Category: Australian News

Revelations that the Finance Department inquiry into Assistant Minister Michael Sukkar was outsourced to the law firm he used to work for is further proof Australia urgently needs a federal corruption watchdog, Greens say.
Greens Leader in the Senate and spokesperson for Democracy, Senator Larissa Waters, said:
“This is just another outrageous example of why we need an independent federal corruption watchdog. Mates investigating mates won’t stop corruption.
“Not only is the Prime Minister choosing not to investigate whether Mr Michael Sukkar breached Ministerial Standards, but now we’ve learnt the Finance Department administrative inquiry into the Assistant Treasurer was outsourced to the very law firm he used to work for.
“The government cannot be trusted to properly scrutinise its own Ministers and is doing all it can to delay setting up a watchdog with teeth that will hold their dodgy dealings to account.
“Just this morning, the Attorney General’s Department revealed an exposure draft of the Government’s bill for a federal integrity body has been sitting in the Attorney General’s inbox since December 2019. And yet the Government is still peddling the excuse that the pandemic has slowed them down.
“After two years of excuses and promises of draft laws being “imminent” and “soon”, it’s clear that the government just doesn’t want a watchdog, and perhaps that’s because with every passing week there is a new scandal.”

Australian Greens Peace and Disarmament spokesperson Senator Jordon Steele-John said allegations by American Marines that Australian special forces shot and killed a prisoner because there was no room for them on a helicopter were disgraceful and appalling.
“These allegations, if proven to be true, are war crimes and the individuals responsible must face the full weight of the law for their actions,” Steele-John said.
“When you have American Marines and the Drug Enforcement Agency saying they don’t want to work with Australian special forces because of their alleged criminal behaviour then you know that something is very seriously wrong.
“This is clearly a much larger problem then just the individuals involved in this case, and the many others that have surfaced over the last few months. What we are beginning to see emerge here is a sinister cultural problem within our defence forces that must be investigated, owned and addressed.
“Australians expect that our defence forces will act respectfully, and lawfully, when undertaking operations in foreign conflict zones in our name. If that is not the case, then we deserve to know.”

Not a single dollar of the $250m arts and entertainment package the PM announced with Guy Sebastian four months ago has been spent, the Department has revealed under questioning by Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young at Senate Estimates today.
“The Morrison Government has failed the arts and entertainment industry. The fact not a single dollar of this so-called rescue package has gone to an artist or creative four months after the announcement is a kick in the guts,” Greens Spokesperson for the Arts Senator Sarah Hanson-Young said.
“The arts and entertainment industry was shutdown overnight in March and has been the second hardest hit with job losses, yet the PM didn’t even put money on the table for it until June and now still hasn’t spent a cent.
“The Prime Minister was excited to be sharing the stage with Guy Sebastian, but despite the fanfare nothing been delivered. Again Scott Morrison is all sizzle and no sausage.
“It’s hardly coming to the rescue if eight months after being hit by Covid19 restrictions the industry is still waiting for support. It’s like promising a struggling swimmer a lifebuoy and not throwing it out till their too weak to hold onto it.
“The Morrison Government has shown nothing but contempt for the arts. We know he prefers footy, but he should also value a $112bn contribution to our economy and the benefits for other sectors likes hospitality and tourism.
“The PM should be ensuring the $250 money gets out the door immediately, and then quadrupling it so the industry worth so much to our economy, culture and social fabric, has a chance of survival.”

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the incidence and severity of perinatal depression and anxiety. Since March 2020, the number of new callers to the Perinatal Anxiety and Depression Australia (PANDA) helpline has doubled. 43% of all calls to the PANDA helpline come from Victoria.
The Morrison Government is supporting expectant and new parents providing $13.6 million through our $43.9 million Perinatal Mental Health and Wellbeing Program to extend vital national perinatal mental health services.
Almost 100,000 Australian parents are affected by perinatal depression and anxiety each year. One in 10 women experience this while pregnant and one in seven in the year after birth. Men can also experience perinatal mental illness, with about one in 10 expectant and new fathers experiencing depression, anxiety or other forms of emotional distress.
Callers to the helpline are also presenting with more intense and enduring mental illness with call times rising from 15 to 30 minutes prior to COVID-19 to 30 to 45 minutes.
In May our Government provided $320,000 additional funding for the PANDA helpline and in September a further $350,000 in funding to ensure that the helpline is able to meet the increased demand from parents impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly in Victoria.
The $13.6 million in additional funding will ensure that PANDA and other key national programs will continue to support women and their families affected by perinatal mental illness, or experiencing grief after the death of a child during this challenging period.
Dedicated perinatal mental health support, perinatal loss and bereavement peer support, and perinatal mental health promotion and training will be delivered by trusted organisations right across Australia. This will complement the work being done by Primary Health Networks in ensuring tailored local mental health services are available on-the-ground in every community.
The new program will extend funding for existing national perinatal mental health and wellbeing services including:

