Op-ed

Regenerative medicine is poised to create a new era of healthcare focused on prevention, personalization, and patient-centred care – and its potential alone should be a call to action for Australia. We are in a unique position to make our mark and put Australia at the forefront of the healthcare industry. Regenerative medicine harnesses the natural capacity of our cells to repair and restore health and support well-being – ultimately the future of medicine.

The NASA Artemis I launch is an important step towards making it possible for people to go farther and spend more time in space than ever before. Future Artemis missions aim to send crews to Mars and the Moon, a journey that will take up to three years in total. A crucial question posed to scientists before these missions is asking what the astronauts will eat, to not only fulfil their daily nutritional intake, but also to satisfy them. As surviving on protein bars and vitamins for years on end certainly doesn’t sound the least bit appealing – plants, with their incredible capacity to transform light, water, and carbon dioxide into food, serve as the foundation of life on Earth and are the obvious choice to feed people in space.

Southeast Asia must continue to prioritize the integration of renewable energy and the addition of new natural gas infrastructure to achieve an affordable, resilient and sustainable energy future. The industry and govts in the region must continue to collaborate on enabling long-term conditions that facilitate the deployment of future tech solutions across hydrogen and ammonia, carbon capture, energy storage and bidirectional, cross-border grids.

Federal Budgets are not only about bold and visionary futures of the economy. They must, as a first priority, ensure we are caring for and including our most vulnerable in the immediate term. It is possible to invest for the circumstances we find ourselves in now, while retaining a long term view of the horizon. Here is how we can improve outcomes for the future. 

HESTA welcomes the Budget potentially providing significant cost of living relief to women and lower income earners, funding for a much needed 15% pay rise for aged care workers and measures to encourage green investment. While the Budget had a range of measures that could assist our members, we believe there needs to be an urgent stance to address long-standing super inequities that are seeing women miss out on billions in retirement savings.

The Budget missed an opportunity to appropriately boost business productivity, a critical tool in the inflation-busting toolkit. Reducing the cost of doing business is just as important as reducing the cost of living. The measures to support SMEs on issues like greater flexibility for the ATO to support small business navigate tax issues, increase to the instant asset write-off, small business energy incentive and relief fund, and digital tech uptake will be of assistance.

The Australian Institute of Superannuation Trustees (AIST) has welcomed the initiatives in the Federal Budget aimed at improving the wellbeing of Australians, particularly those on low incomes. This included announcements that the tax rate on the earnings of super accounts with balances of more than $3 million would increase to 30% from 2025-26, and that employers would be required to pay super at the same time as wages from 1 July 2026.

Moving superannuation payments to align with wages could give millions of Australians $50,000 more at retirement and drastically curb Australia’s unpaid super scourge which has cost workers $33 billion over seven years. The federal government should be commended for announcing in this Budget that super should be paid on payday and not at least once a quarter, a policy change that will get more workers all the super they have earned.

Australia is in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis, with out-of-control energy price rises and inflation being made worse by reckless govt spending. Yet, mainstream Australian families have been ignored in this year’s Federal Budget. As reported in the Daily Telegraph, IPA analysis shows that average household energy bills will rise 39% by this time next year from March 2022 levels according to Australian Bureau of Statistics CPI data and Budget forecasts.

On 9th May 2023, the second budget was presented by Treasurer Dr. Jim Chalmers. It consisted of several measures related to tax and superannuation, with an emphasis on aiding SMBs, promoting investment in sustainable housing and buildings, modifying the Petroleum Resource Rent Tax, and executing Pillar Two of the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development / G20 Two-Pillar Solution to tackle digital transformation of the economy.