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Australia news live update: Daniel Andrews ‘won’t be deterred’ by Victoria protests; NT on edge over Covid cases; flood warnings for NSW
Australia news live update: Daniel Andrews ‘won’t be deterred’ by Victoria protests; NT records six new Covid cases; flood warnings for NSW
(32 minutes later)
Follow all the day’s news live
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We are going to stop there because Chief Officer Micheal Gunner is talking in the NT. There are six new cases
Gunner is saying they are concerned because they don’t know how the cases are linked.
Wren:
“We do not know how those two outbreaks are linked and so there is a concern for seeding.
“To around 34% of people on JobSeeker now actually have a disability or an impairment. We have also got a lot of older women and men who have been laid off late in their working lives and, frankly, they are just waiting to claim the higher aged pension. And, of course, we have got single parents.
“Any person who has left Katherine, Robinson River, on those dates, come forward and get tested.
“Predominantly mothers, because, as we know, poverty is gendered, like violence, in this country, with children, with a child of the age of eight years. There is no parenting payment for those mothers, those families. It is JobSeeker.”
“We are concerned about potential seeding and that missing gap between that outbreak. There is a chance it is a separate and new incursion. But we do not have a source case if that is so. We are concerned.
Wren said we would also see the number of people who need unemployment payments is going to rise.
“We are a bit worried at the moment beyond Katherine and Robinson River.”
“It is about 27% more now than before we had the bushfires and the pandemic.
Gunner is asked about Wa closing the border, despite the fact Darwin is not in lockdown.
“But we’ve also got 2 million people who have, this year, for this lockdown, these avoidable lockdowns, have needed to claim another payment called the COVID disaster payment.
“Leaders will do what they need to do to look after that jurisdiction and I think Mark has had a fairly consistent approach all the way through this. I am not here to criticise other leaders.
“That’s gone. 2 million Australians have needed that. That payment, we still don’t know how many of them, but I don’t think all 2 million of them are going to be able to automatically snap back to their jobs or find a new job.”
“I am concerned about the nine-day gap between the fourth and 13 November.”
Wren:
Gunner is back and he is asked what the reality of life will be for people who do not get the vaccine.
“We in Australia have been cushioned, really, buy a decent age pension level, but also predominantly most people who retire in Australia up until now have owned their own home.
He says he wants to avoid a result where unvaccinated Territorians are separated from normal life.
“So that is the cushioning effect of poverty in retirement. As we see this rental crisis and buying crisis go forward, we would expect to see many more people retiring without owning their own home.”
“I think there will be the inconvenience of the mask.
Wren is now talking about the yearly data up until October:
If we get to a place where COVID is endemic in the NT, this is hypothetical so I will be very careful about doing hypothetical - there is enough going n with COVID to deal with the reality is that we may have to have other public health measures.
“So we still saw 30% increases in the SunshineCoast, Gold Coast, but also in places that weren’t affected as much by lockdowns, in WA some 27% increases, 21% in Far North Queensland.
“But at the moment it is about testing rules and must mandate to reduce the risk of incursion and try to catch it as soon as possible.”
“Sydney, 15%, Melbourne is the outlier, only 3%. But those percentages translate into higher rents that people simply can’t afford to pay.”
Pain says the health care system just cannot cope with widespread community outbreak if vaccine rates are not higher.
Wren is about to go through the key three reasons why poverty will increase as we come out of the first, lockdown-y stage of the pandemic.
“Our system is prone to being overwhelmed if we cannot get people protected.
And first up is housing affordability.
“The modelling we have seen, if we have a widespread outbreak in the community, we cannot manage that. However, we are not there yet. And we must get vaccinated at higher levels to avoid the health system being put under unacceptable and potentially unsustainable pressure.
“We’ve had a failure to invest in social housing over decades and increased house prices have been driving those two things, a big increase in reliance on private rental. The pandemic, despite many predictions, actually has supercharged these factors.
“So I do not want to sugarcoat that. That is a significant risk we are very concerned about that.
“Prices are going up, whether you are buying or renting. In the year to June, regional rents across Australia went up by 11%. And in some parts of coastal Queensland, it was 30%.”
“The government is concerned about that and so, again, I would just like to appeal to people, help us now.
Executive Director of anti-poverty week Toni Wren is up now.
“Your way of helping us is to prevent that is to come forward and get vaccinated.”
She says the pandemic has exacerbated the wealth inequality of this country.
