Australia

We looked at the latest research from around the world to understand what knowledge was being used to inform the care of children and young people with gender dysphoria by looking for research published in the scientific literature between 2019 and 2023. This work builds on a previous report we provided to NSW Health summarising the research published between 2000 and 2019.

We found 82 research studies published since 2019. This represents a rapid growth in research in this field. Various methods of varying quality were used to gather information in these studies. While we found that there hasn’t been a significant increase in the use of gold-standard methods (such as, randomised controlled trials (RCTs)) in this emerging field of research, we were still able to draw out meaningful insights into the effectiveness and risks of gender dysphoria treatments. The research we found provides a good starting point for discussing critical issues with patients, caregivers, and healthcare providers, including deciding where to invest in future research.

NSW Health will use this review’s findings to guide various projects designed to gather more information from experts and people with lived experiences, with the aim of providing safe and effective psychological and medical treatment services for young people with gender dysphoria.

The criminalisation and repression of climate and environmental protest is problematic for at least two main reasons. First, it focuses state policy on punishing dissent against inaction on climate and environmental change instead of taking adequate action on these issues. In criminalising and repressing climate and environmental activists, states depoliticise them. Second, they represent authoritarian moves that are not consistent with the ideals of vibrant civil societies in liberal democracies.

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Governments, legislatures, courts and police forces should operate with a general presumption against criminalising climate and environmental protests. Instead, climate and environmental protest should be regarded as a reasonable response to the urgent and existential nature of the climate crisis, and activists engaged as stakeholders in a process of just transition.

The Australian Inequality Index is a ground-breaking new tool that provides a multidimensional measure of inequality across a range of economic, social, and demographic indicators. By tracking changes in inequality over time, we hope to enable a richer, more nuanced understanding of the root causes of inequality and develop targeted solutions to address them.

The over-reliance of economists and policy makers on traditional measures of progress, such as Gross Domestic Product (GDP) or Gross National Income (GNI), is understandable: it has been the dominant measure of economic progress for the better part of a century. Yet there is a shift afoot, with many policy thinkers and leaders now acknowledging its limitations as a tool to measure genuine social progress.

This shift can be seen in the rise of movements advocating the implementation of wellbeing budgets as a core part of government policy processes. That the Australian Federal Government has recently embraced the wellbeing framework underscores the utility and timeliness of our Index.

The Index provides seven conceptually sound, easy to follow sub-indices, and a composite index that brings these seven dimensions together. The sub-indices provide a useful set of insights into progress achieved within each of the chosen dimensions: income, wealth, gender, generation, ethnicity, disability and First Nations. 

Funded by the Department of Social Services, the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey is a nationally representative longitudinal study of Australian households.

HILDA is funded by the Australian Government through the Department of Social Services and is managed by the Melbourne Institute.

The Melbourne Institute publishes the latest findings from the HILDA Survey each year, allowing Australians to see how different aspects of their lives have changed over time.

Commonwealth Government engagement in housing was very limited until the war of 1939-45 when the conditions were ripe for its leadership. Reviewing the nation’s social security system, Parliament concluded that housing was important in achieving a fairer society.

The Commonwealth Housing Commission (CHC) in the letter of transmittal accompanying its final report said:

"We consider that a dwelling of good standard and equipment is not only the need but the right of every citizen – whether the dwelling is to be rented or purchased, no tenant or purchaser should be exploited for excessive profit (Emphasis in original) CHC 25 August 1944)"

The CHC statement summarised the aspirations that had energised housing reformers as they responded to the privations of the previous half century. The Commonwealth’s development of a public housing program was seen as a way of giving effect to the CHC’s assertion.

This paper charts the departure from that lofty ambition since 1945 revealed as a series of episodes around the periodic Commonwealth State Housing Agreements (CSHAs) from 1945 to 2000.

Slum clearance and rehousing the displaced population was another important subject during the late Depression years. The identification of flats, terraces, and tenements, particularly in the inner city, as slums irrespective of how sound they were as housing stock was as much a moral judgment as a functional one. The claim that overcrowding in the slums would lead inevitably to alcoholism, crime and indecency, suggested that “morality is a question of square feet” (Spearritt 1974:65).

The Commonwealth proposed to create a public housing program under which households would be able to rent housing from a State housing authority as a matter of choice but low income households were expected to be a significant proportion of tenants. The original CSHA provided for the sale of houses although that the proportion would initially be very low.

Tell me about it …

A new Everybody’s Home report reveals that Australians on the lowest incomes are being priced out of renting in virtually every corner of the country, despite a rise in Centrelink payments and rent assistance.

