TAX, LOVE, AND CARE
Some 149 aged care houses with four- or five-star scores didn’t meet requirements together with treating residents with dignity and respect, giving good scientific care, or supporting well being and wellbeing, Guardian Australia reviews. However these minimal high quality requirements, assessed by the Aged Care High quality and Security Fee (ACQSC), aren’t thought-about within the star ranking system for compliance. And people stars are sometimes utilized by households to resolve the place to ship their family members, the paper says. The ACQSC stated solely corrective motion, not non-compliance, impacts a ranking, however a former well being division official stated it reveals how “deceptive” the celebs are. In the meantime SA’s ambulance service is sending taxis to 36 triple-0 callers per week, The Advertiser reviews, costing taxpayers $121,686 in two years. Ramping (ambos queueing at emergency) hit a document 4,285 hours in November, the paper notes.
It comes as Peter Dutton says Anthony Albanese’s management is “over” if the federal government ditches the stage three tax cuts, Sky Information Australia reviews, as a result of the opposition chief decides these items, or one thing. Sky notes the reform means 94% of Australian taxpayers will face a most marginal tax charge of 30% or much less. Sounds nice proper? Besides greater than 80% of the cuts will go to individuals within the high 20% of incomes, and two-thirds of the cuts will go to males. Folks within the lowest third of incomes get nothing, the Australian Council for Social Providers says. Dutton was droning on about breaking election guarantees, though his predecessor Scott Morrison broke election guarantees together with a federal watchdog, creating 1.3 million jobs in 5 years, delivering a surplus, constructing 47 commuter automobile parks, planting a billion new bushes, and extra, as The Day by day Mail listed. Albanese has steadfastly stated the stage three tax cuts are going forward.
WORDS OF WAR
The Albanese authorities has not formally designated October 7’s bloodbath as an abroad terrorist act, The Australian ($) reviews, so Australian Jews can’t entry the Sufferer of Terrorism Abroad Cost below the Social Safety Act. Dwelling Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil stated the federal government was “contemplating additional methods” to help Australians and their households, however opposition dwelling affairs spokesman James Paterson urged motion, saying family members of the slain want help to “rebuild their lives” after “the worst bloodbath for the reason that Holocaust”. The paper notes it took below two months to designate the 2015 Paris ISIS assaults and the 2016 Berlin assaults below our laws.
To a different abroad battle now and we received’t be sending our retired Taipan helicopters to Ukraine prefer it requested, Defence Business Minister Pat Conroy confirmed, as a result of there’s none in a match state to fly. They’re being taken aside forward of their burial at a defence website, ABC reviews — how oddly touching — and it might be an enormous greenback determine to get them working once more, Conroy stated. We retired the Taipans in September after 4 Defence personnel died in a Queensland crash. In the meantime, Japan needs to check missiles in Australian navy ranges, the AFR reviews. Japanese missiles have already been fired in Train Talisman Sabre warfare video games, and Defence advised the paper we’re comfortable to collaborate when it gives “mutual advantages”. The Japan Occasions says it’ll assist “improve deterrence towards Beijing’s provocative navy actions within the Indo-Pacific area”.
TRUTH AND POWER
The College of Western Australia’s Michael “Mick” O’Leary has been accused of a “lack of regard for the reality, lack of independence and lack of scientific rigour” by Federal Court docket Decide Natalie Charlesworth within the high-profile Munkara v Santos case, The Australian ($) reviews. The affiliate professor was introduced in as an skilled witness within the Indigenous heritage case battling to cease the Barossa fuel discipline within the Timor Sea to guard Aboriginal songlines within the ocean. However the choose discovered O’Leary lied to Tiwi Islanders in a “cultural mapping” train — the Nationwide Indigenous Occasions delves into it — and he or she ended up dismissing the case this week.
