Month: September 2020

Australian Greens Education spokesperson Senator Mehreen Faruqi has said the Education Minister’s announcement the Commonwealth will fund 12,000 more student places for 2021 is a last-minute scramble to drum up support for unpopular university fee hikes and funding cuts.
Senator Faruqi said:
“Universities need a guaranteed, long-term funding boost, not a cynical injection of last-minute cash as the disastrous job-ready bill hangs in the balance.
“Universities are shedding tens of thousands of jobs and facing multi-billion dollar cuts. The government proposes putting a tiny band-aid on an open wound.
“While money for student places is always welcome, this is effectively an admission that the places promised in Job-ready Graduates come nowhere near satisfying demand for next year. Even with these new places, it won’t be anywhere near enough.
“When Covid-19 hit, the Liberals should have shown some leadership, provided a rescue package for universities and made university free for all students to aid our recovery.
“The grim reality is the government is crying poor on university funding while drawing up plans to bring forward billions in tax cuts for the wealthy,” she said.

The Morrison Government today announced new funding and a strategy for reducing the number of younger people living in residential aged care.
Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme, Stuart Robert, and Minister for Aged Care and Senior Australians, Senator Richard Colbeck said the initiative includes $10.6m in the 2020-21 Budget for a national network of system coordinators to help younger people find age-appropriate accommodation and supports to allow them to live independently in the community.
Minister Robert said the Younger People in Residential Aged Care (YPIRAC) Strategy charts the course to meet the strengthened targets set by the Government in late 2019 and builds upon the YPIRAC Action Plan released in March 2019.
‘The Morrison Government is committed to ensuring no younger person needs to live in residential aged care,’ Mr Robert said.
The YPIRAC targets seek to ensure, apart from in exceptional circumstances, there are no people under the age of 65 entering residential aged care by 2022; no people under the age of 45 living in residential aged care by 2022; and no people under the age of 65 living in residential aged care by 2025.
‘The experiences and needs of younger people living in residential aged care, their families and carers, are central to this strategy,’ Mr Robert said.
‘It recognises and prioritises the rights of younger people to determine where and how they choose to live.
‘Priority areas of work have been co-designed with key stakeholders, with input from state and territory governments.
‘These include supporting greater choice and control, improving pathways and linkages across the disability, aged care, housing and health systems, and providing age-appropriate accommodation and ongoing support options.
‘Under the NDIS, we have seen significant progress in reducing the number of participants in residential aged care.”
From the launch of the Government’s YPIRAC Action Plan (March quarter 2019) to 30 June 2020, there has been a 39 per cent reduction in younger people entering residential aged care from 407 to 247, a 22 per cent reduction in people under the age of 45 living in residential aged care from 167 to 130, and a 15 per cent reduction in people under the age of 65 living in residential aged care from 5,715 to 4,860.
Minister Colbeck said the system coordinator initiative, funded in the 2020-21 Budget, will assist the Government to achieve and report against the targets in the YPIRAC Strategy.
‘As part of the 2020-21 Budget, the Government is establishing a national network of up to 40 system coordinators to directly help younger people living in, or at risk of entry to, residential aged care,’ Senator Colbeck said.
‘People who want to live on their own terms and with independence in the community will be supported to navigate Commonwealth and state and territory systems.
‘System coordinators will work with younger people and their families to support younger people to access the disability services, health services, housing and social supports they need.’
‘The initiative will go a long way to support younger people to move from residential aged care to age-appropriate accommodation and supports by 2025.’
The Younger People in Residential Aged Care Strategy 2020-2025 can be found here:
www.dss.gov.au/ypirac.

