Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
The Albanese government is in the final stages of signing off on a boost to childcare workers wages as a centrepiece of next month’s budget.
Guardian Australia understands the budget razor gang, the expenditure review committee, has considered a number of proposals on the sector-wide wage increase, which would see the government cover a significant pay rise for early childcare educators.
Caps on childcare fees may be required to prevent providers hiking prices in response to more generous government subsidies, the competition watchdog has warned.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s second report into childcare, released on Sunday, warns that childcare in Australia is “relatively less affordable for households than in most other OECD countries”. The ACCC said there would be “substantial benefit” in the government considering “direct price controls”.
The Queensland childcare worker accused of being one of Australia’s worst paedophiles is alleged to have sexually abused seven different girls in a single month, court documents show.
Charge sheets released on Tuesday reveal new details about allegations against the man, who is accused of abusing 91 children in Australia and overseas over a 15-year period.
In Australia, children, young adults, parents and teachers can contact the Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800; adult survivors can seek help at Blue Knot Foundation on 1300 657 380. In the UK, the NSPCC offers support to children on 0800 1111, and adults concerned about a child on 0808 800 5000. The National Association for People Abused in Childhood (Napac) offers support for adult survivors on 0808 801 0331. In the US, call or text the Childhelp abuse hotline on 800-422-4453. Other sources of help can be found at Child Helplines International
Childcare fees have outpaced inflation in the past five years, with rises of between 20% and 32% from 2018 to 2022 according to a report from the competition regulator.
Households are now paying 4% more for centre-based and outside-school-hours care, 6% more for family daycare and 15% more for in-home care services, once adjusted for inflation.
Two years ago, it cost Jessica* $176 a day to send her daughter to childcare in Melbourne. From July, it’ll be $204.40 – a $26.40 jump.
Jessica is now reconsidering a second child. She’s accepted for the first five years of her daughter’s life, her and her partner will “just have to be broke”, dishing out more than $1,000 per week on fees.
The union representing early childhood educators has condemned the Albanese government’s failure to boost their pay in the federal budget, signalling it will bring a multi-employer bargaining claim within weeks seeking a 25% pay rise.
Helen Gibbons, the director of early childhood education at the United Workers Union, said it was “very likely” it would make an application on behalf of thousands of educators shortly after new industrial laws take effect on 6 June.
Over on the Nine network Bill Shorten had a chat about Optus and the robodebt royal commission (Shorten has found his media niche in commercial tv, particularly breakfast shows).
Well, first of all, we want Optus to look after its customers. Based on what I’ve been told, Optus hasn’t done enough. They have done not enough to protect its customers and their follow up needs to be much more diligent. Clare O’Neil, our Minister for Home Affairs, is coordinating our response. I think it’s time for a giant overhaul- or not a giant overhaul, but a big overhaul of how data’s kept by our large corporations. So we’re doing everything we can to try and apprehend the hackers. But there’s no doubt that the defences of the company were, as I’ve been informed, inadequate, and they’ve got to reach out and support their customers. That’s what we want to do.
Gallagher says Labor has not changed position on tax cuts
And on the stage three tax cuts, Katy Gallagher echoed the line the treasurer, Jim Chalmers, started last week and continued yesterday – which is effectively Labor playing dead on the $243bn cuts:
I have been asked this a number of times. You know, we haven’t changed our view on stage three. They don’t come in until 2024.
My sole focus at the moment is putting a budget together for October and what we can do in the short-term to relieve pressure on families. That is what I’m focused on everyday.
Well, the budget we inherited was heaving with a trillion dollars of Liberal party debt. We got deficits as far as the eye can see.
We got some programs that weren’t funded in an ongoing sense that clearly are programs that need ongoing funding.
At least 68 children have been left on buses in Australia in the past five years – a rate of more than one a month.
Earlier this month, three-year-old Nevaeh Austin was treated in intensive care after being found unconscious on a bus outside her Queensland childcare centre. She had been left on the bus alone for six hours in temperatures over 30C .
Scott and Jenny Morrison are visiting Whitemore in the Labor-held electorate of Lyons in Tasmania this morning.
Brian Mitchell holds Lyons on a margin of 5.2%, although his buffer was inflated by the disendorsement of his Liberal opponent mid-campaign in 2019 for anti-Islamic social media posts. Morrison is still on the offence, seeking gains to offset expected losses elsewhere.
The family of a three-year-old girl who was allegedly left in a hot bus for six hours outside her childcare centre in central Queensland say they are hoping for a speedy recovery.
Nevaeh Austin was found unconscious on a bus in almost 30C heat by staff about 3pm on Wednesday outside Le Smileys Early Learning Centre in Gracemere.
When Nicole Greem decided to return to her job as a nurse after maternity leave, her biggest stumbling block wasn’t whether she could find work, but whether she could access childcare.
Like many places in regional New South Wales, Bourke, where Greem and her family live, had been crying out for healthcare workers. But even those who lived there were struggling to take up the shifts they wanted.
