More than one million Aussie homes at risk from fires, floods as housing crisis deepens
The report by the Housing, Homelessness, and Disasters National Symposium last week found 1153 homes were left uninhabitable by the floods. Another 1831 homes were damaged.
Some 23,000 Australians are displaced by floods, bushfires, and cyclones each year, with the report finding 5.6 million homes are at risk from bushfires as climate impacts accelerate.
Homeless Australia CEO Kate Colvin said as climate disasters become more regular, there was a risk of a 'two-tiered society' in which housing security determined disaster survival.
'There is a gap between people who are best able to protect themselves and people who are least able to,' she said.
Ms Colvin said renters were often limited to cheaper properties in more flood-prone areas and were less resilient to climate-related disasters, compared with higher-income earners.
Renters also often had less access to government support and faced a 'superheated' rental market.
'They can't compete because all those people who had insurance often also get a special payments system to afford rent during the time when their home is not available,' Ms Colvin said.
'They then can't get a rental because you've got this superheated market, so you have another wave of homelessness just because of the housing market impact'.
Ms Colvin called on the federal government to make renters or people facing homelessness a priority in future disaster responses, and include disaster resilience in its 10-year housing plan.
'In the planning phase, include the homelessness sector, include strategies around housing resilience … (and) in the response phase, be inclusive of people who are facing homelessness.'
The symposium brought together more than 100 professionals across the housing, emergency management, and governmental sectors to examine how 'secondary crises' affect NSW.
Factors included the prevalence of construction workers who flood disaster zones in the wake of climate events, inadvertently driving up rents for already struggling locals.
The symposium found that in Australia, some 953,000 homes were vulnerable to flooding and 17,500 were at threat from coastal erosion, with 169,000 people on the public housing list.
HowWeSurvive UNSW Sydney academic and co-author of the symposium report, Dr Timothy Heffernan, said climate disasters were already hitting 'housing-vulnerable' communities.
'When you have 6.5 million homes at risk from bushfires, floods or coastal erosion, and a housing system that can't meet demand, every disaster becomes a humanitarian crisis,' he said.
'Hotels and motels fill up immediately, caravan parks are often in flood-prone areas … We're asking an already strained system to absorb sudden surges of thousands of displaced people.'
Social Futures general manager Martelle Geurts said the Northern Rivers housing system was 'already fragile' when it was hit by the 2022 flood disaster, damaging more than 10,000 homes.
Despite extensive recovery efforts, the Northern Rivers accounted for about a third of rough sleepers in NSW in 2025.
The most recent NSW Street Count - an annual audit of people facing homelessness - found 346 people sleeping rough in the City of Sydney. In the Northern Rivers, there were 654 people.
'Climate events are becoming more frequent and severe, and they destroy homes. So, climate change and homelessness are inextricably linked,' Ms Geurts said.
'People can't recover without stable housing.
'Disasters displace people and can cause lasting trauma. Some people experience PTSD, and the impact of that can be lifelong.
'What we know is that people can't recover psychologically unless they have a secure place to live.'
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ABC News
13 minutes ago
- ABC News
Cheaper medicines and HECS top parliamentary agenda as tax debate ramps up
The Albanese government will try to keep attention on its election promises as the new federal parliament returns for its second week, but will face further scrutiny about what new policies it plans to unveil at next month's economic roundtable. Labor will introduce legislation to cut the price of PBS medicines to $25 and will also seek to pass the HECS loan cuts introduced last week in what Anthony Albanese said was a deliberate prioritisation of cost-of-living measures. "What we've done very clearly in the first fortnight is concentrate on measures that make a difference to people's money in their pocket. We make no apology for that … That was the basis on which we were elected," he told the ABC's Insiders on Sunday. The $25-per-script price would start in the new year and reduce annual user costs by an estimated $200 million. The $7.70 script price for pension and concession card holders, frozen until 2030, would be unchanged. The policy was matched by the Coalition during the election campaign, so it is unlikely to be controversial, with the opposition also signalling it will likely support the HECS cuts. But there is no timeline for Labor to re-introduce its stalled proposal to double the earnings tax on superannuation balances for those with balances over $3 million, controversial because