Someone has stolen the parking meters at Mount Lofty Summit (not just one of two of them, but all of them), so there is free parking until they are replaced. Normal price is $2 - $4 (I can't recall exactly how much it used to be)
Further information about the Summit is available here
Happened many years ago at my old work, well the street parking around it. Angle grinder off the pole apparently.
4wd, Bullbar and not a whole lot of imagination
(kicks the metal saw under the bed) what a terrible crime.
How is this a deal? It'll cost thousands of taxpayers money to replace them
No it won't - we won't have to pay extra tax. It means that the government will have less money to spend on ridiculous things like war planes.
But but Darwin and Sydney is still in extreme danger from Japanese bombing
Hahaha, seriously?? At least there is the potential for the general population to benefit out of the 'crazy schemes' unlike $50bn on submarines. That is a complete waste of money!! You could do so much more for Australians with $50bn, then to spend it on defence, where is the cost-benefit ratio for that?
@Resistor: Cost Benefit is that you can sleep safe in your bed at night. Cost Benefit is in all of the jobs that are created for people to build, support and maintain the things. Cost benefit is in knowing that if and when our brothers, sisters, kids etc are called upon to go to war and fight that they will be going in the best, safest and most capable pieces of kit giving them the best possible chance to win and come back home safe! The General Population that are welders, factory workers, maintainers, logistics experts etc will benefit from having a job. All of these homeless vets we love to start charities for will have a potential career path to move into industry when they leave the forces (and before you have a go about mentioning veterans, I am one and this is exactly how I ended up in the Defence industry).
are you seriously saying that being safe and protected and having our security guaranteed is not considered of benefit to the general population, but building a new hospital in a marginal electorate in order to get a vote in parliament, or contracting dodgy and unsafe companies to install pink batts or implementing controversial school programs or even doing a dodgy online census is of more benefit to the general population than being safe in our beds of a night?
Personally not keen on money being spent on … political handouts to do deals for votes
You realise that's exactly what the subs deal was right?
@NigelTufnel: And you know this how? How many years did you spend working in Capability Development Division working on the Gap Analysis between Australia and our potential adversaries. Did you work on the White paper authoring team, what is the strategic climate from 2025 onwards? Which sections of the white paper do you disagree with. I will admit that I am not a Maritime' specialist. If you have a better source than mine please do tell.
@2ndeffort: Not saying we didn't necessarily need extra Defence capacity, but the decision on how much to pay and where to have them built was completely political decision to get votes, rather than an economic cost/benefit decision.
@2ndeffort:
Huge Cost Benefit in jobs created for people to build, support, maintain and staff a hospital too. Except then it gets to be used by actual people in need, instead of just chugging around the ocean playing war games.
So which countries are saying "Damn, we were gonna invade Australia, but now they're building these submarines…."
@NigelTufnel: The political part of the decision that cost extra money was the decision to build them here using Australian workers. If we were happy to just buy the subs made by French or German workers the cost would have been much less but then there would not be jobs for welders in Adelaide etc etc . In terms of capacity it is more about having an edge on your likely opponent, they don't build these things on a guess, there is an enormous amount of study, analysis and forecasting that goes into the decision.
@2ndeffort: Hahaha, seriously deluded. Safe and protected from who? Oh we will just stick our nose in the south china sea and say g'day for the reason of what? Sounds like looking for trouble to me. Regarding the second paragraph yes, that those things are of much more benefit to me than sleeping safe at night knowing the government spent a waste of money on protecting themselves after they stick their nose in Afghanistan, Iraq, South China Sea. What the hell have those countries' issues got to do with us? Nothing. Iceland don't have an army and they have no issues.
Oh and we could build high speed rail for that amount.
@CGradeCyclist: They are going to build hospitals as well thpough, I don't think it is an either/or decision. Ther4e are specific electorates that have been given very generous federal grants and infrastructure, largely to guarantee the patronage of their local independent MP, particularly when a vote or 2 is needed in a hung parliament. I agree Australia is not likely to be invaded anytime soon but the relative threat levels and the strategic outlook for the future have been analyzed and published in last year's white paper. The defence investment program is tailored to make sure we have an edge to meet any of the potential threats in the future period of the white paper. I am not qualified to 2nd guess the analysis of the folks that wrote the white paper, if you are please do!
So which countries are saying "Damn, we were gonna invade Australia, but now they're building these submarines….
China and Russia!
@2ndeffort:
Just out of curiosity, is there any dollar amount you would consider too high to spend on submarines?
If there was a more pressing issue than a possible future war, could that money be better spent?
