Cartoons of the Week

 

Alan Moir

David Rowe

John Shakespeare

Peter Broelman

Cathy Wilcox

Final Report of the Aged Care Taskforce March 2024: "A strong preference for many older people and their families is for them to age in place and remain in their home for as long as they are able. This was reflected in responses to the stakeholder survey, with 90% of respondents supporting the principle."

 

Given the growing number of people over the age of 65 years living in the Northern Rivers region, this may be of some interest to retirees, their families and friends.

Australian Government, Final report of the Aged Care Taskforce, 12 March 2024, excerpt:

Support older people to age in place

______________________________________

Principle 1: The aged care system should support older people to live at home for as long as they wish and can do so safely.

______________________________________

A strong preference for many older people and their families is for them to age in place and remain in their home for as long as they are able. This was reflected in responses to the stakeholder survey, with 90% of respondents supporting the principle.

The decision of whether an older person wishes to remain at home or enter residential aged care is driven by a wide range of factors. Consultation showed the top reasons for preferring to remain at home included comfort and privacy, a desire to remain independent, better mental and physical health outcomes and maintaining connection to community, friends and family. For other reasons, such as social connectedness, increasing clinical care and safety needs, some older people may choose to enter residential aged care sooner. While overall there is a shift towards ageing in place, it is important to meet each person’s preferences for their aged care and provide continuity of care when needs change.

Home care programs need an overhaul to meet future demand

The current home care programs are not ready to meet the needs of a rapidly growing cohort of older people. Home care currently involves 2 programs, the Home Care Packages Program and the Commonwealth Home Support Programme, that have evolved over time and with different design objectives. This has led to a system where:

• applicant assessments are inconsistent and not well aligned to actual need

• access to services is constrained and inconsistent, and many older people are not receiving an optimal mix of services 

• services are priced and fees are charged inconsistently (see Appendix E for details)

• different funding approaches are impeding the sector from scaling up and diversifying

• there is a lack of clarity about what services should be available.

Those who can access home care under the current system can leave significant funds unspent, while others can wait for months to access services. This is due to existing program constraints, limited availability of services and appropriately skilled workers, as well as behavioural and attitudinal factors. In the Home Care Packages Program, unspent funds as at 30 June 2022 totalled $2.3 billion.16 Prices across the programs are inconsistent and inefficient due to variable price setting arrangements. This undermines the predictability and sustainability of funding and can cause confusion when comparing packages with other participants.

There are also obvious signs of lack of scale and diversification of providers. As the population ages, these issues will need to be addressed to deliver a rapid scaling up of services to meet demand.

The Support at Home Program is an opportunity for generational change in how home care is delivered

It will also be important to make sure home care better meets older people’s needs, while enabling program

scalability and pricing signals that ensure funds are used consistently and in line with program intent. In

addition, home care must provide value for money, transparency and better quality services.

The new Support at Home Program, to be introduced in stages from July 2025, is an opportunity to address

these critical issues in the current home care programs.

As the Support at Home Program is implemented, it will be important to ensure the new arrangements

deliver on the intent of the design and meet the expectations of older people, their families and carers for:

• greater choice and control

• easier and more timely access

• flexibility to adjust services over time as needs change

• better value for money through controls on unreasonable administration fees

• better clarity and transparency around fees and how funding is used.

It is also important that the new arrangements deliver for providers, acknowledging the need for:

• more predictable and sustainable funding that meets the costs of quality service delivery

• recognition of the costs associated with complying with regulatory requirements

• flexibility to adjust services on the ground as participant needs change

• improved use of a qualified and skilled workforce to increase service availability

• appropriate and adequate implementation timeframes.

Support at Home Program inclusions and exclusions need to be more clearly defined than under current programs

The Taskforce was asked to provide advice on program inclusions and participant contributions for the

Support at Home Program. In developing this advice, the Taskforce considered the diverse needs, goals and

circumstances of participants, the intent of the program and the role of other service systems. The

importance of prevention, flexibility and reablement also played a key role in discussions.

The Taskforce notes the Support at Home Program needs much clearer specifications than current programs about what it will and will not fund. The lack of clarity and consistency in inclusions and exclusions in current home care programs has led to confusion between providers and participants. This affects participants’ ability to make informed choices about their care, diminishes value for money in the programs, and could also mean that funds are not used according to the policy intent of home care.

