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Albanese says no ‘big changes’ to super
By Angus Thompson
The prime minister has also been quizzed about the proposed changes to superannuation, which readers will know has been a focus of a lot of political discussion today.
Albanese says the government stands by its election commitment to avoid making “big changes” to superannuation after Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones floated capping super balances to wind back the roughly $50 billion in superannuation tax concessions.
On Monday, Treasurer Jim Chalmers unveiled the government’s suggested wording for a definition of super, which would restrict its use to retirement income.
He also said the cost of tax concessions was in his sights ahead of the May budget.
“We remain the party that’s absolutely committed to universal superannuation and to the system,” Albanese told the National Press Club.
“And what we’re talking about here is ... there’s nothing that impacts the sustainability of the system from punters out there who have $150,000 in their accounts. You know that’s not an issue at all, which is the average [amount].
“We said during the election campaign that we did not intend to make big changes to superannuation, and we don’t.”
What happened this Wednesday
Thanks for joining us today.
Here’s what happened today.
See you tomorrow.
ABC managing director David Anderson joins staff wage negotiations
By Angus Thompson
The ABC has postponed an early March vote on a new enterprise deal for the public broadcaster’s staff as managing director David Anderson joins the drawn-out negotiations over pay and conditions.
Anderson’s intervention comes as staff vote whether to take industrial action against the ABC after members of the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance effectively shut down the latest offer of a 10.5 per cent pay rise over three years with a $1500 one-off payment.
ABC Managing Director David Anderson during an estimates hearing at Parliament House in Canberra.Credit:Alex Ellinghausen
The union’s 1000 members at the broadcaster have until the end of the month to vote on a range of actions, from wearing union logos to full 24-hour work stoppages.
“If we can take an overwhelming majority ‘YES’ vote result to the table, we can show ABC management that we need a fair offer immediately, or we will be taking action,” an email sent to MEAA members this afternoon said.
The email said both representatives of both the MEAA and Community and Public Sector Union resumed negotiations with ABC management this morning.
“In the bargaining meeting today your representatives called on management to postpone the vote on their new offer, so the parties could meet and try to reach an agreement that we can all endorse,” it said.
“The imminent threat of industrial action has caused a serious shift in management’s approach. ABC have agreed to postpone voting on their new proposed offer and managing director David Anderson will now be leading the negotiations for the ABC.”
Australia pledges further Fiji cyclone support as rugby campaign begins
The press conference we mentioned just below began early! Australia has promised an additional $10 million in support for Fiji to assist the country in rebuilding schools damaged in the cyclones that engulfed the nation’s north in 2020 and 2021.
The announcement, made by foreign minister Penny Wong at that press conference, comes in addition to the existing aid program, which is working to rebuild the schools to a high cyclone protection standard.
The main discussion of the meeting, though, was the launch of Fiji’s 2023 women’s rugby season. Australia has been funding part of the competition for several years. It’s resulted in some highly competitive players coming out of the country.
“I did say to my staff as we were driving here, ‘So let me get this clear. We help, they beat us more?’” Wong joked to a laughing crowd.
Watch live: Penny Wong speaks from Fiji
Penny Wong, the minister for foreign affairs, is currently in Nadi, Fiji.
She’s due to speak in a joint press conference with Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka.
They’re speaking ahead of the Fiji Rugby Women’s 2023 campaign.
The meeting comes after a chaotic few days in Fiji, when former prime minister Frank Bainimarama was thrown out of parliament and suspended for three years after he gave a speech criticising the current prime minister, president and house of parliament.
Watch live:
Ballot issued for NSW upper house vacancy
By Tom Rabe
NSW Liberals appear to have reached a partial resolution after days of infighting over how to fill a recently vacated upper-house seat, with a ballot to endorse moderate Jacqui Munro presented to the party’s state executive.
Liberal factions have for days been at odds over who should replace Peter Poulos in the state’s Legislative Council after he was dumped for forwarding an intimate photograph of a female colleague from a Penthouse magazine.
While the moderate arm of the Liberal Party on Sunday night agreed to endorse Munro, who is president of the NSW Liberal Women’s Council, the deal was temporarily scuttled on Monday amid concerns she once worked for independent City of Sydney councillor Kerryn Phelps.
Members of Munro’s own faction were concerned she would not get over the line on Tuesday night.
However, several senior Liberal sources confirmed a ballot had been issued to the state executive on Wednesday afternoon, with votes to be cast by 10pm tonight. The party sources, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the numbers were extremely tight.
Court hears of bid to publicly name high-profile man charged with rape
By Zach Hope
The case of a high-profile man charged with the alleged rape of a young woman in 2021 has returned to a Queensland court.
The man did not appear in person at Toowoomba Magistrates Court on Wednesday, and his lawyer Rowan King made no comment to the large contingent of assembled media.
The case of a high-profile man charged with the alleged rape of a young woman in 2021 has returned to a Queensland court.Credit:Louie Douvis
The charges relate to an alleged sexual assault in Toowoomba in October 2021.
