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| Australian politics live: Victoria reports five new Covid cases as Melbourne goes on high alert | |
| (32 minutes later) | |
| A school student in Melbourne’s north tested positive to coronavirus, putting the suburbs of Dallas, Roxburgh Park, Broadmeadows, Preston and West Heidelberg on high alert. Follow live | A school student in Melbourne’s north tested positive to coronavirus, putting the suburbs of Dallas, Roxburgh Park, Broadmeadows, Preston and West Heidelberg on high alert. Follow live |
| Australia Post is facing questions from Labor as to whether postal services have deteriorated as a result of changes made after the coronavirus pandemic began. | |
| Under the ‘Alternating Delivery Model’ (ADM) announced in May, about 2,000 motorbike posties were set to trade bikes for vans or move into warehouses to cope with the increased load or parcels, with the frequency of letter deliveries also being cut. | |
| Labor’s Kim Carr has asked about a survey of nearly 400 posties, conducted by the Victorian postal union, with 93% of respondents saying the model had degraded service quality, and 71% saying they were unable to take all their breaks to complete their delivery round, as per a report in The New Daily. | |
| Rod Barnes, of Australia Post, said he would look into the reports, but indicated the data and information he had available to him did not back up the claims. He said it would be unacceptable if posties felt the need to speed up as a result of the volume of work, but every postie had a scanner and GPS positioning device that would allow these claims to be checked. | |
| “I do take those safety reports seriously and I will look into those.”Barnes said that half of posties in Victoria were having to start each day three or three and a half hours later than their colleagues, which impacted productivity. Australia Post understood this was not popular with posties. But Barnes said the decision not to have everyone starting at the same time each day was driven by Covid-safety needs. “It is simply not safe for us to do so.” | |
| Labor’s Kristina Keneally has gone into Estimates to ask senator Jonathon Duniam whether any minister knew about Amanda Stoker’s line of questioning about tweets from aged care royal commission staff. | |
| Keneally said that Coalition senators cared about “tweets” rather than spending their time asking about 683 deaths in aged care and the interim royal commission report titled Neglect. | |
| Duniam objects that he can’t be expected to know whether ministers knew about the questions, and Stoker, in the chair controlling proceedings, accused Keneally of grandstanding. | |
| Stoker said the Estimates committee had moved on the National Archives, and as Keneally persisted with the line of questioning shouted over her that she had to confine questions to the National Archives. | |
| Liberal senator Sarah Henderson objected to Keneally’s “completely out of order and unruly” behaviour. | |
| Keneally moved to have a private meeting to discuss whether she can ask about the Coalition “caring about tweets rather than deaths”. The committee suspended. | |
| Just so we are clear, the royal commission on aged care is holding its final hearing today. | |
| And Amanda Stoker and Sarah Henderson, are talking about old tweets from the media director. | |
| Just to be clear – Amanda Stoker called back the AG’s department to ask about the tweets as it was a “new development” she was not aware of yesterday. | |
| The committee is getting very heated. | |
| Amanda Stoker brought in Chris Moraitis to ask him these questions. | |
| Kristina Keneally has come in to ask questions about whether or not any ministerial staff helped prepare the questions. | |
| Stoker says the committee has moved on to the national archives and the time to ask questions about the aged care royal commission and the AG’s department ended at 10.10am. | |
| Amanda ‘oh golly’ Stoker, known for her free speech crusade, opened the legal affairs estimates committee by asking the AG department secretary, Chris Moraitis if he was aware of some of the private social media musings of Kate Hannon, who is the media director for the royal commission into aged care. | |
| Hannon, who worked for News Corp and AAP (as well as Mike Rann) won a Walkley for her reporting on the kerosene bath scandal, which lost Bronwyn Bishop her ministerial position. | |
| Stoker brought up posts Hannon made (again on her private account) three years ago, and asked if that was in breach of the public service act. | |
| There was a high profile court case recently which found that private musings on private social media accounts can be in breach of the PSA. | |
| Moraitis said he would review the tweets, as he was not aware of them. | |
| Labor senator Anthony Chisholm said it seemed that the government was concerned with three year old tweets, than nearly 700 deaths in aged care. | |
| The legal affairs committee has gone on break. | |
| “Oh golly,” says chair Amanda Stoker. | |
| “At 10.30 we will resume.” | |
| Switching over to legal affairs estimates and the national archive boss is painting an awful picture – cost cutting has meant a huge downturn in the amount of work the archive can do – there have been issues accessing records – 19,000 applications are overdue – and there is a very real danger important archives are about to be lost in the next five years, because they don’t have the resources to digitise them. | |
| There is another week to go. | There is another week to go. |
| Labor senator Kim Carr is leading the questioning of Australia Post. He says it’s an essential public service. | Labor senator Kim Carr is leading the questioning of Australia Post. He says it’s an essential public service. |
| In a clear sign the questioning may become robust this morning, Carr said ongoing parliamentary committee scrutiny was needed to deliver better oversight of Australia Post. | In a clear sign the questioning may become robust this morning, Carr said ongoing parliamentary committee scrutiny was needed to deliver better oversight of Australia Post. |
| “It’s not about personal animus to any individual, it’s about our responsibilities to ensure Australia Post operates in terms of its accountability to the Australian people through the parliament.” | “It’s not about personal animus to any individual, it’s about our responsibilities to ensure Australia Post operates in terms of its accountability to the Australian people through the parliament.” |
| He points to a recent Senate committee report on concerns about the way in which Australia Post was responding to questions put to it. Christine Holgate, the Australia Post chief executive officer, said she respected the comments, noted the organisation had engaged with Australian Government Solicitor, and said it had made a commitment to engage. | He points to a recent Senate committee report on concerns about the way in which Australia Post was responding to questions put to it. Christine Holgate, the Australia Post chief executive officer, said she respected the comments, noted the organisation had engaged with Australian Government Solicitor, and said it had made a commitment to engage. |
| She said an external consultant had also been engaged. | She said an external consultant had also been engaged. |
| It would smooth the blow somewhat, yes. | |