Australia

• Greater competition, contestability and informed user choice could improve outcomes in many, but not all, human services.
• The Commission has prioritised six areas where outcomes could be improved both for people who use human services, and the community as a whole. Reform could offer the greatest improvements in outcomes for people who use:
  • social housing
  • public hospitals
  • end-of-life care services
  • public dental services
  • services in remote Indigenous communities
  • government-commissioned family and community services.
• Well-designed reform, underpinned by strong government stewardship, could improve the quality of services, increase access to services, and help people have a greater say over the services they use and who provides them.
• Introducing greater competition, contestability and informed user choice can improve the effectiveness of human services.
  • Informed user choice puts users at the heart of service delivery and recognises that, in general, the service user is best placed to make decisions about the services that meet their needs and preferences.
  • Competition between service providers can drive innovation and create incentives for providers to be more responsive to the needs and preferences of users. Creating contestable arrangements amongst providers can achieve many of the benefits of effective competition.
  • For some services, and in some settings, direct government provision of services will be the best way to improve the wellbeing of individuals and families. The introduction of greater competition, contestability and choice does not preclude government provision of services.
• Access to high-quality human services, such as health and housing, underpins economic and social participation.
  • The enhanced equity and social cohesion this delivers improves community welfare.
• Government stewardship — the range of functions governments undertake that help to ensure service provision is effective at meeting its objectives — is critical.
  • Stewardship includes ensuring human services meet standards of quality, suitability and accessibility, giving people the support they need to make choices, ensuring that appropriate consumer safeguards are in place, and encouraging and adopting ongoing improvements to service provision.
• High-quality data are central to improving the effectiveness of human services.
  • User-oriented information allows people to make choices about the services they want and for providers to tailor their service offering to better meet users' needs.
  • Transparent use of data drives improvements in the performance of the system for the provision of human services and increases accountability to those who fund the services.

Well, that's Australia. Punching above our weight in punching down, while simultaneously a world leader in shooting ourselves in the foot.

Mark Aitken, a registered nurse for 39 years who spent 16 years in aged care roles including assessing elderly people for support and funding, said he quit his job in regional Victoria just four months into using the tool.

[…]

“Eight times out of 10, the outcome was different to one that I would have recommended, or my colleagues would have recommended,” Aitken said.

It follows previous controversies over automated decision-making tools being used by the government, including the robodebt welfare scandal, and concerns about algorithm-driven disability funding through the NDIS.

The IAT user guide does not explain how the algorithm weighs risk, need or complexity, and Aitken said this information was never revealed to assessors.

When he asked at a government seminar about the evaluation framework, including what data was being collected, how accuracy would be assessed, and whether results would be publicly reported, he said he felt “shut down”.

“I left my job because I didn’t want to be part of a system that removed the ultimate decision-making about support from real, experienced people who care,” he said.

“The government valued the algorithm more than people with skills, intelligence and knowledge.”

He said some assessors began “gaming” the system, inputting information they knew would generate the level of care the person needed even if that information did not accurately reflect their situation.

“People shouldn’t have to put in fake information,” Aitken said. “I just started to feel like it was going to be another robodebt, I became very uncomfortable, and just felt the tool wasn’t ethical.”

In evidence this morning the judge overseeing the case, Justice Michael O'Bryan, asked Coles to explain what it was telling customers with its prominent marketing campaign, featuring giant red hands pointing down.

"It's really asking a bigger question about what ordinary consumers understand about the Down Down program," Justice O'Bryan said.

In response, legal counsel for Coles John Sheahan KC said: "In terms of what consumers would take from the advertising campaigns and the red hand — not much."

"It's an indication that Coles is trying to keep prices low," he said.

[…]

Mr Sheahan said the ACCC case was too complicated because it relied on an assumption that the average shopper understood the many factors that went into deciding a price while they were browsing the aisles.

"It's too complex to credibly attribute to an ordinary, reasonable consumer walking down the aisle at Coles," he said.

"What they would be concerned [about] when they're walking down the aisle … is whether the claimed discount was, to use of the expression yesterday 'fair dinkum.'"

[…]

"In the end, all prices are temporary. Nothing lasts forever," Mr Sheahan said.

He said both sides accepted that the pricing tickets customers were shown in store were "literally correct".

Mr Sheahan repeated Coles's defence that it also reflected a genuine discount.

If Coles added background information about the price history to the ticket it would be too difficult to understand, he said.

The real gender ideologues at work:

Aiv Puglielli, the Greens’ equality spokesperson, on Wednesday moved a motion calling on the upper house’s legal and social issues committee to investigate the scale of such crimes, as well as the state’s current response and support available to victims.

It follows what Puglielli described as a “disturbing” and “terrifying” series of attacks targeting gay and bisexual men across several states and territories since 2024. In some instances, videos of the attacks have been recorded and posted on social media.

As of October 2024, 35 people had been arrested in relation to such incidents, Victoria police confirmed in a statement to Guardian Australia.

