Category: Australian News

Greens Spokesperson for Housing, Senator Mehreen Faruqi, has reacted to a new Productivity Commission report showing that two thirds of low income renters spend more than 30% of their income on rent, the commonly used benchmark for identifying rental stress. Half of those remain ‘stuck’ in stress four years on.
Senator Faruqi has called for the Federal Government to review and increase Commonwealth Rent Assistance.
Senator Faruqi said:
“When even the Productivity Commission concludes that rent assistance hasn’t kept up with rising rents, you know we have a problem. The Federal Government needs to step in and commit to increasing rent assistance.
“It is unacceptable that so many people already on low incomes are falling into financial stress just to put a roof over their head. Everyone has the right to a safe, secure and permanent home.
“We know the situation is getting worse. We need urgent interventions, coupled with significant financial resources and reform of the housing system, or more and more people will be without a home.
“The Productivity Commission has also pointed out wide disparities around the country in conditions for renters. That’s why the Greens have consistently called for a national standard to protect renters”, she concluded.

A popular genre of computer game allows players to design and create civilisations from the ground up.
Players build roads, water supplies and industrial precincts. As their cities grow, they attract workers whose taxes fund further building, allowing the player to build wealth, raise armies and conquer the world.
The heart of these games is planning. Players have to make sure their civilisations have the infrastructure necessary to sustain development.
High speed rail down the east coast would completely transform the economies of the regional cities along its route, as it has done in Europe.CREDIT:RAIL EUROPE
If they skimp on roads and water supplies, for example, community sentiment goes sour, residents leave, the civilisation collapses and the player has to start all over again.
Of course, in the real world, it’s not that simple. We can’t just start the game again if we get it wrong.
That’s why it is critical governments ensure that they respond to population growth with commensurate infrastructure investment or risk real damage to our quality of life.
The simple lesson from those computer games is that government must invest adequately to meet the demands of growth with the investment required to deal with its effects.
The current federal government is failing in this task.
Over the five years to 2018, total annual infrastructure investment in this country was down by 17 per cent compared with average levels during the period of the former Labor government.
In the same period, the national population, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, increased by 1.5 million, or 6.5 per cent.
The outcomes of this under-investment are manifest across our big cities, most notably with traffic congestion.
According to the recently released Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey, the average daily commuting time for Sydney workers climbed from 61 minutes in 2002 to 71 minutes in 2017.
It is a tragedy that traffic congestion means many Australian workers spend more time driving to and from work each day than they spend at home with their children.
One of the first decisions of the Abbott/Turnbull/Morrison government was the cancellation of all federal investment in public transport projects that were not already under construction.
Tony Abbott set out the reason for this approach in his book, Battlelines.
“Mostly, there just aren’t enough people wanting to go from a particular place to a particular destination at a particular time to justify any vehicle larger than a car and cars need roads,” he said.
The cuts and delays to urban rail projects has had an ongoing negative impact. Australians are paying by having to waste more time stuck in traffic.
Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison changed the rhetoric on public transport, but they have failed to restore Mr Abbott’s cuts, instead leaving the heavy lifting to states.
While the government announced an Urban Congestion Fund in its May 2018 Budget, not a single project has begun.
Indeed, only about 30 per cent of all money allocated to rail and road investment in the 2019 Budget will be invested within the next four years.
The government should bring some of this investment forward. In Sydney, it could speed up work on the Western Sydney Rail line and also get behind the proposed Western Metro to Parramatta and beyond.
This investment would also satisfy the Reserve Bank’s ongoing calls for increased infrastructure investment to stimulate the economy, creating jobs and economic activity in the short term, while boosting productivity over the medium to long term.
Infrastructure investment as an essential component of economic and social policy.
It’s about giving Australians the services they are paying for through their taxes, but also driving economic growth that will benefit their children and grandchildren.
It can also boost regional development.
High speed rail down the east coast would completely transform the economies of the regional cities along its route.
It would make regional cities more attractive as places to set up new enterprises and create new jobs, which would take pressure off the capital cities.
Anthony Albanese

Greens Spokesperson for Animal Welfare, Senator Mehreen Faruqi, has slammed the resumption of the live export of sheep to the Middle East.
Senator Faruqi said:
“The resumption of live exports to the Middle East, especially while temperatures are so hot shows the Government is just paying lip service to animal welfare.
“It is going to be over forty degrees in Kuwait over the next few weeks, which means thousands of sheep will continue to suffer cruel heat stress. We are quite literally putting these poor animals into the furnace of the Middle East heat for profit.
“Whether it is heat stress, overcrowding or spending weeks standing in their own filth, animals on live export ships suffer immensely. It’s time to end live exports once and for all,” she concluded.

