Greens want free IVF, label Liberals policy 'conservative and exclusionary'

This is a step in the right direction, given the falling birthrate. To support an ageing population, Australia needs all the babies it can get. And we know that IVF babies will be well treated and so fulfil their potential. It is however odd that the Greens support the idea. They used to be in favour of population reduction

The ACT Greens want assisted reproductive services to be free, condemning the Canberra Liberals policy as "conservative and exclusionary".

The Liberals announced this week they would pay up to $2000 towards IVF and certain fertility treatments for those who are deemed medically infertile.

The territory government has already fired back and said they are working on their own policy, after promising to explore options in late 2022. Labor is also expected to reveal a policy as part of its health commitments in the election campaign.

The Greens say they believe assisted reproductive services should be included in the public health system and it should be free.

"Assisted reproductive healthcare is expensive. Whether you have fertility issues, have a disability, are in an LGBTQIA+ relationship or no relationship at all, everyone should have choice and free access to start a family," ACT Greens health spokeswoman Emma Davidson said.

"The ACT Greens want a fairer public health system - where assisted reproductive services are available to everyone, for free, without the emotion toll that comes from fitting into an exclusionary definition of infertility."

Under the Liberals scheme, same-sex couples and individuals will only be able to access the rebates if they are medically infertile.

However, Ms Davidson said this would mean a person would be put through a distressing process and treatments such as IVF should be available to everyone.

"The ACT Liberals policy relies on a conservative and exclusionary view of what a family is. Canberra is incredibly diverse, and we need initiatives that reflect this to create a truly inclusive and fair community," she said.

"Not everyone can fall pregnant and it's not always because they are medically infertile. Under the Liberals policy, people will still need to go through a costly and lengthy process to be considered medically infertile which can be distressing on the individual, their partners and family."

The proposed rebates from the Liberals will cover out-of-pocket expenses of up to $2000 when undergoing IVF or certain assisted reproductive technology and up to $1000 for intra uterine insemination. The party says they are not considering a public service as part of their pitch to voters.

Opposition health spokeswoman Leanne Castley said the party had chosen to only open the scheme to those who were medically infertile as it was the biggest cohort in need of assistance.

"This is open for all Canberran families that have fertility challenges," she said this week.

"We hear from families who are struggling with infertility and believe that's the biggest cohort who do need assistance and it's just a small way we can help those families who are struggling with infertility."

https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/8605888/act-greens-say-assisted-reproductive-services-should-be-free/

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Financial Help for Uni Students on Placement Floated

Financial help might be offered to university students completing unpaid placements as part of their degrees, as unions warn failure to provide support will result in greater workforce shortages.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers said the federal government was considering relief for people with university debts and students undergoing required practical placements in their courses.

“We are looking at both of those things for the budget,” Mr. Chalmers told reporters on April 22.

Students studying nursing and teaching are among those required to complete unpaid placements to finish their degrees, and can be left struggling to pay bills especially during the cost of living crisis.

Last week, the prime minister suggested Labor was looking to reduce the rate of student debt indexation to stop money owed growing by more than four per cent in 2024.

Higher Education Loan Program (Help) debts are indexed to inflation, which resulted in a 7.1 percent jump in people’s debts in 2023.

Mr. Chalmers said the government acknowledged that students were under pressure.

“If we can afford to do something to help on that front, that’s obviously something we'll consider as we finalise the budget,” he said.

The Universities Accord report, released earlier in 2024, recommended the Commonwealth ensure student loans did not outpace wage growth.

NSW Nurses and Midwives Association assistant general secretary Michael Whaites said he strongly recommended paid placements for nursing and midwifery students.

They must carry out up to six months or 800 hours of unpaid clinical work in NSW, which carried immense financial pressure and at times placed students in poverty, he said.

“Failure to address this will continue to contribute to the workforce shortages that currently exist in nursing and midwifery, and this is untenable if we are to continue to deliver high quality health care in our health systems,” Mr. Whaites said.

“We hear a lot of stories of people having to ultimately drop out because they’re just not able to maintain the full amount of unpaid work, which can be as much as six to eight weeks in their final year of study, which is devastating after already having undertaken more than two years of study.”

