Australian Politics

Adelaide woman Brooke Robran exposes issue her generation faces

I do feel sorry for this woman. She is up against it. But where were her parents? By the time she got to university, they should have had enough to pay the fees for her. Parents have been saving for their children's education since the 19th century.

It's cheaper to pay HECS in advance anyway. I paid all my son's fees in advance so he entered the workforce with zero debt and now in midlife has significant assets

And she is attractive so why does she not get a bloke to help share the costs? Everything does not have to be paid for by the government. Too much is already paid -- mostly for nonsense such as windmills. Better spend it on education than superfluous "renewables"

A young Aussie has sparked a fierce debate after calling out older generations and saying they have ruined the possibility for younger generations of buying their own homes.

Adelaide influencer Brooke Robran explained young Aussies were struggling to move out of home due to soaring HECS debts and unattainable property prices.

'How the f**k are people in their early 20s meant to move out of home now?,' Ms Robran asked in a video posted to social media.

'Generations before us have really f***ed us over here.

'When people used to go to uni it was free. Now the people that go to uni have $26,000 on average HECS debt.

'People like me aren't moving out of home until they're thirty now because they can't afford it. I swear you need four different jobs to make the amount you need to buy a house now.'

University was once free for students under Australia's 21st Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam.

During his brief four-year term, Mr Whitlam famously abolished tuition fees in 1974 and introduced a living allowance for full-time students.

Mandated payments returned in 1989 under Bob Hawke's Labor government, which also introduced the HECS programme.

Initially, all degrees had a uniform annual fee of $1,800. This changed in 1996 when the Howard coalition government introduced a three-tiered fee system.

The fees increased from a flat rate of $2,454 to $3,300 for Band One degrees, such as education and humanities, and $5,500 for Band Three degrees, including law and accounting.

Both sides of Australian politics have since agreed students should continue to pay the cost of higher education.

Data from comparison website Finder shows the average HECS debt sits at $40,000 with 21 per cent owing between $40,000 and $100,000 and just over one per cent owing more than $100,000

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13685825/Adelaide-woman-Brooke-Robran-exposes-issue-generation-faces.html

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The secret probe into university facing foreign student allegations

There have long been allegtions that lots of Indian students get into Australia via fake docements and it is true that many cannot cope with their studies when they get here. But they generally become productive members of the workforce anyway so it is no great grief. Where do you think all the Indian restaurants come from?

The country’s higher education watchdog is probing an Australian university accused of aggressively poaching foreign students from other institutions and for having lax recruitment practices and low English standards for admissions.

Documents obtained by this masthead reveal Torrens University is under scrutiny from the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency after the agency became concerned by the university’s recruitment of international students and a rapid increase in its enrolments.

The correspondence also reveals multiple Australian universities enrolled students who were later found to have provided fake documents in their applications, as part of systemic fraud occurring in Haryana state in northern India.

The documents, released under freedom of information laws, show TEQSA has launched a compliance assessment into Torrens to determine whether the university is still meeting the standards required to remain registered.

Torrens, which has campuses in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide, has been the subject of 12 complaints since 2022. The watchdog said this was a “large number” for one institution.

Elite unis lower ATARs in favour of special entry schemes
Among the allegations made by complainants was that Torrens pushes education agents to poach from other providers, offering a 35 per cent fee discount for onshore international students.

Separately, an unnamed NSW public university alleged Torrens’ agents had been involved in unethical behaviour and were actively encouraged to poach its students by promising large discounts and other incentives.

Another complainant alleged high visa refusal rates were driven by “corrupt behaviour” in markets such as India, and that Torrens sales staff had made decisions related to student admissions.

The documents also revealed allegations that staff who raised concerns about the practices were forced to resign or had their employment terminated.

A Torrens spokesman said staff were bound by its code of conduct and undertook regular mandatory compliance training, while recruitment agents were also bound by stringent requirements.

“We would terminate – and have done so – any contract where an agent was found to be in breach,” he said.

The ongoing probe into the university’s practices comes as the federal government pushes ahead with a major crackdown on foreign student numbers. Education Minister Jason Clare said “shonks and crooks” were undermining the international education sector.

The government late last year changed its visa processing system to prioritise higher education providers deemed the least risk of recruiting “non-genuine” students, those who come to Australia primarily to work, not study.

