News Shorts

Catholic education saves taxpayers billions

Monday, March 18th, 2024

A groundbreaking study has confirmed the immense financial benefits of parental school choice in Australia. Non-government schools save taxpayers at least $4.59 billion annually in recurrent funding costs. The research from Catholic Schools NSW, published March 14, reveals that if all schools received their full government funding entitlement, the yearly recurrent savings provided by non-government Read more

Banned priest Tony Flannery to break silence on fate of the Catholic Church

Monday, March 18th, 2024

Banned Redemptorist priest Tony Flannery plans to question the survival of the Roman Catholic church at a public talk in Galway shortly before Easter Sunday. Fr Flannery (77), suspended from public ministry by the Vatican in 2012, intends to give his views on whether “religious belief as we have known it can survive in modern Read more

House building: NZ needs 125,000 homes in 5 years to meet high migration

Monday, March 18th, 2024

Westpac Bank says New Zealand will need to ramp up its house building machine to about 125,000 homes over the next five years if it hopes to keep up with rampant migration and mitigate the post-pandemic slowdown. Westpac senior economist Satish Ranchhod said while some parts of the country were catching up with longer-term underbuilding Read more

Minister for Women ‘considers’ hospital funding tie to abortion

Monday, March 18th, 2024

Australian Federal Minister for Women Katy Gallagher says the government should do more to make abortions accessible to women. She has left open the possibility of tying hospital funding to abortion provision in her National Press Club address on gender equality held last week. Answering a journalist’s direct question about whether the Labor government would Read more

Amazon cloud pays barely $1m tax on $391m revenues

Monday, March 18th, 2024

The Government has set in place a new “cloud first” policy requiring all its agencies to store their information on the cloud. “Do not invest in on-premise ICT infrastructure unless information meets specific criteria,” chief executives are told. Ideally, it says, information classified as “restricted” should be hosted in a New Zealand-based data centre, where Read more

Syria’s civil war marks 13th anniversary, “world’s worst displacement crisis”

Monday, March 18th, 2024

As Syria marks the 13th anniversary of the beginning of its civil war on March 15, one Catholic agency says people “should not forget that Syria is the world’s worst displacement crisis.” In March 2011, popular discontent with the government of Bashar al-Assad led to large-scale protests and pro-democracy rallies across Syria, echoing the Arab Read more

Research confirms parental choice in education saves taxpayers billions

Monday, March 18th, 2024

Recent research conducted by Catholic Schools NSW (CSNSW) confirms the significant amount of money taxpayers save due to government support for parental school choice. Published on 14th March, it reveals that non-government schools save taxpayers at least $4.59 billion each year in recurrent funding. Catholic schools in NSW alone represent a $500 million annual saving Read more

Sydney start-up has developed a process to infinitely recycle PET plastics

Thursday, March 14th, 2024

An Australian start-up claims to have cracked the code to infinite recycling after it developed a solvent that allows contaminated plastic to be used repeatedly. This move could potentially boost its revenue by $100m a year. Paco Industries’ discovery has overcome one of the biggest barriers to the repeated recycling of polyethylene terephthalate plastic (PET), Read more

Nick Wilson of Palmerston North new Council for Young People Chair

Thursday, March 14th, 2024

Nick Wilson of Palmerston North is the new chair of the Council for Young People of the Catholic bishops of Aotearoa New Zealand. Nick is the Diocesan Young Catholics Team Leader for the Diocese of Palmerston North. He has had a career in education in New Zealand and overseas. He works as the Manawatū Catholic Read more

French Catholics continue to reflect on themes from the Synod on synodality

Thursday, March 14th, 2024

The famed Institut Catholique in Paris (ICP) has launched a series of eight webinars aimed at discussing themes related to the Synod on Synodality, Pope Francis’s project for Church renewal and reform launched in October 2021. The 300 slots at the first of these monthly sessions, which took place this past Monday, filled up quickly. Read more