Australia news live: Michaelia Cash claims IR law will lead to ‘chaos and confusion’ after crossbench backs Labor bill
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IR law will lead to ‘chaos and confusion’, Michaelia Cash says
Michaelia Cash has attacked the government’s IR bill, saying the amendments negotiated by senator David Pocock and others amount to little more than “tinkering around the edges”.
Speaking to reporters in parliament today, Cash said the bill would compel employers into an agreement and would lead to “chaos and confusion”:
What you have today is a deal has been struck and the legislation will pass. The employers of Australia, the employers who create the jobs today, remain united.
I have one last plea to Mr Albanese and that is please listen to the job creators in this country. It is going to be a really rough Christmas for so many employers out there.
Cash said she wanted the government to hold off on passing the bill over the Christmas break to talk to employers.
She also said the proposed law would “fundamentally take away the right of the employer and the employee to negotiate terms and conditions” between each other.
On the prospect that the government may move to censure Scott Morrison following the findings of the Bell report, Cash said she would “wait and see” what decision will be made tomorrow.
Updated at 23.26 EST
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It looks like Labor will hang on to Melton, according to the ABC. Labor are also on on track to hold Albert Park despite a challenge from the Greens, who ended up finishing third in the count.
Man charged after pedestrian allegedly hit by hearse in inner-west Sydney
A pedestrian is fighting for his life in hospital after being hit by a hearse last night in Sydney’s inner west.
The driver of the Mazda hearse allegedly fled the scene before emergency services arrived about 8.50pm.
Paramedics treated the 61-year-old pedestrian at the scene before taking him to hospital in a critical condition.
The hearse driver, 21, attended Newtown police station later in the night, when he was arrested.
Police seized the hearse in Five Dock and charged the man with multiple driving offences, including dangerous driving occasioning grievous bodily harm.
He was refused bail and was due to appear in court today.
– AAP
Updated at 00.09 EST
Good afternoon, this is Lisa Cox taking over from Royce Kurmelovs who has done a fantastic job taking us through the Victorian election wash-up. I’ll be here with all of your afternoon updates.
Updated at 00.02 EST
Student doctors to help relieve pressure on NSW hospitals
More than 1,000 NSW final-year medical students will be working in hospitals in paid positions to reduce pressure on a health system still battered by Covid-19.
Premier Dominic Perrottet said the assistant in medicine (AiM) initiative was introduced in 2020 as a temporary workforce surge measure during the pandemic but was so successful, it made sense for it to continue. He told reporters today:
This Australian-first program is good for students, good for hospital workers and it’s great for patients.
Perrottet said the pilot program had expanded from 400 part-time positions to 1,100 final-year medical students who have been placed across regional and metropolitan hospitals as part of the state’s $33bn investment in health.
Regional health minister Bronnie Taylor said the program allows “medical students who are highly qualified … to get into the system fast … and to have a really significant role”.
The announcement comes on the back of pharmacists being authorised by the government to administer a wider range of vaccinations. The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners has slammed the move as “madness” and “a recipe for disaster”.
Dr Jose Arguelles, who underwent the AiM program, said the initiative provided hands-on training and enabled future doctors to navigate the health system by taking on patient care:
You’re given a set of responsibilities coming in day in and day out and learning about these patients – that’s a privilege. It’s a human job as well. We’re not just robots.
A Bureau of Health Information survey, released this month, reported that NSW hospitals were less organised, their staff were not working together effectively and the care being provided was not as good.
It asked more than 19,000 adult patients to rate the care they received throughout 2021. The results showed worse outcomes than the 2020 survey.
More than one in five patients reported receiving contradictory information about their condition or how it would be treated.
– AAP
Updated at 00.11 EST
Victorian Liberals eye up leadership options after election defeat
With Victorian Liberal leader, Matthew Guy, announcing he will step down following a resounding election loss, the party is now turning its mind to who can replace him.
Several Liberal MPs have told Guardian Australia Warrandyte MP Ryan Smith has been canvassing support for a leadership bid, as has Berwick MP Brad Battin and the party’s Hawthorn candidate, John Pesutto.
