Category Archives: Australian economy

Australia politics live: PM delivers national apology to thalidomide survivors; Pocock and Plibersek strike deal on Murray-Darling

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Plan will remove a cap on buybacks and extend deadlines for water recovery targets. Follow the day’s news live

For what kinds of crimes would preventive detention be used?

Preventive detention can be used for terrorists or terrorism suspects already (yes, we already do this) so what other crimes will be added to the list? (Not all of the cohort have committed crimes.)

What I can tell you is that we’ll work through the detail of the law over the coming days. We’ve had a high court decision for about 17 hours now.

But the high court decision actually specifically refers to child sexual abuse as one of the grounds on which preventive detention might also be lawful.

We will work through these issues and will do so in a way that is fast but also constitutional. What we have seen on the other side of politics is a pretty torrid history of rushing laws, doing it improperly and writing things that aren’t constitutional, that are later thrown out by the high court and the consequence is that the Australian community is less safe.

We don’t want to make that mistake. We will work through this carefully.

The most important thing to understand from the high court’s ruling is that the high court has said that politicians don’t get to make that decision (indefinite detention).

And so politicians have previously been allowed to hold people in immigration detention for very long periods of time. The high court has told us that that’s not constitutional under these circumstances.

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Australia’s inflation rate eased to 4.9% in October, reducing likelihood of another rate rise as weak consumer spending reduces likelihood of another interest rate rise

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Consumer price index rose last month at an annual rate of 4.9%, which is lower than economists had forecast

Australia’s inflation rate has eased sharply in October as weak consumer spending made it less likely the Reserve Bank will inflict another interest rate rise on the economy.

The consumer price index rose at an annual clip of 4.9% last month compared with a 5.6% pace in September alone, the Australian Bureau of Statistics said on Wednesday. Economists had expected CPI to come in at 5.2%.

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Stephanie Foster appointed new home affairs secretary – as it happened

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The NSW Council for Civil Liberties (NSWCCL) has backed the campaign for a royal commission into immigration detention – including onshore and offshore detention on Nauru and Papua New Guinea.

As mentioned earlier in the blog, the campaign will be launched in Canberra today.

Our mandatory, arbitrary immigration detention regime is unnecessarily cruel and degrading. Instead of offering refuge for those who seek the safety of our shores, we imprison people, strip them of their humanity and allow them to be demonised in our media and by our politicians. It is a system that conditions the Australian public to dehumanise others. This cruelty has persisted for decades.

Increased discussion and debate around gender equality, a tight labour market and impending legislative reform have helped drive action on workplace gender equality over the last year.

We see an increase in the proportion of women in management and at the upper pay quartiles, and we also see the proportion of women being promoted and appointed at manager level is higher than the proportion of women managers overall. As this trend continues, we can expect to see the gender pay gap continue to fall.

The management opportunities for part-time employees are negligible; the number of men taking paid primary carer parental leave has barely shifted; and the number of women in CEO roles and on boards has stagnated.

If we want real change, we need employers to take bold action. We need employers to look across the drivers of gender inequality and be imaginative in their solutions.

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Black Friday: Australian shoppers tipped to spend more than $6bn in four-day sales period

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Retailers say online sales on Friday were 10-25% up on last year, with the shopping event becoming bigger than Boxing Day

Retailers say Black Friday has gotten off to a strong start, with Australians tipped to spend a record amount as they seek savings during the cost-of-living crisis.

The Australian Retailers Association (ARA) has predicted shoppers will spend $6.36bn across the four days between Black Friday and Cyber Monday, up 3% from last year, according to their research in partnership with Roy Morgan.

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Australia news live: Bruce Lehrmann back in the witness box as defamation case kicks off third day

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Former Liberal staffer’s defamation trial against Network Ten and journalist Lisa Wilkinson continues in the federal court. Follow the day’s news live

The minister for Indigenous Australians, Linda Burney, has said the government is yet to decide how to best consult with First Nations people after the loss of the Indigenous voice referendum.

Burney was on RN Breakfast earlier and said today’s Closing the Gap meeting, the first since the referendum, would focus on the silver linings from the loss.

What we have seen is a group of young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people get involved in the political process.

We had 6 million Australians say yes. And the thing that really excited me about the outcome in places like the Tiwi Islands, where … Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people wanted this change. And those votes are really important.

Education is the most powerful cause for good in this world, that is where you learn.

If you want to protest, do it on the weekend. School is on, we expect them to be there.

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Australian banks buckle to pressure over scams and vow to block transfers to suspect accounts

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Consumer groups have long lobbied for institutions to crack down on scams by rejecting transfers if name and bank details of recipient don’t match

Australian banks have buckled under pressure and will do more to fight scams by introducing technology that will block customers from transferring money to some fraudulent accounts.

