A perfectly formed example of just how corrupted our public administration has become occurred on Thursday near the bridge crossing the Shoalhaven River in Nowra, two and a half hours south of Sydney

Foreign Minister Marise Payne was there to inspect bridgework across the river in the middle of town – a $342 million New South Wales and Commonwealth infrastructure project promised prior to the 2019 election.

Labor won the seat of Gilmore but the Liberals, with a keen eye on the next election, was flying the party flag, cheering on delivery of a promise and sowing seeds for a possible new local MP.

Marise Payne pulled out of an event spruiking a $342 million taxpayer-funded project after local Labor MP Fiona Phillips turned up.

Senator Payne didn’t go ahead with her planned media event , put off by the arrival of Labor MP Fiona Phillips who assumed the elected local member should be present at a big publicly funded event on her patch.
Phillips watched Liberal senator Jim Molan speak – before Payne left without uttering a word – but was told she couldn’t take part in the announcement as it was “a Liberal event”.

The promise for funds to upgrade the Nowra bridge was central to Liberal attempts at wrestling the Labor seat back to the Coalition fold, with prime ministerial favourite candidate Nyunggai Warren Mundine shoe-horned in against the wishes of Liberal rank and file.

It failed – but Morrison never admits defeat, and he has Gilmore on his target-seat list for this year’s election.

As election time rolls around – September and October are months most mentioned – it will be interesting to see whether Morrison and his ministers take their foot off the opening gear for the pork barrel sluice gate.

Will they chance another round of sports rorts ? Will more safe streets and communities pledges be made? Will women’s sport be singled out for extra bags of funds, wanted or unwanted? What about some new park and ride facilities for train stations?

• Related: Michael Pascoe: Grants rorts? Wait, there’s more …

Being a wealthy private school will not disqualify anyone from sporting sheds or rowing club kit – every player can win a prize if you’re in the right marginal seat with the right number of appropriately coloured ticks on a ministerial spreadsheet.

The Nowra bridge is spare change in the billions spent on grants schemes that festooned the last federal election campaign, but it’s a political carbuncle that oozes the putrid pus of corrupt process.

Sure, the bridge upgrade is needed and will be welcomed. However, it’s only being done for political reasons. If it was in the safe seat of Riverina, motorists would have to suck it up as they bounced into a pothole here and there.

The failures and faults of Donald Trump’s administration were measured in many ways, none more compelling than the constantly updated Fact Checker at The Washington Post .

Scott Morrison has a lot in common with Donald Trump. Photo: Getty

By the time Trump left office, the Post had tallied 30,537 lies, falsehoods and misleading claims.

If Trump’s corruption of public life is measured in lies, Morrison’s should be counted in rorted and maladministered funding schemes – with a slew of outright dodgy, tender-free deals sprinkled on for pungency.

The latest issue of The Monthly had just hit newsstands and websites with an exhaustive look at government scandals by editor Nick Felk when the ABC’s 7.30 added to the already long and winding hall of shame.

Scandals are nothing new in Aust politics, but the way they have piled up in the recent years of Coalition government points to a critical shift in our governance. Acts of malfeasance and impropriety have become more than isolated episodes.

My new piece: https://t.co/wP6txAwalP

— Nick Feik (@NickFeik) February 1, 2021

Former deputy Nationals leader Bridget McKenzie’s election-ready spread sheet of grants aimed at marginals tops most people’s list but the stacking of government bodies like the Administrative Appeals Tribunal – where almost 100 Liberal mates including former MPs, candidates and staffers have been salted over the past seven years – should not be overlooked.

Stunningly, McKenzie still claims she did nothing wrong, repeating her sainted self-assessment at a Senate hearing on Friday and declaring she was proud of the program. During the hearing, McKenzie sought to have the word “rort” struck from the record. She failed.

Bridget McKenzie lost her ministerial job over the #sportsrorts scandal, but insists she’s “proud” of the program.

Now Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton has been exposed as having intervened to shift money around with plenty of spending redirected to seats the government wanted to win or was keen to defend.

Dutton calls criticism of his obvious distortion of the granting of funds as “absurd” because he was just spreading the cash around in a scheme that was clearly oversubscribed.

When he was asked about the Dutton community-safety money tree, Morrison blamed those asking questions: “It’s just the Labor Party throwing mud, it’s what they do”.

• Related: PM defends Peter Dutton over rorting allegations

Morrison insists he’s not aware of “any breaches of any rules or regulations in relation to the administration of that program”.