The seat of Hawthorn remains on a knife edge between Pesutto and a “teal” independent, Melissa Lowe. Lowe was ahead on election night but Pesutto edged ahead today off the back of postal votes. With 70% of the vote counted, Pesutto leads by 480 votes.
Pessuto, considered a future leader of the Liberals, previously held the seat between 2014 and 2018 before he lost it unexpectedly at the “Danslide” election.
Another possible contender for the leadership is Matt Bach, the party’s shadow transport infrastructure minister, though this would require a move from the upper to the lower house.
Updated at 23.26 EST
Mixed review of new economic inclusion advisory panel
The Australian Council of Social Services has welcomed an announcement that an economic inclusion advisory panel will be created to report publicly on issues such as the rate of income support ahead of federal budgets.
The panel will be led by the treasurer and social services minister and will aim to bring together experts, advocacy groups and peak bodies.
Acoss CEO Dr Cassandra Goldie said the body would help address the “structural issues in our income support system that entrenches poverty”:
We welcome the government’s commitment to hear from the experts on these issues in the lead up to May 2023 and future budgets. Importantly, this should include the voices of people who are experts by experience, people with direct experience of poverty and income supports.
It will be crucial that the government acts on the Committee’s recommendations, which will no doubt shine a light on the inadequacy of JobSeeker and related payments to meet essential costs.
We know the inadequacy of these payments forces people to go without food and without essential medicines, and that an adequate increase to income support payments is needed urgently right now.
People on JobSeeker and other income support payments are suffering poor health, losing their homes, and going without other basic goods and services because no one can survive on $48 a day. We cannot let this continue now, and we cannot end up here again.
The proposal, however, has not been well received among anti-poverty activists who have been campaigning for years to raise social security payments.
Kristin O’Connell from the Anti-Poverty Centre said the proposal was a “technocratic” solution that was “at best pointless, at worst, harmful”:
The only people it serves are those who want to perform empathy for folks on welfare. Doing this without an independent determined poverty line is inviting disaster.
She said immediate action could be taken by lifting payments now but the government has so far asked welfare to wait at least another year “for the sake of budget”.
Updated at 23.06 EST
Nervous wait for inflation data before interest rate decision
A key consumer price index will be closely watched for a further inflation spike as the Reserve Bank weighs up yet another cash rate hike.
The CPI release on Wednesday will be only the second time the Australian Bureau of Statistics has issued a monthly rather than quarterly inflation figure.
The index rose 7.3% in the 12 months to September – the highest rise in more than three decades – after significant increases in the costs of housing, food and transport.
The annual inflation rate is expected to hit 8% by the end of the year.
The RBA meets for the final time this year on 6 December, when it is expected to hike rates again as it seeks to get inflation back to its target band of between 2% and 3%.
CoreLogic’s national index of house prices will be released on Thursday and CommBank economists expect it to show a monthly fall in prices of about 1%.
On Friday, the ABS will issue its lending indicators report for October, which is expected to show an increase in the value of home loans.
Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe will take part in a panel discussion hosted by the Bank of Thailand in Bangkok on the same day.
– AAP
Updated at 23.08 EST
IR law will lead to ‘chaos and confusion’, Michaelia Cash says
Michaelia Cash has attacked the government’s IR bill, saying the amendments negotiated by senator David Pocock and others amount to little more than “tinkering around the edges”.
Speaking to reporters in parliament today, Cash said the bill would compel employers into an agreement and would lead to “chaos and confusion”:
What you have today is a deal has been struck and the legislation will pass. The employers of Australia, the employers who create the jobs today, remain united.
I have one last plea to Mr Albanese and that is please listen to the job creators in this country. It is going to be a really rough Christmas for so many employers out there.
Cash said she wanted the government to hold off on passing the bill over the Christmas break to talk to employers.
She also said the proposed law would “fundamentally take away the right of the employer and the employee to negotiate terms and conditions” between each other.
