Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Chris Peace, Lecturer in Occupational Health and Safety, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

Newly announced reforms to the Health and Safety at Work Act mean landowners will no longer be responsible for tourism-related injuries on their properties. But it’s not clear this has ever really been a problem.

Workplace Safety Minister Brooke van Velden says there was an “inadvertent climate of fear” affecting councils, farmers and landowners who allowed access to their land for hunting, fishing, mountain biking and horse trekking. The fear was that they would be held responsible if someone was hurt or killed on their land.

The reforms targeting landowners are part of wider changes to the Health and Safety at Work Act, which was passed in 2015. Under section 37 of the act, a person who controls a workplace is responsible for ensuring that

the workplace, the means of entering and exiting the workplace, and anything arising from the workplace are without risks to the health and safety of any person.

But we found just one instance of landowners being taken to court for adventure activities going wrong on their properties. This was the case against Whakaari Management Ltd, the owners of Whakaari/White Island after the 2019 eruption that claimed 22 lives and injured 25 others.

In 2024, Whakaari Management was found guilty of failing to protect visitors to the island, but that decision was overturned in February this year.

Responsibilities under the law

Under the current rules, responsibility for something going wrong rests with the “person conducting a business or undertaking”.

A farmer, for example, is conducting business because they own or have control of their land. This does not apply if they are renting out the land but not involved in the activity’s management or control.

In the Whakaari Management Ltd appeal the judge wrote:

To be caught by [section] 37, a [a person conducting a business or undertaking] must in fact be exercising active control or management of the workplace in a practical sense. Owning it is not enough. Making money from it is not enough. Merely being able to manage or control a workplace, but not doing so, is not enough.

Active control might include an agreement between the landowner and the activity operator to monitor conditions.

While the Whakaari case is the only one we found where a landowner has been prosecuted under the current rules, there have been a number of court cases involving adventure activity companies.

The key difference between successful and unsuccessful cases seems to be whether the business owners had the ability to influence or change what went wrong.

For example, in cases where customers of diving businesses drowned, the courts have decided the businesses did not have control of the workplace, including the sea, a lake or river.

In one case the judge wrote the business

does not and cannot control flow or conditions nor can it control who uses or goes through the rapid […] It cannot give directions in relation to it, nor exercise any authority over it.

A business owner operating a kayaking business did have control of the operational conditions and should have had a safe system of work, including checking the weather forecast.

Similar failings were found after a school trip resulted in drownings and after the poor condition of tour buses and uncontrolled driving during a sand-surfing trip resulted in deaths.

Making adventure activities relatively safe

Even under the Adventure Activities Regulations – industry specific rule passed in 2010 and updated since – the responsibility for safety in the tourism industry fell on tourism operators, not landowners.

And, from a safety perspective, the rules have been relatively successful. In the past 35 years, there have been about 52 deaths in adventure activities due to natural hazards (including the Whakaari/White Island tragedy). During the same period more than 30,000 workers died at or because of work.

But this relative safety in adventure activities has come at a cost for small businesses. Under the 2010 regulations, the average cost of mandatory audits has been around NZ$5,000 – a cost borne by the small adventure activity businesses.

If the government wants to further improve the safety of the outdoor tourism industry, then it needs to focus on making it easier and cheaper for businesses to comply with the regulations, rather than focusing on protecting landowners from a risk they never really faced.

Danaë Anderson receives funding from the New Zealand Industrial Relations Trust

Joanne Crawford receives funding from the Health Research Council and the New Zealand Industrial Relations Trust

Chris Peace does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Owners are officially no longer responsible for tourism accidents on their land – but they never really were – https://theconversation.com/owners-are-officially-no-longer-responsible-for-tourism-accidents-on-their-land-but-they-never-really-were-253622

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Karin Hammarberg, Adjunct Senior Research Fellow, Global and Women’s Health, School of Public Health & Preventive Medicine, Monash University

The news of a woman unknowingly giving birth to another patient’s baby after an embryo mix-up at a Brisbane IVF lab has made headlines in Australia and around the world. The distress this incident will have caused to everyone involved is undoubtedly significant.

A report released by Monash IVF, the company which operates the Brisbane clinic, states it “adheres to strict laboratory safety measures (including multi-step identification processes) to safeguard and protect the embryos in its care”.

It also says the company’s own initial investigation concluded the incident was “the result of human error”.

An independent investigation will follow which presumably will shed light on how human error could occur when multi-step identification processes are in place.

On a broader level, this incident raises questions about how common IVF errors are and to what extent they’re preventable.

The booming IVF industry

Because people have children later in life than they used to, some struggle to conceive and turn to assisted reproductive technologies. These include in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) and intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) which both involve handling of sperm and eggs (gametes) in the laboratory to form embryos. If there’s more than one embryo available after a treatment cycle, they can be frozen and stored for later use.

Increasingly, assisted reproductive technologies are also being used by single women, same-sex couples, and women who freeze their eggs to preserve their fertility.

For these reasons, the fertility industry is booming. In 2022 there were more than 100,000 assisted reproductive treatment cycles performed in Australian fertility clinics, up more than 25% on the number of cycles performed in 2017.

Regulation of the IVF industry

In Australia, the IVF industry is more regulated than in many other parts of the world.

To operate, clinics must be licensed by the Reproductive Technology Accreditation Committee and adhere to its code of practice.

In relation to storage and accurate identification of embryos, the code states clinics must provide evidence of the implementation and review of:

Policies and procedures to identify when, how and by whom the identification, matching, and verification are recorded for gametes, embryos and patients at all stages of the treatment process including digital and manual record-keeping.

The code further states clinics must report serious adverse events to the Reproductive Technology Accreditation Committee. The list of what’s considered a serious adverse event includes any incident that “arises from a gamete or embryo identification mix up”.

Clinics must also adhere to the National Health and Medical Research Council’s ethical guidelines on the use of reproductive technology in clinical practice and research.

Lastly, states and territories have laws that regulate aspects of the IVF industry such as requirements to report adverse events and other data to state authorities.

In the United Kingdom, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority regulates the IVF industry and requires clinics to report adverse incidents. These are reported as grade A, B or C, where A is the most serious and involves
“severe harm to one person, or major harm to many”. Data on adverse incidents is reported in a publicly available annual report.

In the United States, however, the IVF industry is largely unregulated, and clinics don’t have to report adverse incidents. However, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine states clinics should have rigorous procedures to prevent the loss, damage, or misdirection of gametes and embryos and have an ethical obligation to disclose errors to all impacted patients.

How common are IVF errors?

There’s no global data on IVF errors so it’s not possible to know how common they are. But we learn about some of the more serious incidents when they’re reported in the media.

While the recent embryo mix-up is the first known incident of this nature in Australia’s 40-year IVF history, we have seen reports of other errors in Australian clinics. These include the alleged use of the wrong donor sperm, embryos being destroyed due to contamination, and inaccurate genetic testing which resulted in the destruction of potentially viable embryos.

In the UK, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority’s most recent report states there was one Grade A incident in 2023–24. This was the first Grade A incident reported since 2019–20 when there were two.

In the US, some notable errors include storage tank malfunctions in two clinics which destroyed thousands of eggs and embryos.

Lawsuits have also been filed for embryo mix-ups. In a 2023 case, a woman from Georgia delivered a Black baby even though she and her sperm donor are both white. The biological parents subsequently demanded custody of the child. Despite wanting to raise him the woman who had given birth gave up the five-month-old boy to avoid a legal fight she couldn’t win, she said.

In the US, some argue most errors go unreported because reporting is not mandated and due to the absence of meaningful regulation.

Are IVF errors preventable?

Despite Australia’s stringent regulation and oversight of the IVF industry, an incident with far-reaching psychological and potentially legal consequences has occurred.

Until the independent investigation reveals how “human error” caused this mix-up, it’s not possible to say what additional measures Monash IVF should take to ensure this never happens again.

An IVF laboratory is a high-pressure environment, and any investigation should look at whether staffing levels are adequate. Staff training is also relevant, and it’s essential all junior lab staff have adequate supervision.

Finally, perhaps Australia should adopt the UK’s model and make data about adverse events reported to the Reproductive Technology Accreditation Committee available to the public in an annual report. To reassure the public, this report could include what measures clinics take to avoid the errors happening again.

Karin Hammarberg is affiliated with Monash University, which is not connected with Monash IVF and the incident mentioned in the article.

– ref. How common are errors in IVF labs? Can they be prevented? – https://theconversation.com/how-common-are-errors-in-ivf-labs-can-they-be-prevented-254382

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Yuting Zhang, Professor of Health Economics, The University of Melbourne

Seeing a medical specialist can leave you with significant out-of-pocket costs. Yet political parties have not adequately addressed this in their pre-election bids.

Labor has promised A$7 million to expand the government’s Medical Costs Finder website, which potentially allows you to compare specialists’ fees. But it hasn’t outlined a policy to lower these fees. The Coalition and the Greens have not addressed specialists’ fees directly.

During a cost-of-living crisis, this is a major omission.

Specialists’ fees are high, vary across specialties and across geographical regions.

