New wages for gig workers

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One of Australia's most recognizable broadcasters is facing the biggest battle of his life. Alan Jones has pleaded not guilty to multiple historical sexual assault charges, and now the case is before the courts.

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I'm not going to dwell here on the allegations made about me, other than to say that I refute them entirely.

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As witnesses step into the box and the evidence unfolds, the case of podcast will be your eyes and ears inside the courtroom. Search the case of podcast on ABC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts.

**Carrington Clarke** (0:37)
Some of Australia's gig workers now have a new safety net in place with a wage floor and insurance protections which come into effect today. But how will this affect the hundreds of thousands of independent contractors across the country and what will it mean for delivery costs? And national preliminary auction clearance rates are the highest they've been in months. Does this mean the property market is starting to strengthen or is the picture more complicated? Welcome to ABC Business Daily.
I'm Carrington Clarke.

**Michael Janda** (1:10)
And I'm ABC Business Editor Michael Janda.

**Carrington Clarke** (1:13)
Michael, so good to be sitting across from you. I've had a few weeks off.

**Michael Janda** (1:17)
Very good to have you back. You're looking refreshed and tanned.

**Carrington Clarke** (1:21)
Yes.

**Michael Janda** (1:21)
Thank you. Where have you been?

**Carrington Clarke** (1:23)
I've done a little bit of gallivanting around. Most of the time spent in Europe.

**Michael Janda** (1:28)
How was the heat wave?

**Carrington Clarke** (1:29)
The heat wave was intense. I mean, I think my two takeouts, kind of a macro level, were that you have had a major shift in the way that weather is working in Europe. Obviously, we have to be careful whenever trying to ascribe changes to climate change. But the heat wave was enduring and intense across large parts of the continent this year. And talking to a lot of people, they were really starting to re-think whether or not, particularly if they're from Northern Europe, whether or not they needed to go towards the Mediterranean to Southern Europe in order to get that kind of typical summer holiday. It was so, so hot in different parts of the continent that I visited, including Majorca, where I was for the eclipse at the end.
It was hellishly hot. And I think a lot of people now are looking at maybe Helsinki makes more sense.

**Michael Janda** (2:18)
Pining for the fjords.

**Carrington Clarke** (2:19)
Exactly. Yes. Helsinki makes more sense than Majorca, perhaps, in summer. There were also anecdotal reports. I made some reporting suggesting that perhaps tourism operators in Southeast Asia were struggling, those that were usually dependent on European and American visitors.

**Michael Janda** (2:36)
So now that the UK and Northern Europe actually has a summer, they don't feel the need to travel somewhere else.

**Carrington Clarke** (2:42)
Well, I think that might be part of it, but I do actually think the fuel crisis has impacted that and the ability to travel through the Middle East. I think a lot of people changed their plans earlier in the year, at the height of the Middle East war, and it'll be interesting to see whether or not that does return. Apparently, there has been a lot of other Asian countries have continued to travel to some of those places. But if you were, for example, a German translator working in Southeast Asia, perhaps you were struggling this year because those same visitor numbers weren't coming across. But I think there's a pretty sensible business punt on if you were involved in manufacturing or installing air conditioning in Europe because a lot of these big cities are just-

**Michael Janda** (3:27)
Could be an export opportunity for Australia, given our expertise in cooling things down, which is something they're really not very good at. I noticed when I've traveled in the UK or Germany, they're not designed for hot weather. But it's interesting to hear you can take the reporter out of the studio, but you can't take the economist out of the reporter even when he's on holiday.

**Carrington Clarke** (3:47)
Well, it is interesting watching the other side of this argument. Obviously, there is a continued debate here in Australia about renewable energy and we have had large-scale installation of heat pumps, reverse cycle, air conditions, that's continuing to go on in Australia.
One of the great things about many European cities, they have these very old buildings. They're obviously under heritage protection. The difficulty is if you're trying to fit air conditioning units, modern technology into those type of apartments or houses, that's very difficult to do while keeping it sympathetic to the way that the building look, the way that the street look. So I think it is something that people are really struggling with. For a long time, I remember European friends criticizing Americans for being too gung-ho when it came to air conditioning and also being too gung-ho when it comes to icing up their water. But there seems to have been a noticeable shift in the last few years. And I think that they don't have the same access to copious amounts of sun normally. This year might be an exception. But obviously their winters are a different proposition.