Penulis: Agus S

Cold drop, upper-air trough and heat dome combine to create severe weather and 85mm hailstone

Severe thunderstorms swept acrossFrancelast Friday, killing one person and injuring another. Two systems were involved, prompting orange weather warnings: the first came from the west via Brittany and hit the north of the country, and the second arrived via Spain and affected south-west France.

More than 30,000 lightning strikes were recorded between midnight on Friday and early Saturday. Eure, north of Paris, was worst hit with 4,326 strikes. Strong winds lashed Normandy – Rouen recorded a 76mph (123km)/h) gust that broke the 64mph record set in 2019. Hail affected several areas, leading to infrastructure and crop damage.

There were further storms over central and north-west France on Saturday night, many with very large hailstones. The largest, found in Orly, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, measured 85mm.

Several factors led to the severe weather. A key component was a phenomenon known asgoutte froide, in which an isolated, upper-air cold pool detached from the overall circulation, creating significant atmospheric instability.

Athalweg d’altitude(upper-air trough) provided the lift necessary by favouring air ascent. Warm, moist air flowed into the trough and was forced upwards. As the air rose, it started to cool and water vapour began to condense, forming clouds. As this clouds swelled, they created severe thunderstorms.

As air flowed into the trough from every direction, it enabled supercells to develop by introducing the element of spin. Supercells are large-scale, highly organised storms with a rotating updraft that can sustain themselves for several hours and travel hundreds of miles – one of which swept through northern France on Friday.

A recent heat dome over the country helped intensify the storms by providing a greater gradient between the surface and the upper air, and by bringing a greater source of moisture. A heat dome occurs when high pressure persists over a region, trapping warm air and allowing temperatures to rise several degrees above the seasonal average.

Excavation crews begin sealing off site in Tuam, Co Galway, before full-scale dig starts on 14 July

Preliminary work aimed at identifying the remains of nearly 800 infants is starting on thesite in Tuam, Co Galway, as Ireland continues to wrestle with the traumatic legacy of its mother and baby homes scandal.

Catherine Corless, a local historian who first sounded the alarm about the dark past of the institution run by nuns from the Bon Secours order, uncovered the names of 796 infants who are believed to have been buried there between 1925 and 1961, some in a disused subterranean septic tank. There were no burial records.

On Monday, excavation crews began sealing off the site before the search for remains next month. “There are so many babies, children just discarded here,” Corless told Agence France-Presse.

It was Corless’s work that led to an Irish commission of investigation into the so-called mother and baby homes, to which young women and girls were sent for decades to give birth in, rather than in hospital or at home. Doubling as orphanages and adoption agencies for much of the 20th century, the institutions were run by religious orders with sanction by the state, which overlooked deprivation, misogyny, stigma and high infant mortality rates.

The government made a formalstate apologyin 2021 after thecommissionreport.

In Tuam, hoarding has been placed around the excavation site, now in the middle of a housing estate. The preliminary work is expected to last four weeks before a full-scale excavation begins on 14 July.

The site was once a workhouse and the search for the infants’ remains could be complicated by the fact that victims of the 19th century great famine are also thought to be buried there.

Daniel MacSweeney, who is overseeing the operation, told RTÉ radio: “It’s an incredibly complex challenge because of the size of the site and the fact that we are dealing with infant remains that we know, at least in the case of the memorial gardens (on the site), are co-mingled.”

The existence of mother and baby homes has been described as a dark stain on Irish society. In 2017, the then taoiseach Enda Kenny described what was revealed about Tuam as “a chamber of horrors”.

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Speaking in the Dáil, the Irish parliament, he did not spare his fellow citizens. “No nuns broke into our homes to kidnap our children. We gave them up to what we convinced ourselves was the nuns’ care. We gave them up maybe to spare them the savagery of gossip, the wink and the elbow language of delight in which the holier-than-thous were particularly fluent. We gave them up because of our perverse, in fact, morbid relationship with what is called respectability,” he added.

Alaa Mousa accused of torturing detainees at military hospitals during Syrian civil war under former ruler Bashar al-Assad

A Syrian doctor has been sentenced to life imprisonment for crimes against humanity in his home country – including murder and torture – by aGermancourt.

