Health News at Your Fingertips

Hamilton bound for Brisbane

Hamilton is coming to Brisbane, and creator Lin-Manuel Miranda spoke to ABC News Breakfast this morning from inside what appeared to be a space capsule.

Hamilton has already opened in Melbourne and Sydney.

Miranda told the ABC:

Hamilton always kind of surpasses every hope I had for it. I remember thinking as I was writing it, ‘I hope there are enough history teachers that will take their classes that we’ll hopefully run for a few years and make our money back for our investors’ … it just continues to resonate with people and I can’t explain that.

He said he was proud the show had supported and promoted hundreds of non-white actors around the world:

That’s one of the things I think I’m proudest of is that so often Hamilton is the first entry in an incredibly talented actor’s CV. And I know that from anecdotal evidence, that the Australian cast are like rockstars in Australia and I can’t wait to see what they do next and I’m thrilled that we get to be a footnote in their journey as artists.

John Farnham in intensive care after cancer surgery

The singer remains in a stable condition in intensive care, according to a statement released by his family this morning.

The Farnham family said they wanted to acknowledge and thank everyone for their ongoing messages and well wishes that have been shared throughout the last week:

It really lifts our spirits knowing that everyone is thinking of John.

Jill Farnham said:

John remains in a stable condition in ICU following the removal of a cancerous tumour in his mouth on Tuesday. He is awake and responding well to the care he’s receiving.

Pocock pushes for scrapping of stage-three tax cuts

Independent senator David Pocock was on RN speaking about the stage-three tax cuts, which he says should be “resisted” – no matter what was promised before the election.

What I’ve said is that they should be revisited … [Anthony Albanese] has a really strong case to relook at these these tax cuts and see what what else that could actually be spent on, given the you know the huge amount of money that they represent.

Pocock said the money could instead be spent on raising the Medicare rebate, fully electrifying homes or any number of reforms. (If you want to see how you would spend the $243bn that would be saved by scrapping the cuts, try out our interactive here.)

Pocock said Australia “should have a sensible discussion about this”:

Things have changed a lot since these were where they decided. We’ve had bushfires, a global pandemic. We’ve had flooding and stagnant wages, and now people are in a cost-of-living crisis across the country. And so I just don’t think that we can justify handing out $240bn over the next 10 years to the wealthiest Australians.

Will jobseeker be raised?

Lifting jobseeker from $46 to $70 a day will be raised at the jobs and skills summit – it has already been raised in submissions – but employment minister Tony Burke has poured cold water on hopes that it will be implemented at this stage:

Ultimately, when we hit the budget in October – which is where these issues get reviewed every year – when you look at the budget, there will be things that we want to do that we can’t do. And that’s the reality of a trillion dollars of Liberal debt, particularly as inflation goes up. That debt now costs a lot more than it costs even a year ago.

So there will be things that that we would want to do that people would like us to do that aren’t going to be possible as an example. It’s basically saying, ‘Yeah, this is just too too expensive.’

Asked by Patricia Karvelas whether the low rate of the jobseeker payment creates an “inability to get yourself job ready”, Burke said there were employment programs designed to provide support to people.

He referred to the Workforce Australia jobs program which has had teething issues:

We’re only in the second month of that new system. A lot of it was designed before we came to office and the contracts had all been signed before we came into office. So I’m still very mindful of what we can do. But the the challenges of the people who are in the system right now are exactly as you’ve described.

Incidentally, independent senator for the ACT David Pocock, who will be at the first day of the summit, does support an increase to the jobseeker rate.

He told Radio National:

I think to live on $46 a day is incredibly difficult if not impossible.

Burke signals he’s open to change on better-off-overall test

Tony Burke also said he may be open to a change to the better-off-overall test (Boot), a change he has previously resisted:

Up until the summit I’ve been pretty hardline on the better-off-overall test. And I took the view that if I was expecting everybody else, to come forward with compromises and to try to find a way together at the summit, that I should be willing to do the same.

So while I’m very careful and wary of changes to the better-off-overall test, I’m not ruling out that we might be able to find compromises that that makes the whole system work more effectively.

Link to closing gender pay gap

Tony Burke said even if the reform were adopted, “the main form of bargaining will continue to be enterprise bargaining”:

Directly between workers and employers will, I think, always be the agreements that are most common.

But particularly in small businesses, the agreements that hadn’t been possible had been agreements in industries like childcare, like aged care, like smaller retail, and when you look at those industries, in pretty much every case you’re looking at workplaces where the majority of people working there women. [They] are the ones that have tended to miss out on bargaining. There’s a direct link between this conversation and some of the things we need to do to close the gender pay gap.

Minister welcomes multi-employer collective bargaining deal

Employment minister Tony Burke is speaking on Radio National about the agreement between unions and small business to work on multi-employer collective bargaining.

(We have an explainer on multi-employer collective bargaining here.)

Burke said this agreement was “exactly the sort of cooperation we’ve been hoping to achieve with the summit”:

When the concept of multi-employer bargaining was first flagged by the ACLU last week, I leant in saying I was very interested in it. And one of the areas that really caused me to be interested is small business, effectively for both employers and for workers.

If you’re in small business right now, you are cut out of any of the benefits of enterprise bargaining … a small business doesn’t have an HR department. They don’t have the resources to do this. I grew up in a small business family myself, I’ve run my own small business. I know that you’re you’re spending your day on the fundamentals of the business and something like bargaining is something that you’re not going to have the opportunity to be engaged with.