it would include the "unrealised" earnings of assets. Mr Albanese on Sunday dismissed the Treasury's advice that taxes would need to be raised to fix the budget, reported by the ABC earlier this month, and including an option identified by the department to "build on" the super tax. "Treasury, of course, will put forward advice to government from time to time. That's not government policy … Our starting point is the positions that we took to the election." But the government will face fresh questions this week about its plans to go beyond its election platform in the August roundtable led by Treasurer Jim Chalmers, who has already declared openness to tax changes as part of a reform package. Unions, business groups, and economists are already jostling to propose ideas for the three-day discussion forum to be held in late August before the next parliamentary sitting, where Mr Chalmers and Mr Albanese say they are open to any ideas. The Business Council (BCA) has this week revealed one of its main proposals, to increase the generosity of the tax credit for research and development spending, with the greatest concessions for Australian research commercialised in Australia. In a joint report with Australian companies Atlassian and Cochlear, who are among the biggest users of the tax credit with a combined $316 million spend in the most recent year of data, the BCA has called for an 18.5 per cent flat-rate incentive. "Empowering businesses to make research and development investments is critical to making our economy more productive and innovative, and for delivering greater prosperity for all Australians," the lobby's chief executive, Bran Black, said. "If we don't act now, then we will keep losing innovators, capital, and ideas to other nations." Support for lower company taxes, which appeared to be echoed in Treasury advice, was also on display at a pre-roundtable roundtable convened last Friday by independent MP Allegra Spender. Former treasury secretary Ken Henry and ANU tax professor Bob Breunig, both of whom will attend Mr Chalmers's roundtable, told the forum that company taxes should be reconsidered to tax rents such as mining income more, but entrepreneurship less. Mr Breunig, a noted sceptic of tax incentives for research and development who has argued there is little evidence they spur on research that would not have occurred otherwise, instead proposed a tax deduction for investing in businesses. "If you invest in a company and you make a modest rate of return … that return would be tax-free … Kind of like a tax-free threshold for corporations," he suggested. The forum saw dozens of tax and budget proposals raised, with general agreement that budget sustainability would require some combination of spending cuts, higher taxes, and policies to support economic growth, consistent with Treasury advice. Suggested targets for raising taxes included the petroleum resources rent tax, further changes to super tax concessions, higher capital gains tax, and increasing the GST, although the treasurer and PM have appeared reluctant to consider that move. On the spending side, Michael Brennan of the e61 Institute identified what he called a "capital binge" on infrastructure projects, including at the state level. "There's a lot of value destruction going on in these mega-projects where the benefits are nothing like the value of the cash being [spent]," Mr Brennan said. Participants agreed the government should consider a large package doing multiple things at once, a "grand bargain" rather than "piecemeal" reform. "Tax reform cannot be done piecemeal," Mr Henry said. "This is the lesson that I take from Australia's tax reform adventures of the last 40 years. If it's going to be successful, it's going to have to be big." While Mr Chalmers has embraced suggestions he could pursue ambitious changes, Mr Albanese has seemed more reticent and on Sunday again emphasised the roundtable's focus on economic growth rather than tax changes, branding it a "productivity summit". "[It] is about how do we get that economic growth in the future? And what the productivity summit is about is identifying ways, including [industry investment program] Future Made in Australia. "How do we fix housing? How do we fix these issues in a way that is fiscally responsible?" The Coalition has sent early signals that it would likely oppose any tax reform package that increased the overall tax take, but is likely to be distracted again this week by internal disagreement about net zero. The WA Liberal Party's state council passed a motion calling to drop the net zero by 2050 target, effectively backed in the aftermath by the two most prominent federal frontbenchers from the state, conservatives Andrew Hastie and Michaelia Cash. "We recommitted to emissions reduction, but we will not do that like Mr Albanese legislating a net zero target by 2050," Senator Cash told Sky News on Sunday. "Let's be honest here, the WA Liberal Party have been very, very clear we will not crash the economy in doing so … And we will make sure we do not impose any unnecessary costs on them."
ABC News
3 hours ago
- ABC News
How easy is it to trick the Australian Taxation Office?