The 40-year-old man, Alaa Mousa, worked as a junior doctor in an army hospital and a military intelligence prison in Homs and Damascus inSyria, in 2011 and 2012, in the early phase of the civil war.

He abused prisoners accused of being members of the opposition and who were considered enemies of the Syrian dictatorBashar al-Assadwho had participated in the uprisings against the regime during the Arab spring. He was convicted by the court in Frankfurt of two deaths and eight cases of severe torture.

The court imposed the highest possible sentence on the man, a supporter of Assad, whose crimes – including war crimes, torture and murder – the judge, Christoph Koller, said had “seriously injured nine people, both physically and mentally, and killed two”.

He described the doctor, based on one of several experts’ reports, as having a “sadistic” nature that was given particular expression when he tortured his victims.

“Above all, the accused enjoyed harming people that he considered inferior and of lower value to himself,” Koller said.

Witnesses called to give evidence during the almost three-and-a-half-year trial described, sometimes in considerable detail, the severe abuse they had received at the hands of Mousa, including beatings and kickings, or how he deliberately set broken bones with insufficient levels of anaesthetic. They also told the court how the doctor had poured flammable liquid on their wounds and parts of their body – and in two cases, including that of a 14-year-old boy, on their genitals – and set them on fire. He injected one prisoner with a deadly poison while the man had been trying to defend himself. He died in front of fellow prisoners.

The court also heard how he had beaten and kicked a young man suffering from epileptic seizures, knowing he had the condition, which led to it worsening. He later administered a pill, which caused the man to die in the presence of his brother.

Koller praised the more than 50 witnesses who he said had possessed the courage to share the descriptions of their suffering with the court, sometimes over several days. He said without them the case could not have been brought successfully.

During her summing up, the senior public prosecutor Anna Zabeck emphasised to the court last month the difficult circumstances under which the witnesses had testified. Both they and their relatives living in Syria were repeatedly threatened and intimidated to prevent them from appearing at the trial, she said.

She said the witnesses had been “asked to give almost everything during their testimony”, by discussing the violence that had scarred them “physically and mentally”. The prosecutor Christina Schlepp added that, despite repeated accusations from the defence lawyers that the victims had been part of a conspiracy against the doctor, there were “no signs they had wanted to incriminate” Mousa for the sake of it.

During the often hours-long court sessions, Mousa mainly sat in the dock with his head bowed, and repeatedly had to blow his nose.

Mousa has lived inGermanyfor 10 years. He worked in various clinics over five years as an orthopaedic medic, most recently at a hospital in Bad Wildungen in the state of Hessen, in western Germany, until his arrest in summer 2020. He was recognised and reported to the authorities after some of his victims saw him in a TV documentary about the Syrian city of Homs and was placed in custody. The court case against him at Frankfurt’s higher regional court started in January 2022 and took place over nearly 190 days.

It was possible to try the doctor in a German court even though the crimes were committed in Syria due to the principal of universal jurisdiction in international criminal law. This allows for the prosecution anywhere of a person alleged to have committed war crimes.

The federal prosecutor’s office had asked for the man to receive life imprisonment – which usually runs to a maximum of 15 years in Germany – followed by preventive detention – meaning he would always stay behind bars, because of the potential danger it considered him to pose to wider society should he ever be released.

Lawyers acting for the doctor called for him to be acquitted on the charge of the two killings, arguing that he had not been working in Homs at the time they took place.

The doctor, who entered court wearing a black fur-trimmed hooded coat to cover his face, pleaded not guilty, insisting he had been the victim of a conspiracy.

Four booths hidden from view, prompting fury from Israel’s defence ministry and visiting US Republicans

The four main Israeli company stands at the Paris airshow have been shut down after exhibitors reportedly refused to remove some weapons from display.

The stands at the aerospace industry event were hidden from view after pressure on the organisers from the French government, a source told the Guardian.

The stands were used by Elbit Systems, Rafael, IAI and Uvision. Three smaller Israeli stands, which did not have hardware on display, and an Israeli Ministry of Defence stand, remain open. The airshow is taking place amid an escalatingconflict in the Middle East.