University risk ratings from the Department of Home Affairs were updated in April. Federation University, the University of New England and the University of Tasmania were all given level 3 grade, the lowest category. Torrens University remained a level 2 provider.

‘Sudden and significant’ increase in enrolments

The watchdog wrote to Torrens in January last year concerned about its “sudden and significant increase” in international students

“TEQSA is concerned about the risk that students may lack the academic preparation and proficiency in English required to participate in their intended study,” the letter reads.

“The significant increases, particularly from new and existing source countries such as Laos, Kenya, Ghana and Nepal, also raises concerns about the measures taken by [Torrens] to ensure that student agents are only recruiting genuine students.

“In addition, we have identified a number of agents engaged by [the university] who had high visa refusal rates in 2022 and in previous years. This raises material concerns about the efficacy of the agent monitoring framework.”

In July 2023, TEQSA was concerned enough about the university’s practices that it moved to launch a compliance assessment, which is still under way.

It also wrote to at least one other university in 2023, expressing concern over its recruitment practices and formally requesting further information, the documents reveal.

Former TEQSA chief commissioner Professor Peter Coaldrake wrote to universities and colleges in August, warning them of their obligations when recruiting, admitting and supporting overseas students. He revealed the regulator was investigating several institutions’ risk of non-compliance.

However, TEQSA has refused to reveal if those investigations led to compliance assessments into other universities’ practices. Compliance assessments can begin only when the regulator identifies “serious compliance risks”.

Widespread fraudulent applications

The documents separately reveal multiple universities – who were not identified – were in contact with TEQSA in 2022 and 2023, concerned about admissions fraud in Haryana state.

One university informed TEQSA in October it had determined there was systemic fraud in applications coming out of the region. It said students had been using fake academic documents and fake employment records.

It discovered the fraud only after the students were enrolled. This was after it was known that too many applicants from the region were “non-genuine” temporary entrants.

Former Department of Immigration deputy secretary Abul Rizvi said that while smaller operators had been the target of much of the government’s visa crackdown, larger Group of Eight institutions, such as the University of Sydney, needed more scrutiny.

He believes the increase in foreign student admissions has affected universities’ ability to deliver high-quality degrees.

“If I was sending my child to another country to get an overseas education, the last thing I’d want was for my child to be studying in a class full of students from the same country,” he said.

The Torrens spokesman said it closely managed its recruitment of international students, who make up 48 per cent of its cohort, and that it was proud to have maintained a level 2 risk rating.

“Our offshore international student enrolments grew in 2022 compared to 2019 – as borders re-opened post the COVID pandemic. However, this was substantially offset by a decline in onshore international student enrolments,” he said.

“We believe in student choice, and Torrens University works hard to offer a highly competitive and high-quality educational experience with small class sizes, individualised support and an innovative curriculum, that is competitively priced for international students.”

https://www.smh.com.au/national/the-secret-probe-into-university-facing-foreign-student-allegations-20240624-p5jo9p.html

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Hydrogen nonsense

Mining magnate Andrew ‘‘Twiggy’’ Forrest surprised many in the media on July 17 when he announced he was scaling back his green hydrogen commitments.

Yet, journalists following the global energy debate should have known this holy grail of power storage and pollution-free fuel was running into trouble around the world — even as Forrest continued to make multibillion-dollar announcements with state and federal leaders here and with governments overseas.

This is why politicians should not try to pick winners: the rush of capital looking for taxpayer-guaranteed returns is no measure of a technology’s viability. Nor does history show Australian politicians are any good at making decisions properly left to investment market professionals.

This column has long been sceptical of various firming technologies for variable wind and solar power. Back on October 17, 2022, I wrote: “Perhaps the most important question (in this area) that journalists should be asking relates to the feasibility of green hydrogen, being spruiked around the world … by Forrest.”

It quoted climate campaigner and engineer Saul Griffith estimating Forrest’s hydrogen would be between five and six times more expensive than using wind and solar only for power. Griffith said power would need to be priced at 2c per kilowatt hour to produce hydrogen for the then-new Albanese government’s $2 per kilogram target price.

Most states at the time were charging between 25c and 40c per kilowatt hour.

