MIL-OSI Export

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard Baka, Honorary Professor, School of Kinesiology, Western University, London, Canada; Adjunct Fellow, Olympic Scholar and Co-Director of the Olympic and Paralympic Research Centre, Institute for Health and Sport, Victoria University

Quite a few crocodile tears have been shed on the issue of the rowing and canoeing venue of the 2032 Brisbane Olympics and Paralympics.

The reason for the controversy is the proposed venue – Rockhampton’s Fitzroy River.

The tidal river is prone to flooding and is also home to crocodiles.

While the Queensland government is adamant the venue will host rowing and canoeing, others are nervous.

So, what are the pros and cons, and who will have the final say?

Disagreements among decision-makers

The river has a deep-rooted rowing history dating back to 1863 and has hosted significant events such as the 2009 Australian Masters Championships.

Last week, Queensland deputy premier Jarrod Bleijie reinforced the river will host rowing and canoeing events in 2032.

But World Rowing and the International Canoe Federation are conducting studies and feasibility assessments, and have not yet thrown their full support behind the venue.

Officials from both governing bodies toured the venue in February with members of the 2032 organising committee.

Several Olympians, including Australian rowing legend Drew Ginn, have expressed concerns about the fairness of holding the rowing in a tidal river. Competitors in some lanes could be disadvantaged due to varying current conditions caused by tides, flooding and water depth.

Ginn said:

I think it’s just embarrassing that we’re doing it. Imagine the 100m sprint having a (runner) in lane six going forward, and on lane one going backwards and thinking that’s fair for athletes. Rivers flow, rivers flood, we know the course up there has real issues around this – that’s ok for a local regatta … but it’s not ok for the Olympic Games.

As well as concerns about currents and flooding, the river is also home to crocodiles, although official Queensland government statistics show no crocodile attacks on humans have been recorded here – only sightings.

President of Brisbane’s organising committee Andrew Liveris dismissed concerns about the crocodiles:

There are sharks in the ocean and we still do surfing […] creatures below the water – that’s a bit kind of ‘Hollywoodish’.

Supporters of the Fitzroy River

Key decision makers – the Queensland government, the Brisbane organising committee headed by Liveris and the Games Infrastructure and Coordination Authority – want the Olympics and Paralympics to be regionalised.

Rockhampton fits into this plan. It was a state election promise and part of the original proposal to the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which encourages hosts to take a decentralised approach.

Both the 2024 Paris summer games and 2026 Milano Cortina winter games demonstrated a successful model of decentralised venues, with ongoing socio-economic legacy for residents.

Out of the 17 proposed new or upgraded venues for the 2032 games, there are nine in regional areas.

Recreational and elite athletes train on the river and Australian training camps were held there before the Tokyo and Paris games.

While some argue the river has technical challenges due to its bends and currents, course adaptations are always possible – for example, for the 2028 Los Angeles games, the course length has been reduced from the standard 2,000 metres to 1,500m.

The arguments against

It will be expensive to dredge the river and widen it as well as costs for security, seating and other added amenities. The total has been estimated at $500 million but upgrades have not yet commenced.

Many Olympians are not in favour of this site, claiming it is not an Olympic-calibre venue.

A separate athlete’s village will need to be built, and competitors in these two sports will be isolated from the main action down south, about 640 kilometres away.

Suggested alternative venues are in Moreton Bay and the Queensland State Rowing Centre in the Gold Coast.

Moreton Bay in particular has shown interest in hosting. As it is only a one-hour drive from Brisbane, Moreton Bay would be more centralised and logistically easier to manage.

The Gold Coast venue is also close to Brisbane and is a well-used facility. Both would still require significant expenditure to upgrade, but possibly less costly than Rockhampton.

There is also a proposal to relocate to Penrith in New South Wales – the rowing site of the Sydney 2000 games. This is not a realistic alternative given the Queensland government’s investment and promised games legacies.

Then there is of course the crocodiles. Media hype on this angle is strong, although fears may be overblown, as no human attacks have been reported and the venue hosts community and school rowing regularly.

It’s almost decision time

Venues and the sports program for the games must be confirmed this year. This gives a six-year timeframe to adequately complete construction and prepare for the games.

The IOC, World Rowing and the International Canoeing Federation will have the final say – the IOC will likely discuss it at board meetings in May and June.

It appears leaving rowing and canoeing in Rockhampton is the most likely option at this point in time.

