Latest news with #TheGreatAussieDebate
New York Post
15-05-2025
- New York Post
The dangerous bedroom act that can go ‘from fun to deadly'
Nearly a third of young Australians are engaging – for pleasure – in a sex act that can go 'from fun to deadly' in a matter of seconds, new research has found. Of the more than 54,000 people who took part in The Great Aussie Debate – a wide-ranging, 50-question survey launched earlier this year, uncovering what Australians really think about everything from the cost of living and homeownership to electric vehicles and going shoeless in supermarkets – 30 percent of 18 to 29-year-olds had engaged in strangulation during sex. They were also the generation with the highest rate (3.31 percent) of it happening without their consent. Defined as when a person's breathing is stopped or restricted by the use of hands, other body parts or ties around the neck, the act, commonly referred to as 'choking', cannot be performed safely during sex, police, doctors and researchers have said. 4 18 to 29-year-olds were the generation with the highest rate of engaging in strangulation during sex, and the highest group of it occurring without their consent. LIGHTFIELD STUDIOS – Though the practice isn't new, Gen Z's increased acceptance of it as part and parcel of 'normal' sex has become a central concern for experts. As Teach Us Consent founder Chanel Contos asked in her National Press Club address, 'How can it be a significant indication a man is going to kill you has become commonplace in the bedroom?' 4 Gen Z's increased acceptance of choking as 'normal' sex has become a central concern for experts. Volodymyr – First and foremost, the University of Melbourne's Professor Heather Douglas told 'I think we can blame the extraordinary accessibility of online pornography and sharing over the internet' for the rapid rise of sexual choking. In a survey led by Douglas of 4700 18 to 35-year-old Australians, pornography was the primary source (61.3 percent) of participants' exposure to information or depictions of the practice, as has fear of being perceived as 'vanilla', movies (40.3 percent), friends (31.9 percent), social media (31.3 percent) – where memes have minimized and even romanticized the risks, and discussions with potential partners (29.2 percent). Douglas's findings showed two things, Women's Health NSW Senior Project Officer Jackie McMillan told 'The idea that it is safe to do, and the idea that all your friends are doing it.' 'And when more people are introduced to a sexual practice, they may also go on and try it with their future partners, which can lead to increased prevalence,' McMillan said. 'When people think sexual choking is normal and routine, it can become decoupled from the health and safety risks associated with it, and it can reduce the impetus on every sexual participant to get informed, affirmative and specific consent before they try doing it.' Male Great Aussie Debate respondents were most likely to be curious about engaging in choking during sex (4.45 percent), while fewer than 2 percent of women (1.84 percent) said they had any desire to partake. 4 'When people think sexual choking is normal and routine, it can become decoupled from the health and safety risks associated with it,' Jackie McMillan, Women's Health NSW Senior Project Officer, said. LIGHTFIELD STUDIOS – Of those who had engaged in choking during sex, 12.5 percent said it had been with permission, versus 2.3 percent who said it had been without. Non-binary Australians (8.15 percent) were most likely to have been subject to choking without their consent, followed by women (4.69 percent) and less than 1 percent of men. Irrespective of consent or the lack thereof, the harms and risks associated with strangulation are well-documented: everything from the immediate – bruising or swelling to the neck, blurred vision, dizziness or light-headedness, difficulty swallowing – to long term. Of greatest concern to experts is brain damage, which can take days, weeks, or even years to manifest. No matter how briefly, restricting blood flow to the brain can cause permanent injury like cognitive impairment or a stroke. Douglas pointed to research that, over a month, compared people who had been consensually strangled during sex on three or four occasions with those who had never been strangled. 'The people who were strangled showed brain damage,' she said. 'They were slower at solving problems, had more memory issues and even the structure of their brains looked different.' There is also growing evidence that, much like the cumulative harm of repetitive head injuries on football players and boxers, hypoxic/anoxic brain injuries from sexual choking also add up, McMillan said, and can lead to long-term cognitive problems. A 'fine line' exists between the amount of pressure applied during fatal and non-fatal strangulation, Douglas said. 4 According to Heather Douglas, a professor at the University of Melbourne, there is a 'fine line' between fatal and non-fatal pressure for strangulation. MergeIdea – Even the 'relatively low' amount of force it takes to open a can of soft drink, when applied to someone's throat, is enough to cause unconsciousness and risk brain injury. People who are engaging in strangulation during sex, she continued, are unlikely to be 'experts on pressure use' – a survey of 169 Australian university students published last year found that most considered it to be risk-free. 'The timeline between pleasurable and fatal sexual choking is measured in seconds, not minutes,' McMillan said. 'It can move from being fun to being terrifying and deadly very quickly. If you throw drugs or alcohol into the mix too, you can imagine how quickly stuff can go wrong.' McMillan noted there is also 'legal risk' to sexual choking. Under NSW law, 'having someone's consent doesn't protect you if you cause serious harm or the death of another person … even if you use harm-reduction techniques like 'moderate' pressure and communication throughout'. 'If you're going to keep (engaging in) sexual choking – and that's entirely your prerogative – we say it's a good idea to make it something you only practice occasionally, rather than part of your 'daily' or regular sexual practices,' McMillan said, referring to Women's Health NSW's online learning hub, It Left No Marks. Though the program stresses that there is no risk-free way to engage in the act, it provides information for people 'about lower-risk activities, including holding your own breath (so you can let it go when it gets scary) and simulating choking (play acting) rather than actually restricting someone's air or blood flow to the brain', McMillan said. 'Nobody wants to give or receive a brain injury during sex,' she added. Given the threat to people's brains posed by strangulation, Douglas said that 'we need to separate (it) from other kinks'. 'Helping people to understand these risks is key,' she said.
