PAYWALL:

What also needs to be done is to directly address the overarching structural problems with a program that is supporting people it was never supposed to cater for.

The E61 Institute’s number-crunching to show what difference a means test would make to the cost of the National Disability Insurance Scheme is a case of the glass being half full.

The centrist think tank, which is run by former Productivity Commission chairman Michael Brenan, says that applying the same income and assets test that determines eligibility for pension and unemployment payments to the NDIS would “generate modest fiscal savings”. This is an understatement.

Means testing the nation’s fastest-growing social program – forecast to cost $56 billion this financial year – would have saved $4.5 billion, E61 estimates, on the $44.3 billion cost of the scheme in 2023-24. That is hardly an insignificant sum. It’s roughly half the cost of building an AUKUS submarine every year.

E61’s analysis of the scheme’s administrative data suggests that a very high 87 per cent of adult participants would still qualify for the NDIS because they already receive the means-tested Disability Support Pension.

The paradox is that when the means test includes the wealthier parents of children on the scheme, 40 per cent of the NDIS’s three-quarters of a million participants would be removed. But the savings generated would be proportionately less, in the vicinity of reining in costs by about 12 per cent, because most of those who would be denied access receive only relatively low-cost support.

Nevertheless, there is an important principle involved in targeting government assistance and requiring those who have the financial capacity to do so to support themselves.

Requiring those who can afford to pay for their own disability services to do so might also help restore the integrity of the scheme.

The NDIS has lost social licence among Australians due to exploding costs, widespread rorts and fraud, and the well-known reality that the program is not only supporting the relatively well-off but also those with relatively less severe problems.

The core problem has been the rules of the scheme, which were originally supposed to provide life-changing support for the relatively small number of Australians with severe and permanent disabilities.

Instead, scope and eligibility creep has significantly increased the number of people receiving support, especially adults and children diagnosed with mild autism who have been the major driver of the explosion in the size and cost of the NDIS.

The Albanese government acknowledged this when it announced in August last year that children with mild autism would be diverted from the NDIS to the new Thriving Kids support program jointly funded with the states.

Labor’s Thriving Kids program, jointly funded by the states and designed to divert children with mild autism and development delay away from the NDIS, got tangled up in the usual federal-state financial argy-bargy.

It took a fiscal bribe in the form of additional federal funding for public hospitals – thereby undermining NDIS reform’s overall contribution to budget repair – for most state and territory governments to agree to fund and operate Thriving Kids services. The remaining holdout is the Crisafulli LNP government in Queensland, thereby living up to the Sunshine State’s long history of Canberra bashing.

E61’s analysis suggests that the savings generated by a means test would be split between $1 billion from adults and $3.5 billion from children based on parental income. Those savings would be reduced in proportion to the extent Thriving Kids succeeds in getting children off the NDIS.

A means test may be no silver bullet for NDIS sustainability. But the substantive point is the number of people based on their lower level of need who are on the scheme but shouldn’t be. What needs to be done is to directly address the overarching structural problems with a program that is supporting people it was never supposed to cater for. This underscores the importance of the Albanese government’s belated reforms to fix the fundamental design problems at the heart of the NDIS’s unaffordable trajectory.

Labor’s plan to limit future growth in the cost of the runaway scheme to just 2 per cent and cut a forecast 900,000 participants by one-third over the next four years hinges on the legislation currently before parliament.

The most important changes include revised eligibility rules based on standardised evidence-based functional assessment of people’s needs, and the independent reassessment participants need to determine whether they continue to receive support when their plans expire. Both those changes appear designed to keep those with less severe disability, especially children and adults with mild autism, off the NDIS.

As part of the horse-trading over the passage of Labor’s changes to investment tax concessions announced in the May budget, the Greens secured an eight-week delay while the NDIS bill was referred to a parliamentary inquiry due to report this Friday. Every day it has been delayed has cost the budget $11.5 million, according to the government.

Despite the objective being to return the NDIS closer to its founding purpose of supporting those who are permanently and profoundly disabled, disability groups are mounting a rear guard action to water down the proposed changes.

Labor appears determined to hold the line on NDIS reform. But the political pressure will build as the legislation returns to parliament next week.

Thankfully, the Coalition appears set to give bipartisan support for the overhaul in the Senate. This is an opportunity to help govern the country and set a more responsible fiscal course that the opposition should seize, as it seeks to rebuild its credibility on budget and economic management under Angus Taylor.

Have google'd around a bit and a lot of the suggestions seem out of date or US-centric, is there any app for Aus that works decently at detecting the number who is calling from a master database or AI or something and can show who the caller is?

The quantity of spam/random foreign language recorded message calls/irrelevant salespeople I get these days keeps getting worse but I also need to take calls for medical or appointment/tradie related stuff so don't want to just block legit people.

Anything good that people are using that actually works well out there people can recommend please & isn't just a crappy spammy app in and of itself?

PAYWALL:

The cost to build a Sydney mid-rise unit now tops $1 million, driven largely by high labour expenses and a nationwide deficit of skilled workers.

A decade ago, developer Don O’Rorke built 300 apartments a 25-minute drive from Brisbane’s central business district for $205,000 each – and sold them for $395,000.

To build that same unit in Coopers Plains today, construction costs alone top $650,000. To break even, O’Rorke would need to sell each apartment for $900,000. To turn an industry-standard 15 per cent profit, he would need $1.3 million each.

The problem? Suburb market prices max out at $750,000.

“That would mean we would make a loss doing the project. We’re not going to do that. We’re not going to be able to raise finance to do that,” the Consolidated Properties Group chief executive tells AFR Weekend.

“We entered into COVID without too much cost inflation and a pretty efficient industry,” says O’Rorke.

“We came out of COVID with prices basically doubling, and building prices don’t tend to go backwards.”