But history tells us, when it comes to finalising Olympic venues, key decision-makers rarely all paddle in the same direction.

– ref. Is the Fitzroy River a suitable venue for the Brisbane Olympics, given it’s home to crocodiles? – https://theconversation.com/is-the-fitzroy-river-a-suitable-venue-for-the-brisbane-olympics-given-its-home-to-crocodiles-279213

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/04/01/is-the-fitzroy-river-a-suitable-venue-for-the-brisbane-olympics-given-its-home-to-crocodiles-279213/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

Australia’s failure to fully use the skills of its permanent migrants is an “enormous waste” for the economy, former Treasury Secretary Martin Parkinson has warned, calling for urgent action in the May budget to free up this talent.

Nearly half of all permanent migrants were working below their skill level, Parkinson said in a Wednesday address.

The former senior public servant led a review of migration for the Albanese government, presented in 2023 and concluding that the migration program, including permanent and temporary arrivals, was not fit for purpose.

In what amounted to an indictment of the government’s failure to follow through, he said this finding had been accepted by government and stakeholders but not enough had been done since to fix problems.

The debate about numbers, where people came from or what they believed “obscures the more tractable, and politically easier issue to solve” relating to the skilled permanent migration program.

This program involved two parts.

“Part one is getting the right skilled migrants into the country. That is the migration system: what are our needs, today and into the future, and then ensuring our visa settings, our selection criteria, the operation of the points test, the core skills list, processing times and so on, all work together to address those needs.

“The Migration Review canvassed this in depth, pointing the way forward – little, if anything, seems to have been done in response.

“Part two doesn’t get the same attention.

“It is what happens after those skilled migrants have been granted the pathway to permanent residency/citizenship. In particular, whether Australia will let them use the skills they were brought here to contribute.

“That is the skills and qualifications recognition and occupational licensing system.

“It is where enormous economic value is currently going to waste, largely unnoticed.”

Parkison said Australia prevented migrants, including those already in the country, from working at their full capacity.

“We have a multi-step, multi-agency, multi-jurisdictional assessment and licensing process that was never designed as a system. It just accumulated, layer by layer, over decades.

“It is like a river, clogged by mud, sludge and garbage over decades. But a river that can be reshaped and cleaned away by a flood of common sense and good policy.”

“No matter where you sit on the size of the migration program debate, you have to recognise that a more immediate question is whether Australia is getting the economic value it should from the skilled people it has already invited here, and those it will invite in the future.”

Supporting the Activate Australia’s Skills campaign – a campaign backed by business, union, and community organisations for reform of Australia’s complex and burdensome skills recognition system – Parkinson said an independent skills and qualifications recognition commissioner was needed.

This would be a statutory function overseeing an end-to-end recognition system, from visas to occupational licences to employment.

“It would identify system barriers and propose solutions while never reducing Australia’s rightly high standards.

“It turns a patchwork of individual assessing bodies into a system, with shared objectives that works in the public interest to ensure an adequate supply of talent to address the nation’s skill shortages

“Every functioning system requires good governance with the right incentives.

“This governance framework would help facilitate harmonisation across states and territories to reduce the variation in licensing requirements for the same occupation in different jurisdictions.”

– ref. Nearly half our permanent migrants are working below their skill level: former Treasury Secretary – https://theconversation.com/nearly-half-our-permanent-migrants-are-working-below-their-skill-level-former-treasury-secretary-279206

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/04/01/nearly-half-our-permanent-migrants-are-working-below-their-skill-level-former-treasury-secretary-279206/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Vibhu Arya, PhD Student, UTS Business School, University of Technology Sydney

From October 1, 2026, Australians will no longer pay a fee for debit, prepaid and credit payments using eftpos, Mastercard and Visa cards. The Reserve Bank of Australia estimates the change could save consumers around A$1.6 billion a year.

The case for change sounds simple enough: one price, no add-ons, no surprises at the end of a transaction.

But credit card companies, banks, restaurants and others are already warning they could raise fees and prices in other areas once card surcharges are banned.

That means we could see costs shifting, rather than falling.

How a card payment actually works

Most people experience paying by card as a direct exchange with a shop. Behind that tap, several other parties are quietly collecting their share before your money reaches the shop.

When you pay at a cafe, your bank approves the transaction and releases the funds. The cafe’s bank receives that money on the business’s behalf. Between them sits the card network – usually Visa or Mastercard – routing the payment from one to the other.

