Passionate debate as bill to improve abortion access in regional NSW passes state parliament
"I acknowledge that this bill - while necessary - is not a silver bullet (a simple solution to a complex problem). Cultural change within an organisation as big as a local health district takes time. Training, educating, and supporting health workers takes time and resourcing, and this is not something that can be solved with the stroke of a pen."
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ABC News
2 minutes ago
- ABC News
INTERVIEW: Leaving construction to fight the industry's mental health crisis
Despite the physical dangers of the job, the leading cause of death among construction workers isn't job site accidents. It's suicide. So what's fuelling it? And what can you do if you or someone you know is struggling? We've been unpacking the industry's hidden hazards with someone who's lived through them: Dr Simon Tyler, who now works as a psychologist helping to address the high rates of suicide within construction. When we ran a shorter cut of this interview on the radio show, it had a huge response from people wanting to talk about it. In this extended interview, Dr Tyler shares more of his insights and experiences, and also offers some advice. And remember, Lifeline is there on 13 11 14. Guest: Dr Simon Tyler, psychologist and men's mental health researcher Get the whole story from Hack:
The Australian
33 minutes ago
- The Australian
Information technology can solve many of nation's problems
As Australians, we grow up thinking of ourselves as a relatively young country. After all, when most of us grew up, the second line of our national anthem even declared that we were 'young and free'. In reality, though, we are middle-aged among all the nations of the world. Look at a political world map from 1901, when Australia's constitutional system of government was established, and the list of nations that have come and gone across all the inhabited continents is striking. Australians live every day with the legacy of decisions made in the 19th century about how we govern ourselves. We just probably don't notice because we are so used to it. Some of those legacies – and how we had to move beyond them – have left us reminders even today. For example, how we had to build a single national rail gauge, leaving us Australia's longest rail platform in Albury where passengers between NSW and Victoria had to swap trains because the tracks were different in the two states! Other examples persist, not only consuming enormous bureaucratic effort in all governments but also having real impacts on the lives of Australians. Think of the cross-border recognition of vocational training qualifications and trade certificates, drivers' licences with different restrictions, specific business regulations such as health and safety, employment obligations, or car registration requiring different roadworthiness assessments. The National Competition Policy reforms of the early 1990s addressed scores of examples. But it has proven to be a game of whack-a-mole – as one problem is fixed, new state-based regulation seems to pop up presenting more challenges. Governments have tried in the past to fix these inconsistencies top down through national agreements. But there is another way to think about some of these problems – by focusing on the data and the technology that can turn it into actionable information. One of the best examples is how our three tiers of government pay for and manage infrastructure. Community requirements for infrastructure, and the associated costs, have exploded with population growth and changes in the way we live. Think about cars. In 1921, two decades after federation, there were fewer than 100,000 cars registered in Australia. Today, there are about 22 million. Upgrading roads is both a necessity and very politically popular. But when it comes to the cost, it can become very complicated. The Bruce Highway in Queensland is a great case in point. The federal and Queensland governments have invested tens of billions of dollars in upgrading the road in the past decade. But the highway itself runs through 11 local council areas. The responsibility for the maintenance of the highway and the roads and infrastructure joining and around it is shared between three tiers of government. Does anyone driving along the highway know or care? Do they know or care if they are paying for it through their federal taxes, state fees, levies and taxes of local rates? Probably not. But they will certainly notice if the driving experience in one part of their journey is wildly different to another. Governments could try to get together to discuss how they most effectively navigate the constitutional division of powers and responsibility for every type and piece of infrastructure. Or they could take a look at the investment already made in information technology that can deliver more value. For example, almost all of the councils the Bruce runs through are using the same asset management system to schedule their work on road assets. Imagine if all that data from all the councils was combined by the Queensland or federal government so decisions about where money was most urgently needed was based on a complete understanding. How much more efficiently would money be spent? How much better and more consistent – not to say safe – would the experience of travelling along the highway become? This is not a specific criticism of the management of the Bruce today. The same applies to hundreds of asset types that are paid for by one tier of government, managed by another, but used by people who are residents of a council, and a state but think of themselves as Australians. We have the technology. Thinking a little differently about how we can use it might just open up a whole new way to advance Australia fair – and fairly. Ed Chung is CEO of TechnologyOne.
