Health News at Your Fingertips

Aged care sector calls for more protection amid Covid surge

Aged care providers are calling for urgent action to protect residents and staff from a winter Covid-19 wave that is hitting more than a third of the country’s facilities.

The Aged and Community Care Providers Association said 6,000 residents and 3,400 staff were infected in 1,013 facilities as of Thursday.

The association’s interim chief executive Paul Sadler said 10-15% of staff were0 already isolating or quarantining at home, and the coming weeks would put intense pressure on aged care residents and workers.

ACCPA is concerned that anywhere up to two-thirds of aged care homes could be affected by active outbreaks over coming weeks.

The increased availability in surge workforce, including the Australian defence force, over the past week has been welcome, but there is still a shortfall.

The reality is we can’t leave older people without adequate levels of care for too long.

Sadler said 2,301 residents had died this year, including 114 in the past week.

He called for more support for a surge workforce, including ADF personnel, until at least September.

– From AAP

Victoria extends free RAT access for people with disability

Adeshola Ore

The Victorian government will extend access to free rapid antigen tests for people with a disability.

The Andrews government announced on Sunday that Victorians with a disability could continue to access 20 free RATs per visit from state-run testing centres until the end of September.

The disability minister, Colin Brooks, said the extension would ensure Victorians with a disability were protected during the winter period:

Early detection of Covid-19 helps protect people from serious illness by ensuring earlier diagnosis and treatment – and this is especially so for the most vulnerable in our community, who experience its effects more harshly.

No people with Covid-19 have died in Queensland overnight, with the state recording 5,804 new cases on Sunday morning, 1042 people in hospital and 19 in ICU.

Move to WA, Mark McGowan urges

The western Australian premier, Mark McGowan, has pointed to rising inflation on the east coast to make his pitch for people to head west.

McGowan released the results of a report by Deloitte Access Economics that found Perth was the most affordable of four major capital cities thanks to the availability of affordable housing and low mortgage repayments.

The report, commission by WA Department of Treasury, compared Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, and Bunbury with other regional centres to inform the government’s plan to “attract and retrain skilled workers to the state”.

In presenting the report, McGowan said it showed Western Australia was “the most affordable and successful place to live.”

Western Australians enjoy some of the highest median household incomes in the country, and most affordable cost of living, particularly for housing and mortgage repayments, and other day-to-day expenditures.

Throughout the pandemic, thousands of people have moved west, incentivised by our safe handling of the pandemic, the economic opportunities on offer and our great lifestyle.

Not only do we have one of the best performing economies but also significantly lower living costs than other major Australian cities.

It found the average Perth household spend $16,30 a week on goods and services, including household costs.

This figure was 24% lower than Sydney ($2,134), 19% lower than Brisbane ($2,002) and 10% lower than Melbourne ($1,805).

Wages were also high, with those in Perth earning a median household income of $2,027 a week compared with $2,146 in Sydney, $1,958 in Melbourne and $1,962 in Brisbane.

The situation is a change from the middle of past decade, when the iron ore boom and the six-figure salaries it promised caused a price surge across Perth.

Australia could reach an inflation rate of about 6% as early as this week, as households continue to absorb higher fuel, food and housing costs, AAP reports.

The cost of living has been rising all year, leading to an annual rate of 5.1% in the March quarter, the Australian Bureau of Statistics revealed in April.

But the survey for the June quarter, due on Wednesday, could show prices have risen enough to take the annual rate to the peak forecast by the central bank much earlier than expected.

In May, the Reserve Bank of Australia forecast the consumer price index to reach 5.5% in the June quarter.

It also predicted the index to hit 6% by the end of December, before falling in 2023.

That peak may have been reached much earlier than predicted, if the expectations of financial market economists are anything to go by.

Commonwealth Bank of Australia economists expect inflation to rise by 1.9% in the quarter, for an annual rate of 6.2%.

That would be the highest annual number since the December quarter in 1990 – or in more than 31 years.

St George Bank senior economist Jarek Kowcza says price pressures definitely continued to heat up in the quarter, when the cost of an iceberg lettuce peaked at an eye-watering $10.

We expect an annual headline inflation rate starting with a ‘6’.

Economists agree that whatever the outcome, the RBA will lift its 1.35% cash interest rate in August, for the fourth time in as many months.

The RBA began raising the cash interest rate from an all-time low of 0.1% in May.

Two people with Covid-19 have died in Tasmania overnight, with the state recording 1,155 new cases on Sunday morning, 174 people in hospital and three in ICU.

MP Dai Le wants more done to help households with bills

The Independent MP for Fowler, Dai Le, said health and cost of living pressures would be among her priorities as parliament was set to resume.

Le spoke to the ABC this morning saying she wanted the government to extend the cut to fuel excise and do more assist households struggling to pay bills.

That’s something that I will be fighting for, for our community – the high cost of living – to make sure that with interest rates rising, food prices rising, and rentals and housing affordability. It’s just not within reach of many families here in Fowler any more.

Le said she might not be a teal independent but climate change was still “very important” for voters of her electorate.