The banks had initially resisted calls – including from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) and the Consumer Action Law Centre (Calc) – to block transfers if the name and bank details of the recipient did not match.

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Man found dead after statewide search – as it happened

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Hostage release essential if truce to last, Paterson says

Rewinding to Liberal MP James Paterson’s appearance on RN Breakfast this morning, wheN he said more needs to be done to free the hostages Hamas is holding in Gaza.

We don’t know how many of them are still alive, and their continued release would be essential for any continuing ceasefire because otherwise Israel continues to have a legitimate military objective.

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Housing prices back at record levels, defying Australia’s interest rate rises

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The 7.5% drop from the April 2022 peak has been recovered, but some cities are faring better than others, CoreLogic analysts say

Australian home prices are back at record levels, recovering all of the 7.5% dip from their previous peak in April 2022, according to the data group CoreLogic.

As of Wednesday, Corelogic’s home value index had climbed 8.1% higher than the recent nadir reached at the end of January this year, defying five additional interest rate rises by the Reserve Bank since then.

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Australia news live: Bruce Lehrmann ‘utterly destroyed’ by Ten broadcast, court told

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Former Liberal staffer is seeking ‘substantial’ damages over The Project broadcast, lawyer says. Follow today’s news live

More than 20 people have been arrested and charged following an unauthorised pro-Palestine protest at Port Botany overnight.

According to a statement from NSW police, about 400 people gathered at the protest. Police issued a move-on direction, which they say was not complied with.

The group continued to occupy Foreshore Road, blocking vehicle movement.

That just gives a really clear line drawn that if it’s labour hire, it’s covered, if it’s service contractors, it’s not.

In terms of the conversations with the crossbench, I continue to reach out to the crossbench [and] there’s a series of meetings that continue to happen.

They’ve made a decision that they don’t want to deal with this bill until next year. I would rather we were dealing with it over the next fortnight. We certainly will be dealing with it next week in the House of Representatives.

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BoM provides El Niño update – as it happened

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Birmingham says China ‘doesn’t appear to be acknowledging the facts’

Shadow foreign minister Simon Birmingham is speaking with ABC RN and is asked about sonar pulses from a Chinese warship that left one Australian naval diver injured.

The Australian navy and Australian defence force operates always with professionalism, and I’m confident that Australia’s version of events is a credible.

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Singtel rejects Optus claims it caused network outage; gillnet fishing banned in Great Barrier Reef – as it happened

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Labor MPs furious over ‘one political party’ pitting Jewish community against another

Labor MPs are still furious over the motion Peter Dutton moved in question time on Wednesday, where he linked anti-semitism with the release of detainees, including some criminals, after the high court decision which deemed indefinite detention to be unconstitutional.

As a leader of the Jewish community and someone who represents a large Jewish community, I’ve always thought it was extremely important to act in the interests of the community.

And that means working across the political aisle. It means working with people like Allegra Spender, who represents the largest Jewish community in Australia, and of course with my friend Julian Leeser, who I will always stand with members regardless of what political persuasion they have, in order to act in the interests of the Jewish community.

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Politics live: cyber chief takes leave as defence department announces recall over ‘workplace matter’

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And here is the standard of some of the “debate” among senior parliamentarians.

Meanwhile, Australia’s sense of social cohesion is at its lowest recorded ebb.

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Wages grew by 1.3% for Australian workers in the September quarter amid tight labour market

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Wage price index increase in line with expectations as Fair Work minimum wage decision helped pay packets close gap with inflation

Australians’ wages grew in the September quarter as decisions by the Fair Work Commission and a tight labour market helped pay packets close the gap with inflation.

The country’s wage price index rose 1.3% in the quarter alone and 4% compared with the September quarter a year ago, the Australian Bureau of Statistics said on Wednesday.

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Australia politics live: students protesting over climate crisis ‘are being the adults’, Adam Bandt says

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Shorten reiterates support for two-state solution

Patricia Karvelas then raises with Bill Shorten what was said on Q+A last night, when Nasser Mashni, the president of the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network, argued that hopes for a two-state solution “ended years ago”.

Oh, no, our policy has been to support a two-state solution.

There was a policy which we developed many, many years ago about respecting the security of Israel and the right of Palestinians to have a say in controlling their own land. I don’t think that’s a radical policy.

I think it’s unexceptional what the foreign minister said. We’re in very close step to the United States and other western nations. We’ve called for humanitarian pause, but we completely recognise that Israel’s dealing with Hamas who don’t want to negotiate, so the idea that we want an enduring peace, as Penny said, of course, is what we want.