The Australian Government is extending testing and bolstering the supply of Personal Protection Equipment (PPE) throughout residential aged care facilities across Melbourne and the Mitchell Shire to further supress COVID-19 infection rates.
To support the Victorian Government, capacity for asymptomatic testing of aged care workers will be extended and an additional seven million P2/N95 respirator face masks will be provided as the Commonwealth continues to help the sector drive down case numbers.
In making the announcement, Minister for Health, Greg Hunt, said the distribution of additional masks for aged care facilities reinforced the existing health safeguards for residents, workers and families.
“We are committed to ensuring all aged care facilities across the country have access to the critical PPE they require to keep residents and staff safe,” Minister Hunt said.
“To date, we have provided more than 12 million masks and approximately 3.5 million goggles and face shields to Victorian aged care services.”
Urging providers and staff to remain vigilant, Minister for Aged Care and Senior Australians, Richard Colbeck, said “the decrease in community transmission in Victoria was cause for optimism.”
“All facilities will be able to request P2/N95 respirator masks to support their delivery of safe care,” Minister Colbeck said.
He said capacity would also be extended to continue to regularly test aged care workers in Victoria.
“In July, we established Mobile Testing Clinics to test asymptomatic staff and residents in residential aged care facilities in Melbourne and Mitchell Shire,” Minister Colbeck said.
“This will be continued by the Australian Government’s dedicated aged care in-reach pathology service that prioritises COVID-19 testing for aged care residents and workers.
“Under the ‘in-reach’ program, more than 152,000 tests at more than 11,000 site visits to almost 2000 residential aged care facilities across Australia have been conducted.”
The Australian Government has already provided further support by funding bulk-billed Medicare tests for asymptomatic Victorian aged care workers which they will continue to take at any time.
This work helps detect areas of community transmission before outbreaks in aged care services occur. To date, more than 10,500 tests have been conducted.

The Australian Government is supporting Australian screen content by simplifying regulations and injecting $53 million into the development and production of local film and television as part of the 2020-21 Federal Budget.
Minister for Communications, Cyber Safety and the Arts, the Hon Paul Fletcher MP, said that a vibrant local screen industry was essential to Australia’s cultural identity, while also supporting jobs and economic recovery following the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The Government is providing $30 million in funding to Screen Australia over two years to support the production of Australian drama, documentary and children’s film and television content,” Minister Fletcher said.
“Screen Australia will also receive an additional $3 million over three years to establish a competitive grants program to cultivate quality Australian screenwriting and script development.
“We are also providing $20 million to the Australian Children’s Television Foundation over two years to boost the development, production and distribution of high-quality Australian children’s content.”
As part of these changes, the Producer Offset – a key screen funding mechanism through which producers receive a refund of part of the production budget through the tax system – will be set at a harmonised 30 per cent for all domestic film and television production.
‘The old approach of treating film and television differently no longer makes sense. Increasing the offset to 30 per cent for television will mean additional funding for Australian television production – and in turn support higher production values and programs with a better prospect of being sold into the global content market, taking advantage of the opportunity created by the explosion of streaming video services like Netflix, Disney+, Stan and Amazon Prime.”
These measures will be complemented by changes to streamline and simplify the drama, documentaries and children’s content ‘sub-quota’ Australian content rules for broadcasters.
The sub-quotas were temporarily suspended as an emergency measure during COVID-19, but will be reintroduced from 1 January 2021.
Content will count towards the new, simplified requirement if it is either drama, or children’s content, or documentary content. With the minor exception of a cap on the number of hours of documentary content that can be counted towards meeting the requirement, the particular mix chosen will be a matter for each broadcaster based on its business strategy and judgement of audience appeal.
Commercial broadcasters will continue to be required to provide 55 per cent overall Australian content on their primary channels between 6:00 am and midnight, and to provide 1,460 hours of Australian content per year on their multi-channels.
The points scheme underpinning the sub-quotas will give more points to higher-budget productions, creating a stronger incentive to commission bigger budget drama which is more likely to be sold globally rather than only be seen in Australia.
The Government will also legislate to reduce the existing Australian content spend obligation on selected subscription television channels from ten per cent to five per cent.
The Government has moved quickly to implement this package of reforms in the first budget brought down after the Supporting Australian Stories on our Screens options paper and consultation process.
It forms part of the Government’s 2019 commitment, in response to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s Digital Platforms Inquiry, to a staged process to reform media regulation towards an end state of a platform-neutral regulatory framework covering both online and offline delivery of media content to Australian consumers.
Work will continue under that process, including examining whether to introduce an Australian content spend obligation on streaming video on demand services above a minimum size threshold in the Australian market.
As an initial measure, the largest streaming video services will be asked to commence reporting to the Australian Communications and Media Authority on Australian content acquisition from the 2021 calendar year.
“The Government very much appreciates the strong engagement we received during our consultations this year,” Minister Fletcher said.
“The views of stakeholders and interested parties were very clear – we need to continue our support for the production of Australian content, but we also need to remove unsustainable obligations on industry and tailor our interventions to match the new and diverse ways Australian content is being produced and consumed.”
“The measures announced today are designed to do just that. They begin to rebalance our regulatory framework and provide Australians with the opportunity to access Australian content across a range of media, regardless of whether they want to watch free-to-air television, subscription television or streaming services.”
More information on this package can be found here.

