This blog is now closed.
Expect to hear a lot more on this today:
Southern Australia could face gas shortages during “extreme peak demand days” from 2025 as Bass Strait supplies dwindle, the Australian Energy Market Operator has said.
Continue reading...Charities and education providers say young carers should be eligible for welfare when they study more than 21 hours a week
Young carers in England and Wales are being blocked from staying in education and going to college or university by benefit rules that unfairly penalise them, according to a coalition of charities and education providers.
The group of more than 200 organisations and representatives is lobbying ministers to exempt young carers – those aged 16 to 24 who often look after relatives – from the rule that makes them ineligible for the government’s carer’s allowance if they study for more than 21 hours a week.
Continue reading...DWP missed many chances to act as woman’s mental health declined while under overpayment investigation
A coroner has criticised the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) after a woman died from an overdose in the wake of a six-month official investigation that left her with soaring universal credit debts.
Fiona Butler, the assistant coroner for Rutland and North Leicestershire, wrote a Prevention of Future Deaths (PFD) report to the DWP highlighting its failures to respond to the victim’s mental health issues.
Continue reading...Department of Social Services figures show some areas had average wait times of more than 200 days between September and December
Claims for the disability support pension took more than 80 days on average in the final months of last year and some local government areas are experiencing average wait times of more than 200 days, data has revealed.
According to the data provided by the Department of Social Services in Senate estimates last month, disability support pension claims took an average of 82.2 days to be processed between September and December 2023.
Continue reading...Australian Council of Social Service says ‘unconscionable’ case shows why mutual obligations system must be ‘replaced with a fair system’ for jobseekers
A jobseeker is calling for an overhaul to the way suspensions are handled after his Centrelink payments were suspended while he was in hospital recovering from brain surgery.
The Albanese government is mulling an overhaul of the employment services system following a damning parliamentary review that criticised the mutual obligations system, which can suspend jobseekers’ welfare payments if they do not fulfil tasks such as attending meetings and submitting job applications.
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Continue reading...Exclusive: Smaller Workforce Australia providers, including those catering to Indigenous jobseekers, have effectively suspended more than 90% of their caseloads
Some of Australia’s outsourced employment service providers have effectively suspended the Centrelink payments of more than 90% of the jobseekers on their books, new data reveals.
Jobseekers have their payments suspended as part of the mutual obligations regime, which is meant to ensure jobseekers are actively looking and preparing for work. If they do not fulfil activities such as job applications, training courses, interviews and meetings with job providers, their Centrelink payments are suspended.
Continue reading...Many participants struggled to afford basics, cutting back on food or rationing medication, survey suggests
People experiencing poverty and job insecurity are increasingly unable to budget their way out of financial crisis, a new report from the Brotherhood of St Laurence has found.
The research, which asked 40 low to middle-income Victorians to detail their finances over 10 weeks, found inadequate income support, insecure work and the cost-of-living crisis are driving inequality across Australia.
Continue reading...Key senator calls for broader tax reform, while arguing changes to stage-three plan could fund increases to jobseeker and other payments
The independent senator David Pocock has called on the Albanese government to use $28bn of savings from its new tax-cuts package to increase welfare payments and urged Labor to trim other tax concessions.
With the Greens signalling that they will press Labor to recoup even more from high-income earners, Pocock has suggested the revamp of stage three should be a springboard to other tax reforms in the too-hard basket including capital gains tax.
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Continue reading...Advocates say government failing to meet ‘basic obligation’ to process claims quickly after Tim McCabe spent weeks with ‘no income’
A New South Wales jobseeker says he was forced to complete welfare mutual obligations – including a 50km round trip for job agency appointments and enrolling in training courses – despite receiving no welfare payments for 11 weeks.
Tim McCabe, 60, said he had applied for the jobseeker payment on 1 November after moving off a carer’s payment when his mother died.
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Pat Conroy says Ukraine-requested helicopters are not cleared for flight
The defence industry minister, Pat Conroy, is speaking to ABC RN about a request from Ukraine to receive Australia’s retired fleet of MRH-90 Taipan helicopters. The helicopters were retired earlier than planned after a crash in Queensland killed four Defence personnel during a training exercise last year:
Anyone who suggests that these aircraft have been cleared is wrong and they are making, quite frankly, really offensive suggestions at a time when people are really grieving.
I think it’s really important that those investigations keep working to establish the cause of that accident. These aircraft are [not in] flying condition, and we still do not know whether they’re safe to fly.
Continue reading...Call centre workers say systems are monitoring their performance minute-by-minute in bid to improve wait times
Centrelink call centre staff claim they are being monitored minute-by-minute, including the length of their bathroom breaks, as part of a management-led crackdown to improve average call wait times that have blown out to nearly double in the last year.
Staff spoke to Guardian Australia on the condition of anonymity, for fear of losing their jobs, claiming management systems, which assist team leaders in capturing call time figures and monitoring staff activities, acted more like a surveillance system, describing them as “intrusive and stressful”.