That’s what we found when we used actual Medicare data to map costs across Australia to see a specialist doctor.

What we did and what we found

We used data from the national 2023 Medicare Benefits Schedule (or MBS) accessed from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. We calculated mean (average) fees charged by doctors in 17 specialties for initial face-to-face appointments after a GP referral.

Under MBS billing rules, different specialties use different item numbers (104 or 110) for an initial consultation. These attracted a different Medicare schedule fee ($91.80 and $161.90, respectively, as of January 2023). These schedule fees are what Medicare considers a fair price for doctors to charge.

Most patients pay the gap between 85% of the Medicare schedule fee and the specialist’s fee. This is their out-of-pocket cost. But that percentage can differ, depending on the circumstances. So not all patients have the same out-of-pocket costs for the same consultation.

We only looked at fees charged by private specialists at private clinics. We didn’t include free specialist care in public clinics. Nor did we look at GP fees.

We then looked at how specialists’ fees varied by patients’ geographical location to create some maps.

Use the map below to search for mean specialists’ fees and mean out-of-pocket costs for cardiology, rheumatology, neurology, and oral and maxillofacial surgery.

Fees for the other 13 specialties we looked at are available via maps on the HALE Hub’s Australian Healthcare Atlas website.

Which specialists charged the most?

Specialist fees varied substantially. On average, rheumatology had the highest fees, followed by neurology and immunology. Oral and maxillofacial surgery had the lowest fees, followed by general surgery.

Some specialties used the item number that attracted the $91.80 Medicare schedule fee. But almost all these specialists (except for general surgery) charged more than twice this amount (an average $183.60) in at least 80% of geographical areas.

Other specialties used the item number that attracted the $161.90 Medicare schedule fee. This included rheumatologists, which charged an average of over $323.80 (twice the schedule fee) in 17.6% of geographical areas. Neurologists charged the same amount in 19.2% of geographical areas.

Which parts of the country had the highest fees?

Certain states and territories consistently had higher fees for some specialties. For example:

• cardiology was most expensive in Western Australia, Australian Capital Territory and Queensland

• orthopaedics was most expensive in ACT, New South Wales and Queensland

• obstetrics was most expensive in ACT, WA and NSW.

High fees matter

Higher specialists’ fees directly translate to patients’ higher out-of-pocket costs. That’s because Medicare rebates are fixed, and private health insurance does not cover out-of-hospital consultations.

If patients avoid their initial consultation due to cost, their health can worsen over time, potentially leading to more expensive treatments later.

Higher specialists’ fees and the barrier to care could also entrench inequalities. That’s because people in lower socioeconomic groups already tend to have worse health.

What can I do?

You can use our maps to look at what specialists charge near you. Although the maps use 2023 data and look at average fees and out-of-pocket costs, you can get a general idea. Then you can call specialists’ offices and the receptionist will tell you how much the doctor charges for an initial appointment.

If there are several referral options, comparing fees will help you make an informed decision about your health care, alongside wait times, geographical location, quality of care and other factors. You can discuss these issues with your GP so they can refer you to the best available specialist for your circumstances.

What else can we do?

1. Make fees transparent

Patients often do not know how much a specialist consultation costs until they arrive at the doctor’s office. GPs typically do not refer to specialists based on their fees and often don’t know them anyway.

The government’s Medical Costs Finder website relies on doctors voluntarily reporting their fees. But only a few report them.

If re-elected, the Labor government says it will upgrade the website to display the average fee charged by every eligible specialist (other than GPs) using Medicare data, without asking doctors to spend time inputting their fees.

This is a welcome move. But the government should also mandate disclosure of fees on the website, which would be more up-to-date than looking back through past Medicare data.

2. Doctors need more advice, and can help

Specialists in Australia can charge what they like, and as we’ve found, sometimes way above the Medicare schedule fee.

But professional medical colleges can provide guides on how to set “reasonable” fees. They can also develop codes of conduct about fee practices, and counsel members who consistently charge high fees.

Once specialists’ fees are more transparent, GPs can inform patients about fee variations and options for more affordable care.

3. We need more public clinics

Government could also open more public clinics that offer free specialist care for those who cannot afford large gap fees in private clinics. This type of investment may be warranted in some low-socioeconomic areas if we’re aiming for all Australians to receive the specialist care they need.

Yuting Zhang has received funding from the Australian Research Council (future fellowship project ID FT200100630), Department of Veterans’ Affairs, the Victorian Department of Health, National Health and Medical Research Council and Eastern Melbourne Primary Health Network. In the past, Professor Zhang has received funding from several US institutes including the US National Institutes of Health, Commonwealth fund, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. She has not received funding from for-profit industry including the private health insurance industry.

Chenhao Liang does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Think your specialist is expensive? Look at what others are paying – https://theconversation.com/think-your-specialist-is-expensive-look-at-what-others-are-paying-253628

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Judy Bush, Senior DECRA Research Fellow, The University of Melbourne

Walking and cycling is good for people and the planet. But hot sunny days can make footpaths, bike lanes and city streets unbearable. Climate change will only make matters worse.

So city planners and decision-makers need to provide adequate shade for walking, cycling and other forms of active transport – including from good tree canopy cover.

Unfortunately, our recent research reveals Melbourne’s transport strategy and its separate strategy to increase canopy cover from 22% to 40% by 2040 aren’t currently working together.

Our research found most bicycle lanes in inner Melbourne today have less than 40% canopy cover. And as the maps below show, future bicycle lanes will have even less. There’s plenty of room for improvement.

Searching for shady lanes

We used the City of Melbourne as a case study to explore bikeability, tree cover and health.

The city council area covers 37 square kilometres, taking in suburbs from leafy Parkville to industrial Fishermans Bend.

When we mapped tree canopy cover against the active transport network, we found most bicycle lanes have less than 40% canopy cover. Some cycling corridors – such as along Royal Parade and parts of St Kilda Road – stand out with relatively high canopy cover. But they are few and far between.

Existing bike lanes

And it’s about to get worse.

Bicycle lanes proposed for construction have lower overall tree canopy coverage than existing lanes, particularly in urban renewal areas in post-industrial precincts such as Fishermans Bend and Docklands.

Along Royal Parade and St Kilda Road corridors, additional bicycle lanes are proposed next to existing lanes. However, in current conditions, the proposed new bicycle lanes have lower canopy coverage than existing bicycle lanes along the same corridor.

Proposed bike lanes

The city’s strategies don’t match up

We also examined the city’s transport and urban forest strategies. The latter includes the council’s ambitious goal to increase canopy cover to 40% by 2040.

We found both the transport and urban forest policies recognise that they can contribute to the health and wellbeing of city residents, workers and visitors. They also acknowledge the health risks associated with lack of physical activity, such as heart disease, lung disease and diabetes. But there are key gaps.

The transport strategy broadly refers to climate change, but does not mention urban heat.

In contrast, addressing urban heat is one of the main stated aims of the urban forest strategy. But there’s only a passing reference to encouraging outdoor activity and exercise.

There are signs though that this may be changing – in 2022, Melbourne has joined a handful of other cities worldwide in appointing chief heat officers to focus planning and action for cooler cities.

Planning for more trees

Trees need sufficient space for healthy growth. This includes space below ground for a strong and stable root system as well as room to grow up and spread out.

For street trees, extra care must be taken to facilitate this growth. The locations of other infrastructure, both above- and below-ground, need to be taken into account.

Smaller trees may be more appropriate in some urban areas, particularly where overhead powerlines require clearance, but obviously these trees will provide less canopy. Likewise, healthy tree root development can be disrupted by underground services, unless high quality soil and sufficient space is allocated.

To ensure trees are still thriving in 50 or even 100 years time, planners also need to select species that can withstand hotter and drier conditions.

What a difference shade makes

Street trees cool urban areas by shading surfaces and releasing water into the air. This can lower air temperatures by 1-2°C. But the temperature difference on the ground can be even more substantial. Asphalt can be anywhere from 13°C–20°C cooler under dense tree canopy shade.

Reducing the amount of heat roads and other hard surfaces absorb eases what’s known as the urban heat island effect, in which cities experience warmer temperatures than green spaces.

Climate change is increasing the frequency and duration of heatwaves. This adds to the pressure on Australia’s health services, including ambulances and emergency departments. If current rates of climate change continue, Victorians are likely to experience twice the annual number of very hot days by the 2050s, compared with 1985-2005.

All of this means walking or riding in the absence of shade can expose people to heat-related illness and even premature death.

Better planning for liveable cities

Our research shows planning policies must work together more effectively for liveable cities. This is particularly important when it comes to building new infrastructure such as roads, bicycle lanes and footpaths.

Proactively planning for more trees in these spaces can promote healthy tree growth, with benefits for human health in cooler cities.

And while we can plant trees next to bike lanes for future shade, the need to protect cyclists from heat now means we should locate bike lanes along existing shaded streets.

City planners and decision-makers need to ensure the places we live, work and play are designed to promote active transport. That means ensuring transport routes align with our urban forest.