The man cannot be named because unique Queensland laws prevent the identification of a person charged with sexual offences until the matter is committed to a trial.
A coalition of media organisations on Wednesday applied to magistrate Kay Philipson for an exception on the grounds it was in the public interest.
But after lengthy legal arguments, Philipson adjourned the application before any of the parties were able to present their final points.
Malarndirri McCarthy: Yes campaign ‘has been a challenge from the get-go’
On ABC News, Labor senator for the NT Malarndirri McCarthy has been speaking with presenter Greg Jennett.
He’s asked her about various critics of the Voice, and whether she saw “a momentum of criticism or negativity building around this, ostensibly around people who would support or do support a Voice?”
Here’s how she responded:
There is no doubt that this has been a challenge from it the get-go, and the statistics, as we have always said, are pretty tough …
We know this is a huge mountain to climb, but there is a firm belief and a fundamental sense of hope that carries the rest of Australians that a lot of the commentators just do not see.
And when I travel around and when I talk to town hall meetings, when I engage directly with First Nations people … there is a great deal of interest to want to know more.
So no, I’m not alarmed. I just see this as democracy in action. Clearly those of us who support the Voice and ask people to vote yes, they have to be very clear about what it is we are asking and what we’re doing, and that is my role here in the Northern Territory.
Bluesfest suffers another blow after Sampa The Great cancels
If you’ve been following the war over the Bluesfest music festival, this story may not be too surprising. Music writer Martin Boulton reports:
Two-time Australian Music Prize winner Sampa The Great has pulled out of April’s Bluesfest, two days after King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard cancelled their performance at the festival.
Sampa The Great is the latest to ditch Bluesfest.Credit:Photos by Rick Clifford
The annual Easter event has become mired in controversy since festival director Peter Noble last week revealed Sydney band Sticky Fingers were among recent additions to the line-up.
He’s got the full details of the latest walk-out here.
Robo-debt victims had ‘ice cube’s chance in hell’ against program: commissioner
The commissioner overseeing the robo-debt royal commission says there would have been “an ice cube’s chance in hell” of the debts of some people being erased, after a bureaucrat tried to defend the scheme.
Former department of human services general counsel Matthew Roser told Wednesday’s hearing a sworn affidavit in the court case of Melbourne nurse Madeleine Masterton gave credibility to her statement that she had properly declared her income in the past.
The exchange drew the ire of Commissioner Catherine Holmes.
“So if all those people who had contacted Centrelink saying, ‘But I declared my income properly’, had just put in statutory declarations, that would’ve been accepted?” she said.
“The assertion, sworn or not, that income had been correctly declared wouldn’t have stood an ice cube’s chance in hell against the (online compliance intervention) program.”
Roser responded he assumed that would have been the case, but he didn’t work in the relevant department.
Holmes then expressed her “incredulity” the affidavit from Masterton’s solicitor was taken more seriously than customer complaints.
“It wasn’t even her sworn account, it was her solicitor’s affidavit, it was hearsay,” she said.
“So, in an evidentiary sense, it was worth even less than your average Centrelink customer ringing up and saying, ‘I declared my income correctly’.”
The department’s former acting chief counsel Tim Ffrench told the hearing he had reservations about the scheme’s legality and seeking outside legal advice would have been prudent.
He said he believed bureaucrats were scared to raise issues with the scheme because of a hostile attitude by the people in charge of making the policy who “were determined to achieve a particular outcome for government”.
“Once they’d reached that state of mind, an inquiry into (legal) issues was not something that was fostered by that culture,” Ffrench said.
“I believe the culture and environment at that time prevented people from asking the questions that they should have asked because of the fear that those questions would be seen as potentially impertinent.”
AAP
Australian higher education ‘very weak’ on innovation, review head says
The head of the review into the country’s higher education sector admits Australia still has a long way to go if it wants to catch up to like-minded nations.
Mary O’Kane, who is overseeing a new accord of higher education, said there were many significant issues in universities that needed to be addressed.
The accord, touted as the biggest reform to higher education in more than a decade, is set to be released by the end of the year.
In a speech to the Universities Australia conference on Wednesday in Canberra, O’Kane said research still had to be improved.
Mary O’Kane, who is overseeing a new accord of higher education, said there were many significant issues in universities that needed to be addressed.Credit:Oscar Colman
“(On innovation), Australia is very weak in terms of its results against its OECD peers,” she told the conference.
“There is something going wrong – we might be educating people well, but we may not be educating them for what is needed.”
A discussion paper on the accord has been released, proposing a new long-term target for higher education and participation.
The current measure of bachelor degree attainment for people aged 25 to 34 is 44.6 per cent – above the average for OECD countries of 41.5 per cent.
But it lags behind the highest-achieving countries such as the Netherlands (54.3 per cent), Switzerland (52.3 per cent) and the UK (51.2 per cent).
AAP
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2023-02-22 07:18:07Z
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