‘A housing disaster': The case against demolishing Melbourne's public housing
Independent news and stories connecting you to life in Australia and Nepali-speaking Australians. Stories about women of Nepali heritage in Australia who are about to become parents.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
ABC News
2 hours ago
- ABC News
Fears for agricultural gap year program as funding deadline draws nearer
It's a bitterly cold winter's day on a dairy farm in Victoria's north east, and the ground has turned to mush as the rain falls from the grey sky. Jesse Wallace is guiding 500 dairy cows up the muddy path to the dairy shed for their afternoon milking. The 18-year-old does it with ease, noting which cows are usual suspects for lingering at the back. However, six months ago this was a daunting task. "It was in the middle of summer, and they all get in the river and you have to get knee deep to get them out," he said. "And you're worried about all the gates being shut." Mr Wallace finished high school last year in Brisbane, and is now working on a dairy farm for his gap year. He is a participant in the AgCAREERSTART program, run by the National Farmers' Federation. "There's not a lot of dairy opportunities in Queensland, because the weather is so hot, and I thought this would be a good area to get started in," Mr Wallace said. "It's cold [in Victoria] — but I'm warming up and getting used to it. Waiting at the dairy ready to start attaching the cups to the udders, is Ruby Spicer, 18, who originally hails from Canberra. Also in her gap year, she said she had no prior experience with farming and no connections in the industry. "I like working outdoors and thought it would be a good opportunity to have a gap year," Ms Spicer said. "Everyone is very patient with teaching you — you don't feel stupid for not knowing things. "It is a lot of early mornings, but you get used to it — if you start at 3am, then you're usually done by 10am." Ms Spicer said she would like to stay working on a farm next year if there was a position for her. "I probably wouldn't have gone into agriculture without this program," she said. "This is a good experience and you get to decide if this is a job for you." The Australian Bureau of Statistics says the average age of an Australian farmer is 58, which is a decade older than the rest of the general workforce. And attracting young people to work in the agriculture industry has been a challenge across a range of sectors. The AgCAREERSTART program is currently in its fourth year and has placed 250 students aged 17–25 onto working farms to support farmers facing workforce shortages. Participants get paid to work, and also receive a $4,500 training bursary. Over the past four years, 85 per cent of participants kept working in the agriculture industry with 43 per cent finding ongoing work on the same farm. One of those alumni is Hannah Dunn, 19, who is into her second year working on the dairy farm with Mr Wallace and Ms Spicer. "I love to work with animals and I'm currently studying a Bachelor of Animal Science," Ms Dunn said. "I'd tell people to do it — it's a great way to get practical experience that employers are looking for. "And it's a paid gap year, like, why not try it out?" The AgCAREERSTART program is funded by the federal government until 2026, currently allowing for one more intake. The ABC has contacted the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry to ask if funding will be guaranteed beyond 2026. Richard Hamilton is the manager of the dairy farm in Tallangatta South which employs the three young workers. He said it would be a shame to lose a program that worked so well to solve worker shortages in the industry. "These three can run an 800 cow day-to-day operation without assistance," Mr Hamilton said. "If they stay in dairy is irrelevant. "If they can take some good practices from us and go on and develop, it's got to be good for Australian agriculture as a whole. "It's a bigger picture than us; if they give us a good couple of years on their way and go on and do incredible things then it's a tick in the box from my point of view."
ABC News
3 hours ago
- ABC News
Montevideo Maru mural unveiled in Stanhope to mark POW tragedy
For many years, Clive Toms had no idea his two uncles had died in Australia's worst maritime tragedy. Claude and Cecil Toms, from the northern Victorian town of Kyabram, were aboard Japanese prisoner of war transport ship the Montevideo Maru when it was sunk by a US Navy submarine, the USS Sturgeon, on July 1, 1942. The brothers were commonly known by their second names Howard and Hector, and were among 1,053 Australians who died in the tragedy. Mr Toms, 81, said it was a disaster his mum and dad never talked about. "It was shielded from us kids," he said. Mr Toms said his dad died when he was just 18, and he never really got the full story from him. "Mum remarried a few years later and if you ever asked any questions it was 'the boys are lost' and you knew very well there was no story going to come," he said. Desmond Crichton, who lives in the town of Stanhope, 15 kilometres south of Kyabram, lost his uncle Tom in the Montevideo Maru disaster. He said he knew hardly anything about its sinking when he was growing up. "My main knowledge comes from when I was living in Brunswick in the 1970s," Mr Crichton, 70, said. "I picked up the local paper and there [was the] story of the Salvation Army Band lost in the Montevideo Maru. In Stanhope there is a 25-metre-long mural honouring those who died during the disaster. The mural was unveiled in 2023. It stands opposite a memorial park with storyboards detailing those whose lives were lost on the ship. Stanhope RSL secretary George Gemmill said the mural, which was made by north-east Victorian artist Tim Bowtell, had put his town on the map. Mr Gemmill said a new storyboard about the discovery of the ship's wreckage in 2023 would be unveiled at the town's memorial park on the 83rd anniversary of the tragedy. Mr Toms said the mural had a profound impact on his Gippsland-based cousin Marie, whose dad was Howard (Cecil Toms). "She stared at that mural on the wall for 10 minutes," he said. "After that she started reading the words and stories on those storyboards. "Here were stories of men that were her dad's mates. "Now she could see a link for the first time. It was terribly important."