The ‘Priced Out’ 2024 report shows people who primarily rely on Centrelink payments and the full-time minimum wage would be in severe rental stress across all capital cities and most regional areas.

The report applies Friday’s indexation increase to Centrelink payments and 10 percent rise to Commonwealth Rent Assistance (CRA) with indexation on top, with the findings underscoring the need for more social housing and for payments to reflect the cost of housing.  

Key findings include:

• Single JobSeeker recipients are facing acute rental stress, and would have to spend all their income or more on unit rents in most capital cities and 10 regional areas
• Those relying on the Age Pension, Disability Support Pension or working full-time on the minimum wage would likely be in severe rental stress in almost every part of the country
• Based on capital city rents, people on the Age Pension and Disability Support Pension would be left with $8 a day after paying rent, while a person on the minimum wage would be left with a little over $25 a day. A person on JobSeeker would be left with $0 and have to find $122 on top of their income.
• The most unaffordable areas outside of the capital cities include the Gold Coast, Northern WA, Sunshine Coast, and Wollongong, where people primarily living on Centrelink payments, or the minimum wage would have to spend at least half their income on rent.
   

All these things have increased housing demand, as have the grab bag of government subsidies for homebuyers: first home owner grants, stamp duty concessions, mortgage deposit guarantee schemes and shared equity schemes.

Saul Eslake sardonically calls them “builders’ and land developers’ profit margin expansion grants”, and notes that once again John Howard’s fingerprints are on them.

“Almost 60 years of history – since Menzies introduced the first home owners’ grant scheme at the instigation of the Young Liberals’ then president, John Howard – shows that anything that allows Australians to pay more for housing than they otherwise would have has resulted in more expensive housing, not in more people owning houses.

“Suppose a first homebuyer can afford to spend $500,000. And then the state government comes along and says, ‘Well, you won’t have to pay $50,000 on stamp duty’, then the homebuyer thinks, ‘Well, okay, I can now afford to spend $550,000.’ Probably buying the same house, because there’ll be someone else with the same stamp duty exemption competing for it.”

In Australia, the Parliamentary Budget Office estimates the cost of tax breaks for the owners of multiple properties – including in particular negative gearing and capital gains tax rebates – will be more than $165 billion over the next decade. That’s almost half a million dollars for each of the 377,000 new dwellings the NSW government aims to build in the state under the National Housing Accord – deployable as a subsidy or used to build mass public housing outright with no net cost.

Ending these wealth-entrenching tax breaks would have other immense benefits as well. In particular, it would disincentivise housing-as-investment, thereby cooling the market and making purchase more possible for the young. At the same time, it would redirect massive investment funds towards industries that actually create goods.

Further, by reducing the incentive to land-bank, it would likely decrease vacancy rates. Of Australia’s roughly 10 million homes, 10 per cent were empty on the last census night. Prosper Australia estimates almost half of these vacant homes were “speculative vacancies”, deliberately kept empty or derelict.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's government says the move is needed to shore up domestic energy supply while supporting a transition to net zero.

But critics argue the move is a rejection of science, pointing to the International Energy Agency (IEA) call for "huge declines in the use of coal, oil and gas" to reach climate targets.

Australia - one of the world's largest exporters of liquefied natural gas - has also said the policy is based on "its commitment to being a reliable trading partner".

Released on Thursday, the strategy outlines the government's plans to work with industry and state leaders to increase both the production and exploration of the fossil fuel.

The government will also continue to support the expansion of the country's existing gas projects, the largest of which are run by Chevron and Woodside Energy Group in Western Australia. 

From the ABC's summary:

The Albanese government's Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee released its second report recently. […]

The committee made 22 recommendations to the federal government on ways to best improve economic inclusion and create a more equal and prosperous nation.

It said its recommendations had been made with regard to their fiscal impact, their effect on workforce participation, and the long-term sustainability of the social security system.

But the committee said its five priority recommendations were to:

• "Substantially increase JobSeeker" and related working-age payments, and immediately improve the indexation arrangements of the payments.
• Increase the rate of Commonwealth Rent Assistance to better reflect the high rents actually charged in the private rental market.
• Commit to a "full-scale redesign" of Australia's employment services system to underpin the government's goal of full employment, and to replace the current system, which "worsens economic exclusion" with one that "promotes economic inclusion".
• Implement a national early childhood development system that is available to every child, beginning with abolishing the activity test for the child care subsidy to guarantee access to a minimum three days of high-quality care.
• Renew the culture and practice of Australia's social security system to support economic inclusion and wellbeing.

The committee's experts said that last point was really important.