OK, it's going to be hot today. Very hot. The bureau's forecasting a top of 39 degrees, and while it's a bit cooler the rest of the week, really, it's going to be hot for the foreseeable future.
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No barbies today, it's a total fire ban
Talking of that heat... As total fire bans were declared across the ACT and the immediate NSW region, the ACT Ambulance services has reminded people how to stay cool during this hellish week of 30C-plus temperatures. One sure sign you're hydrated is frequent toilet breaks, unless you're at the pub, which just means you broke the dam way too early. It's also really not going to help with keeping hydrated. Here's my full piece on it here.
How much do Canberra parents spend kitting their kids up for school?
Rubbing the salt into the wounds of parents reeling from Christmas shopping, sending Canberra's kids back to school can cost parents $500, even when trying to keep costs down. This can hit $850 if parents have to buy an electronic device, with some parents feeling pressured to so their kids avoid being picked on at school. Uniform, $220; shoes, $180; electronic device, $300; for everything else there's a crippling sense of shame. Clare Sibthorpe has the full price tag.
$3 billion child support system the latest federal government tech-wreck
It's not a good time for government IT projects at the moment. There's the Census debacle, the tax office online system crashed, and the PM's pet project, the Digital Transformation Agency has been sent back to the drawing board. Not to mention robo-debt. Now it turns out Australia's Child Support Agency is working with technology declared obsolete four years ago. The $104 million project to replace the befittingly nicknamed "CUBA" platform is late, in disarray and the Department of Human Services refuses to say when the job will be done or how much it has cost. Noel Towell takes us through the Commonwealth's latest IT embarrassment.
Werriwa Wiener dash claims world dachsund record
It might have been too "specialised" for the snobs at Guinness, but the organiser of the Werriwa Wiener Dash has declared the 154-strong dachshund dash a world record for most sausage dogs in one place at one time and tells any contenders they need to prove him wrong. And while there was plenty more at the Bungendore Show, our team did come back with lots of shots of the cute dogs. There's a whole gallery of them. David Ellery has the word from the race track, err, showground.
The upside of that federal gridlock
The gridlock in federal parliament and low interest rates only mean good news for the ACT's economy, with a Deloitte Access Economics outlook report saying what's bad for the nation, is good for the ACT. As the company's ever-quotable partner Chris Richardson puts it, "If Canberra's small businesses were any more confident, they'd be giving [US President] Donald Trump lessons on self-promotion." The federal public service sector has grown by 2.5 per cent in the last financial year while the Turnbull government struggles to perform with a one-seat majority at the Hill. I try to make sense of all the numbers here.