The budget will be handed down on May 14.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/world/financial-help-for-uni-students-on-placement-floated-5634435

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Ideology, education will not protect women from violent men

Only a Leftist with his childish belief in government as a cure-all would think that governments could reliably predict and stop men who kill their women

CLAIRE LEHMANN

A 28-year-old NSW woman, Molly Ticehurst, was found dead in her home last Monday. Two weeks prior, a man who had been charged with stalking and raping her appeared before court.

The police prosecutor charged him with a series of serious crimes and told the court his behaviour was “indicative of features in domestic violence offenders that we see often come to light after the most disturbing conclusions to their conduct”.

Despite this warning, he was released on bail.

Ticehurst is among 26 women who have been killed in the first 114 days of 2024. If the rate of violence continues, 2024 will be one of the worst years in recent memory for major crimes against women – with one woman murdered every four days. Despite the cries from the community to do more, and despite Anthony Albanese joining weekend rallies, there is a lack of leadership on what must be done. The current strategy isn’t working, and we need to understand why.

For the past decade or so, the focus of Australian governments has been on “primary prevention” – that is, preventing violence before it occurs. Ad campaigns that encourage boys and men not to slam doors or tell sexist jokes, as well as educational efforts in schools on “toxic masculinity”, are meant to have made a difference. But have they? It doesn’t look like it.

A recent essay co-authored by Walkley Award-winning journalist Jess Hill and UNSW criminology professor Michael Salter offers a sustained criticism of the primary prevention approach, arguing that our national strategy “outsources its results to future generations, and thus gives politicians the cover to adopt platitudes and evade accountability”.

Their central argument is a brave one: reducing inequality between men and women does nothing to reduce violence against women. The axiomatic claim that violence will disappear once inequality disappears is not supported by the evidence. They show that governments’ decades-long focus on gender equality has not moved the needle in terms of reducing violence against women. In fact, the opposite may be true.

The Nordic countries provide a warning. Those nations are all ranked higher in gender equality than Australia and other EU countries, yet also record higher rates of domestic violence and physical or sexual violence against women.

Through its National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children 2022-2032, the Albanese government has made the bold claim that it will work to end gendered violence in just one generation through attitude change, which is measured via surveys. But there are several problems with this plan. One of them, according to Hill and Salter, is its blanket focus on all boys and men – instead of identifying those most likely to offend.

Assigning guilt to the entire male sex may be a waste of time: “Situating all little boys as potential perpetrators not only risks diluting much-needed resources and effort, but it also invites confusion and potentially backlash from boys and young men who were never at risk of hurting their partners in the first place,” the authors write.

One reason it may be a waste of time is because the link between attitudes and behaviour is not clear-cut. We all know examples of high-profile figures (think Harvey Weinstein) whose public behaviour does not match how they act behind closed doors. Similarly, there is no good reason to think responses to a pencil-and-paper survey on attitudes will capture the future likelihood of violence.

To explain why this approach is inadequate, Hill and Salter draw attention to an alarming, yet under-reported trend. Young people aged between 16 and 24, are the most likely cohort to reject problematic attitudes regarding violence against women. Yet within this very age group there has been an alarming increase in sexual offending.

In the past, a child who had experienced sexual assault was most likely to have been targeted by an adult. Today, when a child is sexually assaulted, the perpetrator is most likely to be another child (or adolescent). If attitudes correlated directly with behaviour, we would not be seeing this trend.

Another failure of the strategy is to imagine everyone is equally capable of changing their behaviour as a result of changing their beliefs. “In our current prevention model, there does seem to be a default middle-class subject sitting at the centre of our interventions; a tabula rasa upon which we can imprint the right beliefs and attitudes,” write Hill and Salter.

Such an outlook disregards the harsh realities faced by many boys who later resort to violence. Boys who grow up to use violence are often raised in environments where violence, drug and alcohol abuse are commonplace, and where a general lack of impulse control means beliefs and attitudes are of secondary importance.

