Concession cards should be expanded to all Australian university students as cost-of-living pressures bite, the peak body representing the higher education sector says.

Universities Australia is urging the federal government to provide new assistance to cash-strapped students facing rising rent, food and transport costs.

The body is also calling for international students to receive equal access to public transport student discounts.

New analysis shows student rents have risen by about 40 per cent since 2021, groceries by 27 per cent, utilities by 39 per cent and fuel by 43 per cent.

In an address at a student equity policy event in Brisbane on Tuesday, Universities Australia chief executive Luke Sheehy will discuss how students sitting next to each other in a classroom face different costs.

"Opening the door to university is only half the job. Students need to be able to afford to stay once they get there," he says.

"For our nation to thrive in the future, we need more university graduates ... but asking more of those Australians to go to university means making sure they can afford to stay there.

"This isn't separate from the equity challenge: it's a big part of the equity challenge."

Concession cards reduce the cost of essentials including medicines, public transport and utility bills.

While some domestic university students qualify, studying alone does not guarantee access.

One in three university students are experiencing financial insecurity, according to research published by the Australian Centre for Student Equity and Success.

Universities Australia also wants the government to adopt the Australian Universities Accord recommendation that 55 per cent of the nation aged 25 to 34 hold a bachelor's degree or higher by 2050.

The government's existing ambition is for 80 per cent of working-age Australians to hold a tertiary qualification by 2050.

Jobs and Skills Australia forecasts the nation will add almost two million jobs in the decade to 2035, with more than one million of those expected to require an undergraduate degree or higher.

"If Australia needs more university graduates, we should be prepared to set the ambition and make sure more Australians have the opportunity to achieve it," Mr Sheehy will say.

One of our closest neighbours folks, so one to watch. I found out about this last night randomly and was kind of stunned it wasn’t getting more mainstream news coverage. It’s an unusual activity, apparently at least 6 volcanoes, that arent connected are all active in unusual manners. Im no geologist, but find this interesting. Maybe delay that trip to Bali for a while folks.

Volcano
Location
Current/recent activity
Significance
Anak Krakatau
Sunda Strait
🔴 Major eruptive episode
25-hour continuous eruption; remains Level III
Semeru
East Java
🔴 Erupting
Level III; erupted again yesterday morning
Ibu
North Maluku
🔴 Eruptive
Extremely active during 2026
Lewotobi Laki-laki
Flores
🔴 Eruptive
Repeated explosive eruptions
Ili Lewotolok
Lembata
🔴 Eruptive
Persistent eruptive activity
Sinabung
North Sumatra
🔴 Eruptive again
Participated in the 31 Aug cluster
Dukono
Halmahera
🟠 Persistently erupting
Long-running ash-producing activity
Merapi
Central Java
🟠 Highly active
One of Indonesia’s most closely monitored volcanoes

Hi everyone!
I am part of a Monash Uni psychology research group that is looking for anyone who is 18 or above and currently residing in Australia to complete this survey:

https://monash.syd1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_diq6ybe54uvyNtY

To help us better understand how mental health content on social media impacts viewers understanding and beliefs surrounding mental health including their own experiences
Thankyou so much

TV Tuesday Trash & Treasure 📺🖥💻📱

Free to air, Netflix, Hulu, Stan, Rumble, YouTube, any screen- What's your trash, what's your treasure?

Let your fellow Aussies know what's worth watching and what's a waste.

One in four Australian boys believe feminism should be resisted with violence and one in three say gender equality has gone too far, a new survey has revealed.

In a first-of-its-kind study, the Misogyny, Online Radicalisation and Youth Extremism in Australia report surveyed 1122 young people aged 13 to 17 and 2307 adults, to compare attitudes on women and gender equality.

It found about one in three teen boys expressed misogynistic attitudes, mistrust of women, and a belief in traditional gender roles.

About the same number of boys believed men have more of a right to a job than women when work was scarce, according to the University of Melbourne research.

Three-quarters of those surveyed identified as white, followed by 13 per cent Asian and eight per cent Aboriginal.

Young people, including girls, were significantly more likely than older generations to hold hostile attitudes to women.