Reuters reported that the instruction came from the French authorities after Israeli companies failed to comply with a direction from a French security agency to remove offensive or kinetic weapons from the stands.

The show, which was first held in 1909 and is organised by the French Aerospace Industries Association, is taking place in Le Bourget, in north-eastParis, from Monday until Sunday.

France, a longtime ally of Israel, has gradually hardened its position on Benjamin Netanyahu’s government over its actions in Gaza and military strikes abroad. The French president,Emmanuel Macron, last Friday reiteratedhis country’s support for Israel’s right to protect itself, but in reference to its strikes on Iran he called on “all parties to exercise maximum restraint and to de-escalate”.

Israel’s defence ministry said it had rejected the order to remove some weapons systems from displays, and that exhibition organisers responded by erecting a black partition that separated the Israeli industry pavilions from others.

The ministry said: “This outrageous and unprecedented decision reeks of policy-driven and commercial considerations. The French are hiding behind supposedly political considerations to exclude Israeli offensive weapons from an international exhibition – weapons that compete with French industries.”

IAI’s president and chief executive, Boaz Levy, said the black partitions were reminiscent of “the dark days of when Jews were segmented from European society”, according to Reuters.

Earlier on Monday, images taken by the AFP agency showed yellow writing on one of the black walls around the stands. Accompanied by a drawing of an Israeli flag, it read: “Behind these walls are the best defense systems used by many countries. These systems are protecting the state of Israel these days. The French government, in the name of discrimination, is trying to hide them from you.”

Later, the section of black wall appeared to have been replaced by a white wall.

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Two US Republican politicians attending the airshow also criticised the move.

Talking to reporters outside the blacked-out Israeli defence stalls, the Republican governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders described the decision as “pretty absurd”, and the Republican senator Katie Britt criticised it as “shortsighted”.

Meshar Sasson, a senior vice-president at Elbit Systems, accusedFranceof trying to stymie competition, pointing to a series of contracts that Elbit has won in Europe. “If you cannot beat them in technology, just hide them, right? That’s what it is because there’s no other explanation,” he said, according to Reuters.

The company Rafael described the move as “unprecedented, unjustified, and politically motivated”.

The airshow’s organiser said it was in talks to try to help “the various parties find a favourable outcome to the situation”.

Palazzo Maffei in Verona contacts police after visitors cause Van Gogh’s Chair to buckle while posing for photos

An Italian museum has contacted the police after two clumsy tourists almost wrecked a work of art while posing for photos.

Video footage released by Palazzo Maffei in Verona showed the hapless pair photographing each other pretending to sit on a crystal-covered chair made by the artist Nicola Bolla – described by the museum as an “extremely fragile” work.

The woman squats and does not seem to touch the work – called Van Gogh’s Chair and covered in Swarovski crystals – but the man is not so careful, sitting and then stumbling backwards as the seat buckles under his weight.

The pair can then be seen fleeing the room in footage that went viral over the weekend.

Palazzo Maffei described it as “every museum’s nightmare” and said on Monday it had made a complaint to the police, without specifying when it was filed.

The museum posted an account on social media on Thursday saying the incident had happened in the past four weeks and the chair had since been repaired.

“It was an idiotic thing to do,” Bolla told Italian magazine Fanpage. But the artist said he could see a “positive side” to the incident. “It’s like a kind of performance. Ordinary people can do it too, not just artists.”

Committee replaced state executive 10 months ago, after ‘scathing’ review about nomination failure in council elections

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The fate of theNew South WalesLiberal party will be decided at a crunch meeting on Tuesday, where the party’s federal executive will weigh up whether to end or extend its control over the division.

The federal Liberal party forcibly took over theNSW division in September last yearafter the NSW branch failed to lodge nominations for 140 candidates in 16 councils before the local government elections. A committee was appointed to replace its state executive for a period of 10 months.

On Tuesday, theLiberal partyfederal executive will decide the next steps for new Liberal leader Sussan Ley’s home state division in one of her first major challenges.

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In the lead-up to the meeting, a small NSW-focused committee remaining in control of the state branch has been firming as the most likely outcome.