Sam Hawley: How easy is it to trick the Australian Tax Office? Well, for fraudsters it's not hard at all and plenty have done it costing taxpayers billions of dollars that have never been recovered. Today, Angus Grigg on his Four Corners investigation into the biggest GST scam in history and how the ATO dropped the ball. I'm Sam Hawley on Gadigal land in Sydney. This is ABC News Daily. Sam Hawley: Angus, you've been hard at work looking into what's going on at the Australian Tax Office. And you've really been having a deep look into this huge GST scam. Now, this unfolded in no other than Mildura in north-west Victoria. So, take me there and tell me about local resident Sarah. Angus Grigg: Yeah. Mildura is a really beautiful town, an irrigation town on the Murray in North West Victoria. And this GST scam really took off in Mildura. And it really was circulating within a sort of population that you might say is low socioeconomic groups, people on welfare, people with addiction issues. And we went to interview one person called Sarah. She was going through quite a bit of financial hardship at the time. I think she'd separated from her partner who was facing pretty serious charges at the time as well. And she was short of money because she needed to have some dental work done. So one of her friends showed her how to use a business that had been registered and an ABN linked to GST to claim GST refunds fraudulently. 'Sarah': The people that I was associating with at that time, they had done it and told me how easy it was to get a large amount of money quickly. And I just thought at the time it was a good idea because I was in a bit of financial trouble. Angus Grigg: She pretended, if you like, to be a hairdresser, despite the fact that she had no hairdressing qualifications. She'd never worked in a hairdresser, hadn't hired premises, had no equipment. And so she logged into her myGov account and first of all, claimed $15,000 and then did it a second time and got another $15,000. 'Sarah': I don't even really still understand how it went through. I was a single parent and then all of a sudden I'm a hairdresser that's getting this return put into my account with no other payments from clients or anything like that to balance it was needed. Like no proof. Angus Grigg: Now, bear in mind, the money went into the same account as her welfare payments and the money went within about 10 days without any verification, without any checks, without anyone from the tax office ringing and saying, what did you spend this money on? Do you have hairdressing qualifications? Have you hired premises? You know, she just absolutely couldn't believe how easy it was. 'Sarah': Yeah, I just couldn't believe it that it was just sitting there on my everyday access debit bank card. Angus Grigg: Now, the other thing to bear in mind, to receive a GST refund of $30,000, she would have needed to have capital expenditure or bought stock and other items for her hairdressing business of about $300,000. Now, surely a single mother living on welfare, getting family tax benefits, that should have been a red flag for the tax office. Sam Hawley: Wow. Okay. So Sarah, which is not her real name, just by the way, you've changed that for this story to keep her anonymous. She just tells the ATO she's a hairdresser and then the tax office falls for it. That's extraordinary. Angus Grigg: It is. And the fact that you don't need a receipt, you don't need any proof of the line of work you're in is extraordinary. And that's because the tax office basically fired most of the humans in the loop and started relying on algorithms or computers, if you like, to make these payments. They wanted to ensure the timely payment of GST refunds to businesses. But in doing that, they really opened the door up to fraud. Sam Hawley: Right. Sure. So the tax office wants to streamline things. But in the meantime, people like Sarah are all of a sudden dabbling in fraud. And as we've mentioned, she's not the only one. There's a lot of other people doing a very similar thing. Tell me about Linden Phillips. What was he up to? Angus Grigg: Linden Phillips, once again from Mildura, for us, he was like patient zero. It looks like he was the really one of the very, very early people in this scam. So what happens is that Linden Phillips gets out of jail in August 2021. And he already has a company registered. And so he reactivates his GST registration through his ABN and his MyGov account. And then within a couple of weeks of getting out of jail, he does what I'd sort of call a test run. And he claims $13,000 in GST refunds from the tax office. Once again, no documents, no receipts, no verification required. He gets that money within a couple of weeks and clearly then thinks, OK, I'm going to go for the big one. And so what he does is he lodges 46 backdated GST claims for an amount of $821,000 in GST. And the real kicker here is that for most of the period those GST claims are lodged, he's actually in jail. Sam Hawley: Oh my gosh. Angus Grigg: I know. He just couldn't make it up. Sam Hawley: What does he do with all that money? Angus Grigg: Well, of course, he spends it, right? Within a couple of weeks, the money's completely gone. He buys himself a second-hand Porsche. Somewhat endearingly, he buys his mother a house. But the really damning thing here is that the tax office notice it. Finally, someone, there's a human in the loop and they pick up the fact that, hey, maybe something's a bit wrong here. And so they ring him up and he says, oh yeah, no, it's all legitimate. I'll get my accountant to call you. The accountant never calls. They send him some emails. They write him some letters. He ignores them all. And the really damning thing here is the tax office does nothing for four months. And in that four month period, this scam absolutely explodes. So what we did is we went back and we deconstructed, if you like, the tax office's narrative. And the narrative was that this fraud took off on social media. The tax office noticed it. They cracked down really hard, really quickly, and they brought it under control. Now we sort about testing that idea. Sam Hawley: So the ATO says it did this great job. It cracked down on this fraud. But what actually happened? Because you actually had a look at that and discovered, in fact, the ATO didn't do much at all. Angus Grigg: No, exactly. So Linden Phillips does finally get caught, but it has absolutely nothing to do with the ATO. It all comes down to the smarts of a local detective in Mildura named Vanessa Power. Now, she is attending Phillips's house on a drugs and gun charge, and she searches his premises, his house, and she confiscates a phone. And using the sort of smarts that the ATO should be employing, she sees that on his phone there appears to be a pretty elaborate GST scam. And in fact, it looks as though that Linden Phillips had helped 60 other people perpetrate this scam. Linden Phillips is arrested. And then a few weeks later, the ATO finally launch what they call Operation Protego, which is to crack down on this GST scam. Sam Hawley: Wow. Okay. And at that point, of course, Sarah, who we spoke about earlier, she was also arrested back in December 2022. But the thing is, the money, it's sort of gone, right? 