Multi-employer is the only way that you’re going to have a chance to significantly open this up to the small business sector.

‘The current bargaining system was not built for us’

Alexi Boyd, the CEO of the Council of Small Business Organisations Australia, said small business had been “looking for a way forward” on workplace reform, and particularly workplace bargaining, “for a long time”:

We do not have resources that are available to big business with lawyers and HR departments. The current bargaining system was not built for us, it is not efficient and is too complicated. We welcome the opportunity to explore new flexible single or multi-employer options that can be customised to our circumstances. The one size fits all approach doesn’t work … Small business is seeking an environment that is conducive to employ more people and that reduces the complexity of compliance.

ACTU secretary Sally McManus said unions were committed to working with small business “to put in place bespoke and modern agreements that are easy to administer and suit the needs of employees and business owners”:

The current enterprise focused system was built for an economy of 30 years ago, it needs to be upgraded and work for the economy of today. The employees of small businesses, and their owners, should be able to access the same benefits from bargaining that bigger businesses have enjoyed.

Unions and small businesses have agreed to work together on workplace reform in the lead-up to the jobs and skills summit.

The ACTU, which represents more than 1.6 million workers, and the Council of Small Business Organisations Australi, which represents more than 800,000 small business members, announced their agreement this morning:

COSBOA and the ACTU have agreed to come together to explore ways to simplify and reduce complexity within the industrial relations system that will enable small businesses to employ more people and grow their businesses

The two organisations have agreed to support development of a simpler system for small business that includes:’

1. The ability for small business to be able to correctly embrace the workplace relations requirements

2. A simpler BOOT (better off overall test)

3. New options for flexibility in the workplace

4. New options around collective bargaining which include multi-employer agreements

Both organisations recognise the importance of small business owners and employees to our economy and have committed to work together with new laws to deliver workplace arrangements that are customised for small businesses that benefit owners and employees.

Jobs and skills summit explainer

Lifting wages and productivity and easing skill shortages will be at the top of the agenda at the jobs and skills summit this week, Paul Karp explains

The guest list is tight and has not yet been released in full. It will comprise of 30% employers and their representatives, 30% workers and unions, 30% subject matter experts and representatives from the community, education, employment services and social services sectors, and 10% from government.

You can read Paul’s full explainer here:

The builders of Australia’s planned warship fleet say they have clawed back more than a year of an announced 18-month delay.

BAE Systems Australia and defence officials say the design process has mopped up a range of issues on the $45bn project, so the planned 2031 delivery date is now “high confidence” and can be moved forward if the government wants an early delivery.

The news comes after Spanish shipbuilders Navantia pitched to build three more air warfare destroyers amid rising concerns about geopolitical instability in the region, and Australia’s military capability.

The Covid pandemic caused delays with the British type 26 ship the Australian ship is based on, and there were further delays because of the number of changes to that reference ship required by the defence department.

Craig Lockhart, BAE Systems Australia’s maritime managing director, said the company was “comfortable” that it had mitigated risk in the nine-ship program.

With the 18-month delay, construction of the first ship was not going to start until June 2024, but now it will go ahead in May 2023.

Lockhart said:

If the government were to ask for us to accelerate beyond what we are currently trying for, I think we’ve got more we can throw at it.

Tony Dalton, the defence department’s deputy secretary of national naval shipbuilding, said:

I don’t want to say that it’s going to be simple, everything in shipbuilding is hard and when we talk about accelerating the program we have to understand how we are managing those risks.

The anti-submarine Hunter class frigates are to replace the existing Anzac class ships and the project has been troubled by concerns they will be bigger and slower than expected because of the additional capability defence demands.

Defence officials said some of the issues were what-ifs and they had been addressed, and the ship would meet the navy’s requirements.

They were also sceptical that any “off-the-shelf” air warfare destroyers (such as those offered by Navantia) would be available sooner than the frigates, considering the need to integrate US weapons systems.

Today marks 100 days of the Albanese Labor government. Prime minister Anthony Albanese will mark the milestone with a speech at the National Press Club.

In a draft of the speech, seen by Guardian Australia, Albanese says he wants to move from the recovery phase of the pandemic to a period of reform and renewal:

After a wasted decade, we are not wasting a day. Government has a responsibility to plan for the future, to build for the long-term, to implement the reforms that arm people with every chance to fulfil their potential. Not change for the sake of it, reforms that help people lead better lives.

A key election promise, the jobs and skills summit, will take place this week. His aim for the two-day summit, he says, is to create “a culture of cooperation – a renewed understanding between unions and industry and small business and government and community groups”.

Albanese has already flagged support for a central ask of the Australian Council of Trade Unions submission to the summit, which is to allow industry-wide bargaining.

Also on reform, the national cabinet on Wednesday will reportedly discuss reducing the isolation period for a person who tests positive to Covid-19 from seven days to five. It comes as Australia is just recovering from the winter wave of Covid cases, which at its peak saw more than 5,000 people with Covid admitted to hospital a day. The daily hospitalisation rate now sits at about 3,000, according to our Covid data tracker.

We’ve also got an update on Australia’s long-awaited warships. There was an 18-month delay in production but that’s apparently now only six months. More on that shortly.

Let’s crack on. If we miss anything, you can reach me at calla.wahlquist@theguardian.com or on Twitter @callapilla.