This is due in part to the difficulties associated with defining homelessness. The ABS uses the “cultural” definition, where homelessness is divided into three categories: primary, secondary and tertiary.

• Primary homelessness covers the traditional stereotype of rough sleepers and those in makeshift accommodation. They account for about 16% of homelessness in Australia.
• Secondary homelessness includes people who frequently move from one temporary form of accommodation to another, and those in transitional/emergency accommodation provided under the Government’s Supported Accommodation Assistance Program. This is the biggest cohort, and accounts for 64% of homelessness.
• Tertiary homelessness includes people who live in boarding houses on a medium/long-term basis but do not have the security of tenure considered necessary to meet the community standard of a self-contained flat. This includes “couch surfers” and accounts for about 20% of homelessness in Australia.

The Government’s 2008 Homelessness White Paper, The Road Home, set an ambitious target of halving homelessness by 2020, with an interim target of a 20% reduction by 2013. Between the 2001 and 2006 Censuses, the number of people experiencing homelessness increased from about 100,000 to 105,000. However, the overall steadiness of this figure masks the big changes that occurred among age groups. Although there was a 16% decrease in the number of 12–18 year olds experiencing homelessness, there were large increases in the number of under 12s and over 55s. This kind of data – disaggregated and rigorous – is essential in any kind of homelessness policy development, and assessing the effectiveness of that policy.

Although the most recent Census was held on 9 August this year, most of its results will not become available until late 2012. This lag in data collection will be problematic when it comes time to track the progress of interim goals in the Homelessness White Paper.

Long-term, it might be useful to provide basic statistics training for NGOs and community groups. If the standard of their data collection rises to a level acceptable to the ABS, the job could be effectively outsourced, providing widespread geographical coverage and a rolling stock of raw data so we don’t get surprises every 5 years.

There is no easy way to measure inflation, and the best tools we have are proxies in the form of various price indexes. The most well-known is the consumer price index (CPI) which tracks a ‘basket’ of goods and services representing commonly bought things.

Inflation can be an insidious thing, eroding the value of people’s cash savings, and reducing their purchasing power. It also has a tendency to accelerate out of control if it is not contained. The most famous example is the hyperinflation in Germany in the 1920s, which got so bad people had to push around wheelbarrows of cash to buy loaves of bread.

Australia’s Reserve Bank (RBA) has an explicit policy of “inflation targeting”, where it tries to keep the annual rate of inflation (CPI) between 2 and 3 percent over the course of the business cycle. The RBA achieves this through changes in the ‘cash rate’, which is the market interest rate on overnight funds lent to banks and financial institutions. The cash rate is used as a baseline that affects most other interest rates, including mortgages and business loans. Increases in the cash rate have a tendency to reduce levels of business investment and consumer spending and vice-versa. Changes in the cash rate therefore have reverberations across the entire economy, affecting overall spending and borrowing.

Inflation targeting was introduced in 1993 and has been singularly successful in anchoring inflation expectations, keeping CPI increases stable, and underpinning Australia’s economic growth. You can see in the graph below that CPI increases oscillated wildly before 1993, but have since mostly stayed in the RBA’s 2–3 percent target band.

The CPI starts to wobble again towards the end of the graph as the income surge from Australia’s mining boom starts creating price pressures across the economy. The uptick at the very end is attributable to the hangover caused by the RBA dramatically cutting the cash rate from 7.25 to 3.25 percent over the course of 2008-09 in the face of the global financial crisis.

The most recent statistics have the CPI running at 3.6 percent, fuelled by increases in the cost of fruit (up 26.9% in the three months to June), petrol (+4.0%) and health services (+3.4%). This was offset by decreases in the cost of vegetables (–10.3%), computer equipment (–6.3%) and electricity (–1.5%). Although some of this is attributable to natural disasters and external events, the CPI is still at the upper bounds of the RBA’s target.

Through agreement between the RBA Governor and the Treasurer, and the Statement on the Conduct of Monetary Policy, the RBA’s mandate is to address this breach of its inflation target. If the RBA were a purely inflation targetting central bank, it would have raised rates on Tuesday. The RBA’s staff economists pushed for an increase. Reading between the lines of its statement, elements of the RBA Board would also have preferred to raise rates. The tension lies squarely on the Board itself, which is populated by industry figures whose business interests, particularly in retail, are crying out for rate cuts.

Against the backgrop of ongoing debt and economic troubles in the US and Europe, the next 12 months will be fascinating.

I shall simple repost my comment on Enoch’s blog, who also does not think very highly of the retrograde changes.

It is god damned atrocious. It’s increasingly apparent we went to a third-??rate institution, and it shows up in everything they do: the quality of education, the quality of facilities, the relationship between the governing bodies of the uni and the students, and now the barely-??tepid effort they put into their website.
Who the hell thought it was a good idea to have the logo jut ting out to the left? What is this meant to represent? That if you want to achieve some thing, Sydney Uni will jump out of left field to block you?
Why is there is logical grid or spacing to effectively man age the masses of informa­tion? Why is it so boxy? Why is the typography so bad? All-??in-??all it looks like some “designer” spent a couple of hours trawling the 1990s inter net for some “cool scripts” and hacked together a Frankstein’s monster.

And this is after a very promising brand ing pitch book that actually looked like it was going to unify the hitherto haphazard brand ing strategies. I’m really disgusted. I fully expect Sydney Uni to have slipped down the rankings in the next decade, all the while funnel ling massive amounts of corporate money into its coffers.

Mmm… virile.

“What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value.“
— Thomas Paine

Hugs are special. They provide comfort in times of need, and express joy following triumph. And it is their relative rarity that gives them that value. That works out well, because our passions and emotions are rarely at those highs for very long.

For my generation however, those hugs are doled out without a second thought – they are literally free.

I find this a little troubling, because these actions provide a veneer of rapport and camaraderie over what are really very shallow relationships. If a hug is just a way of saying “hello”, how do we express real intimacy? Not with kisses, because guys are ending their text messages with them. Is it symptomatic of an instant-gratification culture where we try to fast-track bonds of affinity, and in the process destroy the worth of those relationships?

Call me a cold bitch if you want, but I find the excessive touchy-feelyness of other young people quite icky. Harden the fuck up people, and save hugs and kisses for when they are actually warranted!

XOXO