Key events2h agoBowen to cancel Kyoto carbon credits scheme2h ago’A real betrayal’: Burney on Price’s comments3h agoFirst Nations people never at war with British colonists, Price says3h agoLabor condemns Jacinta Price’s claims British colonisation had no lasting impact on Indigenous Australians4h agoWelcomeFilters BETAKey events (5)Jacinta Nampijinpa Price (6)8m ago20.39 EDT
Wastewater reveals Victorians are country’s biggest fentanyl consumers
Victorians are the country’s biggest consumers of “super drug” fentanyl, AAP reports.
The latest wastewater data from the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission shows Melbourne has the highest level of heroin, ketamine and fentanyl consumption of any Australian capital city.
In regional areas, Victoria tops the national list for heroin consumption and is second for fentanyl and oxycodone use.
Crime Stoppers Victoria chief executive Stella Smith warned organised crime syndicates were targeting specific industries as a way to smuggle them in.
Fentanyl is up to 100 times stronger than morphine and drug dealers often mix it into cocaine and heroin to boost their profit margins.
Updated at 20.47 EDT23m ago20.24 EDTNatasha May
Public Health Association calls for pathway to fund preventative health measures
A parliamentary committee chaired by Dr Mike Freelander is today hearing from peak health bodies and experts as part of its ongoing inquiry into diabetes.
Diabetes is the world’s fastest growing chronic health condition, with evidence indicating the increasing numbers are primarily due to a rise in obesity.
Terry Slevin, CEO of the Public Health Association of Australia (PHAA), has just told the inquiry that obesity is a “slow moving public health crisis”.
He has three key messages he wants to get across:
There needs to be a package of measures, not a single quick fix, introduced to tackle the issue – in a similar way that vaping is being tackled through a suite of measures.
Obesity should be a high priority when the Australian Centre for Disease Control is up and running.
There needs to be machinery for investing in preventative health measures because at the moment there is no pathway to fund them.
Updated at 20.30 EDT38m ago20.09 EDT
Some more on what’s to come in the NSW budget
The New South Wales education minister, Prue Car, will fund a significant pay rise for the state’s public school teachers by pulling $1.4bn from elsewhere in her department
Car announced on Friday she would cut “bureaucratic waste” by reducing programs that she said didn’t “directly support schools” and by redirecting discretionary funds that had taken teachers off classroom duties to do admin.
The measures will save the NSW government $268m over the next year and $390m over the three years after that, and help return highly skilled executive educators to classroom teaching positions, Car said.
Teachers have been informed of an immediate freeze on the recruitment of non-teaching executive…
2023-09-14 19:30:14
Post from www.theguardian.com
rnrn