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Australia

Launceston General Hospital patient dies after being ramped for more than nine hours

A gurney sits next to an ambulance outside Launceston General Hospital.

The death of a woman in her 70s who was ramped and waiting to be admitted to a Tasmanian hospital’s emergency department for more than nine hours is “totally unacceptable” and shows the state’s health system is crumbling, a union says.

The union that represents paramedics in Tasmania said the woman was taken to the Launceston General Hospital about midnight on Friday night, and died at about 9am on Saturday.

“The patient had been ramped for nine hours at the time when they passed away, and they were still in an inappropriate setting and had not been allocated a bed at that time,” said Robbie Moore from the Health and Community Services Union (HACSU) .

“This is a very sad situation that just demonstrates how bad our health system is, that we couldn’t have a bed available for a patient who clearly needed medical assistance, and shows that ambulance ramping is out of control and patients’ lives are being put at risk.”

Ambulance ramping happens when hospital emergency departments are full and cannot admit new patients.

Paramedics care for the patients they have transported in an area of ​​the hospital outside of the emergency department.

Mr Moore said the patient received care from emergency department staff while they were waiting for an ED bed to become available, and was also cared for by ambulance paramedics.

“A patient being ramped for nine hours is totally unacceptable, and demonstrates that we are letting down the Tasmanian community,” he said.

“Unfortunately this is not an isolated incident … we’re unfortunately aware of several other incidents where patients have been unable to get a bed and passed away on the ramp.”

Nursing staff ‘distraught’ at conditions in LGH emergency department

The Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation’s Tasmanian secretary Emily Shepherd said on the night the woman was brought to the hospital, the LGH’s emergency department was full, with 20 patients waiting to be admitted to beds in other parts of the hospital, about 50 people in the ED waiting room, and seven ambulances ramped up.

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Categories
Australia

Rental stress hits families in Toowoomba with $15 standing between home and homelessness

A woman with long brown hair and a navy hoodie stands in front of her brick home

Fifteen dollars might be spare change to some but, for those trying to contend with feeding a family and grappling with rising costs of living it is a rent rise few can afford.

According to a new survey from Data Finance Analytics Toowoomba, southern Queensland has one of the highest rates of mortgage and rent stress in the country.

The survey of 47,000 people across Australia found 61 per cent of renters were under rental stress, while in Toowoomba 57 per cent of the 240 respondents experienced rental stress.

Lyndal Hood is one of them. She and her husband’s rent has recently risen by $15 a week.

“Our rent went up from $230 to $245 when we got our new lease,” she said.

Ms Hood’s husband works in retail, and she worked in hospitality until forced to take a break after a heart attack late last year.

major sacrifice

Ms Hood said while it may seem like a small amount, it quickly added up.

“That extra $30 to [fortnight]that’s the price of my medications,” she said.

“That means no extra money left over, and it’s not like we’re bludgers.

“If it went up further, we’d have to leave because we can barely cope with what we’ve got.”

Welcome to Toowoomba sign surrounded by flowers
Toowoomba has been known as Australia’s Garden City since the 1940s.(ABC Southern Qld: Peter Gunders)

Ms Hood said she had no choice but to stay in her property and pay the extra amount.

“I feel like we’re just stuck,” she said.

“We look around town at what else is out there and it’s no better than this place. The house across the road is $360 a week and it’s a dive.”

Darling Downs and South West REIQ president Daniel Burrett said rent rises were generally the landlord’s reaction to increasing interest rates.

“Rents are continuing to go up,” he said.

“The average rent price in Toowoomba is in the early $400s. It used to be around the $330 to $340 mark.”

statewide surge

Statewide it is no secret that rent is also surging, particularly in high-growth areas.

According to the Everybody’s Home campaign that coincides with Homelessness Week this week, the average rent on the Gold Coast rose by over 15 per cent in the past three years.

Everybody’s Home spokesperson Kate Colvin said the data proved how many people were at risk of homelessness.

“We know that rental stress is the gateway to homelessness,” she said.

“When you combine surging rents with flat wages you put people in a financial vice and for the past three years that vice has been tightening.”

Ms Colvin said it would not just affect low to middle-income earners and was “a handbrake on the economy right through regional Australia”.

“You have situations where in tourism locations restaurants can’t open every day of the week because they can’t get the staff, or aged care services around the country where they simply can’t get the staff to operate at full capacity,” she said.

“A part of the reason for that is because people won’t move to an area to take up work if they can’t find a house or a property in the rental market.

“In terms of our economic health, particularly in regional Australia, housing is an important part of the picture.”

never been worse

Data Finance Analytics principal Martin Short said he had never seen it as bad.

“Unfortunately, both rental stress and mortgage stress seem to rise and the pressure on households is really stressful and growing,” he said.

“I’ve never seen it so high with almost half of households with a rent obligation finding it really difficult to service it.