Greens spokesperson for the climate crisis, Adam Bandt MP, has warned that the United Nations Climate Summit has made it abundantly clear that even if global Paris pledges are met, it won’t be enough to avoid catastrophic global warming.
“This summit made it crystal clear that even if Australia meets its Paris commitments, that won’t be enough,” said Mr Bandt.
“The world’s Paris pledges, including Australia’s, have us on track for a catastrophic 3.4 degrees of global warming.
“Scientists at the summit say we need to a least triple current Paris pledges to stay below 2 degrees, but instead Scott Morrison is lifting pollution. Scott Morrison is now a direct threat to life.
“It’s great to pull plastics out of the sea, but the biggest threat to our oceans is climate change and Scott Morrison is making global warming worse.”
“A true leader would front up to the UN Climate Summit, and explain why they’re desperately trying to open new coal mines in the middle of a climate emergency,” said Greens leader Richard Di Natale.
“Instead, Scott Morrison is too busy hanging out with his fellow climate denier Donald Trump and Australia’s richest coal baron – while unashamedly boasting that he shares many of the same backwards and views as his host.
“In an attempt to deflect blame for Australia’s carbon exports he’s urging China to reduce their use of fossil fuels – at the same time his Resources Minister is trying to flog off ever more coal to India. By seeking to ignore reality, he’s clearly found a mentor in the most dangerous US President in history.”

By skipping the United Nations Climate Summit to attend the opening of a box factory owned by a billionaire donor to the Liberal Party with President Trump, Scott Morrison is showing just how out of touch he is with the millions of Australians demanding genuine action on climate change, said Leader of the Australian Greens Dr Richard Di Natale.
“Millions of people are taking to the streets to demand that our political leaders take serious action on climate change. But instead of listening to their voices and attending a landmark UN Climate Summit today, Scott Morrison has chosen to open a box factory in Ohio owned by a billionaire political donor to the Liberal Party,” said Di Natale.
”We are in a climate emergency and yet the Prime Minister is more interested in rewarding his donors than action to save the planet. Unless Scott Morrison is expecting to find his Government’s missing climate change policy in one of those cardboard boxes, he should be at the United Nations working with other world leaders on a genuine solution to the climate crisis.”
“This weekend, millions of people around the world took to the streets to demand greater action to tackle the climate crisis, yet Scott Morrison refuses to even show his face at the UN Emergency Climate Summit, taking his climate denialism to new and increasingly destructive heights,” said Greens Climate Change Spokesperson Adam Bandt MP.
“Scientists from around the world have a very simple message: we must triple our climate ambition to have any hope of avoiding catastrophic, runaway global warming. It’s time for Scott Morrison to listen to the scientists, listen to the strikers and plan for a phase-out of fossil fuels.”

Federal Labor expresses its deep concern for residents affected by serious bushfires across much of Queensland and Northern New South Wales.
We have been in touch with Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and State and Federal Emergency Services Ministers to offer our support in this time of need.
We commend the efforts of fire and emergency service personnel and the many volunteers who have assisted to fight fires in these dangerous conditions.
We also commend the residents of bushfire affected regions for their cooperation with bushfire authorities
We join with our state counterparts in encouraging all residents to follow the directions of authorities.
We express our sincere sympathies to those who have lost their properties and will do what we can to support recovery efforts.