• PANDA’s National Perinatal Anxiety and Depression helpline
• Red Nose’s helpline and peer support
• Sand’s helpline and peer support
• the MumSpace website (www.mumspace.com.au) which hosts the MumMoodBooster treatment program and the MindMum smartphone app

This funding builds on the $1.3 million delivered to Sands Australia for an intensive support service to families affected by stillbirth, as well as $3 million for national education and awareness programs to demystify stillbirth and reduce its incidence announced last year.
The Morrison Government continues to prioritise better mental health for all Australians, with an unprecedented $5.7 billion to be spent on mental health in 2020–21.

The Australian Government is ensuring the mental health and wellbeing of young people remains a priority during a challenging time.
Today marks National headspace Day – an initiative aimed at helping youth take small steps every day to improve their mental health.
Minister for Health, Greg Hunt and Minister for Youth and Sport, Richard Colbeck, encouraged young people to take time out for themselves.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has had an unprecedented impact on the lives of young people across Australia,” Minister Hunt said.
“Whether you are struggling to focus on study, have lost a job or finding it difficult to connect with others – there are professional teams and services like headspace available to offer support.”
There are currently 124 headspace services in Australia and many are planning headspace Day events and celebrations.
Since 2006, headspace has provided more than 3.6 million services and supported more than 626,000 young Australians to strengthen their wellbeing and manage their mental health.
In 2019–20 alone, headspace supported nearly 130,000 young people.
In 2020–21, the Government is providing over $130 million to support headspace services across Australia, and has also committed to expand the headspace network to 153 services by 2022.
Minister Colbeck said every year one in four young Australians experienced mental health issues.
“More than ever many young people are facing family or relationship conflict, a disconnection from study and work, financial stress and social isolation,” he said.
“During times like these, focusing on the everyday things that support a young person’s wellbeing helping them form healthy habits, develop resilience and manage stress or anxiety.
Minister Colbeck said the Government was also committed to ensuring the mental health of young people is maintained through provisions from the 2020-21 Budget.
“The Australian Government has invested an unprecedented $5.7 billion in mental health support in 2020-21 alone,” Minister Colbeck said.
The support builds on the ongoing work to develop a whole-of-government National Youth Policy Framework to inform how policies and programs support young Australians and improve their lives.
For more information on the headspace Day and how to be involved, along with digital wellbeing kits, visit www.headspace.org.au.
Follow headspace on social media and share your favourite tip using #headspacetips and #headspaceday.

Australian Greens Disability spokesperson Senator Jordon Steele-John said today it was unacceptable that the Attorney General would not introduce privacy protections to the Disability Royal Commission, garuanteeing witnesses confidentiality beyond the life of the Commission, until mid-next year.
“This is a simple legislative fix that would be universally supported by the Australian Parliament, and the Attorney General has had at least 8 months to get it done! There is simply no excuse for forcing disabled people to wait any longer to feel safe to tell their stories,” Steele-John said.
“I have a bill before the Senate right now which could be passed in the upcoming November sitting.
“The Attorney General knows full well that his failure to act urgently is an impediment to the Royal Commission; the deliberate and ongoing delay amounts to a moral obstruction of justice.
“To be able to properly investigate violence, abuse, exploitation and neglect the Royal Commission must be able to protect witnesses including, and especially, disabled people and other individuals who want to blow the whistle on institutions, service providers and government agencies.
“Disability Royal Commission Chair Ronald Sackville AO QC wrote to the Attorney General in February formally asking him to change the law, and in the Royal Commission’s second progress report, released earlier this month, the Chair dedicated an entire section (page 37) to the limitations this issue was placing on the scope of the Royal Commission.
“So many people in our community have lost all faith in the system because of the violence, abuse, exploitation or neglect they, or their family, have suffered; they want to know that it is safe to tell their stories.
“By delaying these important privacy protections until mid-2021 the Attorney General is impeding the ability of the Royal Commission to do its job and he is failing disabled people.”