Staying in WA and a few 9,200 houses haven’t any energy after extreme thunderstorms broken strains, The West ($) reviews, with residents in Wheatbelt and Goldfields advised to arrange for as much as seven days of darkness. Non-essential journey to the 2 cities must be averted, authorities stated, with the outage affecting the ability provide, water provide, phone companies, web connection, gasoline stations and shops. In the meantime WA’s Well being Division barred the South Metropolitan Well being Service from negotiating with personal operator Aegis Well being in its $55 million deal, paperwork WA Right this moment FOI’d present. The 80-bed medihotel is simply weeks away from being constructed however there’s nonetheless no service settlement in place.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE
In case you have seven minutes free day-after-day for the following week, you could possibly really feel some iota of pleasure in an in any other case meaningless existence stuffed with horror. That’s tongue-in-cheek, however it may possibly genuinely really feel a bit ignoble to really feel pure pleasure within the overlapping cost-of-living and housing crises amid a worldwide context of warfare and impending local weather doom. And I’m not speaking about listening to a podcast whereas cleansing your own home, which is making utility really feel enjoyable — that’s not pleasure. So what’s it? Ask Huge JOY, a citizen science venture primarily based on the Better Good Science Middle on the College of California, Berkeley. Some 88,000 individuals have tried the week-long program because it launched, together with The Guardian’s Emma Beddington, who was fairly unsettled when her first process was to take heed to amusing observe.
Her subsequent process was to ask individuals to inform her one thing “enjoyable, fantastic or inspiring that they’ve skilled” these days. Tales of holding one’s new child granddaughter, recognizing a uncommon hen, and shagging a Canadian oncologist adopted. Huge JOY urged her to reply “That will need to have felt nice!” however Beddington writes, “I’m not American, so I don’t”. (Additionally, it wouldn’t be probably the most becoming response to somebody having intercourse). Her subsequent process is to take heed to one of many Dalai Lama’s favorite Buddhist prayers, and the cynic in her groans. By the top, she finds herself crying. Different duties embody writing three positives that got here from one thing damaging, making a gratitude checklist, a nature-based awe train, ranking her values, and at last, doing one thing sort for 5 individuals. “Who am I, Amélie Poulain?” she writes “I don’t even see 5 individuals most days”. However she does it. She darns her husband’s jumper and offers some groceries to a meals financial institution. It does make her really feel good, about 14.13% extra, to be exact. No small factor proper now.
Hoping you notice a possibility for an excellent deed immediately too.
SAY WHAT?
In any future association … Israel wants safety management all territory west of the Jordan. This collides with the concept of sovereignty. What are you able to do?
Benjamin Netanyahu
In a chilling admission, the Israeli PM stated he would solely conform to a peace deal that may see his nation achieve safety management over your complete Gaza Strip.
CRIKEY RECAP
“NCA, the Information Corp Newswire does a vox pop piece accumulating the general public’s views on the choice. Of the seven individuals they communicate to (a household of three and 4 different people) most complain about value gouging and the dearth of help offered by Woolworths to Australian producers.
“Solely the ‘all-Australian’ household, who moved to Cronulla from South Africa in 2000, expressed any particular attachment to Australia Day on January 26. The piece runs below the headline ‘Aussie household stated they are going to ‘assume twice’ earlier than procuring at Woolies’.”
“However ‘The Solar Wot Received It’ [headline] brag within the UK and the 1996 launch of the overtly right-wing Fox Information on US cable inspired lecturers to have one other look. An evaluation of British elections between 1997 and 2010 put a quantity on it, concluding The Solar’s help was price about 2% of the vote.
“Within the US, a 2007 research discovered that between 1996 and 2000 each the Republican turnout and vote went up considerably (in a statistical sense, at the least) in cities the place Fox Information was on cable. It’s not simply Trump forcing the change. The fragmentation and siloing of audiences shift focus from the ability of persuasion to the revenues arising from confirming the biases of the viewers you have already got.”
“In the meantime, the most recent constructing approvals knowledge reveals we plan to construct extra flats nonetheless. In Sydney and the ACT a majority of approvals are for dwellings aside from separate houses, suggesting that earlier than lengthy Sydney can have separate houses as a minority. Canberra is farther from that eventuality however dashing there shortly.
