The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, has been speaking in Tomago, NSW, after announcing a deal to keep the country’s biggest aluminium smelter there open past 2028.
There has been a board meeting here that’s considered the proposals that were going forward, and what that will look like is Tomago agreeing to have more investment here in their capability, at the same time as we provide security of a guarantee of energy price going forward as well.
That’s the fundamentals, we’ll be working those issues through over coming weeks and months, including with New South Wales.
The industry minister, Tim Ayres, explained further:
The fundamental premise of this is a long-term power-purchasing agreement that delivers security at the right price for Tomago so they are internationally competitive.
This is Australia’s youngest aluminium plant. This is a good facility, this agreement will underwrite the development of new-generation wind, solar storage projects and transmission, accelerate that in NSW and mean that we are underwriting lower-cost electricity not just for here but building the electricity grid and lowering costs for households and business at the same time.
Economics editor Patrick Commins has written recently on the issue of taxpayer funding of smelters such as Tomago:
States remain open to further negotiations, Nicholls says
The Queensland health minister said:
I think I can emphasise that the states remain at the bargaining table. We do want to negotiate and we’re very happy to talk to the Commonwealth about what each state needs and what a reasonable contribution rate looks like. It would require funding at a far higher rate each year to get there than is currently being put on the table.
The prime minister, I think, can see and understand where we’re coming from. We’ve made the case very clearly. Minister Butler understands and sees the predicament that the state is in.
It is up to the commonwealth to come back with a sensible and realistic offer.
Queensland health minister calls negotiations with federal government ‘incredibly frustrating’
Nicholls adds the ongoing back-and-forth with the federal government is “incredibly frustrating for us as ministers”. He went on:
This has been a journey that we’ve been on – I’ve been in the role for a year, others have been here for a little bit longer – and we’ve been trying to get a landing on the national health and reform agreement ever since I’ve been in the role. …
Short-term planning doesn’t allow us to engage clinicians. It doesn’t allow us to invest in proper care, so it’s very frustrating for all of us to have to be coming back time and time again saying – this offer is not acceptable.
State and territory health ministers are speaking after a meeting with the federal health minister, Mark Butler, after Anthony Albanese’s insistence that they accept a deal for more than $20bn in extra spending for public hospitals.
Tim Nicholls, Queensland’s health minister, said the state and territory leaders had rejected those terms. He said:
The offer that we received overnight on Wednesday does not meet that requirement. And all states and territories – I think that I can speak for all of my colleagues here, have rejected that offer. It does not meet the needs of Australians.
And that’s why it’s really important that today, we were able to relay that message in the firmest terms possible to minister Butler so he can take it back to the prime minister.
Nicholls said he hoped the federal government would step forward with a new, “realistic offer” that provided the care “that Australians and from our perspective, Queenslanders, are going to need over the coming years”.
Workers’ comp laws will drag unwell NSW employees back to work, advocates warn
Reformed workers’ compensation laws in New South Wales could force vulnerable workers off support when they are still too sick to return to their jobs, advocacy organisation Australians for Mental Health (AMH) has warned.
Under the deal between Labor and the Coalition, people who suffer psychological injuries at work that render them “permanently impaired” to the level of 25% or less will only get two years’ support, plus an additional year to transition back to work. That threshold will be lifted to 28%.
AMH’s executive director, Chris Gambian, said the reforms would force nurses, teachers and paramedics suffering from severe mental health to go back to work before they had fully recovered.
This deal punches down on people whose workplaces made them ill.
[It] will ultimately see people with serious depression, PTSD and trauma forced to return to work before they have capacity to do so.
Gambian urged the government to focus reform efforts on making workplaces safe and reducing harm to employees.
The Australian Association of Psychologists vice-president, Katrina Norris, has previously warned raising the threshold of “permanent impairment” to 31% could exclude nearly all workers from making a legitimate mental health claim for lifetime care.
Read about the deal here:
Albanese was asked if government intervention to protect industry was “fair” to the taxpayer. He replied:
I tell you what’s not fair to the taxpayer in our national interest is to not have manufacturing in this country. This is an investment that produces a return …
If Australia doesn’t produce aluminium, then the knock-on effect in other industries is significant because aluminium is increasingly a vital product.
We make no apologies for the fact that we put front and centre to the Australian people our Future Made in Australia agenda.
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, has been speaking in Tomago, NSW, after announcing a deal to keep the country’s biggest aluminium smelter there open past 2028.
