Category: Australia

Reeves said even if the letters prompted just 30 people to rent their houses long-term, it would be worthwhile.

He said the council had no power to compel property owners, but he hoped the letters, to go out in the coming weeks, would appeal to their sense of community obligation.

The problem is particularly severe on the Bass Coast, which includes Phillip Island, with more than 10,000 properties vacant on census night, accounting for just over 39 per cent of the total.

Bass Coast Shire chief executive Ali Wastie said there was plenty of housing in the municipality, but many people either leased houses on short-stay sites or left them completely vacant.

She also hoped the letters would encourage non-resident property owners in the shire to act in the interests of the local community.

“They may not be aware that businesses can’t get staff because there’s no housing for them to live in,” she said.

Bass Coast ratepayers are expected to receive the letters next week. The letters will ask property owners to put their homes on the rental market for 12 to 24 months.

“There are many reasons houses remain unoccupied, including a switch from permanent rental to short-term rentals, but this potential under-utilisation presents a housing opportunity,” the letter says. “Our communities will not thrive unless they can sustain a permanent population.”

Gippsland Lakes Complete Health chief executive Anne-Maree Kaser moved to Lakes Entrance last year and struggled to find a rental property.

“Here I am a professional woman, good income, great history,” she says. “I couldn’t even get a look-in.”

After three months, she found a house to rent through a colleague, but that agreement ends in December and Kaser dreads having to find another place to live.

In Lakes Entrance and surrounding areas, almost 24 per cent of private dwellings were unoccupied on census night, equating to almost 1450 properties.

Kaser said her service desperately needed more allied health professionals and general practitioners. But several times, she said, great candidates were unable to take the jobs because they could not find anywhere to live.

She said other regional health services were reporting similar problems.

Many businesses along the main drag of Lakes Entrance are short-staffed and some have notices plastered in their windows seeking workers.

Matt O’Donnell, who owns the café, convention center and catering business Albert & Co, said he was about 15 workers short.

O’Donnell has slashed operating hours due to staff shortages. He has advertised for staff in Melbourne and interstate – and even considered finding accommodation for workers himself.

“But there’s nowhere around here we could do that,” he said.

Local hairdressing salon manager Jacqui McInnes said she could easily hire another two hairdressers but could not find workers.

“I don’t know why,” she said.

McInnes said the town remained popular with tourists, but businesses could not meet the demand.

“At Christmas when the town’s full, these businesses are closing at 7 o’clock at night.”

Tourism industry groups have asked the state government to follow the lead of other states and cap the number of days owners can lease their properties on short-stay sites, in an effort to encourage more long-term rentals.

The state government confirmed it would review short-stay accommodation laws and investigate whether the regulations needed further amendments.

Elders Lakes Main Entrance Rachael Newman said her real estate agency received at least two “walk-ins” every day, in addition to phone calls with people seeking rental properties.

Newman said houses that did become available were snapped up quickly and rent typically started at $380 a week.

The latest Domain data revealed rents have soared by up to 20 per cent in some regional towns over the past year.

And census figures showed that 36.2 per cent of renters in Lakes Entrance were making rental payments greater than 30 per cent of their household income, putting them in rental stress.

Newman has worked in local real estate for nine years and said the relatively affordable rental market had vanished as “desperate” buyers pounced on properties during the depths of lockdown.

“Now we’re seeing people who purchased holiday homes less than 12 months later not using them,” she said. “A lot of them are sitting vacant.”

This week, Airbnb country manager for Australia and New Zealand Susan Wheeldon said the company wanted to grow the “tourism pie” for everyone by making travel more accessible, arguing additional tourists meant more money for businesses that would help them hire local workers.

“Short-term rentals also provide a way for everyday people to stay afloat and combat rising costs of living and growing mortgage repayments,” she said.

The Surf Coast Shire has asked the state government to introduce a statewide scheme to provide incentives for second property and holiday home owners to rent their houses to long-term tenants.

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“Reinfection is common and increases your risk of bad outcomes,” Professor Raina MacIntyre, head of the Kirby Institute’s biosecurity program, wrote in the Saturday Paper.

“Being infected with Omicron BA.1 earlier in 2022 does not give you much protection against the newer variants.”

But others remain skeptical about the studies’ results.

Does infection with Omicron offer protection against future infection?

In June, a UK-based research team caused a stir with its surprise finding, published in the journal Sciencethat getting infected with Omicron seemed to provide little protection against reinfection with Omicron.

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This might be a case of “immune imprinting”, the researchers suggested: the immune system remembering the first version of the virus it saw and building antibodies to that older version each time it encountered a new variant.

But science is accumulative: many studies over time build an accurate picture of what’s going on.

the Science paper studied antibodies in a test tube; data from the real-world is more optimistic.

A paper from Qatar suggests Omicron infections are close to 80 per cent effective at preventing infection with Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5. Studies from Denmark and Portugal come to similar conclusions.

Does each reinfection increase the risk of bad outcomes?

Also in June, a team led by Washington University’s Ziyad Al-Aly uploaded its paper based on a large healthcare database operated by the US Department of Veterans Affairs, which covers US military veterans. They extracted healthcare data for people who had been infected and reinfected, and compared that with veterans who had never been infected.