News.com.au
06-05-2025
- Business
- News.com.au
Salary you need to earn to be considered ‘rich' in Australia in 2025
How much more would I need to earn to be considered rich? It's a question every worker has pondered at one point or another and, for many Aussies, is likely something that has been front of mind so far throughout 2025. The past few years haven't been easy on Aussie bank accounts, with the cost of living crisis hitting people hard. While the cash rate finally dropped in February to 4.10 per cent, people are still reeling from more than a year of rates being held and, prior to that, a period of prolonged, brutal rises. Rent prices have also skyrocketed, with the median weekly national rent now sitting above $600. Grocery prices are continuing to soar and wages aren't rising fast enough, meaning an increasing number of people are struggling to make ends meet. Given this, it's no wonder Aussies are thinking about their salaries and what it would take to relieve some of the pressure. Earlier this year, launched The Great Aussie Debate, a wide-ranging, 50 question survey that has uncovered what Australians really think about all the hot topics of 2025. Over two weeks, more than 54,000 Australians took part in the survey, revealing their thoughts on everything from the cost of living and homeownership, to electric vehicles and going shoeless in supermarkets. One of the questions we asked was what salary a person would need to earn in 2025 to be considered 'rich'. The majority of respondents, 56 per cent, believe you need to be earning more than $250,000 to fit into the 'rich' category. The typical full-time Australian worker earns $90,416 a year, according to the latest ABS figures. Comparatively, taxpayers earning a total income of just over $180,000 a year are considered to be in the top five per cent of earners in Australia, according to ATO figures recently analysed by the Grattan Institute. Those with a gross yearly income of $375,378 or more are in the top one per cent of taxpayers. The next highest response to our salary question was $200,000-$250,000, which 20 per cent of people said was enough to make you rich. Of those surveyed, 14.8 per cent said between $150,000-$200,000 was enough, 6.1 per cent chose $100,000-$150,000 and just 2.6 per cent said between $80,000-$100,000 made you rich. The highest salary range was the most selected option among all age groups, though the older generations were most likely to choose this answer, suggesting the perceived threshold for wealth increases with age. As part of the Great Aussie Debate, we also asked people when they last received a pay rise they were happy with. The most common response was two to four years ago, with 27.7 per cent choosing this option. Just under 20 per cent said it has been between five and 10 years since they were happy with a pay rise, and 17.7 said it had been at least a decade. This is just slightly higher than the number of people who said it has been 12 months or less, with 17.6 per cent choosing this option. Concerningly, a significant portion, 17.1 per cent, claimed they have never been satisfied by a pay increase. Earlier this year, hit the streets of Sydney to see how people were feeling about their salaries in 2025. One woman revealed the last time she received a pay rise was two years ago, which she revealed was 'two jobs ago'. 'Pretty sh*t,' she said. Another worker revealed that every time she has received a pay rise it has just been in line with the cost of living and 'not really enough to change the way I am living'. However, not everyone was feeling uninspired about their pay, with one woman saying that in the five years she had worked at her current job, she had received a pay rise each year. 'It is not something that was expected so it was always a surprise. There was never any feelings that it wasn't enough or not sufficient,' she said. Those in the 18-29 age group dominated in the 'within the last 12 months' (39.02 per cent) and the 'I have never been satisfied' (30.99 per cent) categories, reflecting the varying challenges young people face when it comes to entering the workforce. Looking at the responses by gender, women and non-binary/other individuals reported higher rates of never being satisfied, with 25.43 per cent and 34.77 per cent, respectively, choosing this option. This compared to 18.4 per cent of men. It comes as new research from financial comparison site, Finder, highlighted the significant struggles facing Australian households at the moment. Finder's Consumer Sentiment Tracker revealed 20 per cent of households earning up to $100,000 would exhaust their savings within a week if unemployed, more than double the 7 per cent found in households earning $100,000 or more. Almost one in five higher-income households could sustain themselves for over a year, while only per cent of lower-income households could achieve the same. The research also found that 50 per cent of lower-income households have less than $1000 in savings, compared to 26 per cent of higher-income households. Speaking to Sarah Megginson, personal finance expert at Finder, said it is fascinating when the conversation turns to what 'rich' really means. 'For most people this means having a total abundance of money – much more than you actually need, and enough to do things that only 'rich' people usually get to do,' she said. 'Living comfortably is different altogether. That's about working out how much money you need to pay your bills, have some fun and feel good and live comfortably day-to-day.' Ms Megginson said that it is important to remember not to get caught up in and compare yourself to 'rich' behaviour people might display online. She said things like flying business class, driving a luxury car, or eating out at expensive restaurants are not necessarily an indicator of 'actual wealth'. 'It's a much better use of your time and energy to get better at understanding your own money and figuring out how to get yourself into a better financial position,' she said. 'Learning simple things, like setting up a budget and investing to make your money grow slowly, can really help you out in the long run. 'Doing small, smart things with your money consistently can actually make a big difference over time.'