'Sarah': I can't pay it back. It's not even an option at the moment. Or it probably never will be. Sam Hawley: Is there any way the tax office can actually get these funds back? Angus Grigg: Well, this is the point, right? In the end, $2 billion was stolen from the tax system by 56,000 people. Now, the ATO tell us that of those 56,000 people who perpetrated this scam, just 120, I think it might be 122 now, have been convicted. Secondly, of the $2 billion stolen, the ATO tells us that only 160 million, or around 8% of that, has been recovered. Sam Hawley: And, Angus, that money, it really is just a drop in the ocean, right? Because you've also looked at all the other funds that the ATO hasn't managed to collect, and you've spoken to Karen Payne. Now, she's a former Inspector General of Taxation. She basically says if the ATO had collected what it was owed, then we would all be paying less tax. Angus Grigg: Yeah. Karen Payne, she really focused on what's called collectible debt. And that is this sort of giant number that the ATO doesn't like to talk about. And when she started looking at it, it was about $30 billion. Then it rose to about $50 billion. The figure is now $53 billion. And that is the amount of money or taxes that the ATO has levied, if you like, but not collected. Karen Payne, Inspector General of Taxation, 2019-24: The large percentage of the debts that were due were in fact owned by a very small number of taxpayers or they're related to a small number of taxpayer accounts. So you'd kind of think it's a small number of people you need to be chasing. Angus Grigg: And the point that Karen Payne was making is that if we collected all that tax, perhaps we would not have to pay as much tax, all of us, but also we'd have more money to spend on really basic things like schools, roads and hospitals. Karen Payne, Inspector General of Taxation, 2019-24: The fact that it keeps rising is troubling. So it's fundamental, I think, that we've got good administration of the tax system because the integrity of the tax system is fundamentally important to all of us. It pays for all of the services that we benefit from. Sam Hawley: Angus, despite everything that you have said, which is frankly really concerning, the ATO itself thinks it's doing a pretty good job, right? Because Chris Jordan, who was the tax commissioner up until 2024, he's been putting a rather positive spin on the ATO's work. Angus Grigg: Yeah. This is the really extraordinary thing. Despite all these scandals, the ATO tells us they are doing a great job. Just before Chris Jordan stepped down as tax commissioner, he did a victory lap, if you like, at the National Press Club, and he pointed out all the great, terrific things that the ATO has done. Chris Jordan, Tax Commissioner, 2013-24: We've successfully charted a massive program of transformation. We've cut red tape and we've modernised our administration of the tax system as part of the digital revolution to make tax just happen.
News.com.au
6 hours ago
- News.com.au
Labor to introduce Bill to cap PBS-listed scripts at $25, PM dodges questions on super tax
Labor will begin its first steps to legislate its election promise to cap the cost of scripts listed on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme to $25 from January 1 of next year. Once passed, eligible medicines will be lowered from $31.60 to $25. The government estimates the change will save Australians $200m a year, while costing the budget $690m over four years. This is in addition to previous reforms which allowed patients to acquire 60-day prescriptions, and freezing the cost of medicine for pension and concession card holders at $7.70 until the end of 2029. The election pledge was also matched by the Coalition, suggesting the Bill will likely have a swift passage through parliament. Anthony Albanese said it was a promise delivered. 'This is another example of cost of living relief that helps every Australian,' Mr Albanese said. 'The size of your bank balance shouldn't determine the quality of your healthcare. My government will continue to deliver cost of living relief for all Australians.' Health Minister Mark Bulter also welcomed the incoming Bill. 'Cheaper medicines are good for the hip pocket and good for your health,' Mr Butler said. 'For general patients medicines haven't been this cheap since 2004. 'For pension and concession card holders we've frozen your medicine prices at a maximum price of $7.70 until the end of the decade.' The Bill comes as the United States lashed Australia's PBS as 'discriminatory' amid tariff negotiations to remove the general 10 per cent levy, as well as fees on Australian steel and aluminium US imports. Concerningly, US President Donald Trump has also flagged a 200 per cent tariff on pharmaceutical imports, which could have a major impact on $2bn of Australian exports. However the Albanese government said it is unwilling to use the PBS as a bargaining chip. On Sunday, Mr Albanese also faced a grilling over when Labor would introduce its proposed plan to double the tax on superannuation accounts over $3m up to 30 per cent. He said the Bill 'will come in time' and that the priority in the first fortnight was policies 'that make a difference to people's money in their pocket'. Perth MP and assistant minister to the Prime Minister Patrick Gorman said the government had been 'clear about our priorities' for the Bill and said he was 'confident it will pass'. 'I think we have seen in this building, time and time again, that when it comes to getting things through parliament, you have got to also let the parliamentary processes do their piece,' he said.
