NDIS legislation will bring ‘new era of reforms’, Shorten says
On the NDIS legislation, Bill Shorten says the bill will meet the government’s commitment to legislate in the first half of 2024.
Shorten describes the bill as ushering “in a new era of NDIS reforms that ensure the Scheme can continue to provide life-changing outcomes for future generation of Australians with disability and to make sure every dollar in the Scheme gets to the participants for whom the Scheme was designed”.
The legislation is based on recommendations in the NDIS review and will also increase the powers of the NDIS quality and safeguards commission to better protect participants.
Shorten says:
Review recommendations will take years to implement. Today is the next step in the journey. For the past three months, I have travelled around Australia talking to people with disability and the sector. In just over 12 weeks, I hosted a national tour of 8 townhalls, where thousands of Australians heard, discussed and asked questions about the Review’s proposed reforms and what needs to happen next.
There will be a significant piece of work to collaborate with people with disability the reforms and we are seeking the lived experience of the disability community as we continue to strengthen the Scheme together.
We have released this bill to be transparent.
Key events
The last time youth crime became a hot button political issue in Queensland, the Newman government was elected. The response there was boot camps, tightening bail laws even further, electronic monitoring and removing the concept of detention as a last result.
The debate has hit much the same areas as the Crisafulli opposition looks to take power for the LNP for just the third time since 1989. Removing detention as a last resort is one of the LNP promises. Steven Miles says there is no evidence it actually stops crime.
What they’ve not been able to do is provide any evidence, any expert support, that that change would lead to less offending. What there is, I’ve seen, evidence and expert advice, that those changes could lead to more offending. If you detain offenders, low-level offenders, you risk criminalising them further. You risk introducing them to gangs, to older kids, to higher levels of violence, and so they will need to explain how they’re going to avoid those risks if, as they say, they’re going to lock kids up as a first resort.
Youth crime has been a huge political issue in Queensland (despite experts screaming for people to look at the evidence, it has crossed into the political sphere and is a leading election issue) and the state Labor government have responded by tightening bail laws, and increasing policing.
Premier Steven Miles has announced a new ‘flying’ “high intensity” police team which will travel to ‘hot spots’ as part of the ongoing response.
He told the ABC:
Well, what we’ve seen is our high intensity-policing has demonstrated some success in turning the quarter in 12 of our 14 regions and we want that progress to continue and we’re ramping up with Operation Whisky Legion. This will be extra police available to fly in to regions to identify risks of future crime hot spots, to intervene early, to use intelligence to identify offenders at risk of offending or escalating their offending and intervening with them. So it’s a program that’s worked in recent months and we want to see it greatly expanded.
Baltimore bridge tragedy a reminder of Tasmania’s 1975 disaster, Wilkie says
Andrew Wilkie agrees that there would be people in Tasmania who have seen the Baltimore bridge tragedy and have flashbacks to the Tasman Bridge disaster of 1975.
Back then, 12 people were killed, including seven on board the Lake Illawarra container ship which collided with the pylons of the Tasman Bridge, which connected the two sides of Hobart. Five people in four cars were also killed. The loss of the bridge had huge social implications to people living on the eastern shore, which was suddenly isolated. What was a three minute trip across the river became a 90-minute drive. Ferry services were set up, but the impacts of being cut off lasted for years.
The new river crossing, the Bowen Bridge, was not completed until 1984.
Wilkies says:
I wasn’t in Hobart at the time. I’ve heard much about it and it rocked the city to its core. It split the city in two and resulted in a fundamental change in direction for the eastern shore to this day. You know, this will have enormous implications for the whole city of Baltimore.
Wilkie says government ‘scrambling to get’ deportation legislation through ‘is disappointing’
On the issue of the deportation legislation the government is attempting to rush through the parliament (the coalition voted for it in the house and are deciding the senate position this morning) Andrew Wilkie says he is disappointed:
As a matter of principle I oppose all of these legislative moves against people who are almost all fleeing for their lives. We need a new approach to asylum seekers.
We need to start regarding the global displaced persons issue as a humanitarian crisis and not a border security problem. Not something we’re scrambling to beat the High Court at every turn.
I think we should have a more compassionate approach. The way … the government is scrambling to get around the High Court is disappointing.
Independent MP believes UK delaying Assange’s appeal to be good news
The UK high court have delayed their decision on whether or not Julian Assange can appeal his extradition order to the US by three weeks.
A decision had been expected overnight (UK time) and the further delay has had a mixed response.
