Cartoons of the Week

Mike Luckovich

 

Fiona Katsaukas

Quotes of the Week

“Google has announced that soon, when you search a question on its site, the first result displayed will be an AI-generated answer drawn from the open web. But many of the most trustworthy sources of information - academic journals, high-quality newspapers - are locked behind a paywall. There is a real chance the AI-powered search engines that will shape our lives will be biased toward misinformation or even falsehoods.”

[The Conversation, webpage footnote, excerpt retreived 11 June 2023]

“We’ve logged our state forests to exhaustion, so we’re now going into ‘plantations’ cutting old growth and remnant forest.”

[Dr Tim Cadman, Adjunct Senior Research Fellow with Law Futures Centre and Institute for Ethics, Governance and Law at Griffith University, writing in Griffith News, 5 June 2023]

Meme of the Week

HUMBUG

 

Bipartisan support for The Voice makes its presence felt in the Richmond Valley NSW

 

Byron Echo, 14 June 2023:

Showing their support for the ‘Yes’ vote were Alice and dozens of ‘Yes’ friends in Brunswick Heads. Photo Tree Faerie

The Richmond for Yes campaign kicked off this week, with a strong call for volunteers to help deliver a successful Voice referendum.

Bundjalung elder Charline Emzin-Boyd, who is leading the campaign locally, says, ‘People who want to be involved in this special moment in history can get in touch with us at Yes23’.

‘Volunteering is an opportunity to walk with us’, says Charline, ‘so people from different backgrounds and different politics can come together to make Australia a better place for everyone.’

The new campaign is based in the federal electorate of Richmond, which covers coastal towns from Tweed to Ballina, and west to Mullumbimby and Murwillumbah….

The Richmond electorate voted for the Labor Party platform - which included the Voice Referendum - at the 2022 federal general election, by re-electing sitting MP Justine Elliot for her seventh consecutive term as their representative in the Australian Parliament.

Other notable local supporters of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples Voice to Parliament are former Liberal MLC Catherine Cusack and former Greens candidate for Richmond, Echo columnist Mandy Nolan & NSW Labor MLC for Lismore Janelle Saffin.

The YES 23 campaign has a website, https://yes23.com.au/.

That website allows everyone to keep track of what’s happening in the Northern Rivers region and elsewhere at:

https://action.yes23.com.au/events.

Information about the referendum question and what it means can also be found at:

https://voice.gov.au/.

RESIDENTIAL AGED CARE IN AUSTRALIA: is push is about to meet shove over the next four years?

 

Yes, an Australia-wide review of the residential aged care system was long overdue given the ongoing train wreck which started in the Howard Government era and continued through to the Morrison Government era and hasn’t yet come to a complete halt. 

Although the Albanese Government's 20 per cent increase ($3.9 billion) in federal government funding for residential aged care and home care in 2022-23 was a promising sign. As was the $23 billion over the 4 years from 2022-23 to improve aged care infrastructure and services that provide support to older Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander people and to older individuals from diverse communities and regional areas.

Although the fact remains that between 2012 to 2022 bed numbers in residential aged care facilities were effectively being privatised and creating risk with:

• government managed beds down from 10,825 to 8,170;

• Not-for profit managed beds up from 107,410 to 120,053;

• privately managed beds up from 66,335 to 91,658; and

• the number of residential aged care providers falling to just 811 business entities by 2022.

Yes, the ageing population is also growing. By June 2022 the number of people 65 years of age and older composed 17 per cent of the total population at an est. 3.3 million individuals and, there were 180,750 older people in permanent residential aged care – 58 per cent of those being aged 85 years to 100+ years. These individuals were accommodated across 219,965 permanent residential aged care places as of 30 June.

Should we panic at these numbers? No, not quite yet.

Admissions to permanent residential aged care across Australia between July 2020 to June 2021 totalled 67,146 older people.

In the same financial year these 67,146 people entered residential care and a total of 2,823 exited due to death. By 2025 the majority of those admitted in 2020-21 will have been discharged from permanent residential aged care by death, given that for at least half of all permanent care residents appear to have a length of stay after admission of between 24 to 48 months.

In fact, of the 180,750 older people in permanent residential aged care in June 2022, it is possible that up to 95,797 will have been recorded as discharged by death before 2027.

However, by 2027 Australia’s population 65 years of age and older will be est. 5.2 million or est. 18% of a total national population which might have reached 29.2 million persons by then, according to projection scenarios by the  Australian Dept. of Health & Aged Care and Australian Bureau of Statistics. Out of that older population pool as many as 300,000 might by then require some form of residential aged care (permanent or respite) which potentially creates a bed shortfall risk.

That bed shortfall combined with the growing amount of federal funding required to keep government & not-for-profit operators afloat and satisfy the demands of a profit-driven private sector means that decisions have to be made within this present election cycle on residential aged care costs and infrastructure.