Acknowledgements: thanks to Bachelor of Design, Urban Planning (Honours) student Crystal Tang who carried out the research that underpins this article.

Judy Bush is the recipient of a Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (2024-27) from the Australian Research Council. She is a member of the Planning Institute of Australia and the Ecological Society of Australia.
Crystal Tang undertook the data collection and analysis as part of her B.Des (Hons), supervised by Judy.

– ref. Most bike lanes in inner Melbourne have less than 40% tree cover – that’ll get worse, new maps show – https://theconversation.com/most-bike-lanes-in-inner-melbourne-have-less-than-40-tree-cover-thatll-get-worse-new-maps-show-253222

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Blair Williams, Lecturer in Australian Politics, Monash University

Australian politics has historically been a male domain with an overwhelmingly masculine culture. Manhood and a certain kind of masculinity are still considered integral to a leader’s political legitimacy.

Yet leadership masculinity changes along party lines. We are now halfway through the election campaign and can already see differences in the masculine performances of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton.

State Daddy versus Strongman Tough Cop

In a recent open-access study, I identified the emergence of two Australian political masculinities during the COVID-19 pandemic.

First, the traditional “Daggy Dad” of former Liberal prime minister Scott Morrison, centred around the nuclear family and paternalistic protection.

Second, the “State Daddy”, embodied by Labor leaders such as Albanese, who perform a more compassionate masculinity focused on social provision. In the 2022 election, Albanese effectively used his caring masculinity against Morrison’s faltering protective paternalism, highlighting many of Morrison’s weaknesses and especially his unpopularity with women.

The 2025 election is shaping up to be another “gender election”, this time between the State Daddy and the Strongman Tough Cop.

Albanese and Dutton’s adoption of certain masculine identities reveals not only how they want to be perceived but also how they envision the electorate, the nation, and its defining values.

Dutton is a “tough-nut” conservative who portrays himself as a “strongman” protector. His leadership masculinity combines that of several other Liberal leaders, notably John Howard. But his conservatism is more reactionary, focusing less on economics and more on stoking culture wars.

Like Tony Abbott, he is a pugilistic opposition leader who promises to keep Australians safe while reinforcing fear and uncertainty. Following Morrison’s lead, Dutton also targets outer-suburban electorates that traditionally vote Labor.

His plan is to tap into voters’ anxiety and offer his “strongman” masculinity as its antidote. Since becoming leader, Dutton has frequently attempted to emasculate Albanese, labelling him “weak”, “woke”, and too preoccupied with “elite” issues, such as the Voice Referendum, to tackle the cost-of-living crisis.

Dutton positions himself as the traditional masculine protector of the nation. The mobilisation of fear of a threat, real or imagined, is core to this identity. Dutton vows to protect Australians by being tough on crime, immigration and “wokeness”.

Yet his strongman persona and conservative policies do not resonate with women, who fear he will follow Trump’s lead on gutting Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives or cuts to the public service and rights to work from home.

The strongman protective persona is aimed at men in the outer suburbs, especially those at risk of voting Labor.

In contrast, Albanese’s State Daddy masculinity targets women over men and seeks to inspire hope, care, and a collective response. The focus is on issues of equality, embodying a caring masculinity to rival traditional conservative masculine identities.

Physical attractiveness is integral to the State Daddy image. For example, before the 2022 election, Albanese underwent what is colloquially termed a “glow up”.

Seeking to appeal to the female gaze, he gave an “at home” interview for The Australian Women’s Weekly. These images are a useful tool for State Daddies for two reasons. First, to physically differentiate them from the dishevelled look preferred by conservative political leaders, such as Morrison, Boris Johnson or Donald Trump. Second, to visually signal their commitment to women voters.

Both the Daggy Dad and Strongman Tough Cop often fall short. They claim to provide financial and physical protection to citizens, but only in exchange for subordination to their masculine authority. These limitations are often exposed when it’s necessary to protect citizens during crises such as, in Morrison’s case, bushfires, flood or plague. This protector masculinity fundamentally fails to recognise citizens’ needs and exposes the empty rhetoric at the core of protectionism.

Who can we see at the 2025 election?

Albanese is a far less popular leader than he was in 2022, for many reasons. However, the ALP are again campaigning on boosting the care economy, with major commitments to health care, aged care, and childcare. These are primarily women-dominated industries that Dutton, like Morrison before him, has repeatedly failed to support and engage.

In contrast, Dutton was forced into an embarrassing back-down on a promise to end work-from-home arrangements for public servants, 57% of whom are women.

Distracting from the Coalition’s long-standing “women problem”— which in part cost them the 2022 election — Dutton has been implying that Albanese’s “wokeness” has left men behind.

Taking a page from the Trump playbook, Dutton has appeared on podcasts targeting mainly male audiences. On one appearance, he made a pitch to young male voters, noting: “Young males feel disenfranchised [and] ostracised”. He sympathised with the “anti-woke revolution” and argued that young men are “fed up” with “woke” practices.

Albanese, meanwhile, has appeared on podcasts targeting mainly women audiences, including Abbie Chatfield’s “It’s A Lot” or Cheek Media’s podcast. He spoke about Labor’s policies supporting women’s health in areas including endometriosis care, contraceptives and menopause.

It’s clear that both leaders are targeting very different parts of the voter bloc, in policy platforms and social media strategies.

Blair Williams does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Strongmen, Daggy Dads and State Daddies: how different styles of political masculinity play into Australian elections – https://theconversation.com/strongmen-daggy-dads-and-state-daddies-how-different-styles-of-political-masculinity-play-into-australian-elections-252727

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Helen Hodgson, Professor, Curtin Law School and Curtin Business School, Curtin University

Federal elections always offer the opportunity for a reset. Whoever wins the May 3 election should consider a much needed revamp of the tax system, which is no longer fit for purpose.

The biggest challenge that should be addressed through tax reform is the level of inequality in Australian society.

The five-yearly Intergenerational Reports lay bare the intergenerational squeeze. The future burden of supporting the ageing population will increasingly fall on younger Australians who generally don’t enjoy the same financial wellbeing of previous generations.

But there is also rising inequality within generations. Not all younger Australians can rely on inherited wealth, including the bank of mum and dad. And superannuation balances at retirement vary wildly, given they are tied to work history.

Proper systemic tax reform would play a crucial role building a fairer society.

Reform freeze

But to define what is meant by tax reform, we need to think about some of the big picture concerns that affect our economy.

Arguably we have not successfully pursued a tax reform agenda since the introduction of the GST in 2000. Various governments have changed the tax rates, but that doesn’t constitute genuine reform.

The Henry Review, commissioned by the Rudd government, set out the long-term horizon for reform – including resource taxes and road user charges for the transition to a net-zero economy. However, the Henry blueprint has not been adopted by any succeeding government.

Politicians like to boast of “reform agendas”. Despite the political rhetoric, the tax system has not yet adapted to the 21st century.

Wealth inequality

The biggest gap in our tax base relates to the concessional taxation of wealth and assets, which is an area ripe for reform.

According to the Treasury, the top six revenue losers all relate to superannuation, capital gains and negative gearing. In 2024–25, the estimated revenue foregone for these concessions are:

• $29 billion for the concessional taxation of employer superannuation contributions

• $27 billion for the main residence Capital Gains Tax exemption (discount component)

• $26 billion for rental deductions (this is partly offset by rental income)

• $24.5 billion for main residence Capital Gains Tax exemption

• $22.73 billion for CGT discount for individuals and trusts

• $22.2 billion for the concessional taxation of superannuation earnings

The distributional analysis for superannuation and the Capital Gains Tax discount shows the greatest benefit goes to older taxpayers in the higher earnings brackets. So wealth inequality is perpetuated.

Addressing these overgenerous concessions to broaden the tax base should be the starting point for any meaningful reform in this country.

Taking another look at death duties, which were abolished from the late 1970s, should also be considered.

Death duties were applied to assets transferred to beneficiaries on death. If they were reimposed with a starting threshold set at an appropriate level, they would limit the intergenerational transfer of wealth, which is generating much of the inequity.

Wealth creation tools

The Capital Gains Tax discount was introduced following the 1999 Ralph Review to direct productive capital into Australian businesses.

The 50% discount sparked the boom in residential investment, which combined with negative gearing, has supercharged the inefficiencies in our housing market.

Superannuation is another wealth-creation tool. Again, the design of superannuation, whereby tax was paid at 15% on the three stages of contributions – investment, earnings and withdrawal – was subverted in search of simplicity in 2007 when the Howard government exempted superannuation withdrawals from tax.

Case study

By comparison, the age pension is taxable, if the recipient earns other income. So too are earnings from work allowed under Centrelink rules. This not only allows estate planning advantages, but creates an unfair outcome for retirees who have not had the opportunity to accumulate substantial balances.

Consider the cases of “Jean” and “Kim”, who are both single homeowners aged 68.

Jean has no financial assets and receives the full pension of $1,194 per fortnight plus $512 per fortnight from part-time work. She has a taxable income of $43,816 per annum and, after tax offsets, pays $2,595 in tax including $209.70 medicare levy.