For decades, the cost of building an apartment tracked quietly alongside inflation. Since the pandemic, however, costs have surged far beyond the consumer price index.

The core reason construction costs are still rising is a major shortage of skilled workers, pushing up wages, caused by a large cohort of tradespeople retiring over the past decade while too few apprentices or skilled migrants are taking their place, experts say.

While some areas are more affected by labour shortages than others, data shows it is a national issue that no state has been able to solve, and it is now the main driver in a perfect storm of cost increases stopping typical apartment builds from being feasible.

The national median dwelling value is $930,000, first home buyers cannot affordably buy a house in any capital city and in Sydney, dwelling prices have risen about 10 times higher than the median income.

Economists broadly agree the best way to sustainably control price growth and make housing affordable for future generations is to increase all types of supply, but the cost of building low- or mid-range units is not stacking up as it did before 2020.

Headline inflation has fallen from its quarterly pandemic peak of 7.9 per cent, to 3.8 per cent in the June quarter – although it’s still above the Reserve Bank’s target range of 2 per cent to 3 per cent – but the aspects of housing and new dwelling builds are still rising by 6.8 per cent and 5.8 per cent, respectively.

Figures from Sydney developers Deicorp show the cost of apartment construction steadily increased from an average of $200,000 per apartment in the 2000s to $250,000 in the 2010s, but there was a sharp rise in costs after the pandemic to $550,000.

This is in line with research released by the NSW Productivity and Equality Commission this week that shows it costs more than $1 million to build a typical mid-rise apartment in Sydney.

A breakdown of the costs shows construction is the highest expense at $522,000, followed by the required margin ($175,000), land ($113,000), finance ($119,000), other costs ($76,000) and taxes ($45,000) to make the average unit build cost $1.05 million.

Ray White’s chief economist, Nerida Conisbee, says labour costs are now the main driver of construction price increases, but it’s not the whole story.

“Materials and freight drove the initial surge, but those pressures have eased. What remains is a shortage of skilled trades, rising subcontractor costs and weak construction productivity,” says Conisbee.

“Large state infrastructure programs are also competing with residential construction for the same workers and contractors.”

Changing council rezoning has been proven to increase feasibility by reducing land prices, and federal governments are examining ways to boost productivity through reducing safety-related red tape – but it’s the cost of construction that has risen the most.

Brisbane developer O’Rorke says the biggest factor stopping his typical apartment builds from being feasible is the cost of labour and that can be divided into two parts: skill shortages and worker productivity.

On the latter, O’Rorke said low productivity was a major factor due to the “aggressive” and “militant” CFMEU causing the average days tradespeople were actively working on Brisbane sites to drop to 2.75 days a week.

“You’ve got high costs, but you’re only using a site for two days out of a potential of six days, so that productivity piece really amplifies the higher cost inputs of labour and materials,” he said.

Productivity in Brisbane is almost back to pre-COVID levels due to the state Liberal National government’s work in reforming union behaviour, leaving skills shortages as the major issue not under control.

“There is more demand for construction services than there is supply, and that capacity issue can really only be addressed in two ways,” O’Rorke said.

“One is organic growth – so more apprentices, more people into the workforce, more women in construction.

“The second way is to import capacity. If the federal government were to allow an increase in short-term workers, I am sure the private sector would find a way of accommodating them.”

O’Rorke sold his Cornerstone Living land in Coopers Plains to state government-funded Brisbane Housing Company to build social and affordable housing.

His company switched its focus to building luxury apartments for downsizers, and has two projects in Brisbane’s inner-city suburbs of Yeerongpilly and Newstead in development.

Why do we have a skills shortage?

In 2017, when the cost of building apartments was still feasible, Australia had 1.126 million construction workers, the equivalent of 4.54 per cent of the population.

In 2025, that figure grew to 1.278 million construction workers but at the same time Australia’s population increased 3.03 million people, so the overall number of construction workers has decreased to 4.05 per cent of the population.

Some trades have lost workers since 2017. There are 2700 fewer glaziers, 3900 fewer tilers and 4300 fewer electricians, according to KPMG data.

“For a long time, becoming a tradie fell out of fashion so you had more and more people heading to university,” said KPMG urban economist Terry Rawnsley.

“It’s really tough being on an apprentice wage doing tough, physically demanding work. So people were dropping out of those apprenticeships.

“Plus, you had this older group of tradies who are probably hitting their 50s and going, ‘I can’t work on site any more, so I’m dropping out’.”

Tradies are gravitating towards state government infrastructure projects first, as the pay is more favourable, as well as the renovation and house building space, leaving apartment building at the bottom of the pile, experts say.

“The fact we’ve seen this decline in trades probably tells us that the higher education settings aren’t quite right, and maybe we’re not bringing in enough workers in those trades,” said Rawnsley.

Master Builders Australia NSW executive director Matthew Pollock said getting more people into building trade apprenticeships, increasing apprenticeship completions and reforming the skilled migration system was needed to fix skills shortages.

“The opportunities that construction provides for rewarding careers can be better promoted, especially as a building trade is virtually AI-proof,” said Pollock.

“Fixing the skilled migration system and boosting the number of tradies must be a priority.

“Skills recognition for overseas labour needs to be faster. Sponsorship costs need to be realistic and affordable for builders.”

PAYWALL:

The NSW government will force Sydney councils to make 30-year housing density plans as apartment construction costs surge and changing zoning requirements are found to be an effective way to improve supply and affordability.

It costs more than $1 million to build a typical mid-rise apartment in Sydney as construction costs keep rising faster than the price of apartments, making projects not feasible for developers, the NSW Productivity and Equality Commission has found.

The Minns Labor government is forcing councils to allow development, generating significant backlash from the affluent inner-city councils of Mosman and Woollahra, which are being flooded with apartment development applications.