Independent MP Andrew Wilkie, who has been one of the earliest supporters of Assange’s case said on balance, he believes the delay to be good news. He told ABC News Breakfast:
The fact that the UK High Court of Justice have delayed their decision about giving Julian the right to appeal in full, to delay by three weeks and insist that the US give assurances that he would enjoy the rights of a US citizen, the right to free speech on the First Amendment, and that he wouldn’t face the death penalty, not just on current charges but on future charges that might be brought against him. That’s good.
But the best news is it gives Julian’s legal team and Julian personally time to cut a deal with the US Department of Justice.
Wilkie said he believes the political attitudes around the case have changed.
I think everyone wants a resolution. It’s a case on whether everyone can agree. There’s a range of views about Julian. Some love him, some hate him, but most people think it’s gone on long enough.
Catie McLeod
Minns’ long service leave draft laws to benefit workers with multiple employers
Up to 250,000 community sector workers in New South Wales would be able to accrue long service leave from multiple employers under draft laws released by the Minns government today.
The reforms to leave entitlements would cover workers in disability care, family and domestic violence services, homelessness services and other essential services, after similar changes for the cleaners and bringing NSW into line with the ACT, Victoria and Queensland.
About 75% of the workers who would benefit are women, the government says.
The government is trying to attract and retain workers in a highly-casualised sector, which it says is struggling with stress, burnout and job insecurity.
Under the new laws, community sector workers would be offered paid long service leave after seven years rather than 10 years and their leave would be portable, meaning it could be accrued across different jobs.
Silvana, a domestic violence support worker who asked to be identified by her first name only, welcomed the potential changes.
She said:
I’ve worked in the same domestic violence program for 20 years. I haven’t had access to long service leave because the way the sector is funded means I’ve had to change employers to do the same work.
The work health and safety minister, Sophie Costis, said:
A portable entitlements system aims to reduce the high level of staff turnover among community service workers, provide these essential workers with greater financial security and improve the
level of care provided to clients.
Consultation on the draft legislation will be open until 30 April.
Bowen backs Chubb review despite critics of the scheme
Bowen says that on coming to office he asked the former chief scientist, Professor Ian Chubb to lead a review on the safeguard scheme.
That review found that carbon credits … was basically sound but needed some reforms, which we have , or we’re in the process of implementing.
In relation to the human induced method, that HAR method that expired last year, but I’d also make this point the clean energy regulator engaged the services of Associate Professor Cris Brack, also for an Australian National University to review the performance of individual projects, passing their first five yearly regeneration check.
He found the projects are demonstrating regeneration and proponents are implementing the project activities.
There’s been other checks in relation to the significant increase in vegetation that we’re looking for and it is found that increasing vegetation exists.
The Chubb review didn’t analyse individual projects. Bowen says it analysed the entire scheme.
On the concerns raised by Andrew Macintosh, an environmental law professor at the Australian National University (ANU), a former head of a carbon credit integrity assurance body and more recently a sharp critic of the management of the scheme. Two years ago he described it as a “sham” and a fraud on taxpayers and the environment, Bowen says he understands Macintosh doesn’t agree with the Chubb review.
I understand Professor Macintosh has a different view. He’s expressed that on multiple media platforms, but Professor Chubb and associate Professor Brack are the people who’ve been commissioned and there is a different result from their work.
Chris Bowen was also asked about this story from Adam Morton:
Australia’s main carbon offsets method is a failure on a global scale and doing little if anything to help address the climate crisis, according to a major new study.
Research by 11 academics found the most popular technique used to create offsets in Australia, known as ‘human-induced regeneration’ and pledged to regenerate scrubby outback forests, had mostly not improved tree cover as promised between about 2015 and 2022.
The peer-reviewed study, published in the Nature journal Communications Earth & Environment, analysed 182 projects in arid and semi-desert areas and found forest cover had either barely grown or gone backwards in nearly 80%.
Paul Karp
Labor’s deportation bill is ‘a completely botched process’: Dan Tehan
The Coalition is still reserving its position on Labor’s controversial deportation bill.
The shadow immigration minister, Dan Tehan, told Radio National:
We’ll have a further discussion this morning … there were a few things out of the hearing that still have left us with more questions that we would like answered.
And once again, you know, we are seeing a completely botched process by the government. The question was asked last night and very clearly was, what is the rush? What is the need for these laws to be passed through the Senate today? We couldn’t get a clear answer on that.
I mean, it is quite quite extraordinary that you’ve got a major piece of legislation like this. And that we haven’t heard from the minister for immigration or the minister for home Affairs, neither of them have fronted.
