Parents to pay for PM backflip
THE big four banks have collectively raked in a whopping $ 98 million since they hit both owner occupiers and investors with out- of- cycle rate hikes and more are expected to come.
The Reserve Bank of Australia board met yesterday and kept the cash rate on hold at 1.5 per cent, where it has sat since March, but that hasn’t deterred the banks lifting rates.
Data crunched by financial comparison website Mozo found Westpac was the biggest winner since the latest round of variable rate hikes hit in late March, reaping in $ 49.8 million in interest charges.
Mozo spokeswoman Kirsty Lamont said borrowers “continued to be hit hard by out- of- cycle rate rises” and there was no end in sight.
“Mortgage stress is becoming a problem and is growing consistently while wages remain stagnant,’’ she said. A FIVE- YEAR- OLD boy is recovering in hospital after he was shot in the hip while playing with his sister in their southwest Sydney home.
Forensic and ballistics experts spent much of yesterday examining the property in Lurnea as detectives doorknocked neighbours. The boy was hit by a single shot fired from outside the home into a bedroom about 9pm on Monday.
He suffered a penetrative but non- life threatening injury.
The boy’s parents rushed him to Liverpool Hospital where staff alerted police. He was later taken to Westmead Children’s Hospital where he remains in a stable condition.
Superintendent Peter Gillam says it’s “only for the grace of God” that the boy didn’t suffer a more serious injury.
“Nobody wants anything like this to happen to their kids,” he said. ILLEGAL tobacco is now costing the Federal Government $ 1.61 billion in lost taxes, a report to be published today will reveal.
The Illicit Tobacco in Australia 2016 report calls for a national strategy.
The UK introduced a national strategy in 2000 and lost revenue dropped from $ 5.8 billion to $ 3.5 billion.
The report, by KPMG, estimates that 13.9 per cent of tobacco consumption in Australia is made up of illicit cigarettes and chop chop.
It is estimated that 2.3 million kilograms of illicit tobacco was consumed last year alone.
Nikitas Theophilopoulos, managing director of tobacco company Philip Morris, said the industry was urging federal and state authorities to continue their efforts to combat organised crime in tobacco. CASSIE S Sainsburyi b was moments from Gate 32 at Colombia’s El Dorado airport when narcotics police swooped on a tip- off from the United States Drug Enforcement Agency.
The 22- year- old Adelaide woman had checked her blue suitcase for flight AV120 to London, then home to Australia, and was about to clear the final immigration check near duty free.
“We found her because of an alert from the DEA,” Bogota airport’s narcotics chief, Commander Rodrigo Soler, told News Corp Australia. “We didn’t know who she was until she arrived at immigration and it came up on the system. Before that we were none the wiser. She had cleared security and checked her bag.”
The DEA alerted Colombia’s national police several times a month of suspected drug mules, he said, declining to detail anything further about the operation.
Ms Sainsbury has told her family in Australia she thought she was carrying home packages of headphones to give as presents at her February wedding, and that a local man she had befriended and come to trust had given them to her.
At first she was calm, choosing not to answer questions fired at her about the 18 bags of cocaine in her suitcase.
As the seriousness of the situation dawned, the former personal trainer and volunteer firefighter became “very sad, crying”, Commander Soler said.
As one of 46 foreign drug mules arrested by Commander Soler’s officers this year, Ms Sainsbury has been swept into the vast and bewildering bureaucracy of the justice system in South America’s cocaine capital.
And according to those who have been comforting her since her April 11 arrest, she has barely stopped crying.
Her most pressing problem is finding good legal advice. She has met with several lawyers and most have advised she plead guilty in order to avoid the maximum 25- year sentence she faces for trying to smuggle 6.234kg of cocaine.
Criminal lawyer Franciso Freyle Matiz, who has practised in Bogota for 25 years, said the fact she admitted the suitcase was packed by her meant she had no claim of innocence.
“Hers is a very weak defence and in the eyes of Colombian law, this is no defence,” he said. PARENTS face being whacked with higher school fees after Malcolm Turnbull slashed funding for richer schools to help pay for poorer students, in a stunning education backflip.
At least 24 elite schools will have their funding cut and about 350 private and public schools across the country will receive smaller taxpayer funding increases from next year. But more than 9000 schools throughout Australia will be better off under the Prime Minister’s shock embrace of Labor’s Gonski needs- based model, which he yesterday rebranded Gonski 2.0.
State Education Minister Kate Jones said the new funding deal would equal an extra $ 1 million – or $ 2 per student – in 2017- 18. But she said that, on current modelling, the state could stand to receive $ 6 million less funding in 2020- 21.
Under the deal, which is yet to be signed- off on by the states, $ 18.6 billion more will be spent over the next decade, starting from 2018.
Total Commonwealth funding will go from $ 17.5 billion this year to $ 30.6 billion in 2027, totalling $ 242.3 billion over that period.
Federal Labor’s education spokeswoman Tanya Plibersek said that was about $ 20 billion short of what the Opposition would spend and was “an act of political bastards and it’s an attack on Australian children”.
The National Catholic Education Commission immediately warned school fees could increase.
“We are concerned that Catholic schools in some states and territories may be forced to raise fees as a result of this Government’s funding changes,’’ a spokesman said.
“( The) announcement has only created immediate uncertainty for principals, teachers and parents, who need to make decisions now about schooling next year.”
Independent Schools Queensland welcomed the overhaul.
Mr Turnbull, who for months has argued more cash did not equate to better schooling results, announced his former Sydney Grammar schoolmate Mr Gonski would hold a review into how the extra $ 18 billion over the decade should be spent. Mr Turnbull said he wanted the extra cash in next week’s Budget to produce better results.
“We will get Australian students back to the top of the class – that is my goal, that is my commitment,” he said.
Richer private schools will be aggressively stripped of Commonwealth funding under a plan to give struggling public schools more resources.
Some schools, are receiving funding three time above their entitlement, which is determined by the schooling resource standard ( SRS).
The SRS contains a base amount for each student plus extra cash to address student and school disadvantage, such as indigenous levels and disability. Many are above their funding because of complex historic deals former Labor prime minister Julia Gillard struck with states.