Australia news live: Linda Burney hails Archie Roach’s songs as ‘a source of healing’; nation records at least 41 Covid deaths
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NSW town hit by floods buys walkie talkies to communicate
Residents of the Macdonald valley, 90 minutes’ drive north of Sydney, say they feel like the forgotten valley after recent floods left the area in disarray, forcing them to buy walkie-talkies to communicate.
“All those guys had the best intentions in the world,” Steve Kavanagh says of Defence Force and state government assistance in the immediate aftermath of floods at the end of June.
“They came in for six days,” he says, but the help was gone before the town was even close to back on its feet.
Now rubbish piles up in the streets, a Telstra phone box sits overturned, roofs lie destroyed on the ground and tonnes of sand from the river has moved onshore, blocking access.
“It’s like a very mini version of Lismore,” he says of the clean-up efforts.
Read Josh Taylor’s full story here:
Updated at 01.19 EDT
Tranche of files set to be released about John Barilaro’s US trade job
More documents relating to the appointment of former NSW deputy premier John Barilaro to a highly paid trade role in the US are expected to be released by the state government tomorrow.
The opposition treasury spokesperson Daniel Mookhey said he expected the tranche of files to be released before 5pm on Monday. Speaking in Sydney on Sunday, Mookhey said:
These documents contain information that the people of NSW will want to see. They will raise serious questions around the selection process, as well as the role of [investment] minister Stuart Ayres here.
Mookhey was glad the premier, Dominic Perrottet, was back from his Asian trade trip but said he had returned to “a government that is disintegrating under the weight of scandal after scandal”.
The NSW shadow treasurer Daniel Mookhey. Photograph: Dan Himbrechts/AAP
Last week documents revealed the deputy NSW Liberal party leader, Ayres, asked Investment NSW chief executive, Amy Brown, to add a name to the shortlist of candidates for a lucrative job that ultimately went to Barilaro.
While Investment NSW confirmed the candidate mentioned in the email “was not John Barilaro”, the email calls into question Ayres’ insistence that the appointments were made by the public service at arm’s length from the government.
Moohkey said Ayres had “serious questions to answer”.
Ayres has continued to deny he influenced the process. Barilaro has since withdrawn from the role but always maintained he followed the proper process before his appointment.
To catch up on what has happened so far, you can read the Guardian’s report on the emails that show how Ayres helped produce a shortlist of candidates:
Updated at 01.39 EDT
‘Archie Roach was proof that music could change lives’: Tony Burke
The arts minister Tony Burke has released the following statement on the death of Archie Roach:
What a loss.
Archie Roach was proof that music could change lives and move hearts.
Music changed his life and his music changed Australia.
He was an elder, a storyteller, a songman and one of the most humble people I’ve met in my life.
Before he found music so many of the ingredients of his life had been harsh, even brutal.
He took all of that and used music to create beauty, truth telling and hope.
Burke said he first saw Roach play at ACTU Congress and the final time he saw him was at the Woodford Folk Festival. Burke credited Roach with collaborating with the next generation of artists.
Thank you Archie Roach.
Your strength, strengthened us all.
I extend my deepest sympathies to Archie’s family, particularly his sons Amos and Eban.
Updated at 00.44 EDT
It is a case that captured the attention of Australia and the world, with all the hallmarks of a great mystery novel. A body on the beach. Slumped against the sea wall, the man is well dressed but no one can identify him.
A scrap of paper in a foreign tongue is found inside his pocket – the words “tamám shud”, meaning “it is finished” in Persian. The paper is traced to a copy of an ancient poem, the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, in a book containing a secret code and the phone number of a young nurse living close by where the dead man was found on 1 December 1948.
For 73 years, the unknown man has been referred to by the beach where he was found, Somerton, just south of Adelaide, allowing the tantalising threads of the “Somerton man” mystery to spin out, resulting in elaborate theories. Some believed Somerton man was a Russian spy, or a spurned lover who fathered the child of the young nurse.
This week Prof Derek Abbott of the University of Adelaide claimed to have identified Somerton man as Carl “Charles” Webb, a 43-year old engineer from Melbourne who wrote poetry and “seems to be a bit of a loner”.
For more on the latest developments in the mystery of the Somerton man, read the full story by Guardian Australia rural network reporter Natasha May.
ACT budget to focus on health and housing
The upcoming ACT budget will look to tackle social infrastructure with pre-budget announcements focusing on housing and health.
The territory’s Labor-Greens government has announced $37.5m for mental health services such as perinatal mental health screening, enhancing perinatal, infant and child mental health and expanding the childhood early intervention team.
