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Backing the wage rise shows Labor is on the side of workers at a time when many are doing it tough, writes Sarah Martin.

Electricity spot market suspension will bring stability, Aemo says

With the Australian Energy Market Operator now suspending the wholesale spot market, people will be wondering what it all means, and what comes next.

Firstly, Aemo will go into more detail in an hour’s time (so 4pm AEST), but basically the system of identifying market shortfalls had “become unsustainable”, a spokesperson said.

The spokesperson confirmed it was the first time the entire market had been suspended. It was not caused by a single event but rather a build-up over the past few days when an ever-growing number of forecast shortfalls were emerging.

The last main interruption was linked to the “SA black” event in 2016, when tornados knocked over key transmission lines and a bunch of windfarms exceeded their settings, and were turned off (but they were NOT the main problem).

Suspending the market does not mean we’re about to get blackouts.

“Hopefully, this [suspension] will bring more stability to operations,” the Aemo spokesperson said.

Traditional owners attempting to block the construction of a nuclear waste dump in South Australia have told a court the federal government has already approved plans to begin earthworks, despite an active legal challenge.

We are expecting a press conference on the electricity market situation at 4pm AEST.

NSW disaster agencies defend flood response

New South Wales disaster management agencies have defended their rescue and recovery response to the record-breaking floods which claimed 13 lives earlier this year, AAP reports.

The NSW resilience commissioner, Shane Fitzsimmons, the State Emergency Service boss, Carlene York, and the Rural Fire Service commissioner, Rob Rogers, appeared on the final day of hearings before an upper house committee on Wednesday.

The inquiry is examining the authorities’ ability to save lives and property during the catastrophic floods and is separate to the government’s own investigation.

The committee chairman, Labor MP Walt Secord, said communities in the state’s north were angry that Resilience NSW had treated the “fourth worst natural disaster” in modern Australian history as a “nine-to-five job”.

But Fitzsimmons vigorously defended the agency’s conduct in reaching and supporting flood evacuees.

We’re not a 24-hour organisation. We don’t have thousands of personnel.

We’re active and engaged but we’re only a couple of hundred people.

We don’t have the scale or resourcing during the response phase of these events.

York said 13 lives were lost from late February until early April across the state, with the town of Lismore in the Northern Rivers region hit the hardest.

The SES was dispatched to more than 2,200 flood rescues and responded to in excess of 33,400 requests for help.

Minimum wage increase ‘pitiful’, Antipoverty Centre says

The Antipoverty Centre has released a statement in relation to the wage increase – saying the daily pay rise would not even cover the cost of iceberg lettuce.

Jay Coonan, an Antipoverty Centre spokesperson, said:

The Antipoverty Centre is relieved that some low paid workers will soon get a pay rise, many of whom do not earn enough to get above the poverty line. But $1 an hour is a pitiful increase that maintains the status quo and does not meaningfully improve lives – it won’t even buy an iceberg lettuce for a day’s work.

We are disturbed by the decision to delay the increase for workers in aviation, tourism and hospitality. There is no justification for prioritising businesses over the wellbeing of the workers they rely on.

Announcing the wages decision the Fair Work Commission president said ‘low paid workers are particularly vulnerable’ – so what does that make the five million people who rely on poverty-level Centrelink payments?

Our payments are becoming worth less with each day, and so far we’ve heard nothing but repeated commitments from the new government to keep it that way.

After all those notices about shortfalls in the wholesale spot electricity market serving eastern Australia, it looks like the Australian Energy Market Operator has blown a whistle, and the game is suspended …

More on this soon.

Energy generators meet to discuss electricity market

Eastern Australia’s generators are sitting down with the members of the Energy Security Board to chat about how the electricity market is going.

They will no doubt be discussing why generators are withdrawing capacity and then being asked to supply it by the regulators. And presumably they will discuss how to avoid worrying the public about possible electricity supply shortfalls.

Take New South Wales, for instance, where the projected “lack of reserve level 3” (LOR 3) implies a lot of gaps need filling, particularly one at 8pm tomorrow evening with 4,000 megawatts needed. (At present, NSW as a whole is using about 6,100MW.)

It can be hard to keep up, since Victoria also has a bunch of LOR 3s, including tomorrow at 6.30pm when 2,000MW of supply needs to be found.

These gaps are being closed, but sometimes the regulator has to intervene and tell a lucky generator it’s time to switch on, as happened earlier today in Victoria.

Queensland and South Australia have also been in the mix today as far as projected shortfalls. The SA premier, Peter Malinauskas, this morning told RN Breakfast the market was an “embarrassment”.

Given we might have a few weeks or longer to go before the supply risks subside, we might want to consider how the messaging can be tweaked. Otherwise we might not be ready when a real crisis looms …

Encrypted apps must be regulated to curb far-right extremism, inquiry told

From AAP:

The federal government needs to take action against encrypted messaging apps like Telegram to curb the rise of far-right extremism, a Victorian inquiry has been told.

Far-right extremists initially shared hateful content on mainstream sites like Facebook and Twitter but are increasingly being deplatformed, Swinburne University’s Dr Belinda Barnet told Wednesday’s hearing.

The groups are now moving to spaces like Telegram where they can share their ideas without censure or detection from the authorities, which is dangerous, Barnet said.

These apps are also allowing the far right to draw in people from the “fringes of society”, Swinburne University’s Associate Prof Christine Agius told the parliamentary inquiry.