The commission found that low and mid-rise planning reforms have more than doubled the number of new homes in Sydney that are feasible to build, and it has pushed for further zoning changes.

“Above all, we need to unlock more homes in the east, north, and inner suburbs of Sydney, where high demand for housing goes hand in hand with high feasibility and lower infrastructure costs,” commissioner Peter Achterstraat said on Wednesday.

In response, the Minns government aims to remove more barriers to increasing density in sought-after suburbs by forcing councils to identify land feasible for housing development at least 30 years in advance to prevent future supply blockages in popular suburbs.

If councils fail to provide the strategic plan in two years, the government will step in to ensure housing capacity is delivered through state-led rezonings or other planning reforms.

“We’ve spent the last three years changing the conversation on housing. Now is not the time to lose our nerve and go back to the planning failures that left a generation priced out of home ownership,” Premier Chris Minns said.

“Today we’re taking the next step by making long-term housing planning an ongoing responsibility, not a one-off exercise.”

Woollahra mayor Sarah Dixson said her council had always planned responsibly for future generations.

“Today’s announcement asks councils to fix a problem that Chris Minns and [Planning Minister] Paul Scully have created themselves,” Dixson said.

“In typical fashion, the government has again threatened to override local elected representatives, is ignoring community needs and remains silent on funding and delivery for critical infrastructure that new homes and their residents will need.”

Sydney’s median home value is $1.26 million and home ownership rates in the city have slipped to levels not seen since the 1950s, with dwelling prices about 10 times higher than the median income.

The cost of building a new apartment in a typical mid-rise unit block in Sydney has risen from $660,000 in 2018 to $1.05 million in 2026, the Centre for International Economics found. The median unit sale price in Sydney is $849,068, according to Domain.

Experts like Centre for Independent Studies chief economist Peter Tulip blame NIMBYism and local council zoning restrictions, among other construction issues, for the lack of supply and affordable housing in the city.

Mark Bainey, the chief executive of Capio Property Group, said the changes should help increase the supply of zoned land over time and boost the delivery of housing.

“The state government has done a fantastic job at taking the power away from councils to deliver approvals for developers to create dwellings. So any move where the state government steps in and takes over controls from the council is a welcome one from our perspective as developers,” Bainey said.

High land costs, labour shortages, materials costs, interest rates, land holding taxes, low productivity and time-consuming development application processes are the other major reasons the cost to build an apartment in Sydney is not stacking up.

Bainey said there was a shortage of tradies, and more skilled migrants were needed.

“Particularly in Sydney, we’re in a shortage of qualified trades and labour, and then whatever’s left is going to Brisbane to build infrastructure for the Olympics.”

Property Council NSW executive director Katie Stevenson said Wednesday’s announcement needed to focus on housing delivery rather than simply planning approvals.

“The measure of success is not how many homes fit in a planning document, but how many homes can actually be constructed and when,” Stevenson said.

“We look forward to working with the NSW government on the details of a consistent feasibility framework and the development of practical tools that will help councils understand where and under what conditions new housing can be delivered.”

PAYWALL:

Treasury warned the federal government nine months before the $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund kicked off that its initial target of 30,000 new social and affordable rental homes in five years was unachievable because the building sector was unable to deliver it and there were inconsistent planning and regulatory systems between states.

Treasury advised the government in March 2023, six months before legislation enabling the HAFF passed the Senate, then again in June and September and “throughout 2024 and 2025” that the targets were unlikely to be met, an Australian National Audit Office report disclosed on Tuesday.

Under the HAFF, not-for-profit consortia led by community housing providers bid for funding to provide an expanded total of 40,000 subsidised rental housing units for qualifying lower-income tenants. The program had delivered just 1432 homes by April this year, almost halfway into its life.

The nine-month audit, which Auditor-General Caralee McLiesh announced in October, cast doubt on the HAFF meeting the government’s targets.

“As of April 30, 2026, it is forecast that 20,000 homes (half of the target) will be delivered by June 30, 2028,” said the report, tabled in parliament on Tuesday. “The remaining 20,000 homes are forecast to be delivered by June 2029. Given that round three is under way, there is considerable uncertainty about this forecast as of June 2026.”

The audit found that the nominal value of support by government per home under the HAFF was expected to be $770,387 over 25 years, on average. The value for social homes for low-income residents was $825,225 on average, and the total spent on affordable homes – leased to tenants at a typical 25 per cent discount to market rates – was $715,124 on average.

Housing Minister Clare O’Neil said the government stood by its “ambitious” targets for housing delivery and welcomed the scrutiny.

“Independent scrutiny helps strengthen government programs,” O’Neil said. “As building and financing costs increased, Treasury identified those pressures early, and the government acted to protect our commitment to deliver more social and affordable homes.”

The review criticised Treasury for weaknesses in managing and assessing the HAFF program, which arose out of the then-Labor opposition’s May 2021 budget reply speech.

“Treasury’s approach to monitoring and evaluation was finalised 17 months following program commencement,” the review said. “Its approach lacks clarity in terms of the relationship between program outputs, outcomes and performance measures. The approach also does not clearly link to program impact. There is insufficient focus on measuring program efficiency. A planned process evaluation is not proceeding.”

O’Neil said the government had accepted all five recommendations by the audit office, including ensuring that Treasury implement governance arrangements that were fit for purpose, regularly assessed risks, and established performance measures for delivery of the complex program.

“The auditor-general has identified practical opportunities to strengthen governance, risk management and public reporting as the program continues to mature,” O’Neil said. “We welcome those recommendations and will continue improving the way the program is delivered.”

