Australia news live: Penny Wong urges Australians to leave Lebanon; Chalmers says housing pipeline ‘not where we want it to be’

Australia must be reimagined, disability advocate says

The federal government released its response to the disability royal commission yesterday, 10 months after the final report was released – and advocacy groups have reacted with dismay after only 13 of the 222 recommendations for which the commonwealth has full or joint responsibility were accepted.

People with Disability Australia’s interim president, Marayke Jonkers, said the plan was insufficient and lacked a concrete timeframe when change was so urgently needed. She told AAP:

Every day we wait on this, someone is suffering further abuse, neglect, experiencing PTSD.

These people could be part of the community, they’re people’s loved ones – you could be one slip, fall or illness away from this.

The government should accept every suggestion to completely reimagine Australia as an inclusive society rather than try to fit people with disability into existing systems, Jonkers said.

What we want to do is create a special community for all of us – whether we have a disability or not – where we know how to understand each other, how to communicate with each other and how to include each other so we can all live up to our full potential.

Over four years of public hearings, private sessions and written submissions, more than 10,000 stories were heard. The commission found “transformational change” was needed, and proposed reforms across human rights law, advocacy, guardianship, schooling, employment and the justice system.

– Australian Associated Press

Rex may need to offer board seat for more goverment funding

Any government bailout for embattled regional airline Rex would need strict conditions and could require the government taking a seat on the board, an expert says.

The airline has appointed administrators and grounded the Boeing 737s on its intercity routes, while its regional services remain operational.

The federal transport minister, Catherine King, said the government was working closely with administrators to ensure the airline’s “absolutely vital” regional presence remained.

Further government funding could require conditions allowing some control in the boardroom, according to Helen Bird, a law and corporate governance specialist at Swinburne University:

Whoever is the new investor, be it government or otherwise, is essentially taking up fixing a corporation that got to where it is because of poor governance and poor management.

Private investors take advantage of that opportunity all the time, she said. “But we’ve got to be very careful before we let taxpayers’ money go down that route, and certainly we need to put some pretty strict conditions on it,” Bird said.

A failing company would not attract unconditional funding. Bird said:

Unless you saw it as an essential service, which it is in regional Australia, and you said, ‘Well, if we are going to give that kind of money as a government we’ll need to have a shareholding stake’.

We haven’t done that in the past, certainly with Qantas, and the government gave lots of money to Qantas during Covid. They didn’t require that but I note that a number of airlines overseas did … in return for funding.

– Australian Associated Press

Chalmers says he understands ‘people under pressure’ in the current economy

Asked whether he accepts that “people feel like we’re living in a recession,” treasurer Jim Chalmers said:

I certainly understand that people’s experience of the economy right now is an economy which is soft and people are under pressure. And those two things are related.

You know, we’ve had these interest rate rises in the system already putting people under pressure and slowing the economy, and we’ve got other issues as well, a lot of global economic uncertainty. And those things combine to create an economy which is pretty soft.

We saw in the first three months of the year, the economy barely grew at all. We’ve seen household savings come off. We got numbers yesterday showing retail trade is soft. And none of those things would come as a surprise to Australians. They know that things are difficult right now, and that’s the primary motivation for all of this cost-of-living relief that we’re rolling out in the most responsible way.

Chalmers agrees ‘housing pipeline is not where we want it to be’

The treasurer, Jim Chalmers, says the “housing pipeline is not what we want it to be” on ABC RN:

This is really a defining issue in the economy right now. The housing pipeline is not what we want it to be. Rents are too high, even with the help being provided by our two increases to Commonwealth rent assistance. And that’s why that $32bn of new investment, including an extra $6bn in the May budget, is so important because we need to build more homes. We need to build more rental properties. We need more homes for Australians.

That’s really one of the big features of that budget we handed down in May. A lot of that is still to roll out. It’s rolling out right now. It’s a tribute to Julie Collins, the former housing minister, and it’s a big job for the new housing minister, Clare O’Neil, and it’s a very, very high priority for us.

We’re helping out in the near term with these increases to rent assistance, but building more homes is really the key here, and that’s why we’ve got tens of billions of dollars invested in that task

Chalmers acknowledges inflation ‘more stubborn than any of us would like to see’

The treasurer, Jim Chalmers, is speaking on ABC RN this morning, getting straight into “persistent” inflation:

The strategy that we have deployed here – which is to get the budget in much better nick and to roll out all of this cost of living help in the most responsible way that we can – has helped ensure that inflation, which had a six in front of it a couple of years ago, now has a three in front of it.

We know that people are still under pressure. We know that this inflation is more persistent, stickier, more stubborn than any of us would like to see.

Australians urged out of Lebanon amid ‘real risk’ of escalation, Wong says

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