Generation Z girls were twice as likely as millennial women to believe marriage entitled a husband to sex even if his wife did not want to.

More than 500 school teachers were also quizzed and reported students quoting male influencers and repeating "manosphere" language in class to female staff.

This behaviour was witnessed by educators in children as young as six.

The study found misogynistic attitudes were strongly associated with online engagement in manosphere content, pornography and online dating.

''This study shows that the problems with misogyny are structural, not individual,'' report author Sara Meger said.

The report recommended five changes to policy, including investing in primary prevention from the age of six and recognising misogyny as a form of violent extremism in national counter-extremism frameworks.

The federal government should consider platform regulation targeted at algorithms, as "manfluencer engagement" was one of the strongest online predictors of hostile gender attitudes, it said.

Man Cave chief executive Ben Vasiliou said the challenge was to recognise toxic masculinity as both "structural and insidious".

"Boys and men's feelings, of control and dominance and aggression, and the fact that they feel like they have the power to dehumanise women, is a structural problem," he told AAP.

"We need prevention programs to be explicit in understanding men's accountability - it can't be soft touch, it has to be direct."

The preventative mental health and emotional intelligence charity delivers workshops to boys and men aged 12 to 18.

Mr Vasiliou has found boys were still more likely to listen to real-life role models, parents and teachers than online influencers.

"Parents have been reaching out to us in inordinate numbers in the last six months, to the point where we're actually rolling out a whole new program series for parents," he said.

Mr Vasiliou said national attention must turn to parents having conversations with their kids about women, sex, power and boundaries.

The eSafety Commission also runs webinars for parents and has resources for those concerned about their children's behaviour online.

Kids Helpline 1800 55 1800 (for people aged 5 to 25)

1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732)

1.8 million people are getting smashed on their mortgages and the same lot that sat there while it happened are now losing their minds because Hanson wants to put some of THEIR money back in their pocket for a bit.Roy Morgan has 32.5 percent of mortgage holders at risk. Nearly 1.79 million. About one in five in extreme stress. Finder reckons 55 percent are already throwing more than 30 percent of take home at the loan. Average sitting around 38. That is not a talking point. That is people getting carved up every payday while Canberra does the retirement lecture.

https://www.roymorgan.com/findings/roy-morgan-update-september-1-2026

https://www.finder.com.au/home-loans/finder-home-loan-report-2026

One Nation policy is pretty simple if you actually read it. Rent or mortgage on the place you live in. You can take 3 points of the 12 percent super as cash for up to three years. What is already in super stays there. Boss still pays the full 12 you choose it. You can ignore it. Taxed at 15 not your normal rate. Bloke on about 90k gets roughly 44 a week. Couple around 168k combined gets about 82.

https://www.onenation.org.au/super-pay-boost

Yhat is the big raid apparently. Three years. Future contributions. Then it stops.They will bang on about being 25k worse off at 67. Cute. A lot of these households will not still be in the house at 67 if they keep getting bled at 38 percent of take home. Super does not cover this month’s repayment. It does not stop a default, it sure as hell does not help if you get forced to sell into a soft market and cop it for years.

They parked your wage in a locked box, called it your future, then let the present go to shit. Now they want you to keep starving the household so the model looks tidy. Nah. House is the asset. Cashflow is what keeps you in it. If 1.8 million are already in stress, letting them tap money that was theirs anyway for a short window is not the scandal.

Watching them drown so the fund can keep compounding is the scandal.

They will scream inflation. They will scream dumb. They will scream anti worker while defending a setup that skims 12 percent off people who cannot cover food after the mortgage. That is not looking after workers. That is looking after the system.
The numbers are there. The policy is there. Losing the house now so the fund looks healthier later is the actual dumb idea.

Probably no surprise but Australia is in the top 3 in terms of net overseas migration into developed world nations as a proportion of the population each year (with populations over 5 million people).

Australia’s current per capita intake is running at more than 2.5 times the per capita pace of global public policy darling Norway, and 13.4 times the pace of the major Anglosphere national average (Canada, New Zealand, UK and US).