Coalition housing spokesman Andrew Bragg, who pushed for an audit into the program – which he has said was an inefficient use of public funds to deliver affordable rental housing and should be scrapped – said the report showed criticism of the HAFF was justified.

“The auditor-general has laid bare how Labor’s signature Housing Australia Future Fund has failed to deliver,” he said. “This is all proof that Labor’s housing scheme is a nightmare that has squandered scarce taxpayer money and failed to build the houses desperately needed by Australians.”

Treasury acknowledged the report’s statement that delivery arrangements for the HAFF were “partly effective” and said it was committed to continuous improvement.

“Treasury is committed to continuous improvement and agrees with the five recommendations for the department,” it said.

“Actions to implement each recommendation are in place or under way as part of strengthening Treasury’s governance, risk assessment and public reporting arrangements. This work will be undertaken in collaboration with program delivery partners including Housing Australia, the Department of Veterans’ Affairs and the National Indigenous Australians Agency.”

The soundtrack in this game is amazing in general, but man it really hit me entering the underwater areas for the first time not only from the cool visual environment but the music captures the 'aquatic' nature of the areas perfectly.

The way they blend subtle electronica with aqueous feel plus the great vocals is just so unique, haven't heard a soundtrack like that in a game as long as I can remember.

I legit found myself wanting to get into fights just so I could hear the battle music again, haha.

The Sirene zone ones are also amazing in particular, love the Monoco jazzy tune etc. but the water-y ones just scratch a specific itch for my eardrums.

What a great game.

Simply put, it doesn't matter how on top of your negative keywords you are even on a daily basis; for my SaaS company we have thousands upon thousands of negative keywords applied account-wide & even only running [Exact Match] keywords, the platform still allows a bunch of junk variations through.

This also includes typos of words you've taken the time to negative out; given it's literally impossible to exclude every miss-spelled version of a word some random fool types into a search bar, this serves as a proxy method for Google to still be able to charge you $$ for words you don't want.

I've seen this happen enough and wasted enough money on this to believe it's more than some conspiracy theory at this point. Google Ads becomes more of a junk platform by the day, it's insane.

Rant over.

PAYWALL:

Labor could be reduced to just 25 seats and the Coalition 28 in the Victorian parliament while One Nation could pick up as many as 19 if a state election were held today, underscoring the seismic shift in politics ahead of the November state poll.

That is the worst-case scenario for the major parties, according to a Redbridge large-scale analysis of voter intentions commissioned by the Victorian Trades Hall Council, which has been leaked to The Australian Financial Review.

But even the best-case scenario for Labor pushes the Allan government, seeking a historic fourth term for the party, into minority government.

Victorian Trades Hall Council secretary Luke Hilakari briefed the union movement on Tuesday on the details of the MRP poll, which sampled about 6500 voters last month at the time a Financial Review/RedBridge/Accent Research survey was in the field.

The poll is based on many simulations and produces a range of scenarios based on the margin of error. The worst-case scenario is considered possible but less likely than the median scenario.

One Nation’s primary vote statewide is 27 per cent, followed by Labor and the Coalition, which are neck and neck on 26 per cent, and the Greens on 13 per cent, according to the RedBridge/Accent Research survey.

The projections based on the MRP methodology say that if an election were held, Labor, which has 54 seats in the 88-seat Legislative Assembly, would be reduced to between 25 and 44 seats, with a median of 35, according to a source who was briefed on the results and disclosed it to the Financial Review.

The Coalition, on 29 seats, is projected to win between 28 and 50 seats – 25 for the Liberals and 3 for the Nationals – with a median of 39. One Nation could win between seven and 19 seats, with a median of 12, according to the polling.

The Greens, who have three MPs in the lower house, could be wiped out in the worst-case scenario or win five seats in the best case, with a median of two.

The Coalition needs to win a net 16 seats off Labor to form majority government, with Labor exploiting the fractured primary vote by arguing Opposition Leader Jess Wilson would need to rely on One Nation to govern.

Poll analyses personal traits Multilevel regression with poststratification (MRP) is a statistical technique that estimates local public opinion using a single poll.

Instead of relying on respondents from every electorate, MRP analyses traits such as age, gender and religion to estimate opinions statewide. It then takes those insights and combines them with census data to reconstruct a picture of the area.

Although MRP polling is effective at identifying how macro trends might be expressed at the local level, it does not factor in the strengths or weaknesses of individual candidates.

It also does not factor in the strengths of a political party’s campaign machine and cannot measure new trends, in this case the rise of One Nation.

Other public state-based and federal polls have shown One Nation’s vote has been slipping in the past month, since leader Pauline Hanson’s speech to the National Press Club where she advocated for a “monocultural” Australia and disparaged paid parental leave, and as the major parties have sharpened their attack on the minor party.

A little more than four months out from election day One Nation still has no candidates or parliamentary leader in Victoria.

The Trades Hall-commissioned poll showed Labor was likely to finish in the top two on election night in 72 of the 88 seats; One Nation and the Coalition were likely to finish top two in 49 seats.

Given the election is shaping as a genuine, three-way contest, the poll also presented the scenarios in which each party was likely to end up in the top three, highlighting the importance of preference flows.

Labor is set to have a candidate finish in the top three in all 88 seats, One Nation in 79 and the Coalition in 83 seats, according to the poll.

“This is uncharted territory. One Nation being in so many top threes is concerning,” said a Labor source.

“A lot of it will come down to a Coalition-One Nation preference deal. They absolutely need each other.”

A Labor source said Hilakari was expected to meet union secretaries on Friday to present a seat-by-seat breakdown of which parties were set to pick up which seats.

Some Labor figures were sceptical of the poll’s results, pointing out that as One Nation had not run lower house candidates in all 88 seats at a Victorian election before, it was difficult to ascertain where its preferences would flow.