Compared with those who had been infected once, veterans who had been reinfected were three times more likely to be hospitalized and twice as likely to be dead. They were more than twice as likely to have heart or blood problems, fatigue or mental health issues. As people had more reinfections, their health problems increased.

Based on this paper, we should be doing all we can to avoid reinfection, said Professor Rhonda Stuart, director of epidemiology at Monash Health.

“If you have a chance of getting long COVID from your first infection, it would seem to make sense that you have the same chance the next time you get COVID,” she said.

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“In the end, the message is, if you’ve had COVID, you don’t want to get it again.”

If reinfection is worse than primary infection, this would be an unusual feature of the virus. In many other respiratory viruses, “reinfection typically results in a milder illness with a shorter duration”, said Dr Gemma Saravanos, a respiratory infection researcher at the University of Sydney.

The paper has not yet been peer reviewed or published in a scientific journal – meaning it needs to be interpreted with caution.

Other scientists identified possible biases in the paper that may cloud the results.

The study used healthcare records, meaning people had to be sick enough to use healthcare. That means it might have missed people who had asymptomatic reinfections, or cases so mild they did not get tested. By oversampling people who got very sick after reinfection, the study could make the effect of reinfection seem worse. “I think there are fair concerns about sampling bias,” said Assistant Professor Saskia Popescu from the US-based George Mason University’s biodefence program. “Especially in this case, as they used a population … which may be more likely to have existing health challenges and co-morbidities.”

The study also compared people infected with the original strain of the coronavirus and those reinfected with the Delta variant – which is known to be more severe.

Based on that, “I would confidently predict that the risk of serious symptoms on a reinfection – compared with first infection, and for hypothetically same virus – is less,” said University of Melbourne epidemiologist Professor Tony Blakely. “But time will tell.”

Other studies come to different conclusions than the June papers. A study published in the Journal of Infection in April, looking at 13,960 reinfections in Britain, found people were 61 per cent less likely to die from a reinfection compared with an initial infection. Rates of hospitalization were also dramatically lower. Similar data has been published from Serbia and Qatar.

For Efron, having experienced none of the effects of long COVID, it was the reassurance of knowing what lay ahead that made the second infection easier than the first.

“I just remember the first time feeling tightness of breathing and found that alarming and a bit uncomfortable. So I think the second time actually was a little bit better.”

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The government’s development partner Aqualand unveiled plans for the 5.2 hectare site in April, including a two-hectare waterfront park, campus-style offices and a new cultural venue, as well as mid-rise buildings and a 73-meter building above the metro station .

National Trust NSW conservation director David Burdon said the changes were so significant they should require a fresh proposal rather than a modification.

“If I was designing my own house, when you do a modification to your design it’s for a minor amendment, it’s for a small change. And this is much more than a small change,” he said.

Though the residential building is only a quarter of the height of Crown’s adjacent tower, Burdon said it was nearly as tall as the much-maligned Blues Point Tower across the harbor and would block views of Observatory Hill from Pyrmont and Balmain.

He argued the building would not contribute to the community or amenity of the area because its apartments would likely be purchased by wealthy foreign buyers. “They’re people’s overseas pads, not regular people that will populate the street,” he told the herald.

In a long statement, project director Rod McCoy said Aqualand’s Central Barangaroo proposal responded to the government’s policy of increasing the intensity of land use around new public transport infrastructure, which was generally considered best practice.

He said Barangaroo’s scale and mixed use made it “one of the most vibrant public places and one of the most connected and successful urban renewal projects in the world”.

McCoy said Aqualand was “conscious of the sentiments of the residents of Millers Point around perceptions of view loss”, but the building heights originally approved for Central Barangaroo in 2007 would have obscured some views anyway.

“We recognize that there is some sensitivity to the height of the proposed building at the northern end of the site from some local residents, and we’re listening to their concerns,” he said.

“That said, we do see this building as an opportunity to deliver world-class design that responds to the unique and special setting, and we think that many of the concerns can be addressed once the concepts for the site are revealed.”

The modification plans were lodged by government body Infrastructure NSW, which is managing Barangaroo, and will therefore be determined by Roberts as planning minister, or his delegate.

Roberts referred questions to Infrastructure NSW. A spokesperson said the body had engaged with stakeholders such as the National Trust and welcomed their feedback.

“Infrastructure NSW respects the planning process and the role it plays in ensuring the community are given the opportunity to have their say before any final decisions are made,” they said.

The Langham, a luxury boutique hotel on Kent Street, wants Roberts to refer the decision to the Independent Planning Commission. Manager Shane Jolly said the hotel was concerned about the heritage values ​​of Millers Point, the loss of views and “a loss of visitation to this iconic area”.

Similar objections are being lodged by Friends of Sydney Harbor and the Millers Point Community Residents Action Group. The group’s president, Bernard Kelly, said the fact the application would be decided by the minister was “a clear indication [the government] is determined to steamroll this enormous project through before the state election.”

The City of Sydney is finalizing a submission. Lord Mayor Clover Moore told a public meeting last weekend the council would object to the bulk and scale of the proposal as well as “the lack of any public benefit such as affordable housing”.

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