seats from behind on preferences, and perhaps win more such seats combined than ALP.

Any thoughts on where the threshold(s?) would be for 2PP to start breaking down under a ONP ascendency? I assume we're not particularly close...

'Time to go home': South African man who attended Neo-Nazi rally has visa cancelled The federal government has revoked the visa of a man who attended the far-right National Socialist Network protest at NSW's parliament house.

Ministerial discretion to cancel long-term visas and deport residents for bad (but not illegal?) politics seems a pretty bad road to go down!
www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11...

Snowy Hydro deal being mulled to save Tomago Aluminium Rio and the Albanese government are locked in a stalemate over Tomago’s future after the mining giant rejected a reported $1 billion federal-NSW bailout offer.

www.afr.com//politics/fe...

Australia spent ~$14b building a massive piece of shared public infrastructure in Snowy 2.0. Now the nation's largest aluminium smelter is demanding to be given Snowy's output to stay in business. Government as a cash machine for failing industrials.

The emissions reductions objective is vague - if anything, AEMO is more at risk of overplaying it (e.g. to motivate implausible ISP scenarios).
If private owners won't close plants, and government refuses to take action to force the issue, what's an independent market operator meant to do?

Not great!

‘Catastrophic’ failure delays massive $1b Waratah super battery The BlackRock-owned development is the largest storage project in the world and a key part of the transition away from coal power.

www.afr.com//companies/e...
Looks like the very large 850MW Waratah Super BESS has popped one of three 350 MVA transformers just short of completing its already long delayed commissioning process 😬
Seems they're still partially operational, but that's a *big* delay and expense to deal with

Excellent essay here on the slow strangling of mass literary culture in the West - most clearly in the US, but it's obviously happening here too

Important news, but I'm surprised at how favourably this report sees the economics of gas reciprocating engines - I've heard complaints about the cost and complexity of maintenance + disappointing reliability. Would love to hear if any others are seeing recips as a serious economic challenger to GTs

I haven't seen any very convenient free sources, but I think NEMOSIS is reasonably effective at automating the pull and reformat from AEMO's clunky MMS files

Cool idea in its simplicity, but geez there could be a lot of regulatory and economic difficulties in the way of actually making this happen:
reneweconomy.com.au/solar-sharer...

US accused of threatening EU diplomats during bid to kill green shipping rules Negotiators at shipping talks in London were told both they and their countries could be punished unless they voted with the U.S.

European negotiators were personally targeted by their American counterparts during a brutal negotiation over green shipping rules, European Commission officials told POLITICO. 

This highly unusual gambit left diplomats shaken after the meeting. 

Also those ISP assumed upgrades I've never seen costed at Gordon (#4,5 turbines?) and maybe Reece over on the west coast - speaking of, REECE2 still isn't back in action after the fire in July. Wonder how expensive that'll be to fix?

Important piece on Hydro Tasmania's growing debt and falling revenue: reneweconomy.com.au/hydro-tasman...
To my knowledge, none of the system planning in Australia thinks particularly hard about what happens to hydro inflows as the climate changes - possibly because the answers are too unpleasant.

Can't really see how we avoid going back to scholarly work via small, exclusive webs of trust. The openness of the early 2000s was great - I benefited from it a lot - but with persistent AI exploiting and degrading open social systems wherever they're found, those systems won't stay open for long.

I suppose the real test here is "if the PRC threw its full economic heft behind sanctions to stop You/Us/The West accessing a mineral or material with strategic significance, could they succeed?". Seems to be yes for Dy or Gd, no for steel or copper, maybe for many things in between.

Just pulled it out as an example of something very niche with few producers and little/no market incentive to add capacity, but with a few key uses (BeCu tooling, aviation alloys) that would suffer from losing access - which is more plausible than losing access to e.g. steel. That's the point.

The government view on this is pure politics, but if "critical mineral" is to have any value as a concept I think it needs to focus on essential materials with smaller supply chains at risk of market capture. Fe, Al, Cu are clearly critical - but also somewhat distinct from Nb, Ga, Be etc

Aluminium smelter closure tests Labor’s clean energy goals Federal Industry Minister Tim Ayres says every option will be exhausted by the government to prevent the closure of Australia’s largest aluminium smelter.

Tomago smelter maybe closing in 2028: www.smh.com.au/business/the...
Tomago faces a doubling of supply costs when their power contract expires in 2028 and want a ten-figure handout to cover the difference. They may get it - but is this really the best 21st century use of our limited generation?

Time for 2025 updates to my annual “opinions about solar” thread. If you like these, you might like the second edition of my book, Solar Power Finance Without The Jargon. A 30% discount code WSQ0437 is valid on publisher website until end of November 2025.

www.worldscientific.com/worldscibook...

Weird scheme here - tempting to view this as money shoveled into the fire, but since the hydrogen support will be as production tax credits there's a decent chance the money is simply never spent (as the H2 won't be produced). Overall, hard to say if the scheme is naive or cynical

people become terrorists when they get engineering degrees, offering us a simple solution.

New round of CIS winners announced today, showing a continuing shift away from wind and toward solar+BESS hybrid generation: reneweconomy.com.au/solar-batter...
This really isn't the energy transition we expected a few years back but it seems to be the one we're getting. Onwards!

Coordination polymers! Congrats to the team, and great to see Robson recognised - I'm sure the Australian inorganic community will be enjoying a few beers this week