They often share grievances around perceived entitlement – that society has changed too much, feminism has gone too far, and minority groups are taking what’s rightfully theirs.

Erickson: ‘There’s a lot to reflect on’ about the media during the campaign

Jumping back to the National Press Club, Erickson was asked about the media:

Joel Fitzgibbon appointed to forest industry board

From AAP:

Former Labor MP Joel Fitzgibbon says the forest industry has a strong role to play in climate mitigation and jobs provision.

The former minister and MP for the New South Wales seat of Hunter has been appointed to the Australian Forest Products Association board as an independent non-executive director.

“As the former minister and shadow minister for forestry, I have met many of AFPA’s members and have seen firsthand the countless benefits the industry provides to Australia’s economy and the livelihoods of Australians,” he said in a statement on Wednesday.

“[The] industry is passionate about the role it can play in climate mitigation, building our regional communities by providing meaningful and secure jobs and delivering the millions of fibre-based products we often take for granted – from timber for houses, to paper and tissue products.

“I look forward to working with my board colleagues and AFPA management as we look to the future of forest industries.”

The AFPA chair, Greg McCormack, said Fitzgibbon would bring to the board passionate support for forest industries.

“[And he] understands intimately how we can assist the new Albanese government deliver both greater climate change initiatives and more timber for our builders and renovators,” McCormack said.

“Joel’s vast experience in both strategic vision and policy development will provide valuable input for the AFPA board and in dealings with all levels of the government and the public service as we all try to deliver on the more than $300m in new initiatives Labor committed to during the election, along with key policy changes.”

Labor not concerned about rise of independents and Greens, Erickson suggests

Paul Karp: “I note the seats that you had climate swings to you – Bennelong, Chisholm, Higgins and Boothby. Only one of them had a high-profile independent and none of them were top-tier Greens targets. So my question is: how worried are you that those will be the next to fall to a growing crossbench if Labor doesn’t lift its ambition on climate?”

Erickson:

I’m confident of the four members that were elected in those seats that they’ll do an excellent job over the next three years. I think if we look at the teal seats, the issues that were in play in those seats were the electorate’s dissatisfaction with Mr Morrison’s performance as prime minister, and anger at the Liberal party over climate, over the treatment of women and over integrity.

The 2022 election and the contest between the Liberals and the teals played out with those issues and on the terms that we saw. So I don’t think that you can extrapolate from that much, if anything, about what the next election might look like and what it means for the Labor government.

Erickson: Greens ‘seek to divide Labor’s base in a manner that doesn’t help progressive politics’

On the Greens, Erickson says:

I think there’s in doubt that the Greens are an effective campaign machine and they do have a very successful strategy that they have honed over 20 years, which is to always position yourself two steps to the left of Labor, minimise our successes, give zero credit for any of the progressive gains that Labor governments make, constantly criticise and seek to divide Labor’s base in a manner that doesn’t help progressive politics.

That’s what Adam’s entire adult life has been about.

Erickson: ‘The test is not whether you can run a mistake-free campaign. The test is how do you respond when new challenges emerge’

David Crowe from SMH and The Age: “What are your reflections on the mistakes, if any, in that campaign?”

Erickson:

No campaign is perfect. The experience of every campaign is the challenges are constantly thrown at you and things go wrong. The test is not whether you can run a mistake-free campaign. The test is how do you respond when new challenges emerge, when events throw unexpected dynamics at you, or when mistakes happen.

It was even more so the case in this campaign because of Covid. We were constantly having people get sick. I missed a week, the leader missed a week, the president, the assistant national secretary, I think around half of the cabinet.

So it was just constantly coming at us. And so the way I think to deal with that is as a campaigner is just to maintain that focus on what is your strategy, what are you trying to do? And that’s how we dealt with and grappled with challenges as they came along.

Labor can continue to build support and lift primary vote, Erickson says

Greg Brown from The Australian asks if the days of 40% primary votes are over.

Erickson:

No, no, I think there are lots of examples around the world and through Australia’s history of a government like this one coming into office in circumstances like this and then building its support and building its support through good government and by delivering on what it promised.

I think we have seen, you know, the Ardern government in New Zealand is a good example in terms of looking at their result in 2017, and then their re-election, there have been examples at a state level here in Australia in the recent history of state Labor governments. And that’s the challenge that’s in front of us.

‘We did win in our right’: Labor national secretary

Phil Coorey from the AFR: “What is it in your view that Labor needs to do over the next three years to get that primary vote up and to win it in your own right without the factors that helped you last time?”

Erickson:

We did win in our own right.

And don’t agree with the proposition that my speech or my remarks have made an argument that we didn’t win it and they lost it.

I think in my remarks I set out how we thought about the election and that we felt that we had two arguments we had to make. First, how would Australia be different under a Labor government led by Anthony Albanese? And we set that case out.

We set it out in principle in terms of Anthony’s leadership style and we set it out in detail on issues like climate, childcare, health and wages and the cost of living.

Erickson denies misleading voters on cashless debit card

Labor national secretary Paul Erickson is now taking questions at the National Press Club.

Anna Henderson from SBS: “Labor was accused during the election campaign of misleading voters in relation to the cashless debit card and paid advertising suggests it was going to be expanded to all age pensioners. On reflection, was that a lie?”

Erickson:

Absolutely it was not a lie. We campaigned against the cashless debit card and pointed to the Liberal government and Anne Ruston the former minister’s own words and we have now taken steps as we committed to abolish the cashless debit card.