“Putting that into practice, what does it actually look like?” said a Labor source. “Will that vote hold or will it be easily shifted?

“But at the end of the day, based on current polling numbers, sure, it doesn’t look great.

“But if you model it on a 4 per cent or 3 per cent swing away from One Nation, and adjust by 1 or 2 per cent the way in which preferences break, it could be a safe scenario for Labor.”

The Financial Review earlier this month revealed the Labor Party had effectively written off nine seats it holds and identified 27 seats it believed were at risk, including some of its safest electorates, on margins above 10 per cent.

ARTICLE TEXT:

Tenants have been hit with a sharp rise in costs, with new figures showing one state will have renters needing to cough up almost $3,000 per year extra.

Rents have blown straight past Treasury’s modest warning, with new figures showing tenants are being hit far harder than the $2-a-week rise flagged when the government unveiled its headline tax reforms.

PropTrack data shows national rents surged 3.1 per cent over the past three months, piling an average $21 a week onto the typical asking rent for houses, units and townhouses across the country.

The three month period represents the first quarter since reforms to negative gearing and capital gains tax were leaked in April ahead of the May budget.

In a brutal blow for renters already stretched to breaking point, the fresh numbers suggest the real-world impact has landed at more than 10 times the increase Treasury had predicted.

When the government moved to reshape negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions in what it billed as landmark housing reform, Treasury modelling in the federal budget pointed to only a $2 a week hike on rents.

The PropTrack data showed a varying impact across some of Australia’s key capitals over the June quarter:

MELBOURNE

Realestate.com.au data shows Victoria’s capital copped a more than $20 (3.5 per cent) hike in typical weekly rents to reach $600 in the June quarter.

Industry experts say that the Albanese government changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax benefits for investors, as well as a growing list of state government rental reforms and even rising interest rates could all lead to more rent hikes for tenants.

Property Investors Council of Australia chairman Ben Kingsley said Victorian rents were likely to continue rising.

“It’s the perfect storm for renters in respect of less supply, high demand and high costs, and so tenants are absolutely going to be paying significantly higher rents in the state of Victoria over the foreseeable future.”

SYDNEY

Sydney house rents have climbed by an average of $50 per week in the past three months as recent government tax reforms spark an exodus of new landlords from the market.

Newly released figures from research group PropTrack showed Sydney house rents climbed by 6.3 per cent over the period and now average a record $850 per week – the highest in the country. The rise will add $2,600 to the annual rent bill of the average house tenant.

Unit rents increased an average of 4 per cent, or $30 per week, over the same period, with Sydney tenants paying more per week for apartments than every other capital’s residents paid to rent houses.

BRISBANE

Brisbane’s rental prices have reached an all-time high, climbing to an average of almost $700 a week as recent government tax reforms spark an exodus of new landlords from the market.

The latest realestate.com.au market insight report shows Brisbane’s median advertised rent has jumped 2.2 per cent in the quarter to $695 a week.

The increase is 1.5 times higher than last quarter’s rise of 1.5 per cent.

Master Builders Australia chief executive Denita Wawn said the tax changes were already hurting an industry that was dealing with an 11.2 per cent drop in build starts – further limiting rental supply.

“Builders are telling us that uncertainty created by the federal budget is affecting confidence and slowing investment decisions,” Ms Wawn said.

ADELAIDE

Adelaide rents are still climbing but they have done so at a much slower pace over the past year than any other capital city across the country, as tenants struggle to stretch their budgets much further.

Latest PropTrack data shows the median advertised rent for an Adelaide property – which is based on both houses and units – is 4.2 per cent higher than a year ago at $625 per week.

It was the lowest pace of annual growth recorded of any capital city, trailing Canberra’s 4.8 per cent to take its median rent to $650 per week.

Looking for a version of Creeping Death where he (or he/Jason) sings the whole thing & not the audience, ideally with best possible audio quality too.

Basically looking for a version as close as you can get to a more 'adult James voice' album version than the actual album version if you get what I mean?

And ideally one on Spotify... I've listened to about 7 different versions so far and he gets the crowd to sing in every one, which is cool and all but not what I'm after. Does one even exist?

Thanks!

PAYWALL:

In India as in Australia, the challenge is how best to balance democracy, citizenship, constitutional governance and minority rights to forge a national identity.

Ramesh Thakur - Former United Nations official

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit coincides with Pauline Hanson’s political position being approximately where Modi’s was in 2014. Like Hanson today, Modi then offered a vision of a muscular defence of India’s Hindu civilisational ethos while promising to respect minority rights. Like her today, Modi then was politically toxic at home, with most parties refusing to have any truck with him; and abroad, with several Western countries denying him entry.

Modi’s rise rested on widespread public opposition to three decades of appeasement of Muslim demands by the Congress party in the name of secularism, which tried to make Hindus ashamed of their religion. Hanson’s rise rests on a similar public disenchantment with the mantra of multiculturalism and shame in the West’s legacy.

The challenge of maintaining unity-in-diversity, common to many democracies, is most acute in India owing to the range of physical, religious, linguistic and political differences. The three great institutions that have helped to preserve India’s unity-in-diversity are democracy, federalism and secularism.

Modi’s long – 12 years and counting – and geographically extending tenure (West Bengal being the latest state to come under the ruling BJP’s sway in May) poses a small but immensely consequential risk to all three. He won in 2014, promising more governance and less government. Indians hoped he would prioritise growth-centric governance and downplay cultural nationalism.

Instead, he has neglected governance, further corroded the integrity of India’s public institutions, reversed the momentum of economic reforms bequeathed to him by Manmohan Singh, and weaponised Hindutva to destroy regional parties.

This is not to deny Modi’s many impressive achievements in infrastructure, digitisation and service delivery direct to citizens, thereby cutting costs, waste and corruption. Yet, India today is visibly less relevant on the world stage dominated by China and the US.