The week before the latest federal budget this column had a crack at Jim Chalmers for pinning so much of his government’s “Future Made in Australia” ambition on green hydrogen. The piece pointed out industry was expecting more taxpayer funds for green hydrogen in the budget the following week, but even the green evangelist Grattan Institute warned in December optimism about hydrogen was overblown.

Grattan energy specialist Tony Wood said government and industry would be wise to limit hydrogen expectations to green ammonia for fertiliser, green steel and green alumina.

Wood said even confining hydrogen ambitions to these sectors would “require more than 30 gigawatts of electricity, 60 per cent more than we have in the National Electricity Market today”.

Yet, on budget night, May 14, the Treasurer announced a further $19.7bn over 10 years under the “renewable energy super power banner”. Green hydrogen support was extended to $6.7bn over a decade.

Forrest, Chalmers and Anthony Albanese all claimed last week they remained committed to green hydrogen despite Forrest’s lay-off of 700 workers and his scaling back of several projects. He did remain committed to five hydrogen projects here and overseas.

Yet, had Chalmers and the Prime Minister read Saul Griffith’s testimony before the federal parliament last year, they might have been more cautious.

The Renew Economy website on April 6 last year quoted Griffith, also co-founder of Rewiring Australia, telling a parliamentary inquiry committing taxpayer funds to hydrogen would be a costly economic mistake.

“The idea that hydrogen will play a large role in the energy future does not make economic or thermodynamic sense,” Griffith’s written submission to the joint standing committee on the energy transition says. Griffith, like Wood, believes hydrogen will play a role in certain hard-to-abate sectors.

Griffith said people with a strong vested interest had “a heavy hand on the tiller of the hydrogen conversation”.

Forrest’s climb-down from the hydrogen pulpit came as the EU sounded a warning about hydrogen.

The Brussels-based European Court of Auditors said on July 17 — the same day as Forrest’s announcement — the EU’s hydrogen goals were unrealistic, despite the billions of euros already invested.

The EU had committed €18.8bn ($31bn) to make 10 million tonnes of green hydrogen by 2030 and to import a further 10 million tonnes by 2030. Forrest alone claimed he could make 15 million tonnes by 2030.

The following night on ABC’s 7.30, host Sarah Ferguson gave Forrest a rare, almost interruption-free, 11 minutes to obfuscate on the central question: has hydrogen been over-hyped?

It was an interview in stark contrast with her latest nuclear power exchange with opposition energy spokesman Ted O’Brien. Ferguson talked over the top of him throughout and interrupted during most of the points O’Brien tried to make.

Yet, nuclear power is tried, tested and reliable while green hydrogen is in early development stages and may not be viable at scale.

A paper by the conservative Manhattan Institute released on February 1 this year, Green Hydrogen: A Multibillion-Dollar Energy Boondoggle, gets to the heart of the hydrogen problem. Hydrogen creates less energy than is used to make it.

The study examines various hydrogen technologies and homes in on EROI: energy return on investment.

The EROI of green hydrogen via electrolysis is 0.5. It releases half as much energy as is invested in making it.

The EROIs of traditional power sources are 28 for natural gas, 30 for coal and 75 for nuclear power. This is the science; it’s not about climate denial but the reality of physics and chemistry.

The point of the hydrogen story for a column on journalism? Scepticism is a key quality needed for good and accurate reporting. Journalists need to be especially sceptical in testing claims in-line with their own personal biases.

In the energy transition, conservative-leaning journalists who favour nuclear power have been unable to accept the Coalition’s plan to build nuclear reactors will do nothing to reduce CO2 emissions until 2040.

Therefore, unless a Coalition government were to scrap its emissions reduction targets, it would not markedly slow the rollout of wind and solar technology which, for all its problems, will reduce emissions.

Remember, too, the Coalition plan calls for nuclear as a dispatchable backup rather than a whole-of-system power source. As O’Brien has said, it would eventually operate in tandem with wind and solar.

Similarly, left-leaning journalists like those who dominate the ABC need to test their inherent biases in favour of anything claimed to reduce emissions.

Ferguson has been a prime example in recent weeks. Why the soft approach to Forrest while applying attack tactics in her nuclear interview with O’Brien in March?

