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| Coronavirus Australia update: Victoria records Covid-19 death and 20 new cases reported – live news | |
| (32 minutes later) | |
| Victoria records 20th Covid death as ABC urges against further government budget cuts. Follow live | |
| We are chasing this up | |
| I know that has been a fair bit of not related to Covid news, but it is still important to policy, hence its inclusion. | |
| Getting on with it though, according to Angus Taylor, means not answering questions about targets. Asked about the 2050 target, Taylor says: | |
| Angus Taylor is asked if there are still people in the Coalition party room who don’t believe in climate change. | |
| (Obviously, there are. You know who the are) | |
| But the energy minister says: | |
| The Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) - whose members include ABC staff - has issued a statement criticising the latest job cuts. It says it is a case of “death by a thousand cuts for ABC staff”. | |
| The CPSU says the latest plan will hit Australian content creators hard, as well as see an end to flagship ABC programs. It has called on the government to halt the funding freeze and commit to a five-year ABC funding model. | |
| The union says the cuts will affect technology, news, entertainment, specialist and local teams, and will have “major impacts on content makers and specialist teams, stripping seniority and experience from the organisation”. It says the $5m cut to independent production “means less Australian drama and content on our screens”.The secretary of the CPSU’s ABC section, Sinddy Ealy, said everyone could see that the media and arts industries had been hit hard by Covid-19, and they needed the ABC to assist in the recovery. “Cutting jobs now is utter madness”. | |
| Ealy added: | |
| “The ABC has delivered through all major crises of this year. The ABC has provided in some cases lifesaving information throughout the droughts, fires and now a health pandemic. It is clear that Australia needs a strong ABC now more than ever.” | |
| Unicef has sent $140,000 in personal protective equipment to Timor Leste, including vital equipment for medical staff such as face shields, face masks, respirators, safety goggles and surgical gloves. | |
| This shipment, used funds raised from the agency’s Covid-19 appeal, is part of more than $3.5m in funding that Unicef Australia has sent across the region to suppress the spread of the virus. | |
| Timor Leste has had only 24 cases of Covid-19, and zero deaths, but there are concerns an outbreak would be hard to contain, given limited health infrastructure across the country. Timor Leste has 7 doctors per 10,000 people and only one intensive care bed with a ventilator for the entire nation of 1.2m people. | |
| Felicity Weaver, Unicef Australia’s Director of International Programs, said it was “hard to underestimate the vulnerability that still does exist” in countries like Timor Leste neighbouring Australia. | |
| Weaver said in Timor Leste, a focus on Covid-19 preparedness and testing, had the potential to draw attention and resources from other key healthcare initiatives across the country, including childhood nutrition and vaccination programs. | |
| Timor Leste has rates of childhood stunting that are some of the highest in the world: 50% of children under five have stunted growth. | |
| Weaver said the health crisis of Covid and the economic fallout of the shutdowns was a “double whammy” for developing countries like Timor Leste, “with lower household incomes, people not having sufficient funds to purchase a diversity foods”. | |
| “It also might be harder to continue with screening for stunting, and to identify kids who might be vulnerable.” | |
| Weaver said globally about 325m children have been kept from classrooms by Covid-19 restrictions, and reliant on some form of remote learning. “Our work has been around keeping children engaged while they are out of school. At this juncture in time, with children now returning to school, the question is how do help prepare those schools, so kids can feel safe.” | |
| Further to that last post, is this one from Hursty: | |
| One of many moving parts in the ABC cuts is the changes to the radio news bulletins. | |
| Here is how the ABC managing director, David Anderson, described the change to morning radio news programming: | |
| “On local radio, we are proposing changes to some broadcast services. The 7.45am bulletin will cease. We will still have a 10-minute bulletin at 7.00am, and a new five-minute bulletin at 8.00am, followed by the AM program until 8.30. The 45 minutes of news will reduce to 30 minutes. | |
| “ABC News digital on-demand services will deliver high quality journalism and a broader range of information for the growing audiences who access our news services on these platforms. Investment from services with a single broadcast focus, such as the 7.45 am radio news bulletin, will be redirected to services that are available across all audio platforms, 24/7, available to all Australians at a time that suits them.” | |
| In his speech to staff, the ABC’s managing director, David Anderson, said the government’s indexation pause – announced in 2018 – would reduce the ABC’s budget by $84m over three years and result in an ongoing reduction of $41m per annum from the 2021-22 financial year onwards. | |
| Anderson said it was true that many traditional media businesses were also facing revenue challenges, and that the ABC needed to “evolve our digital services to stay relevant”. But he noted there was a key difference: | |
| Outlining the mechanics of the expected 250 job cuts, Anderson said the ABC had opened a process a fortnight ago that allowed people to express an interest in redundancy. The ABC would today begin a second formal expression-of-interest process in divisions where there were likely to be 10 or more redundancies. | |
| The ABC had also “notified other employees of their potential redundancy today”. After the completion of the second EOI process in a fortnight, the ABC would “commence further consultation with staff and unions”. | |
| Anderson said the people leaving the ABC were “valued colleagues who have made tremendous contributions to the ABC” and it was “a difficult time for everyone”.You can read his full speech here. | |
| On the ABC cuts, Anthony Albanese says: | |
| Asked how big a test the Eden-Monaro byelection is for his leadership, Anthony Albanese says: | Asked how big a test the Eden-Monaro byelection is for his leadership, Anthony Albanese says: |
| Q: Mark Butler said immediately after the election that Labor would set a medium-term target before the next election which was consistent with the science. Does that remain Labor’s policy? | Q: Mark Butler said immediately after the election that Labor would set a medium-term target before the next election which was consistent with the science. Does that remain Labor’s policy? |
| Albanese: | Albanese: |