Scott Morrison has dismissed questions over Peter Dutton’s allocation of funds. Photo: AAP

This is a cover-all cover-up that can be distilled down to a get out of jail free card reading: “We set the rules, you don’t know what they are but trust me I know these rules and no rules have been breached because we set the rules and they are being observed. The rules have been set so that we can do what we need to do to stay within the rules”

There are myriad examples of societal changes which sped up during the last 12 months of SARS-CoV-2, whether it’s working from home or shopping online.

One trend that has become more prevalent is the complete absence of consequence for poor public behaviour and administration aka corruption and cronyism. Now more than ever we need consequences, we deserve consequences. The insouciant, lackadaisical attitude of leaders like Scott Morrison is a disgrace.

The post Dennis Atkins: Scott Morrison will leave a legacy of pork-barrelling without consequence appeared first on The New Daily .

Lewis Hamilton has ended his long-running contract saga with Mercedes by signing a new one-year deal.

The seven-time world champion’s extension was announced by the sport’s all-conquering team on Monday ahead of the new Formula One campaign which gets under way in Bahrain next month.

Hamilton, 36, will be bidding to win an unprecedented eighth world title.

Hamilton, who was knighted in the New Year Honours, has been in the unusual situation of being out of contract since his last $71.5 million-a-year deal expired on the final day of December.

But after several weeks of negotiations with Mercedes, the British driver’s future has finally been settled, albeit with both parties agreeing to only one extra year.

“I am excited to be heading into my ninth season with my Mercedes teammates,” said Hamilton, who has spent much of the off-season training in America.

“Our team has achieved incredible things together and we look forward to building on our success even further, while continuously looking to improve, both on and off the track.”

Hamilton, who persuaded his Mercedes team to change their livery from silver to black to highlight the fight against racism, added: “I’m equally determined to continue the journey we started to make motorsport more diverse for future generations and I am grateful that Mercedes has been extremely supportive of my call to address this issue.

I’m proud to say we are taking that effort further this year by launching a foundation dedicated to diversity and inclusion in the sport.

“I am inspired by all that we can build together and can’t wait to get back on the track in March.”

Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff said: “We have always been aligned with Lewis that we would continue, but the very unusual year we had in 2020 meant it took some time to finish the process.

“Together, we have decided to extend the sporting relationship for another season and to begin a longer-term project to take the next step in our shared commitment to greater diversity within our sport.”

Hamilton surpassed Michael Schumacher’s record number of victories last season and emulated the German by winning a seventh title.

Hamilton galloped to the crown, wrapping up the record-equalling triumph with three rounds remaining at November’s Turkish Grand Prix.

But the Briton was forced to miss the penultimate round in Bahrain after he contracted coronavirus.

The post Lewis Hamilton re-signs with Mercedes for one year appeared first on The New Daily .

Spasms of devotional fervor last week left Republicans and Democrats in the US Congress accusing, defending and generally freaking out over heretic women in their midst.

This being 2021, talk of witches seems— even for the GOP —a bit medieval. The “which” is not about the Devil but Direction – as in which way will the parties now head in the post-Trump era?

Unlike 1690s Massachusetts, no one’s been hung in the town square or crushed by stones. But the apocalyptic vibe, with talk of heresy and retribution, is not unlike the mood that engulfed the God-fearing colonists that bleak winter in Salem.

The most colourful alleged sorceress is Marjorie Taylor Greene, a newly minted GOP congresswoman for Georgia.

Ms Greene is/was a far-right follower of QAnon, the wacky right-wing conspiracy grab bag that believes Democrats are led by pedophiles and the Clintons killed JFK Jr.

Georgia Marjorie Taylor Greene last week as the House met to vote on whether to strip Ms Greene of two committee assignments. Photo: AAP

Her social media history has been dusted like a crime scene, revealing anti-Semitism, harassment of school shooting victims, doubts about 9/11 and the tacit approval of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s assassination.

A Trump acolyte remarkable for her lack of polish or shame, Greene is an easy target, and GOP House Leader Kevin McCarthy found himself under pressure to scold her, thereby demonstrating the party’s return to sanity.

At the same time and from the other direction, Mr McCarthy was confronting calls to censure Liz Cheney, a high-ranking party leader and mainstream Republican, for her scalding criticism of President Trump and his role in the January 6 uprising at the Capitol .

The blasphemous Ms Cheney, daughter of former vice president Dick Cheney, is now facing fury from her Wyoming constituents and almost certainly faces a primary challenge in 2022.

