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Social services minister says current rates of domestic and family violence ‘unacceptable’

Social services minister Amanda Rishworth says the current rates of domestic and family violence are “unacceptable”.

Speaking to 10 News First earlier today, she said no one government or organisation would be able to address the issue on their own, and “we all need to push in the same direction”.

This includes men standing up and calling out violence. That is a critical part of the response. But I will not be deterred and I’m pushing on efforts to end family, domestic and sexual violence…

We do need to invest in all areas, but this is where everyone’s responsibility comes in. If you see disrespectful attitudes or violence, it might be casual violence against a woman, it’s everyone’s role to call it out, step up and just be very clear. It is unacceptable.

Does that mean we need public campaigns about respecting women and changing behaviours? Rishworth flagged the government campaign “stop it at the start” will be promoted further in the coming months.

She also acknowledged that First Nations women experience “disproportionately high levels” of domestic and family violence, and said:

We currently have a steering group of First Nations women and men leading that work to develop a standalone plan for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women and children and how we keep families safe. This is critical work that needs to be led by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

Renting families and overseas students not in competition, research suggests

International students are not competing directly with families in the rental market as they typically prefer inner-city apartments over standalone homes in the suburbs, new research suggests.

Australian renters have experienced eye-watering rental increases over the past few years and stiff competition for available properties, with vacancy rates hovering around record lows.

Fingers have been pointed at international students returning after borders reopened but the property industry research challenged this narrative and said there were a range of pandemic-fuelled housing trends and long-term structural issues at play.

The study commissioned by the Student Accommodation Council found only 3% of international students lived in detached houses, with the vast majority – 74% – in accommodation purpose-built for the cohort close to universities. Another 8% were living in apartments.

The research from the Property Council offshoot also found international students made up a small 4% slice of the total rental market.

– from AAP

Greenlife can resume supplying mulch under stricter licence conditions, EPA says

The company at the centre of the New South Wales asbestos crisis can return to its regular operations after the environmental regulator lifted a prevention notice that prohibited it from producing and supplying mulch.

The Environment Protection Authority (EPA) has released a statement saying Greenlife Resource Recovery, and its parent company VE Resource Recovery (VERR), had complied with all aspects of the prevention notice issued in January after asbestos was discovered in mulch at the Rozelle parklands.

The regulator said the company could now resume supplying mulch but under stricter licence conditions.

The EPA’s acting executive director of operations, Adam Gilligan, said the new conditions included testing for asbestos prior to supplying mulch offsite:

Following the discovery of asbestos in mulch at sites across Sydney, we took immediate action to prevent further production at the Bringelly facility.

VERR has now followed our directions and safely disposed of existing stockpiles but further mulch production at the site is now subject to stricter regulations.

We have implemented a comprehensive testing regime on VERR to collect 32 discrete samples from individual mulch stockpiles that cannot be moved until results are tested and validated by a National Association of Testing Authorities (NATA) accredited laboratory.

Gilligan said the EPA would also be conducting regular compliance checks at Greenlife Resource Recovery’s facility.

According to the conditions, Greenlife must follow strict methods for taking samples from its mulch stockpiles and report the results of any tests to the EPA within two business days of receiving them.

The discovery of asbestos in mulch in Rozelle triggered the biggest environmental investigation in the state’s history. More than 75 sites across greater Sydney were found to have asbestos-contaminated mulch.

Victorian police give press conference on family violence

Victoria police’s family violence command assistant commissioner, Lauren Callaway, held a press conference earlier this morning, in the wake of several high-profile alleged murders of women across the nation.

Callaway sought to reassure Victorians the state had a “good system” in the wake of a 2016 royal commission into family violence, which she said other jurisdictions had also learnt from. But she said she understood community concern:

These homicides tend to ask us, is there something more that we can do?

She said disclosure registers, tracking of perpetrators with ankle bracelets and allowing women to carry pepper spray had all been floated in recent days. These measures, she said, would not help in the majority of cases where victims are known to perpetrators:

We need to really remember that the majority of violence committed against women is done by men who are known to women and it’s in places where they’re expected to be safe, like their home. So it’s not that stranger danger element, although that can be part of some cases, but it’s not the majority of cases.

So if we’re looking at people known to us, then we need to think about what are some measures that we can use as police officers to try and strengthen accountability on that perpetrator when they don’t follow the conditions of their intervention order, they don’t follow the conditions of an order that they might be in the community on from a sentence. They’re the sorts of things we need to look at.

WA targets family violence with $96.4m funding package

Western Australia will spend $96.4m to bolster the safety and support of victim-survivors of family and domestic violence, AAP reports.

The state government funding, to be included in May’s budget, will enable family and domestic violence response team operations to be expanded to seven days a week.

It will also provide 17 additional community corrections officers over four years and a new family and domestic violence one-stop hub in Perth.