That would mean replacing the three-person committee backed by Peter Dutton and supported by Tony Abbott.

The administrative committee – whose term runs out on 30 June – ignited a internal furore after one of the members, Alan Stockdale, said Liberal women were “sufficiently assertive” and perhaps men needed a leg up.

The federal executive is also expected to agree to launch two separate reviews after the party’sworst election defeat in its 80-year history– a conventional post-election inquiry and a broader probe into the party.

Arthur Sinodinos is expected to be among the senior party figures to lead the campaign review, although Guardian Australia understands the former Liberal minister, staffer and US ambassador has yet to be formally approached for the task.

John Howard-era cabinet minister and former rightwing power broker Nick Minchin was another name that was floated.

The Queensland senator, James McGrath, is the frontrunner to lead the deeper dive into the party, according to multiple Liberal sources.

The federal intervention has rankled all three factions in NSW – the moderates, the centre-right and the right – and all are perturbed with the lack of progress and consultation.

A three-person committee made up of Victorian party figures Stockdale and Richard Alston and former NSW state MP Peta Seaton was installed to manage the branch, including reviewing the party’s constitution, overhauling the administrative machinery and helping to conduct the federal election campaign.

As a decision on the future of the intervention neared, a compromise in which the federal executive agreed to continue with a committee but install more NSW members has garnered a level of support across the factions.

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The most likely shape of the new committee would be an elder statesperson from NSW as the chair – and the three remaining vice-presidents from the NSW state executive.

“It’s very much a Speakman-Ley proposal,” said one senior Liberal, referring to Ley and the NSW opposition leader, Mark Speakman.

“They have been working very closely together,” he said.

This option would have the advantage of being more acceptable to the NSW party members because local figures would be in control.

Ley would not comment before Tuesday’s meeting but sources close to the Liberal leader disputed suggestions she was working with any faction on a particular model.

The compromise is not certain to succeed as it requires 75% support from the22-strong federal executive, which is compromised of Ley’s federal parliamentary leadership team, state division presidents and federal branch officials.

“We’re about two-thirds there,” said one insider, noting that most of the state representatives on the federal executive were instinctively likely to favour more state control.

If the vote for either the old or the compromise committee does not achieve 75%, the control of the NSW division will automatically revert to the NSW state executive.

Exclusive:Aboriginal deaths in custody royal commissioner says ‘people need to be empowered and take action against those agencies’

Jason and Luke died in the same way as dozens of others. Why did authorities fail to act?

Read more fromour investigation into the prison suicide crisis

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The former Labor senator and Aboriginal deaths in custody royal commissioner Patrick Dodson has condemned inaction on known hanging points as “totally unacceptable” and joined calls for national leadership on justice reform.

Guardian Australiarevealed last weekthat 57 Australians had died using hanging points that prison authorities knew about but failed to remove, often despite their use in repeated suicides and explicit warnings from coroners.

Dodson, a Yawuru elder often referred to as the “father of reconciliation”, was one of the royal commissioners who worked on the 1991 Aboriginal deaths in custody royal commission. That royal commission told state governments to remove obvious hanging points from their prisons, a recommendation that was universally accepted.

Despite this, Guardian Australia has revealed how obvious hanging points have been allowed to remain in prisons like Brisbane’s Arthur Gorrie, where 10 hanging deaths occurred using the same type of exposed bars between 2001 and 2020, despite repeated, early coronial warnings that they be removed.

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Even at the relatively new Darwin Correctional Centre, which opened in 2014, more than 20 years after the royal commission, cells were designed with an obvious and well-known hanging point, which was used in two hanging deaths in its first two full years of operation. The hanging point was not fully removed from cells until 2020.

“It’s totally unacceptable and this is where people need to be empowered and take action against those agencies based on their duty of care,” Dodson told Guardian Australia.

“They have a duty of care. They’ve been told 30 years ago to get rid of these things.”

Indigenous Australians remain vastly overrepresented in prison populations and hundreds have died in custody – 101 of those by hanging – since the 1991 royal commission.

Official data shows the rate of Aboriginal hanging deaths is at a 17-year high, correlating with Australia’s surging prisoner population.