In a dramatic showdown meeting with GOP congressional members last Wednesday night, McCarthy presided over a collective kicking of the can. ms Cheney was re-elected to her party post, while Ms Greene escaped any discipline after a tepid mea culpa over a few of her past positions.

(Unlike another McCarthy, who pioneered “witch hunts” for imagined Communist agents in the 1950s, this McCarthy has no taste for intra-party conflict, even if he risks looking weak or intolerably tolerant.)

For Democrats – who will begin their second impeachment case against Donald Trump this week in the Senate – that should have been enough.

They could keep baiting the GOP to police their members while delighting in the civil war everyone had predicted. With the Republicans split between disciples awaiting Trump’s resurrection and those eager to move on, the GOP is just the kind of wounded animal the Democrats need to prevail early in the Biden presidency.

But unable to stay out of the way while their enemy was self-destructing, House Dems had to get in on the action.

In a move of performative indignation, they voted to strip Greene of her Congressional committee posts, an unprecedented act of hostility by an opposition party.

Greene is odious and an embarrassment to the GOP, and shouldn’t be in Congress. But she is also cartoonish, powerless – and potentially gone in two years.

Training such heavy artillery on a freshman Congress person already in the minority is overkill. And it will surely invite retribution if the Republicans manage to regain the House of Representatives at the midterms in 2024.

Should that happen, one possible GOP target is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez , 31, of New York, who is to the GOP what Greene is to Democrats. Her brand of savvy progressivism and witty social media polemics has enraged the right – so much so that she was explicitly targeted for execution by some mob members during the January 6 insurrection violence.

Last week, Ms Oscasio-Cortez recounted her terror during those hours, and in the telling revealed her own struggle with sexual abuse. Instead of sympathy – or at least silence – right-wing pundits tried to dispute her account, suggesting she exaggerated her trauma and fibbed about her location.

The GOP would need little prodding to go after the likes of Ms Oscasio-Cortez – depriving New York and Democrats of a voice far more important than Ms Greene’s could ever hope to be from the other side.

Five years of Trump have left both parties over-caffeinated, unable to focus on policy solutions when you can fight about personalities instead.

Democrats missed a good chance to show what’s important, and score political points, by not leaving well enough alone when it comes to Ms Greene and her nuttiness.

The post Trump impeachment is the focus – but pay attention to the ‘Which’ Trials appeared first on The New Daily .

It seems Energy Minister Angus Taylor can’t help himself when it comes to using fake numbers to justify not taking action to curb Australia’s emissions at the expense of fossil fuels.

Though he is formerly dubbed as “Minister For Emissions Reduction” his latest effort unveiling his agenda for a future fuels strategy shows it actually increases transport emissions by 6 per cent over the decade to 2030.

The minister goes to extraordinary lengths to claim that hybrid vehicles will emit less pollution than 100 per cent electric ones.

He does this according to analysis by Dr Jake Whitehead, a transport economist and United Nations lead author for its International Panel On Climate Change, by ignoring the emissions of extracting, shipping and refining imported fuel so that his figures have “likely underestimated pollution” for petrol/diesel vehicles by 20 per cent.

Mr Taylor, you may remember, embarrassed himself and the government by using fake travel costs to attack Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore after she had the temerity to call out the Morrison government for being climate laggards.

Weeks out from the last election he used a fake image on Twitter to show a Nissan Leaf electric vehicle being charged by a petrol driven generator on a weekend camping trip.

Tweet from @AngusTaylorMP

This puerile demonisation of electric vehicles is of a piece with the Morrison government’s near complete capitulation to fossil fuel interests at an increasingly greater cost to Australia’s national interest.

Tweet from @SamPCrosby

On Monday Prime Minister Scott Morrison proclaimed that his government, through the Joint Strike Fighter initiative, was “delivering sovereign capabilities to keep Australia safe”.

Neither he nor his minister are doing the same when it comes to fuel security, a situation lamented by one of Australia’s most distinguished soldiers Major General, now senator Jim Molan.

Australia holds just 28 days worth of fuel – well below the international safety standard of 90 days to meet any crisis, last year Mr Taylor did a $94 million deal to buy crude oil from the American stockpile.

There are, however, major import time lag and refining issues with the arrangement, made worse by a blinkered vision that fails to see that a rapid transition to electric vehicles – cars, trucks, trams and trains – would go a long way to address this strategic vulnerability.

Renewable energy is, after all, Australian made.