The long overdue announcement of the Safe Places Emergency Accommodation grants is welcome, but falls critically short of national demand and is no substitute for adequate funding in next week’s Budget, Greens Senate Leader Larissa Waters said.
“This funding is a fraction of the money needed to ensure women and children fleeing family violence have somewhere to go and get the support services they need,” Senator Waters, Greens spokesperson on Women, said.
“Announcing 700 new crisis places which the government contends will house 6,000 women and children nationally, when its own data shows almost 10,000 survivors were already turned away from crisis accommodation pre-Covid, means the government is condemning a third of women and children to a choice between violence or homelessness.
“Increased demand throughout Covid has meant Queensland Women’s Legal Service hasn’t been able to answer 50% of its incoming calls.  Much of the ‘emergency’ funding announced by the government to address increased demand on Family and Domestic Violence services in March is yet to reach the bank accounts of frontline services.
“Funding for crisis accommodation and support services for victim-survivors has never been more critical. Yet services have been waiting months for the support promised by this government, and made clear that much more is needed.
“The Greens support the sector’s calls for a significant increase in funding to fix the domestic and family violence crisis. Next week’s Budget must fund all frontline services needed to keep all victim-survivors of violence safe, and effective primary prevention,” Senator Waters said.

The Morrison Government is providing $9 million to support research into the causes, biology and progression of cancer among children and young adults.
Cancer is the leading cause of death from disease among Australian children. In the decade to 2015, nearly 1000 Australian children under the age of 15 died from cancer.
Delays in diagnosing childhood cancers can limit treatment options, and for some cancers, there are currently no effective treatments.
Tragically, survival rates for some cancers among children have not improved in more than 25 years, and new analysis of records held by the Australian Childhood Cancer Registry shows the rates of several childhood cancers are slowly rising.
This $9 million investment from the Government’s ground-breaking Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF) will provide grant opportunities for Australia’s world-leading researchers to accelerate options to prevent, diagnose and treat cancer in children and adolescents.
The Grant Opportunity will fund projects in two streams of research:

• Cancers that occur in children aged 0-14 years.
• Cancers that occur in adolescents aged 10-19 years.

Funding of $3 million will be allocated to each of the two streams. The remaining $3 million will be earmarked to support the overall best research, irrespective of streams.
Consultation with The Kids’ Cancer Project and Cancer Australia, has informed the scope and priorities of the 2020 Childhood Cancer Research Grant Opportunity.
The Government’s MRFF is a $20 billion endowment fund. The MRFF is a long-term investment supporting Australia’s best and brightest researchers. Further information about the MRFF is available at www.health.gov.au/mrff.
Guidelines to apply for grants under the 2020 Childhood Cancer Research Grant Opportunity are available at https://www.grants.gov.au/