Business News - WA
At Close of Business podcast August 27 2024
All the latest business news from WA, deliver daily. At close of business, news briefing. Good afternoon and welcome to the Our Close of Business podcast. I'm Sam Jones and I'll be reading your Tuesday headlines. S&P Global Ratings has affirmed WA's credit rating of AAA estimating the state's economy to be stable for the next few years. The ratings agency affirmed its long-term issuer credit rating of AAA and an A1+ short-term issuer credit rating on the state's budgetary performance. In its assessment, S&P said the ratings given WA reflected the state's track record of sound financial management and high-income economy. S&P found WA's financial management to be very strong but estimated the state's budgetary performance to weaken slightly in the next three years because of increasing capital expenditure commitments by the government. The agency estimated WA to continue posting healthy operating surpluses and averaging 9.7% operating revenues over fiscal years 23-27. Over to Canberra now and the federal government has proposed to cap international student enrollments in the country to 270,000, including individual limits for each institution. Federal Education Minister Jason Clare today announced the bill which would set national planning level for international student commencements for tertiary and vocational education sectors for 2025. The federal government reported 289,230 international student commencements in 2024 as of May. Australian Bureau of Statistics found foreign students spent about $48 billion in the country in 2023 with international education becoming the fourth largest export in the nation's economy. Under the proposed national planning level, 145,000 students would start at publicly funded universities and 95,000 would go to vocational education and training. Other universities and non-university higher education providers will share the remaining allocation of 30,000 places. And finally, Henderson had quoted Ostal has agreed to pay a $35 million penalty to settle an investigation over former U.S. employees allegedly manipulating its financial reports. The shipbuilder told the market that it had reached a deal with the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission to resolve the long-running investigation. Ostal said the investigation focused on actions between 2013 and 2016 of former employees at its U.S. branch who misstated its performance and financial condition. Those U.S. financial statements were consolidated into consequential statements and financial reports of Ostal Ltd, which trades on the ASX. Under the settlement announced today, Ostal will pay $35 million in penalties. As part of the SEC resolution, Ostal doesn't have to admit or deny the allegations. An independent monitor will be appointed to the U.S. Division to assess its adherence with the plea agreement and compliance program. That's all for today's headlines. You can read more at businessnews.com.au. Coming up on the podcast, Live to Clerk and Nadia Budihajo discuss arts engagement in aged care. Stay on top of the latest news stories that are impacting your business, industry or sector. The new Look Business News app gives subscribers breaking news alerts, access to editions, articles by category, as well as our advanced data and insight search function to find projects, people and companies. It's your mobile portal to the latest intelligence on commerce, politics and industry, wherever you are. Stay informed at critical times and download today. Visit businessnews.com.au/app, download on the App Store or get it on Google Play Now. Welcome back to the At Clothes of Business podcast. I'm Nadia Budihajo and today I'll be speaking to Live to Clerk. Live for the recent edition of the Business News magazine. You spoke to Aurelian Sconella, who left the West Australian ballet late last year after ten years as its artistic director. What is his newest arts venture? Aurelian has embarked on a project still within the realm of dance, but with a unique twist I suppose you could say. He's partnered with his wife, Sandy DeSalle, and fellow ballet professional, Lisa Purchase, to establish an organization called Ballet for Wellbeing, which will basically deliver ballet-inspired exercise programs using virtual reality. The program aims to promote dance and movement specifically for people with dementia and Alzheimer's disease, but it will also be open to residents in aged care facilities and other elderly people within community. Lisa has actually been teaching ballet to people with Alzheimer's since 2017, and when I spoke to her she said she had started investigating ways to mitigate against Alzheimer's, or at least delay its progression after her mother passed away from the disease in 2016. Her research found that dance was actually one of the most effective exercise methods to lessen the chances of developing neurodegenerative diseases generally. So Aurelian, Lisa and Sandy have launched a pilot trial of their program. It was in early August that they did this, and they've engaged researchers from the Australian Alzheimer's Research Association as well to conduct a study on the outcomes experienced by participants to see if it actually does improve or delay Alzheimer's and dementia progression. Very interesting to see how those can, I guess, connect. So how are the trio incorporating virtual reality into their program? So last year Aurelian teamed up with a Western Australian based company called Your World VR, which has been trialing its virtual reality services over three years with palliative care patients in Bethesda, healthcare and WA country health service. Your World VR has agreed to work with ballet for well-being to design virtual ballet classes for its program. This means that the elderly people who obviously cannot leave their home or residential aged care facility can have the ballet classes brought to them through VR and they can stay seated for the whole experience. I think they've termed this chair ballet. So basically what they've done is created a library of 15-minute experiences which are one-on-one sessions with a dance instructor. So they've recorded these in an actual studio where the instructor is teaching ballet movements with music and the participants will be able to take these classes with the VR headset on and it will feel like they're actually in a ballet studio. It was really interesting as well because in our conversation Sandy said there was a gap in high quality arts programs for aging Western Australians, generally particularly those who are living in aged care facilities. Arts has the ability to transport people to another place and that's why it was so crucial for the creators behind ballet for well-being. To take these programs into the facilities as those people obviously don't have the opportunity to go out and experience arts particularly dance as much as they used to, this way they can still be transported by arts. So to speak, Sandy also said that dance companies in particular were often looking at delivering performances in hospitals and in aged care residences, sort of taking the dances through the venues but involving the older or sick people in the performance, having them perform was often not considered but it was really, really important and Lisa even went so far to describe exercise classes that are currently delivered in aged care as rudimentary. As you mentioned other groups have also recognised the need for better arts offering for aged care residents and in the story you mentioned aged care provider Curtin Heritage Living also establishing a program specifically for this back in March. Could you tell us more about this? Yes, so Curtin Heritage Living launched this program called The Heritage Collective earlier this year to curate artistic opportunities for those living in its Cotta Slow facility. So the program is focused on visual arts and operates within what is called the Makers Space Arts Building at its facility there which was constructed actually specifically to host workshops, musical performances as well and other arts activities. When I spoke with Ricky Arnold who has been appointed as Heritage Collective Arts and Culture Coordinator, he said throughout his arts career a lot of programs for people in aged care had been centred around providing arts and performance rather than encouraging the residents participation so a very similar thing to what Sandy was talking about. He said that what tends to happen in the arts is people of that age are treated only as ticket buyers and consumers rather than actual artists which is quite sad and Ricky said there was this perception it just needed to be shifted so that rather than assuming an arts workshop in an aged care facility was just to have something tactile for the residents to do or some kind of entertainment the approach should actually be around understanding that those residents probably have 60 or 70 years worth maybe even more of cultural engagement already and many of them are more than capable of continuing to engage in and contribute to this this sector. It's been a very interesting read on how the arts and aged care sectors can intertwine. The story is part of the arts and culture feature that is now online at businessnews.com.au or in the August 19th September 1st edition of the Business News magazine that's out now. Thank you for listening and thank you Liff for joining me. Thank you. The latest business news deliver daily. Subscribe and rate the show wherever you listen to your podcasts. For all the latest business news visit businessnews.com.au Thank you. (upbeat music) [BLANK_AUDIO]