Mr Morrison has a preference he says “for net zero emission by 2050”, but he said last week at the National Press Club, “When I can tell you how we get there, that’s when I’ll tell you when we’re going to get there”.

• Related: Electric vehicles will tow us forward, despite PM’s brakes

The Prime Minister also claims he will do it by “technology and not taxation”; a proposition Malcolm Turnbull scoffed at when Tony Abbott, after successfully demolishing “Labor’s carbon tax”, introduced a policy of Direct Action.

That policy directly taxed Australians to pay polluters, as Mr Turnbull said almost 10 years ago: “Any suggestion you can dramatically cut emissions without any cost, is to use a favourite term of Mr Abbott, ‘bullshit’.”

Scott Morrison ‘prefers’ to reach net zero emissions by 2050. Photo: AAP

Since then, renewables are cheaper than any new coal or gas alternatives to produce electricity, and when it comes to “technology to get there” – we already have it.

Every technology roadmap we get from this government involves increasing, not curbing, carbon emissions whether it is “the gas-led recovery” or new petrol-driven hybrids.

Not only is transport a major source of emissions in Australia, it is made worse by the fact that the country has among the dirtiest petrol in the world, because we have no mandatory standards for fuel emissions.

And of course this suits the big petroleum companies just fine under the cover of cheaper petrol and diesel – never mind that it means we cannot import the most economical, modern engines because as Stephen Corby wrote in Cars Guide, “Our fuel is not clean enough”.

There is plenty of factual data to support Labor leader Anthony Albanese’s criticism of the PM on Monday for not actually doing anything significantly serious in this space.

Mr Albanese said: “He is all smirk and mirrors when it comes to action on climate change. Australians know that.”

If they do, it’s not because the government has come completely clean with them.

The post Paul Bongiorno: Exhaust smoke and mirrors can’t hide the Morrison government’s energy failings appeared first on The New Daily .

We’ve all looked up at night and admired the brightly shining stars. Beyond making a gorgeous spectacle, measuring that light helps us learn about matter in our galaxy, the Milky Way.

When astronomers add up all the ordinary matter detectable around us (such as in galaxies, stars and planets), they find only half the amount expected to exist, based on predictions. This normal matter is “baryonic”, which means it’s made up of baryon particles such as protons and neutrons.

But about half of this matter in our galaxy is too dark to be detected by even the most powerful telescopes. It takes the form of cold, dark clumps of gas. In this dark gas is the Milky Way’s “missing” baryonic matter.

In a paper published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, we detail the discovery of five twinkling far-away galaxies that point to the presence of an unusually shaped gas cloud in the Milky Way. We think this cloud may be linked to the missing matter.

Finding what we can’t see

Stars twinkle because of turbulence in our atmosphere. When their light reaches Earth, it gets bent as it bounces through different layers of the atmosphere.

Rarely, galaxies can twinkle too, due to the turbulence of gas in the Milky Way. We see this twinkling because of the luminous cores of distant galaxies named “quasars”.

Astronomers can use quasars a bit like backlights, to reveal the presence of clumps of gas around us that would otherwise be impossible to see. The challenge, however, is that it is very rare to catch quasars twinkling.

This is where the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) comes in. This highly sensitive telescope can view an area about the size of the Southern Cross and detect tens of thousands of distant galaxies, including quasars, in a single observation.

Using ASKAP, we looked at the same patch of sky seven times. Of the 30,000 galaxies we could see, six were twinkling strongly. Surprisingly, five of these were arranged in a long, thin straight line.

Analysis showed we’d captured an invisible clump of gas between us and the galaxies. As light from the galaxies passed through the gas cloud, they appeared to twinkle.

At the centre is one of the strongly twinkling galaxies. The colours represent brightness, as it fluctuates between shining brightly (red) and more faintly (blue).

A clump of gas 10 light years away

The cloud of gas we detected was inside the Milky Way, about 10 light years away from Earth. For reference, one light year is 9.7 trillion kilometres.

That means light from those twinkling galaxies travelled billions of light years towards Earth, only to be disrupted by the cloud during the last 10 years of its journey.

By observing the sky positions of not just the five twinkling galaxies, but also tens of thousands of non-twinkling ones, we were able to draw a boundary around the gas cloud.

We were intrigued by the sky positions of the twinkling galaxies in our ASKAP observations. Each black dot above represents a brightly-shining, distant object.

We found it was very straight, the same length as four Moons side-by-side, and only two “arcminutes” in width. This is so thin it’s the equivalent of looking at a strand of hair held at arm’s length.

