Some Coalition MPs voted against the bill to allow them to provide information on the no case in a pamphlet to be issued by the government.
Reserve Bank of Australia governor Phillip Lowe fronted Senate estimates where he said the bank was committed to bringing down inflation, as new data showed inflation rose to 6.8% in April while underlying price pressures eased.
Lowe said it was easier for the RBA to raise the cash rate than for politicians to raise taxes or cut spending
He also said one of the drivers of Australia’s skyrocketing rents and the housing crisis was more people living alone or moving out of home, and encouraged people to go into share housing.
The US warned Australia that the Brereton report may trigger a provision that bans US assistance to units linked to alleged gross violations of human rights.
The Greens have called for the PwC scandal to be investigated by the new national anti-corruption commission when it begins on 1 July, however the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, has said the matter has already been referred to the AFP for investigation.
We’ll be back with you again tomorrow with all the latest news. Until then, enjoy your evening.
The Greens senator Jordon Steele-John has expressed some, shall we say, scepticism about the government’s plan to save billions by spending millions.
Back on budget day, the government revealed it would spend $73m on (to put it simplistically) efficiencies within the National Disability Insurance Scheme. These efficiencies would lead to $7.2bn in savings, they said, part of a broader $15bn savings effort.
In Senate estimates, Steele-John said that was rather a large figure.
There are fears the “savings” are more like “service cuts”.
The NDIS actuary, David Gifford, said he would be “hesitant to draw a direct link” between the expenditure and the saving, while the NDIA chief, Rebecca Falkingham, said the maths worked because it was about “avoiding future growth” in the scheme, which has been ballooning. She said:
We want to have a better planning process … we don’t want a situation where every single plan is overspent because that means every initial plan was incorrect. We think we absolutely can reduce that growth in the scheme longer term.
That did not appear to ease Steele-John’s scepticism.
Falkingham also revealed the agency had not been consulted before a national cabinet decision to reduce the growth in the NDIS from an expected 14% to 8%.
Greens reiterate push for NACC investigation into PwC scandal
During question time earlier, the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, resisted a call from the Greens leader, Adam Bandt, for the PwC scandal to be referred to the National Anti-Corruption Commission when it begins operations on 1 July.
Albanese said the matter had already been referred to the Australian federal police for investigation.
In response this afternoon, Bandt said the AFP had failed to investigate PwC twice already in 2018 and 2019, according to information heard in Senate estimates.
He said:
We need an independent investigation into the PwC scandal by the national corruption watchdog, an investigation in which the public would have confidence.
The parliament set up an anti-corruption watchdog to get to the bottom of big, complex scandals. It’s not enough to create a Nacc, you have to actually use it.
The AFP should continue with its investigation, but it’s time to set the anti-corruption watchdog on every aspect of the PWC scandal.
NSW government supports motion to release Kathleen Folbigg
The New South Wales government has supported a motion that passed in the upper house calling for the release of Kathleen Folbigg but with amendments that the government take action as soon as appropriate and practicable rather than immediately.
Sue Higginson, the NSW Greens’ justice spokesperson who put the motion forward, said now was the appropriate and practicable time for the state’s attorney general to issue advice to the governor that Folbigg be released.
Folbigg, who has always maintained her innocence, has spent 20 years of a 25-year sentence in prison since she was convicted in 2003 of murdering three of her children, and the manslaughter of a fourth child.
But calls have been growing for Folbigg to be released after a final hearing into her convictions last month heard there was enough evidence to suggest her children had died of natural causes.
Higginson:
With this motion being carried, the calls for Ms Folbigg’s release will continue to escalate and the pressure on the attorney general will increase.
Member of the upper house for Labor, Stephen Lawrence, said during the debate the evidence given at the inquiry was the most “significant development in the criminal justice system in New South Wales living memory”.
It’s perhaps those horrors that make this case quite difficult to engage with on a human level, but engagement with it needs to be done.
Watchdog calls for reforms to penalise market power abuse
The competition regulator has called for court-order powers that could break up big businesses, including supermarkets, if they abuse their market power.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (Accc) chair, Gina Cass-Gottlieb, said on Wednesday such a reform could lower food prices by improving competition in a tightly held sector dominated by Coles and Woolworths.
“In a situation where Australia faces a number of quite significantly concentrated markets it would be a worthwhile power for a court,” Cass-Gottlieb told the Senate economics legislation committee in response to questions from the Greens senator Nick McKim.
The proposal, supported by the former ACCC chair Allan Fels, would give the courts the power to break up a company, rather than only issue a fine or similar penalty, if deemed necessary after a breach of competition law.
Coles and Woolworths control two-thirds of the supermarket sector and have increased their profit margins during a period marked by the pandemic and inflation-fuelled rise in living costs.
The supermarket sector is one we are watching closely. There is less constraint on them in price competition than we would want to see.
