NSW government ‘very sorry’ family violence funding package was not released earlier
The NSW premier, Chris Minns, is speaking to the media, outlining what is included in the state government’s $230m emergency family violence package.
We detailed this earlier in the blog, here and here. Speaking to the media, Minns said:
This is the first announcement of our government – major announcement – when it comes to domestic and family violence. There is a lot more to do in this space and the truth of the matter is this is only a first step …
We have heard loud and clear the call from the family members of those who have been killed at the hands of a violent partner and the message from my government today is: more needs to be done.
We are very sorry that this package was not released or announced earlier, but we are determined to learn from the mistakes that have been made by my government and previous governments over the past decades.
Key events
Greens reject placement payments as ‘slap in the face’ to students
Caitlin Cassidy
The federal government’s plan to front a stipend for teaching, nursing, midwifery and social work placements has been rejected as a “slap in the face” to students, with the Greens urging Labor to make the payments universal and not limited by degrees.
Students are required to complete hundreds of hours of unpaid placements in a number of courses including psychology, counselling and physiotherapy that are excluded from Labor’s announcement.
Greens deputy leader and spokesperson for education, senator Mehreen Faruqi, said Labor was moving in the right direction but all students should be paid for their hours of work to at least the minimum wage. Labor has suggested the payment be benchmarked to the single Austudy rate of $319.50 per week from 2025.
During this cost-of-living crisis, unpaid placements are forcing students to choose between putting fuel in the car to get to their placement or putting food on the table every day. Labor’s policy won’t even try to change that until 1 July 2025. It’s a slap in the face from the government to ignore the many students experiencing placement poverty right now.
James Sherriff, spokesperson for Students Against Placement Poverty (SAPP), said without a living wage, students remained in placement poverty despite winning “an important concession” from the government.
This change will do very little to alleviate placement poverty in the vast majority of cases, and urges that more drastic change is needed immediately.
Benita Kolovos
Reports of student ranking system ‘disgraceful and utterly unacceptable’: Victorian premier
Circling back to Jacinta Allan’s press conference, where the premier was asked about reports in the papers this morning that four students at a private school in Melbourne’s east have been suspended after rating their female classmates.
According to a report in The Age, the students at Yarra Valley Grammar School in Ringwood shared a spreadsheet of photos of their female classmates and ranked them in categories. The girls were ranked from top to bottom as “wifeys”, “cuties”, “mid”, “object”, “get out” and then finally “unrapable”.
Allan said the reported behaviour was “misogynist[ic], it’s disgraceful, it’s disgusting, and it’s utterly unacceptable.”
We have been having, for months now, an ongoing community conversation about how four women every week are losing their lives at the hands of a man. Maybe a current or former partner, maybe a complete stranger. This pattern of violence against women – not only does the act of violence have to stop, but these displays of disrespecting women. Like it’s just disgraceful.
My thoughts today are with the young women and the young men who they go to school with, who are absolutely devastated by this news, [and] with the young women and their families. To think that you’re sitting in a classroom with classmates who may not just hold these views, but write them down and share them.
Allan continued, stating “this is no joke”.
Respect for women has to be at the forefront of every classroom, of every household, of every part of our community, because we are seeing what happens. The extreme end of what respect for women looks like with too many women subjected to violence, too many women losing their lives. My thoughts today with those young women and their families who must be just devastated. I was devastated, utterly devastated when I read those reports this morning.
Jordyn Beazley
DVNSW responds to NSW government’s emergency family violence package
The peak body for NSW’s domestic violence sector has said the Minn’s government’s emergency $230m family violence package is a “positive and substantial first step” that should be followed by more funding for housing and homelessness services.
Delia Donovan, chief executive of Domestic Violence NSW, said:
This is a comprehensive investment for the domestic and family violence sector. We’re glad to see the NSW government respond to our advocacy and recognise the critical need for investing in the sector to address the domestic and family violence emergency in our state.
DVNSW applauded the government’s expansion of the Staying Home Leaving Violence (SHLV) program, which helps victim-survivors remain in their home or another safe home of their choice. Through the funding, the SHLV program will be expanded from 91 locations in the state to 128 local government areas and will help an additional 4,200 women every year.
The organisation also welcomed the increased specialist support for children, which will go towards improving the wellbeing of children who are victim-survivors and help break the cycle of violence. Donovan said:
The recognition of children and young people as victim-survivors in their own right has been a key area of advocacy for us.
The peak body said it hoped to see more on housing in the upcoming budget, including an additional $52m for existing refuges to ensure no victim-survivors were turned away.
