Private school fees to rise 8pc

Parents of children at private WA schools should brace for fee rises up to four times the inflation rate next year, with new figures showing education costs leapt 37.5 per cent in the past five years.

Elite colleges said it was too early to set next year’s fees but they predicted rises between 5 and 8 per cent.

Principals said big pay rises to State schoolteachers last year in a three-year agreement were driving up fees at private schools because they competed for staff.

Scotch College principal Andrew Syme said fees at private schools had to go up at least 6 per cent to keep pace with teachers’ pay rises before any improvements in service.

Anglican Schools Commission chief executive Peter Laurence said fee rises at low-fee church schools would be similar to last year’s increases of between 6 and 9 per cent.

“Teachers’ pay is the number one driver that’s going to keep increases higher than they used to be a few years ago,” he said.

Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show education costs in Perth, comprising school fees and other miscellaneous costs, have jumped 37.5 per cent since 2004 – the biggest increase registered by any capital city. Canberra had the second biggest leap, with 29.4 per cent.

The rise was driven by a 55.9 per cent lift in fees associated with pre-schools and primary schools. By contrast, pre-school and primary school education costs in Sydney rose almost 23 per cent.

Pre-school and primary school fees have grown faster than the average wage of West Australians which, between 2004 and today, jumped 44 per cent – the biggest rise of any capital city.

The State Government has held down public primary school fees so the increase is mainly for private schools.

A private education in WA costs between $3000 a year for Year 12 tuition at low-fee Catholic schools and $17,000 a year at high-fee independent schools. Many private schools in Sydney and Melbourne charge more than $20,000 a year.

Association of Independent Schools of WA executive director Valerie Gould said the recent teacher pay rises and rising construction costs in the building boom two years ago may have been the big contributors to increased education costs.

WA Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief economist John Nicolaou said the fact fees were going up so much in the private sector reflected poorly on the public school sector.

He said people were voting with their feet and going to the private sector even while fees were rising, which said something about what parents thought of Government schools.

WA Secondary School Executives Association president Rob Nairn said students in Years 8 to 10 could get an education at a State school for a voluntary contribution of $235 a year. Costs were higher in Years 11 and 12 but much less than in private schools.

Source  :   www.thewest.com.au

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Retail hiring jumps on spending hopes

Retailers are boosting staff numbers in anticipation of an improvement in consumer spending, according to the Australian Retailers Association.                

The industry group’s executive director, Richard Evans, said surveys of association members showed a 12 per cent jump in employment for small and medium-sized retailers this month, painting a much more positive picture than figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics earlier this month.

The number of people employed in the retail sector fell by less than 0.1 per cent last month compared with February, on a seasonally adjusted basis, but the ABS also reported an increase in underutilisation—the proportion of the workforce that is either unemployed or not working as many hours as it would like.

The rate of underutilisation among female workers was 9.1per cent last month, compared with 6.4 per cent for men, which the ABS attributed to the larger proportion of women working in industries with high levels of casual employment, such as retail.

However, Mr Evans said most retailers were holding on to skilled staff in preparation for rising demand, with 68 per cent reporting no change in employment levels in the past quarter.

“A further 16 per cent of retailers actually increased their number of staff during the same period,” he said.

“Retailing works in cycles, and although the sector has experienced a downturn, good retailers are doing their best to hold on to skilled staff as consumer confidence continues to grow and a new type of consumer emerges.”

The same trend was in play among the bigger retailers, with David Jones boosting staffing levels around the Mother’s Day shopping period after the delivery of the federal government’s fiscal stimulus package in April led to a sharp rebound in sales.

Mr Evans said the stimulus package and lower interest rates meant most consumers had more cash available to spend, but “negative and fear-filled commentary” had fuelled a tendency among consumers to cut discretionary spending in favour of saving or paying off debt.

This meant shoppers would be in a better position to spend when confidence picks up again—with the ARA forecasting an improvement as soon as the September quarter.

Source  :  www.careerone.com.au

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WA is fastest growing state with 2.204 million people

WESTERN Australia has the fastest growing population in Australia, according to the latest figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

WA’s population growth rate has hit 3.1 per cent for the year ending December 2008 – well ahead of every other state or territory.   

Next was Queensland, growing at 2.5 per cent, Northern Territory, 2.0 per cent, Victoria, 1.9 per cent, ACT, 1.7 per cent, New South Wales, 1.4 per cent, South Australia, 1.2 , and Tasmania, 1.0 per cent.

WA, along with Queensland, had the highest rate of intra-state migration, with WA attracting 6300 people from other states and territories and Queensland luring 21,200 interstaters.

At December 31, 2008, WA’s population was 2,204,000 — the fourth largest in Australia, with NSW the most populous state (7.04 million), followed by Victoria (5.36 million) and Queensland (4.35 million).

Nationally the population increased by 1.9 percent  from 2007 — the highest growth rate recorded since the 1950s and 1960s, which was boosted by post war migration and high birth rates. 

These rates compare with a 1.2 per cent growth rate recorded five years ago.

At the end of 2008 Australia’s population had swelled by 406,100 people to 21,644,000.

