A daily 5 minute news wrap for English learners and people with disability.
Welcome to SBS News in Easy English, I'm Biwa Kwan.
An ageing and growing population in Australia over the next 40 years is projected to have a big impact on government spending in areas such as health and defence.
The full Intergenerational Report released by federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers assesses how government policies will work over the next four decades.
He says he has heard the calls for tax reform,and says he is ruling out any changes to the headline corporate tax rate.
"Well, we are in the middle of implementing meaningful tax reform across multinational taxes, high balance superannuation and when it comes to tax compliance. And the tax reform that we already have in train are already making a substantial difference to the budget position. They have been one of the reasons why we have been able to get the budget position in a much better nick to face the uncertainty ahead."
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Members of the Tasmanian Aboriginal community are celebrating a decision to remove the statue of a former Tasmanian premier who interfered with the remains of an Aboriginal man in the 1800s.
In 1869, politician and surgeon William Crowther broke into a Hobart morgue and stole the skull of an Aboriginal man, William Lanne, sending it to the Royal College of Surgeons in London.
To cover up what he had done, he put in place a skull he had stolen from another corpse.
A majority vote by the Hobart City Council's planning committee has resulted in a decision to remove the statue.
It is believed to be the first time a monument has been removed in Australian, in response to calls from Aboriginal Australians.
Nala Mansell from the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre told SBS it is significant to see steps taken to remove the statue.
"The Aboriginal community have been calling for its removal for decades. We want to see it gone. The council has voted in favour. We're sick of this long drawn out process that the Aboriginal community didn't agree with in the first place. Let's get it done, remove the statue, and let's start working to acknowledge the true history of Tasmania in other ways."
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The national arts funding body in Australia has been overhauled and relaunched as Creative Australia.
It is part of a $286 million national cultural policy that was announced in January.
Arts Minister Tony Burke says the changes will see more Australian stories being told.
"But now, instead of having the old system of Australia Council there for the funded sector, Creative Partnerships there for the philanthropic centre, and commercial world out on its own. We bring all three together. This creates a body that can be dedicated simply to Australian stories, simply to Australian creativity in all its forms."
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Australia's largest airline has reported a record profit of $2.5 billion in the year to June 30.
It is airline's first full-year profit since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Qantas CEO Alan Joyce says it is a remarkable turnaround after being just 11 weeks away from insolvency and incurring $7 billion in losses during the pandemic.
Domestic capacity is now back at pre-pandemic levels, and international capacity has recovered to about 80 per cent of pre-pandemic levels.
Mr Joyce says he expects the cost of plane tickets to drop soon.
"Between December of last year and the middle of this year, international airfares have come down already by 11 per cent. And we're expecting them to come down even further in the next year as those 6.4 million seats are added into the international market."
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And to sport, in athletics,
Australian pole vaulter Nina Kennedy has shared a gold medal with American Katie Moon at the World Athletics Championships in Budapest.
Kennedy twice broke her own national record with a first-up clearance at 4.85 metres and then with a third attempt at 4.9 metres.
Moon also finished on the same height.
That left the athletes with a choice: to share the gold medal or compete in a jump-off.
Kennedy says she was pleasantly surprised with Moon's decision.
"And I didn't think she would want to share it. You know, she's the absolute champion of our sport. So I kind of said to her, 'girl, you want to share this?' And she was relieved. And I was relieved. And yeah, it couldn't be more of a privilege to share it with Katie."
Moon says she was relieved to find out they were both thinking the same thing.
"And she walked up, I thought she was going to want to jump off. So I was like, Yeah, I'm jumping. And then when I saw the look on her face and she didn't want to, I was like, 'Wait a minute, okay.' And it was for me, it was very much a gut reaction of yes, like we went jump for a jump and we finished out the same way and it just made so much sense. We both won today."
I am Biwa Kwan, this is SBS News in Easy English.
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