Whatever the Albanese Government decides will probably satisfy very few — because that is the nature of the collective political beasts roaming the Arena at present, as well as the mood of the national electorate watching this brutal Roman Circus.

Australia's Misery Index might not be as high as during the Global Financial Crisis or the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic but it's at a less than comfortable level in 2023

At its meeting on 6 June 2023 the Reserve Bank of Australia Board decided to increase the cash rate target by 25 basis points to 4.10 per cent.

Banks and other financial institutions are adjusting their mortgage & loan investment rates upwards again and the ABS Cost Price Index (CPI) remains stubbornly high for the category labelled Food & non-alcoholic beverages.

This was the twelfth cash rate rise in the thirteen months from 4 May 2022 to 7 June 2023.

The inflation rate is hovering at 7.0, while everyone hopes that by the end of June it will stand at 6.25.

The fact that it appears inflationary pressures might still be with us in 2024 doesn’t make for happy little Vegemites in the average Australian household.

This general dark mood can be measured using the Misery Index. An economic concept created in the1960s by Okun and further refined by Barro and Hanke.

It is based on the assumption that:

1) a higher cash rate/interest rate increases the cost of borrowing;

2) which in turn drives up the cost price index for essential goods services;

3) when these factors combine with the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate (rate calculated at times two if you are a Hanke purist); and

4) there is slower/lower growth in the nation’s gross domestic product;

5) this combination goes on to create economic and social costs – or misery – for a country.

To establish where a country is on the Misery Index basically one adds the current reserve bank cash rate, cost price index & seasonally adjusted unemployment figures together and then divides that number by the year end real gross domestic product per capita to produce the Index score.

In Australia’s case the Misery Index according to Professor Guay Lim and Associate Professor Sam Tsiaplias (University of Melbourne) – writing in March 2023 – came in at a whopping 16.3 per cent in third quarter of 2008 during the Global Financial Crisis and 13.7 per cent in the second quarter of 2022, just as the global pandemic really began to bite.

The Misery Index fell sharply in in the second quarter of 2021 but began to climb again over the following months reaching 9.9 per cent in December.

The quarterly Economic Misery Index since 2000. Recent high inflation and high interest rates have caused a rapid rise in the index. Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics, and the Reserve Bank of Australia. Graph: University of Melbourne, Pursuit, “WHAT WE CAN EXPECT FROM THE 2023 ECONOMIC ‘MISERY INDEX’ ”, March 2023

By 2022 the annual economic misery index was at 9.2 per cent.

Unfortunately the Misery Index is not currently budging by much. In the first two weeks of this month, June 2023, it would seem that our quota of misery is somewhere between 9.0 and 9.11 per cent.

Columnist Van Badham writing in The Guardian on 9 June 2023 had this to say:

Australian households with the average $600,000 mortgage have been asked to find a spare $17,000 among the couch cushions since the RBA began its lifting-rates-a-thon last May.

There’s rising costs of other expenses, such as transport. The Australian Automobile Association calculated the average cost of running a car in this country went up $28.31 a week in the March quarter; in Brisbane and Melbourne, it went up $34. With associated automotive costs, using a car in Sydney now averages $510 a week.

Meanwhile, in regional Victoria, one food bank is shipping 40 tonnes of food every day to help struggling families.

Why are the price rises happening? International research conducted by the OECD concluded “corporate profits contributed far more to Australia’s rise in inflation through the past year than from wages and other employee costs”. There’s been similar analysis from the European Central Bank. The Reserve Bank of Australia and Treasury disagree, I guess because the OECD is led by notorious communist Mathias Cormann.

The RBA insists that the pay packets of Australian workers have magically, secretly swelled, and this is driving inflation – even though, as Australian economist Stephen Koukoulas has said, “real unit labour costs only rose 0.1% in the March quarter and 1% over the course of the year”.

And how is it possible wages are inflicting such terrible damage when the ACTU could observe major local employers are enjoying profits at Scrooge McDuck levels? The latest half-yearly statements had Ampol bathing in $440m, Coles $616m, Qantas $1.4bn … and the Commonwealth Bank taking a swim in the gold coins pool at a depth of $5.15bn.

Philip Lowe is the RBA governor. Although he has a whole bank board and a coterie of senior mandarins alongside him making rate rise decisions, he is certainly to blame for public statements that imply “workers pay to solve inflation they didn’t cause”, to quote (yet another) economist Jim Stanford.

The theory for the rises is neoliberal orthodoxy; apply economic pressure to cause unemployment, and make those who retain their jobs live in such valid terror of the burning tyre-pit hell that is Centrelink that they won’t make pay demands and therefore won’t drive “wage price” inflation.

Lowe has generously suggested that those households struggling to keep up with rising mortgages – 27.8% of whom are now at risk of mortgage stress – to just “pick up more work”. This is Schrödinger’s employment policy, where the RBA advocates for and against employment at the same time, while you place a box on your head and scream at your ballooning mortgage repayments. An earlier Lowe suggestion was that those struggling with exploding rents should magic up some flatmates or move back to a “home” that may or may not exist.

