Some Thoughts on the Federal Election 2019

The following are simply my personal thoughts and do not reflect the policies of any organisation I may be associated with.

1. Queensland - Labor was always going to struggle in Queensland, simply because they think differently in Qld.  Must be all that sun.  The real problem was always going to be in areas that Adani affected because they are currently very high unemployment areas.  Anything that increases employment is going to be a plus.  Labor misread the signs and did not support Adani enough.  As much as they wanted to be seen to be strong on climate change, this is a factor that is "someone else's problem" i.e. others can make the sacrifices so that I can feel good about my contribution to a better environment. 
2. Unions appear to be becoming more irrelevant as time goes on.  Unfortunately they are associated with a previous time that today's workforce do not recall.  Until they make themselves relevant to today's young workforce, their influence will keep decreasing.
3.  Labor Leaders - we were reminded of charismatic leaders by the death of Bob Hawke, and more to the point, how charisma-free Bill Shorten is.  To carry the country, you need to be able to convince voters that you are able to convince all walks to support you.  Bill played well with the Unions, but he failed in the Boardrooms and those that aspire to that area.  Labor may have got much more traction if they had a forceful woman leader as it would have given them more of a point of difference rather than a competition between 2 middle-aged, white men. 
4.  Advertising - As Clive Palmer showed, too much advertising is not necessarily a good thing. By the time we got to the election people were punishing Clive because they were sick of being robo-called and spammed.  Also I hope some of the parties are penalised heavily for continuing to advertise on election day.
5.  The clear picture here was that Fear will win you an election.  This is the second election where the fear campaign was used to spook voters into one side or the other, and not looking to the future. Labor pulled out the Fear card way too late and failed to make it stick.  As much as I dislike this as a way of campaigning, unfortunately it works.  
6.  Preference deals - One wonders what the election would have looked like if the smaller parties were not able to wield such a large stick in the form of preferences. One wonders how much of the Morrison Government will compromised by those deals.  
7.  Compassion - This current government has shown a continuing lack of compassion, from it's treatment of unemployed, and disabled through to it's treatment of refugees.  What stuns me is that the Australian public have in effect agreed with this stance. From being a country that would help others in a time of need to being a country that scrambles over the bodies of those unable to keep up in it's efforts to reach the boardroom, this country has lost it's way.  Given how many people wanted to vote for Jacinda Ardern, this surprises me.. 
8. Taxes and debt - The bogie men of taxes and debt were used to scare people into voting for the Coalition, even though the Coalition has tripled the debt since they came to power and failed to decrease taxes for those most in need to tax relief. 
9.  Media interference - The Murdoch Media was against Labor from the start and this was always going to be an issue.  When you are unable to get positive stories for your candidates published, you are always going to struggle.  
10.  How many of the newly minted politicians are going to struggle with Section 44? That is, how many of them are going to be found to be dual citizens?
11. Absentee votes -  with nearly a third of the country choosing to vote early, why have we not changed the voting so that we vote over a week, with counting being done as the votes come in?
12. When we all declare bankruptcy, because this government for all it's bragging about knowing how to run the economy only knows how to benefit their mates in big business, it is comforting to know that we can all look forward to robo-debt being enforced.  At least some one will be calling us because it won't be employers. 
13. Instead of getting out there and pointing out that the Franking credits issue does not apply to people who are earning an income and paying taxes, and that it really only affects those that have retired with huge shareholdings, the Labor party did not do enough to get this message across.  It was left to the Coalition to use the franking credits as a scare campaign "The Labor party is going to tax the money you have worked all your life to save" .  Never mind that it was only ever going to be a case of rolling back a loophole that was being exploited by financial planners to ensure that their clients got a nice tax cheque from the Government each year. Franking credits should simply be that, a credit against taxes already paid or offsetting tax to be paid on income.  It should not be another form of income. 
14. The Us versus them marketing by the Labor party, makes many people appear greedy.  At the end of the day, most people aspire to the boardroom, even if their income is more in the janitors room.  More should have been made of the fact that most people have been in effect going backwards wage wise over the last 5 years and that the Government was encouraging employers to not increase wages through various means.
15. Where to now?  Bill Shorten has already resigned, and it looks like there will be more of the same in the Labor party.  They need to get some of their competent women to the top level. 
16. Looking at this a few months after the election, it is interesting how much support Albo has been getting. This may be a function of the "new guy" bounce, but I think the fact that Albo has a personality is helpful.  
17. Now that the tax breaks have been granted, there is a lot of newsprint in the Left press about how this mainly affects those on higher tax brackets.  It will remain to be seen if this government lasts long enough for those high end tax breaks to actually occur.  

Microsoft Office licensing and annoyance

Microsoft Licensing and Installation Blues

So recently I had an executive drop his laptop on my desk with the command that he needed MS Project installed (in 20 minutes).

"No Problems" I thought and went to the Office 365 admin portal, allocated a license to him and proceeded to login to the office portal with his account to download the installer.

All went well until I went to run the installer.  At this point it complained that it needed an administrative account to install.

By default we restrict users from installing software, so I ran the install as my administrative user.  This got a bit further, however then it popped up an error that it could not install because it could not download files required for the installation.  AAARGh, how bloody annoying can you get?!  Check that there are no firewall blocks (local firewall is set to pop up a dialogue box if this is blocked)

Ok so time is not on my side, and I will shortly have an exec  on my shoulder asking where his laptop is. Quick google using the error code "error-code 30182-1011 (3) unable to download file"  and there is very little help.  Looks like it is another generic Microsoft error, with the suggestion to "uninstall Office and reinstall".  Given that it takes 20 minutes to install, I'd hate to think how long it is going to take to uninstall all the versions of office on this laptop and re-install Office365, then try the Project installation.  With no guarantee that this is going to work.

OK so is there a way to get the full install for Ms Project? Yes, the Office Offline installer gives this option, but it needs you to know the exact name of the software you want to install and the shortname which you have to place in the correct location in the installation.xml file.  Of course documentation on this is written  in legalese i.e. you need to spend 2 days reading one paragraph to understand what you need to do.  Why can't MS just give you the option to download the full file from the link at Office365 ?  (I know, they only want you to download the minimum so that they can control installations.)

When I gave the exec the unfortunate news, he was not happy :(
What I have suggested is that some future time when he does not need his machine for the day, I will back it up, uninstall all Office installations and do a fresh Office365 install on his machine. The aim is to make it possible to do the installation should he need it urgently in the future.

But my big question is for Microsoft.  When I am shelling out for an E3 license to allow me to install the software locally on my computer, I want to be able to download the full installation at one time, not have a quick installer download and then have to ensure that internet connectivity will allow me to download the rest of the software.  Why is this not offered as an option?   Worse still, in the above case, the Click-to-Run version that was installed as a default with windows 10 had actually worked to block the installation of new software.  Why did the installer not pop up an error stating that multiple versions of Office had been found and offer to uninstall any unneeded software?

I'm sure that with the MS move to a completely subscription based software, this will be become less of an issue but in the meantime, at least give us useful error messages instead of generic WTF errors that help no-one.