A record amount of land is also due to be made available by the government over the next five years to help tackle housing affordability in the capital.
The government is planning for an increase of 30,000 dwellings in the time frame as the ACT’s population is predicted to eclipse 500,000 by the end of the decade.
Funding for the renewal of public housing stock and the construction of more properties marked as rentals has been slated as well.
There is also more than $13 million in additional support for alcohol and drug services, spanning rehabilitation, family and carer support and specialised treatments.
It comes as the ACT opened Australia’s first static drug testing site under a pilot program.
The 2022-23 budget will be handed down on Tuesday.
– from AAP
Updated at 00.03 EDT
National Covid summary
Here are the latest coronavirus numbers from around Australia today, as the country records at least 41 deaths from Covid-19:
ACT
NSW
Northern Territory
Queensland
South Australia
Tasmania
Victoria
Western Australia
SA records nine Covid deaths
Nine people with Covid-19 have died in South Australia overnight, with the state recording 2,364 new cases on Sunday morning, 346 people in hospital, and 11 in ICU.
Updated at 23.36 EDT
WA government lifts public worker pay rise offer
Western Australian teachers, nurses, police officers, cleaners and public servants have been offered a 6% wage rise over the next two years as a buffer to rising inflation, AAP reports.
The Western Australia government has increased its pay offer for 150,000 workers to three per cent annually for the next two years, along with an additional $2,500 cost of living payment.
Premier Mark McGowan said in a social media post on Sunday the move was in response to peaking inflation and would cost the budget an extra $634m over the next four years.
Given the current economic climate we’ve listened and reviewed our wages policy.
This is a reasonable and generous policy, but also responsible in these volatile economic times.
The changes will immediately flow through to industries that have already accepted the government’s previous 2.75% pay increase offer, including teachers and public hospital doctors.
Some workers’ wages will be boosted more than the three per cent annual rate, with a patient care assistant who earns just over $55,000 a year set to effectively get a 7.5% wage rise over the first year.
WA premier Mark McGowan says the pay offer is ‘reasonable and generous’. Photograph: Richard Wainwright/AAP
Perth’s consumer price index jumped 1.7% in the June quarter, according to Australian Bureau of Statistics data, pushing its annual inflation rate well above the national average to 7.4%.
Health workers and other WA public servants were lobbying for a pay rise above 2.75%, with some holding stop-work meetings outside Perth hospitals in recent weeks.
Updated at 23.46 EDT
Hundreds of new staff to help stretched NSW teachers
Hundreds of school administration, leadership and support staff will be hired in New South Wales to help under-pressure teachers, AAP reports.
More than 200 new administrative positions will be trialled from term four to assist public school teachers with tasks including data entry, paperwork, and co-ordinating events and excursions.
Thousands of teachers walked off the job in late June over wages and conditions, with the NSW Teachers Federation describing the state government’s three per cent pay increase offer as an insult.
The NSW education minister Sarah Mitchell said the new roles will reduce the administrative burden on teachers and open doors to people wanting to re-enter the workforce or upskill.
Our teachers are skilled professionals and their time is precious. However, they are stretched across too many non-teaching and low-value activities.
Running a modern-day school is complex. We need to look at the work staff do in schools and think differently about how it gets done.
NSW education minister Sarah Mitchell. Photograph: Dan Himbrechts/AAP
She said recruitment had started for 780 assistant principal positions.
The strike on June 30, just a day before two weeks of holidays, was the third in six months.
Updated at 23.44 EDT
Chalmers wants to see ‘strong and sustainable’ wage growth
Sky News has run an interview with the treasurer Jim Chalmers from late last week, where Chalmers was asked about Labor’s position on wage growth amid the high inflation the nation is experiencing.
Chalmers:
I think all of our team understands that we do want strong wages growth, but we want it to be sustainable. You know, I don’t hear anybody in our team calling for exorbitant wages growth. What people really want to see is something that’s strong and sustainable at the same time and enduring.
And there is a high level of understanding not just in our side of the parliament, but I think in the Australian community that one of the problems we’ve had with our economy for the best part of a decade now is those stagnant wages. We’ve got real wages going backwards quite considerably at the moment, unfortunately. And so our job is to see that inflation moderate, do our bit on the supply side in particular, but also to get those real wages growing again.
I think it’s in the interests of all Australians that as we rebuild this economy after this difficult period that sustainable wages growth is part of the story. And that means productivity is part of the story. It means investing in the future of our economy, strong and secure well-paid jobs is a big part of our agenda. Because what we want to see is these wage increases to continue to endure, and to be responsible and sustainable at the same time.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers says stagnant wages have been a problem for years. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP
Updated at 22.52 EDT