Catherine Phillips is perhaps the rarest kind of landlord.

The Melbourne support worker, who bought an investment property in regional Victoria with her husband a year ago, has spent a lot of time thinking about how she can make things easier for her tenant.

She has never met her tenant, but knows she is a single mum with three kids.

The Phillips' rental property, in a small border town on the Murray River, has solar panels but only ducted gas heating.

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"I know gas prices are going through the roof. So I said to my husband, 'Maybe we should put a split system into the house, because (the tenant's) a single mum, and that will help with the cost of living'," Phillips said.

With this in mind, Phillips contacted the real estate agent managing the property to get some local recommendations for the install. 

It was then that the real estate agent gave her some news.

"She said, 'I spoke to the tenant last week and she's struggling financially and she may have to move'," Phillips said.

"I was a bit sad to hear that, it's not a stable home environment if you have to pack up and move all the time with your kids."

After speaking with her husband, Phillips said she rang the real estate agent back and informed her they would be reducing the rent on the property.

Phillips' property manager Lisa Attana, from Andrew Jenkins Real Estate, said the couple's decision took her by surprise.

"As far as landlords reducing rent for tenants, it isn't something you ever really see," she said, adding that the only time this had happened in her experience was during the early stages of the pandemic when many people were losing their jobs.

Attana said rental prices were increasing in the area, with some properties costing up to 20 per cent more than what they would have previously.

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"With so few rentals on the market at the moment we are flooded with rental inquiries and applications daily."

"People are having to take smaller homes/older homes due to the current prices of rent.

"It won't be too long until rent prices are an issue for tenants due to the increase in everyday living costs of fuel, groceries and utilities."

Phillips shared the her experience last week in a post on the popular Facebook group 'The Kindness Pandemic' which attracted more than 11,000 reactions and a thousand comments.

She said she decided to write the post in the hope of inspiring other landlords to do what they can for renters.

"If you are in the position to help someone out,  please do, we aren't rich, we live pay packet to pay packet and always have, but I feel grateful we could do something to help," she wrote.

"There's plenty of landlords out there that have had rental properties for a long, long time that wouldn't have a huge mortgage on it, or it's probably paid off," she told 9news.com.au. 

"I would say to landlords, don't gouge people, everybody's cost of living is going up – fuel, food, energy prices, everything. The flow-on effect of this is family violence, mental health and people becoming homeless."

Phillips said she was saddened by many of the comments on her post, where renters shared their struggles with the cost of living.

A recent Anglicare Australia report showed just how unaffordable rental properties have become amid escalating inflation and stagnating wages.

The report looked at just under 46,000 listings and found only 2 per cent were affordable for a person earning a full-time minimum wage.

Just 1 per cent were affordable for someone on the age pension.

None of the rentals were affordable for those on the disability pension, JobSeeker or Youth Allowance.

Meanwhile, surging interest rates are predicted to hit homeowners hard, but could also have a significant impact on renters, experts say.

"The Reserve Bank's interest rate rise will have an impact on renters," AMP Capital chief economist Shane Oliver told Domain yesterday. 

"As the cost of buying a home goes up for an owner or investor, they may try to pass that on to their tenants. It might not be the full amount of the increase, but it could be a big chunk.

"With market conditions so tight, and vacancy rates so low, tenants may not have too many other alternative properties to rent or, if they'd been saving up for a deposit, then it's now going to be harder for them to buy. And, in the longer term, the higher rate could lead to a fall in the property market and less construction, which could tighten the rental market even further."

Contact reporter Emily McPherson at em********@******om.au

Melbourne mum Paige didn't know what she was looking at when she opened up her seven-year-old son's school bag recently to find a neon green, plastic object inside.

It had the words "double apple" printed on the front, as well as "rock" and a cartoon skeleton.

"At first I thought it was a sour lolly, like Warheads, because of the bright colours," she told 9news.com.au.

Paige said her son, who had found it on his school's basketball courts and brought it home, also thought it was a lolly.

