Government all at sea on toxic algae bloom
Four months ago, an algal bloom primarily caused by the microalgae Karenia mikimotoi was spotted in the waters off the Fleurieu Peninsula south of Adelaide, and has spread west to the Yorke Peninsula and east into the environmentally sensitive Coorong and across the mouth of the Murray River. Thousands of kilometres of South Australian beaches have been littered with dead sharks, rays, fish, dolphins and seals. Tourism has been devastated and the fishing industry is reeling. There are concerns, too, that prevailing currents could carry the bloom into Victorian or West Australian waters.
Going down 20 metres beneath the waves, the algae bloom is already almost double the size of the ACT and may be the biggest to hit Australia's coast. The South Australian government, scientists and environmental groups called for help early, but Canberra remained distracted by the federal election until this week, when federal Environment Minister Murray Watt announced a $14 million assistance package, but resisted calls to declare a natural disaster.
Watt admitted the bloom was a 'very serious environmental event' but it was wholly within South Australian-controlled waters and therefore did not meet the definition of a natural disaster. 'The Commonwealth natural disaster framework considers events like floods, cyclones and bushfires to be natural disasters, and if they are declared as such, they attract a range of funding,' Watt said.
These are nearly always land-based natural disasters, and while past governments thought the sea out of bounds, climate change and pollution suggest the definition needs updating. Such blinkered vision no longer passes the pub test. Imagine the uproar if a similar-sized toxic algal bloom hit Sydney's beaches, with the carcasses of fish and marine animals lining the sand and people prevented from going into the water.
Scientists believe the bloom may have resulted from a combination of nutrient-rich water from 2022 floods that flowed through the Murray-Darling system, the current SA drought, and a marine heatwave last September that pushed sea temperatures 2.5 degrees above normal.
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While the funding announced by Watt is welcome, most of it will probably go towards helping fishers and tourist operators, with money for research a distant afterthought. While coral reefs attract attention and funding, researching the algae bloom in the Great Southern Reef system along the bottom of Australia is expensive science, not least because of the depth of the water.
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Sydney Morning Herald
2 minutes ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
Australia news LIVE: Labor to introduce student debt cuts and childcare reform; Albanese urged to go greener; Ozzy Osbourne dead at 76
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The Advertiser
an hour ago
- The Advertiser
Student debt to be slashed, less cash deducted from pay
Students and graduates will soon see a reduction in their HECS debts and save hundreds of dollars a year. Federal Education Minister Jason Clare will introduce legislation to slash student debt by 20 per cent and increase the income that graduates need to earn before minimum repayments kick in. It's the first bill that the Albanese government will put before parliament at the start of its second term. People earning between $60,000 and $180,000 will save hundreds of dollars each year under the changes. Someone on $70,000 will save the most, $1300 a year, on minimum repayments due to an increase to the thresholds at which the debts must be paid back. Savings vary between incomes in the bracket, with people pocketing anywhere from $200 to $850. Bruce Chapman said it would make it fairer by giving those on lower salaries more money in their pockets, while their debts remain the same in nominal terms. "It looks bigger, in real terms it's not bigger," the architect of the HECS scheme told AAP. But the top priority should be reviewing the price of each degree because humanities students finish with the highest level of debt and end up being the lowest-paid graduates. "All the prices are wrong," Professor Chapman said. Mr Clare said reforms were being looked at, after the failure of the former Liberal government's job ready program. The program aimed to fill skills shortages by making it cheaper to study courses like teaching, nursing and psychology while doubling the cost of popular degrees including law, communications, business, humanities and the arts. "If the intention there was to reduce the number of people doing arts degrees, it hasn't worked," Mr Clare said. "People study the courses they're interested in, that they want to do, that they love." The universities accord final report branded the program "deeply unfair" because it punished students following their interest, and called for it to be scrapped. It recommended that fees reflect future earning potential, as part of 47 recommendations to reform the sector. Other aspects about how HECS is paid off also needed to be addressed, Prof Chapman said. HECS repayments are taken from a person's pay slip if they're earning above an income threshold. But the money isn't immediately taken off the HECS debt and is instead deducted as a lump sum at the end of the financial year after indexation has been applied on June 1. This means a higher debt is indexed as the repayments haven't been deducted and the university accord recommended it be reformed to make the system fairer. The Australian Tertiary Education Commission has been established in an interim capacity to implement long-term university reform and will review the HECS system over the next 12 months. Mr Clare will introduce further legislation in the coming months to set the commission up as a permanent body. Students and graduates will soon see a reduction in their HECS debts and save hundreds of dollars a year. Federal Education Minister Jason Clare will introduce legislation to