Continue reading...The escaping violence payment is not getting to people when they need it, say advocates who want the eligibility criteria broadened
More than half of people trying to access emergency financial support for domestic and family violence are having their claims rejected, new data has revealed.
Between July and September last year 57,041 applications were made for the escaping violence payment (EVP) but only 29,437 were found eligible, according to data released in response to a question on notice during Senate estimates.
Continue reading...PM sets up possibility of income tax coming down in March and says control of welfare is a priority
Rishi Sunak has said he wants to cut taxes for working people further this year, possibly cutting welfare payments to fund it.
The prime minister said on Sunday his priority before the budget in March would be further tax cuts, which he said would entail stricter controls on public spending and benefits.
Continue reading...Albanese government would need to couple any increases in unemployment benefits and pensions with savings, experts say
Addressing competition issues and increasing unemployment benefits and pensions are ways the Albanese government could tackle cost-of-living pressures but they would have to be coupled with savings to avoid reigniting inflation, economists say.
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, on Wednesday said he had asked Treasury and the finance department to develop “further propositions” for providing cost-of-living relief by the May budget.
Continue reading...Workers claim they have been forced to clean up human faeces, had payments cut off after a death in the family and have had to cancel work to attend provider appointments
Jobseekers say their employment providers have put them in positions where they have been given just one shift a fortnight, had to clean up large amounts of human faeces, and have been cut off payments after a close family member died.
In one case, Rebecca, who did not want her last name used, said her disability provider, Multiple Solutions, had registered her as a sole contractor and placed her into a role cleaning an aged care home in Gawler, South Australia, without telling her she was technically self-employed.
Continue reading...Exclusive: The apparent error has been occurring for at least three years and has been blamed on a transition to new computer systems
The Department of Veterans’ Affairs has apologised for chasing elderly Australians for alleged pension overpayments and has blamed a systems error for wrongly targeting those aged over 90.
After a Guardian Australia report on the issue, a departmental spokesperson said a number of veterans were incorrectly subjected to compliance reviews, resulting in debt notices.
Continue reading...A 74-year-old carer was mistakenly declared dead by Centrelink two times in a case advocates describe as illustrating the ‘devastating consequences of automation’
The Centrelink officer on the end of the phone to Eve* was telling her she was dead. Eve, 74, who receives a carer payment, had called after she noticed an extra $3,000 from Centrelink in her 81-year-old husband’s account in May this year, and she was concerned they had been overpaid.
After calling multiple times, she reached someone from Services Australia who looked up her account history.
Continue reading...Karen Payne says the debt notices had triggered a significant increase in complaints, and may require the government implementing a legislative fix
Australia’s tax ombudsman says the government should consider putting time limits on debt collection and ensure that people are not put into hardship after an ATO campaign to resurrect thousands of historical debts caused widespread distress and confusion.
Karen Payne, the country’s top tax bureaucrat in charge of the complaints management service, said the ATO campaign to extract the debts from tax refunds had triggered a significant increase in complaints, and may require a legislative fix.
Do you know more? Email jonathan.barrett@theguardian.com
Continue reading...Former ACT minister Emma Davidson voices unease after states and territories given just one month to review landmark report into scheme
A former ACT disability minister has accused the federal government of being more concerned with costs than people with disabilities after giving states and territories just one month to review a landmark report into the NDIS.
The ACT Greens MLA Emma Davidson, who was the territory’s disability minister until a cabinet reshuffle on Monday, said she agreed with decisions made by national cabinet this month but said they weren’t for the “right reasons” in a lengthy letter published on Friday.
Leaders met for a national cabinet meeting in early December where the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, agreed to extend the GST “no worse off” guarantee for a further three years, estimated to cost $10.5bn, in exchange for a joint funding agreement for additional disability services to complement the NDIS.
Continue reading...BoM tracker map shows forecast path of category 2 cyclone will hit north of Cairns and Port Douglas on the Queensland coast at about 1pm with heavy rain, 140km/h winds and storm surge predicted. Follow the latest Australia news and weather updates today
Ceasefire ‘can’t be one-sided’
Emergency management minister Murray Watt is also speaking to ABC RN this morning, and was asked about the PM’s joint letter with his New Zealand and Canadian counterparts urging a ceasefire.
[It] shows that we want to work with like-minded countries towards what would be a just and enduring peace. I think the whole world has been pleased to see the release of hostages and the pause in hostilities that we’ve seen over the last couple of weeks, but what we need to do is move towards a sustainable ceasefire …
I think everyone who watches this conflict unfolds on their television screens, is really disturbed about the loss of life that we’re seeing go on at the moment.
I think that’s the value that a country like Australia can play here by really taking that even-handed approach that does call out the abhorrent behaviour by Hamas, but also as a friend of Israel, calls on them to respect international humanitarian law.
We are alarmed at the diminishing safe space for civilians in Gaza. The price of defeating Hamas cannot be the continuous suffering of all Palestinian civilians.
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