Dr Charles Pain is up now. He is talking about how many health workers are in isolation.
She says people on the lowest incomes died at a rate four times faster than those on higher incomes.
He says it’s “a small number.”
“Before we had the pandemic the highest 20% of Australians had six times the wealth of the middle, but 90 times the wealth of the lowest 20%.
“No one is in isolation at this point. We were able to keep people working.”
“That is increasing over time. So wealth inequality in Australia is getting worse. And that just doesn’t feel right in one of the wealthiest countries in the world.”
He says the health system is already under strain.
Charlton:
“We have been planning this for a very long time but I do acknowledge that we are under pressure already.
“We need to act now to ensure that the progress we have made on poverty doesn’t disappear. We need to learn the lessons of the crisis and take those forward boldly in our policy-making.
“Our health system is under significant pressure all of the time. We have high demands of our system into the territory.
“We need to make sure that the effects of mental health, education, and employment gaps don’t reappear long after the pandemic has gone.
“The important point I wish to make an appeal to community, we need your help to prevent those admissions to hospital.”
“These policies aren’t handouts, they are good economics that will make our economy stronger for everybody.”
Gunner is back up - he has been asked about rough sleepers - he says many people are choosing not to take up accommodations.
Charlton is now talking about the long term impacts. He said because of government spending nearly half a million Australians were lifted out of poverty.
“We had a meeting yesterday to coordinate welfare support, education, vaccination, mobile testing.
He is arguing governments need to support vulnerable groups now more than ever as disadvantaged people will feel the financial and social impacts of the pandemic.
“We are happy to work with anyone who wants to relocate we have discussed this in the past and obviously the solutions that we have for normal emergencies, cyclones, floods, are not appropriate during a Covid emergency.
“If we were smart ... right now we would be preparing a bounceback package to help vulnerable groups get back on their feet and prevent lasting damage from the pandemic to the economy.
“You do not bring all people into a single spot. I will double-check the Katherine situation but we are happy to work with rough sleepers.
“We would be supporting schoolkids, for example, schools were closed for extended periods, we won’t know the full impact of homeschooling on the generation of children for a long time.”
“I want to be clear, unfortunately, it is a choice. People will (not) want to leave those circumstances... I will mask.
Charlton said the pandemic also showed us that working from home actually enhanced production for many people.
“In Darwin, in the past, we have had rooms available not taken up by rough sleepers. We have the offer and they choose not to take it.“
“In many companies productivity went up not down, people work smarter at home they spent less time commuting, productivity didn’t go up for everyone it depended on the nature of your job, circumstances of your home office, the level of support you received, importantly, there was no suggestion that working from home was inherently less productive.”
Chalker:
Charlton:
“To all key leaders, to the strong family members out that I urge you to pull recalcitrant people in line so we can focus on saving lives in the territory. Thank you.”
“The pandemic helped us answer the age-old question about the generosity of social payments, taught us giving more money to low-income people as many positive benefits, both to them and the community.”
Chalker says there was a homicide in Darwin last night and two serious robberies.
Economic researcher Andrew Charlton is speaking at The National Press Club about poverty - what we learnt about it during the pandemic and “economic long Covid”.
“I need to return to Darwin. Unfortunately, there was a homicide that tied up police resources, a very severe domestic violence incident where a female was lying on a mattress and her partner kick to multiple times in the face resulting in serious facial injuries.
Charlton is talking about the debate on unemployment payments.
“This behaviour in the backdrop of what the NT is currently dealing with is completely unacceptable. The demands on our frontline resources, not just police but our health resources should not be impacted in this way.
“On one side many people make the point that the unemployment benefits are very low, not enough to live on, on the other side people who don’t want to increase the unemployment benefits, argue that it’s already enough, the extra money may not be well spent and it may have negative consequences for the employment.”
“It is very clear all the work we are doing is to serve and protect this community.”
He says the extra pandemic payment acted as an experiment to see how people spent it - with data from more than 250,000 bank accounts showing people spent the money on essentials.
NT police commissioner Jamie Chalker is now talking:
“Exactly what they do with the extra money, the data is clear, on that extra $550 a fortnight, the coronavirus to supplement the largest amount $85 dollars, was spent on household bills, electricity, phone, water, $70 of the extra money spent on food, $60, spent on clothing and household goods, seven - $275 saved or used to pay down debt, what we saw as for the people who received that extra money, it was life-changing.
“Within Katherine, the compliance has been very good although behaviour could be better.
