Right now, there are over 200,000 students across Australia studying health sciences, comprising of medicine, nursing and allied health professions, among others. They study a range of undergraduate and postgraduate degrees, and invest anywhere from 2 to 7 years or more in their education. They play a critical role in our health system, caring for our sick and elderly, and entry into these fields of study are competitive. Upon entry into these programmes however, students are faced with a grim reality: the expectation to participate in a number of unpaid, full-time placements to further their training. Whilst typically presented as a learning experience, many of these placements involve significant work contributions by the people who participate in them, without any requisite remuneration and often resulting in high out of pocket costs for students. Students are implicitly expected to forgo other paid employment during this time, further increasing the relative cost of these programs. In many instances, only those economically privileged enough to forgo this income, live with their parents or who have sufficient savings can cope, and many are pushed into “placement poverty” because of this.

It’s a topic that has dominated Australian politics for nearly two decades now, and one that will continue to divide Australians and be used as an ideological boondoggle on both sides of politics: energy. Ever since Malcolm Turnbull was dumped as leader of the opposition in 2009 and replaced by Tony Abbott, who promised to reject the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, we have gone back and forth on models of what the future of our energy system should look like. Renewables. Coal, gas & other fossil fuels. Nuclear. Every future option, vision and system has been thrown around, with many largely detached from the realities that people face and the economics of energy in Australia.