On the prospect that the government may move to censure Scott Morrison following the findings of the Bell report, Cash said she would “wait and see” what decision will be made tomorrow.
Updated at 23.26 EST
Proposed new IR law gives workers hope, ACTU says
ACTU secretary Sally McManus has welcomed the announcement that Labor’s industrial relations bill is likely to pass the Senate.
McManus said the law would benefit women in sectors like aged care by improving their pay and conditions:
This gives people hope. It gives people hope that we can start unwinding the large numbers of insecure jobs that we have in this country.
Updated at 22.36 EST
PM defends plan for an economic inclusion advisory committee
Anthony Albanese rejects criticism suggesting the proposed economic inclusion advisory committee is “kicking the can down the road” on a decision to raise jobseeker, as the body will have no power to actually push through a rise in the payments:
This is an important process being established that will assist government decision making but will also assist transparency. I take David Pocock at his word, as I do with others as well.
A final question now on whether the government will act to bring down gas prices.
Albanese says the government “will be having further discussions” on whether it will intervene in the federal gas market. He says it aims to make a decision before Christmas and “this remains the timetable”.
Updated at 22.37 EST
Albanese calls on Morrison to apologise for secret ministries
Anthony Albanese says former prime minister Scott Morrison should apologise for signing himself into multiple ministries and in light of the findings of the Bell inquiry.
Asked about the results, Albanese would not be drawn on whether parliament would vote to censure Morrison:
You had a shadow government operating in an unprecedented, extraordinary way. You had a prime minister who was standing up in parliament and not telling, not telling his own side, or not all of his side knew, let alone the parliament as a whole, who held what portfolio and who was responsible for decisions.
There’s a reason why, under the Westminster system, ministers are held accountable by the parliament. It wasn’t possible to hold the ministers to account because people didn’t know who the ministers were. The parliament is likely to want to express a view on that and we will have a discussion of it and we will let you know once that decision is made.
Albanese says he has yet to see an apology from the former prime minister:
Our democracy requires, I think, deserves an apology for this. I didn’t see any contrition in Scott Morrison’s statement last Friday, and I find that just extraordinary that anyone could read the Bell inquiry and not be embarrassed if you’re the subject of it.
It’s also the case that Scott Morrison said he’d fully cooperate with the inquiry, but he chose to talk with his lawyers, through his lawyers. And that of course is his right to do but I’ll leave people to draw their own conclusions there.
Updated at 22.34 EST
Any payment increases subject to the state of the budget
After some questions about commentary on the Victorian election, Anthony Albanese is brought back to the question of whether social security payments will rise. The question is that his comments just now are the clearest indicator that jobseeker payments will rise at the next budget.
Albanese, however, waters this down and says his comments are “consistent” with what he has said previously: that any decision will be subject to the state of the budget:
Each and every budget, Labor will consider what we can do to provide further assistance to people but we’ll do so in the context of the economic circumstances that we face.
So we’ll do so responsibly. I would always want to do more for people who are disadvantaged – that’s the Labor way. We don’t like seeing situations whereby people are doing it tough, but what we know is that we need to be responsible.
Albanese says though his government would have liked to have done more, they had to “do the right and economically responsible thing, which is to return 99% of the revenue growth that had occurred to the budget because that’s what the economy needed at that the point in time”.
Updated at 22.54 EST
Albanese won’t guarantee social security payments will rise
The first question is about the commitment from the government to establish an economic inclusion advisory committee.
Albanese is asked if he accepts as true that one in six Australian children live in poverty and if so, why a committee is necessary when immediate action could be taken.
Albanese:
Government will continue to make decisions, but it should make decisions based upon the best possible advice, putting out the facts there, which this committee will be able to do.
There are a range of other sources of advice. This will be an additional one. We know that I said before the election repeated again: there’s more I would like to do.
The prime minister however did not go so far as to guarantee that social security payments will rise and said there were “fiscal constraints”.
We do have to make sure that any action of the government bears in mind inflation and the economic circumstances, which are there. This committee I think will add to the amount of information and the quality of the information which is out there.
Updated at 21.50 EST