ABC News
4 hours ago
- ABC News
Workplace flexibility 'paramount' for 'sandwich generation' caring for both children and aging relatives
For Canberra woman Belle Hogg, the first sign her life was about to change came when her mother forgot her birthday. "You might say it's not a big deal, but she's the sort of mum that would send you something in the post two weeks before your birthday because it had to be perfect," Ms Hogg said. "At the time, I was actually cranky … and I said, 'I'm going up there, something's not right.'" Her mother had dramatically lost weight and her home was in a state of disarray. Soon after, the then-68-year-old was diagnosed with dementia. Suddenly, Ms Hogg found herself juggling full-time work in the public service, a photography business, raising her three children and caring for her mother. "She just declined so quickly, and it was just so hard going to work and thinking, 'Is she OK at home?'" Ms Hogg is part of the "sandwich generation" — adults caring for both children and aging relatives. As the population ages and people start their families later in life, a growing number of Australians are finding themselves squeezed by dual caring responsibilities. "It's definitely a rollercoaster — Mum and I have always been besties, the person I call for every piece of advice," Ms Hogg said. Research indicates about two-thirds of sandwich carers are women. Canberran Evie Kollas retired prematurely from teaching to care for her now-94-year-old mother and other family members. "That has financial implications. It also has social implications," Ms Kollas said. She said her caring and administrative responsibilities took up the time of a full-time job, without the same recognition. "If it was a job, it would be paid really well, and it would be really, really well resourced, and we would have some status," Ms Kollas said. "None of that applies to carers. "Recognition is always something carers have called for, but it needs to be a wider recognition, it needs to be a social revolution, it needs to be appreciated on a political level." ABC Canberra has been inundated with frustrated stories of carers in the sandwich generation who feel forgotten by the system. "I personally feel completely ripped off as I had to retire early from a job I loved to care for parents AND In-laws AND grandchildren. I've spent 10 years trying to juggle everything, retired 4 years ago, and have no hope in the foreseeable future of having the retirement we planned. By the time my carer burden is gone I will be too old/unwell to travel." "I'm working full time, caring for my 2 primary school children and now caring for my mother with dementia. My Aged Care has assessed her as needing a level 3 home care package but they won't release the funding. So my mum sleep[s] in my living room. We are all at our wits' end. We get no help. The dementia hotline said when it gets too much my best option is to leave her at the local hospital which they call a 'social admission'. We are paying a consultant thousands of dollars to try and find an aged care placement. The system is broken." "I'm in a double sandwich generation family. My 80yr old parents have been caring for my grandmother for 20+ years (she has now been in aged care for a couple of years). I am supporting my parents whilst raising my kids, who are still young teenagers … I have limited my work (both in hours and in complexity) to prioritise my caring responsibilities. This [affects] my superannuation and plans for my aged care." Melissa Reader, chief executive of not-for-profit Violet Initiative, said sandwich carers were crying out for more support. "Sixty-thousand Australians will turn 85 in the next five or six years … so it's a really phenomenal shift in our demographics and it's putting enormous pressure on the adult caregivers of those elderly Australians," Ms Reader said. And she said the impact of people leaving the workforce would have widespread effects on society. She said a high proportion of sandwich carers were stepping out of their position in the workforce as teachers, nurses or aged care staff. Michelle O'Shea of the University of Western Sydney said a survey run by Carers NSW found sandwich carers wanted to be in paid employment. "[Survey participants expressed] getting out of the home, getting ready for work, going to a workplace, engaging with people as being so important," Dr O'Shea said. Dr O'Shea said carers were often forced into making short-term decisions to look after themselves which sometimes had long-term negative ramifications. "Having to not go for promotion, not necessarily being available for the same number of shifts, or moving from full-time to part-time employment where that was practical — carers talked about the fact that there was often an unwillingness within their current employment to enable their ongoing work," she said. "That is, you couldn't be a senior leader, or you couldn't be a supervisor, and be so on a part-time basis, for example." She said it was important for employers to be able to provide carers with the flexibility they needed such as starting later in the day, finishing later in the evening or allowing breaks in the day for medical appointments. And when that sort of flexibility was given, Dr O'Shea said it benefited everyone. "When that flexibility was provided there was a really positive sense — the employee felt really positive about their workplace, and said the fact they were being given flexibility [meant] that they were probably working over and above to acknowledge their employer's trust in them," she said.