We all know we’re a long way off that and Hamas should be prevailed upon by world opinion to hand back the hostages to say that they’re going to stop trying to kill Israelis and destroy Israel.

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As the federal government prepares to scrap road and rail projects – find out what is being funded in your area

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The government is backing hundreds of infrastructure projects across Australia, however some may now be cancelled due to cost overruns

The Australian government has committed to hundreds of infrastructure projects around the country, mostly road and rail projects.

However, as many as 250 projects that have yet to begin construction may be scrapped or delayed as a cost-saving measure to pay for at least $33bn in cost overruns.

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Australia news live: ‘we let him down,’ WA corrective services minister admits after death of 16-year-old Cleveland Dodd

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Aboriginal teenager died in a hospital in October, a week after being found unresponsive inside a maximum security prison. Follow live

This morning Guardian Australia revealed that the Albanese government will immediately begin releasing people from indefinite detention after receiving a flurry of demands from long-term detainees to be set free due to Wednesday’s landmark high court ruling.

In question time on Thursday the government confirmed it had released the plaintiff in that case, a stateless Rohingya man known as NZYQ who was convicted of sexually assaulting a 10-year-old, but claimed it needed to wait for the court’s full reasons and legal advice before making a call on others.

Yesterday the government assured the Senate they would not be releasing any other detainees before the court published its reasoning. The fact they are doing so less than 24 hours later shows how unprepared they were for this case. Sadly the Australian people cannot rely on their assurances about community safety if they are not even across fundamental legal questions like this.

It is the duty of journalists to seek out sources, including documentary evidence, in order to report to the public on the activities of the government. The United States must not pursue an unnecessary prosecution that risks criminalising common journalistic practices and thus chilling the work of the free press. We urge you to ensure that this case be brought to a close in as timely a manner as possible.

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Optus confirms ‘network event’ behind outage – as it happened

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Rowland: ‘consumers were clearly frustrated with lack of information’ over outage

Rowland says the key issue of the Optus outage was “getting some more understanding of the nature of the problem”. She tells ABC TV:

I made it clear from the outset that consumers were clearly frustrated with the lack of information. Australians are reasonable people. They understand that things need to be resolved and that may take some time, but the key issue here was getting some understanding of the nature of the problem, how long it may take and what the impacts would be.

And I think it goes to the issue of how reliant we are on our digital devices and connectivity overall, including for consuming messages and news media. And, in this case, the broadcasting platforms were there to be utilised and I did encourage Optus to do that as well.

It’s important, I believe, to have a post-incident review that is both thorough in scope but also is completed expeditiously and goes to the precise issues of what has caused this, considering the considerable amount of disruption, the distress it has caused, but also the economic impact as well. And to understand what [can] be done in future by the sector as a whole to take the lesson and mitigate that going forward.

So this is important, because Australians expect that there will be follow-up, that there will be lessons learned. But, importantly for the sector as a whole, it’s important to understand how this can be certainly avoided in future.

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Australia news live: Optus network outage ‘root cause’ unclear as services slowly return; NAB lifts variable home loan rate after RBA hike

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Victoria’s Northern Health phone lines affected by Optus outage

Northern Health in Melbourne said all phone lines into its campuses are affected by the current Optus outage.

This includes phone lines into Northern hospital Epping, Broadmeadows hospital, Bundoora Centre, Craigieburn Centre, Kilmore district hospital, and [the] Victorian Virtual Emergency Department (VVED).

We apologise for any inconvenience.

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The Reserve Bank’s 13th interest rate rise is tightening the squeeze. But a pre-Christmas shock looks unlikely | Peter Hannam

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RBA governor Michele Bullock’s debut rate rise as governor looks unlikely to be repeated next month

Had the Reserve Bank left its cash rate unchanged on Tuesday, a few pundits would have declared “Without a Fight” had won twice within about half an hour.

Instead, a 13th interest rate rise by the Reserve Bank will certainly tighten the squeeze for the half of the mortgagors already nearing the financial stress zone.

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Australia news live: RBA tipped to hike interest rates today; last day of PM’s China visit; Melbourne Cup 2023

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A record level of stressed households are projected as economists tip Melbourne Cup Day interest rate rise. Follow the day’s news live

The government services minister, Bill Shorten, was also asked about the Reserve Bank’s upcoming decision on interest rates later today.

He acknowledged the Reserve Bank is independent of the government but said “I hope it stays static”:

[I] just know a lot of mortgage holders are doing it tough, but the bank will make its decision independently.

For the Albanese government, we know that inflation is a cost of living issue. We have put in a whole heap of measures from childcare to parental leave and energy support. People are doing it tough at the moment, I think it’s hard out there.

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