Kim has a superannuation balance of $880,000 and draws a super pension of $44,000. Kim is not eligible for the pension, but pays no tax and no medicare levy.

Is our tax system really delivering a fair go for all Australians?

Tax relief is not reform

Ahead of election day, both the government and opposition are promising tax handouts. Labor is offering top-up tax cuts starting July 1 2026. The coalition says it will temporarily halve the fuel excise.

But meaningful reform will not be achieved by politicians trading off various interest groups to win votes.

Nor do we need yet another review: many of the solutions to Australia’s tax problem were identified by the Henry Review 15 years ago.

And we must avoid cherry-picking incentives that lead to perverse outcomes. For example, cutting fuel excise will slow down the transition to a net zero economy.

Consensus needed

Whoever forms government after the election could build a coalition of business and community sector leaders to seek consensus and pursue holistic reform. The focus must be on addressing the inequality that is emerging as a challenge to the economy and our way of life.

As Ken Henry recently stated, successive governments have fuelled inequality by failing to do three things

one, manage financial risks arising from the erosion of the tax base; two, maintain the integrity of the tax system; and three, have regard to intergenerational equity.

Without significant tax reform, Australia’s wealth divide will continue to deepen with young people and future generations left to suffer the brunt.

This is the sixth article in our special series, Australia’s Policy Challenges. You can read the other articles here

Helen Hodgson has received funding from the ARC, AHURI and CPA Australia. Helen is the Chair of the Social Policy Committee and a Director of the National Foundation for Australian Women (NFAW). Helen was a Member of the WA Legislative Council in WA from 1997 to 2001, elected as an Australian Democrat. She is not a current member of any political party. She is a Registered Tax Agent and a member of the SMSF Association, CPA Australia and The Tax Institute. Helen has superannuation with Unisuper and jointly owns positively geared rental properties.

– ref. Post-election tax reform is the key to reversing Australia’s growing wealth divide – https://theconversation.com/post-election-tax-reform-is-the-key-to-reversing-australias-growing-wealth-divide-252177

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Cull, Associate Professor, Western Sydney University

There is no denying housing reform is urgently needed in Australia to make housing more affordable and accessible to everyday Australians.

Both major parties have now announced the incentives they are offering to help first-home buyers. While both Labor and the Coalition are hopeful their newly announced policies will win the most votes, how easy will it be to implement and how will it help first-home buyers?

What new housing incentives are being offered?

Refreshingly, both major parties are offering more novel policies than have previously been announced. In addition, both policies offer welcome relief to first-home buyers.

As part of their $43 billion housing plan that already includes delivering 55,000 social and affordable homes, a Labor government will spend $10 billion to help more Australians purchase their first home.

The first part of this plan includes increasing housing supply by building 100,000 new homes over eight years – just for first home buyers. The government would work with the states to identify where these homes will be built, beginning next financial year.

The second part of Labor’s plan involves expanding the 5% deposit Home Guarantee Scheme to remove the annual cap of 50,000 places and removing income thresholds.

It will also increase property price caps to better reflect local markets so that buyers can look to purchase a property where they currently work and/or live. For example, the current cap in Sydney will increase from $900,000 to $1.5 million.

The Home Guarantee Scheme, which has already been used by more than 150,000 Australians, allows eligible first-home buyers to purchase a property with a 5% deposit and without paying Lenders Mortgage Insurance. The government guarantees part of the home loan. This will speed up the time that it will take for first-home buyers to save for a deposit, as they will be able to use a smaller deposit to secure a home.

The Coalition have announced they will permit first-time buyers of newly built properties to deduct interest on up to $650,000 of their mortgage against their income for up to five years. The first home buyers, however, have to remain in their home for this time period.

This will be available to singles on incomes up to $175,000 and couples with a combined income of up to $250,000. This is similar to the mortgage interest tax deduction currently permitted through negative gearing to property investors with rental properties.

How easy are these housing policies to implement?

While Labor’s Home Guarantee policy is already in operation, it should be relatively easy to expand this policy.

However, in terms of building 100,000 homes, we know Labor is already well behind on its plan to build new housing stock, even though the number of dwellings increased by 53,200 to 11,294,300 for the quarter ended December 2024.

This is where Labor’s policy of increasing subsidies to apprentices in the construction industry, as well plans to invest in prefabricated and modular homes and introduce a national certification system will help. While welcomed by housing advocates, the detail surrounding exactly where the houses will be built is an important part of this new housing policy.

The Coalition’s proposal is more radical and will require changes to legislation before it can be implemented.

It may also need to form part of more holistic taxation reform to have the intended effect. Details are still needed as to how this reform may affect the current capital gains tax exemption and other property tax concessions for one’s principal place of residence.

Whether the Coalition have other taxation reforms planned is yet to be revealed.

Could these policies work?

The latest housing policies announced by both major parties are a step in the right direction.

However, the details are missing and concerns remain around how these policies will interact with other policy proposals and whether there will be an unintended effect of pushing up housing prices.

While increasing the supply of housing is the answer to the housing crisis, whether these houses can be built quickly is still questionable. The 5% deposit for first home buyers will go a long way in enabling first home buyers to save a deposit. However, this means the remaining 95% still needs to be repaid and first home buyers will still need to prove they can service the loan. It will also increase pressure on first home buyers if interest rates increase early in their home ownership journey.

First home owners who want to claim a tax deduction on their mortgage interest will still need to construct a new home, which will take some time to build.

The tax deduction will help first-home buyers in the early years of their mortgage when mortgage interest is highest. However, it does tend to favour higher income earners who receive larger tax deductions due to their higher tax brackets.

While it does little to put downward pressure on housing prices, the Coalition has combined this with an aggressive immigration policy aimed at increasing supply of established homes.

Given the tight and expensive market in Australia, the latest housing incentives announced by the major parties may come as welcome news to first home buyers. But any new policy must be viewed as part of the larger package of policies being offered. First home buyers are not the only ones experiencing problems with housing affordability and accessibility.

If anything, the contest for the federal election has forced both major parties to seriously consider their housing policies and share these with the public. However, the hardest part is yet to come: whether the incoming government’s housing policy is actually effective.

Michelle Cull is a member of CPA Australia, the Financial Advice Association Australia and President Elect of the Academy of Financial Services in the United States. Michelle is an academic member of UniSuper’s Consultative Committee. Michelle co-founded the Western Sydney University Tax Clinic which has received funding from the Australian Taxation Office as part of the National Tax Clinic Program. Michelle has previously volunteered as Chair of the Macarthur Advisory Council for the Salvation Army Australia.

– ref. Labor and Coalition support for new home buyers welcome but other Australians also struggling with housing affordability – https://theconversation.com/labor-and-coalition-support-for-new-home-buyers-welcome-but-other-australians-also-struggling-with-housing-affordability-254451

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Isaac Gross, Lecturer in Economics, Monash University

The election campaign has erupted into a economic battleground as Labor and the Coalition unveiled major new tax policies at their campaign launches.

Each policy package is aimed at addressing the mounting cost-of-living pressures facing millions of Australians.

Labor’s flagship announcement is a new standard tax deduction of $1000 per year for work-related expenses. It represents a permanent reform designed to simplify the tax system and provide consistent, predictable relief.

Economically, it reduces compliance costs and inefficiencies by eliminating paperwork and receipt-keeping for millions of Australians.

According to a Blueprint Institute report, simplifying tax deductions through a standard deduction can significantly reduce compliance costs and increase economic efficiency. It potentially saves taxpayers and the government millions annually by streamlining the tax filing process.

This change reduces errors, improves efficiency and saves both individuals and the government significant time and resources.

A standard deduction can lead to increased compliance and fewer disputes. The Australian Taxation Office will not need to audit taxpayers who take the standard deduction. This will lower administrative costs and reduce the need for costly tax advice from accountants.

Additionally, a simpler tax system can enhance labour market participation. It does this by removing complexity that disproportionately affects lower-income workers and those without professional tax advice.

It also preserves the option for Australians with an unusually high number of deductions to keep deducting item by item as they currently do.

In contrast, the Coalition’s big-ticket announcement is a one-off Cost of Living Tax Offset. It offers a refund of up to $1200 to workers earning up to $144,000 annually.

Similar in structure to the previous Morrison government’s Low and Middle Income Tax Offset (LMITO), this measure provides short-term relief rather than systemic reform.

Economically, the Coalition’s approach injects rapid fiscal stimulus into the economy, targeting households under significant financial strain from rising living costs.

By providing direct rebates after the lodgment of the 2025-26 tax return, the Coalition aims to boost disposable incomes and encourage consumer spending without permanently altering tax scales.

The temporary nature of the Coalition’s offset, priced at $10 billion, allows fiscal flexibility. It mitigates potential inflationary pressures by avoiding permanent spending increases, thereby providing immediate relief without structurally embedding costs into the budget.

Coupled with the Coalition’s pledge to cut the fuel excise by 25¢ per litre immediately after the election, the tax offset represents a significant short-term fiscal injection. It offers immediate political advantage but limited longer-term economic reform.

