Sydney Water will seek expert advice on whether data centres could release “forever chemicals” into the wastewater system after the possibility was raised at a Senate inquiry. The scrutiny comes as Swedish nonprofit ChemSec reported earlier in September that most of the world’s top 10 PFAS producers are planning to expand production, with some framing their investments around the “AI revolution”.
A Senate inquiry has called on the federal government to consider taking Triple Zero out of Telstra’s hands and placing it under government control in a damning report examining "catastrophic" emergency-call failures.
When direct subsidies and indirect costs are taken into account, private health insurance rebates cost the taxpayer more than $12 billion a year, yet there is little evidence to prove they achieve their primary goal of taking pressure off the public health system.
Australia’s usual model of general practice relies heavily on private businesses earning revenue for each service they provide. That can work reasonably well where there are lots of patients and doctors (i.e. cities). It works less reliably in a town of a few thousand people, where maintaining a viable practice can depend on rents, accommodation, hospital arrangements and whether somebody can cobble together funding from three levels of government.
