The Australian Council of Social Service, the height physique for the neighborhood providers sector, has backed Labor’s Robodebt royal fee election pledge.
The ACOSS chief government, Dr Cassandra Goldie, stated in an announcement:
The Robodebt affair was not only a maladministration scandal, it was a human tragedy that resulted in folks taking their lives.
A royal fee is acceptable and proportionate. We have to correctly probe the selections and processes that led to this woeful state of affairs and ensure nothing remotely related ever occurs once more.
However we additionally have to probe the underlying considering.
There’s a very stark distinction between the principles for pursuing folks on revenue help for overpayments and money owed in contrast with the principles for company recipients claiming Jobkeeper. A unique morality appears to use for these with deep pockets.
ACOSS shall be an enthusiastic participant if this royal fee occurs. This is a crucial alternative to amplify the struggles of people that haven’t been heard.
As governments more and more depend on automated decision-making and expertise to ship life sustaining human providers, usually to folks at excessive danger together with these on revenue help, employment providers and the NDIS, we strongly welcome this dedication from the ALP and urge all events and candidates to ship the identical.
Again to cost-of-living pressures. Morrison:
I do perceive that Australians are going through price of residing pressures. I do perceive that there’s rising stress on rates of interest … we do know that the impacts on inflation are coming from nicely past Australia’s shores.
He criticises Labor:
They don’t have any magic pen that makes’s folks’s wages go up any greater than they’ve a magic pen that may change the worth of a lettuce. Speaking about the issue will not be sufficient, Mr Albanese.
Morrison then goes on to reiterate the Coalition’s measures, together with the short-term gas excise lower, and the one-off $250 cost-of-living fee, earlier than wrapping up the press convention:
And eventually, in the present day, what we’ve introduced: slicing $10 off the worth of their medicines for the Pharmaceutical Advantages Scheme.
Requested whether or not the spiritual discrimination invoice is useless within the water, Morrison says:
I used to be devastated that that wasn’t handed, together with religion communities. It was an important disappointment to me. However what I suggest to do and made very clear is I’ll take it ahead. However I’ll be taking it ahead as standalone laws. It should take care of the RDA. It gained’t be coping with different points.
Morrison says it is ‘hypocritical’ for Labor to criticise robodebt
Morrison is requested about Labor’s election pledge to carry a royal fee into the robodebt scheme. He says:
There have been quite a few inquiries into this and there’s been courtroom issues which we’ve totally cooperated in and nearly $750m in reimbursements have been made by the federal government and modifications to the scheme have been put in place. So the issue has been addressed.
However any such inquiry, I think about, must begin with the method of … revenue evaluation, averaging of revenue, which was launched by the Labor celebration. I discover it fairly hypocritical {that a} scheme that the Labor celebration really launched for revenue averaging – in assessing folks’s welfare entitlements – that they now search to criticise the federal government for when the Labor celebration do that on a regular basis.
As a reminder, robodebt was launched by the Coalition authorities in 2016.
Now some questions on China’s safety take care of the Solomon Islands.
Morrison, requested concerning the timing of the announcement, says:
We’re very conscious of the affect that the Chinese language authorities seeks to have on this nation. We, actually, launched legal guidelines to forestall it. So any suggestion that the Chinese language authorities doesn’t search to intrude in Australia – nicely, we didn’t put that laws in for no cause. We put it in there to make sure that Australian safety might be safeguarded from international affect in our personal nation.
Requested for a response relating to feedback from China’s vice international minister, who stated Morrison’s criticism of the deal amounted to disinformation, coercion and intimidation, he stated:
The Chinese language authorities would say that, wouldn’t they?
Morrison has been requested repeatedly why the federal government didn’t embody the medicines lower as a measure on this yr’s funds, slightly than saving it as an election promise. Requested a second time, he says:
There are short-term measures that we placed on the funds, long run measures within the mid-year assertion. It’s a pretty frequent manner that we do budgets …
This can be a long run measure and it’ll begin subsequent calendar yr. So the explanation that we’re speaking about it now, usually we’d make an announcement like that later within the yr.
Victoria information 19 Covid deaths and 9,064 new circumstances
Victoria has reported 19 new Covid deaths and 9,064 new circumstances. There are presently 30 folks in ICU and three requiring ventilators.