The economic debate between Labor and the Coalition has now crystallised around differing perspectives on fiscal management and economic intervention.

Labor prioritises systemic reforms aimed at simplification and equity. The Coalition emphasises immediate, substantial cash injections to households through temporary relief measures. Both policies entail substantial fiscal commitments, yet differ markedly in their timing, permanence and structural impact on the Australian economy.

Voters face a clear economic choice: Labor’s systemic tax simplification versus the Coalition’s aggressive short-term tax relief.

Isaac Gross does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Voters have a clear choice. Labor’s long term and equitable tax reform or the Coalition’s big but one-off tax cuts – https://theconversation.com/voters-have-a-clear-choice-labors-long-term-and-equitable-tax-reform-or-the-coalitions-big-but-one-off-tax-cuts-254452

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

If anyone had any doubts before, Sunday’s Liberal and Labor launches highlighted that this election is an auction for votes, in particular those of the under 40s and people in the outer suburbs.

Amid the usual launch hoopla – the Liberals choosing western Sydney and Labor returning to Perth – both parties announced major fresh housing initiatives. They were making a deep bow to what’s a central issue for younger Australians who still aspire to the so-called “Australian dream” but can’t see themselves affording it.

Significantly, Peter Dutton also produced a tax handout – a tax offset of up to $1200 targeted to lower and middle income earners. This was despite his signalling earlier in the campaign he wouldn’t be able to afford to do so. On tax, Anthony Albanese promised people would be able to claim a $1000 automatic tax deduction for work expenses (at a cost of $2.4 billion over the forward estimates).

The Liberal campaign has been flagging. Labor has appeared headed for victory, at least in a comfortable minority. The Liberals might say they’ve been working on the policies produced on Sunday for some time, but they do have a “break glass” feel about them, as the opposition seeks to reinvigorate its campaign.

The Liberals’ proposal for the interest on a mortgage to be tax deductible has strict limits. It only applies to first home buyers, to new homes and (for the house buyer) for five years, and provided the buyer remains living in the home. There is a means test, and the interest deductibility only applies on the first $650,000 of the loan. This is why the plan is costed at a modest $1.25 billion over the forward estimates.

The plan will come under some tough criticism in the final three weeks of the campaign. Independent economist Saul Eslake said on Sunday the policy would put upward pressure on house prices. “We have 60 years of evidence going back to the Menzies government’s initial first home owners’ grant scheme that anything allowing people to spend more on housing than they otherwise would results in more expensive housing and a smaller proportion of the population owning it.”

Eslake argues that when this policy is combined with the Liberals’ policy to give people access to their superannuation for a deposit, “they make a candidate for the worst policy decision of the 21st century so far.”

In its new housing offer, Labor is promising to invest $10 billion for the construction of up to 100,000 new homes to be sold only to first home owners. Also, the present scheme under which the government guarantees a 5% home deposit would have the means test removed (the Liberals would also tweak some detail of this measure).

Labor in its first term committed to spending $33 billion and set a target of 1.2 million new homes over five years. Progress to the target is off course. The latest initiatives could be seen by some voters as more of the same.

The Liberals hope the interest deductibility policy might be a show stopper. But there is a salutary lesson from the 2022 campaign. The Liberals also came out at that campaign launch with a big housing initiative – to allow people access to their super for the purchase of their first home.

It wasn’t the “game changer” Scott Morrison labelled it. It was too late, for one thing. For another, policy auction or not, many voters make decisions on wider criteria, including what they think of the leaders and the context in which the contest is taking place.

The latter is especially important this election, when the vagaries of the Trump administration are driving some voters towards staying with “the devil you know”.

While the Liberals’ tax offset announcement came as a surprise, perhaps it was inevitable the Coalition would have to offer something on taxation. It seemed at the time crazy brave for the opposition to reject the government’s $17 billion budget package of tax cuts.

The opposition rationalises the money involved in its election carrots. The earlier-announced cuts in petrol and diesel fuel excise (costing $6 billion) would last a year (although open to extension). Then the $10 billion tax offset would cut in. The Liberals argue this sequencing balances immediate cost-of-living relief with economic responsibility.

Nevertheless, the opposition’s giveaways don’t sit easily with its mantra about the need to cut spending. We have yet to see the circle squared, and that will only come (if it does) at the end of the campaign when the accounting numbers are all submitted.

Meanwhile, Labor is making the most of the threat of Dutton’s unknown spending cuts. Albanese said in his speech: “If Peter Dutton won’t tell you what cuts he will make before you vote, if he refuses to say where the $600 billion for his nuclear reactors will come from, then every other promise is worthless.”

The figure of Donald Trump continues to hang over the campaign, with Albanese declaring “the Liberals want to copy from overseas”.

In an own goal on Saturday Jacinta Price, who is shadow minister for government efficiency, referred to the opposition’s commitment to “make Australia great again” at an appearance with Dutton.

Dutton’s launch speech ran for the best part of an hour, with three former prime ministers, John Howard, Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison, in the audience. Predictably, there was no sign of Malcolm Turnbull.

Julia Gillard was there for Albanese’s launch. Paul Keating didn’t make the trek to Perth; Kevin Rudd, as ambassador in Washington, has other responsibilities these days.

Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Election Diary: Liberal and Labor launches focus on housing, but who thinks either side can fix that crisis any time soon? – https://theconversation.com/election-diary-liberal-and-labor-launches-focus-on-housing-but-who-thinks-either-side-can-fix-that-crisis-any-time-soon-254206

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Seth Asare Okyere, Visiting lecturer, University of Pittsburg and Adjunct Associate Professor, Osaka University, University of Pittsburgh

Humans are walking beings. Walking is intrinsically linked to our physical development from childhood and enables our connections with people and places. We can say it is essential to our physical and mental well-being.

Walking can also help create inclusive and sustainable cities. Most western cities incorporate this need in their spatial planning.

In African countries like Ghana, however, the fact that most people walk doesn’t always mean they prefer to. They need to walk because it’s cheaper than using motor vehicles. But many African cities are not friendly to pedestrians.

More than 70% of the urban population in Africa walk daily for various purposes. To deal with the challenges pedestrians encounter, some African cities have incorporated policies and strategies for walking into their motorised transport policies. For instance, in Nigeria, the Lagos Metropolitan Area Transport Authority has developed a policy that aims to create a safe and pleasant network of footpaths, greenways and other facilities that serve everyone in the city.

In Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), a similar policy was developed. Its objective is to increase the number of people who walk by investing in walking facilities and improving connectivity to public transport.

The strategies in these documents are commendable, but they have met practical challenges like funding, public perception and technical capacity.

Ghana also has several transport and local development planning policies. Yet most urban areas in Ghana don’t have walking infrastructure and a safe walking environment.

As scholars interested in sustainable urban development planning and policy, we reviewed some of these policies to explore how they treat walking as a way of getting around. The research also assessed institutional perspectives and residents’ everyday lived experiences of walkability in Accra, the capital city. We found that both policies and urban plans paid little attention to making the walking experience enjoyable.

Read more:
City streets: why South Africa should design more people-friendly spaces

The study

The Ghana Transport Survey Report indicates that over three-quarters (75.3%) of the country’s population make up to ten daily trips on foot, and most urban areas lack walking infrastructure. Pedestrians account for about 42% of road deaths in Ghana.

We chose two study sites in Accra, the capital, where many come to find work. The sites represented inner-city and suburban areas. The research used in-depth and semi-structured interviews with 80 people to capture the perspectives of institutional representatives and community residents. We explored walking experiences in terms of accessibility, safety and enjoyment.

Findings

Accessibility: The national transport policy seeks to provide dedicated, safe, reliable and appropriate facilities for users across all transport modes. What we found, however, was an absence of infrastructure to enhance pedestrian access to facilities and services.

One resident commented:

The roads are not only in poor condition but they have no sidewalks. It is not hard to assume that these were built for car owners, not pedestrians’ everyday use.

Safety: The research revealed a chasm between policy ambitions for walking and realities at the community level. Municipal development plans don’t say how they will address the frequent crashes that result from commuters, vendors and motorists competing for space. The most at risk are pedestrians, who represent 42% of transport-related fatalities. This is because of noncompliance with bylaws that regulate activities on the roads and pedestrian pathways.

One municipal official said:

Look at the streets: Motorists, street vendors, school children on the same street space. There is encroachment, reckless driving, illegally parked cars on road shoulders. School children and the disabled face constant risks. But the plan aims to make the neighborhoods walkable. Just words as always.

Enjoyment: Enjoyment was the least considered aspect of walkability in both national policy and municipal development plans. The absence of facilities and infrastructure that offer comfort, aesthetics and other pleasures for pedestrians provides a clear indication of this.

A community leader complained:

Flooding and poor sanitation create an unpleasant walking environment. Clogged waste, poor drains, and rubbish along streets and alleyways are a problem. There is nothing pleasant about walking: the smell, the dust, the noise and the heat. You walk because you have no choice.

Read more:
New forms of urban planning are emerging in Africa

Towards cities that are walkable

The deep gulf between what the policies say and everyday experiences in our study calls for new ways of thinking and implementation within the urban transport in Ghana’s development planning regime.