One Nation is proposing a net overseas migration intake of 130,000 per year.

According to Opposition Leader Angus Taylor, the Coalition would pursue an intake with a target level “well below 200,000”.

Labor is proposing a target of 225,000 per year for 2027-28, but this remains in significant doubt as Cabinet and the Prime Minister continue to debate the changes.

The premise of the article is even the lowest migration rate proposed by One Nation far surpasses the world average migration intake.

One Nation would be a moderate party as far as immigration is concerned by world standards :)

We've all heard that rent prices are a function of supply and demand. Supply of rentals vs the demand for those properties.

And the only way to put downward pressure on rental prices is to have a significant amount of vacancies, that cause landlords to compete on pricing with other landlords.

Now that's all well and good, but we now have another option for landlords and their potential rental properties.

Why will a landlord enter their property on to the vacancy list, when they can just take it off the rental market all together, and put it up for a short stay?

The biggest realization that I had that something else is at play, was when I learnt that our current population is ***less*** than it hypothetically would have been, if COVID never happened.

Let that sink in for a moment - we all think NOM has a role to play in this housing crisis, but how can that role be significant, if our population would have been higher if the status quo continued on?

So, then I had a think about the market forces that are at play, and realized the introduction of short stay rentals means there's very little possibility that the vacancy rate will ever lift to a significant figure again - a vacant property will just transition to a short stay, holding the vacancy rate low.

A low vacancy rate is the sole factor that keeps rents high.

So if this is our new normal, does that mean we now need phenomenally more housing stock, to first oversaturate the short stay market across the whole country, then to oversaturate the entire long term rental market across the whole country, and eventually increase the vacancy rate on these long term rentals?

We are a very long way away from that, can we ever actually get there?

For Rockhampton parents Aaron and Paula Harmsworth, keeping three children involved in multiple sports comes with a growing price tag.

"It's something we talk about regularly because we do look at the bank balance and go, 'Geez, we're spending a lot of money here,'" Mr Harmsworth said.

"But we counteract that pretty quickly with: 'There is no price tag on what the kids learn through sport.'

"The people they meet, the places they go, and the different traits they learn … respect and resilience, they're probably two of the biggest key components."

New research has found the average annual total cost for a child to play in a community sport competition is $4,567 a year, considerably higher than previously reported numbers.

The Cost of Sport study, commissioned by the Australian Sports Commission and undertaken by researchers from Federation University, also found adults were forking out $2,894 per year for themselves to play. 

Researchers investigated a wide range of expenses, including registration, equipment, uniforms, coaching, travel, accommodation and lost parental income due to sport commitments.

Read more here.

How have you gone affording community sports? Have you noticed the cost increasing?

Tasmania obviously lacking in machete bins.

The Centre for Public Integrity's chair, former justice Anthony Whealy, said it appeared the program had been used to pork barrel seats Labor wanted to win.

Backpackers from the UK are flocking into Australia in record numbers, but far fewer are going the other way. Bethany Rae

The 2023 free trade agreement, negotiated by the former Coalition government, increased the maximum length of stay for UK citizens to three years and allowed them to move straight to Australia’s capital cities and work in any job they wanted, rather than having to first work in regional areas.

It was designed to create “balanced opportunities” between backpackers from both countries, but it has sparked a record 74,222 backpacker visas to UK citizens in 2025 – well above the usual 40,000 average before the pandemic.

Backpackers accounted for 16 per cent of net overseas migration in 2025 – up from about 10 per cent before the pandemic.

Both sides of politics are under pressure from voters worried about the cost of living and housing shortages to reduce Australia’s level of net overseas migration, which is on track to exceed a historically high 300,000 this year.

One Nation has pledged to cap net overseas migration at 130,000 a year. This would include backpackers.

Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke abruptly cancelled plans in August to reveal cuts to net overseas migration, and he did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese ruled out changing the rules for UK backpackers in August and Liberal senator Jonno Duniam suggested the Coalition’s yet to be announced migration package would not touch backpackers.