Much like teaching table manners to a person with no food, teaching proper attitudes to a person who has failed to develop self-control will be an exercise in futility. If we want to get serious about reducing violence against women, ideological attempts to assign collective guilt need to be discarded. Efforts should instead be redirected into identifying high-risk groups, and providing supports for drug, alcohol and trauma recovery. Perpetrators who have already offended, and who are at risk of reoffending, need to be locked up. They shouldn’t be let out on bail.

Believing educational materials alone can stop violence before it happens is naive. It’s unfair to victims who need governments to take real action to prevent future violence against women by perpetrators who have already been violent.

Commenting on the fact that Daniel Billings was released on bail after being charged with sexual intercourse without consent, stalking and intimidation, NSW Police Commissioner Karen Webb said: “I’ll say from the outset that police share the sentiment of the community. This shouldn’t have happened. And sadly, it’s not an isolated case.”

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/ideology-education-will-not-protect-women-from-violent-men/news-story/b4782bcf9d481acb35d0b05b69f83c82

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Payments for coal plants and urgent reform needed for renewables switch

Governments are facing the fact that they cannot do without coal power. Renewables have cut what coal generators can earn by selling electricity so they have to be subsidized to enable them to cover their costs and stay in business

Inadequate preparation for the energy transition and years of ad-hoc political interventions have badly damaged Australia’s electricity market, leaving governments little choice but to keep cutting deals to prop up coal-fired power plants to avoid price rises and blackouts.

When the National Electricity Market was created in 1998, coal generators dominated the energy mix, accounting for more than 80 per cent of the grid’s electricity. While the fossil fuel still makes up to two-thirds of the supply, the rollout of cheaper and cleaner renewable energy is increasingly undercutting the economics of ageing coal-fired power stations, which have been bringing forward their closure dates and are expected to have nearly disappeared from the grid by the first half of the 2030s, according to the most-likely energy market forecasts.

Governments are becoming increasingly nervous that not enough new renewable energy and storage projects are being built to keep power supplies and prices stable as the wave of coal generator closures draws closer.

The Grattan Institute’s Keeping the Lights On report warns that the energy transition is happening so quickly, and the preparation has been so haphazard, that state and federal governments must “accept this as a period of muddling through, with as many Band-Aid fixes as are necessary, to keep the lights on and prices down”.

“Australia’s great energy transition – from fossil fuels to renewables – is not going well,” said Tony Wood, the Grattan Institute’s energy director and the report’s lead author.

“Governments have lost faith in the market being able to deliver enough electricity to the right places at the right time, consumers are fuming about high power prices, and investors have been spooked by frequent and unpredictable government interventions.”

Across the eastern seaboard, officials are worried about a repeat of 2017, when the Hazelwood coal plant in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley gave just five months notice before it shut, citing unfavourable market conditions. The warning was too short for other companies to build replacement power generation, and a period of higher wholesale electricity prices followed.

Victoria has since struck secret financial deals with two other Latrobe Valley coal plants, Yallourn and Loy Yang A, to ensure they don’t close unexpectedly. NSW is in talks about doing the same with the Eraring plant in the Hunter Valley.

Wood expects both Victoria and NSW to cut at least one more deal to delay an impending coal closure but said governments should not continue Victoria’s practice of keeping the financial arrangements confidential. He nominated AGL’s Bayswater plant in the Hunter region, which has a scheduled closure date of no later than 2033, as a potential target for government support.

“I also wouldn’t be surprised if the government does something with Loy Yang B in Victoria,” he said.

Coal closure dates in Queensland can be directly controlled by the state government, which owns the generators in its jurisdiction.

To accelerate the build-out of vital new transmission infrastructure to link up often-remote wind and solar power regions to Australia’s major cities, Wood said governments must also urgently agree on “coordinated, pragmatic actions ... to remove roadblocks and bottlenecks to new projects proceeding”.

In addition to ensuring a smooth transition away from coal, adding more renewable energy to the grid is also a key plank of state and federal targets to reduce the output of planet-heating greenhouse gas emissions.

The Albanese government has set a legally binding target to cut emissions by 43 per cent by 2030. To do so, it aims to reach 82 per cent renewable electricity supply by the same deadline. Victoria is chasing 95 per cent renewables by 2035 and NSW is aiming for 70 per cent renewables by the same deadline.

