Hospital corridors filled with patients in pain and lengthy emergency department waits are becoming common as Australia struggles with an aging population, the nation's peak body for emergency doctors has warned.

The Australasian College for Emergency Medicine (ACEM) has released its third annual State of Emergency report focusing on the implications of an aging population and the looming health system crisis that could come with it.

Nationally, only 54 per cent of older people who presented at emergency departments in 2023–24 were given an inpatient bed within eight hours, a decline from 75 per cent in 2018–19, according to data collated by the ACEM.

The figures mark a worrying trend which the college said was ongoing.

'Not adequately equipped'

The crux of the issue, according to the ACEM, is that most hospitals and emergency departments are not adequately equipped to deal with the surging demand caused by Australia's aging population.

In 2023–24 the number of older people presenting at EDs increased by 16 per cent from five years earlier, compared to four per cent for younger patients, according to the ACEM's report.

John matten (juvy) has finally been awarded the star of gallantry for his extraordinary bravery and courage

for his actions in the Vietnam war witch saved the life of Russell James copeman (my uncle) who payed the ultimate sacrifice 3 months later on the 10th April 1967

The star of gallantry is the second highest award for bravery in the Australian defence Force.

We live in a small rural town, our closest Coles and Woolworths are two towns away, a 150km return journey.
Our youngest son has an apprenticeship in that town so we always do click and collect orders from either one of the two stores for him to pick up, 9 times out of 10 there’s things wrong or things missing. For example packets of biscuits that are 80% broken, same with a lot of products really, squashed loaves of bread, badly bruised fruit that is basically at the end of its life.
On a whole when you do a n online order you are given the worst of worst, the products every other shopper leaves behind and for good reason.
Our latest order was through Coles, not only were there the same issues as mentioned above but this time we got 2x 3 litre of milk, they both expire in 2 days, this is wrong, they don’t care, we were told that it wasn’t expired when sold.
As if life and the cost of living isn’t bad enough, struggling, every dollar counts, yet the big corporations could not care less.
I wish we lived closer than we do because I would go and do my own shopping, choose my own products, checking freshness and expiry dates.
Just pure disappointment.

Tell us the good things about the town, city or suburb you live in, or a place you like to visit.

Text posts or photos are OK, either in the comments or as a standalone thread.

Please use the tag [Town Talk Tuesday]. Sub and sitewide rules apply.

How do politicians manage to make so many terrible decisions when they’re surrounded by experts, advisers and experienced professionals? 😭 Is decision-making really that difficult, or do they just ignore everyone who knows what they’re talking about? 🤦🏿‍♂️

How was this guy even a cop to begin with ? You would think he would have some counter forensic skills being a police officer, however he leaves his name tag at the site where he dumped the bodies.

Note: I do not own a small business. I do not condone deceptive pricing. I do not condone rude business owners (based on the threads I have read). This is not about them.

I’ve been reading a lot of the threads on here lately about the recent card surcharge changes, and the amount of hostility toward business owners is difficult to watch.

This may be an unpopular opinion, but I’d like to offer a different perspective.

1. The surcharge issue is against both the everyday punter and the businesses.

Why are we paying card processing fees in the first place? Banks and payment processors could easily afford to absorb card fees. They simply choose not to because card processing is a multi billion dollar profit machine. The actual cost for a bank to process an electronic tap and go transaction is a fraction of a cent.

Small businesses have to pay an extra $500 - $1000 per month (some more) just to let you tap your card… Directing anger towards a small business for adjusting their price is like licking the boot of the multi billion dollar corporations ripping us off.

Perhaps this is a little conspiratorial of me, but from my perspective, I believe this was a power play by the government to direct anger away from the financial sector and onto your average local business owner. The regulatory bodies knew this is exactly what would happen. Everytime I saw a surcharge pop up when I’d go to pay, I’d get pissed off at the bank for forcing it on me. Now, that anger can be redirected to the business owner instead. How convenient.

1. The reality of running a small business in Australia.

Now, I am not a business owner, but I have seen plenty of businesses rise and fall behind the scenes. There seems to be a common narrative in this sub that if a business owner is worried about margins, they "just aren't very good at running a business." However, the deck is actually very heavily stacked against local/small business owners.

It is well known that the survival rate of businesses is often quite low. I believe Westpac did a survey some time ago which stated that it took an average of 2.3 years for a business to turn a profit. 2.3 years of putting everything back into the business and having pennies left for yourself. I don’t know about you but that sounds incredibly difficult, especially considering the hardship everyone is facing in our current economy. No wonder so many businesses fail.

Beyond that is all the payments businesses have to account for. Think about your local coffee shop and how much profit they’re likely making annually. I’m not talking about well known coffee shops in the middle of a busy city. Think about your local cafe in your suburb, or the local convenience store, or the local mechanic. They have to consider: GST, company/income tax, payroll tax, FBT, super, workers comp, accounting software, accountants, leave/penalty rates, commercial rent (which is so expensive), council rates, utilities, building maintenance, subscriptions, bank loan interest (for startups), registrations, industry licences/permits, insurance, and on and on. Not to mention specific expenses relative to the business whatever it may be.