Similarly, ABC Media Watch has for decades been on the hunt for any stories it thinks might hide secret climate denial.

Last Monday, July 22, it was again on its favourite hobby horse: bollocking Sky News Australia. This time it targeted the network’s coverage of EVs.

It did acknowledge what has been clear for over a year: while Australian buyers were late to the EV party, buyers in Europe and North America have been walking away from the technology.

Why? The problems reporters at this paper have been describing for almost a decade: range anxiety, price, increasing insurance premiums, fears about battery fires, the cost of battery repair and the high cost of smash repair. The latest EV hot-button issue has been deep price discounting by Tesla which has left recent former buyers out of pocket compared with new buyers.

Media Watch ignored most of these issues and failed to make the central point. Most EVs in Australia, unless powered by a home battery connected to rooftop solar, receive electricity from a power grid still largely fired by burning coal.

Now, that should make any thinking journalist a bit sceptical.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/media/scepticism-a-crucial-element-in-energy-mix/news-story/0cd1ee4d06038b39a0883fbd09bd0358

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Former ABC chair Ita Buttrose says journalists at the broadcaster are too sensitive to criticism

Some interviewers at the ABC are reluctant to tell both sides of the story and the public broadcaster needs to improve the quality of its journalism, the taxpayer-funded organisation’s recently-departed chairwoman Ita Buttrose has declared.

In extraordinary comments just four months after she stepped down from the ABC board, Ms Buttrose warned the ABC was too sensitive to criticism and its reporters should just give up if they cannot handle scrutiny.

Ms Buttrose’s comments were the media doyenne’s most strident criticism of the broadcaster she once led and have been backed by another recently departed ABC board member, businessman Joe Gersh.

Speaking to ABC radio on Monday, Ms Buttrose said that having both sides of the story was “much better” for the broadcaster’s audience and blasted un-named presenters for not doing so.

“I think there’s no harm in presenting both sides of an argument, and I don’t understand the reluctance of some of our interviewers not to do that,” she said.

“Have both sides of the story, it’s much better for the viewer or the listener.”

Former ABC board member Joe Gersh – who was on the board alongside Ms Buttrose before his tenure ended in 2023 – said he agreed with Ms Buttrose’s comments.

The Jewish businessman said the ABC could have done a much better job at reporting on anti-Semitism during the Israel-Hamas conflict.

“As a member of the Jewish community, a supporter of the ABC and a former director, I’ve been extremely troubled by the ABC’s apparent lack of concern at the alarming and unprecedented rise of anti Semitism in Australia,” Mr Gersh said.

“The failure of the ABC to meet its impartiality obligation in respect of the Israel-Hamas conflict means that in some respects it is part of the problem, rather than part of the solution.

“The ABC has an obligation of impartiality and it’s of concern of when it falls short of meeting that obligation.”

Ms Buttrose finished her five-year term at the ABC in March and was replaced by Kim Williams.

The Australian asked Mr Williams on Monday if he agreed with Ms Buttrose’s remarks but he would not comment.

Mr Williams said in March: “If you don’t want to reflect a view that aspires to impartiality, don’t work at the ABC.”

During the interview Karvelas claimed News Corp, which includes mastheads such as The Australian, “have gone after ABC frontline reporters and presenters pretty hard, including me.”

“Is that something that you think is concerning and does it have a chilling kind of impact,” Karvelas asked.

Ms Buttrose dismissed the claims put to her.

“No, look, quite frankly I think you are all too sensitive about News Corp; let them do what they want to do, it doesn’t really matter,” she said.

“When Kerry Packer was alive he didn’t like the ABC either and I used to have vehement arguments with him about the role of the ABC, because I was brought up on the ABC because of my father (journalist Charles Oswald).

“I used to have big arguments with Kerry about the role of the ABC and why it was important, and News Corp seems to share Kerry’s feelings about the ABC.

“If the ABC can’t take the criticism then it should just give up. It doesn’t matter what they say, it doesn’t matter, don’t keep worrying about what they say. Just keep doing your own job, which you have to do, just do it.”

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/media/former-abc-chair-ita-buttrose-said-journalists-at-the-broadcaster-too-sensitive-when-they-cop-criticism/news-story/7957d062f51f444ed34dea2a152f2e59