What other kinds are there? Are there shared e-scooters?

Yep, escooters for hire are also a thing - just not much in NSW. There have been (and still are) various trials run in NSW by escooter operators but no permanent areas that I know of. They are more popular than hire bikes in some other places though, for example Canberra has a lot of shared escooters.

I don’t have data to base this on but would place decent bets on it being noticeably more dangerous than driving for the individual riding the scooter and noticeably less dangerous for anyone they run into. The rate would depend on how you measure accidents though - per kilometre would be a lot worse than per trip.

Escooters aren’t really good vehicles for rider safety - small wheels (often with no suspension), unstable geometry, and a riding position with limited ability to brace oneself means you do have to be careful. It does require a solid readjustment coming from my dirt bike in particular (where hopping 20-30cm logs is easy) onto the scooter where hitting a little tree root raised bit of tar at 25km/h will just about throw you off the thing.

They are definitely convenient and fun though, it’s a good thing that NSW is finally moving to allow them.

Slowly catching up with the times, classic NSW though having to be different to everyone else and make it 20km/h rather than 25.

Really should be allowed on footpaths (maybe with lower limit) but I guess small steps are better than the current situation where they’re illegal but mainly ignored. The ACT allows both escooters and bicycles on the footpath and this works fine, so take claims it’d be super dangerous with a large serving of salt.

Baby red bellies are indeed pretty cute, can confirm as I got to hold a live one in a jar once when I was a kid (some other kids caught it and were showing it off). Would definitely prefer they be cute somewhere that’s not my backyard though…

What’s wrong is that too much of our society is developing a moral panic about carrying knives. It doesn’t help that the knife in question is black with an angular design and therefore scary looking to the pearl-clutchers despite being something that appears to be an reasonable everyday carry.

The article says they were searching people at Central, which isn’t even an unreasonable place to have a pocketknife on you. I’ve carried my pocketknives through Central plenty of times without even considering not bringing them.