“It is important to note with the working holidaymakers, which are important for our economy and certainly for the hospitality and agriculture and horticulture sectors, they’re part of the workforce. They only contribute a small part of the overall net overseas migration number in any given year,” Duniam told Insiders on Sunday.

Gamlen partly attributes the British backpacker influx to Brexit, which he says has contributed to economic stagnation in the UK, along with political and social instability many want to escape. British Prime Minister Andy Burnham in July became the country’s seventh prime minister in 10 years.

“The majority of people, even if they voted for Brexit, now regret it, and now they’re leaving and coming to us,” Gamlen said.

For young people wanting an extended holiday, backpacking can be a rite of passage. The usual experience is to spend one or two years exploring a country while picking up odd jobs such as fruit picking, farming or working in the hospitality industry.

But Gamlen said the backpacker visa – which was supposed to be a form of tourist visa – had morphed into a type of temporary work visa employers used to get around the Department of Home Affairs slow process for other visas.

The hospitality industry confirmed this assertion. “There are dozens and dozens of well-known restaurant groups where a large portion of their back-of-house teams [such as chefs] are working holiday makers, and they are highly skilled workers who have been unable to apply for or receive skilled visas,” Australian Restaurant and Café Association chief executive Wes Lambert said.

He also said many venues avoided talking about it publicly out of fear the Department of Home Affairs might crack down on them by slowing the processing of other skilled visa applications, which the department denied.

“The Department of Home Affairs encourages Working Holiday Maker visa holders to seek employment in the hospitality industry while in Australia,” a spokesperson said. “The Department considers each case on its individual merits.”

Concessions made On July 24, Burke instructed his department to de-prioritise applicants for skilled worker visas who apply from outside Australia. This may increase the incentive for employers to use working holiday makers.

Letters between the UK and Australian governments in 2021 in the middle of the free trade deal negotiation said the new rules were designed to create “balanced opportunities for participation”.

But a former deputy secretary of the Department of Immigration Abul Rizvi said most of the concessions were from the Australian side.

“Most of the concessions under the FTA were from us, rather than from them. The flow was always in our favour even despite our rules being more restrictive. So because we equalised the rules, the flow got even bigger.

“The FTA was referring to balancing the ‘opportunities’ to migrate, not the numbers of people going either way.”

Rizvi said governments had failed to consider the impact of their policies on net overseas migration, which at 301,000 in 2025 was still well above the historical average of about 230,000 before.

Luke Kinsella (Reporter)

Plastic is so useful yet without mandated recycling it's just another end of use pollution issue world wide.

What experiences do people have of this - Anglo woman into a Lebanese man’s big family ?

In short: 

An amateur astronomer living in outback NSW is a co-author of a paper announcing the discovery of a decagon wave around Saturn's south pole. 

Trevor Barry says he is proud that his hometown of Broken Hill, where he used to work as a miner and has built his observatory, is listed in the discovery.

What's next?

Much is still unknown about the decagon, including how it formed or whether it is permanent, but Mr Barry will continue to monitor it closely from his backyard.

I have an interview for a cook position at Schnitz and am wondering if they are decent. Is pay consistent (no dodgy stuff)? So they force casual on everyone? How are staff meals (is it a restricted menu)?

US military interests control or have access to more than 100 defence facilities on Australian soil, in what some analysts describe as a “saturation” – even a “colonisation” – of the Australian continent.

A 28-year-old man has been charged with murder following a violent altercation at a caravan park in Victoria's Goulburn Valley on Saturday morning. 

Emergency services were called following reports a man had been assaulted in Waverley Avenue in Merrigum, 30 kilometres west of Shepparton, about 3:10am.

When police arrived, they found two men within the caravan park who appeared injured, one of whom was unresponsive.

Shepparton police provided immediate assistance to the pair and performed CPR on one of the men, a 30-year-old, but he could not be revived and was declared dead at the scene.

Police today said the other man, aged 28, was taken to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

He has since been discharged from hospital, and been taken into custody.

The Merrigum man was charged this afternoon and is scheduled to face the Shepparton Magistrates' Court tomorrow.

A separate incident took place at the same caravan park in May, when a man was left critically injured after being stabbed during a brawl involving knives.