Morrison:
In the event you want these medicines, then I can consider no extra important service for to you get entry to …
I ought to stress that it is a everlasting change that follows indexation into the longer term and we’re additionally making certain that nobody is worse off on any current remedy, and that shall be handled by laws when the parliament returns to make sure that those that are on discounted medicines will proceed to get the reductions wherever they’re getting them from.
NSW information 20 Covid deaths and 11,709 new circumstances
COVID-19 replace – Saturday 30 April 2022
Within the 24-hour reporting interval to 4pm yesterday:
– 96.2% of individuals aged 16+ have had one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine
– 94.7% of individuals aged 16+ have had two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine pic.twitter.com/Pu6tSTihlx— NSW Well being (@NSWHealth) April 29, 2022
Scott Morrison pledges to chop remedy prices
Morrison is speaking concerning the new election pledge to chop remedy prices:
What we’ve got determined to do from the primary of January, so re-elected as a authorities, what we are going to put … within the mid-year funds replace is we are going to embody a brand new measure which can see the price of non-concessional PBS funds fall from $42.50 all the way down to $32.50 – what’s often called the PBS normal co-payment.
This may save sufferers taking one remedy a month … $120 a yr.
Scott Morrison is campaigning with Bridget Archer in Tasmania.
Talking at a pharmacy in Mowbray, he says:
We understood the necessity to take motion to supply aid on price of residing pressures, and we all know these pressures are actual. We noticed that bolstered once more this week.
These pressures, as we all know, are coming from all world wide, significantly the struggle in Europe, however the aftereffects and lingering results of what’s taking place with Covid. And much more not too long ago, we began to see emerge within the numbers the impression of issues just like the floods and so forth.
The Nationals senator Perin Davey has been talking on the ABC.
Requested concerning the Coalition’s pledge to chop the price of medicines listed on the Pharmaceutical Profit Scheme, she stated it might come at vital price to the federal funds, however would assist people’ well being prices. Davey stated:
It should price the funds, however it’s one thing that we’ve got heard the pharmacists – the Pharmacy Guild of Australia have been calling for a discount within the PBS prices for a while – and we all know that this can assist.
One of many greatest danger elements that we’ve got in our well being system is folks avoiding prices, so folks avoiding medicines as a result of they price an excessive amount of. So that is actually going to assist folks with their price of residing, but in addition with their well being outcomes.
Anthony Albanese is now out of isolation and has positioned in Perth for his official marketing campaign launch on Sunday.
Earlier this week, Scott Morrison took goal at Albanese, contrasting Albanese’s “quiet” week at house in opposition to his personal “busy” schedule whereas isolating with Covid earlier this yr.
The comparability annoyed our political editor Katharine Murphy, who writes in her column in the present day that needling Albanese over his Covid workload is an indication that Morrison is beginning to fear. Morrison’s prime ministership is now on the clock, on the midway mark of the election marketing campaign.
She writes:
Having had Covid himself, Morrison is aware of the lingering after results of the virus are fatigue and mind fog. Debates, after a day of campaigning, are gruelling encounters, bodily and mentally, even for seasoned professionals. So Morrison’s calculation is straightforward: Albanese is considerably extra prone to make a mistake when he’s not 100%.
Once more, time is of the essence. Morrison is aware of he’s obtained to discover a pivot level within the marketing campaign, and discovering it’s all on him.
Learn Murph’s column right here:
Good morning
Hiya and welcome to day 20 of the election marketing campaign.
Labor has introduced that if it wins authorities it might launch a royal fee into the Robodebt scheme to seek out out who was answerable for implementing the discredited program.
In case your reminiscence wants jogging, the automated matching of tax and Centrelink information to lift money owed in opposition to welfare recipients was dominated illegal in 2019, with a $1.2 billion settlement reached between Robodebt victims and the federal authorities in 2020.
The Morrison authorities has by no means detailed who was accountable for the four-year scheme, and which ministers knew about its issues.
In the meantime, the Coalition will in the present day pledge to chop the price of medicines for on a regular basis circumstances resembling blood stress and excessive ldl cholesterol beneath a $150 million cost-of-living measure.
Scott Morrison will announce that the worth of medicines listed beneath the Pharmaceutical Profit Scheme could be lower from January 1 subsequent yr, with a saving of $10 per script.
Let’s get caught in. You possibly can contact me on Twitter @donnadlu or through e mail at [email protected].