The New South Wales premier, Chris Minns, has recreated the famous meme of the former NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian getting ready to watch the State of Origin tonight.
70 people have been evacuated from the site of a “major gas leak” between Foveaux and Albion St in Surry Hills, Sydney. Fire and Rescue NSW say the gas company is on the scene.
SURRY HILLS: Route 304 buses are diverting away from part of Crown St due to a gas leak between Fitzroy St and Albion St. Buses towards the city are using Foveaux St, Elizabeth St and Albion St. Buses away from the city are using Albion St, Flinders St and South Dowling St.
Australia’s emissions sink at a glacial pace, latest data shows
Australia’s carbon emissions edged lower in 2022 with reductions from the electricity sector partly countered by increases in pollution from transport and agriculture.
The country’s emissions last year totalled 463.9m tonnes of CO2-equivalent (Mt CO2-e), down 0.4% or 2m tonnes from the previous year. Preliminary estimates for the year to 31 March indicated emissions totalled 464Mt CO2-e, or 0.,2% lower on a rolling 12-month tally, the national greenhouse gas inventory shows.
Since June 2005, carbon pollution had dropped by 24.7% by the end of 2022, or slightly more than half the Albanese government’s 43% emissions reduction target by 2030.
Australia’s total budget under the Paris climate agreement is 4.353bn tonnes of CO2-e, and so far it has burned through 27% of the total in 25% of the accord’s time period.
We need emissions to keep falling at the rate they did during the lockdowns, and well... they are not. pic.twitter.com/hL9ucUvdHS
Of the different sectors, changes in land use and forestry have decreased by the largest margin of any sector since June 2005, or so the data claims. In fact, it has dropped 179.1% or 144.6 Mt CO2 -e, “due to reductions in land clearing and native forest harvesting, increases in plantations and native vegetation, and improvements in soil carbon”.
By contrast, emissions in the power sector have decreased 21.4% or 42.1 Mt CO2 -e since June 2005.
“After decades of strong growth, emissions peaked in 2009 and have since fallen 26.9%,” the inventory said. “This reflects accelerating renewables deployment and gradual displacement of coal as a fuel source.”
A young child has been found dead in a Sydney unit and a man is in critical condition, authorities say.
The three-year-old was found dead inside an apartment in Riverwood after emergency services were called about 4pm.
Police found the young boy dead inside the unit, along with a 45-year-old man who was treated at the scene for serious injuries and taken to hospital in critical condition.
A crime scene has been established and the incident is being investigated by police.
NSW to investigate use of consultants after PwC scandal
A NSW parliamentary committee will hold an inquiry into the state government’s use of consultants amid a scandal embroiling consultancy giant PwC, AAP reports.
The Greens NSW Legislative Council member Abigail Boyd was named as the new head of the Public Accountability Committee on Wednesday, and revealed plans to tackle what she said was an “overreliance” by the NSW government on consultants.
PwC has come under fire after revelations staff shared confidential tax information from the Treasury department.
“Breaches of confidentiality and trust are of course of enormous concern, but the purpose of this inquiry goes beyond that,” Boyd said in a statement.
“I’m particularly interested in investigating exactly how far these enormous private consulting firms have burrowed into the machinery of government, displacing public sector workers and depleting our capacity for self sufficiency.”
ADF chief faces allegations of ‘gross lack of transparency’ in Senate
The chief of the Australian defence force, Gen Angus Campbell, has faced more questions in Senate estimates about the letter he received from the US defence attache in the wake of the Brereton report into alleged war crimes in Afghanistan, and any actions the ADF took in response.
The earlier questions were from Jacqui Lambie; the Greens senator David Shoebridge is leading the questioning now. Shoebridge said the advice from the US embassy was dated 21 March 2021; Campbell did not dispute that date.
Campbell told the Senate committee there “was an interest in understanding what Australia was doing with regard to the Brereton report and I think in good faith that such considerations were not triggered”.
Asked to confirm the US department of defense refused to engage with Australian special forces for a period of time, Campbell said:
There was a precautionary period where we looked to our arrangements.
Asked how long that was for and what restrictions applied, Campbell said he would take that question on notice.
During the exchange before the Senate’s foreign affairs, defence and trade committee, Shoebridge said Campbell was obliged to cooperate with the committee and “just a bland statement that you will take it on notice is unacceptable”. Shoebridge added:
When our major ally has advised our chief of defence that they won’t work with a key unit of the Australian military and you won’t tell us for how long that restriction lasted or what the nature of the restriction was, we have a significant problem, don’t we – a gross problem of a lack of transparency in our military, don’t we?
Campbell replied:
No, senator, that is not the truth.
Campbell confirmed that Australian special forces, including SAS, were currently in a position to operate with US military forces, and were not subject to any restrictions as a result of US Leahy laws.