Read and download the full report at:

https://www.health.gov.au/sites/default/files/2024-03/final-report-of-the-aged-care-taskforce_0.pdf

With Aging in Place recommendations on pages 16 to 18.

About Peter and David's little plan to put a fast transitioning to renewable energy on the backburner in favour of creating a nuclear power industry in Australia

 

It would appear as though the two Coalition opposition parties are determined to take the creation of a nuclear power industry to the 2025 federal general election.

It is being presented as cost-effective and relatively risk free way to provide for Australia's future energy needs.

So here are some basic facts to consider when evaluating the propaganda beginning to spread across national newspapers and social media.

CAPITOL COSTS

Annual change in capital costs: Across the board, new build costs have generally stabilised as the impacts of inflation ease. However, cost pressure remains on gas, onshore wind and nuclear SMR. [Draft GenCost Report, December 2023]

The CSIRO Draft GenCost Report 2023-24 stated that Nuclear small modular reactors (SMRs) emerged as the highest-cost technology explored in the report. This corresponds with new data from the most advanced SMR project in the US. 

SMRs are the type of nuclear power facility favoured by Liberal MP for Dickson & Leader of the Parliamentary Liberal Party, Peter Dutton and Nationals MP for Maranoa and Leader of the Parliamentary National Party, David Littleproud.

SMRs at this stage exist only as either prototype drawings or development projects - appearing at this point in time to be unrealised technology.

According to the current Draft GenCost Report:

Significant increase in nuclear small modular reactor costs

The cost of nuclear small modular reactors (SMR) has been a contentious issue in GenCost for many years with conflicting data published by other groups proposing lower costs than those assumed in GenCost (ES Figure 0-3). UAMPS (Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems) is a US regional coalition that develops local government owned electricity generation projects. Up until the project’s cancellation in November 2023, UAMP was the developer of a nuclear SMR project called the Carbon Free Power Project (CFPP) with a gross capacity of 462MW. It was planned to be fully operational by 2030. After conversion to 2023 Australian dollars, project costs were estimated in 2020 to be $18,200/kW which is only slightly below the level that GenCost had been applying ($19,000kW).

While the EFSC Investment Group states that estimates suggest that the construction cost of a coal-fired thermal power plant can range from less than $1,000 to $4,500 per each kilowatt of installed capacity.

That's a whopping $14,000 difference at the high end of the costing range. Making these boutique smaller nuclear power units very expensive if they can be realised.

Then there is the limited service area of nuclear small module reactors (SMRs). Based on the U.S. Carbon Free Power Project SMR with a proposed gross capacity of 462MW, such an SMR would be able to supply a mere est. 31,862 residential households according to Ausgrid 2022-23 electricity consumption figures. Hardly value for money given the high cost to Treasury and Australian taxpayers of building and bringing online these small power plants, by CSIRO estimates around $8.7 billion per SMR.

Lake Macquarie City Library reveals that: The total cost of the Eraring Power Station, built by the NSW Electricity Commission was $1.653 billion. Work commenced with the earthworks on the site in 1976, followed by construction of the station beginning in 1977. Several of the larger components of the station were shipped through the Swansea channel, up Lake Macquarie to the Eraring site. The first generating unit was brought into service in March, 1982, the second and third units in 1983 and the fourth unit in 1984.

The Coalition Shadow Minister for Climate Change and Energy is fond of tossing out timescales for nuclear power stations builds - from around 5 years to complete construction of an small modular reactor (SMR) to 10-12 years for a large-scale nuclear power plant.

In the first instance it's hard to assign a build timeline to an SMR because one hasn't actually been built yet.

In the second instance, the build time lines for existing large-scale nuclear reactors ranging from 1,000MW-e to 1,350MW-e capacity is fairly well known and historically construction completion took between 19.66 to 25.08 years. These days the optimistic theoretical time given for completed construction of a 1,000MW-e nuclear power station is seven and a half years.

In the case of a nuclear power plant with the same capacity as the Eraring coal-fired power station, without factoring in the long lead-in years of legislative framing, planning and approval processes, actual construction could be expected to be completed in 18 years at the earliest. While the World Nuclear Organisation figures would put the overnight cost of this nuclear power plant in Australian dollars at $9,115 per KW-e as a starting point which comes in at over $17.6 million overnight or $6.4 billion over 365 nights.