Of the 406,100 new Australians,  62 per cent, or  253,400, were overseas immigrants. The excess of births over deaths contributed 152,700. 

The states losing the most people to interstate migration were New South Wales (down 22,700), South Australia (down 5200) and Victoria (down 1000).

Source www.news.com.au

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CommBank cops sustained online fraud attack

Commonwealth Bank customers are being inundated with phishing attacks, some at a rate of several scam emails a day, sent by cyber criminals seeking to steal passwords and credit card details.

The scammers, who are specifically targeting the bank in a sustained assault, are bombarding customers with several clever variations of the email ruse – such as using bogus call centres – in an attempt to hook even tech-savvy web users.

The emails have largely managed to evade spam filters using methods such as images instead of text.

Commonwealth Bank spokesman Steve Batten admitted the bank was losing the war with the fraudsters, despite working closely with the Australian Federal Police’s Australian High Tech Crime Centre.

“As soon as we close them down they are opening up elsewhere,” Batten said.

This is backed up by figures from the Australian Payments Clearing Association, which reported a 33 per cent increase in both the volume and value of fraudulent online payments in Australia for the year ended December 31, 2008.

The scam emails, which look authentic and include the Commonwealth Bank’s logo, try to trick the victim into handing over sensitive information by telling them they need to unlock an account, activate a card, claim a fee refund, update internet banking details, view an important security message or complete a survey in exchange for payment.

When the victim clicks on the link in the email, they are either infected with a password-stealing virus or presented with an official-looking page that asks them to enter their details, which are then harvested by the fraudsters.

Batten said some of the emails purport to come from actual Commonwealth Bank staff members. He stressed that the bank would never ask customers to submit sensitive information over email.

But in a new variation on the traditional “phishing” attack, which usually asks victims to click on a malicious link, one Commonwealth Bank scam email asks customers to call a Queensland phone number in order to redeem a $500 “cashback bonus”.

IT contractor Tom Howard, from the Central Coast, received the email and attempted to call the number just as an experiment.

“It’s an automated system with an American accent that welcomes you to the Commonwealth Bank of Australia and then requests an account number or says something’s expired and asks for your credit card number,” he said.

The voice recording then requested Howard’s expiry date and pin number, but he just entered in random digits.

“It actually told me the information was incorrect, which suggests that it’s hooked up to a payment gateway and it’s actually trying to do an authorisation on the credit card right then and there,” he said.

Howard said he was alarmed at the sophistication of the scam and believed the bogus call centre idea would trick a lot of people.

“People have been conditioned in terms of these phishing emails to ‘don’t click on the links’, but not so much to ‘don’t call the number’,” he said.

Source: smh.com.au 

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Australia prepares for Budget 09

TONIGHT’S Federal Budget will be about three things – jobs, nation building and a path back to surplus.

That was the message from Treasurer Wayne Swan this morning as he again repeated the Government’s mantra that there would be “difficult decisions” and “no easy answers”.

Just hours from delivering a in Budget ravaged by a $200 billion writedown revenue, Mr Swan said he was working in the “most difficult set of circumstances in 75 years”.

But he dodged questions about the likely impact on Labor in the polls, saying: “What we have to do is the right thing in the nation’s long-term economic interests”.

Wealthy retirees emerged as the latest group to pay the price for that stance today.

The Daily Telegraph reported they could have their pensions cut to help fund a $30-a week increase for almost one million single age pensioners.

The Government is expected to tighten the taper rate on the age pension, a method by which it claws back the welfare payment from retirees with an independent income.

It is just one of a number of cutbacks the Government is expected to outline as it tries to rein in an expected almost $60 billion Budget deficit.

The 30 per cent tax rebate for private health insurance coverage will be means tested, payouts for obstetric and IVF services under the Medicare Safety Net will be cut back and the increase in the first-home owners grant will be wound back.

Wealthy Australians will have their tax break on superannuation contributions cut in half and government superannuation co-contributions for low income earners will be slashed from $1500 to $1000 a year.

The “sin taxes” on alcohol and cigarettes could be increased.

But the Budget will announce an 18-week paid maternity leave scheme.

And it is expected to include a big-spending jobs package to combat an expected increase in unemployment to 8.5 per cent as a result of the global financial crisis.

The Opposition said the Budget cutbacks were made necessary by the Government’s irresponsible big-spending stimulus packages in response to the global financial crisis.

The $30-a-week rise in the pension will go only to single age pensioners and will see the weekly pension rate rise from $284.90 to $315 a week.

It will answer criticism that the payment left in poverty those who relied solely on the pension.

The rise is also expected to be extended to single veterans and disability pensioners but will not go to single mothers.

The pension rise will cost more than $3 billion, and to help pay for it, the Government is expected to tighten means testing of pensions.

Currently, single pensioners can earn up to $41,000 and still receive a small pension payment.

They also qualify for a range of concessions on medicines, council rates, electricity bills and telephone allowances worth up to $10,000 a year.

Couples can earn up to $68,000 and still get access to these valuable concessions.

http://www.news.com.au

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