Then there’s the payment service provider, the company behind both the software processing the transaction and the physical device you tapped your card on.

Each of them charges for what they do. When a business applies a surcharge on card payments, it’s trying to claw back some of these costs.

The single largest charge is the interchange fee, currently capped at 0.8% of your purchase for credit cards and 0.2% for debit cards, paid to banks.

The Reserve Bank regulates most of these fees (other than the payment service provider fees) and its October changes aim to bring down those costs.

(These changes won’t apply to American Express cards or “buy-now pay-later” like Afterpay, which will be looked at in a separate public consultuation starting in mid-2026.)

What’s changing from October

From October 2026, surcharges on most debit and credit card transactions will be banned.

Interchange fees paid to banks will be capped below their current levels. For credit cards, those fees will drop from 0.8% to 0.3%.

And for debit cards, the fee will drop from the current rate of either 10 cents or 0.2%, down to either 8 cents or 0.16% (whichever is lower).

That’s expected to cost banks an estimated $660 million a year.

The Reserve Bank (RBA) decision was based on a clear principle: what the price tag says should be what the customer pays, regardless of how they choose to pay.

The RBA said they were responding to “strong feedback” from a public survey, which found three-quarters (76%) of people wanted surcharges to end.

Which consumers look set to pay more

The RBA estimates a surprisingly low share of merchants – just 16% in 2024/25 – add surcharges for card payments. But that’s doubled since 2022, making it harder for consumers to avoid unexpected, costly surcharges.

The central bank acknowledges that from October, businesses that have had surcharges “may increase their advertised prices to cover the cost of accepting card payments”. But it expects those price rises “to be negligible”.

In practice, the RBA is saying that if you pay a card surcharge at your local cafe today, expect its prices to rise slightly in October, once surcharges are banned. If you always pay by credit card now, you might not notice any difference then.

But if you’re in the minority of Australians who pay with cash, or insert a debit card into the eftpos machine to pay lower surcharges, you could end up paying slightly more at some businesses from October than you do now.

The Australian Restaurant and Cafe Association has said:

We expect menu prices will increase on October 1 and for any business that does not pass costs on, their profit will drop. Consumers will now pay $5.10 for a coffee that used to cost them $5.08, and the biggest losers are cash payers.

Australian banks have also said they may have to make up their losses with higher card fees, higher rates or shorter interest-free periods.

Lessons from overseas

The European Union and United Kingdom banned card surcharges back in 2018, arguing it would save consumers money and avoid nasty surprises at the checkout.

Past studies from the Netherlands showed that when extra card fees are removed, people are more likely to pay by card. Widely-cited research by economists David Evans and Richard Schmalensee explains that in payment systems, when pricing changes like this, the costs don’t disappear – they just move around.

The real lesson from what the EU has done is that beyond banning surcharges, you also need to give people better options to avoid card payments completely.

Other countries like India, China, Brazil and Singapore have already made it easier to pay without a card than Australia.

Hard choices for smaller businesses

The RBA’s move to cap interchange fees should ease some cost impacts, both for consumers and for business. The RBA estimates businesses will save $910 million through lower interchange fees.

For larger businesses, the new interchange cap is largely beside the point. Their transaction volumes already gave them the leverage to negotiate rates directly with card networks – well below the ceiling the RBA has now set.

According to the RBA, 89% of large businesses are not surcharging customers now.

The RBA says most small businesses will be better off from October, as 85% of small merchants don’t add a surcharge now.

For smaller businesses that have had surcharges – like a local pharmacy or independent grocer – the good news is their overall card fees will now be lower. But they won’t vanish entirely.

That leaves them with limited choices: absorb a hit to margins, or lift prices.

What to expect in October

From October, paying by card will feel cleaner. One price, no additions. That will feel like a genuine improvement.

But a simpler checkout is not necessarily the same as a cheaper one.

Whether shopping actually becomes less expensive is a different question – partly depending on whether you’re someone who’s been avoiding surcharges by paying with cash, but also on how banks and businesses respond by raising other prices.

– ref. Banning card surcharges will make paying simpler – but not necessarily cheaper – https://theconversation.com/banning-card-surcharges-will-make-paying-simpler-but-not-necessarily-cheaper-279662

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/04/01/banning-card-surcharges-will-make-paying-simpler-but-not-necessarily-cheaper-279662/