So if Dutton & Co were to form government in 2025 and hit the ground running - by my reckoning they might, just might, have one solitary nuclear power station built and online by 2058 at a cost on current pricing in the vicinity of $21 billion. Having achieved nothing nuclear towards the net zero by 2050 policy. 

It is interesting to note that the Coalition parties see coal-fired generation as remaining critical to Australia's electricity supply and the Liberal Party makes a point of saying so in its 2025 re-election plan for the resources sector. A plan that doesn't even include the words "nuclear power stations" Indeed one might suspect Dutton and Littleproud of raising the possibility of future nuclear energy as an excuse to maintain all existing coal-fired power stations should they win government again and, that it what makes this particular energy option so attractive a proposition.

Dutton & his nuclear cheer squad are also saying that if elected to federal government that they will not be ruling out including in Coalition policy a crossover to large-scale nuclear power generation on retired or soon to be retired coal-fired power station sites.

A fact that should give communities in places like the Lake Macquarie region reason to pause and consider, given Eraring Power Station is due for retirement soon.

The risks involved with a 2,922MW capacity coal-fired power station already drawing 11 billion litres of salt water a day from Lake Macquarie and returning it after cooling, is a different proposition to a full-scale nuclear power plant of similar capacity drawing at least 7.9 million litres of water a day from an as yet unidentified source, contaminating an unknown percentage of that water with radionuclides – unstable atoms with excess energy – and then seeking to return supposedly 'cleaned' water to the lake.

Given uncontrolled water and liquid effluent releases from nuclear power stations have occurred in the past, some contaminating groundwater, this is one more worry our regional communities do not need.

CLARENCE VALLEY CONSERVATION COALITION'S VOICES FOR THE EARTH "EARTH MATTERS" SESSIONS START AGAIN ON 18 MARCH 2024

 

Clarence Valley Independent, 6 March 2024:

VOICES FOR THE EARTH

EARTH MATTERS SESSIONS START IN MARCH

The Clarence Valley Conservation Coalition (CVCC) is restarting its Earth Matters environmental information sessions on March 18 after a break in 2020 following the advent of covid.

These public events, introduced in 2004, were held every two months between March and November and were conducted by a range of people from the community, or from government or local environment groups. Sometimes the goal was acquiring information about an issue while at other times it involved exploration of an idea, the seeking of a solution or celebrating the wonders of the natural world.

The range of subjects over the years has included sustainable farming, climate change, the impact of light at night, flying fox ecology, cane toads in the Clarence Valley, Grafton’s tree heritage, riparian vegetation on the floodplain, native bees, waste management and recycling, inspiration for your town garden, conservation in north-west Tasmania, national parks in India and Bhutan, and restoring rainforest.

Recently the CVCC decided to restart these public information sessions. The new venue is the Joan Muir Community Centre in Turf Street, Grafton. Sessions will be held between 6 and 8 pm on the third Monday of the month in March, May, July, September and November. The events will generally consist of a presentation by one or more speakers for an hour, followed by a short question and discussion session and light refreshments. Those attending will be asked to contribute a gold coin to assist with expenses.

The first two presentations have been arranged and the CVCC is looking forward to providing the community with information on a range of important environmental matters from March onwards.

Proposed Mineral Mining in the Clarence Catchment is the subject of the first Earth Matters session on March 18. Shae Fleming, Clarence Catchment Alliance Coordinator (CCA), will discuss the current situation on mining in the Clarence Catchment, CCA's role, the community campaign's aim and progress to date, the threat of mineral mining to our local water, species, environment, social, cultural and economic wellbeing and how you can help.

• Leonie Blain

NSW Minister for Finance Courtney Houssos has written to 128 councils urging those who use ticketless parking fines to address shortcoming in their approach. Requests councils to provide an on the spot, written notification to drivers

 

9 News, 11 March 2024

ECHO, 11 March 2024:

The days of receiving ticketless council parking fines in NSW are to end thanks to new directions from the Labor state government.

Half of all fines processed by Revenue NSW are reportedly council parking fines, with 48 councils issuing ticketless fines including the Tweed, Ballina and Lismore local government areas (LGAs).

Some councils have abandoned the use of on-the-spot paper fines altogether.

The former coalition state government introduced the ticketless scheme as a trial in May 2020 before expanding it to more councils in December 2020.

Local governments included in the scheme can lodge parking infringements directly with Revenue NSW, along with photographic evidence, rather than by leaving a ticket on the offending car.