It was only when Paige looked the product up online that she found out it was a vape. 

While there were no ingredients listed on the vape her son brought home, information online showed it contained 50mg of nicotine, roughly the same amount as five cigarettes.

Paige said she was horrified by the packaging on the product, which seemed to be clearly marketed towards children.

"How can cigarette packets be required to label nicotine usage and have horrible pictures on them but vapes just look like lollies?" she said.

Paige said she reported the issue to the principal at her son's school, who acknowledged similar incidents had happened before with older children leaving vaping products on school property outside of hours.

Last October, the federal government introduced a ban on nicotine e-cigarettes being imported into Australia, or sold to people, without a prescription.

However, a burgeoning black market in vaping products is flourishing online, particularly on social media.

A search online by 9news.com.au shows the same vape Paige's son found at school is currently being sold on both international and Australian vaping websites.

The website igetvapesaustralia.com, which lists the product for sale, advises Australian residents to check the laws on e-cigarettes in their state before purchasing, however it does not appear to ask customers for proof of a prescription.

9news.com.au has contacted the online business for clarification but is yet to receive a response.

Figures provided to 9news.com.au show a staggering amount of vaping products are being seized by the Australian Border Force each month.

In the eight months since the ban came into play on October 1, Border Force has intercepted and seized almost a quarter of a million vaping products.

This includes 111,575 e-cigarettes and pods, 94,380 refillable vape devices and 47, 327 liquid vape solutions.

However, nicotine vaping products are still illegally making their way on Australian streets in large numbers.

Last month, NSW Police announced it had seized more than $1 million worth of illegal e-cigarettes and liquids containing nicotine so far this year.

NSW Health has seized more than $3 million of the banned products since July 2020.

Meanwhile, public health experts have expressed alarm at the growth in the number of young people using vapes and e-cigarette products.

A report released late last month by the NSW Health Department showed the number of young people vaping has doubled in the space of a year.

Eleven per cent of people aged 16 to 24 reported being a current user of e-cigarettes, compared to 4.5 percent in 2020, data from the NSW Population Health Survey, showed.

A recent report by the Australian National University, which reviewed the global evidence on vaping, found it was a gateway to traditional cigarettes.

"Young people, who were non-smokers, are three times more likely to pick up tobacco smoking after using e-cigarettes," Sinan Brown, who co-authored the study, said.

The report found e-cigarettes were causing poisonings, burns seizures, addiction and lung injuries.

"For children, we have concerns about the development of their brain. Using products with nicotine at a young age also really sets the platform for addiction in later life," Brown said.

Brown said the advertising and marketing of vaping products to young people, particularly on social media, was an area which needed consideration by Australian regulators.

"What we are seeing is that social media advertising is huge and a lot of this (is directed at) youth," he said.

"We are seeing this in the flavours, we know that there are 16,000 flavours on the market."

Under TGA requirements, nicotine vaping products sold in Australia are required to have an ingredients list, and child-resistant packaging to protect children from the risks of accidental use.

Australian pharmacies who sell prescription nicotine vaping products are also limited in how they can advertise their products, for example, they are only allowed to use three colours in their advertisements.

Overseas products bought online by customers with a prescription are not subjected to the same advertising restrictions.

This raised the question of whether people should be allowed to import nicotine vaping products for personal use, even with a prescription, Brown said.

"These are harmful products and we still are needing more evidence on a lot of health outcomes," he said.

"There's this argument that e-cigarettes are safer than tobacco, but I think until we find all the evidence for the health effects we can't be confident that that's the case. 

"Also, tobacco is the number one cause of death in the world, it kills almost 9 million people every year. So, even if these products are safer than tobacco, that doesn't really mean much."

Contact reporter Emily McPherson at em********@******om.au

A man once briefly married to Britney Spears who showed up uninvited at the pop star's wedding to longtime boyfriend Sam Asghari was charged on Monday with felony stalking.

Jason Alexander, 40, pleaded not guilty in Ventura County court to the charge, along with misdemeanour counts of trespassing, vandalism and battery.