slash student debt by 20 per cent and increase the income that graduates need to earn before minimum repayments kick in. It's the first bill that the Albanese government will put before parliament at the start of its second term. People earning between $60,000 and $180,000 will save hundreds of dollars each year under the changes. Someone on $70,000 will save the most, $1300 a year, on minimum repayments due to an increase to the thresholds at which the debts must be paid back. Savings vary between incomes in the bracket, with people pocketing anywhere from $200 to $850. Bruce Chapman said it would make it fairer by giving those on lower salaries more money in their pockets, while their debts remain the same in nominal terms. "It looks bigger, in real terms it's not bigger," the architect of the HECS scheme told AAP. But the top priority should be reviewing the price of each degree because humanities students finish with the highest level of debt and end up being the lowest-paid graduates. "All the prices are wrong," Professor Chapman said. Mr Clare said reforms were being looked at, after the failure of the former Liberal government's job ready program. The program aimed to fill skills shortages by making it cheaper to study courses like teaching, nursing and psychology while doubling the cost of popular degrees including law, communications, business, humanities and the arts. "If the intention there was to reduce the number of people doing arts degrees, it hasn't worked," Mr Clare said. "People study the courses they're interested in, that they want to do, that they love." The universities accord final report branded the program "deeply unfair" because it punished students following their interest, and called for it to be scrapped. It recommended that fees reflect future earning potential, as part of 47 recommendations to reform the sector. Other aspects about how HECS is paid off also needed to be addressed, Prof Chapman said. HECS repayments are taken from a person's pay slip if they're earning above an income threshold. But the money isn't immediately taken off the HECS debt and is instead deducted as a lump sum at the end of the financial year after indexation has been applied on June 1. This means a higher debt is indexed as the repayments haven't been deducted and the university accord recommended it be reformed to make the system fairer. The Australian Tertiary Education Commission has been established in an interim capacity to implement long-term university reform and will review the HECS system over the next 12 months. Mr Clare will introduce further legislation in the coming months to set the commission up as a permanent body. Students and graduates will soon see a reduction in their HECS debts and save hundreds of dollars a year. Federal Education Minister Jason Clare will introduce legislation to slash student debt by 20 per cent and increase the income that graduates need to earn before minimum repayments kick in. It's the first bill that the Albanese government will put before parliament at the start of its second term. People earning between $60,000 and $180,000 will save hundreds of dollars each year under the changes. Someone on $70,000 will save the most, $1300 a year, on minimum repayments due to an increase to the thresholds at which the debts must be paid back. Savings vary between incomes in the bracket, with people pocketing anywhere from $200 to $850. Bruce Chapman said it would make it fairer by giving those on lower salaries more money in their pockets, while their debts remain the same in nominal terms. "It looks bigger, in real terms it's not bigger," the architect of the HECS scheme told AAP. But the top priority should be reviewing the price of each degree because humanities students finish with the highest level of debt and end up being the lowest-paid graduates. "All the prices are wrong," Professor Chapman said. Mr Clare said reforms were being looked at, after the failure of the former Liberal government's job ready program. The program aimed to fill skills shortages by making it cheaper to study courses like teaching, nursing and psychology while doubling the cost of popular degrees including law, communications, business, humanities and the arts. "If the intention there was to reduce the number of people doing arts degrees, it hasn't worked," Mr Clare said. "People study the courses they're interested in, that they want to do, that they love." The universities accord final report branded the program "deeply unfair" because it punished students following their interest, and called for it to be scrapped. It recommended that fees reflect future earning potential, as part of 47 recommendations to reform the sector. Other aspects about how HECS is paid off also needed to be addressed, Prof Chapman said. HECS repayments are taken from a person's pay slip if they're earning above an income threshold. But the money isn't immediately taken off the HECS debt and is instead deducted as a lump sum at the end of the financial year after indexation has been applied on June 1. This means a higher debt is indexed as the repayments haven't been deducted and the university accord recommended it be reformed to make the system fairer. The Australian Tertiary Education Commission has been established in an interim capacity to implement long-term university reform and will review the HECS system over the next 12 months. Mr Clare will introduce further legislation in the coming months to set the commission up as a permanent body. Students and graduates will soon see a reduction in their HECS debts and save hundreds of dollars a year. Federal Education Minister Jason Clare will introduce legislation to slash student debt by 20 per cent and increase the income that graduates need to earn before minimum repayments kick in. It's the first bill that the Albanese government will put before parliament at the start of its second term. People earning between $60,000 and $180,000 will save hundreds of dollars each year under the changes. Someone on $70,000 