Guardian Australiarevealed last weekthat in 2020, after the hanging death of young Indigenous man Tane Chatfield, the New South Wales government told a coroner it had audited Tamworth prison for hanging points but could find none. An independent inspection of Tamworth prison less than 12 months later found “multiple hanging points” including some that had been purportedly removed.

Guardian Australia asked every state government what has been done to address the problem. You can readtheir responses in full here.

Dodson said the federal government, through the standing council of attorneys general, should take a national leadership approach on reforms that reduce Indigenous incarceration rates and reduce deaths in custody, including by removing hanging points. His voice adds tothat of a group of crossbenchers, including David Pocock, David Shoebridge, Lidia Thorpe and Zali Steggall, calling for federal leadership on the issue of hanging points after the Guardian’s investigation.

Dodson said the federal government should establish a national Aboriginal justice commission to progress nationally coordinated reforms and ensure state governments are responding the recommendations of the 1991 royal commission, many of which remain unmet.

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He said the attorney general, Michelle Rowland, should ensure the issue is listed on the next agenda of the standing council of attorneys-general.

“The other thing that the attorney general should be doing is convening a group of the Aboriginal leadership in this space to discuss, have a discussion with them about the need for [an Aboriginal justice commission] and its importance,” he said. “I think we need a structure, otherwise, where does it end, you know?”

The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander social justice commissioner, Katie Kiss, said that the removal of hanging points from prison cells to reduce self-harm was a “key recommendation” from the 1991 royal commission“The failure to implement this – and all other – recommendations exacerbates the ongoing national shame that is Aboriginal deaths in custody,” she said.“The treatment of our people, particularly when it comes to the administration of the justice system, is a deep stain on this country. They are being failed by an oppressive system that continues to deny their rights.”Kiss said “immediate, tangible steps” must be taken to ensure that incarceration is a last resort, including investment in preventive measures to stop people from being detained in the first place and to ensure their safety and wellbeing if they are detained.“We need to end this cycle of abuse, injustice, and trauma. In many cases, duty of care is not being administered – from the point of arrest, within police custody, in prisons, and detention facilities,” she said. “People’s lives are at stake and their human rights must be upheld.”

A spokesperson for Rowland said any death in custody was a tragedy.

The spokesperson said the attorney-general was working with her state and territory counterparts to “accelerate progress on justice targets and achieve government commitments under the National Agreement on Closing the Gap”.

“The Attorney-General strongly encourages state and territory governments to review their practices and continue to work toward effective solutions that ensure the safety and dignity of all Australians in the justice system,” the spokesperson said.

In Australia, the crisis support serviceLifelineis 13 11 14. In the UK and Ireland,Samaritanscan be contacted on freephone 116 123, or emailjo@samaritans.orgorjo@samaritans.ie. In the US, you can call or text theNational Suicide Prevention Lifelineon 988, chat on988lifeline.org, ortext HOMEto 741741 to connect with a crisis counsellor. Other international helplines can be found atbefrienders.org

To avoid drawing the ire of mercurial US president, the Australian PM will discuss less Trump-friendly issues with other leaders behind closed doors

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WhenAnthony Albanesemet his Canadian counterpart, Mark Carney, in Calgary on Sunday, the Australian leader came with an unusual gift.

Along with an Akubra hat, Albanese presented Carney with framed memorabilia from the 1981 Australian film Gallipoli.Directed by Peter Weir, the war story is a favourite of the former central banker. The gift had been arranged with help from Canberra’s National Film and Sound Archive.

The pair had a friendly and constructive meeting, ahead of the G7 summit getting under way in nearby Kananaskis, in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, on Tuesday, Australian time. Albanese and Carney will have scores of meetings with leaders from around the world.

But for both, one event is dominating the agenda.Donald Trump, larger than life in any forum he steps into, landed in Canada on Monday afternoon, Australian time.

With protests and civil unrest at home and a growing war in the Middle East, Trump might be forgiven for not spending much time worrying about Albanese. Trump wants Australia to lift its defence spending and will explain the Pentagon’s review of theAukusagreement. But even Australian officials on the ground are describing the talks as introductory and likely uncontroversial.