Police said the alleged offenders – most aged between 13 and 20 – had used fake profiles on dating apps to lure their victims.

“The victims are then allegedly assaulted, robbed, threatened and subjected to homophobic comments,” a police spokesperson said.

[…]

During the June 2025 sentencing of a 19-year-old Victorian man who met and assaulted two people after speaking to them on the gay dating app Grindr, the court heard he admitted to police he had been inspired by vigilante-style videos he had seen on TikTok.

Puglielli said the inquiry would examine how influencers sharing far-right, misogynistic and homophobic “alpha male” content operate online, and how to protect young people from their messaging.

He alleged some perpetrators, often very young men, had been “groomed and radicalised by far-right manosphere influencers”.

This is so, so important to read in full. For me to be told that a critically important part of my identity is reducible to my sexuality — an embarrassingly marginal part of my life — is not merely insulting but ridiculous. To tell children that not merely what they have, but what they are, is a fetish and that therefore they are for all practical purposes not allowed to even discuss it until they turn eighteen is murderous cruelty. Post-egg-crack, I don't know what I would have done if I'd not been able to establish friendships online with other trans women my age who had similar life trajectories.

Queer identity is one of being born into a secret society that you as a member have to discover as rite of induction. If you fail, misery tends to visit you again and again, without having a good explanation for it, dissatisfaction, and shame from an unknown source.

In this light, the push to #AgeVerification for social media and internet access is especially awful. With "queer" being equated to sex stuff exclusively, queerness is effectively banned in the era of life where teens are supposed to discover love, and have first, clumsy experiences. But while the cishets generally experience queerness from porn and get their fingers sticky to what they view as fetish, it is so much more. Especially for trans kids, research on who and what they are is postponed to a time when devastating damage is already taking place, and a lot of it in fact irreversible, or a huge effort and cost to correct.

The State Library of Victoria (SLV) conceded it had “created unintended concerns” with its proposal to cut 39 jobs and reduce services to focus on more “digital experiences”.

Musician Nick Cave was among 220 distinguished names to sign an open letter calling for the board to explain the restructure, which would have halved the number of reference librarians, from 25 to 10.

In a statement, board president Christine Christian said the library had “decided to withdraw” the proposal after “careful consideration of feedback”.

“Our focus will remain on strengthening services, modernising operations and ensuring the library continues to thrive as a leading home for history, arts, culture and knowledge for the next generation,” she said.

An email was mistakenly sent to a junior doctor who allegedly spoke up about being rostered on for 10 night shifts in a row, a practice which has been deemed unsafe for staff and their patients.

The message from a manager stated, “I wonder if any of them realise that they are a doctor and that this is what happens.

“Oh, that’s right… I forgot.

“Life style before career.

“God help us in the future.

“We are going to have a workforce of clinical marshmellows.”

Doctors Union President Dr Nicholas Spooner said the email was not an isolated incident at one hospital.

“It is a symptom of the broader crisis within our public hospitals that is playing out across NSW,” he said.

“Hospitals are severely understaffed and can’t meet patient demand. We have a toxic workplace culture that demands doctors risk their own health and safety to fill rosters.

Home ownership is falling fast among poorer Australians who are approaching retirement. Between 1981 and 2021, home ownership rates among the poorest 40 per cent of 45-54 year-olds fell from 68 per cent to just 54 per cent.

Most older working Australians who rent do not have sufficient savings to keep paying rent in retirement. The poorest 40 per cent of renting households aged 55-64 have less than $40,000 in net financial wealth.

Commonwealth Rent Assistance, which supplements the Age Pension for poorer retirees who rent, is far too low.

The government has lifted the maximum rate of Rent Assistance by 27 per cent – over and above inflation – in the past two budgets. But even after these increases, a single retiree who relies solely on income support can afford to rent just 4 per cent of one-bedroom homes in Sydney, 13 per cent in Brisbane, and 14 per cent in Melbourne.

And the rents paid by people who get Rent Assistance have increased nearly 1.5 times faster than the maximum rate of the payment since 2001.

Well said, this fellow:

Supporters of Israel’s conduct in Gaza and elements of the media have steadfastly defended the indefensible – the atrocities against Palestinians – and this campaign has deliberately created a serious confusion in our national discussion about what antisemitism is.

Antisemitism is not criticism of Israel or Zionism, nor is it a timeless or mystical hatred. It is not something caused by migration. It’s a political and historical form of racism that takes different shapes in different contexts. Right now, it is real, escalating and sometimes lethal – but it is being tackled in exactly the wrong way.

We have heard calls not only to investigate how a massacre occurred, but to place universities, protest movements, migrants, cultural institutions and human rights bodies under suspicion. As though they are responsible for bloodshed.
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I want antisemitism confronted. I want it named and addressed with urgency. But I do not want it treated as a political tool, a justification for silencing dissent or expanding state power in ways that will ultimately harm us all.