Drive to give our netball a Super lift
New palliative care help for carers
NETBALL Tasmania’s aspirations for a state team on the national stage have taken a step forward with plans to apply for a licence in the Super Netball competition.
If successful, Tasmania could have side in the competition as early as 2023.
Netball Tasmania chief executive Aaron Pidgeon said it was an exciting time for the sport. Netball Tasmania has an ongoing partnership with Collingwood Magpies and the submission would likely affect that arrangement. But Mr Pidgeon believes pushing forward with a Tasmanian submission is in the best interests of the state’s elite pathways and grassroots.
As part of the strategy to operate a Super Netball club in Tasmania, Netball Tasmania would field a standalone team in the Australian Netball Championships for 2021 (formerly the ANL), rather than continue with the Tasmanian Magpies team.
“The Tasmanian Magpies has been a really valuable program and we’ve collectively achieved great things, including winning the ANL Premiership in 2018,” Mr Pidgeon said.
“We do however, need to be doing what we believe is in the best interests of our athletes in alignment with our SSN aspirations, and that means entering a stand-alone team so that we can provide greater elite competition exposure to a greater number of Tasmanian athletes.”
Netball Tasmania request funding from state government but submission will include will the its a long-term vision to deliver a stand-alone financial model.
“We believe that the financial model we have created for the proposed club is sustainable, but it is dependent, at least through the first licence period, on the financial support of the Tasmanian government,” Mr Pidgeon said.
“That said, we are not looking for a handout but rather a mutually beneficial partnership that would see the Tasmanian Super Netball team deliver a value through regular and ongoing engagement with the Tasmanian community and an unwavering commitment to providing positive leadership and role models for young Tasmanians.”
Aspiring Super Netball athlete and current Cripps Waratah player Ashleigh Probert-Hill is thrilled about the proposal.
“A Tassie team would be awesome. Having a Tassie stand-alone team brings so much more opportunity for us athletes here, so getting that exposure at that level would be awesome,” she said.
A NEW online resource aimed at assisting Tasmanians providing palliative care at home is now available as local advocates welcome the launch.
According to Carers Tasmania chief executive David Brennan, four out of five Tasmanians will need to provide palliative care for a loved one in their lifetime — well above the national average of onein-eight — and four out of five Australians will need palliative care in their final days.
Mr Brennan knows firsthand the challenges of caring for a loved one having lost his mother and brother to terminal illness in recent years.
“Most of us will have to confront either needing palliative care ourselves or caring for someone who does,” he said.
“A few years ago my mother got cancer and passed within about of diagnosis.
“It wasn’t something we prepared for … when it came, we were shell-shocked, we didn’t know where to go for information and we didn’t know what support was available.
“My sisters, brother and I didn’t even know we were carers — we hadn’t thought to classify ourselves that way or realise that with that comes different responsibilities, duties and tasks.”
CarerHelp is a new web portal offering advice and support for Australians who have taken on the role of caring for a terminally-ill parent, partner, relative or friend.
“In Tasmania, doctors can be few and far between and if you’re in a remote or rural area, you don’t get access to a GP,” Mr Brennan said. “That’s why this site is so important, it’s a fantastic site that helps you understand the journey 11 weeks and what will happen through the palliative process.”
The initiative, led by St Vincent’s Hospital Melbourne’s Centre for Palliative Care in partnership with Flinders University’s CareSearch, University of Technology Sydney and Carers Australia, has helped thousands of Australians supporting a person in their final weeks and days of life.
“CarerHelp addresses the information needs that carers have told us are important when someone is coming to the end of their life — what to expect as a terminal illness progresses, the practical aspects of caring, how to access community services and the obligatory legal and financial considerations involved in caring, dying and funerals,” Centre for Palliative Care’s Professor Peter Hudson said.
For more information visit carerhelp.com.au or call Carer Gateway on 1800 422 737.
AUSTRALIANS are set to build more houses in 2021 than ever before with regional areas and first-home buyers to be the big winners of a 130,000 home bonanza.
But a “dark shadow” looms for the nation’s builders in 2023 with one of the country’s most influential housing groups warning detached home construction will fall to levels not seen since the global financial crisis.
Forecasts from the Housing Industry Association to be released today have revealed the construction will be worth about $40bn to the nation’s economy.
The figure trumps the 120,000 house builds recorded in 2018, and secures about 500,000 construction jobs nationwide — as well as tens of thousands in fringe industries.
HIA chief economist Tim Reardon said the federal HomeBuilder grants scheme was the “primary cause of this upgrade in our forecast”, which had sunk as low as 80,000 in worst case scenarios considered last year. The government program offers those building or substantially renovating a home a $25,000 or $15,000 grant and, as of yesterday, had attracted almost 85,118 applications nationwide, despite being envisaged to support just 27,000 households.
HIA is expecting a significant surge in applications when the program ends on March 31, with builders “holding on to contracts” so the clock starts on the six-month time limit as late as possible.
A nationwide hunt for tradies is under way, with the country’s largest volume home builder Metricon noting regional construction workers were in high demand in Victoria, Queensland, NSW and South Australia.
The figures anticipate NSW will have 7000 new houses started a quarter for the rest of the year, more than 6000 in Queensland, about 5000 in WA and around 2500 every three months in South Australia. Despite starting just over 800 new houses a quarter, Tasmania will have its best year since the 1970s.