Politics live: Dutton ‘undermines Australia’s core security interests’ with ICC threats, Wong says; six in 10 support nuclear power | Australian politics

Looking at NSW for a moment –reports that residents of a social housing block that exploded in Sydney’s west at the weekend had raised concerns about the smell of gas over the past year will be investigated by the government after a woman was found dead in the rubble early Monday morning.

NSW Housing minister, Rose Jackson, said what had happened at Whalan was “devastating” and impacted residents would be provided temporary housing until a permanent solution was found.

She said:

I am deeply concerned to hear of accounts from residents who reportedly raised the issue of the smell of gas within the last 12 months.

I have instructed Homes NSW to urgently investigate this matter. The Department are currently checking maintenance logs for any history of this.

I am monitoring this active situation closely as it continues to unfold.

Dutton pays tribute to Gary Nairn after former LNP MP dies

Peter Dutton has released a statement honouring the former LNP MP for Eden-Monaro Gary Nairn, who died over the weekend aged 73.

Nairn held the seat of Eden-Monaro from 1996 until 2007.

Dutton said in his statement:

A dependable and duty-driven man, Gary served his country, his constituents, and the Liberal Party with distinction.

Gary’s counsel and common sense were readily sought after by his colleagues and his Prime Minister, John Howard, who appointed him his Parliamentary Secretary and Special Minister of State.

In his maiden speech, Gary spoke proudly about being part of a government that was decent, honest, and worked for ordinary Australians – the very traits Gary embodied in his life.

Nairn was appointed an officer of the Order of Australia in 2015 for his parliamentary service, work as a surveyor and support of Australians with disability.

Dutton:

On behalf of the Federal Coalition, our heartfelt condolences are with Gary’s wife, Rose, his children, Ben and Deborah, and his grandchildren.

Majority of domestic violence crisis payments are not processed in time

The Liberal senator Maria Kovacic has asked about the domestic violence payment, which has a timeframe of two days. The average is three days but in some LGAs the wait time is as high as 11 days.

From 1 January to 29 February 2024, 62.1% of crisis payments weren’t processed in time, the data tabled shows.

The deputy chief executive officer of Services Australia, Jarrod Howard, said:

So we don’t allocate based on LGA, we base [it] on a day’s process. And it does depend on how many staff we have with the right skill tag and the process that it takes for a particular claim type.

The crisis payment does need a social worker and other elements to assist with the other elements – to assist with making those assessments.

Treasury secretary concedes young people ‘not getting the same opportunities’ in housing market as older generations

The Greens senator, Nick McKim, has put to officials that young people are being “smashed” by interest rate rises and are “cannon fodder” in the war against inflation.

The Treasury secretary, Steven Kennedy, cautioned against that use of language, which he said is not “helpful” given there is nothing “unusual” about the way monetary policy is working at the moment. Monetary policy affects those in debt, who tend to be younger or middle-aged working people who have recently bought a home.

Kennedy said he understands we need to be “concerned about intergenerational equity issues” but the young people of today are the older people of tomorrow. Older people of today had faced their share of rate rises in their time.

Kennedy did make one small concession, that when it comes to the “structure of the housing market” young people are “not getting the same opportunities” as preceding generations.

The video team have put together part of Penny Wong’s opening statement to Dfat estimates – Daniel Hurst has been reporting on that hearing throughout the morning.

Fair Wages Commission to announce minimum wage decision at 10.30am

The (optimistically named) Fair Wages Commission will release its annual decision on minimum and award wages this morning.

Last year, the commission granted a 5.75% increase, with a top-up for 180,000 workers that lifted those on the national minimum award by 8.6%. At that time (although the FWC panel wouldn’t know it for another couple of months), consumer prices were increasing at a 6.1% pace.

The challenge is to anticipate what inflation might be in the coming year knowing that, on the margin (literally), the commission’s decision will influence price increases over that period.

The Reserve Bank, which has tended to tolerate wage hikes for those paid the least, expects inflation to come in at 3.8% in the June quarter and 3.2% in a year’s time.

The ACTU would like to see a 5% increase for the coming year, while employers’ associations such as the AiGroup would like to see it closer to 2.8%. (These lobby groups tend to be coy about what wage increases their executives are getting, as we noted here.)