ABC News
5 hours ago
- ABC News
Bigger properties occupied by smaller households in major housing mismatch, Cotality finds
In a reminder of how broken housing affordability and access is, new analysis highlights a major mismatch between the size of Australian homes and the number of people living in them. While the vast bulk of Australian housing is built for larger families, property research firm Cotality has found more than 60 per cent of households are made up of just one or two people. It reveals a misalignment between "who lives in our homes and the kinds of homes we're building", Cotality's head of head of Australian research Eliza Owen said in the report. "Of the lone-person households in Australia, the data suggests around 40 per cent are aged 65 and over," Ms Owen said. "The highest share of households is two people, but the highest share of housing has three bedrooms. "While there's nothing wrong with more bedrooms than people in a dwelling, there could be some inefficiencies in the way housing is being allocated," Ms Owen said. "After all, a 'traditional' family of four may have more need for a three-bedroom dwelling than a household of two people." The report cited data from the 2021 Census, which showed there were more two-person family households in three-bedroom dwellings (about 1.3 million), than three or four-person family households (about 1.1 million). Ms Owen has suggested a way to fix the "efficiency question", which she knows is not politically appealing — send a price signal. "Governments could make it more expensive to have more housing than you need, and cheaper to live in smaller housing," she wrote in her research note. She said that logic often leads to calls for tax reform including abolishing stamp duty to cheaper to move between housing, replacing it with a broad-based land tax (which raises costs the more land you own). "These options are both politically difficult as it would involve moving from a tax that applies to a small amount of voters each year who purchase property to one that will tax two thirds of voters (property owners)," she noted. Independent housing researcher Cameron Kusher, speaking to The Business in July, argued high transaction costs, namely stamp duty, discourage moving to a "better sized property" and can lead to people purchasing larger homes than they need to begin with. "People just feel like if I can get a better and bigger home sooner, that's a better outcome," he said. "If we look at what is being built, it's usually very large houses, four or five bedrooms, taking up most of the land on these new housing sites," Mr Kusher said. "A lot of it comes down to how much a piece of a property, [and] how much the land and the house, costs. "I think a lot of people are building bigger homes, thinking 'I'll spend a little bit more up-front and my family will grow into this home'. "It might just be a couple grandkids, or they're planning to have a couple of kids." He noted the effects of rapidly increasing property prices, which can leave people priced out of re-entering the market, and the fact that larger properties can be more likely to appreciate in value at a faster pace. Cotality's Ms Owen said other policy options to encourage people to move into appropriately sized homes could include reforming pension asset tests to include the value of the family home. "Strides are already being taken on the supply side to establish well-located apartments in our larger cities, that can accommodate smaller households. "But shifting demand through tax reform could help the take-up of these new homes." The government has accepted it is not on track to meet the target to build 1.2 million homes in five years, but Treasurer Jim Chalmers has stood by the ambition, despite Treasury advice it would not be met. In another recent note, Ms Owen questioned the focus of state and federal governments on speeding up building approvals to boost housing supply, warning that the construction industry simply cannot keep pace. "With completion times already above average and construction costs elevated, it seems an odd time to be incentivising more dwelling approvals and commencements," she said. Cameron Kusher argued past experience could be a guide on how to approach today's housing problems and ease the construction crunch. "Maybe we need to go back to how things were 30 or 40 years ago, where you have smaller homes and you make them easy to renovate," he told The Business. "Over time, people can actually add bedrooms, bathrooms, car parks, verandahs and all these sorts of things to add value to the home.