Are you confident a $30bn Japanese solution would have left us in jeopardy that is removed by the $50bn French deal?
Do you consider the Collins class subs a success?
I've not been interested in exactly taking sides here….. But I wish we actually tried to do more 'indigenous' or 'local' development of these ideas and/or industries rather than import so much of it…..
I'd like to see us use this 'transfer of technology' and capability to build submarines and ships used for building a export industry, then you can "start" to mitigate the costs of expensive defence contracts(marginal cost).
At the very least we should do more 50-50 partnerships in building new assets with other countries so we can develop and improve….
@mskeggs: I am an ex-army guy, not ex-Navy so I am not an expert on Submarines, I would be better placed arguing about the large Land project, Land 400. The process to determine capability as I understand it is based upon an analysis of future capabilities by regional threats followed by a gap analysis to identify what we need to retain a local edge. Somewhere online there is a public policy document that details the process. I haven't read it for a long time, very dry! I am sure that there is a point where it becomes unaffordable, I personally have no idea where that line is but I know subs are very expensive.
I don't know much about the Collins Class subs, never even been in one. In terms of French vs Japanese I don't have any personal insight but I expect that the risk of integrating a US combat system into a Japanese Sub, combined with the fact that Japan has never transferred their IP and designs to a foreign client before was probably considered in the evaluation process. The things that derail, delay and cost loads to these projects are normally the integration challenges. My mail from the Collins Program was very critical of ASC and the processes they had in place for engineering and maintenance. I personally didn't work on the program but had friends and colleagues that did.
@Forfiet: This is normally the aim and part of the justification when these programs kick off. Pyne is touring the country at the moment spruiking this very agenda, was in Melbourne yesterday. In practice foreign orders are vcery hard to come by. The reason many of the big US companies have such a large head start is that their domestic market is so big and strong that they have massive economies of scale for investing in huge projects. When we buy another 3 or 4 heavy lift aircraft our order (and that of most countries) gets added to the order for 20 or 30 planes being made for the USAF! We get 3 or 4 out of their production run. There is not much that we make here in large enough scale to be competitive. Would love it if we did but tough nut to crack.
@CGradeCyclist: At the risk of being a little 'High Brow' for OzBargain, I think this abridged quote form Machiavelli probably answers your question:
"There can be no proper relation between one who is armed and one who is not. Nor it is reasonable to expect that one who is armed will voluntarily obey one who is not"
I would imagine that it does wonders for the political bargaining power of a future Australian PM if regional neighbours know that we have the ability to counter any threats made against us! Sometimes you just need to have the Big Stick, you don't always need to actually use it.
@2ndeffort: I understand and fully agree…. But you don't have to start big in what you make.
I was just saying we should prevent a 'brain drain' and selling off all our most profitable patents(medical included) and restart development and production here…
GAF Jindivik, Metal storm and Ikara missiles and other past productions….
I do however realise we can't afford to make or develop technologies already available for cheaper elsewhere, so there is no real black and white solution. :(
I don't think anyone is arguing the fact we need defense. We do, however all the massive programs we have forked out over recent years have all been failures. Technologies that really should be in beta testing, dumped on Australian tax payers by private US military conglomerates. It's like buying the latest model Ferrari, that doesn't work until further testing… If I worked at a private business and bought their fleet of car "that sometimes works", I'd be fired, but it seems if you do that in government, you get promoted.
@2ndeffort:
Thanks for the considered reply.
It is hard to prioritise defence spending, for me, when there are many other areas that need attention. Especially when the defence materiel people have a pretty mixed record. Time will tell with the subs, but looking at our ongoing commitment to the doomed f-35 program isn't reassuring.
I'm not against a robust defence force. I think it is critical we be able to defend the good things we have here, but I do question whether the best way to do that is with a small force of extremely costly air and sub technology aimed at interdiction - effectively hoping to cut logistics lines of an invading force.
I worry we are still fighting WWII at heart, and we'll be over taken with a tactics like swarms of drones, massive simultaneous surface attacks from small vessels in great numbers or other simple, low cost options coupled with denial of service/jamming of our command and control systems that our concentrated, high cost defences aren't designed to face.
I reckon the only sustainable defence is that used by the Swiss or Israelis. Train and equip your entire population so an aggressor faces such high costs of occupation they never try in the first place.
@2ndeffort: Yes, yes we are saying that.
In my case largely because I refuse to accept the military, much less submarines, is keeping me safe at night (and I've certainly never asked them to). Spout a load of hypothetical scenarios of other countries waiting to invade Australia all you like but it's never going to be believable to me (which no, does not mean I want the military completely disbanded…).
