Key posts
- ACTU wants industry-wide wage deals to tackle shrinking incomes
- Push to unmask staff involved in secret portfolio saga
- Doctors call for urgent reform of ‘broken system’
- This morning’s key headlines at a glance
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Industry-wide bargaining ‘a road we’ve been down before’: business lobby
Speaking of the ACTU’s proposals for next week’s jobs and skills summit, here’s what Andrew McKellar – the chief executive of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry – has to say about the push to overhaul enterprise bargaining:
Honestly, if we’re talking about industry-wide bargaining replacing enterprise bargaining… that really does jeopodise the relationship between employers and employees [and their] ability to bargain in good faith.
It’s a road we’ve been down before. It’s one-size-fits-all and it’s not something that I think business would be very attracted to at all. And, frankly, what it amounts to is a reversal of the sort of reforms that we saw back in the Hawke and Keating era.
The comments were made on the ABC’s RN Breakfast.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers is due to front the program later this morning. Stay tuned.
ACTU wants industry-wide wage deals to tackle shrinking incomes
The union movement will seek a new deal on wages for millions of workers at next week’s jobs and skills summit with a bold plan to allow entire industries to negotiate the same pay and conditions despite business fears about the cost of the change.
ACTU national secretary Sally McManus will call for major changes to workplace law to make it easier for many companies in the same industry to sign up to a single enterprise bargaining agreement and deliver efficiencies and pay rises for all their workers.
ACTU secretary Sally McManus: “We’ve got to reset the whole discussion about productivity.”Credit:Eddie Jim
Airing her frustration at shrinking incomes, McManus told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age that workers were angry at missing out on the gains enjoyed by executives and would not accept a bigger intake of foreign workers when salaries were falling in real terms.
More on the union’s proposal here.
Push to unmask staff involved in secret portfolio saga
Pressure is mounting on the powerful bureaucrats and former political advisers who worked with Scott Morrison to explain their role in the secret ministries scandal, as the Greens and independents demanded a wide-ranging inquiry into the matter.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has promised an independent probe led by a yet-to-be-chosen legal expert but key details about its scope, which witnesses will be called, and what investigative powers it will have not been finalised.
Former prime minister Scott Morrison.Credit:Nick Moir
Defending his secret appointment to five departments while prime minister, Morrison last week disclosed there were “people in the department and the people in my office who were directly responsible for managing these specific things”.
In a bid to unmask those involved, key independents are pushing for the government to make clear that its investigation will go beyond Morrison’s conduct and also examine the actions of those in his department, his office, former ministers and the governor-general’s office.
Read the full story here.
Doctors call for urgent reform of ‘broken system’
Emergency department doctors contending with rising numbers of deteriorating patients are backing GPs calling for a radical overhaul of Australia’s healthcare system, warning that it is no longer fit for purpose.
The President of the Australian College of Emergency Medicine, Dr Clare Skinner, is urging the federal government to seize the chance to fundamentally transform primary care and redress the current healthcare funding model – in which acute hospital beds are clogged with patients who should have received the care they needed in the community.
Emergency departments are contending with rising numbers of patients with chronic conditions.Credit:Steven Siewert
“We are seeing the absolute failure of the acute health system around Australia,” Skinner says.
Read the full story here.
This morning’s key headlines at a glance
Good morning and thanks for your company.
It’s Thursday, August 25. I’m Broede Carmody and I’ll be anchoring our live coverage for the first half of the day.
Here’s what you need to know before we get started.
- Lisa Visentin reports that pressure is mounting on the bureaucrats and former political advisers who worked with Scott Morrison to explain their role in the secret portfolio saga. It comes as the Greens and independents call for a wide-ranging inquiry. Labor is yet to release the framework for a fresh inquiry, but one Coalition MP has said the government’s rhetoric is starting to sound like a “witch hunt”.
- A lift in the number of skilled migrants being allowed into Australia could improve state and federal budgets by $38 billion over the next decade, according to Shane Wright. The figures follow polling which shows the majority of voters want governments to prioritise wage rises over migration.
- David Crowe reports that the union movement wants entire industries to negotiate the same pay and conditions in an overhaul of enterprise bargaining. But businesses say the changes would cost too much and are a step back in time.
- In health news, Kate Aubusson writes that doctors are calling for an urgent reform of Australia’s “broken” system. And Australia’s medical watchdog has rejected allegations it’s failed to protect the public from so-called “cosmetic cowboys”.
- And twice as many Victorian voters trust the state Labor Party to govern with integrity compared with the Coalition, according to new polling. Meanwhile, the NSW government remains locked in a dispute with the state’s rail unions.
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