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This morning, home affairs officials have confirmed that the department paid $15,981 to an unnamed first assistant secretary in the department for a property listed on AirBnb used to house a ministerial delegation from September to November.

Chief operating officer Justine Saunders said the department contacted owners of suitable properties through AirBnB “without knowing who the owners of the properties were”.

Saunders said:

One of those properties was a home affairs officer. The home affairs officer, upon receipt of a request from it, was only referred to a government agency seeking to rent the premises, identified that perhaps it could be particularly related to this initiative that home affairs was now responsible for. And as a result, he reached out to a senior officer of the department to seek advice in regards to a conflict of interest.

The department secretary, Michael Pezzullo, said he inquired into it but was satisfied that “proper conduct was engaged in” because the officer self-identified to the department that his property was being rented and offered to remove the property from the pool.

According to Saunders there were “actually no other properties available” and property was required at short notice.

Labor’s Raff Ciccone said it was “mind-blowing” that only one property fit the bill.

Pezzullo said hotels and student accommodation were deemed not suitable, so the department needed a freestanding house at short notice.

Pezzullo said that if the officer had attempted to disguise the transaction, or not drawn it to the department’s attention, or not offered to opt out, he “might have a similarly jaundiced view” of it, but “those conditions are not apparent”.

The Australian Council of Social Services (Acoss) has called on the government to address the climate crisis in its next budget as a matter of urgency. Acoss wants the government to forego tax cuts for the wealthy and invest instead in social security, a green energy transition, and a housing program.

The calls form part of the peak body’s submission to the federal treasury ahead of the federal budget – and, of course, the election.

The submission calls for increases in all income support payments to at least the level of the pension ($69 a day); investment in energy efficiency improvements for 1.8m low-income homes to the tune of $5,000 per dwelling; emergency energy debt relief of $1,000 a household; the establishment of an Energy Transition Authority to manage “fair and inclusive transition for fossil fuel dependent workers and communities”; and a $7bn, 20,000-dwelling social housing package to be rolled out over the next 3 years.

Acoss chief executive Cassandra Goldie said raising the base rate of welfare payments and a focus on employment ought to be “a high priority” for the country, and pointed again to the experience of doubled jobseeker payments during Covid lockdowns as evidence of what investment in social security can do.

She said:

I can’t tell you, the number of times people have come to us … to say that it was profoundly different, that period when the unemployment payment was more adequate, and the way that changed lives. But what we also showed is that we actually had the real life experiment of what it means for the economy when you properly prioritise putting resources into the hands of people who will actually spend it.

The reallocation of resources away from fossil fuel subsidies, on which Australia spends more than $10bn annually, to climate crisis solutions would both address existing and prospective inequity, and contribute to warding off the catastrophic triggers of inequity in the form of climate-related disasters, the submission argues.

And it’s not just extreme weather events – renters and people on low incomes are also unable to access large swathes of the renewable energy market as consumers, making a market-based response to climate crisis wholly inadequate.

Without appropriate and adequate social security, transition from fossil fuels economy to a green economy would exacerbate inequalities as industries shut down. But this also provides economic opportunities, and transition could be managed in conjunction with appropriate investment in social services.

Goldie said:

We’ve always known that the effects of climate change would hit people on low incomes both hardest and longest and that’s exactly what’s happening…

This is not about a trade off between strengthening the economy and the social services and safety net. We’ve actually demonstrated just how powerful it is both socially and economically, for us to be investing more [in the latter].