We’re feeling their age

BABY BOOMER BLUES

Within the next 10 years, there will be more people over the age of 65 than under 18 for the first time in Australian history. Aged Care Minister Anika Wells told the National Press Club yesterday: “We must act now — the baby boomers are coming,” the ABC reports. Yikes! She said a new taskforce was looking at whether rich Australians should be charged more to cover aged care, which was $23.6 billion in 2021 but is expected to double to $42 billion in 2026-27. But opposition aged care spokesperson Anne Ruston objected to Wells chairing the taskforce, saying it would mean the minister was “putting forward policy solutions to her own government”. She added that Labor’s refusal to rule out a new tax for Australians could threaten a pre-election vow not to, as The Courier-Mail ($) adds.

Meanwhile, sperm counts have fallen 52% in the past five decades, The Age ($) reports, and the decline appears to be speeding up. It’s linked to chemicals in tin can linings, cosmetics, nail polish, Teflon pans and flame retardants on cushions which can mess with our hormones. A study at the University of WA found: “If [a] boy’s exposure to phthalates was higher in utero, [then] when they were 21 their testicles were significantly smaller.” One expert said many people would use reproductive assistance by mid-century. Also, Medicare covered fewer and fewer of our specialist appointments over the past two decades, Guardian Australia reports, with just 40% of anaesthetics and obstetrics covered. About 58% of fees for other specialist appointments had Medicare coverage in 2022, which was down from 79% in 2000. And it’s worse in the bush — people there access about half (8.3) of the services city folks (18.3) access.

CASUALTY WARD

Former Coalition MP Gareth Ward will not be barred from NSW Parliament after the privileges committee warned Premier Chris Minns the election promise could undermine the presumption of innocence, the SMH ($) reports. Ward, now an independent, was charged with historical sexual assault last year — he was suspended then, but Minns and then-premier Dominic Perrottet both vowed to move a newer suspension that’d stop Ward from sitting in the chamber if reelected. And he was reelected — in March, by the Kiama electorate. The Privileges and Ethics Committee, headed up by Sydney MP Alex Greenwich, got advice which found basically that it would threaten voting rights if Minns overrode the March election result by giving Ward the boot.

Meanwhile some good news for Sydney commuters. Minns said he’s going after trucks blocking traffic and causing peak hour delays, Sky News reports. The premier said 53 over-height trucks had blocked tunnels this year, about once every three days — indeed on Tuesday motorists languished through two separate delays caused by trucks blocking the Sydney Harbour Tunnel. He wrote to the National Heavy Vehicle Regulator and warned he’d take power “back into state hands” if no improvement was seen, by blocking the registration of offending over-height trucks. And the federal government has one-upped NSW (and Victoria’s) strict Nazi memorabilia bans today, the SMH ($) reports, with Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus to propose a penalty of up to 12 months in jail for people posting online, showcasing or selling swastikas and insignia relating to the Schutzstaffel (SS).

CLIFF-HANGERS

About 880,000 expiring fixed loans in 2023 — and 450,000 due to expire in 2024 and beyond — will tumble off a mortgage cliff with people having to cough up $15,000 more a year to repay the loans, Guardian Australia reports. That’s compared with before this era of cash rate rises. It comes as our productivity rate has tumbled at a record rate from 2.7% to 2.3% while wage growth speeds up, something the AFR ($) forecasts will push our cash rate to 4.85%. The economy expanded by a weaker-than-expected 0.2% in the first three months of the year — that’s because we spent less and fewer homes were built, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. We expected the opposite — a 0.3% rise in activity in that period.

But RBA governor Philip Lowe says the bank board will not be put off, even though he appreciates more and more poor people are suffering at the hands of these rate rises. He says “unevenness is not a reason to avoid using the tool that we have”, as The Australian ($) reports. It’s all Labor’s fault for some reason, the Liberal Party’s finance spokeswoman Jane Hume told ABC’s Afternoon Briefing. She said the May budget was to blame for the latest interest rate rise because “reducing inflation was actually removed from the fiscal strategy” even though Treasurer Jim Chalmers had said “slaying the inflation dragon was his priority”.

ON A LIGHTER NOTE

Happy quarter-century to Sex and the City, folks. Twenty-five years ago four 30-something women upended societal expectations about settling down, or maybe just settling, by embracing fashion, frivolity, food and friends. Love it or loathe it, the impact of the HBO series reverberates today, and not only because the spin-off returns to our screens this month. Take this Costa Rican crocodile — she lived alone for 16 years in her enclosure at a wildlife park, as the ABC tells it. Proving, perhaps once and all, that a woman doesn’t need a man, in 2018 keepers found Ms Croc had gone ahead and laid 14 eggs by herself — the first time we’ve ever seen this happen. Seven were fertile and artificially incubated with no success, but one contained a fully formed female crocodile foetus. Pretty amazing stuff. The phenomenon is a “virgin birth”, known in science circles as parthenogenesis, and snakes and bees do it too. It’s thought to be “a response to when all else fails”, and girl, I get it.