“Hundreds of thousands of people were lifted out of poverty, they didn’t spend that money on frivolous or discretionary items, they didn’t withdraw from the labour market they spent it well on the families and bills.”
“A number of residents unfortunately where it appears alcohol consumption is appearing, probably beyond the realms of what would be considered normal social interaction and that is impacting police services so to those members Katherine of the mindful of the factor that police resources are out there trying to protect people of the Katherine community.”
You can almost feel your wage packet swelling, or the digiwallet version anyway.
Back to the NT – five of the new cases are in Robinson River and one is a three-week-old baby girl.
Figures out this morning from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show the seasonally adjusted wage price index picked up in the September quarter. Salaries were up 0.6% for the quarter and 2.2% from a year earlier.It looks like you’re better off in the private sector, with wage growth reaching 2.4% from a year earlier, continuing a sequence of four quarters of a row of increases.
The public sector is reporting year-on-year growth of 1.7% for the September quarter, snapping a run of quarterly falls that began in the January-March period of 2020.
Given the toll on our health workers during the pandemic, it suggests a “watch this space” is in order in terms of pent-up pressures for more pay. It might also be hard for governments to say “no” to thawing the pay freeze.Interestingly, the health industry was listed as among the sectors with the largest wage gains.
The professional, scientific and technical services posted a quarterly rise of 1.3% and 3.4% for the year, the most for this grouping since the December quarter of 2012.
Laggards included the mining sector which posted a quarterly rise of 0.4%, while electricity, gas, water and waste services were the least on an annual basis. Their 1.2% advance on the year was the slowest since this series of data began.
The RBA for one will be happy to see the pick up in wages. As Governor Philip Lowe said yesterday, the central bank is predicting the labour market to continue to tighten, with a jobless rate of 4% on the cards compared with the latest rate of 5.2%.
So perhaps the wage price index is on the way up.
From AAP:
NSW police need to “throw the book” at anti-coal activists who have been staging controversial protests around the Port of Newcastle, Environment Minister Matt Kean says, adding the dramatic stunts are “completely out of line”.
The protesters have struck again, interrupting operations at the world’s largest coal port.
Two protesters on Tuesday night entered the port and attached themselves to a key piece of machinery that loads and unloads coal, shutting down the port.
“Pull your heads in - get out of the way and stop hurting other people going about their lives, running their businesses,” Mr Kean told Sydney radio 2GB on Wednesday.
“There are hundreds of ways to make your views known and advocate for change but risking the lives of rail workers is definitely not one of them.”
Blockade Australia said the activists, named only as Zianna and Hannah, climbed to the top of machinery and suspended themselves out of reach.
“As dawn broke on the coal port the sound of machinery was interrupted as the two protesters used an intricate set up of ropes to manoeuvre themselves over the edge,” the activist group said in a statement.
Protests have disrupted the port and surrounding rail infrastructure in the past two weeks, prompting police to establish a strike force to crack down on the high-profile stunts.
Federal Labor has announced its first major policy announcement in the lead-up to the election.
The party is promising to spend $2.4bn upgrading the national broadband network to deliver faster internet speeds for millions of homes.
Opposition leader Anthony Albanese was talking earlier and said: “Depending upon the lottery of where you live, some people do have access to high-speed broadband, some don’t.
“And we know that during Covid, access to high-speed broadband has been so important for students getting through school, for people working from home, and we know that this isn’t a luxury. This is a part of 21st-century living.”
The government acknowledged last year the system needed upgrading and committed $3.5bn to help another 2 million homes – this policy from Labor goes further.
Currently, 8.3 million premises are connected to the NBN.
Dr Mel Taylor of Macquarie University has researched people’s behaviour in floodwaters. She’s just put out a statement warning people that driving through floodwater and playing in floodwater are the two behaviours most associated with deaths in floods in Australia.
“In our national survey (2019/20), 55 per cent of the public reported that they had driven through floodwater in the last five years. This behaviour is often normalised, with those who do it being likely to do it more than once/repeatedly,” Taylor said.
Most people claim to have driven through floodwater after ‘careful consideration’ rather than it being a spur of the moment thing, also social pressure to keep going and not turn around comes into play.
She said most people will comply but it was when the rain has stopped that most accidents happen.
“Once the rain stops and/or water starts to recede, this is when people are likely to take risks. They are keen to ‘get on with things’ and ‘press on’– whether that’s clearing up or checking on things, or just getting back to normal.