As for commercial economists, ANZ expects a 3.5%-4% verdict today and NAB at “around 4%”. Westpac looks like being among the most relaxed, saying “anywhere in the 4–4.5% range seems reasonable”.

Watch out for the verdict at 10.30am AEST (which can also be viewed live here).

Dfat officials questioned over Australia’s ‘yes’ vote to UN resolution on Palestinian mission

Back in foreign affairs estimates, and the Coalition is questioning foreign affairs officials about Australia’s decision to vote “yes” at the UN general assembly last month to giving the Palestinian mission greater rights at the UN.

Officials confirm that this yes vote does not equal Australia bilaterally recognising Palestine as a state.

Craig Maclachlan, a deputy secretary at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, says Australia had, at the time of the vote, made it “explicit that not everything in the resolution was what we would propose and yet we did vote for it”.

Maclachlan says Australia supported a two-state solution and it was “not necessarily the resolution we would have crafted but on balance it was one we felt lent its weight towards the objective of a two-state solution”.

The crossbench have come together to call for a “broader remit for the Net Zero Economy Authority”.

The bill establishing the Net Zero Economy Authority will be debated in the house this week and the crossbench have announced they will be urging the government to give it more power.

They want it to support communities in rural and regional Australia who are “on the front line of the shift to renewable energy” rather than just on coal and gas fired power station workers.

The members for Indi (Helen Haines), Wentworth (Allegra Spender) and Warringah (Zali Steggall) will all be moving amendments to the legislation.

Haines:

My amendments address deficits in the Bill by establishing measures to maximise local benefits for communities by offering tangible, practical measures such as reduced power bills and investment opportunities.

Spender:

At a minimum, the government must legislate a statutory review of the Authority’s remit and explicitly consider whether the scope of industries it supports should be expanded in future.”

Steggall:

We have an opportunity now to establish an effective Authority that has sufficient teeth to meet the demands and opportunities of transitioning our economy – let’s get those foundations right. The amendments I have proposed, that were rejected by government provided a mechanism to allow a Minister and the Authority to respond to Australia’s economic needs, and the needs of workers as our transition to a renewable economy unfolds.”

Back to Treasury estimates where a little earlier, Steven Kennedy took aim at “a long-term underinvestment in social housing by governments” as one of a number of factors contributing to housing undersupply.

He said:

The market supply of housing continues to be too low to meet demand, particularly in recent years. This is despite a large number of medium-high density dwellings being built between 2014 and 2018, when low interest rates encouraged a significant pick up in investor activity. A limited supply of dwellings creates affordability pressures for households and makes it difficult to find a property to buy or rent …

Nominal dwelling prices and advertised rents have more than doubled since the mid‑2000s, having increased sharply in the past five years. Households are taking longer to save for a deposit and more people are renting. These impacts are disproportionately felt by those on lower incomes.

The government has addressed some of these distributional effects through changes to commonwealth rent assistance. Both this budget and the 2023–24 budget included assistance for renters on low incomes by increasing the maximum rates of commonwealth rent assistance. The further 10% increase in this budget is in addition to the 15% increase provided in September 2023.

The current lack of new supply has been exacerbated by several factors flowing from Covid-19, including supply chain bottlenecks in inputs to construction and higher inflation, both of which have increased the costs of materials and financing needed to build homes. This is compounding structural barriers in the system itself.

… Industry’s capacity to add new supply has also been hampered by a lack of essential infrastructure in greenfield development sites, while there have been critical shortages of skilled labour and low productivity in the sector in recent years …

At the same time, there has been a long-term underinvestment in social housing by governments, leading to lengthening waitlists … The government’s policies are sensibly focused on boosting the supply of housing. However, meaningful progress cannot occur unless the states use their policy levers to boost supply and, longer-term, allow the housing supply to adapt more flexibly to changes in housing demand.

Trial of MDMA to treat PTSD to begin in NSW

Stepping outside politics for a moment for a trial approved for MDMA to be used to treat PTSD for the first time in NSW.

Led by Prof Ranil Gunewardene, the director of evolution: medicine enhanced therapy, the trial will be the first to examine the effectiveness of MDMA treatments in a public setting in NSW.