We suggest that there is a need for transport planners, urban and development planners, and policymakers to consider coproduction strategies in identifying, framing, developing, and implementing interventions. This will help harness the potential for walking as a social equaliser and its contribution to healthy, safe, equitable cities and communities.

Here, action-oriented collaborative strategies like workshops that consider communities as partners can transition African urban residents from captive walkers to walkers who enjoy it.

Seth Asare Okyere receives funding from the Volvo Research and Educational Foundations.

Daniel Oviedo receives funding from University College London and the Volvo Research and Educational Foundations.

Louis Kusi Frimpong receives funding from the Volvo Research and Educational Foundations (VREF) funding program

Mariajose Nieto receives funding from Volvo Research and Educational Foundation

Matthew Abunyewah and Stephen Leonard Mensah do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Accra is a tough city to walk in: how city planners can fix the problem – https://theconversation.com/accra-is-a-tough-city-to-walk-in-how-city-planners-can-fix-the-problem-253636

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

Anthony Albanese will promise a $10 billion scheme to facilitate the building of up to 100,000 homes that would be earmarked for sale to first home buyers.

To be unveiled at Labor’s formal campaign launch in Perth on Sunday, the proposal would also give all first home buyers access to a federal government guarantee for a 5% deposit.

At present this guarantee is provided only on a means tested basis, up to an income level of $120,000 for singles and $160,000 for couples.

The government would also raise the price levels for properties to be eligible under the scheme.

With the guarantee, buyers avoid having to pay expensive lenders mortgage insurance.

The present 50,000 cap on the number of guarantees available would also be removed.
The latest pledge takes the Labor government’s commitment to housing over its term to $43 billion.

Housing affordability is one of the major issues of the campaign, especially for young voters. A survey by money.com.au recently found housing affordability and rental stress were the dominant concerns for Australians under 40.

“Labor will enable every Australian to buy their first home with a 5% deposit,” the government says in a statement on its proposals. “There will be higher property price limits and no caps on places or income, in a major expansion of the existing scheme.”

The present median home price in Australia is $820,000; 5% of that is $41,000.

Under the changes, a Sydneysider and first home buyer would be able to purchase a $1 million apartment with a $50,000 deposit with their loan guaranteed by the Albanese government.“

Property price limit rises

The government says the plan would cut the time people needed to save a deposit, and save them tens of thousands of dollars on lenders mortgage insurance.

In its $10 billion investment, the government would partner with state developers and industry, to identify suitable projects, including the use of vacant or underused government land. States and territories would fast track land release, rezoning and planning approvals.

The $10 billion would include up to $2 billion in grants and $8 billion in zero-interest loans or equity investment, primarily to states and territories. States and territories would have to match the $2 billion federal grants.

The government says construction on the first projects would start in 2026-27, with buyers moving in from 2027-28.

Albanese said: “I want to help young people and first home buyers achieve the dream of homeownership”.

Housing minister Clare O’Neil said: “Young Australians are bearing the brunt of the housing crisis, and our government is going to step up to give them a fair go at owning their own home”.

Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Albanese pitches to aspiring home buyers with $10 billion plan and removal of means test on deposit guarantee – https://theconversation.com/albanese-pitches-to-aspiring-home-buyers-with-10-billion-plan-and-removal-of-means-test-on-deposit-guarantee-254205

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

Peter Dutton at his party launch on Sunday will offer a “cost of living tax offset” of up to $1,200 to more than 10 million taxpayers.

The one-off offset would go to taxpayers earning up to $144,000 when they lodged their tax return for next financial year, making it more than a year off.

The full offset would be available to those earning between $48,000 and $104,000 a year. About 85% of taxpayers would benefit from the offset and about half of all taxpayers would receive the maximum offset.

The tax offer, costing 10 billion, compares with the government’s tax cuts – announced in the budget and legislated that week – that phase in starting mid next year and cost $17 billion over the forward estimates.

The Coalition’s tax announcement comes as something of a surprise. The opposition had given the impression it believed tax cuts unaffordable.

There was some disquiet in Coalition ranks at the decision to oppose the government’s tax cuts, and concern about the opposition going to the election with no promise for income tax relief.

Dutton has returned to a former Coalition policy. The Morrison government introduced a low and middle income tax offset in the 2018-19 tax year. It was subsequently extended but then abolished by the Labor government.

Dutton said the temporary and targeted offset would provide support for families while a Coalition government addressed the underlying economic problems.

“Australians are hurting,” Dutton said.

He said people needed help now.

“A Coalition government will first provide help to families by cutting fuel by 25 cents a litre – a saving of about $1,500 a year for a two car family. And then by giving back up to $2,400 per family whilst we clean up Labor’s mess. Labor’s 70 cents a day is a bandaid on a bullet wound.

“Our Cost of Living Tax Offset will put more money back into the pockets of millions of Australians at a time when they’re being crushed by skyrocketing grocery bills, rent, mortgage repayments and insurance costs.”

He said “Labor’s “so-called tax cut – just 70 cents a day – is a slap in the face to hard working Australians and an insult to families trying to make ends meet”.

“It shows just how out of touch Mr Albanese really is.”

Shadow Treasurer Angus Taylor said the Coalition’s tax relief was responsible, temporary and targeted.

“Labor’s big spending agenda is fueling inflation and driving up the cost of everything.

“This offset is part of our comprehensive plan to rebuild the economy, ease cost of living pressures, and reward hard work.”

The Liberal launch is in Sydney.

Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Dutton to offer targeted income tax offset of up to $1,200 – https://theconversation.com/dutton-to-offer-targeted-income-tax-offset-of-up-to-1-200-254204

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

It takes a bit for Labor not to preference the Greens but on Friday it was announced that in the Melbourne seat of Macnamara, where Jewish MP Josh Burns is embattled, the ALP will run an open ticket.

Macnamara, which includes the suburbs of Balaclava, Albert Park and South Melbourne, has the second largest Jewish constituency – 10% of voters – of any electorate. Only Wentworth in Sydney has more.

Burns has held the seat since 2019. At the last election he had a primary vote of 31.77%, with the Greens second on 29.65%, just ahead of the Liberals on 29%. After preferences were distributed, this turned into a substantial two-party win for him over the Liberals.

The political dynamics have changed since then. There is anger in the Jewish community about the Albanese government’s attitude to Israel and criticism that it hasn’t done enough to combat antisemitism. The expectation is that Burns’ primary vote will go down and the Liberal vote will go up.

ABC election analyst Antony Green says the seat “will be a battle for the order of exclusion” – it will all depend on who comes in third on primary votes.

If the Liberals or the Greens come third, Burns will be elected. If Burns is third on primaries, he is eliminated and the Greens are favorite, even with an open ticket. But the leakage of preferences from an open ticket would give an opportunity to the Liberals, Green says.

Green points out that given how close the three parties were on primaries last election, a very small shift in votes could change the order of the top three.

Burns has benefitted from the Friday draw for order on the ballot paper. He is in the top spot, giving him the so-called “donkey vote”, with the Greens third, ahead of the Liberals.

Burns warned an election forum this week, sponsored by the Australian Jewish News and various Jewish groups, “If we do not win enough number one votes, then the Greens will obviously come into second place. That is the biggest concern that I’ve got.”

He dismissed the prospects of the Liberals being able to win the seat. “The only people who can win this seat from me are the Greens.”

He told the audience, “If the Greens form into the top two, then think about the people who make up this electorate – the young progressive people from Elwood, from St Kilda, from Windsor, from South Melbourne, from South Bank.

“We are a proud and large Jewish community, but we’re only 10% of the electorate of Macnamara.

“The preferences, regardless of what the Labor Party says, are not going to the Liberal Party from those young people.”

Burns faced some heckling from a small number of people in the audience – they were told to be quiet by other audience members.

The forum was attended by Liberal candidate Benson Saulo, who recounted his Indigenous heritage, and strongly condemned the scenes at the pro-Palestinian rally outside the Sydney Opera House in the wake of the October 7 2023 Hamas attacks in Israel.

The Greens candidate was not invited onto the panel but was in the audience.

Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Election Diary: Labor breaks practice of preferencing Greens to protect Jewish MP Josh Burns – https://theconversation.com/election-diary-labor-breaks-practice-of-preferencing-greens-to-protect-jewish-mp-josh-burns-254202

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Evangeline Mantzioris, Program Director of Nutrition and Food Sciences, Accredited Practising Dietitian, University of South Australia

Endometriosis affects around 10% of women of reproductive age. It’s a chronic inflammatory condition that occurs when tissue similar to the lining of the uterus (the endometrium) grows outside the uterus.

Endometriosis can cause chronic pain, bloating, bowel and bladder dysfunction, pain during sex and infertility. These symptoms can lead to reduced quality of life and mental health challenges.

Although endometriosis pain can be treated with medication or surgery, these options are not suitable for everyone, and a significant number of women experience recurrent symptoms even after surgery.

Many women with endometriosis look to complementary therapies to manage their symptoms, which can include dietary changes and taking supplements.

