In brief: November

28 Nov

The City of Sydney bans below poverty wages for disabled workers

The City of Sydney has become one of the first council to ban council procurement of organisations offering lower than minimum wages to their disabled employees. The ban was initiated by Greens councillor Matthew Thompson, who says businesses pay disabled workers as little as $3 an hour.

The national minimum wage is $24.10 an hour or $915.90 per week on a week of 38 ordinary work hours. Thompson added that the recent royal commission had found the practice of underpaying disabled workers harmful to the health and wellbeing of disabled people – “yet that’s what businesses are legally able to pay disabled workers.”

While the current federal government is dragging its feet on implementation, local councils can demonstrate real leadership, he said and  his council may be the first but hopefully not  the last.

Victoria Park in Western Australia had also banned this kind of procurement, although specifically from Australian disability enterprises who prices labour at these “poverty rates”.

Consult Australia: no more paper plans, wet signatures, and PDFs

A new white paper by Consult Australia has set out a roadmap to integrating digital use into the infrastructure sector and increasing productivity. The Enabling Digital by Default paper was released in response to the Australian government committing $647 billion to major public infrastructure over the next five years. The five recommendations are:

• build a digital by default community of practice
• invest in the business case for digital technology
• harmonise standards and guidance for data and information management
• embed requirements through outcome-led procurement
• build capability and skills

Consult Australia chief executive Jonathan Cartledge said that billions of dollars of infrastructure still need to be delivered using outdated methods such as paper plans, wet signatures, and PDFs. This caused decades of “sluggish productivity and lost data insights to make better decisions and build better infrastructure.”

“A digital by default approach is essential,” he said.

Help to Buy and Build to Rent schemes pass

After a long standoff in parliament, the Greens agreed to letting the government help-to-buy scheme and build-to-rent scheme pass after the Labor government refused to compromise. This week marks the last parliamentary sitting this year and possibly the last if an election is called between now and March.

The help-to-buy scheme allows first homeowners to buy a property up to a certain limit with a 2 per cent deposit of the purchase price, while the government will purchase and co-own 30 per cent of the home – if existing and 40 per cent of the home, if brand new.

The federal government will be considered a secure partner, meaning it is also easier for buyers to be approved for a mortgage and interest on the repayments will likely be lower due to the government already paying off a segment of the house.

The scheme will only support 40,000 low to middle income earners over the next four years.

The build-to-rent scheme provides tax incentives to developers to build and maintain apartments by renting out units at below market rates.

The Property Council of Australia’s chief executive, Mike Zorbas, said passage of the bill was welcome. However, the next step would be to make housing more affordable by boosting housing supplies.

Monash University’s breakthrough could see lithium sulphur batteries become more viable

New research by Monash University published on Tuesday reported a chemistry breakthrough. Using iodine found in household antiseptic ointments could stabilise the previously unusable lithium-sulphur batteries, delivering an extra 1000 kilometres on a single electric vehicle charge.

The research says the unique chemistry would make the batteries cheaper, greener, lighter, and more viable for real-world and heavy-duty use than lithium-ion batteries. While lithium sulfur batteries previously had great promise, the complex chemistry had made them slow to charge and discharge, making it hard for them to maintain high performance without degrading quickly.

Co-lead author of the paper, Dr Petar Jovanovi?, said, “Imagine an electric vehicle that can travel from Melbourne to Sydney on a single charge or a smartphone that charges in minutes — we’re on the cusp of making this a reality.” More on The Driven.

Allegra Spender’s bold green paper on tax reform includes housing and renewables

Teals federal MP Allegra Spender received accolades this week for her green paper after an 18-month-long deep dive into the Australian tax system and how it’s hurting young Australians the most.

The paper is informed by numerous roundtables with experts, tax reform stakeholders as well as more than 1300 feedback from the community. The paper found that the average size of a loan and its demand on household income has increased by 54 per cent over the past decade, but wages have only lifted by 23 per cent.

The green paper also examines failures in business investment and in the environment, as well as poor productivity.

“Our personal tax system should reward effort and ingenuity. It should allow people to create a prosperous life for themselves, regardless of the wealth of their families … But instead, it provides bigger rewards for passive income and property investment,” she writes in the paper.

Allegra Spender’s green paper offers six priority areas for tax reforms, including lowering income tax for working-age people, reshaping the tax system so revenue remains stable even as the population ages or consumption patterns change and incentivising businesses to innovate and lift investment, as well as favouring renewable energy over fossil fuel sourced energy.

Sustainable concrete wins $14 million

SmartCrete Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) has committed $3.2 million in funding, supporting six industry-led research projects that will lead the transition to sustainable concrete.

Industry, research and the CRC will co-fund the projects up to a total investment of $14 million in research and development that will “significantly advance Australia’s concrete capabilities needed to abate the sector.” The projects include research into approaches to sustainable design, innovative materials, technologies, building techniques and management.

The Projects will utilise cutting edge technologies such as 3D printing and computer vision systems, addressing the efficiency, productivity and cost challenges of using concrete.
SmartCrete CRC is a member of The Fifth Estate’s The Green List.

QIC backs Virescent Ventures’ new climate tech fund

Queensland Investment Corporation has committed to backing Virescent’s second climate technology fund, which takes total investments to approximately $125 million. QIC joins cornerstone investors Westpac and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and is said to “supercharge growth” for climate tech companies.

The fund hopes to raise $200 million this time to deploy to supporting climate tech companies. This follows its successful first funding follows the success of Virescent Ventures’ first portfolio, managed on behalf of CEFC, which saw $270 million invested into helping 37 Australian climate companies grow and commercialise.

New data protocol aims to unify fragmented built environment data

At this year’s COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, the International Code Council and Standards Australia committed to developing a Universal Data Protocol (UDP) to unite the built environment by creating standards for tackling building and infrastructure data. Data in the built environment is known to be fragmented, siloed, and unusable across industries due to different disciplines or being recorded at different stages of a building’s lifecycle.

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