However, Grattan argued that the seemingly counterintuitive move to prop up coal might help the clean energy switch in the long term, warning that public support for policies to cut emissions by reducing fossil fuels will wane if power prices rise and reliability falls.

Wood said the 2018 ditching of the National Energy Guarantee was a prime example of the energy chaos that contributed to the lack of preparation for coal plant closures.

The scheme was intended to coordinate the rise of renewable energy with dispatchable power from large-scale batteries, pumped hydro, or gas peaking plants, which can be deployed to rapidly fill gaps when solar and wind power aren’t available. However, the former Coalition government abandoned the policy after the party split over the role of fossil fuels.

The National Energy Guarantee followed a seismic policy shift in 2014 when the Abbott government abandoned the carbon pricing scheme imposed by the Gillard government in 2012.

Most recently, state and federal governments could not form a consensus on how to back up intermittent energy supplies from wind and solar farms, with Victoria agreeing to the use of gas-fired power in publicly funded schemes.

Wood said Australians would “not forgive our political leaders if they mess up the post-coal era”.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/payments-for-coal-plants-and-urgent-reform-needed-for-renewables-switch-20240426-p5fmr0.html

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Albo's Help to Buy home scheme Unrealistic

The proposed income tests for first-home buyers hoping to take advantage of Anthony Albanese’s shared equity scheme will significantly fall short of the price caps set for Australia’s two largest ­cities.

While new buyers could theoretically buy a home with the federal government’s Help to Buy scheme at $950,000 in Sydney and $850,000 in Melbourne, it would be near impossible for them to get a loan to cover the remaining mortgage if earning the scheme’s maximum eligible incomes of $90,000 for singles and $120,000 for couples.

Analysis by Loan Market for The Australian suggests those low to middle-income families would not meet banks’ stringent eligibility criteria to take on such high levels of debt.

The most expensive home a single on that income with no debts could purchase is no more than $408,163 in today’s interest rate environment. If they have the average university HECS debt of $24,700, their top price falls to $357,143.

Couples with a $120,000 household income and no kids were best placed to take advantage of the scheme, being able to purchase a property worth $524,490. But a family with two kids maxes out at $436,224.

The Help to Buy scheme will see the government offer a 30 or 40 per cent equity in the stake in the property, while the homeowners must be able to prove to their bank they can cover the remaining portion after providing a deposit of as little as 2 per cent.

Even after the government’s help, borrowers would have to prove to a bank they can support a loan of at least $570,000 in Sydney and $510,000 in Melbourne.

Analysis by PropTrack shows that while affordability for couples is fair, especially when compared to the rental market, the housing researcher’s senior economist Paul Ryan said it was a “moot point” if buyers simply can’t borrow those amounts.

“It might be touch and go for serviceability … I suspect that a lot of people will have to try and find homes at a lower price,” Mr Ryan said

“I mean, the median home price in Sydney is over $1m. Our Affordability Index shows there are increasingly fewer properties that you have to choose from.

“People looking to access the scheme are going to have to make concessions probably on property price and location. But, it is a very generous scheme from the government if you’re able to access it.”

Banks assess all new mortgage borrowers at the current interest rate with a 3 per cent buffer on top, to ensure repayments could still be made if interest rates were to rise. Brisbane-based Loan Market mortgage broker Mick O’Shea said this aspect would likely become the biggest challenge.

“It’s hard for first-home buyers to gather a deposit while they’re renting elsewhere,” Mr O’Shea said. “This (scheme) provides some relief there but doesn’t alleviate the challenge of borrowing capacity being where it is, when we were putting a 3 per cent buffer onto actual rates.

The Help to Buy scheme has enough spaces to facilitate 10,000 purchases annually over four years, with many in Sydney and Melbourne likely to only be able to afford units.

Promised by Labor during the last federal election, the scheme currently looks unlikely to pass the Senate without the support of the Coalition or the Greens.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/help-to-buy-home-scheme-fails-serviceability-tests/news-story/5cf6332dc18d7f3237503938682272ce

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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