Drivers are in most cases unaware they’ve received a fine until it arrives by mail or the Service NSW app.

NSW Minister for Finance Courtney Houssos says the scheme has eroded trust in the state’s parking fine system.

Minister pushes for photographic evidence in parking fines

The minister on Sunday issued a media release saying she’d written to all 128 councils across the state asking them to return to the practice of issuing on-the-spot written notifications, such as small pre-printed cards left on the windscreen.

While leaving a note isn’t mandatory under state regulations, the minister says drivers who know they’ve been booked may want to collect evidence such as photos and details of where they parked in case they want to seek a review.

‘This note does not necessarily need to form part of the infringement notice but at a minimum it should inform the driver they will soon receive an infringement notice via post or the Service NSW app,’ Ms Houssos wrote in her letter, included in Sunday’s media release.

The minister also requested councils using ticketless fines to review processes to make sure photographic evidence is captured and sent to Revenue NSW.

Lismore council issues nearly $130K in ticketless parking fines

Concerns were also raised about the timeliness of notifications to drivers, with some people said to have received multiple ticketless fines before being told.

The scheme is further accused of having a reduced impact in terms of immediate parking offence deterrence and driver behaviour influence.

On the Northern Rivers, the Lismore City Council is recorded as issuing the most ticketless parking fines in 2023 at 898, followed by the Ballina Shire Council at 473 and the Tweed Shire Council at two.

Ticketless fines in the Lismore LGA were valued at more than $127,000.

The local figures paled in comparison to some metropolitan councils, where fines in the tens of thousands were recorded.

The North Sydney Council issued 52,251 ticketless fines, for example.

The Byron Shire Council wasn’t included in the list.....

NSW Government, Minister for Finance, 10 March 2024 media release at:

https://www.nsw.gov.au/media-releases/ticketless-parking-fines-must-meet-community-expectations

STATE OF PLAY AUSTRALIA 2024: anti-corruption agencies with runs on the board & the new kid on the block

 With corruption perceived as thriving around the world and Australia showing a worsening corruption level with a 10 point change in the wrong direction since 2012, according to Transparency International, it would be nice to see some improvement on the horizon.

In its 2023 report it seems Australia is not showing any such improvement on CPI results in the previous 2022 report. Although in all fairness, on a global scale the nation is not ranked as a high range offender.

Nevertheless, on the Australian east coast alone, four states and one territory published reports on a combined 73 corruption/integrity investigations in the 18 months between 1 July 2022 and 31 December 2023. [See "BACKGROUND"]

So I'm hoping that the slow progress of the first seven months of the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) only indicates a new anti-corruption agency finding its way and, next year the general public will begin to see at least a hint that some of its 13 current investigations are nearing conclusion. Most especially, I'm hoping that Commissioner Brereton publishes the results of all completed investigations which found corrupt conduct.

Because I can see no good reason why the misdeeds of federal public officials/public servants should be afforded a total secrecy not afforded to their state and local government counterparts or any ordinary citizen.

On 5 March 2024 NACC released its regular weekly update for the reporting period: 1 July 2023 to midnight Sunday, 3 March 2024.

Overview

The National Anti-Corruption Commission:

• has received 2594 referrals

• has 376 referrals currently under assessment including 13 under preliminary investigation

• is conducting 13 corruption investigations

• is overseeing or monitoring 25 investigations by other agencies

Referral and assessment

At the end of the reporting period, the Commission had:

• received 2594 referrals

• excluded 2009 referrals at the triage stage because they did not involve a Commonwealth public official or did not raise a corruption issue

• 160 referrals awaiting triage

• 216 triaged referrals under assessment including 13 under preliminary investigation

• assessed 233 referrals, in respect of which the Commission:

  • decided to take no further action in 213 cases. Typically, this is because the referral does not raise a corruption issue, or there are insufficient prospects of finding corrupt conduct, or the matter is already being adequately investigated by another agency, or a corruption investigation would not add value in the public interest.

  • referred 5 corruption issues to agencies for investigation or consideration.

  • decided to investigate 9 corruption issues itself.

  • decided to investigate 4 corruption issues jointly with another agency.

