Everyone is using Mastercard, Visa etc. It is not obvious most of the time but numerous places add a merchant fee without you knowing. The $4.50 coffee you purchase costs more as they place a 1% (?) fee on top of the price. Also, when I do need cash, I am finding it harder and harder to find a bank ATM as the banks are closing branches everywhere. The 3rd party ATM's are everywhere but you get stung with a $2 fee (at a minimum).
Wouldn't using traditional eftpos payment (ie "debit" on the pos device) defeat the issue with visa/mc debit/credit cards?
I realise there's a convenience factor (tap to pay/nfc payment from smart devices) but if a 4.5c extra charge on a coffee is too much, you're probably going to have to deal with a bit less convenience.
To be honest even dealing with cash is going to be the biggest inconvenience. I recently visited my parents in SA after many years away from Australia. We took several hundred dollars in cash for expected small purchases that aren't worth using our foreign visa/Mastercards for. For example the $4.50 coffee.
Practically every place I used cash was able to but not at all expecting to.
One place I just wanted a couple of bottles of water. I don't remember how much it was. The guy seemed almost *insulted* when I handed him coins - he didn't even need to give me fucking change, but apparently putting coins in a till was a task he wasn't prepared for that day.
Another place (another day) I wanted some water, they had to *unlock the till* just to take my cash.
If a vendor is adding 1% to the charge for stuff going to the EMV networks, it's 100% worth it IMO.
If you're spending enough that the 1% becomes a significant amount, either it's:
- a rare purchase, and you could find a less convenient way to pay that one thing (ie eftpos) or you can just accept the cost once;
- it's a common/frequent purchase and you aren't even going to notice the 1%. If you care that much you can still always pay another way.
I have not used cash in the two years since I moved back to Australia. In fact, it took a year for me to realize that they had redesigned the notes while we were away because I hadn't seen any.
Though I hadn't used cash in the US for many years either (didn't even have a way to withdraw cash), so it didn't seem that special.
With the police state there?! What could go wrong!
I remember during the pandemic they were the most ruthless one, and one pic stuck in my mind, a police man with a machine gun threatened a family with kids because they were spending some at the beach, because that was a “public safety” problem!
You foreigners are so quick to paint with a broad brush. Not so, here in Perth. In Western Australia we promptly closed the borders, avoided the worst of it and enjoyed summers on the beach and shopping whilst the rest of the world suffered in isolation because of their lack of principles.
No worries. Here is the article I found it on, where the claim about it being Australia is debunked and the original image source is revealed to be from Brazil
Ah, that’s explains this one then. I did however see other videos too about Australian pandemic, but hopefully police/people learned to be more aware of others and do not act like a mindless bots.
Try applying some critical thinking before believing everything you read on the internet, particularly when it relates to politically charged topics such as the pandemic.
TLDR: the vast majority of shit you've read/watched about "police state" during the pandemic in Australia is just that: shit.
It would be akin to Australians being told that in America every happy meal comes with a free .45 pistol.
The difference is most Australians are smart enough to question things that sound outrageous, rather than just believing everything they see.
Is it? There’s a big difference between misunderstanding a picture location -where I admit I was wrong- and someone is willing to shoot because big pharma said so and still willing to do so if it would happen again, not knowing their mistake, this goes without mentioning the dozens of examples and proven evidence how it was dealt with there, from the quarantine camps [1], to people denied food because they are not vaccinated [2], or how police used drones and other tech invading people basic privacy and liberties [3], and I’m not even going with post-vaccine injuries.
I’m not talking about vaccination policies or itself was effective or not, I’m talking about basic human decency among each other, it’s ok if you do a mistake, admit it, and learn from it especially if you were “just following orders”, just like how I admit that pic was wrong, the least can be done is admitting a lot of covid shenanigans were wrong,it’s time to fix that, and hold some people accountable for ordering others to do such atrocities.
As an Australian, it was extremely obvious that image was fake the second it was seen simply because we had a policeman with a machine gun like that.
If you're going to claim Australia is a "police state" I'd urge you to consider just how foreign the idea of police ever pulling a gun is to anyone here.
For background, I grew up with my Dad in the police. I had literally never seen a gun in person until I went overseas.
As an actual West Australian who grew up on first nation land and had two sessions passing through a two week quarantine airlock as a result of work related out of country trips .. your links (brownstone & rebekahbarnett) are hilariously distorted over the top point of view opinions from what was a surprisingly small percentage of people who got very worked up about sensible precautions with overwhelming support.
As a result of having a two week isolation period in the pre vaccine times western australia spent most of the COVID years operating maskless with very few actual cases.
Once vaccines became available something like 98% of the state population had at least two shots (a very percent with three) with no spikes in death or disease (ie. no excessive side effects).
All of that made a good contrast against the rates of death and hospitalisation seen in (say) the USofA.
Of course there were some very vocal holdouts who foamed at the mouth about workplaces requiring proof of vacination and of course they have blogged at length about the inhumanity of the atrocities they have endured.