“As the following chart reveals, 46% of latest constructing approvals in Sydney are for separate houses. That’s unusually excessive for Sydney, the place as a lot as two-thirds of approvals have been for townhouses and flats in current historical past. Submit-2017, and particularly since COVID, we’re in a bit condominium backlash. However it’s unlikely to final.”
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Pakistan missiles strike Iran in retaliatory bombing as tensions soar (Al Jazeera)
Proof factors to systematic use of rape and sexual violence by Hamas in 7 October assaults (The Guardian)
US weekly jobless claims at 16-month low; homebuilding takes breather (Reuters)
In a uncommon transfer, Singapore expenses a authorities minister with corruption (The New York Occasions) ($)
Pope Francis says sexual pleasure is ‘a present from God’ (BBC)
THE COMMENTARIAT
It’s time to reimagine our communities, not have the identical Invasion Day debates — Nat Cromb (IndigenousX): “We can’t be free till all are free; we are going to really feel no emancipation from colonisation till the buildings of colonisation are dismantled in a reckoning that has been a very long time coming. This is applicable to the remedy of Indigenous individuals right here and on different continents — we (society at giant) can’t be free, till all are free. Opposite to what fearmongering potatoes can have you pondering, this reckoning just isn’t of the colonial violence sort (though it is smart as to why reprisal is the one counter to lots of of years of violence that you can imagine). As a substitute we’re doing the work in reimagining and reviving our methods in our communities regardless of the violence throughout us. It’s in reimagining our communities to be as they need to be – caring, nurturing, wholesome, comfortable and with sufficient.
“Sufficient means very various things to completely different individuals. Sufficient to individuals raised and creating their very own communities of people-centred care and wellbeing dynamics take into account sufficient to be that individuals have a mattress, they’ve meals, entry to good well being care and the power to dwell how they select to dwell. Sufficient to the ability buildings that power feed beliefs of capitalism via media and insurance policies is the person pursuit of wealth and having comfy extra. This disparate consequence and strategy to pondering is what offers us such unwell communities. The place we’re in psychological well being crises, the place homelessness is uncontrolled, the place artifice and the pursuit of it results in competitiveness and ugliness in human behaviours. All of this, a results of capitalism launched by colonial forces.”
From bot reporters to the lack of a legendary editor, the Day by day Mirror is hanging by a thread — Jane Martinson (The Guardian): “For publishing native newspapers — the place cuts have been savage — in addition to the one nationwide newspaper to have constantly backed the Labour celebration for the reason that finish of the primary world warfare, Attain’s historic titles are notably vital in an election 12 months. Launched in 1903, when most titles had been written by and for a slim elite, the Mirror’s left-of-centre politics and dealing class help prompted historian AJP Taylor to say that ‘the English individuals eventually discovered their voice’. I grew up in a Mirror-reading family, not lengthy after it turned the biggest-selling paper on the earth with a circulation of 5m. Even by the point Phillips joined the corporate in 1998, gross sales had halved to 2.3m, primarily due to competitors from the Solar and the Mail.
“Partly to counteract the shortfall, in addition to elevated print prices, newspaper cowl costs shot up by 13% simply final 12 months. The Mirror now prices its devoted however dwindling band of cash-strapped readers £1.40 a day, in contrast with £1 for the Solar. Attain’s final set of accounts make for grim studying. Therefore the job cuts. [Editor Alison] Phillips is known to have chosen to go fairly than preside over any additional cuts in native protection or costly however award-winning journalism such because the Partygate scandal. The exit of a nationwide editor could have prompted headlines, however losses in native papers come at simply as excessive a price. On Wednesday, followers protested the lack of a devoted soccer reporter for West Bromwich Albion at Birmingham Reside. If nobody is devoted to following the fortunes of a Championship soccer membership, what hope for devoted court docket or native council reporters?”
HOLD THE FRONT PAGE
WHAT’S ON TODAY
Eora Nation Nation (also referred to as Sydney)
-
Sydney Competition 2024 continues, with greater than 1,000 artists coming collectively for greater than 150 occasions.