Australian Labor party gathers online to endorse slimmed-down election platform and debate industrial relations, trade and foreign affairs. Follow all the latest updates, live
Labor’s policy should be framed to provide a positive and compassionate approach by a Labor Government to the treatment of refugees, rather than a reaction to the punitive and cruel approach of the Coalition Government. Refugees and those seeking asylum in Australia are to be welcomed under a Labor Government as assets who enhance this nation and our economy and provide positive contribution to our strong multicultural society.
In this chapter, Michael Danby will move this motion:
Labor calls on China to abide by its own constitution and laws which expressly allows for the cultural autonomy of the Tibetan people within the People’s Republic.
Tibetans must be allowed, as they are under Chinese law, to freely practice their religion, to learn and speak their language and to have official documents in the language of the vast majority of people living in the Tibetan autonomous zone.
Scott Morrison says it is the GST top up with has allowed WA to declare a budget surplus.
So, you’re welcome, Mark,” he says
Q: The RBA has warned today that Australia’s historically low population growth rate will heighten the risk of falls in property values in the future. And Treasury has said your housing measures bring forward demand for future years. What will the Government do?
Scott Morrison:
Well, the impacts from the COVID-19 recession are obvious. Whether it’s programs like HomeBuilder and others, there will always be an excess of demand over the supply of housing in this country. Always has been. And that’s what has fundamentally driven house price values all around the country.
And that is still true today. There is still a surplus of demand over supply. And that’s why our HomeBuilder program - and to give you an idea of its impact, what we’ve done in the housing sector is we’ve been unlocking and bringing forward the decisions that home builders want to make. And that will see some 20,000 homes built at a cost of around $500 million.
NSW says a new cluster of three people is likely linked to an existing cluster. The premier Gladys Berejiklian is also warning that the public will be told of “additional venues, additional locations” to respond to during the day.
The remaining three cases of community transmission are all linked, and that source is being investigated by Health. Health has not ruled out also being able to establish a link between that new cluster of three people and also an existing cluster. It’s also important to note that we anticipate during the day there will be additional venues, additional locations, which we’ll be asking the public to respond to.
We anticipate that because we’ve identified these eight cases, that a number of close contacts and family members could be found to be positive as a result, so it’s really, really important for everybody to stay on high alert, look at the information which Health provides during the course of the day, and please react and make sure you take that advice. If you’re asked to get tested and stay home for 14 days, please make sure you do that.
In NSW, another four cases were recorded from returned travellers.
Of the eight locally-acquired cases, one is under investigation and seven are linked to a known case or cluster. NSW Health said:
One new case reported today was locally acquired, is likely to have been infected some days ago and appears linked to the Liverpool Hospital Dialysis cluster. Four more cases are close contacts of this case.
One new case is locally acquired whose source is under investigation. The remaining two cases today are close contacts of this case.
Testing numbers have dropped recently, which is a concern. NSW Health renews its call for increased testing across Sydney, even if you have the mildest of symptoms like a runny nose or scratchy throat, cough, fever or other symptoms that could be COVID-19.
This is especially important for people across West and South West Sydney with these new cases and after the state’s sewage surveillance program detected fragments of the virus at the North Richmond and West Camden treatment plants.
One-size-fits-all approach for sector puts not-for-profits in jeopardy, union warns
The not-for-profit early childcare education sector is struggling to pay up to $9,000 for deep cleaning each time a Covid-19 case is identified, while federal government transition payments may not be enough to keep the sector afloat as parents pull their children out of the system.
The United Workers Union’s director for early childhood education, Helen Gibbons, said the one-size-fits-all approach towards the early childcare sector needed a rethink or the community risked losing not-for-profit childcare centres, which comprise just under half of the sector.
Economists’ study says permanently free childcare would provide short-term stimulus and drive long-term growth
Australia could unlock huge economic gains by continuing to offer free childcare after the pandemic is over, a new report argues.
The release of the report comes a day after Australia’s small business ombudsman and employer groups warned of the coming cliff in economic supports including free childcare ending and called on the government not to reduce jobseeker unemployment benefits to their former level of $40 a day.
Scott Morrison also defends deal as Coalition attacks Labor’s childcare plan as ‘communist’. All the day’s events, live
Both campaigns are now in debate prep mode, so we are going to power down for the moment.
But it’s just a break, not goodbye. We’ll be back just before 7pm eastern time to bring you the blow-by-blow of the first leaders’ debate.
On what he would do in terms of climate policies (given his history on the subject with the Gillard government):
It was Tony Windsor and I who forced the changes. Both sides have the ability to get on with embedding climate change into the processes of government. At the time we did have world-leading legislation.
I concede we lost control of the politics and that Tony Abbott, as the alternate prime minister, came in on a wave of, you know, that carbon tax message, which even his chief of staff, you know, after the event, has admitted was more about the politics than anything to do with policy.