BACKGROUND

In New South Wales out of the five investigation reports published by Independent Commission Against Corrupt Conduct (NSW ICACC) in 2023, four found seriously corrupt conduct involving members of state parliament, elected local government officials, public authority employees or property developers. While in 2022 four out of five investigation reports published found seriously corrupt conduct involving members of state parliament, political lobbyists, public servants, legal practitioners or land council employees.

In 2022-23 the Queensland Crime and Corruption Commission (CCC) received 3,931 corruption complaints and assessed 3,686 corruption complaints. Finalising 39 corruption investigations, resulting in two criminal charges and seven recommendations for disciplinary action.

In 2022-23 the Victorian Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission (IBAC) began 11 investigations and 18 preliminary inquiries into public sector corruption and police misconduct. It also completed 14 investigations and 12 preliminary inquiries, with 18 investigations and preliminary inquiries still in progress at the end of that financial year.

Also in 2022-23 the ACT Integrity Commission worked on 13 investigations, including two new investigations. It also referred 9 matters:

• six referrals to the Public Sector Standards Commissioner

• one referral to ACT Corrective Services

• one referral to ACT Health

• one referral to the Justice and Community

  Safety Directorate.

In 2023 the Tasmanian Integrity Commission released two reports on the potential for bias and conflict of interest in local government hiring practices.

El Niño persists and although it is likely to disappear by May 2024 it may become harder to reliably predict what will follow in the future

 

Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM), 5 March 2024

Neutral ENSO likely during autumn

El Niño persists, although a steady weakening trend is evident in its oceanic indicators. Climate models indicate sea surface temperatures in the central tropical Pacific are expected to continue declining and are forecast to return to ENSO-neutral in the southern hemisphere autumn 2024.

Atmospheric indicators are mixed but are consistent with a steadily weakening El Niño. Cloudiness near the equatorial Date Line has decreased over the last fortnight, returning to the climatological average. The 30-day Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) is currently less than -7.0, characteristic of an El Niño state, but indicative of ENSO-neutral conditions over the 60- and 90-day periods. Temporary fluctuations of ENSO atmospheric indicators are common during summer and are not an indication of El Niño strength.

International climate models suggest the central tropical Pacific Ocean will continue to cool in the coming months, with four out of seven climate models indicating the central Pacific is likely to return to neutral El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) levels by the end of April (i.e., neither El Niño nor La Niña), and all models indicating neutral in May. ENSO predictions made in autumn tend to have lower accuracy than predictions made at other times of the year. This means that current forecasts of the ENSO state beyond May should be used with caution.

Based on the historical record from 1900, around 50% of El Niño events have been followed by an ENSO-neutral year, and 40 to 50% have been followed by La Niña. However, global oceans have warmed significantly over the past 50 years. The oceans have been the warmest on record globally between April 2023 and January 2024. These changes may impact future predictions of ENSO events, if based solely on historical climate variability.

The Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) is neutral. IOD events are typically unable to form between December and April. This is because the monsoon trough shifts south over the tropical Indian Ocean changing wind patterns and preventing the IOD pattern from forming.

The Southern Annular Mode (SAM) is currently neutral, as of 3 March. Forecasts indicate SAM will remain neutral over the coming fortnight.

The Madden–Julian Oscillation (MJO) is currently in the eastern Indian Ocean. The MJO is forecast to move into the Maritime Continent in the coming days and progress eastwards towards the Western Pacific over the coming fortnight. When the MJO is in the eastern Indian Ocean, increased cloudiness tends to occur over the eastern Indian Ocean and western parts of South East Asia. As the MJO shifts into the Maritime Continent, increased cloudiness tends to occur over parts of the far north of Australia and the islands of South East Asia, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea.

The annual global mean temperature for the 12 months from February 2023 to January 2024 was the highest on record, with Copernicus reporting that it was 1.52 °C above the 1850–1900 pre-industrial average. However, this does not mean that the 1.5 °C target referred to in the Paris Agreement has been exceeded as the magnitude of global warming is assessed using multi-year averages, and this is only one 12-month period.

Australia's climate has warmed by 1.50 ± 0.23 °C between 1910 and 2023, leading to an increase in the frequency of extreme heat events. In recent decades, there has also been a trend towards a greater proportion of rainfall from high intensity, short duration rainfall events, especially across northern Australia during the wet season. April to October rainfall has declined across southern Australia in recent decades, due to a combination of long-term natural variability and changes in atmospheric circulation caused by an increase in greenhouse gas concentrations.

[my yellow highlighting]