It also urged the government to build an additional 7,500 social and affordable homes each year over the next 20 years, and 750 more transitional homes to provide a pathway out of crisis refuges. Donovan said:
We are eager to continue to work with the NSW government to ensure that meaningful investment into the sector remains a priority and includes continued investment.
Benita Kolovos
Victorian premier urges RBA to consider pressures on households ahead of rates decision tomorrow
As the Victorian government hands down its budget tomorrow, the Reserve Bank will make a decision on interest rates.
Jacinta Allan said she won’t give them any advice but highlighted the pressure that families, businesses and governments are under:
Whether it’s our budget, household budgets, budgets of businesses, we are all already feeling the pressures of successive interest rate rises [and] ongoing inflationary impacts, and if you just look at the construction sector alone, construction costs have gone up by 22% since 2021 – that’s a massive jump in just a really short space of time. You add to that the workforce shortages and the pressures that puts on the ability to deliver projects and services, but also to again it has an inflationary impact on our overall settings.
And I would hope that the Reserve Bank considers these pressures as they are making their deliberations, because these are pressures that are having a real impact on families at their kitchen table, on businesses and on governments who around the cabinet table have been working very hard on making the sensible and disciplined decisions that we need to make to support Victorian families.
Benita Kolovos
Jacinta Allan speaks ahead of Victorian budget tomorrow
The Victorian premier, Jacinta Allan, is speaking in Docklands ahead of her first budget tomorrow. She’s yet to make any announcements ahead of time and has flagged it’ll be a tight one. She told reporters:
It’s been a budget that’s been challenging to put together – a budget in a domestic and global environment that faces many, many pressures.
Whether it’s the inflationary and interest rate pressures, the pressures of workforce shortages, and what that means for our project works and service delivery – also to the global unrest, the ongoing impact of the pandemic – these are challenges that we can’t ignore.
We simply can’t put our head in the sand and ignore these circumstances as we have been putting this budget together. It’s why the budget will be firmly focused on Victorian families, as Labor government budgets always are, but we’ll also make the sensible and disciplined decisions that respond to those challenges.
Asked if the government will be deferring any infrastructure spending, Allan said:
I appreciate there’s a keenness to see that detail. I’m not going to preempt any budget decisions today.
David McBride speaks ahead of sentencing hearing
Sarah Basford Canales
The sentencing of army whistleblower, David McBride, begins this morning almost five years after he was first charged for his role in leaking secret defence documents about Australia’s involvement in Afghanistan.
The former military lawyer pleaded guilty in the ACT supreme court in December to three offences, including stealing commonwealth information and passing that on to journalists at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
This morning, supporters and advocates gathered at the ACT supreme court to rally against the federal government’s pursuit of McBride. McBride arrived shortly before 10am, briefly addressing the media and his supporters:
I say to the federal government, stop talking about doing the right thing and actually do the right things.
McBride said he disagreed with a recent ABC Four Corners episode, which questioned McBride’s framing as a “whistleblower”. Asked how he wanted the public to perceive him, McBride said:
As someone that stood up for Australian values in the face of a government who has lost sight.
The sentencing is scheduled to run until Tuesday.
Rough seas hamper search for man overboard on cruise
Water police are battling rough seas as they undertake a frantic search for a man who went overboard from a P&O cruise before dawn as the vessel approached Sydney, AAP reports.
NSW police marine area command head Supt Joe McNulty said swells of up to 5 metres were forcing authorities to rely on heat-seeking technology to find the passenger. He told ABC radio:
Hopefully we can identify a person by their heat signature in these cold waters.
The search area was 18km outside Sydney Heads and covered a large area, spanning about 60 square nautical miles of water, he said.
Authorities had some hope of retrieving the passenger alive given a life ring from the cruise ship was yet to be recovered.
“There is a person out there hopefully close to a life ring or in that life ring,” McNulty said, adding that the search would continue through Monday.
The timeframes for survival is still within the limits.
Firefighters rescue family trapped in home smashed by falling tree
Firefighters have helped rescue a family of four after a large tree fell on their Sydney home and trapped them last night.
A 35-year-old man was putting an 11-month-old to bed just after 8.30pm last night when the tree crashed through the roof of their Avalon Beach home, on Sydney’s northern beaches.
Neighbours reported the family’s screams for help after the near miss, and a Fire and Rescue NSW crew quickly attended the scene, along with paramedics and SES personnel.
Firefighters told the family – who only sustained minor injuries – to stay inside until power company technicians were able to isolate “live” electrical cables, exposed during the incident.
The father and child were treated at the scene and transported to hospital for further assessment. A grandfather drove a second child, aged four, to hospital for a check-up.
