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Butterfly_

Listed below are comments made by Butterfly_ between Tuesday, 28th April 2009 and Wednesday, 28th October 2009.

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Asylum, Afghanistan and rugby: blog updates 07:52am on 28 Oct 2009 Australia has a brilliant food culture. Both Melbourne & Sydney do great food that is world class. Right now Melbourne has a love of modern Australian, modern Italian & Pan Asian. French is also making a come back as well. You can eat great world influenced food for not much money in all sorts of places in Melbourne & still walk away with some change. Sometimes going out to dinner is like taking a holiday overseas, but cheaper :)

Sydney wouldn't be much different, except that liquour laws mean that if you wanted a liquour licence it wasn't cheap, so arguably not so many small places that also have a wine list.

Australia beats Britain hands down on food - fresh, inexpensive & all year round!
Does Australia deserve its boozy reputation? 07:52am on 11 Oct 2009 Australia does not have uniform liquor laws, they are different in every state, so we do get slightly different drinking cultures in different areas.

In Victoria where I live the liquor licence fees are very reasonable and they allow cafes and small bars to easily afford to have one. The law allows for cafes and restaurants to serve someone a drink without serving them a meal. The laws were first ammended in the mid to late 1990's and have helped see an explosion of cafes that sell liquor and small boutique bars, particularly in suburban Melbourne.

NSW is in the process of ammending their laws as they would like to create some of the Melbourne bar and cafe culture in inner Sydney. The Sydney mayor Clover Moore is really pushing this.

My understanding is that at the moment Sydney has many venues which are discribed as 'beer barns' that are large pubs that are designed to pack in the punters and are not a hit with women. The fees are just so high that you can't afford to have a small venue that only has room for say 50 people.

Also restaurants and cafes basically still have to serve somone a meal in order for them to be able to serve someone alcohol. I think this was because of the pub and club (social and sporting) lobby pushing their dominance when the laws were orignally drawn up. The fees were also very expensive in the past, so a mum and dad cafe might have felt that having a liquor was just not affordable.
Brand Australia 10:09am on 26 Sep 2009 Victoria's tourism slogan is 'you'll love every piece of Victoria' which is a brilliant phrase beacuse it allows Victoria to be marketed as a whole, whilst recognising the differences in regions throughout the state.

Australia needs something like that, a slogan/message which crosses boundaries and thus works with tourism and the other areas the federal governement wants to cover such as trade.

Something like 'Australia - naturaly beautiful, beautiful naturaly' might work because you can get many important meanings from the one line. The slogan doesn't limit us to being simply a wide brown land, this can discribe people, industries, cities and any of the states and teritories
Australia's underwhelming capital 10:50am on 10 May 2009 I was in Canberra over summer for 2 days this year, mostly to see the Degas exhibition at the National Gallery. It is a lovely place, but one thing I learned was that its not a city designed for pedestrians! Public transport is very poor. I'll either drive up from Melbourne, or I'll hire a car. Some tram routes on their lovely wide roads would be really great for locals & tourists alike!
Australian Republic back on radar 1:13pm on 28 Apr 2009 I voted for a republic in the referendum held on an Australian republic before, but only becuase the head of state was to be chosen by the parliament. It makes a simple change - Governor General basically becomes Presedent & the Prime Minister of the day can't put in whoever he/she likes; 2/3 of the parliament have to like them too. I believe the proposed model was similar to what exists in India. I'm not sure that I would vote for a republic if it was an elected head of state. I don't want the role to be come political

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