That probably sounds good to Albanese too. Given the experience of leaders being berated in the Oval Office in recent months, boring may represent a huge success.

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One option being speculated about is Trump and Albanese holding more substantive talks in Washington DC sometime later in the year, possibly tied to a visit to the UN general assembly. Then Albanese could push for an exemption to Trump’s trade tariffs and build a personal relationship with the mercurial US commander-in-chief.

But whatever happens in the picturesque Kananaskis lodge, Albanese’s gentle foreign policy pivot is playing out at this summit.

Like Carney – who said Canada’s old relationship with the US was “over” – Albanese is strengthening key alliances away from Washington, to build trade and security buffers for an increasingly unreliable ally.

Australia will hold negotiations on joininga defence agreement with the EU, and Albanese has hinted some of his visit, including a stopover in Fiji, was about pushing back on an expansionist China in the Indo-Pacific.

He will meet the leaders of Japan and South Korea while in Canada, as well as the Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte, British prime minister, Keir Starmer, France’s Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s Friedrich Merz.

In those closed-door talks, Albanese will talk about less Trump-friendly issues such as the war in Ukraine, Israel’s continuing humanitarian blockade of Gaza, renewable energy, climate change and free trade ties.

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Trump’s unorthodox approach to governing will have anxiety levels high around the world for the remainder of his second term. Asked if Australia would “stand shoulder-to-shoulder” in the event China invades Taiwan, or if he would raise such a possibility with Trump, Albanese said on Sunday that he would not pre-empt his discussions.

The pair seem to be off to a good start. Shortly after Albanese was re-elected,Trump praised him, saying they had “a very good relationship” and that Albanese had been nice to him.

Like Carney, Albanese has shown signs of boldness in managing the Trump relationship. He has called the tariffs economically reckless, and angered the US by signing on to sanctions for two hard-right members of Israel’s cabinet last week.

After Carney presented him with a Stetson cowboy hat, the pair agreed the world becoming more dangerous under Trump meant closer ties were needed between Ottawa and Canberra, as evidenced by an official readout from the Canadian side.

“The prime ministers agreed to remain in close contact,” it said.

Tom McIlroy is chief political correspondent for Guardian Australia

Government programs designed to offer rent below market rate for low-to-moderate income households are failing those who most need it, advocates say

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A two-bedroom apartment in Bondi Junction that is part of an “affordable” housing scheme run by the NSW government has been listed at $1,100 a week to rent, prompting advocates to warn that programs designed to help low-income earners are increasingly out of reach.

Across the country, affordable housing programs are meant to offer rent below market rate for low-to-moderate income households that make too much for social housing but not enough for the private market.

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The two-bedroom two-bathroom apartment in Bondi Junction is listed under the AffordableHousingScheme by HomeGround Real Estate Sydney, with the guidelines set by the NSW government.

To be eligible for the apartment, which has a $4,400 bond attached to it, applicants must not earn more than a combined income of $121,100 for a couple, $161,500 for three adults, $145,300 for a couple with one child and $169,500 for a couple with two children.

If two adults live there, they would be spending more than 47% of their income on rent, if three adults lived there, they would pay 35%, and a couple with a child would pay 39%.

Financial and housing experts consider a home affordable if it costs no more than 30% of a person’s income.

A snapshot of affordable housing properties in NSW conducted by the NSW Tenants Union in January found that 13 of the 32 available properties were priced at a rate higher than the NSW Affordable Housing Guidelines.

While the NSW guidelines do allow for greater than 30% to be charged to moderate households, Leo Patterson Ross for Tenants Union NSW said the scheme was failing to address “the difficulties people at all levels of income are having in finding a home they can afford and sustain”.

“Excluding people from living in an area because they aren’t rich enough is what the private market has been allowed to do – we shouldn’t be subsidising similar behaviour,” he said.

“We need to make sure affordable housing is delivering genuine affordability. Failing to do so undermines community support for the concept, as well as failing to meet the housing needs of the community.”

The rental asking price of many of the affordable homes currently advertised would also require tenants to part with more than 30% of their income.