“The insistence on diversity as strength has been accompanied by the vilification of dissenters from the narrative as racist bigots.”

When Hanson first broke upon the Australian scene with attacks on Asian immigrants, I was a professor at the Australian National University and head of its Peace Research Centre.

In an article for the global edition of the New York Times on November 13, 1996, I argued that immigration policy must recognise the limits to the absorptive capacity of any country. If the multicultural peace is fragile, too rapid an intake of migrants can spark sectarian explosions that threaten the welfare of those already in the country.

No government, I wrote, “can afford to move too far ahead of community attitudes … on balance, it is more important to ensure fair and equitable treatment to those already in than to insist on enlarging their proportion in the face of hostile opposition.”

For decades, too many Western democracies have ignored that. The insistence on diversity as strength has been accompanied by the vilification of dissenters from the narrative as racist bigots. The result is loss of sting in racism as a label, the proliferation of two-tier laws, policing and judicial verdicts and the growing appeal of insurgent populist movements that speak to popular concerns about loss of cultural identity.

In reflections on “clever” moves by the Modi government to strip Muslims of citizenship through legal trickery, I wrote about ‘Dissent as a Tool for Navigating Citizenship in Democratic India’. India’s Constitution, establishing it as a sovereign democratic republic, came into force on January 26, 1950 (which makes it a day of double celebration for me).

Indian Muslims celebrated January 26, 2021, by draping themselves in the Indian national flag and conducting nationally co-ordinated public readings of passages that guaranteed them rights as Indian citizens. The tricolour was adopted as the symbol of the protest, the national anthem became its song, the preamble to the Constitution the vocabulary and militant Hinduism was the implicit threat to national integration.

Hanson’s comment on the Socceroos at the World Cup as the symbol of her vision of a monocultural Australia speaks to the same sentiment.

I would never use the word monocultural in this context, but I know what she means and no, she does not want to banish my cuisine or my religion as a matter of personal faith. She has in mind our civic culture, the values that unite us in a polity built on Judeo-Christian foundations.

Hanson may lack the capacity for the felicitous word and the elegant phrase. But elitist snobs and scolds fall into the trap of validating her with their condescending scorn. Her meaning does resonate with ordinary Australians, including many immigrants.

There is a yearning for an honest debate on both the volume and the type of immigration, for recreating pride in the achievements and legacies without necessarily denying the flaws and shortcomings of what made Australia a mostly stable, peaceful, cohesive and prosperous democracy.

To put it another way, in India as in Australia, the contemporary challenge is how best to balance democracy, citizenship, constitutional governance and minority rights to forge one powerful national identity.

Hanson intuitively addresses that challenge possibly better than any other contemporary Australian leader. Modi evades it, but no other Indian leader seems capable of rising to it any better.

PAYWALL:

One Nation has overtaken Labor and the Coalition for the first time in Victoria and Premier Jacinta Allan’s approval rating has sunk to a historic low in a new poll that shows the government is on track to be turfed out at the state election in November.

The latest The Australian Financial Review/Redbridge/Accent Research survey shows Labor and the Coalition neck and neck on a primary vote of 26 per cent each, while One Nation recorded a primary vote of 27 per cent.

Allan’s net favourability plunged to minus 42 per cent, making her one of the most unpopular state leaders in Australian history. No premier has won an election with such dire personal approval ratings, and only John Cain in Victoria and Anna Bligh in Queensland (both minus 43) have been less popular than Allan.

The survey of 5516 Victorians was conducted between June 17 and June 28 after Allan narrowly avoided a leadership challenge, while Opposition Leader Jess Wilson was dealing with the fallout of an assault allegation made against a Liberal MP, and federal One Nation leader Pauline Hanson gave a landmark speech in which she disparaged paid parental leave and advocated for a “monocultural” country.

The poll’s margin of error was 1.4 per cent.

The Coalition is leading Labor 54-46 on a two-party-preferred basis, based on the allocation of preferences by survey respondents. But on a three-candidate-preferred basis, Labor was on 39.9 per cent, the Coalition was on 30.1 per cent and One Nation on 29.9 per cent, highlighting the closeness of the three-cornered contest.

“For Labor to win this election, it will be like a Lazarus with a triple bypass plus a knee reconstruction, but there is a pathway if they can improve their primary vote position by a few more points,” Redbridge director Tony Barry said.

Labor’s primary vote rose 1 percentage point since the last poll was conducted in February, the Coalition’s fell 2 points, and One Nation was up 3 points. The Greens remained steady on 13 per cent.

One Nation led the two major parties in rural (34 per cent), provincial (31 per cent) and outer metropolitan (28 per cent) electorates. Its primary vote in inner metropolitan seats was 20 per cent.

Half of those surveyed said they were “solid” in their vote, and One Nation voters (62 per cent) indicated they were the firmest with their intentions.

When asked which parties were most focused on the right issues, the Liberals had a net agree score of 7, One Nation 0, the Nationals minus 8, the Greens minus 12 and the Labor Party minus 17.

“The tight three-candidate-preferred count shows everything is so finely balanced and there are so many variables in the mix,” said Kos Samaras, also a Redbridge director. “However, given the size of the other two conservative parties, it’s very difficult for Labor to be re-elected on these numbers.”

Samaras said Labor needed to lift its primary vote by at least 4 percentage points to chart a pathway to victory in the November poll, but warned that it would be impossible for the Coalition to win a majority government on its current primary and that it would need to rely on supply from One Nation to govern.

Accent Research principal Shaun Ratcliff said that if the Coalition could win enough first preference votes to land in the top two on election night, it would benefit from both Labor and One Nation preferences to claim victory.

