Tag: australian

gift

JB Hi-Fi gift cards and the Australian Consumer Law

Need to know

  • Gift cards are just like cash and considered a prepayment – a retailer shouldn’t have the right to decide when you’re allowed to use them
  • Nothing in the Australian Consumer Law gives retailers the option of rejecting a gift card for purchases
  • After a backlash fueled by customer complaints and media reports, JB Hi-Fi has reworked its ill-conceived policy 

(This story was updated on 9 October to reflect JB Hi-Fi’s reversal on its gift card policy.) 

In JB Hi-Fi’s 2020 annual report, the company says “gift cards and store credits are considered a prepayment for goods and services to be delivered in the future”.

But even though the goods have technically been paid for, JB Hi-Fi gave itself the right in recent days to choose which products gift-card holders can and can’t buy before ultimately rethinking the policy.

That seemed pretty shonky to us, since gift-card

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women

Australian women’s league moves north to Queensland

BRISBANE, Australia (AP) — Australia’s Women’s National Basketball League is moving to northern Queensland state for a shortened season starting next month.

Queensland state managed to control COVID-19 outbreaks better than most in Australia. As a result, many of the country’s professional sports leagues moved teams and matches to the so-called Sunshine State over the past six months in order to complete their pandemic-interrupted seasons.

On Friday, the WNBL decided to do the same — to start and finish its season over a six-week period in three hubs from Nov. 12 to Dec. 20.


The Australian Football League and the National Rugby League also moved matches and relocated teams to Queensland, where the coronavirus was mostly contained because of a stringent policy of closing the state borders.

The WNBL said the northern Queensland cities of Cairns, Townsville and Mackay would host the 56-game regular season and four-game finals series.

Players

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women

Teen Iga Swiatek to meet Australian Open champ Sofia Kenin in French Open final

PARIS — Iga Swiatek is just 19. She’s ranked 54th. She’s never won a tour-level title. She’d never been past the fourth round at a Grand Slam tournament. And she’s as dominant as can be so far at the French Open.

Poland’s Swiatek became the lowest-ranked women’s finalist at Roland Garros since the WTA computer rankings began in 1975, advancing with her latest lopsided win, this one 6-2, 6-1 against Argentine qualifier Nadia Podoroska on Thursday.

Swiatek has won all 12 sets she’s played in the tournament and has dropped merely 23 games through a half-dozen matches.

When this 70-minute tour de force ended before a crowd in the hundreds at Court Philippe Chatrier — there was a daily limit on spectators because of the coronavirus pandemic — Swiatek asked for more noise, waving her arms and cupping a hand to her ear.

Polish teenager Iga Swiatek became the seventh
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women

There are thousands of very credible women across Australia fighting for equal rights | Australian budget 2020

The prime minister, Scott Morrison, is angry with women. Not all of us, just those making a fuss about the woeful lack of attention to women’s workforce participation, economic security and safety in the budget his treasurer handed down on Tuesday night.

After early childhood education advocate and journalist Georgie Dent published an article in Women’s Agenda pointing out that the biggest-spending budget in history had allocated roughly a third of 1% of its funds for women’s economic security (citing a figure I tweeted from the Per Capita account during the budget presentation on Tuesday night), she received a call from the PM’s office to complain that “no one credible” was making such a complaint, and that “nothing in the budget is gendered”.

To quote one famous working woman: big mistake. Big. Huge.

Within a couple of hours, the hashtag #CredibleWomen was born, and soon trending in Australia. Twenty-four

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women

Australia’s English test for partner visas could leave women at mercy of abusers, experts warn | Australian budget 2020

The federal government’s plan to force people seeking a partner visa to learn English could leave them without a safety net from family violence, critics have said, despite the Coalition’s claim that the measure is aimed at protecting women.

The government announced in Tuesday’s budget that from late 2021 it would require partner visa applicants applying for permanency to have made “reasonable efforts” to learn English. The same test would apply to their permanent resident sponsors.

The acting immigration minister, Alan Tudge, said “reasonable efforts” could include taking 500 hours of the free adult migrant English program classes.

The government is boosting the number of partner visas available this financial year from just under 40,000 of the 160,000 overall visa cap to 72,300 in total. There will also be a new fee, with sponsors being charged $420 on top of the usual $7,715 partner visa application fee.

The increase in

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