Australia is about to undergo a public transport revolution.
Over the next two decades, our governments will invest billions of dollars in ne public transport dollars in new public transport projects.
There’s the Western Sydney Rail, the Melbourne Metro, Brisbane’s Cross River Rail, the Perth Metronet, the Melbourne Airport Rail and Canberra’s Light Rail.
Then there is the Inland Rail freight link from Brisbane to Melbourne.
It is anticipated that at least 11,000 new rail cars will be required in the three decades leading up to 2053.
This presents a real challenge.
But it is also an opportunity.
We should build the new trains here in Australia, creating jobs for Australians and developing our heavy manufacturing expertise.
I was shocked to hear recently NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian say were can’t build trains in Australia.
We are no good at it, the Premier said.
This is nonsense.
Australians can build trains.
Downer EDI has been building them at its factory in Maryborough, Queensland, since the 19th century.
Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has just announced they will be building trains for the Queensland rail network, providing jobs into the future.
We can also build trains in Newcastle, Dandenong, Ballarat, Bendigo and Perth.
Yet, like Premier Berejiklian, too many Coalition state governments so lack ambition for local manufacturing that they buy rolling stock overseas.
We have seen several cases where overseas products have arrived unfit for purpose.
We’ve seen that with trains built overseas 20cm too wide for the Blue Mountains line in NSW.
Last week I visited Varley Group in the Hunter Valley.
There, workers are fixing rail wagons built in China that need structural modification before they can be used here.
If we had just built them here, none of this would have been required, saving costs, creating jobs and building our skills base.
It’s a no-brainer.
That’s a why a Labor government will create a National Rail Manufacturing Plan to ensure that, wherever possible, we build the trains we need here, rather than offshore.
This plan will be a blueprint for co-operation between governments, businesses and unions in the national interest when it comes to buying trains.
It would ensure that more trains are built in Australia by local manufacturing workers and that every dollar of federal funding spent on rail projects goes towards creating local jobs and protecting our rail industry.
It would also ensure that Australian products, like steel, were used in the production.
Our plan will focus on investment in research and development, so that as we build trains here, we are developing our capacity to reduce costs and improve quality.
We would also ensure that while building the trains, we train apprentices so they have skills to take the heavy manufacturing sector forward into the future.
Key features of Labor’s plan include:

• Establishing the Office of National Industry Co-ordination to audit the adequacy, capacity and condition of passenger trains nationally;
• Reinstating the Rail Supplier Advocate — abolished by the Coalition in 2013 — to help small and medium-sized enterprises identify export opportunities and link with government buyers;
• Establishing a Rail Industry Council to prevent the loss of more jobs and address the need for more local research and development.

If we get it right, we can also create certainty for manufacturers by ironing out the peaks and troughs in market demand through better co-ordination between state governments.
If every state government orders a new fleet of trains at the same time, local industry cannot deliver.
Better co-ordination of tenders would allow for a steady stream of work that could sustain and indeed grow the local industry.
Our National Rail Industry Plan has potential to help revive Australian manufacturing.
According to the most-recent census, between 2011 and 2016, the number of jobs in Australian manufacturing fell by 24 per cent to about 680,000.
The expansion of rail provides a chance to reverse this trend and create thousands of new, well-paid jobs, including apprenticeships for young people.
And if we can focus on existing rail manufacturing hubs, many of these jobs will be in regional Australia.
In the 21st century, there are two sure-fire ways to generate economic growth — investing in infrastructure to lift capacity and boost productivity, and investing in people through education and training.
A National Rail Manufacturing Plan can address both.