A recent study sought to understand different dietary strategies women with endometriosis use and how these affect their pain levels. The researchers found cutting down on things like dairy, gluten, caffeine and alcohol could improve endometriosis pain.

Let’s take a closer look.

What the researchers did and found

The study, which was led by researchers from the University of Edinburgh, involved an online survey. It asked women with endometriosis questions about any dietary changes they made and any supplements they used, and whether they found these useful for managing pain.

A total of 2,388 women with a confirmed diagnosis of endometriosis completed the survey. Some 84% of respondents had made at least one dietary change, 67% of whom reported these changes improved their pain. Meanwhile, 59% had used supplements, 43% of whom considered these changes improved their pain.

The following are some of the most popular dietary changes women had tried, and how they thought these changes affected their pain:

• drinking less alcohol (improved pain in 53% of women)

• eating less gluten (45%)

• consuming less dairy (45%)

• consuming less caffeine (43%)

• eating less processed sugar, which can be found in foods and drinks such as lollies, cakes, biscuits and soft drinks (41%)

• eating less processed foods, which include deli meats, savoury snacks such as chips and sausage rolls, and chocolate (38%)

• following a low FODMAP diet, which involves avoiding short-chain carbohydrates (certain types of sugars) to reduce gas, bloating, pain and discomfort (32%)

• adopting a Mediterranean diet, which is a diet high in plant foods (including fruit and green leafy vegetables), extra virgin olive oil, breads, fish, fermented dairy, and cereals and low in red meat, and processed meats and foods (29%).

For supplements:

• turmeric or curcumin, the active ingredient in turmeric (improved pain in 48% of women)

• magnesium (32%)

• peppermint (26%)

• ginger (22%).

Some limitations

There are some weaknesses in this study to consider when interpreting the results. First, it’s an observational study, which means we cannot say these dietary changes and supplements cause decreased pain, just that there appears to be an link.

To be more confident about the effects of dietary changes or supplements, we would need to do randomised studies with control groups.

Also, the participants self-reported dietary changes they had made in the past and past pain levels. This relies on memory, which can be unreliable.

All that said, this sort of research does provide us with clues about what may work, especially when we combine it with our knowledge of the actions these foods and supplements have in the body.

So how would they work?

Given the inflammatory component in endometriosis, the findings of this study are not entirely surprising. Many of the dietary changes and supplements this study looked at have anti-inflammtory properties.

For example, reducing alcohol consumption, reducing processed foods, adopting a Mediterranean diet and using turmeric or curcumin may reduce inflammation.

Some of the findings of this study seem to align with other evidence, while others don’t.

For example, a recent review showed the Mediterranean diet can lead to reductions in pain, however the relevant studies did not have control groups. This same review showed a low FODMAP diet reduced pain and improved quality of life in people with endometriosis.

Meanwhile, a 2024 paper concluded there’s a lack of evidence to support a gluten-free diet for endometriosis symptoms. The authors argued avoiding gluten to manage the condition should be discouraged.

Peppermint has been reported to reduce period pain and nausea. But I couldn’t find any specific evidence for endometriosis.

So what should you do?

If you have endometriosis, this study and existing evidence suggests following a Mediterranean diet or a low FODMAP diet may reduce pain. This current study also indicates reducing your intake of alcohol, sugar and processed foods may help.

Importantly, these changes won’t do any harm to your overall health. In fact, the Australian dietary guidelines recommend drinking alcohol and consuming processed foods in moderation, given links to a range of chronic diseases. So these changes may have other benefits too.

However, some of the dietary changes reported in this study may be problematic.

For example, eliminating dairy will significantly reduce your calcium intake which is important for building healthy bones and reducing the risk of osteoporosis in later life. However, there are other ways of ensuring an adequate intake of the nutrients found in dairy products.

Reducing caffeine won’t lead to any health or nutritional concerns, but may affect quality of life for people who enjoy drinking coffee or tea.

Women with endometriosis can try supplements such as turmeric or curcumin and ginger, but it’s best to try them one at a time, so you can identify which one works for you.

If you’re looking to change your diet to try to manage endometriosis symptoms, it may be best to see a registered or accredited practising dietitian to ensure you’re following a nutritionally balanced diet.

Evangeline Mantzioris is affiliated with Alliance for Research in Nutrition, Exercise and Activity (ARENA) at the University of South Australia. Evangeline Mantzioris has received funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council, and has been appointed to the National Health and Medical Research Council Dietary Guideline Expert Committee.

– ref. Could changing your diet improve endometriosis pain? A recent study suggests it’s possible – https://theconversation.com/could-changing-your-diet-improve-endometriosis-pain-a-recent-study-suggests-its-possible-253945

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sophia Staite, Lecturer in Humanities, University of Tasmania

Social media is ablaze with reports of kids going wild at screenings of A Minecraft Movie.

Some cinemas are cracking down. There are reports of cinemas calling in police to deal with rowdy theatregoers and making special announcements before the film, warning of consequences for “anti-social behaviour” including “clapping and shouting”.

But these kids are engaging in a kind of communal experience. Rather than being antisocial behaviour – couldn’t we label it as prosocial?

The global fandom of Minecraft

Minecraft was first released in 2011 and has sold over 350 million copies, making it the best-selling video game of all time.

Minecraft is an unstructured game that provides mineable resources and leaves players to create whatever they want with them. Creations can be as basic as stacking blocks of wood to make a wall, or as complex as a working computer.

It has become the nexus of a vast online community of people with an interest in the game.

Players connect to one-another digitally and share certain social norms and knowledge, including a memeified vernacular. Minecraft-playing Youtubers have also become popular, and are the source of many memes.

The community is dominated by children and young adults and the incomprehensibility of their vernacular for other generations is possibly part of its appeal.

Within child and youth fan communities the usual hierarchies of communication are reversed. Instead of kids having to learn to speak according to adults’ rules, in this community the kids maintain a knowledge system that excludes a lot of adults.

Enter A Minecraft Movie

A Minecraft Movie opened last weekend to enormous box office success, bringing in US$313.2 million globally. The film follows four humans who stumble through a portal into the Overworld (Minecraft). Their only way home involves teaming up with fellow human Steve (Jack Black) to save the Overworld from the creativity-hating Piglins.

Almost immediately, social media conversations sprang up about the behaviour of audiences. One bemused parent described the atmosphere of the cinema as “like [when] The Beatles came to America”.

Many of the videos shared of audiences during screenings show joyful scenes of communal pleasure, similar to other responses to highly anticipated films such as Avengers: Endgame.

But while the response to Avengers: Endgame was celebrated, the behaviour of children and teens at A Minecraft Movie has been framed by news outlets in negative terms.

Journalist Keith Stuart suggests the different responses are a result of parents feeling excluded by A Minecraft Movie’s frequent references to memes.

Negative news reports link audience behaviour to existing moral panics about social media challenges and are particularly focused on popcorn being thrown.

The use of the same two or three videos of popcorn throwing to illustrate multiple news articles highlights how relatively few reports of popcorn throwing there currently are.

Instead, most of the debate on social media has been about the etiquette of noisiness during screenings, including cheering and clapping.

Finding community

A Minecraft Movie speaks the memeified vernacular of its online community.

The film incorporates references to longstanding memes, popular Minecraft YouTubers (and some cameos) and, of course, to the game itself.

The film is speaking directly to Minecraft fans, and audiences are responding by displaying their mastery of this vernacular and strengthening their sense of belonging.

By clapping and cheering when they recognise a meme, or saying lines of dialogue in sync with the actors, kids are identifying themselves as members of a community.

When a whole cinema full of young people does this simultaneously, they are identifying themselves to and with one another.

This is prosocial, strategic communication – not the antisocial pandemonium and chaos some reports would have us believe. Instead, fans are reporting the cheering and clapping happens at specific moments: they are enjoying both the film, and reacting to it.

During the brief (but meaningful for knowledgeable audience members) tribute to beloved YouTuber Technoblade, who died of cancer in 2022, there have been reports of whole theatres falling silent as a mark of respect.

An online community of kids and teens has suddenly become hyper visible to adults because it has intersected with the traditional media space of the cinema.

Online games such as Minecraft are a crucial part of kids’ social lives and play.

Perhaps adults can seize this moment as an opportunity to learn more about something that clearly matters deeply to a lot of kids.

Sophia Staite does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Kids cheering ‘chicken jockey!’ at A Minecraft Movie isn’t antisocial – it creates a chance for us to connect – https://theconversation.com/kids-cheering-chicken-jockey-at-a-minecraft-movie-isnt-antisocial-it-creates-a-chance-for-us-to-connect-254287

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hunter Fujak, Senior Lecturer in Sport Management, Deakin University

Few issues in Australian sport generate as much media noise or emotional fan reactions as player movement, especially in our major winter codes the National Rugby League (NRL) and Australian Football League (AFL).

Contract negotiations, trade whispers and club defections dominate headlines, talkback radio, social media and fan forums — often eclipsing the on-field action itself.

In the past month, the sport news cycle has been dominated by player movement controversies involving the NRL’s Dylan Brown and Daly Cherry-Evans and the AFL’s Oscar Allen.