The funding will also help establish a dedicated organisation to support and develop family and domestic violence-informed workforces and boost the capacity of existing community-based counselling and advocacy services.

Two emergency accommodation programs for victim-survivors in the Goldfields will be expanded and a men’s behaviour change program in Perth will receive additional funding.

Work will also start on an information hub to inform family and domestic violence risk assessment and a lived experience advisory group to inform policy and service design.

Police operation under way at University of Sydney law school

NSW police have confirmed a police operation is under way at the University of Sydney law school in Camperdown, in Sydney’s inner west.

Police said in a statement that an exclusion zone is in place and the community is urged to avoid the area.

No further information at this time.

WA Parks and Wildlife continuing to monitor Dunsborough beaches after stranding event yesterday

The Parks and Wildlife Service of WA has provided an update after a number of pilot whales became stranded near Dunsborough at a Western Australian beach yesterday.

It has received reports of one juvenile pilot whale at Eagle Bay beach and are continuing to monitor its welfare.

Meanwhile, a pod of whales has been located offshore from Eagle Bay and other pods dispersed throughout the Capes area.

Boats and a spotter aircraft continue to monitor and assess any sighting reports and staff are available to respond as required.

They have urged the community to stay away from the beaches and water, and to report any stranded whales to 9752 5555.

Acoss calls for ‘substantial’ lift to jobseeker and youth allowance

The Australian Council of Social Service (Acoss) says the federal government must “substantially lift” the jobseeker and youth allowance benefits in the upcoming budget.

This comes as the Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee has again called for jobseeker to be raised to 90% of the age pension, which Paul Karp covered earlier in the blog here.

The Acoss CEO, Cassandra Goldie, said the prime minister had promised his government “would not leave anyone behind”, but the “more than one million people” who rely on “deeply inadequate” income supports are “barely surviving”.

People receiving these payments are eating one meal a day, skipping essential medication and foregoing cooling or heating in a desperate bid to keep a roof over their heads.

The Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee’s report shows these people are being left behind, and the social and economic cost of inaction will only grow the longer the government waits.

We urge the government to heed the top recommendation of the [committee] and substantially lift jobseeker and youth allowance so that people can live with dignity.

Channel Seven settles with man it wrongly identified as Bondi Junction killer

As Amanda Meade reported earlier: Sydney man Benjamin Cohen, who was wrongly named on air by Seven News as the Bondi Junction killer, has reached a confidential settlement with the network.

You can read the full story below:

A Seven Network spokesperson has said in a statement:

As Seven stated earlier, it was a mistake to name Mr Benjamin Cohen as the Bondi Westfield attacker. Seven has apologised to Mr Cohen. The parties have reached a settlement on confidential terms.

Antipoverty Centre denounces findings of government’s expert panel

The Antipoverty Centre has denounced the key findings from a panel of government poverty experts, stating the panel has “no legitimacy” as “there are no poor people on it”.

As Paul Karp reported earlier, the Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee has again called for jobseeker unemployment benefits to be raised to 90% of the age pension. You can read the full details earlier in the blog here.

An Antipoverty Centre spokesperson and jobseeker recipient said it was hard to “see the point” of a report that “restates what the government was told last year, knowing that they will yet again ignore it”.

As the government knows, and as the committee itself has said, people directly affected by poverty must be on it. It can have no legitimacy otherwise.

The committee ‘won’ by Senator [David] Pocock is nothing more than window dressing that gives the government an easy way out on its meaningless election commitment to review JobSeeker in every budget.

We are in an undeniable cost of living crisis. People in poverty are the worst affected and least equipped to cope.

The Antipoverty Centre is calling on Labor to immediately increase Centrelink payments to “at least the Henderson poverty line” and work with unemployed people to “develop a sophisticated measure of poverty”.

Figures out today from the finance minister, Katy Gallagher, offer the latest indication the Albanese government is on track to post a second consecutive budget surplus.

The underlying cash balance for the 2023-24 financial year to 31 March 2024 – or three-quarters of the way in – was a deficit of $1.8bn. However, the projection in the mid-year economic and fiscal outlook was for a deficit by this point of about $6bn.

Instead, payments have been $4.8bn shy of what had been expected by now, while receipts have fallen by a smaller $649m than projected.

When the 2023-24 budget was announced last May, it projected a budget deficit of $13.9bn, a shortfall that shrank to $1.1bn by the mid-year update. The latest figures indicate the gap will be closed, and then some, in the final quarter of this fiscal year.

However, the independent economist Chris Richardson reckons the surplus has peaked, with spending accelerating 6.4% over the past year. Almost all the extra revenue is coming from personal taxes.

And there will be the $20bn-plus tax cut coming on 1 July and a host of spending increases in the works, not least for defence and the NDIS.

In other words, if a back-to-back budget surplus is declared on 14 May when the treasurer, Jim Chalmers, releases the 2024-25 budget, don’t expect a “three-peat”.