“All three parties are within the margin of error, so there is a danger the Coalition might just miss out,” Ratcliff said. “It could be either a really good election for the Coalition or a really bad one.”

A federal Redbridge/Accent Research poll this week showed Labor had regained the lead from One Nation after its primary vote inched up 2 points to 30 per cent, while One Nation’s primary fell 2 points to 29 per cent. The Coalition’s primary also dipped 2 points to 18 per cent.

The Victorian election will be held on November 28. Labor has 54 MPs in the 88-seat Legislative Assembly and the Coalition 29. One Nation currently has a single upper house MP but no other confirmed candidates nor a state parliamentary leader.

The Redbridge poll results are likely to worry Labor MPs who fear an electoral wipeout under Allan’s leadership and have been pushing for a change.

An expected spill a fortnight ago was abandoned when Allan’s main rival, deputy premier Ben Carroll, decided not to make his move. But MPs believe they have one final chance to topple Allan when parliament returns from a five-week winter break on July 28.

One Labor MP said Labor’s primary was “grim”, another described it as “dire”, and one concluded that “Allan has to go”.

“Everyone took the view in the last sitting week, let’s get to winter, wait for things to calm down, you can’t do anything when everyone is away,” an MP told the Financial Review, on condition of anonymity to speak freely. “But can she withstand the pressure? I don’t know she can. She’s dancing around questions on corruption while the Victorian community is like, ‘F--- you, you bunch of corrupt motherf---ers’.”

Allan faced fresh scrutiny this week over reports in The Age and 60 Minutes that the government knew the CFMEU’s takeover of infrastructure sites was driving up costs but directed contractors to pay up.

MPs are furious with Allan’s handling of crime and corruption on the $100 billion Big Build infrastructure program, her inability to meaningfully answer questions on how much the problem has cost taxpayers, and the culture she oversaw while she was the minister responsible for transport infrastructure between 2014 and 2023.

They say their constituents have consistently raised Allan’s leadership and union corruption on government projects as the reasons for their decision not to back Labor for a historic fourth term.

An analysis by psephologist Kevin Bonham in 2020 found “unpopular state premiers have dire historic fates”, as he tracked the electoral outcome for leaders who had recorded negative personal approval ratings.

Of the 34 premiers with negative net satisfaction ratings, only five went on to win an election: NSW Labor leader Bob Carr (-24), Tasmanian Labor leader David Bartlett (-18), Victorian Liberal leader Jeff Kennett (-16), Queensland Labor leader Annastacia Palaszczuk (-15) and Western Australian Liberal leader Richard Court (-13).

The latest Redbridge/Accent Research poll showed state Liberal leader Jess Wilson had an approval rating of 13 while Hanson had minus 9.

Although the results are dire for Labor, it does not bode well for the Coalition – its primary vote has continued to decline. In the past week, the opposition has once again been engulfed by infighting after MP Moira Deeming accused colleague Matthew Guy of assaulting her.

Victoria Police cleared Guy, prompting him and Wilson to demand that Deeming apologise, which she has refused to do. The Liberal Party’s state executive will meet on Friday evening to consider Deeming’s candidacy for the No. 1 upper house spot in the western suburbs.

She will be given a final chance to defend herself, but Liberal sources expect Deeming to be disendorsed. The parliamentary team is not expected to expel her from the party room, nor will she be kicked out of the party.

ARTICLE TEXT:

Qiu Long was outraged when he discovered the price of a graduate visa had been quietly hiked overnight, just months after the government had already doubled the fee.

The Chinese international student, who recently completed his Diploma of Hospitality Management in Melbourne, said all his classmates were in shock.

In March, the government doubled the cost of the Temporary Graduate Visa (Subclass 485) from $2,300 to $4,600. The fee jumped to $5,750 earlier this week — which students said came without warning.

"The increase in March was already painful, and now it's gone up by more than $1,000. I feel like the government is robbing people using visas," the 34-year-old told the ABC.

"People are anxious about what surprising policy change might hit next."

The temporary graduate visa was among dozens of visa categories that became more expensive from July 1.

Among the most notable changes, the fee for the Resident Return Visa (Subclass 155) rose sharply from $490 to $1,475, while Bridging Visa B increased from $190 to $575 — both surging by more than 200 per cent.

Meanwhile, the cost of a Partner Visa jumped from $9,365 to $11,710.

Experts say visa fee increases would have been accounted for as part of the federal budget.

Abul Rizvi, former deputy secretary of the Department of Immigration, said that would be why there was no formal announcement in the lead-up to the price increase.

"The government doesn't want a rush of applications ahead of the date the fee increase takes effect, so they only announce it on the day," Dr Rizvi said.

'Treating me like a cash cow'

Many international students have taken to social media saying they have been exploited.

"Australia, you really are treating me like a cash cow!" one user wrote on Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu, also known as RedNote.

"When will the Home Affairs list on the stock market? I really want to buy its stock because it's a sure-fire money maker," another user jokingly said.

For Mr Qiu, who arrived in Australia in 2024, the latest increase was yet another financial blow.

He had already paid nearly $63,000 in tuition fees and related costs for two certificates and one diploma — and that's not including living costs.

But Mr Qiu said he will not give up his plan of staying in the country.

"I've come too far and sunk too much cost already. Giving up now would mean quitting halfway," he said.

"It just means I'll have to work even harder and grit my teeth to save more money."

The International Students Representative Council (ISRC) said major changes had been made repeatedly to international student visas "with little or no notice" over the past three years.

"The problem is not only the amount. The deeper issue is the way these decisions are being made," the council said in a statement.

They said student representatives had not been consulted.

"A country cannot market itself globally as a welcoming education destination while repeatedly imposing sudden and substantial costs on the very students it seeks to attract."