As Carrie Bradshaw quips in season three: “What if Prince Charming had never shown up? Would Snow White … have eventually woken up, spit out the apple, gotten a job, a healthcare package and a baby from her local neighbourhood sperm bank?” Or take Robbie, who told SBS her search for The One had left her “quite disappointed, disillusioned” and “very depressed”. So she sent out the invitations, found the perfect white dress, and walked herself down the aisle with a yellow bouquet to the cheers of loved ones. It’s called sologamy and it was a symbolic “celebration for me of finding myself”, she says. Once she had, Robbie says she looked in the mirror and said: “I love you with all my quirks and flaws.” Then, she recalls, “the need that I felt to find a loving partner just dissipated”. And so did Carrie’s, albeit briefly in season six, when she tells a judgmental married friend who refused to replace a pair of the protagonist’s lost heels: “I’m getting married … to myself! And I’m registered at Manolo Blahnik.” Walking in a single person’s shoes can be tough sometimes, Carrie says, and sometimes a special pair — whatever that looks like for you — can make the journey a little more fun.

Hoping you like yourself, today and always.

SAY WHAT?

And even if he were to be convicted of a war crime, to what extent, if any, should that detract from his undoubted heroics in winning the ultimate military accolade?

Peta Credlin

The Sky News host and former Coalition staffer must leave satirists in Australia scratching their heads sometimes. Credlin says we don’t need to leap to the media’s general conclusion that Ben Roberts-Smith is “some kind of monster”.

CRIKEY RECAP

 ‘A real shame’: child sexual assault survivor condemns Seven’s Lehrmann interview

JOHN BUCKLEY

“Coverage of the allegations and subsequent trial have in recent days taken a marked turn, advocates say. News reporting on Lehrmann’s interview with Seven has been couched in sympathy, while coverage of Higgins has grown increasingly hostile, particularly across the News Corp stable.

“Sharna Bremner, founder and director of End Rape on Campus, said the hostility isn’t limited to News Corp’s publishing assets. Media organisations across the board had questions to answer for their news-gathering tactics and reporting on Higgins, which she said has been ‘revolting’ to watch … She said News Corp has done ‘amazing’ work on the #LetHerSpeak campaign, led by survivor and journalist Nina Funnell.”

READ ALL ABOUT IT

Tear gas, water cannon fired on protesting Sri Lankan students (Al Jazeera)

Exclusive: Kosovo president open to new elections in Serb-majority municipalities (Reuters)

Why 1976 All Blacks prop Bill Bush felt ‘racially targeted’ by South African rivals and refs (Stuff)

‘I can taste the air’: Canadian wildfire smoke spreads hazardous haze at home and in the US (AP News)

Bank of Canada hikes interest rate [to 4.75%] — and there may be more to come (CBC)

The European Commission launches legal action against Poland over ‘Russian influence’ law (euronews)

Lionel Messi to join Inter Miami after leaving PSG (BBC)

THE COMMENTARIAT

Your beach house is lovely, but it’s killing Australia — David Hayward (The SMH) ($): “Property is our national, collective bag of chips. For a privileged group, property has become an addiction that’s getting worse by the day. Why settle for one house when you can have two, three, or more? On top of the family home, why not get an apartment to rent out, and another for summer vacation? And why settle for something small when you can have something bigger, if not to start with, then when you are ready for that next extension? I call them MMOOYBYs – those who want to Make Money Out of Your Back Yards.

“During the pandemic, the nation experienced a building boom on a scale not seen before. We not only broke records for new dwelling construction, we smashed it for renovations, too. Despite all that new supply, prices and rents went through the roof when Economics 101 would expect the opposite to occur, especially as overseas migration fell through the floor. We have been building vastly more dwellings than are needed to match population growth for decades, yet real prices and rents keep growing, affordability keeps falling, and ever-increasing government subsidies can’t keep up. We currently have 1 million more houses than households.”

The powerful enjoy special access; Aboriginal people should too, through an Indigenous voice to parliament — Ian Temby (The Australian) ($): “The Indigenous Voice to Parliament will simply give Australia’s Aboriginal people the same access to Canberra as is now enjoyed by very many lobby groups. The same access but less power. The coal industry, the gas industry, manufacturers, irrigators, cotton and rice farmers, banks, the superannuation industry, doctors, lawyers, pharmacists, the media (each of print, television and radio) and countless others have a presence in the nation’s capital or visit often. Some do it through senior executives. Most employ professional lobbyists.

“They make representations in relation to legislation and policies. Which is to say, to Parliament and to ministers and senior bureaucrats. All the time they are seeking to create a climate favourable to their constituents. If the referendum succeeds, the original inhabitants of this country, through their chosen representatives, will have the guaranteed right to lobby for better outcomes than at present. And if all the other interest groups can do this, why not them? Further, it is  twisted logic to say, as some have, that the Voice will be a “Canberra” voice. The opposite is true: unlike the armies of high-paid lobbyists who populate the rarefied air of our national capital, the people elected to the Voice will be drawn from all regions across Australia, with specific provision for age and gender balance. What do the rest of us have to worry about?”

HOLD THE FRONT PAGE

WHAT’S ON TODAY

Yuggera and Turrbal Country (also known as Brisbane)

• Greens Senator Larissa Waters and author Ian Lowe will talk about the latter’s new book, Australia on the Brink, at Avid Reader bookshop.

Eora Nation Country (also known as Sydney)

• Author Kris Kneen will talk about their new book, Fat Girl Dancing, at Better Read Than Dead bookshop.

• Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi will talk to journalist Antony Loewenstein about the latter’s new book, The Palestine Laboratory, at Glee Books.