News.com.au
05-05-2025
- Business
- News.com.au
The very worrying sign hidden in Aussie bank accounts
ANALYSIS We have some bad news: Women have less money than men. Earlier this year, launched The Great Aussie Debate, a wide-ranging, 50 question survey that has uncovered what Australians really think about all the hot topics of 2025. Over two weeks, more than 54,000 Australians took part in the survey, revealing their thoughts on everything from the cost of living and homeownership, to electric vehicles and going shoeless in supermarkets. As a result, we have discovered that women have got less in their savings accounts than Australian men, and, as a double whammy, they have more debt too. Women were most likely to tell the Great Aussie Debate Survey they had $20,000 to $50,000 in savings. About 15 per cent of women fell into that bracket. But males were more likely to say they had saved more than that. Net worth is not just about assets, it's about liabilities, and women are on the hook for some bigger debts, including Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) schemes, like Afterpay. The share of women saying they had up to $1000 in BNPL debt was 17 per cent, compared to 10 per cent of fellas. BNPL debt is not the only kind of debt women have more of. They also have more HECS/HELP debt. The current generation of women is more likely to be taking on HECS/HELP debt, the older generations are paying it off more slowly and the combo means women of all ages are more likely to have student debt. We can also see this in the ATO data, as the next chart shows. BNPL debt is not a great idea, HECS usually is though. So the news that women are more likely to have HECS debts is a bit of a mixed bag. If more women are getting HECS debts, that could be good, but if fewer are paying it off, well that's a different story. The three big 'whys' So why are women worse off? Savings come from income, mostly. And men make more income. Why is that? Partly because men take less leave around the birth of their kids, which gives them more career continuity and more experience and more chance to get promoted. Women can find themselves in a situation where going back to work doesn't make financial sense. (One of the big benefits of cheap and abundant child care is that it helps women get back to the workforce a bit sooner.) But that's only part of it. There's another interesting wrinkle. The higher pay of men is partly because men do the jobs with higher pay. As the next chart shows, many jobs are as gender segregated as a Sydney Private School. If you're a plumber or a plasterer, you probably don't have any female colleagues! And a lot of those blokey jobs have higher incomes than the most female-dominated jobs. Why is that? This is pretty interesting, because we don't really know. It's cultural, probably. For example, look at electricians. There's not an obvious reason a woman can't be an electrician, but there is almost 100 male electricians for every female one. It's just not a job women seem to go into. A bit like men and nursing. Men can measure out drugs and apply bandages and manage patients, but many don't choose that career. There's a weird cultural expectation about what blokes do and what ladies do and we see very little deviation from it. That would be a totally neutral thing, a mere curiosity, if the jobs got the same pay. Big shifts One thing that's interesting to me is when a job goes from being female-dominated to male-dominated and becomes better paid. The classic example is computer coding, which was once seen as a clerical skill and is now seen as a job for geniuses. There could be a whole domain heading the other way now, with office jobs becoming more female dominated and tradies making more money. When I was a kid everyone said it was smart to go to school and uni and get an office job. But now most people in uni are women and the more middling office jobs don't pay especially well, while people with trades are doing very nicely. The implication is that the gender earnings divide might get even wider. What should you do with your savings? So if you are a woman who has managed to scrimp your income and generate some savings, what should you do with them? As the Barefoot Investor would tell you, you need to invest. You can't just leave savings sitting in your transaction account where they earn no interest. If you do that the rate of inflation will eat away at the earning power. Imagine you invested in 2020. What should you have done? The chart below shows that buying the stock index would have meant your savings beat inflation. The bank account option (rolling over a one-year term deposit) would have got you a bit of interest, but not enough to preserve you buying power. The stock market has outpaced inflation for a long time. So it's notable that women are less likely to own stocks. Just 42 per cent of people with money invested in the stock market are women and 58 per cent are men. This is just counting people with money outside superannuation and the men with money in the stock market have much more. Men hold $667,000 on average, compared with $413,000 for women. Whether you're talking income, savings or investment, it all adds up to a country where women have less economic heft than men.
