Australia live news update: Michaelia Cash says unions are Labor’s ‘paymasters’ after jobs summit; severe weather hits NSW | Australia news

Eight people with Covid-19 have died in Victoria overnight, with the state recording 1,519 new cases on Sunday morning, 293 people in hospital, 15 in ICU and six on ventilation.

Six people with Covid-19 have died in New South Wales overnight, with the state recording 2,887 new cases on Sunday morning, 1,689 people in hospital, and 40 in ICU.

Cash also attacked Tony Burke for writing to the Fair Work Commission signalling Labor intends to curtail employers’ ability to apply to terminate a workplace pay deal in a way that would cut pay and conditions.

Cash said:

This is one of the most concerning things I’ve seen in the first 100 days of the Albanese government. For a minister in the government to write to the independent Fair Work Commission and seek to influence them in how they make decisions – that should deeply concern all Australians. The role of the tribunal is to interpret the law as it stands, not as Mr Burke and Albanese would like it to be. They’re actually pre-empting the Senate, which may not agree to this alleged change. Serious questions arise in relation to integrity.

The agriculture minister, Murray Watt, denied that this was an attempt to influence any particular dispute such as the NSW trains dispute. Watt said the “timing is just coincidental” because the letter reflects a “longstanding belief” that employers should not be able to threaten to cut pay and conditions during a dispute.

Earlier, Cash was unimpressed with changes to allow pensioners to work more, suggesting they amount to “a very strange half baked attempt to do what Peter Dutton put on the table in June”.

Cash said it “didn’t take a summit to tell you we need more workers in Australia” due to the “massive skills shortage”. She declined to endorse the new cap of 190,000 on permanent migrants, saying the “devil will be in the detail”.

For more on the Sydney trains dispute, read this from the Guardian Australia’s Michael McGowan.

Paul Karp

The shadow employment minister Michaelia Cash has accused Anthony Albanese of putting the interests of the union movement above the Australian people at the jobs and skills summit.

Cash told Sky News:

The big winners from the two-day talk-fest were the Australian union movement. The Labor party are paying their paymasters in full. It’s very disappointing what Australians can now see is sensible and modest changes proposed 18 months ago to [the better-off-overall test] which would’ve helped employers negotiate with employees … were completely, totally, utterly opposed by Labor but apparently now are OK.

In relation to industry-wide bargaining, this is why the outcome of the summit is a win for the union movement. This is what they’ve been asking for for years and years. Even the Rudd and Gillard government refused to deliver on this.

Cash said the legislation should:

• create a criminal offence of bullying or harassing small business into pressuring them to do a deal; and

• ensure strike action should not be able to be taken for an industry-wide deal

Both of these would be in breach of International Labour Organization conventions on freedom of association, which guarantee a right to strike.

Also, critics of the multi-employer bargaining proposal are consistently misrepresenting it as industry-wide bargaining.

The workplace relations minister Tony Burke has said any changes would not interfere with deals struck directly between employers and their workforce. So a single-employer deal will always be an option.

And welcome to another Sunday morning Guardian live blog.

Fierce winds, hazardous surf and flood warnings have been issued by the Bureau of Meteorology for Australia’s east coast. The BoM’s severe weather warnings include minor flood warnings for the Bellinger, Namoi, Bogan, Lachlan, Murrumbidgee, Murray, Edward and Darling rivers, with a deep and intense low hammering Lord Howe Island.

The Australian government is working on a plan to help international students studying nursing, engineering and IT stay for longer as part of a reform to the nation’s migration program that is being billed as the “biggest since the end of the second world war”. The Albanese government has already announced it will increase the country’s permanent migration intake by 35,000 to 195,000 – the highest it’s ever been.

I’m Royce Kurmelovs, taking the blog through the first part of the day. With so much going on out there, it’s easy to miss stuff, so if you spot something happening in Australia and think it should be in the blog, you can find me on Twitter at @RoyceRk2 where my DMs are open.

With that, let’s get started …