Today I will make my first visit to New Zealand as Leader of the Australian Labor Party.
I am determined to strengthen relations with our nearest neighbours across the many interests we share.
These relationships are crucial, not just in the interests of regional cooperation, but also economic development.
New Zealand is more than a close friend of Australia, it is family.
Our trade relationship with New Zealand is a special one, with two way trade in merchandise and services totalling almost $30 billion.
Australia’s relationship with New Zealand is a crucial part of our engagement with the Pacific.
As the Pacific faces the impacts of climate change it is more important than ever that Australia takes a leadership role in supporting our neighbours.
While in New Zealand I will meet with Leader of the New Zealand Labour Party Jacinda Ardern, Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Winston Peters and address the Australia New Zealand Leadership Forum.
I will be accompanied by Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs Penny Wong.
Anthony Albanese

The Prime Minister has questions to answer about the language he today denied having used today to describe a former Australian senator.
In a press conference today Mr Morrison was asked:
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister why was it racist to question Gladys Liu’s connections to China but it wasn’t racist to call Sam Dastyari “Shanghai Sam”?
PRIME MINISTER: I didn’t use either of those phrases.
Mr Morrison has used the term “Shanghai Sam’’ at least 17 times on 11 occasions, including on the floor of the House of Representatives and in multiple media interviews.
The only person linking concerns about Ms Liu to the entire Chinese-Australian population is Mr Morrison. He should stop.

As a result of the Morrison Government’s economic plan and responsible budget management the Budget has returned to balance for the first time in 11 years.
The underlying cash balance in the Final Budget Outcome for the 2018-19 financial year is $13.8 billion better than estimated at the time of the 2018-19 Budget.
The deficit of $690 million represents 0.0 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP).
A growing economy with more jobs and stronger terms of trade than anticipated at the time of the 2018-19 Budget have driven total receipts $11.5 billion higher, with payments $6.6 billion lower than expected at the time of the 2018-19 Budget.
Employment growth far exceeded expectations at the time of delivering the 2018-19 Budget in May 2018.
With about 300,000 additional jobs created in 2018-19, employment grew by 2.6 per cent, well above the 1½ per cent growth forecast in the 2018-19 Budget.
More than eight out of ten jobs created in the last year were in full time employment with the proportion of those of working age in welfare now at its lowest level in 30 years.
More jobs drive increases in revenue as well as lower payments, with individual tax receipts up by $5.7 billion compared to the 2018-19 Budget forecast.
Our strong fiscal management has put the Budget on a sustainable trajectory, ensuring that we can guarantee the essential services that Australian’s rely on.
The 2018-19 Final Budget Outcome shows that we have kept spending as a share of GDP in 2018-19 at 24.6 per cent of GDP, below the long-run average of 24.7 per cent for the second consecutive year, while also providing record levels of investment in essential services like hospitals, schools and aged care.
In 2018-19, our total funding for Health reached a record $80.2 billion, $4.2 billion more than we provided in 2017-18 and around $19.0 billion more than was provided in 2012-13, before we came into Government. There is also record investment of around $20 billion in Australian schools, $1.7 billion more than we provided in 2017-18 and around $7.0 billion more than 2012-13. There is record investment in aged care $19.8 billion, $2.0 billion more than we provided in 2017-18 and increasing from $12.8 billion that was provided in 2012-13. Spending on the NDIS more than doubled in 2018-19 compared to the previous year, going from $4 billion in 2017-18 to $8.5 billion in 2018-19.
These outcomes demonstrate that the Government’s economic plan is working and confirm that the Budget will be back in the black and back on track for the 2019-20 year.
Importantly Australia has completed its 28th consecutive year of economic growth and maintained its AAA credit rating. With more than 1.4 million jobs having been created since the Coalition Government was first elected in 2013, today’s outcome reflects the record number of people in jobs and an economy which is benefiting from the free trade agreements (FTAs) negotiated by the Coalition over the last six years. Our FTAs combined with strong prices for our key commodities exports has seen the current account move into surplus for the first time since 1975.
Nominal GDP grew by 5.3 per cent in 2018-19, which was significantly stronger than the 2018-19 Budget forecast of 3 ¾ per cent. This was the result of stronger than-expected employment growth and higher-than-assumed prices for key commodities.
The Final Budget Outcome for 2018-19 further demonstrates that the Government’s economic plan is working to create more jobs, and to ensure Australia can continue to afford the essential services Australians rely on.
In the year ahead the economy will continue to be supported by the Government’s economic plan as outlined in the 2019-20 Budget, including the largest tax cuts in two decades, and our $100 billion pipeline of infrastructure investment.
The Final Budget Outcome 2018-19 can be found at www.budget.gov.au.