Category: Australia

The state government has cleared the path for gambling giant The Star to lodge a proposal to build a 105-meter tall luxury hotel tower at Pyrmont, under plans to encourage more intensive development west of Sydney’s CBD.

Planning Minister Anthony Roberts said changes to planning rules for several sites on the Pyrmont peninsula would allow for the six-star hotel, theater and dining complex to be built at the northern end of the casino’s site.

Under the 20-year development strategy for Pyrmont and Ultimo, there is also provision for construction of a 110-metre tower above the future Metro station between Pyrmont Bridge Road and Union Street; and an Indigenous residential college at the University of Technology, Sydney. The Metro station is due to open in 2030.

Pyrmont Action residents’ group convenor Elizabeth Elenius said of the two towers above 100 meters, or roughly 30 storeys: “They’re both too high. They don’t fit the principles laid out in the Pyrmont peninsula place strategy where development has to blend into the existing area and not compromise it. They’re both totally out of scale.”

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The state government has been working on plans to redevelop Pyrmont since 2019, when the state’s independent planning authority refused The Star’s earlier $530 million proposal for a 66-storey casino tower.

It is also forging ahead with a wave of development around the western harbor in inner Sydney, with planned overhauls for Central Barangaroo, Blackwattle Bay, Darling Harbor and the Bays West precinct at Rozelle.

Roberts said changes to the legal planning controls for the Pyrmont sites – controls known as Sydney’s Local Environment Plan (LEP) – would allow developers to lodge applications for retail, dining and tourism projects.

He said the government’s long-term strategy to guide development for the Pyrmont area more broadly would provide “industry and the community the certainty they need to bring to life incredible new assets”.

There’s a longstanding but unacknowledged – and often unnoticed – bias in mainstream commentary on the state of the economy. We dwell on problems created by governments or greedy workers and their interfering unions, but never entertain the thought that the behavior of business could be part of the problem.

This ubiquitous pro-business bias – reinforced daily by the national press – is easily seen in the debate on how worried we should be about inflation, and in the instant attraction to the notion that continuing to cut real wages is central to getting inflation back under control. This is being pushed by the econocrats, and last week’s economic statement from Treasurer Jim Chalmers reveals it’s been swallowed by the new Labor government.

I’ve been arguing strongly that the primary source of the huge price rises we’ve seen is quite different to what we’re used to. It’s blockages in the supply of goods, caused by a perfect storm of global problems: the pandemic, the war in Ukraine and even climate change’s effect on meat and vegetable prices.

Since monetary policy can do nothing to fix supply problems, we should be patient and wait for these once-off, temporary issues to resolve themselves. The econocrats’ reply is that, though most price rises come from deficient supply, some come from strong demand – and they’re right.

Although more than half the 1.8 per cent rise in consumer prices in the June quarter came from just three categories – food, petrol and home-building costs – it’s also true there were increases in a high proportion of categories.

The glaring example of price rises caused by strong demand is the cost of building new homes. Although there have been shortages of imported building materials, it’s clear that hugely excessive stimulus – from interest rates and the budget – has led to an industry that hasn’t had a hope of keeping up with the government-caused surge in demand for new homes. It’s done what it always does: used the opportunity to jack up prices.

But as for a more general effect of strong demand on prices, what you don’t see in the figures is any sign it’s high wages that are prompting businesses to raise their prices. Almost 80 per cent of the rise in prices over the year to June came from the price of goods rather than services. That’s despite goods’ share of total production and employment being about 20 per cent.

This – along with direct measures of wage growth – says it’s not soaring labor costs that have caused so many businesses to raise their prices. Rather, strong demand for their product has allowed them to pass on, rather than absorb, the higher cost of imported inputs – and, probably, fatten their profit margins while they’re at it.

Take the amazing 7 per cent increase in furniture prices during the quarter. We’re told this is explained by higher freight costs. really? I can’t believe it.

Artist, maker and designer Dom Foffani was 24 years old when he and his brother walked into the family kitchen to find their father dead on the floor.

As his family sat around the table in the hours of grief and planning that followed, Foffani’s mother and brothers realized they had no idea of ​​their father’s wishes for his death: did he want to be buried or cremated? What type of funeral did he want? Had he made a will?

They eventually decided against a “quiet and solemn and shy and sad” ceremony. “We wanted something that was fun and silly and stupid because that was him,” Foffani says.

“We found out that our dad wanted to be buried, but we decided he would be cremated, and we only found that when his will came to the surface, which none of us had read.”

Foffani, from Sydney, resolved to not die the same way, and the now-29-year-old began preparing for his own death – not as morbid as it might sound. He started talking with his family about his funeral, organ donation and more. He wrote it all down and put it in his backpack before he went overseas.

A ‘good death’ is when you have considered end-of-life planning.

Cherelle Martin

“The idea of ​​what happens when something goes wrong overseas, and no one knows who I am or what my wishes are or who to contact… That was quite a practical decision I made, to write out what my wishes are,” he says.

After years of a pandemic-induced focus on death, and voluntary assisted dying now legal in all states (it is not legal in the ACT or Northern Territory), Australians are being urged to talk about plans for the inevitable.

Having the first conversation about death can be the difference between leaving your family and friends drowning in paperwork and having real space to grieve, says Cherelle Martin, a campaigner for the August 8 Dying to Know Day, a day encouraging Australians to become “death literate” ”.