A one-bedroom apartment in Homebush in NSW which was listed for $600 a week, would cost a prospective tenant $31,285.71 annually. Single applicants can earn no more than $80,700, meaning more than 38% of their income would be spent on rent on the “affordable” property.

In Victoria, a one-bedroom fully furnished apartment in Caulfield marketed at “hospitality and retail staff” is listed at $615 a week, which would be $32,068 annually.

To be eligible, singles can make no more than $73,530, making the rent more than 43% of their income.

The current advertisements follow another string of Bondi apartments recently advertised under the state’s affordability program, with a two-bedroom two-bathroom flat listed for $1,300 a week.

After Guardian Australia enquired about the two-bedroom property listed for $1,100, the rent was dropped to $1,040 a week.

A spokesperson for HomeGroundSydneysaid the property could be rented for as much as $1,400 a week in the normal market.

“We recognise that when market rent is high in locations such as Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs, even below-market affordable rents can seem high,” the spokesperson said.

But 20% below market price “makes it much more affordable for families to live close to where they work and go to school,” the spokesperson said

As rents have surged by more than 30% in many parts of the country over the past three years, affordable housing programs are often marketed for essential workers or those making below $90,000 so they can live in their own communities.

Managing Director of Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute Michael Fotheringham said many of them offer affordability in name only, with no standardised definition of the term across jurisdictions in Australia.

“It’s a really loose terminology that different state rules apply across the country, and we have both federal and state government investing in programs to deliver affordable housing,” he said.

“But what ‘affordable housing’ is, is really unclear.”

In NSW, affordable properties should be rented out with a discount of 20% on the market rent, though the guidelines say “flexibility in pricing may be applied to moderate income households”.

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The spokesperson for HomeGround, which is one of the biggest affordable providers, said their policy has a ceiling of 40% of a household’s income “to accommodate people’s different incomes and their personal choices on where they want to live”.

“For context, private market rent [may] be up to 50% of a household’s income in high-demand areas,” they said.

In Victoria, it is often linked to income, capped at 30% of the tenant’s median income and at least 10% below market rent.

In South Australia, affordable rentals are often offered at 75% or less of the market rate, while in the ACT they are offered at between 20% and 25% below the market rate.

And under the national scheme, which will end in 2026, rents are capped at 20% below market rates for eligible tenants. The Housing Australia Future Fund has promised to create 20,000 new affordable homes across Australia over five years from 2024.

“We’ve got this real inconsistency across the country,” Fotheringham said.

One key issue, especially in capital cities, is the huge increase in asking rents over the past three years.

In June 2022, a typical one-bedroom unit across Australia rented for $444 a week. Today, that figure has reached $565 – a jump of more than 27% in just three years, data produced for Guardian Australia by Everybody’s Home shows.

For houses, the story is similar. The average asking rent for a house has climbed from $588 a week to $722, a rise of nearly 23%. That means a renter is now paying more than $7,000 extra each year for the same home compared to 2022.

In capital cities, the picture is even worse. Average unit rents have jumped by 35.7% since 2022, while house rents have increased by 31.3%.

Fotheringham said a project is more likely to get approved if a portion of a development is set at an affordable rent, with councils in some cases allowing more stories.

“Governments incentivise it, because they want there to be more affordable supply, even if the current methods of calculating what’s affordable are imperfect,” he said.

Australia needs a consistent national approach that is locally sensitive, he said, suggesting the government should carefully consider tying it to incomes rather than market rate.

“Affordable housing [with a] capital A is, a name of a product, rather than experience,” he said.

While states struggle with bridging the gap, people are increasingly being forced out of suburbs they may have lived in for generations, said Everybody’s Home’s spokesperson, Maiy Azize.

“Governments keep rolling out ‘affordable’ housing schemes, but there is no substitute for social housing. That means low-cost rentals that people can actually afford,” she said.

Australia currently needs 640,000 more social homes than it has, Azize said.

“Until we clear that backlog, and then open the door to people on middle incomes, we’ll never tame runaway rents,” she said.

“Right now, a person on an average income in Sydney can’t get into social housing, but they can’t afford the private market either. That gap is swallowing whole communities. The only fix is to boost social housing – and make it available to more people.”