The family is seeking alternative accommodation as the house is now uninhabitable.
AVALON BEACH | Firefighters help rescue family trapped in home smashed by falling tree – VIDEO. Firefighters have helped rescue a family of four, trapped in a house crushed by a large tree during last night’s rain storm at Avalon Beach, on Sydne… https://t.co/bt4bPugfXc
— Fire and Rescue NSW (@FRNSW) May 5, 2024
Shadow communications minister responds to Telstra’s delayed 3G shutdown
As we reported earlier, Telstra has delayed its closure of the 3G network by two months in an effort to give people more time to update their devices.
Shadow communication minister David Coleman said this move underscores Michelle Rowland’s “hapless handling” of the issue – with some 4G phones not able to work after the 3G shutdown.
Coleman said in a statement this morning:
The minister claimed that she was not aware of the issue until March. Strange, given that her office received information on this in June last year, and the peak industry body AMTA told the whole world when it published information on this exact topic in November.
The minister only set up her ‘Working Group’ in March. If the minister had acted professionally and expeditiously, there would have been ample time to deal with this issue prior to 3G shutdown.
Human remains discovered in Canberra’s southern suburbs
Luca Ittimani
Human remains have been discovered at the edge of Canberra’s southern suburbs, but police are yet to identify the findings.
Police found the remains a kilometre outside Gordon, near the Point Hut Crossing of the Murrumbidgee River, at about 3.45pm yesterday afternoon after a call from the member of the public.
ACT police said they were still investigating the circumstances of the incident and would probably provide a further update later today.
There are 14 long-term missing people from the ACT, including two missing overseas. Anyone with information was urged to contact Crime Stoppers.
Caitlin Cassidy
Five pro-Palestine encampments established at universities across Melbourne
Pro-Palestine encampments have spread to five universities in Melbourne with the establishment of permanent protests at RMIT, Deakin and La Trobe.
The groups are calling on universities to divest from Israel and for a permanent ceasefire. Representatives of Students for Palestine say the camps will be indefinite.
Amelia Christie, general representative of the RMIT student union, said students were “sick of watching a genocide play out” while the university maintained ties with Israeli weapons companies.
We are calling our universities to cut all ties with weapons manufacturers, companies that are currently supplying the weapons used to carry out the horrors unfolding in Gaza.
Alicia Griffiths, La Trobe social justice officer, said students were “horrified” by the violent scenes occurring at protests in the United States.
We want to show solidarity with them. Encampments are spreading like wildfire across Australia because students are determined to disrupt the war machine.
NSW government ‘very sorry’ family violence funding package was not released earlier
The NSW premier, Chris Minns, is speaking to the media, outlining what is included in the state government’s $230m emergency family violence package.
We detailed this earlier in the blog, here and here. Speaking to the media, Minns said:
This is the first announcement of our government – major announcement – when it comes to domestic and family violence. There is a lot more to do in this space and the truth of the matter is this is only a first step …
We have heard loud and clear the call from the family members of those who have been killed at the hands of a violent partner and the message from my government today is: more needs to be done.
We are very sorry that this package was not released or announced earlier, but we are determined to learn from the mistakes that have been made by my government and previous governments over the past decades.
PM applauds ‘very swift action’ of police after WA teen shot dead amid alleged attack
The prime minister says now is the time to “back police” when asked about Western Australia police stopping short of labelling an alleged attack in Perth as terrorism yesterday.
You can read all details on this below:
Responding to the question, Anthony Albanese said:
It is the right time to back in the processes that [police] undertake. My first thoughts are with the victim of this incident, but also to applaud the very swift action of WA police in acting here.
[I] also acknowledge the very important work that the Muslim community did to alert police to the messages that had [allegedly] been sent out by this young man …
Police will go through their processes and that is important, that that be backed up. My job is to back up our security agencies and our police and the important work that they do.
Albanese responds to pro-Palestinian protests at university campuses
The prime minister was also asked about the pro-Palestine encampments taking place across Australian universities. Specifically, he was asked about the phrase “from the river to the sea” used by protesters, and responded:
It is a slogan that calls for opposition to a two-state solution. My position is very clear and the government’s position is clear and it has been a bipartisan position for a long period of time.
Anthony Albanese continued by saying “the Middle East is a complex issue” that required a “considered response”.
Government’s position is very clear, which is [that] the long-term solution in the Middle East requires a two-state solution – the right of Israel to continue to exist within secure borders but the right of Palestinians to have justice as well, to have self-determination and also to be able to live in security, peace and prosperity.
… And I think the slogan that you refer to dismisses that, which is not in the interests of Israelis, but it is not in the interests of Palestinians.