The first patients to be treated include a father who lost his son in the Hunter Valley bus tragedy, an Indigenous woman suffering from trans-generational, family of origin and relational trauma, and a former elite private school boy who was the victim of savage bullying.

It is hoped that a combining MDMA with intensive psychotherapy will allow patients to “more safely explore and reprocess events, feelings, belief and relational experiences that were previously found to be far too distressing, or in some cases downright terrifying”. Gunewardene said:

Whilst these treatments are not for everyone, and there are risks associated with treatment, this evolution of psychiatric treatment provides hope for patients, where conventional treatments have had limited or no benefits, or caused significant side effects.

Patients will not be allowed to use medicines without expert supervision, nor access them outside the medical setting.

Natasha May has written for us previously on the debates surrounding these proposed treatments:

Treasury secretary defends bracket creep as ‘feature of the tax system’

The shadow finance minister, Jane Hume, is asking Treasury about bracket creep (the increasing income tax take as income-earners move into higher tax brackets).

Last week the Treasury secretary, Steven Kennedy, gave a speech arguing that bracket creep had helped fight inflation unlike the US where automatic indexation of tax brackets had given fiscal policy a pro-cyclical effect of adding to inflation.

Kennedy said he would rather leave adjusting tax brackets to a decision of government. Asked if bracket creep was a “core tenet” of the fiscal strategy, he replied it’s a “feature of the tax system” and to the extent it was a tenet of the budget, it had been in everyone’s for “decades”.

The finance minister, Katy Gallagher, said it was a “longstanding feature of your fiscal strategy”.

Seems like everyone loves banking bracket creep but nobody likes defending it. The Coalition is yet to tell us what their “lower, simpler, fairer” income tax plan will be before the next election. Could it be a promise to index brackets?

Over in Treasury estimates, bracket creep (where you creep into a new tax bracket through pay rises, thereby negating much of the impact of the pay rise) is once again under discussion:

It is well worth heeding The Tally Room’s Ben Raue here on what the proposed electoral redistribution in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs actually means:

Wong says she welcomes Israel-Gaza ceasefire proposal from Biden

The foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, has reiterated the government’s view that the situation in Gaza is “catastrophic” and she has called on Israel and Hamas to accept the ceasefire and hostage release proposal backed by the United States.

Wong told Senate estimates:

What we have seen in Rafah underlines why Australia and the international community have been united in opposition.

The death and destruction is horrific. This human suffering is unacceptable.

We reiterate to the Netanyahu government: This cannot continue.

We must see an immediate humanitarian ceasefire so that civilians can be protected.

Hamas must release hostages. Israel must allow aid to flow at scale, as directed by the ICJ [international court of justice].

And so we welcome the current ceasefire proposal from President Biden and we urge parties to agree to its terms.

Biden, over the weekend, characterised it as an Israeli proposal, although far-right members of the Israeli government have threatened to quit if the deal is agreed.

Consumption spending to recover from second half of 2024, Treasury secretary says

The Treasury secretary, Steven Kennedy, has given his opening address at Senate estimates.

Kennedy said growth in household spending has “softened considerably” due to high inflation and interest rates, with the result that household spending is contributing the least to growth in the last decade with the exception of during the pandemic.

The Treasury expects that economic activity in the March quarter, to be released on Wednesday, will be “very weak”. The economy is expected to grow by 2% in 2024-25, which Kennedy said is “more subdued” than the mid-year economic update.

The Treasury expects consumption to remain subdued until the first half of 2025. But the expected moderation in inflation as well as wage growth and tax cuts have helped to bolster real household disposable incomes, resulting in a recovery from the second half of 2024.

Kennedy rejected criticism of Labor’s third budget, explaining that fiscal policy was “consistent” with Treasury projections that inflation will return to within the target band in 2024-25, and saying it strikes the “appropriate balance”.

Kennedy has said that net overseas migration is believed to have peaked in 2023, with arrivals to “ease” and departures to “pick up” and a range of government policies to reduce arrivals. Treasury is working with the home affairs department to improve forecasting of NoM.

Kennedy said the labour market has been “resilient”, with unemployment of only 4.1%. It is expected to rise to 4.5% by June 2025.