The three misdemeanour charges stemmed directly from Alexander's attempt to get into the wedding, which he livestreamed on Instagram.

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The stalking charge involved repeated incidents over time, Spears attorney Mathew Rosengart said.

“He’s going to — I hope, and I pledged my support — be very vigorously prosecuted," Rosengart said outside the hearing.

“It’s a very serious matter. This was more than just a quote ‘wedding crash.’ This was an intrusion.”

A judge issued a restraining order requiring Alexander, who appeared in court via video conference from jail, to stay at least 100 yards from Spears for three years. The judge set his bail at $100,000 and scheduled a Wednesday hearing on the issue.

An email seeking comment from his public defender Matthew Terry was not immediately returned.

Alexander was Spears' first husband.

The two were married for less than three days in 2004 before an annulment.

Spears, 40, and Asghari, 28, were married on Thursday at her home in Thousand Oaks, California, in front of several dozen guests including Selena Gomez, Drew Barrymore, Paris Hilton and Madonna.

Alexander, who was a childhood friend of Spears, was streaming live on Instagram when he approached the house.

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He appeared in a mostly empty but decorated room, telling security Spears had invited him.

Deputies responding to a trespassing call detained him, and he was arrested when they learned he had a warrant for his arrest in another county, the Ventura County Sheriff's Office said.

Spears was previously married from 2004 to 2007 to Kevin Federline, with whom she shares two sons, ages 14 and 15.

She met Asghari in 2016 on the set of the video for her song “Slumber Party.”

https://twitter.com/britneyspears/status/1535429257614217219

Their wedding came nine months after Spears and Asghari were engaged, and nearly seven months after Spears won her freedom from a court conservatorship that controlled her life and affairs for more than 12 years.

Spears posted about the nuptials on her Instagram and Twitter accounts the following day.

“Wow !!! Holy holy crap !!! WE DID IT !!! WE GOT MARRIED !!! Gggggeeeeezzzzz !!! It was the most spectacular day !!!” Spears said in the posts along with a picture of her and Asghari from the wedding.

“The ceremony was a dream and the party was even better !!!”

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From "my air-conditioning won't turn on" to "I've lost my engagement ring", New South Wales paramedics are receiving a variety of non-urgent calls, which have taken a toll on the response to real emergencies.

Paramedics are already overstretched as health systems across the nation buckle under the perfect storm of COVID-19 cases and the rise of influenza infections.

Triple zero operators are warning residents not to call the service unless it is a real medical emergency otherwise life-threatening calls may go unanswered.

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"I received a call from a 30-year-old female who had lost her engagement ring," one operator says in the campaign.

Another operator said they received a call from a lady whose dress made her legs itchy and "they wouldn't stop itching".

"I received a call from someone who needed their air-conditioning turned on," another operator said.

"I took a call from someone who was bitten by their pet goldfish," another operator said.

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NSW Ambulance Commissioner Dr Dominic Morgan said the way the public is using the emergency health system has changed and there has been a rise in these ridiculous calls.

"In days gone by, we would be used purely for emergencies, we can see now changes in the way people are approaching primary health care," he said.

"A very significant proportion of people don't even have a regular practice they go to anymore."

In the past year, NSW paramedics attended 275,000 jobs in which the patient didn't need to be taken to hospital.

These include 844 calls for constipation, 810 complaints of a rash, and 255 calls from people unable to sleep.

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Intensive care paramedic Inspector Joe Ibrahim has warned these non-urgent calls are taking away from real emergencies.

"Everyday on the frontline my team and myself are frustrated with some of the calls we go to which are inappropriate for ambulance services to be tasked to," Ibrahim said.

"We are standing there with things like an itch and hearing on the radio things like cardiac arrest, when we know our services are absolutely required."

Paramedics across Australia have launched a national campaign to reduce the number of non-urgent calls to the emergency service.

The message is clear from paramedics, "save triple zero for saving lives, save triple zero for emergencies".

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