Am a maritime specialist who also works in Defence industry and the politics ruined the decision.
The amount of jobs being created is minor and our Asian neighbours to the north that ASPI drone on about are not going to care about a small fleet of submarines.
Sure joint warfare in PACOM will supplement this 'deturrent' but just like the F-35, it's a political stunt through and through. How many jobs, with the exception of some specialised, niche products, did JSF make for Australia? Sweet buck all.
I won't even start on the fact that we led the Japense on to the point that they were sailing their boats into Sydney showing off their design before making a rediculous choice to go with France. The French design is going to suffer the same fate for any ITAR components; you would be deluded if you thought otherwise.
Where we suck, is where we don't buy off the shelf and we make special decisions like keeping Adelaide 'alive' with ~500 jobs.
By the way, some of those quasi social schemes your refer to prevent undesirables from breaking into your house, stealing valuables to supplement their income while you're at work. I agree some programs are useless but don't generalise.
Your local council has war planes??? Where do you live? It sounds so cool.
Fiberglass replica on static display. Does that count?
So you don't know the difference between Federal, State and Local then.
This is what happens when most of the deals posted are not applicable for SA.
In the interests of making sure this complies with OzBargain rules, can someone please confirm are there at least 10 parking spaces at the Mt. Lofty Summit?
There are none left. Some guy with a really long truck and a license plate called 'BR0D3N' has taken all the spots with his one vehicle.
He must be a professional. And where have I heard that 'BRODEN' before… hmmmm?
So, should the deal be marked as "Expired"?
Not enough quantity dude.
I feel like there is some joke to be made here…. but fact is really stranger than fiction!
can someone steal the ones outside my uni please
Why don't you do it yourself?
Why don't you do it yourself?
30% off cordless grinders at Masters at the moment.
In another thread someone scanned one of the parking tickets, photoshopped new dates on tickets and printed them. Much less likely to get caught.
Will they check on their handheld device to see if you have paid for your number plate or not?
@minhdung1911: Must be the reason the parking meters here have started the need to key in your plate # prior to ticket being printed.
That parking meters are being stolen is deplorable, but the fact that this gets posted up as a deal…. I respect that.
If you haven't been there before, it's a beautiful place to visit with the family.
They also have a Wollemi Pine. They're ugly, but they have an amazing story behind them. Good place to take the kids.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wollemia
"Good place to take the kids."
I rarely take mine out, as they are ugly, but they have an amazing story behind them…
my luck they will be replaced when i visit in a few weeks time
This has got to be one of the funniest deals I've seen!
For reference, here is a wider shot - the orange witches hat is where the parking meter was.
Glad they've bolted that witches hat down so that no-one can steal that too…
Stanley knife vs cordless grinder
:):):)
This is great, saves me from parking at Waterfall Gully carpark for free! Just to walk in agony the 3.9km to the sumit for sip of water and back down again.
'All cars parked at owners risk' << You guys saw that warning on the info post picture? Hmm! Whoever stole the parking meters is/are probably reading OzB now and will be back for more, if you know what I mean by 'more'. :)
Did you steal the meters OP? :p
Nope wasn't me :)
Will Matt fix it?
Nope. Bob the builder
There's always a sliver lining
You South Aussies / 'crow eaters' could organise an OzBargain meetup up there.
so funny, but why i saw someone "REPORT" this to OZbargain admin?
Shit's getting real in SA..
BUGGA….I drove up the hills freeway yesterday and missed out on this freebie.
WOW! This is happening. In other news… if anyone wants a bargain price on a quality, only slightly used parking meter, Must sell Today. PM me.
Not all heroes wear capes…
No Reasonable Offer Refused.
I hope no new users visit OzBargain until this deal gets off the front page.
These poles might pop up on gumtree or ebay (not including 20% off though) soon.
Comes pre loaded with coins for parking to go…..
I totally condone this behavior, but preferably attack the parking meters set up in hospitals where the disabled need to park.
Tried a pricematch for my parking outside Officeworks. The managers head literally exploded. RIP Officeworks Manager 'Alan'.
Hmmm….a stolen parking meter and JV is nowhere to be found on OZBargain? He's usually one of the quickest to write pointless comments but now he's disappeared. A coincidence, perhaps?
I'd say so
Nothing to see here, just another typical day in good old SA.
Need this to happen in my local CBD.
A couple of weeks ago this happened in Melbourne CBD. I figured it was odd but just paid using the PayStay App. Would I have got away with not paying?
How do you steal a parking meter?
They probably set it up elsewhere and pocketing the charge.