Tehan also noted that it is possible parliament could be recalled in the event the commonwealth loses the ASF17 high court decision in relation to immigration detainees who refuse to cooperate with their deportation.
Bowen disagrees reaction to rushed deportation legislation would be different if it came from opposition
Asked if Labor would have been up in arms over the deportation legislation if the coalition had put it forward while in government (and in this rushed form) Chris Bowen disagrees.
I disagree because there have been instances where the Labor Party has been in opposition and the government of the day has come to us and said, here’s the reason we’re doing this. And here’s the advice we have and here’s the evidence and governments and opposition’s have worked together where appropriate, not not in every instance, obviously where the case hasn’t been made, but where appropriate, and the case has been made to see legislation passed in exactly that form.
Deportation review ‘further penalises victims of a fast track system’: Australian Human Rights Law Centre
On the deportation review, Chris Bowen is asked about Zoe Daniel’s comment that if the government makes a mistake in these cases, people could be sent back to countries where they risk being murdered.
Does that weigh heavily on Bowen?
Somebody in this circumstance has had an opportunity to make a refugee case to the Department of Immigration to the relevant tribunal, through the courts, and in each instance has been found not to be a refugee and has failed to get a ministerial intervention.
I mean, if there was an opportunity for them to make a case of their refugee status, at one of the multiple points, they appear before the Department of Immigration or tribunal or a court, they would have made that case. We are talking about people very much at the end of the road who have failed to show any evidence that the refugee [protections apply].
The human rights law centre has addressed this and said under the “fast track” process Australia uses, cases are not fully considered. The plaintiff in the case in front of the high court which has sparked this legislation – ASF17 – had their refugee status denied under the fast track process.
The ‘fast track’ process has been subject to extensive international criticism, that have been rightly acknowledged by the Labor government as neither fair, thorough nor robust, resulting in the abolition of the ‘fast track’ review system with effect from 1 July 2024. The Bill further penalises the victims of the ‘fast track’ system, whose claims for protection have never been properly or fairly addresses.
No EV target for Australia
Chris Bowen reiterates that there is no EV target for Australia:
We don’t have a particular EV target. We have a determination to give Australians more choices. So many Australians come up to me in the street and say, I’d like my next car to be an EV but I’m not really seeing the range of choices that are affordable. And they’re right because there are many more affordable EVs that are available in other countries that aren’t available here because we don’t have efficiency standards.
Bowen to negotiate with Greens and crossbench on fuel efficiency standards
A tired sounding Chris Bowen is speaking to ABC radio RN Breakfast about the fuel efficiency standard he and Catherine King are putting in front of the parliament.
The coalition has said no (Bridget McKenzie admitted to Josh Butler yesterday she had not read the legislation, but was convinced it was a tax, even though a) it is not a tax under any definition and b) the car industry doesn’t think its a tax) so the government will negotiate with the Greens and crossbench to get it through the senate.
On that, Bowen says:
This is what we’re putting into parliament and this is what we intend to legislate, but the Greens have got a range of issues that they’re talking to the government about at the moment. You know, traditionally as I said before, I have a [good] relationship with the crossbenchers broadly with people of good faith right across the board, where we talk about what we’re trying to achieve and we pass it through the parliament. That’s what I take nothing for granted. I take no individual citizen or member of parliament for granted.
Birmingham says ceasefire motion ‘failed to articulate … strong stance against Hamas’
Simon Birmingham’s motion did not receive support and the Greens supported the amended motion put forward by Penny Wong, which saw the ceasefire motion pass.
Birmingham made his views clear after the vote:
The Senate today missed an opportunity to maintain a strong and moral stance against Hamas terrorists and their ongoing cause of bloodshed.
Specifically, the Coalition sought to:
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incorporate the expectation that any immediate ceasefire incorporates the immediate and unconditional release of hostages;
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acknowledges that improving access to humanitarian assistance requires the cooperation of all parties, not just Israel;
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state that Hamas must lay down its arms and can have no role in the future governance of Gaza;
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reflect the totality of suffering felt by Palestinians in Gaza; and
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once again unconditionally condemn the heinous terror attacks of Hamas, while recognising Israel’s inherent right to defend itself.
Birmingham:
In its rush to reflect the UNSC vote the Albanese Government has failed to articulate and stand by the tenets of Australia’s support for Israel and our strong stance against Hamas.
The Coalition is proud to continue to stand resolute in relation to our support for Israel, the removal of Hamas and in pursuit of an outcome that can best support stability and peace in the long term.