“It’s the worst in the high-growth corridors, the areas of the country that have been on a lot of new developments.”

Lowset brick house with For Rent sign out front.
Housing advocate Everybody’s Home says surging rents with flat wages have put people in a “financial vice”.(ABC News: Lucy Robinson)

Rents rose by 12.1 per cent on the Sunshine Coast to an average of $641 per week and 9.4 per cent or $426.21 per week in Cairns.

Ms Colvin said the solution was in social housing.

“Obviously, building social housing would deliver rental properties, but rental properties that are targeted to low-income households who are the ones who are being most squeezed out of the rental market,” she said.

Ms Colvin said this would then free up rentals for people in other income brackets.

“So, it’s a really great solution that really fits the problem,” she said.

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Why is everything so expensive?

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Categories
Business

Regional towns look to community batteries as renewable energy solution

Regional towns look to community batteries as renewable energy solution

Small regional communities are working to secure their own energy futures amid electricity price rises and widespread fears of blackouts.

A new report from the Australian Energy Market Operator shows electricity prices rose to their highest levels on record in the three months to June 30, leading to increasing energy bills across the east coast.

Communities like Ballan, 80 kilometers north-west of Melbourne, are driving their own renewable energy projects as they seek reliability, lower costs, and reduced environmental impact.

The volunteer-run Moorabool Environment Group is working with residents on the first steps of a project to bring a community battery to the town of almost 3,400 people.

Sunflowers in front of a rooftop with solar panels.
Rose De la Cruz has solar panels on her home in Ballan and would like to link to a community battery.(Supplied: Rose De la Cruz)

Resident and group member Rose De la Cruz said Ballan was a “good candidate” for the technology.

“We do suffer from power outages quite a lot here and we have a growing lot of residential houses with solar on their roofs,” she said.

“At the moment everybody is talking about the cost of electricity, so people are interested in anything that will bring down the cost.”

The basic concept was for households and organizations with rooftop solar to feed into a shared battery and draw out electricity when needed.

Indigo Power director Ben McGowan stands next to a large square, a community battery.
Ben McGowan inspects a mid-sized battery at Yackandandah.(ABC News: Emilia Terzon)

Increasing take-up

Community batteries are becoming an increasingly popular option for regional communities.

The first community battery in Yackandandah, a small tourist town in north-east Victoria, was launched in July 2021 after two years of planning and fundraising.

The 274-kilowatt-hour battery that supplies electricity to 40 homes from solar panels on the roof of an old sawmill is part of a bigger mission to have the entire town powered by renewable energy.

It also serves as a backup power supply.

Residents in the western Victorian town of Pomonal, on the edge of the power grid, are also looking for solutions to eliminate blackout concerns.

Pomonal Power People member Dee-Ann Kelly said more people had become interested in the idea of ​​a community battery.

A group of people sit on chairs in a community hall.
Grampians Community Power Hub hosted a community meeting at Pomonal.(Supplied)

“I am interested in the idea that not everyone needs to have solar,” she said.

“Down the track I am willing to do get solar, but for now I want to be able to utilize where we have got solar and where we may have solar in the future.”

She said the project was also about supporting people who did not have the ability to put solar panels on their properties.

“We have talked about not leaving people behind,” she said.

The town is part of a community battery feasibility study and is waiting for a report before deciding on the next steps.

Ms Kelly said sustaining interest and driving the project could be a challenge, given it could take many years and was not an “overnight solution”.

A Tesla battery standing on a streetside kerb.
A community battery in Meadow Springs, Western Australia, is accessed by 52 homes.(Supplied: Western Power)

But she said she was confident the community’s desire for power reliability during disasters, such as bushfires, and broad focus on sustainability would drive continued support.

“We live in the beautiful Grampians and have nature all around us. This is what drives people to want to have a future and be involved in making really important decisions,” she said.

clean energy future

Australia Institute energy advisor Dan Cass said Australia had been over-reliant on “risky and expensive” coal and “increasingly expensive” gas.

Mr Cass said the community battery model would be part of the move to build clean energy resources quickly to avoid another energy crisis.

Aerial shot of a community battery in parkland near a suburb
A community battery in the Perth suburb of Port Kennedy.(Supplied: Western Power)

He said the Australian Energy Market Operator modeling showed a need to build thousands of gigawatts worth of battery storage over the next several years.

“We need a lot more batteries on the grid and we need them urgently,” he said.

“The question is who owns the batteries and what is the scale at which they are built?”

Mr Cass said it was likely large batteries, mid-scale community batteries, and small household batteries would be part of the solution.

“I think we will find eventually every freestanding roof in the country will be able to have solar panels and in some cases that will be backed up by batteries,” he said.

“It will give enormous power and control back to energy consumers and communities as well as being more resilient and zero emissions.

“Australia is in a great position … it is just a matter of planning this out well and this will be the last energy crisis Australia will ever need to face.”

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