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Our blind and vision-impaired communities are celebrating today, after years of campaigning alongside the Greens, that audio description will be made available on Australia’s public broadcasters: the ABC and SBS.
Australian Greens Disability Rights spokesperson Senator Jordon Steele-John said there are more than 450,000 blind or vision-impaired Australians who are currently unable to enjoy television with friends and family, or reap the medium’s educational potential.
“This is now finally beginning to change, with funding made available to our public broadcasters to implement audio description across their channels from 1 July 2020,” Steele-John said today.
“Whilst this is a huge win for our blind and vision-impaired communities, it is disappointing to see that this government has not committed to requiring commercial free-to-air television stations to provide audio description as well.
“The commercial stations – Channel’s Seven, Nine, Ten and Sky – are now on notice. The technology is readily available and cheap, and the community expects them to follow suit and make sure their content is accessible to blind and visually-impaired Australians!
“The Greens will continue to campaign alongside the community to make sure that free-to-air TV in Australia is accessible and inclusive for everyone.”

Today’s meeting of the Murray–Darling Basin Ministerial Council has left the River system in crisis, robbed the environment, and has left South Australia high and dry.
“Today’s meeting has delivered a major blow to the environment, with cuts to crucial environmental water and a delay in plans designed to restore the health of the River” said Senator for SA and Greens Spokesperson for the Murray-Darling, Senator Sarah Hanson-Young.
“Rather than tackling over-allocation and mismanagement of water, Water Ministers today cut water to the environment. This means less water for the River to survive, while big irrigators can keep damming, pumping and making profits.
“The only winners out of the today’s meeting are the big irrigators upstream who have continued to expand irrigation, despite the drought.
“What we’ve seen today is a concerted, planned effort from the upstream states to cut obligations to the environment and roll South Australia.
“NSW’s refusal to help return the promised 450gl to the River as required in the Plan throws South Australia under the bridge.
“When the Murray-Darling Plan was agreed to, all signatories — that is, all the States — agreed to return 3,200 gigalitres of water to the River, that commitment is now effectively dead.
“The SA Water Minister should hang his head in shame. How did he let this happen?
“SA Premier Steven Marshall needs to front up to South Australians and explain what he’s going to do with his capitulating, weak Minister who has sold out our state and surrendered the Rivers health.”

Greens Senator Janet Rice has slammed the government’s failure to act as farmers suffer the effects of the climate emergency, following a damning report released today from the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences.

The report found that the climate crisis has sunk Australian farms’ average annual profits by 22% and that crop farmers have been hit the hardest, losing $1.1bn in revenue a year since 2000.

Senator Janet Rice, Greens spokesperson for Agriculture and Regional affairs said

“This is the cost of our climate crisis. It’s unacceptable that Australian farmers are losing around $18,600 per farm and yet the government is still failing to act on the climate emergency that’s causing this loss.

“Farmers and rural Australians are on the frontline of the climate crisis and this drought is devastating families and leaving communities to perish.

“Instead of helping regional communities and farmers, the coal-hugging Liberal-National Coalition have lifted pollution and done everything in their power to make global heating worse.

“The LNP seem more interested in cosying up to their coal, oil and gas lobby mates than they are in supporting farmers.

“The Bureau of Meteorology predicts that drier than average weather will continue, so we must ensure farmers have what they need to adapt.

“The Morrison government can’t just throw money at the problem as a bandaid during times of crisis. This is an ongoing crisis, made worse by the government’s failure to address the root cause of drought, fund long-term drought resilience programs, and take urgent climate action.

“It is only by cutting pollution that we can reduce the impact of droughts and alleviate the effect on farmers.”

The Prime Minister should stop fudging the figures and get on fixing southern Tasmania’s traffic woes, starting with delivering on the Airport Roundabout.
In 2017, the Liberals promised the Airport Roundabout in Hobart would be finished next year.
Instead, Tasmanians stuck in airport traffic will be still waiting months before they see the first shovel in the ground.
Worse still, there is confusion about total funding for the Hobart-Sorell Corridor.
There was $154 million promised for both the Hobart-Sorell Corridor and the Hobart Airport Roundabout but with blowouts to the Airport Roundabout there is now just $86m available for the rest of the Hobart-Sorell corridor.
We also know from MYEFO that just $25.2 million of the Infrastructure Fast Track will flow to Tasmania this year – less than 15 percent of the Tasmanian package.
Tasmanian locals as well as visitors deserve a plan on infrastructure and jobs from Scott Morrison.
They deserve an answer on whether the Liberal Government will properly fund the over-run over the airport roundabout, and what that means for upgrades to the whole corridor.
In addition – when will all this actually happen?
This Government, now in its seventh year, is continuing to demonstrate it has no plan to boost jobs and no plan on the economy.

Official data shows 1190 fewer Tasmanians are engaged in apprenticeships or traineeships than when the Federal Coalition took office more than six years ago.
That’s a drop of 12.5 per cent.
Over the same period, the Government has issued more than 500,000 visas to overseas workers to cover the skills shortages created by its cuts to TAFE and training.
Tasmanian employers are crying out for qualified workers.
The skills crisis in engineering, health, trades, technicians and construction is hurting the Tasmanian economy and denying young people a pathway to secure, well-paid jobs.
Nationwide, since the Liberals were elected six years ago, Australia has lost around 150,000 apprenticeships and traineeships.
Scott Morrison has no plan to fix the skills crisis he created.
He has no plan to create more jobs or to lift wages for those who are employed.
Australia is perfectly placed to reap the benefits offered by the extraordinary economic growth in our region.
But to take full advantage of this growth we must train Australians so they have the skills and qualifications to exploit the looming opportunities in manufacturing and construction.