This is the first time astronomers have been able to calculate the geometry and physical properties of a gas cloud in this way. But where did it come from? And what gave it such an unusual shape?

It’s freezing out there

Astronomers have predicted that when a star passes too close to a black hole, the extreme forces from the black hole will pull it apart, resulting in a long, thin gas stream.

But there are no massive black holes near that cloud of gas – the closest one we know about is more than 1000 light years from Earth.

So we propose another theory: that a hydrogen “snow cloud” was disrupted and stretched out by gravitational forces from a nearby star, turning into a long thin gas cloud.

Snow clouds have only been studied as theoretical possibilities and are almost impossible to detect. But they would be so cold that droplets of hydrogen gas within them could freeze solid.

Some astronomers believe snow clouds make up part of the missing matter in the Milky Way.

It’s incredibly exciting for us to have measured an invisible clump of gas in such detail, using the ASKAP telescope. In the future we plan to repeat our experiment on a much larger scale and hopefully create a “cloud map” of the Milky Way.

We’ll then be able to work out how many other gas clouds are out there, how they’re distributed and what role they might have played in the evolution of the Milky Way.

---

Yuanming Wang , PhD student, University of Sydney and Tara Murphy , Professor, University of Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article .

The post Five twinkling galaxies help us uncover the mystery of the Milky Way’s missing matter appeared first on The New Daily .

Australia’s free ride on climate change is set to end, with the European Union taking the first step to introduce a cross border carbon tax.

The European Parliament gave the nod to the move on Friday, which means Australian products entering the EU will be hit by a tariff to make up for the fact Australia has no price on carbon.

“It would be a major blow for the Australian government both economically and diplomatically,” said John Quiggin, economics professor at the University of Queensland.

The move has been on the international agenda for some time and has been taken increasingly seriously since Australia dropped its carbon tax in 2014 following the election of the Abbott government.

“It has been talked about a lot in recent years and the election of [US President] Joe Biden means there is a renewed focus on climate policy around the globe,” said Scott Hamilton, consultant to the Smart Energy Council.

“Everyone is getting serious about it except the Australian government.”

Hitting home

Australia’s lack of a coherent energy policy is starting to hit the energy sector locally and is eroding investment plans from major players.

Last week, generation giant AGL Energy wrote down its assets by $2.7 billion and Origin Energy signalled its earnings would be 13 per cent, or $175 million, below expectations.

“AGL has written down a massive $2.7 billion from its asset base because of lower prices for base load coal and losses on forward power purchase agreements,” Tom Allen, energy analyst with UBS, told The New Daily .

AGL had agreed to buy renewable power for over $80 a megawatt hour but the price has since fallen below $50.

Origin’s write-downs consisted of $100 million from gas and $75 million from power generation as prices fell. Without a firm government energy policy in place and with large amounts of new wind power hitting the market, AGL’s coal generation was hit by price drops.

The resulting collapse in the price of wind power meant that previous renewable purchase deals that AGL had made at higher prices became loss makers.

New investment barred

With numerous coal plants scheduled to close in coming years, the market needs AGL to invest in new gas generation to balance growing renewables .

But energy giants AGL and Origin are in a tough bind, as the Morrison government has pledged to help smaller players build gas plants and threatened to build one itself.

‘It is very hard for AGL to make investment decisions about new generation when your competition might get a Commonwealth subsidy and you don’t know how much that will be,” Mr Allen said.

The uncertainty extends to the Prime Minister’s plans for a gas-powered revival in manufacturing , as investment becomes impossible when energy supply is uncertain.

Tweet from @ScottJourno

The world is moving quickly to decarbonise and Australia is increasingly being left behind.

“In Europe, they are tightening the rules with major manufacturing  having new emissions reductions targets for 2030 and 2050,” Mr Hamilton said.

“Germany has just put €9 billion ($14.2 billion) on the table for a new green hydrogen strategy and the UK committed to a net zero 2050 target and ambitious 2030 targets.

“Australia is becoming more and more isolated with an emissions reduction target of 26 to 28 per cent reductions on 2005 levels and no clear path to net zero. Others are in the mid to high 30s.”

Scottish test

Mr Hamilton said “it will all come to a crunch later this year with the UN Climate Summit in Glasgow”.

Newly appointed US Climate Commissioner John Kerry has described it as “ the last best chance “ to avert the worst environmental consequences for the world.

The pressure from America will add to that from Europe, with Professor Quiggin saying the US and China were likely to follow suit with carbon border taxes of their own.