will save the most, $1300 a year, on minimum repayments due to an increase to the thresholds at which the debts must be paid back. Savings vary between incomes in the bracket, with people pocketing anywhere from $200 to $850. Bruce Chapman said it would make it fairer by giving those on lower salaries more money in their pockets, while their debts remain the same in nominal terms. "It looks bigger, in real terms it's not bigger," the architect of the HECS scheme told AAP. But the top priority should be reviewing the price of each degree because humanities students finish with the highest level of debt and end up being the lowest-paid graduates. "All the prices are wrong," Professor Chapman said. Mr Clare said reforms were being looked at, after the failure of the former Liberal government's job ready program. The program aimed to fill skills shortages by making it cheaper to study courses like teaching, nursing and psychology while doubling the cost of popular degrees including law, communications, business, humanities and the arts. "If the intention there was to reduce the number of people doing arts degrees, it hasn't worked," Mr Clare said. "People study the courses they're interested in, that they want to do, that they love." The universities accord final report branded the program "deeply unfair" because it punished students following their interest, and called for it to be scrapped. It recommended that fees reflect future earning potential, as part of 47 recommendations to reform the sector. Other aspects about how HECS is paid off also needed to be addressed, Prof Chapman said. HECS repayments are taken from a person's pay slip if they're earning above an income threshold. But the money isn't immediately taken off the HECS debt and is instead deducted as a lump sum at the end of the financial year after indexation has been applied on June 1. This means a higher debt is indexed as the repayments haven't been deducted and the university accord recommended it be reformed to make the system fairer. The Australian Tertiary Education Commission has been established in an interim capacity to implement long-term university reform and will review the HECS system over the next 12 months. Mr Clare will introduce further legislation in the coming months to set the commission up as a permanent body.
Sydney Morning Herald
2 hours ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
Cutting HECS debt is the least Albanese could do for young Australians. He should do more
You don't pay the tuition fee upfront – the government pays the university on your behalf, and you repay the government. But, unlike any commercial loan you'll ever get, when you to have start repaying, and the size of your repayment, depend on how much you're earning. So, in principle, you should never be paying more than you can afford. Loading You don't pay interest on the loan, but the outstanding balance is indexed to the rate of inflation – which, to an economist's way of thinking, means you're paying a 'real' interest rate of zero. If you never earn enough to be able to repay the loan – say because you become a monk – you never have to pay the loan back. That's by design, not accident. Trouble is, successive governments have not only made the scheme less generous, the post-COVID inflation surge has added greatly to people's HECS debts. Debts have become so big they reduce the size of the home loans banks are willing to give graduates. Worse, in the name of encouraging young people to take supposedly 'job-ready' courses such as teaching, nursing and STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths), in 2021 the Morrison government reduced their annual tuition fees, whereas fees for courses such as business, law and the humanities were greatly increased. Fortunately, this half-brained scheme did little to change students' choices, but did mean abandoning the previous arrangement in which the fees for various courses were geared roughly to the size of the salaries those graduates were likely to earn. The cost of an arts degree is now about $17,000 a year, or a massive $50,000 for the full three years. So it's people who have studied the humanities who now have debts quite out of whack with their earning ability. Smart move, Scomo! Albanese's 20 per cent cut in debt levels will do little to fix this crazy misalignment of fees with future earning potential. The cut will have a cost to the budget of about a huge $16 billion in theory, but more like $11 billion when you allow for all the debts that were never going to be repaid anyway. By making it a percentage cut rather than a flat dollar amount, too much of the benefit will go to highly paid doctors and lawyers. And, in any case, of all the young adults having trouble with the cost of living in recent years, those on graduate salaries are hardly the most deserving. On the other hand, at a time when, justifiably, the young feel the system has been stacked against them, I can't be too disapproving of Albo's flashy measure to help keep the younger generation's faith that, in the end, the democratic process will ensure most age groups get a reasonable shake. Loading The young are right to feel bitter about the way earlier generations have enjoyed the ever-rising value of their homes while allowing the cost of home ownership to become unreachable for an ever-growing proportion of our young. And that's before you get to other features of our tax and benefits system that favour the old. Thankfully, the government is making the rules for HECS repayments much less onerous, making them work the same way as the income tax scale. The minimum threshold for repayments will be raised from income of $56,000 a year to $67,000. Your income between $67,000 and $125,000 will require a repayment of 15 per cent, and 17 per cent on income above that. This will yield significant savings to those with debts. But, of course, the lower your repayments, the longer it will take to clear your debt and the more your outstanding balance will be indexed for inflation.