Following Standard & Poor’s (S&P) reaffirming its AAA credit rating today, Australia remains one of only nine countries around the world to hold a AAA credit rating from all three major credit rating agencies.
Despite a once in a century pandemic, which “wreaked havoc on the global economy and government balance sheets around the world”, S&P has reaffirmed Australia’s AAA credit rating following the release of the Morrison Government’s Economic Recovery Plan to create jobs and secure Australia’s future.
In its report, S&P notes that the Morrison Government’s “balance sheet was strong before the pandemic” and that “Australia’s budget improved in recent years on the back of tight fiscal discipline, strong labour market conditions, and high commodity prices.”
S&P further states that “Australia’s typically strong fiscal performance remains a credit strength for the rating” and that “Australia’s economy is beginning to recover from its first recession in almost 30 years” and will “rebound strongly once borders open”.
Today’s decision by S&P is a further vote of confidence in the Morrison Government’s response to the health and economic crisis caused by COVID-19. The record levels of economic support we have provided has helped save 700,000 jobs.
The Government has been able to do this because we entered this crisis from a position of economic strength and had brought the Budget back to balance for the first time in 11 years. This gave us the fiscal firepower when we needed it most.
Our economic support has been provided in a temporary, targeted and proportionate manner. By doing so we have protected the structural integrity of the Budget, with over 90 per cent of the spending committed in response to the crisis occurring over the next two years.
There is still a long way to go in recovering from this health and economic crisis but the Australian economy is fighting back with around 60 per cent of the 1.3 million people who lost their job or were stood down on zero hours in April now back at work.
Next calendar year, the economy is forecast to grow by 4.25 per cent, and unemployment to fall to 6.5 per cent by the June Quarter 2022. Our economic and fiscal strategy sets out the path to grow the economy, stabilise debt, and then reduce it over time.
Consumer confidence increased 11.9 per cent in October, the largest increase in a Budget month on record since the series began in 1974 with Westpac Chief Economist, Bill Evans, commenting that it was “an extraordinary result” and that “such a development must be attributable to the response to the October Federal Budget.”
The Morrison Government’s Economic Recovery Plan is focused on job creation, rebuilding our economy and securing Australia’s future.

The Greens condemn the Morrison Government for failing to include a gender lens in the Budget, instead leaving it to a non-profit women’s organisation to do their homework for them.
“Women are once again mopping up after the Morrison Government by applying a gender lens to the Budget, something which should have been done by government itself,” said Greens Leader in the Senate and spokesperson on Women, Senator Larissa Waters.
“The National Foundation of Australian Women’s analysis released today unsurprisingly finds that when you don’t apply a gender lens to budgeting, women miss out.
“NFAW found that by investing in the care economy – increasing employment and wages in the childcare, aged care and disability sector – GDP would increase by 1.64% by 2030 and women’s workforce participation would be turbo-charged.
“This follows earlier analysis by the Australia Institute showing that more jobs would be created for both men and women if the government invested in health and education rather than championing male-dominated fields with the blokey recovery we have seen proposed to date.
“The 2020 Budget is bad for women. It has no new money for childcare, housing or frontline domestic violence services, the tax cuts are worth twice as much for men as women, and the women’s economic security statement is a mere 0.04% of the Budget.
“The embarrassing government talking points trying to claim roads as a win for women is reminiscent of Tony Abbott citing his top achievement as Minister for Women being repealing the carbon price so women would pay less when ironing.
“The Budget disproportionately helps men in a year that has disproportionately disadvantaged women, perhaps because only one woman sits on the Expenditure Review Committee.
“There has been no Women’s Budget Impact Statement since Abbott axed it in 2014, and this year a hastily patched-together Women’s Economic Security statement was released three hours after the Budget. Women are an afterthought to this government and it shows,” concluded Senator Waters.

The Greens have condemned the Government’s reintroduction of the discriminatory remote work-for-the-dole scheme Community Development Program (CDP) that disproportionately impacts First Nations peoples.
“It’s very disturbing to hear anecdotal claims from employment providers saying that the increase to income support is leading to more drinking and anti-social behaviours”, Greens spokesperson on Family and Community Services Senator Rachel Siewert said.
The increase in income support has lead to people being able to feed their families, buy essential items and pay bills.
Government should be investing in addressing the barriers people face to employment such as poverty, housing and ill health, particularly for young people who have a higher probability of being penalised.
There clearly need to be more in jobs creation in remote communities, particularly in the care economy.
The CDP program is a top down punitive approach that is not even close to being in line with closing the gap objectives of self-determination and community control.
CDP cannot continue to keep running as it was before its suspension as part of the response to COVID19.
It is a punitive and discriminatory program that sees work-for-the-dole participants, who are largely First Nations peoples having to do work hours and have participation requirements that are far higher than those in the Jobactive program.
Why should people in remote regions, the vast majority of whom are First Nations peoples have to be subjected to a work-for-the-dole scheme that is far harsher and more punitive than their city counterparts.
We need employment and support programs designed and led by First Nations peoples and they have to be funded for the long term. CDEP should never have been dropped in the first place.
APONT has put forward an employment model that has been ignored by the Government.
The Government’s own 2019 evaluation of the program articulates what is well known, that First Nations peoples are more likely to be penalised and are penalised more often than their city counterparts.
CDP has to go.