“Joe Biden has talked about it already. It’s possible that China will go in this direction too,” he said.

“Australia needs to take the matter seriously.

“The main political parties are worried about what Craig Kelly and Joel Fitzgibbon think about this. They aren’t worried about what Europe and the US are thinking.”

“[Major trading partners] Korea and Japan are already on board with a 2050 target but there is no public sign that we are paying attention to it,” Professor Quiggin said.

“It’s not just about energy – it’s about trade. A cross border tariff would be a tax on everything we export.”

Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment Dan Tehan told The New Daily that “we do not want to see carbon tariffs used as a new form of protection”.

Australia wanted to be sure climate change engagement and meeting emissions reductions targets were carried out constructively, Mr Tehan said.

The post EU to hit Australia with a border tax on carbon emissions appeared first on The New Daily .

This may shock you, but a large group of Australians have more money today than before the pandemic.

Banks fell in line with the Reserve Bank and cut mortgage rates to record lows, and lockdowns and border closures forced many of us to save more than we normally do.

In fact, Treasury figures show households squirrelled away an extra $113 billion into their savings accounts between March and November last year.

Couple that with the extra interest in sharemarkets triggered by the GameStop saga, and many Australians will be wondering whether now is the right time to invest, or whether they should get ahead on their mortgage.

So, which one makes more sense?

Low rates make shares more attractive

Beyond Today Financial Planning director Antoinette Mullins said investing in shares might offer “better value” than increasing one’s mortgage repayments now that rates are so low (though she noted it would depend on the person’s individual circumstances).

This is because your money should generate larger returns in shares than it would save you in monthly mortgage repayments.

Why?

It all comes down to interest rates. If shares are delivering higher annualised returns than your lender is charging you in interest, then it makes sense to invest in shares.

And although past performance is no guarantee of future results, it’s worth noting that the Australian sharemarket delivered an annualised return of 6.8 per cent between 1900 and 2020, making it the world’s top-performing sharemarket over that 120-year period.

Higher returns come with greater risks

It should come as no surprise to learn, though, that investing in shares is a risky endeavour, particularly if you attempt to time the market rather than invest over time .

The corporate regulator, ASIC, offers plenty of useful information on sharemarket investing on its website, moneysmart.gov.au .

It says shares are “high” risk investments , property is “medium to high” risk, and savings accounts and fixed-interest investments, such as government bonds and corporate bonds, are “low risk”.

Centaur Financial Services adviser Hugh Robertson said this is why it would make sense for “a conservative investor” to take advantage of record-low interest rates to get ahead on their mortgage.

Doing so would provide them with peace of mind, he said.

“And because interest rates are so low now, when you’re putting in your extra repayments, you’re paying off just straight principal,” Mr Robertson told The New Daily .

This means that when interest rates eventually rise again, you will be paying interest on a lesser amount.

Australians have saved record amounts during the pandemic.

Investment timeframes and goals are crucial

As with all investments, the right option for you depends on your goals, risk appetite, and investment timeframe.

Moneysmart suggests that people only invest in shares if they have an investment timeframe of at least five years, as shares tend to deliver volatile returns over the short term.

This means that if you’re saving for a short-term goal like a holiday, it’s best to keep your money in a high-interest savings account that you can easily access, as there’s no risk of losing your money.

The Australian sharemarket is almost back to where it was before the pandemic.

There’s room to do both

Alternatively, Ms Mullins said home owners could invest in high-yielding  shares – either through a lump sum or monthly contributions – and use the dividends to pay off their mortgage.

“So, you’re essentially doing both,” she said.

Another option would be to focus on paying off the mortgage in the first instance so that you can draw down equity – through a line of credit loan – to invest in shares down the track.

Mr Robertson said this was a complex but attractive option, as unlike with regular mortgage repayments (“bad debt”), home owners could receive tax deductions on the amount borrowed to invest in shares (“good debt”).

“So, if I just pay off my home loan, that’s nice. If I just invest, that’s nice. But a more optimal strategy is to pay down my home loan then redraw that to invest,” he said.

“You pay down bad debt and pick up some good debt – rather than just putting it straight into the investment and getting no tax benefits.”

Mr Robertson said any dividends earned through the shares could then be paid back into the mortgage, giving home owners more space to draw down on equity and invest in more shares.

The post Should I pay off my mortgage, or invest in shares? appeared first on The New Daily .

The end of March is pivotal for renters – and not in a good way.