That’s A LOT. I don’t know about you, but yeah, if I was running a small business and suddenly I had to front an extra $500-1000+ per month for bank fees, I’d probably adjust my prices too.

Not to mention service based businesses like mechanics, tradies etc. who are capped by how many people they can see in an hour.

1. What happens if we lose small businesses to all these expenses?

I see a lot of people praying on the downfall of small businesses. I don’t like that one bit.

I wanted to run my own business. But when I watch people grind themselves into the ground trying to make a an independent business, only to get burnt out by the complexity, costs, or even fines (if they were doing something wrong without realising because we all make mistakes), it makes me not want to run my own business. To be totally honest, it looks FUCKED. Like so unenjoyable. And so many business owners I have met (e.g., my local kebab shop) aren’t living lavish. They’re way below the greedy multi billion dollar corporations we should be taking our frustration out on. They’re just trying to live a normal life, not build a big corporate machine that scams the local consumer for profit.

If we keep treating small businesses like the enemy, people are just going to stop opening them. We’ll end up in a country where the only places left to eat, shop, or get a service done are massive corporate chains. There will be no local themes/flavour or personal customer service.

Shop owners are literally just everyday people trying to earn a living without working for a boss. Stop getting mad at your local shop owner and instead consider why banks get to profit on every transaction we make. And despite what some of you were saying about “support your local business” being a “scam” statement, I completely disagree. I will continue to buy my herbs and spices from the local family grocery that is terribly located right next to Cole’s.

This post isn’t strictly about surcharges, but more about the way that people on this sub seem to view business owners as these scammy, scummy overlords raking in profits while they complain about how hard their life is. Which isn’t a one size fits all opinion.

I moved to Sydney almost 2 years ago and still haven’t managed to feel settled. I came from NZ where it looked like everything was nice and rosy over here but it’s challenging finding friends, finding a proper job took almost year and even then it’s paying the same as nz. The weathers great but rent is obviously getting worse. Dating is difficult and it’s taking a while to make consistent friends too.

For others who moved to Sydney, how long did it take until you felt settled? What helped and what didn’t?

Sydney’s a great place but I’m starting to feel squeezed out.

Nobel Peace Prize winner Navi Pillay has received worldwide praise amid derision from Israel and the US. The Australian government remains silent. Stuart Rees reports.

The Norwegian Nobel Peace Prize committee awarded this year’s prize to Navi Pillay for her lifelong commitment to human rights, justice and accountability. Following a long and distinguished career as a human rights-focused jurist, South African-born Pillay was appointed chair of the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory in 2021.

I'm with aami insurance and I keep receiving their promos for the Driver Reward if I set that up in the app.

Well, I'm definitely not selling more of my personal data and not letting them know when, where, why and how I'm driving. Specially to save a little cash - only if I spend more on other big corporates.

If you have the driver reward app, what's your experience?

Have you noticed that after the surcharge ban, businesses are finding new ways to charge customers?

Update: Thanks to everyone who weighed in. I have submitted a report to the ACCC and hope it gets looked into soon (unless they are already winding down for the Christmas holidays!). I will share an update here if I hear back.

To be clear, my intention is not to see local businesses struggle. I am more than happy to support them when their pricing practices are transparent and fair. But if consumers do not speak up, it sets a bad precedent for other businesses to introduce similar hidden fees, especially when times are already tough for everyone.

I'm a 'murican visiting my daughter who lives on the Gold Coast. I like cream in my morning coffee and when I arrived she told me she remembered to get me some. I asked "pouring cream?" as that was what she had on hand for my previous visits. She, a little bit apologetically, replied "no, thickened cream".

In the good old US of A, we have the following milk/cream hierarchy:

Skim milk, 1% milk, 2% milk, whole milk, half & half, and whipping cream

with skim milk having no fat, 1% having 1% milk fat, and whipping cream being 100% the fat that rises to the top when unhomogenized milk separates. Half & half is half whole milk and half whipping cream and is my preference for whitening my coffee.

Coles, Woolies, Aldi have many many kinds of cream, cooking, dollop, pure, etc. Would someone fill me in on the Australian Cream Hierarchy and where it matches up to the US one?

PS my daughter just got her citizenship! Yay! Now I might be able to emigrate to here if things keep going to hell in a handbasket at home

Does anyone remember staying at a caravan park, and in the morning there was a van with a cow sound effect that would sell flavoured milk for kids, and I think also regular milk.

I can't find any information about it online but I wanna know if they still exist

Bit of a random one. I'm a software developer here in Adelaide and I just added a tiny "Made in Australia 🇦🇺" line to the bottom of my app's settings screen (screenshot). It got me wondering whether that actually means anything for software, or if it only matters for physical products.

At the supermarket the label tells you something real: the kangaroo logo and the bar showing how much of what’s inside is Australian. It clearly sways a lot of people at the shelf.

With apps there’s nothing like that. Most of what’s on our phones is built overseas, and you’d rarely know where an app was made.

So I'm curious, Would "Made in Australia" actually make you pick one app over another, or has it never crossed your mind?