The scrutiny these athletes face is one feature of a workplace defined by expectations rarely found in other industries.

In a world where professional athletes are simultaneously financial investments and human beings, can fans, athletes and leagues strike a truly fair balance when it comes to player movement?

A unique legal status

Professional sport is exempted from several commercial laws that otherwise apply to typical industries. This is due to its peculiar economics.

Crucially, leagues such as the AFL and NRL are permitted to operate as cartels, whereby clubs act collectively in ways that petrol stations or supermarkets legally cannot.

One outcome of sport cartels has been the implementation of various restrictive practices on the recruitment, transfer and remuneration of professional athletes.

Drafts, trade windows and salary caps are all anti-competitive mechanisms with two general aims: fostering “competitive balance” between teams and suppressing player wages to maintain leaguewide financial viability.

These mechanisms remain in place mostly due to co-operation between leagues and their player associations (the AFLPA and RLPA), as their underlying legal standing is in fact ambiguous.

Whether the AFL’s draft would survive a court challenge is debatable.

Australia’s varied player movement rules

National Rugby League

The NRL operates a salary cap model with free agency. This affords athletes strong freedom of movement, including the potential to switch clubs mid-season. Some consider this to be a negative, given constant media conjecture over player movements. However, it keeps the NRL perpetually in the headlines.

In the absence of a draft, individual NRL clubs are responsible for their own junior development and talent identification. The Penrith Panthers’ historic premiership four-peat was underpinned by successfully leveraging their immense junior catchment to develop NRL superstars.

A benefit of this model is it maximises the opportunity for local juniors to play for their local team. This pathway from local junior to hometown hero authentically contributes to embedding NRL clubs within local communities.

Australian Football League

The AFL operates both a draft and salary cap, and players have considerably less autonomy.

Player movement occurs almost exclusively in the post-season. Despite this, clubs sweet talk rival players in the shadows outside this window, hoping to make signings official in the off-season.

This practice came into view this week by the controversy surrounding West Coast captain Allen’s meeting with a rival coach.

The AFL draft takes place after the trade period and is the primary way for athletes to enter the competition.

The draft order is inverted, linked to clubs’ on-field performance (the team that finishes last receives the first pick).

Clubs are largely removed from the process of developing junior athletes, which is centralised through the AFL’s national talent pathway.

The athlete perspective

While professional athletes are often portrayed as privileged, there are few other professions that impose such severe restraints on the rights of workers.

The Allen controversy is a reminder the AFL operates a system where the clubs are masters and players well-remunerated servants.

For the crime of meeting another coach in considering his future, albeit clumsily, Allen was described as “selfish”, “a sell-out,”, “utterly disgusting” and compelled into a press conference apology.

Criticisms of athletes as selfish scarcely acknowledge that, unlike doctors or lawyers, they have uniquely short timespans to exploit their sporting careers.

In many sports, as is the case in rugby league, athletes are disproportionately from lower socio-economic settings, where the money is life changing.

The fan perspective

Professional sport thrives because fans are emotionally attached to their teams. Fans rarely switch the team they support, so they often expect the same from players.

Fan attitudes on player loyalty are therefore largely driven by emotion rather than rationality. Few fans employed in contract work would reject meeting a potential future employer because of a sole dedication to their current employer, as was the case for Allen.

Even fewer fans would reject the ten-year, $13 million contract accepted by Dylan Brown to depart the Parramatta Eels, yet many booed him for doing so, as Melbourne fans did in 2012 after the departure of former No.1 AFL draft pick Tom Scully to Greater Western Sydney.

In 2007, Parramatta Eels fans even threw coins at departed player Jamie Lyon. Thankfully for Brown, Australia has since become a mainly cashless society.

Is there a fair balance?

Player movement in Australian footy codes is a system of regulations that attempts to balance the competing demands of various stakeholders.

In recent times, the NRL has explored the introduction of trade windows, and drafts, seemingly in response criticism over player movement and competitive imbalance.

Such proposals have received strong
pushback from the RLPA.

Responding to the Allen fallout, AFLPA boss Paul Marsh conceded the AFL ecosystem remains immature to player movement:

There shouldn’t be outrage about this stuff but there is. As much as I think we should be mature enough to deal with this, it is the industry we are in.

The challenge for these codes therefore isn’t just regulating player movement but confronting the double standard placed upon athletes that expects loyalty in a system designed to control.

Hunter Fujak has served as an external advisor to several Australian player associations on a pro-bono basis, including the Rugby League Players Association.

Joshua McLeod does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Traded like assets, expected to be loyal: the unique double standard of being an Australian footy player – https://theconversation.com/traded-like-assets-expected-to-be-loyal-the-unique-double-standard-of-being-an-australian-footy-player-253618

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Isabelle Ng, PhD candidate, College of Science and Engineering, James Cook University

Swim along the edge of a coral reef and you’ll often see schools of sleek, torpedo-shaped fishes gliding through the currents, feeding on tiny plankton from the water column.

For decades, scientists assumed these plankton-feeding fishes – or planktivores – shared specialised traits: forked tails and streamlined body forms for speed, large eyes for spotting small prey, and small extendable jaws for suction-feeding.

But our new study, published in Reviews in Fish Biology and Fisheries, shows there is more nuance to this story. We found plankton-feeding fishes don’t follow a single uniform design. To our surprise, they display the widest range of body forms of any feeding group among reef fishes.

Evolving similar traits

A core idea in evolutionary theory since Charles Darwin is that species facing the same problem often evolve similar traits. This is a process known as convergent evolution. It explains the pattern we see among dolphins, sharks, and tunas – distantly related lineages unified in their streamlined body shape used for fast swimming.

We set out to test whether the same phenomenon was true for plankton-feeding reef fishes. Planktivores are an ideal group to study in this case.

For one, plankton-feeding is the most common feeding group among reef fishes – giving us many distantly related species to compare. For another, they all share the same challenge of having to spot and suck out small prey from the water column.

So we asked: do plankton-feeding fishes have a distinct body shape? And do patterns of convergence hold true across a diversity of plankton-feeding reef fishes?

The broadest range of body shapes

To answer these questions, we collected shape data from nearly 300 species of reef fishes from 12 globally distributed families – including surgeonfishes, wrasses, snappers, and damselfishes. We measured 15 feeding, swimming, and vision-related traits such as jaw length, tail shape, and pupil size.

By combining these measurements with evolutionary trees, we tested whether plankton-feeding fishes were distinct in shape to their counterparts.

But what we found surprised us. Plankton-feeding fishes aren’t converging on a specific body shape. It is quite the opposite – they display the broadest range of body shapes among reef fishes. Some species – such as the schooling fusiliers – truly fit the typical “plankton-feeding” model. They exhibit traits such as a forked tail, torpedo-shaped body, large eyes, and small, extendable jaws.

But most others break the mould entirely. For example, tiny gobies – just three centimetres long – cling onto whip corals and adopt a sit-and-wait approach for plankton to pass by.

Other deep-bodied damselfishes depart a small distance from their coral hosts to feed on plankton. But how can we explain this diversity of planktivore body shapes?

An innate ability

The answer lies in the vast diversity of their behaviours and environments.

Their body shape isn’t dictated by plankton-feeding alone – it’s shaped by where, when and how they feed. Some planktivores feed during the day, others at night. Some inhabit deep reefs, others are mere metres below the surface of the water. Some are restricted to rubble slopes while others prefer the reef edge. Some even target specific sizes and types of the plankton itself.

This diversity in activity patterns, habitat use, and prey preferences places different demands on their body forms – explaining why we see such a range of shapes and sizes among plankton-feeding fishes.

Even species we don’t typically think of as planktivores will feed on plankton when the chance arises. Just last year, while on Lizard Island, we watched yellowmask surgeonfishes – normally feeding on algae and detritus – swimming high above the reef, targeting plankton.

Perhaps this flexibility shouldn’t surprise us. After all, all reef fishes begin their lives as plankton feeders, floating in the open ocean before settling on the reef. The ability for fishes to feed on plankton is likely innate.

Challenging a longstanding assumption

Our findings challenge the longstanding assumption that planktivorous reef fishes are distinct in form and are converging towards an optimum body type.

Instead, plankton-feeding is a highly accessible and flexible feeding strategy on coral reefs – available to fishes of many shapes, sizes, evolutionary histories, and even different feeding groups.

This has important implications for how we think about reef fish ecology and evolution. It shows that broad feeding categories like “planktivore” can mask the diversity of other behavioural and ecological traits.

Rather than converging on a single solution, reef fishes highlight something different: that there is more than one way to be a planktivore.

Isabelle Ng receives funding from the James Cook University Postgraduate Research Scholarship.

Alexandre Siqueira receives funding from Edith Cowan University as a Vice-Chancellor’s Research Fellow.

– ref. We study ‘planktivores’ – and found an amazing diversity of shapes among plankton-feeding fishes – https://theconversation.com/we-study-planktivores-and-found-an-amazing-diversity-of-shapes-among-plankton-feeding-fishes-254296