You, Australian, are responsible for your own misery. But that means you’re responsible for your own happiness, right?

So while you’re forced to cut spending, alleviate supermarket blues by performing a funky dance in the canned veg section the inevitable moment a Katy Perry song comes over the PA. Similarly, suppressing an instinct to ask for the wages you need to meet your costs can be a lot less painful if you hum your favourite 80s sitcom themes at work.

Automotive costs might force you into long and difficult walks to overcrowded, underfunded public transport, so maybe commute in a clown suit. If you’re facing record rent rises, you could consider reciting beautifully sad poems from the nearest window and lure flatmates to you with your tender pain.

History suggests there are alternatives, but demands for rent freezes and price controls are unconstitutional. Referendums to allow government economic intervention of this kind were defeated in 1948 and 1973. Faced with inflationary challenges in the 1950s, though, the Liberal government of Robert Menzies addressed the problem by raising taxes on the rich.

Sadly, the Australian people voted Scott Morrison into power in 2019 on a promise to implement the stage-three tax cuts, and then a promise by Labor to keep these cuts on the books arguably convinced enough swing voters over the electoral line.

There is no help coming for Australians from the RBA. Perhaps we should ask ourselves how much of this misery we might have power over, after all.

Very little of what has been built in in the NSW North Rivers coastal zone appears to have a long habitable lifespan - so it's buyer beware

 

What is fascinating about this development application set out in the following article is that the Byron Bay local government area coastal zone generally, including Clifford Street, Suffolk Park, is expected to be impacted by ongoing storm surges, tidal incursion and then permanent sea level inundation beginning sometime between 2027 to 2030 – roughly four to seven years from now. With 9-15 Clifford Street being one of the last addresses to be affected in that street.

Most of the sea level rise scenarios indicate that 9-15 Clifford Street as a habitable dwelling space may only have a life of around 37 to 47 years if Australian east coast and global air and sea temperatures keep rising as steeply as they have in the last 40 years.

Barely enough time to pay off the mortgage before the unit/apartment becomes worthless.

The Echo, 7 June 2023:

The company behind a controversial mixed-use development in the heart of Suffolk Park has quietly submitted revised plans for the proposal as part of the ongoing court battle over the matter.

Sydney-based developer, Denwol Pty Ltd, took Byron Council to the Land & Environment Court after it refused their plans to build two new three-storey buildings, containing 16 units, seven town houses and 300m2 of commercial space at 9–15 Clifford Street.

Council had set out 17 separate reasons for refusing the development application when it was originally submitted last year, including factors related to the environmental impacts, design, bushfire risk and affordable housing claims.

With the formal court hearing getting underway last week, Denwol made an application to the court to submit amended plans for the project.

This followed an amended DA that was submitted in April which involved a significant reduction in the size of the development.

Published on Council’s website, these amended plans involve reducing in the number of residential apartments from 16 to seven, and the number of town houses from seven to six. There would be two retail tenancies.

Both buildings are reduced to two-storeys in the amended plans, though there is little difference in the overall height of the development.

There is also a significant increase in how far the buildings will be set back from the road, though this will require more trees to be cut down.

Resident, Lynne Richardson, said that the amended plans represented little change in practical terms because the overall footprint of the development was ‘much the same’.

Community excluded

She also said that the process by which the most recent amendment had been submitted had excluded the community.

‘I was enraged by the process,’ Ms Richardson said.

‘The only community members who were actually told were those who were due to give evidence during the hearing, and we were only given a few days’ notice to get our heads around the plans before doing that.

‘[Council’s lawyers, Marsdens] only told us a few days before we were due to give evidence, and they asked us to respect the confidentiality of the developer by not disseminating the new plans more widely. In my opinion, the newly modified plans should have been more widely circulated to the community. This affects all of them so they should have been told.’

The Echo understands that Council will continue to contest the matter in court, despite the submission of the modified plans by the developer.

BACKGROUND

Byron Shire Council - List of Applications Submitted, excerpt, retrieved 12 June 2023:

Original Development Application.

10.2022.137.1

Development Application 13/07/2022 15 Clifford St, Suffolk Park 2481 NSW

15A Clifford St, Suffolk Park 2481 NSW

9-13 Clifford St, Suffolk Park 2481 NSW

Demolition of Nine (9) Dwellings, Removal of Twenty Five (25) Native Trees and Construction of a Mixed Use Development Comprising of Two (2) Buildings including Commercial Premises and Multi Dwelling Housing being Twenty Three (23) Dwellings of which Twelve (12) will be Affordable Housing and Swimming Pools.

Details here including latest modification submitted this year.

Existing dwellings

Byron Shire Council flood mapping showing part of Clifford Street