There has been a board meeting here that’s considered the proposals that were going forward, and what that will look like is Tomago agreeing to have more investment here in their capability, at the same time as we provide security of a guarantee of energy price going forward as well.
That’s the fundamentals, we’ll be working those issues through over coming weeks and months, including with New South Wales.
The industry minister, Tim Ayres, explained further:
The fundamental premise of this is a long-term power-purchasing agreement that delivers security at the right price for Tomago so they are internationally competitive.
This is Australia’s youngest aluminium plant. This is a good facility, this agreement will underwrite the development of new-generation wind, solar storage projects and transmission, accelerate that in NSW and mean that we are underwriting lower-cost electricity not just for here but building the electricity grid and lowering costs for households and business at the same time.
Economics editor Patrick Commins has written recently on the issue of taxpayer funding of smelters such as Tomago:
The attorney general, Michelle Rowland, has asked the independent watchdog for politicians’ travel expenses to audit her recent claims.
Rowland joins the communications minister, Anika Wells, in asking for a review.
The Australian Financial Review reported this week that Rowland billed taxpayers $21,685 for flights and travel allowance for a 2023 family trip to Perth.
The trip fell during the NSW school holidays.
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, let slip the referral on Friday, after days of controversy over MPs use of the family reunion travel rules.
Rowland’s referral was not known publicly previously. The government will consider possible changes to the rules once the audits are complete.
The first climate migrants to leave the remote Pacific island nation of Tuvalu have arrived in Australia, hoping to preserve links to their sinking island home, Reuters reports.
More than one-third of Tuvalu’s 11,000 population applied for a climate visa to migrate to Australia, under a deal struck between the two countries two years ago. The intake is capped at 280 visas annually to prevent a brain drain in the small island nation.
Among the islanders selected in the initial intake of climate migrants is Tuvalu’s first female forklift driver, a dentist, and a pastor focused on preserving their spiritual life thousands of kilometres from home, Australian government officials said.
Tuvalu, one of the countries at greatest risk from climate change because of rising sea levels, is a group of low-lying atolls scattered across the Pacific between Australia and Hawaii.
Manipua Puafolau, from Tuvalu’s main island of Funafuti, arrived in Australia a fortnight ago. A trainee pastor with the most prominent church in Tuvalu, he plans to live in the small town of Naracoorte in the state of South Australia, where several hundred Pacific Islanders work in seasonal agriculture and meat-processing jobs.
In a video released by Australia’s foreign affairs department, Puafolau said:
For the people moving to Australia, it is not only for their physical and economic wellbeing, but also calls for spiritual guidance.
Read more about the program here:
Forced bankruptcies on the rise
Private schools and car loan lenders are increasingly taking customers to court to force them into bankruptcy amid a nationwide surge in the mechanism’s use, new analysis from Financial Counselling Australia shows.
In the year to June, organisations filed 2,024 creditors’ petitions to the federal court, where the applicant asks the court to make bankrupt a person or business who owes them at least $10,000, have surged. Two in five applications successfully forced the debtor into bankruptcy.
Education providers accounted for 45 applications in the year, 13 of which were made by Sirius College, three by Overnewton Anglican Community College and two by Wesley College Melbourne – each Victorian private schools.
The finance arms of Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Toyota and Volkswagen accounted for 24 of the applications in the four years to June.
The Australian Tax Office accounted for 13% of all cases in the year to June. Residential strata companies and non-bank business lenders accounted for 12% each, surging from the previous year.
Debt collectors and big banks rarely use the tool, FCA found. Filings have fallen from the 8,000 annually recorded in 2019-20, after the threshold for applications was lifted from $5,000 in debts to $20,000 temporarily before settling at $10,000.
However, success rates have risen, meaning the petitions are sending nearly as many people bankrupt as they were before the threshold rose, prompting FCA to call for it to be raised back to $20,000.
Two teens charged after alleged detonation of aerosol can in Sydney CBD
Two teen boys have been charged after an aerosol can was allegedly detonated in the Sydney CBD.
NSW police said officers responded to reports of an alleged explosion on George Street in the CBD about 7.30pm. On arrival, police were told the detonation was followed by a large fireball.
There were no reports of injury or property damage.
Police later arrested two boys, aged 17 and 14, who were then charged with possession, supply or making explosives for an unlawful purpose. They were refused bail and appeared in children’s court on Thursday.
The older boy will remain in custody until 19 January, while the younger was granted conditional bail and will appear in court next week.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: theguardian.com