Eviction and rent protections in NSW, Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia will all expire.

Federal income support through JobKeeper and JobSeeker supplements will evaporate.

And bankruptcy pauses protecting some landlords will disappear in a puff of smoke — all in a single week.

It all boils down to a multibillion-dollar hit to the pockets of financially distressed renters, which advocates warn could see tens of thousands evicted or unable to pay for basics like food and power.

Now, less than 50 days until NSW and Victoria ease emergency support, tenant advocates say governments in both states should extend the measures to avoid severe economic and human costs.

Tenants Union NSW chief executive Leo Patterson Ross said the Berejiklian government should extend help in some form past March 26 – when eviction moratoria are due to end – until it becomes clear how the withdrawal of federal income support will affect the economy.

“It’s very risky to leave people without protections … people are coming down off higher [JobSeeker] payments, which have made a big difference to people’s ability to pay for food, healthcare and bills,” Mr Ross told The New Daily.

People should never be evicted because of an external economic crisis, that’s never a good enough reason to lose your home – the moratorium is important.”

In Victoria, where a slew of new reforms will introduce additional protections against evictions , negotiable rent reductions and a pause on increases will expire on March 28.

Jennifer Beveridge, chief executive of Tenants Victoria, said she was negotiating with the government to ensure renters aren’t “unfairly disadvantaged” when federal government income support expires.

“The expected drop in federal government income protections certainly doesn’t help hard-hit renters improve their lot,” Ms Beveridge told The New Daily in an email.

“We are advocating for a number of solutions, including ongoing protections for renters facing COVID related pressure.”

Daniel Andrews is being urged to extend rent protections. Photo: AAP

Renters & Housing Union organiser Jesse James Frances urged the Andrews government to extend support and cancel existing rental debt.

“If you went into debt in 2020 because your industry was decimated … it’s more than likely you haven’t had the chance to recover,” Ms Frances told The New Daily.

“We urgently need ongoing protections for renters in financial hardship, including cancelled debt.”

A spokesperson for NSW minister for better regulation Kevin Anderson, who handles the renter protection program, left the door open to continuing some form of emergency support continuing past March.

“The required measures and support needed will be adjusted to align with this new climate. We will continue to monitor the situation and react where necessary to support and prioritise the people of NSW,” the spokesperson said in a statement.

A Victorian government spokesperson said it was “looking closely” at opportunities to ensure a smooth transition from the eviction moratorium to its rental reforms.

“With more than two months’ notice, we’re giving rental providers, estate agents and property managers fair warning to ensure that when the eviction moratorium ends all rental properties comply with these regulations,” the spokesperson said.

‘Nobody knows’: Data gaps underscore risks

But “nobody knows” how many people are at risk of being thrown out when eviction moratoria end in March, according to Emma Baker, professor of housing research at the University of Adelaide.

That’s because although every auction in Australia is tracked in minute detail, there’s much less data available when it comes to evictions and rental debt.

What data does exist suggests a significant portion of the 2.6 million households that rent stand at a financial precipice, Professor Baker said.

“The big worry we have from the data we have is that, one year into the pandemic, as the emergency protections and assistance packages roll back, a number of tenants are likely to be a lot worse off than you would expect,” Professor Baker told The New Daily via email.

Gladys Berejiklian should extend emergency eviction regulations, the tenants union says. Photo: AAP

A survey of 15,000 renters taken by the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute in 2020 found about 40 per cent were struggling to make ends meet, while over a quarter had skipped meals to save money.

About 30 per cent requested a rent reduction, but only half of them said they were successful.

Compounding the problem: Rents are going up

Joel Dignam, executive director at tenancy advocacy group Better Renting, said data gaps underscored how renting issues had been “neglected” in Australia.

He told The New Daily up to 15 per cent of renters surveyed by his organisation last year carried rental debt (unpaid rent) through the pandemic.

If extrapolated, this suggests hundreds of thousands of people could face significant bills in 2021, just as rents across the country start rising, particularly in regional and rural towns .

“Its a pretty rough time to be a renter in Australia,” Mr Dignam said.

“What’s quite scary is the way the economic recovery is slow for a lot of people and at the same time around Australia we’re seeing landlords increasing rents.

[To lift] protections and make people vulnerable to evictions and rental debt couldn’t come at a worse time.’’

Although house prices and rents in inner-city areas have fallen after the pandemic, that’s also driven faster increases in prices across suburban, regional and rural suburbs and towns as people escape the city.