News.com.au
05-05-2025
- Business
- News.com.au
Australians open up about what life is actually like in 2025
Australians have opened up about what their lives are really like, revealing their opinions on a range of topics and responding to the burning – and sometimes uncomfortable – questions that everyone wants answered. Earlier this year, launched The Great Aussie Debate, a wide-ranging, 50-question survey that has uncovered what Australians really think about all the hot topics of 2025. Over two weeks, more than 54,000 Australians took part in the survey, revealing their thoughts on everything from the cost of living and homeownership, to electric vehicles and going shoeless in supermarkets. Their answers have resulted in a snapshot of how the average Aussie thinks, feels and lives in 2025, with some results more surprising than others. This is how Australia answered: MONEY Aussies are still in the thick of a cost-of-living crisis. People are still reeling from more than a year of rates being held and, prior to that, a period of prolonged, brutal rises. On top of this, rent prices have skyrocketed, grocery prices are continuing to soar and wage prices aren't rising fast enough to keep up. So, it's no wonder money is at the top of people's minds. As part of the survey, we asked Australia's what salary you need to earn to be considered rich in 2025. It turns out, that figure is anything over $250,000 a year, with 56 per cent choosing this option. The highest salary range was the most selected option among all age groups, though the older generations were most likely to choose this answer. We also asked people when they last received a pay rise they were happy with. The most common response was two to four years ago, with 27.7 per cent choosing this option. The second most popular option was between five and 10 years. Concerningly, a significant portion, 17.1 per cent, claimed they have never been satisfied by a pay increase. WORK The ongoing working from home debate has heated up significantly in the past few months. At the start of the year we saw a slew of companies rolling back flexible working arrangements and ordering staff back into the office, a move that has been widely unpopular with employees. From our survey, it is clear the majority of Aussies prefer a hybrid approach to work, where possible, with 61.59 per cent favouring between one and four days at home. View the full results below: Australia's biggest argument finally settled Of the respondents, 28.77 per cent believe full time office work is best. However, there is an interesting detail in the statistics. The age group most likely to choose this option have hit retirement age. More than half (51.18 per cent) of the 70+ group want people in the office five days a week. It is clear there are generational conflicts at play in workplaces across the country. When asked who is the hardest generation to work with, almost half nominated Gen Z. Evey age group, apart from two, labelled Gen Z as the most difficult to work with. However, those in the 18-29 age bracket believe Baby Boomers are the hardest to work with and those aged 70+ nominated Millennials. SEX AND RELATIONSHIPS Aussies have opened up about very private parts of their lives, revealing intimate details about their relationships and other romantic endeavours. One of the questions how frequently they have sex, with the most common response being 1-2 times a month, with 21.6 per cent of people choosing this option. When asked how often they would like to be having sex, just under half respondent, 'More than I currently do'. This was the most popular response across all age groups and was significantly higher for males (57.77 per cent) than females (35.43 per cent). Aussies also gave insight into their boundaries when it comes to romantic relationships. Asked if they would consider a partner subscribing to OnlyFans as cheating, 49.48 per cent said, 'Yes, definitely'. A further 42.33 per cent said it depends on the type of interactions they are having with the creator and 8.19 per cent said no and that it was 'normal'. Women are considerably more likely to view a partner's OnlyFans subscription as cheating, while male respondents believe it depends on the level of interaction taking place. THE BIG ISSUES The survey also addressed some of the more divisive topics that have been sparking ongoing debates across the country. In relation to a question about Australia Day, 70.2 per cent said it was meaningful to them and it is important to have a day to celebrate our country. A further 17.3 per cent said that, while they think we should have a day to celebrate Australia, they don't feel comfortable doing it on the current date. Those in the younger age groups were more likely to state they didn't celebrate Australia Day or express discomfort with the current date, while those in older generations were more likely to support the day on it's current date. When asked if Australia is a sexist country, the most common answer (38.6 per cent) was 'yes', but it is better than it was 10 years ago. Women were more likely to believe it is sexist but improved (52.38 per cent), compared to 46.3 per cent of men who think Australia isn't sexist. Many respondents believe the country has become 'too woke', with 78.39 per cent saying people are too sensitive and that cancel culture has gotten out of hand. While people across all age categories agreed, the percentage of people who believe we have become too woke significantly increases with age.