Trapped in 'stressful' situations

Iris Verbaant has lived in Australia for 13 years with her partner and their three-year-old-son.

She is currently on a bridging visa and has been trying to apply for a partner visa.

Last week she was informed via email that her visa application had been deemed "not valid", and that her application fee had been fully refunded.

She said now she must restart the entire application, which required "tonnes of documents" to be verified, at the new price of $11,710.

"I don't understand why it costs that much, and then where is the money going?" she said.

As a bridging visa holder, she said she was not eligible to apply for any loans and credit cards despite facing ongoing cost-of-living pressures.

She said her visa status also prevented her from returning to the Netherlands for important family occasions.

Ms Verbaant, who works as a marketing manager, said her son has special needs but was not eligible to access NDIS services because she, as his main carer, was not a permanent resident.

"The system is really stressful, and it doesn't make sense," she said.

"We just want to be treated as humans, not just numbers," she said, adding that temporary visa holders also needed "security and certainty".

'Rising fees won't fix the system'

Migration lawyer Sean Dong said the latest round of fee increases was far beyond the usual annual adjustment tied to the Consumer Price Index (CPI).

"I think this has something to do with the current anti-immigration political mood in Australia," Mr Dong said.

"Home Affairs needs more budget, and in the current political climate, squeezing money out of visa applicants carries relatively low public backlash, so I think that's why they made that choice."

Dr Rizvi said the immigration system faced three major risks: missing the net migration target, a backlog of partner visa applications and a significant increase in unsuccessful asylum claims.

"And I don't think this fee increase addresses any of them," Dr Rizvi said.

In a statement to the ABC, a Department of Home Affairs spokesperson said the government was "reforming the migration system to ensure it operates in the national interest."

"It is standard departmental practice not to announce VAC changes ahead of implementation," the spokesperson said.

"The cost of visas remains a small proportion of the overall costs of visiting or migrating to Australia.

"Australia remains an attractive destination, and Visa Application Charges (VAC) increases are unlikely to materially affect demand for most visas."

PAYWALL:

Prospective international students and foreign graduates will have to cough up $2500 to apply for an Australian visa despite soaring rejection rates, eliciting warnings that Labor’s crackdown on the sector is pricing Australia out of the global higher education market.

The federal government quietly increased the application cost for most visa classes by 25 per cent on Wednesday, sparking anger from organisations across the education sector, which said they were not consulted on the latest wave of changes.

The $500 increase is another hit to prospective students, who were already paying among the highest fees in the world to apply to study in Australia.

International graduates hoping to stay in Australia after completing their studies also face higher costs, with the non-refundable cost of the visa surging to $5750.

It is the second time in months that the fee for the Temporary Graduate visa – which allows international students to work in Australia for two or three years after they complete their studies – has been increased.

In March, Labor doubled it from $2300 to $4600, meaning the current rate is now 150 per cent more expensive than it was at the start of the year.

Visa fees are non-refundable if the application is rejected, and so the higher cost is likely to create a further barrier for many students hoping to study in Australia.

Universities Australia chief executive Luke Sheehy said the hike was the latest in a list of government measures that had made Australia a “harder sell” for international students, while Group of Eight chief executive Vicki Thomson described it as a “direct hit to Australia’s competitiveness”.

“If talented students choose Canada, the UK, Europe, Singapore or emerging destinations instead of Australia, those relationships, skills and research connections are lost for decades,” Thomson said.

“Once market share and reputation are lost, rebuilding them is difficult and costly.”

Offshore Chinese student visa applications were down almost 30 per cent in April compared to the same time last year, worrying universities that rely heavily on the cohort to subsidise research and domestic student costs.

Phil Honeywood, chief executive of the International Education Association of Australia, said the introduction of another fee increase amid this decline “would send every university and private provider into an unanticipated financial crisis”.

“We would have expected far more from a Labor government than this constant abuse of our sector as a cash cow for non-related budgetary issues.”

Australia’s main competitors for international students charge far lower visa application rates. The United Kingdom’s fee, for example, is just over $1000. Canada’s is about $150 and New Zealand’s is about $700.

Honeywood said Australia was pricing itself out of an increasingly competitive market. “New Zealand and other competitors will be celebrating today,” he said.

Student visa costs have been in the government’s sights since 2024, when the federal government doubled the then $710 fee as it sought to stem the flood of international students streaming into the country post-COVID.

Clear target for the government

International students are the largest group of temporary visa holders, making them a clear target as Labor strives to bring net overseas migration down to 225,000.

Weihong Liang, the president of the International Students Representative Council of Australia, said the increase was another step in a “pattern of increasingly restrictive, unpredictable and poorly communicated policy changes affecting international students and recent graduates”.

He urged prospective students to “carefully assess the growing policy uncertainty, financial risk and lack of predictability before choosing Australia as their study destination”.

“Be prepared for the possibility that the cost, conditions and future pathways attached to studying in Australia may change suddenly, with little notice and limited accountability,” he said.

The Council of Australian Postgraduate Associations also warned that the graduate visa fee would hit new workers as they were deciding whether to stay in Australia and “fill skills shortages”.

“If the aim is to manage who comes in, charging the people already on their way out is the wrong instrument,” the council’s national president, Jesse Gardner-Russell, said.

“International students are not just another resource to be mined, their value extracted and then shipped offshore, like iron ore.”

International students contributed more than $53 billion to the economy in 2024-25, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, making education the fourth-largest export sector behind coal, iron ore and gas.

Assistant Minister for International Education Julian Hill said: “Student visa charges account for a small proportion of the overall cost of studying in Australia, taking account of tuition fees and living costs”.

He also noted that some visa categories were exempt from the 25 per cent increase, including those for people studying English language and non-award courses, and students from ASEAN countries.

Refugee, protection and Pacific visas were also spared.