According to figures published by SQM research, rents have been steadily increasing over the past twelve months, up 9 per cent nationally over 2020.

That’s more than four times the 10-year annual growth rate of 2.2 per cent.

Fed up: ‘Hard hit’ landlords say it’s time to sell

But it would be a mistake for governments to force landlords to continue supporting renters in financial distress, according to Australian Landlords Association (ALA) president Andrew Kent.

“If housing is considered an essential service, why has it been up to landlords to fund tenants up to this point?” Mr Kent told The New Daily.

“What avenues do [landlords] have to pay their own bills?”

Mr Kent said a minority of ALA’s members have been “hit hard” by the rent protections and were now considering selling into a hot property market.

A lot of members [say] it’s time to get out of being a landlord,’’ he said.

When protections were first implemented, Mr Kent said there was broad agreement between the government, banks, landlords and tenants.

But since then banks have started resuming mortgage repayments, tightening the screws.

Mr Kent said renter advocates now risk shooting themselves in the foot by incentivising landlords to escape the market, which would reduce supply and push up rents faster.

The post ‘Neglected’: Storm looms for renters as eviction protections near end appeared first on The New Daily .

Rosie Batty, Bruce and Denise Morcombe and Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton never wanted to be famous, and yet they were thrust into the spotlight in the most unimaginable circumstances.

Years later, they still grapple with the effects of their unwanted fame.

Fiona Reynolds, a decorated Australian journalist and former ABC State Director with 30 years in the industry, wrote her PhD on this very topic.

“I had observed a lot of people over the years who, as a result of some kind of traumatic experience, had ended up becoming news figures and then their personal lives were very public,” Dr Reynolds told The New Daily.

The media turned them into household names, but how did they pick up the pieces?

“We are all very familiar with what happened to them, the events that surrounded them.”

We already know their names and faces, and have had a front row seat as they navigated the most disturbing and distressing events of their lives – but many of these people just want to be forgotten.

After covering some of the nation’s most haunting events, like the 1997 Thredbo landslide and the abduction of 13-year-old Daniel Morcombe in 2003, Dr Reynolds has decided to flip the script.

In her new, six-part podcast Accidental Celebrity , Dr Reynolds speaks with the unwitting faces of Australian tragedy about their sometimes unethical, often invasive media experiences.

“That’s our job to do that, we we also have to think as humans, ‘Where do I cross the line’?”

“We in the media are making people publicly recognisable – whether they want to be or not. And then they have to live with the consequences of that.”

Stolen anonymity

For James Scott, surviving 43 days alone in the Himalayan mountains without food in 1992 was almost better than returning to find himself at the centre of a media storm.

“Not being able to be just, you know, the person next door, having that taken off you, is a nuisance to say the least,” she shares.

Chamberlain-Creighton was at the centre of Australia’s most notorious case. Photo: AAP

The Morcombes and Ms Batty, who all scarified their privacy to appeal for, and raise awareness about their murdered sons, describe their ongoing discomfort at being recognised in public.

Unethical practices

Many of us, particularly now during the height of the true crime content boom, have a macabre obsession with knowing all the grisly details of people’s trauma, often without questioning how these details are sourced.

“There is a human fascination of the suffering and survival of strangers, and also the strength of the human spirit,” Dr Reynolds said.

“We become curious about how they manage to endure and overcome, and then we get very connected to them and believe that we feel we know them because we have heard so much about them and their lives.”

Following his rescue from the Himalayan mountains, journalists began paying Mr Scott’s friends for information about him, and he believes they tried to steal his medical records while he was in hospital recovering.

Stuart Diver, a survivor of the Thredbo landslide, had people follow him around – even as he attended his wife Sally’s funeral.

For Todd Russell, who survived the Beaconsfield mine collapse in 2006 , telescopic lenses were parked on a hill close to his house.

“He did not expect, when he came back from 14 days underground, that he was going to be met with a wall of cameras and microphones and spotlights,” Dr Reynolds said.

“He thought, ‘Wow, this is a worldwide thing’ – he had wondered whether he’d even make the local newspaper.”

Within a day of its February 1 premiere, Accidental Celebrity shot to No.2 on the Australian Apple podcasts chart, proving our insatiable interest in these public figures is far from over.

Many of them will deal with the aftermath of their highly publicised traumas for the rest of their lives, but passing the mic back to them can given them a sense of control over their stories.

The post <I>Accidental Celebrity:</I> The human cost of our obsession with tragedy appeared first on The New Daily .