I just want to make sure that it also takes into consideration the cost of living and the security of the electricity load for our communities, as well as for the rest of Australia. We need to ensure that we access affordable electricity prices and having access to that in times of crisis.

Sarah Martin

What the Labor government’s agenda looks like

Australia’s 47th parliament formally opens on Tuesday, marking the first time Anthony Albanese will stand up in the House of Representatives as the nation’s prime minister.

The new parliament will look very different to the last. Labor will have 76 members on the floor of the chamber, while the Coalition’s numbers have shrunk to just 58. The crossbench will be the largest in history, with 16 MPs, including four Greens.

It will also be a more diverse parliament, and one with more women. About 40% of the new parliament is female after 58 women were elected to the lower house, including 19 new MPs, while at least a dozen newly elected MPs come from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.

As Albanese, his senior ministers and Labor’s 17 new MPs find their feet after the election held just 63 days ago, the Guardian’s chief political correspondent, Sarah Martin, outlines what the new government’s agenda looks like.

Here is the clip of Tony Burke answering the question from ABC Insiders host David Speers about whether the party will move to ban Dorothy Dixers from parliament.

Tony Burke has announced Labor will make good on its election promise to scrap the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC) during his appearance this morning on ABC Insiders.

The federal employment and workplace relations minister said the ABCC had overstepped its authority by investigating union members for the flags they fly or the stickers they put on their helmets.

The final question for Burke is on the negotiations over the government’s climate legislation.

He says:

What I can give you are the three principles that Chris Bowen is using in the negotiations. The first is that will be implementing our promises. The second that negotiations are happening in good faith. And the third thing to remember, particularly with the announcement being made today, is under the safeguards mechanism all the large polluters are now on a trajectory towards net zero by 2050.

On the safeguards mechanism:

We took to the election the safeguards mechanism. I’m referring to the announcement from the Greens you asked about today – [it] needs to be seen in the light of the safeguards mechanism, has all the large polluters on a trajectory to net zero by 2050.

Burke is also asked about parliament, which begins sitting again from Tuesday. Burke has previously described parliament business as a “farce” and is asked how the new government will fix that.

Burke says the government will change Standing Orders and the culture of government.

We got to the point where 15 seconds into a question ministers had had enough talking about their own policy, and were just sledging for the rest of the question. Ministers and governments determine the respect they are willing to show for the Parliament. We ended up getting to the point where ministers in the previous government were delivering speeches on the wrong bill because they weren’t even responsible for their own legislation.

But will the government ban the use of Dorothy Dixers?

The questions from our own side, will you judge what they are like when you watch them, and I expect what will happen is people will think it is not what some would regard as the ideal, some will think it’s going to certainly be a hell of a lot better than where we were. We are not going to create a situation where the government agenda isn’t part of Question Time. Of course it will be. We will not create a situation where the opposition and crossbench are the only people to determine what the issues of the day are.

Which sounds like a long way of saying “no”.

Labor has wanted to repeal the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC) but Burke now offers some detail on what the government will now do: cut its powers back to the “bare legal minimum”. Burke:

As of Tuesday, the ABCC and its powers will be pulled back to the bare legal minimum. So a lot of what it’s been doing can appropriately be done by another regulator. Some of it goes to health and safety regulators, some of it goes to the Fair Work Ombudsman. And some of the things that the ABCC’s been doing, which I just think have been ridiculous rules, are gone all together.

Burke says the commission has been more interested in target unions and been investigating workers for the “sticker someone is told to put on their helmet” and what flags are flown on site.

Those sorts of initials should never be something for an official government regulator to waste taxpayers money from.

Burke says he does not want to impose minimum hours on gig economy workers as this would “undo” the technology.

I don’t want to destroy the technology. OK. So part of the technology involves flexibility and a lot of the workers in the gig economy, for example, do want the sort of flexibility that’s there. What they don’t want is a situation where the rates of pay are so appallingly low that we become a country where you have to rely on tips to be able to make ends meet.

Gig economy should have ‘minimum standards’ – Burke

Speers asks whether gig economies should have a minimum wage.

Burke:

They should all have minimum standards. Now, for example, for some gig work it’s actually effectively on five-minute shirts rather than three or four hour minimum shifts. So how you calculate what a reasonable minimum is when you’re on a much shorter shift may in fact be an amount higher than the minimum wage.

Somebody delivering a pizza on the back of a bike where they have no control over how much they are paid, that person is not a small business person, and they need minimum standards.

Burke on casual work

Will the government seek to change the definition of casual work?

Burke:

I’m much more interested in how we can promote secure work and get more people into secure jobs than just redefining everything about casual employment. There is some aspects of the casual worker definition that do need to be brought up to date, and there can occasionally be some leave entitlements that are appropriate but I don’t want to just legislate everybody.

Burke is asked to define what a secure job is. Burke begins by talking about the Fair Work Act.

If you go through the objectives of the Fair Work Act, flexibility is there, security isn’t. And I think security needs to be there as well. Examples of security, obviously full-time and part time work where your hours are guaranteed, where you have leave entitlements they are examples of secure work.