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Dept Liberal Leader Sussan Ley is being interviewed on Afternoon Briefing about the Job Summit right now. She is standing by her decision to boycott the jobs summit:

Look, 10% of workers are in unions. But 25% of the attendees at the jobs summit are going to be the unions. So that’s already an overrepresentation of a certain point of view. I’m not saying it’s not a valid point of view, it needs to be included.

But I’m saying that by stacking the summit with people who have a predetermined outcome, led by a Government with a predetermined outcome, who is taking instructions from those that it has installed at this summit is really not in the interests of small business, of workers and the economy more broadly.

She says the government should act now and adopt the Liberal’s policy to allow retirees to work more before their welfare payments are cut.

They could adopt our policy to have veterans and pensioners, retirees back in the workforce without affecting their income. And there’s a workforce ready-made to start tomorrow.

They could allow the private sector to be more involved in training, industry-led training and quickly develops the skills that we need. And they could do something about visas.

They’re talking about that but they haven’t announced anything. All these things could be in place already. We’re waiting for a talkfest.

Josh Taylor has more information on this morning’s shark attack here:

Anthony Albanese is expected to address the media around 4.45pm – I will bring you that as soon as it happens:

Adeshola Ore

Little-known Canadian-born businessman Geoffrey Cumming has made one of the largest single philanthropic donations in Australian history, providing $250m for the creation of a global pandemic therapeutics centre in Melbourne.

The centre is designed to invest in developing treatments that can fight infectious diseases and will be named in honour of Cumming, who currently lives in Melbourne and whose donation will be used over a 20-year-period.

Former Test cricketer Michael Slater charged with assault and intimidation

From AAP:

The former Test cricketer and commentator Michael Slater has been charged with assaulting and trying to intimidate a man in a Sydney hospital.

The 52-year-old did not appear at Manly local court on Wednesday, entering pleas of not guilty through a lawyer to two charges of common assault and one of attempted intimidation.

The offences against a 36-year-old man are alleged to have occurred on 18 July at the Northern Beaches hospital.

Slater played in 74 Tests for Australia, scoring 5,312 runs at an average of 42.83 after making his debut during the 1993 Ashes tour of England. Seven dropped him as a commentator ahead of last summer’s cricket season, citing budgetary pressures.

Two NSW beaches closed after shark attack

Avoca and North Avoca beaches on the Central Coast are closed after a shark attacked a surfer earlier this morning.

The surfer was bitten on the arm around 10:30 am and a drone operator has been sent to the area to search for the shark.

People are being warned to avoid the beaches for now.

Josh Taylor

NBN Co acknowledges advantages of fibre optic internet connections over copper

NBN Co, free of the former government’s need to justify ditching the full-fibre National Broadband Network, seems to be talking up fibre-to-the-premises for the first time in a decade.

The company has today released a statement of corporate intent, which is just a short document summarising the company’s strategy, sustainability, employment policies, and things like that. But there was an interesting paragraph after NBN discussed the plans to upgrade 3.5m homes to full fibre from fibre-to-the-node by the end of 2025. (This is part what the company was already doing under the Coalition but expanded under Labor.)

It seems now there’s been a change of government and a change of policy, NBN Co is clearly acknowledging the advantage fibre offers over copper:

This extended access to Fibre to the Premises also means the company will be able to significantly reduce the number of copper connections in the network.

This is central to the company’s plan to improve customer experience and reduce maintenance and operating costs. Fibre is inherently more capable of delivering faster upload and download speeds and is generally more reliable than copper connections.

There’s no similar statement in the last corporate plan released in 2021, for comparison.

Greenhouse gas emissions increased by 1.5% in quarter after Covid restrictions ended

Adam Morton

National greenhouse gas emissions increased by 1.5% over the year to March as Australians emerged from Covid-19 restrictions.

Quarterly emissions data for the March quarter show emissions over the previous 12 months rose by 7.4m tonnes, reaching 487.1m tonnes, due to increases in carbon pollution from transport, manufacturing industries and agriculture.

They more than cancelled out the continuing drop in emissions from electricity generation as the country burned less coal and uses more renewable energy.

The quarterly report said national emissions for the previous year were 21.6% below 2005 levels. The Albanese government has a target of cutting emissions to 43% below 2005 levels by 2030.

Most of the cut recorded in the accounts since 2005 was due to changes in emissions from land-clearing and forestry, mostly driven by state government policies. Emissions across other parts of the economy – including fossil fuel industries, farming and waste management – were down only 1.4% since 2005.

The climate change minister, Chris Bowen, said the data showed the previous Coalition government had relied on the pandemic and drought to cut emissions and had no climate or energy policies.

Even a global recession could only interrupt the LNP’s decade of climate policy neglect for so long.

A Senate committee inquiry into Labor’s climate change legislation, which includes the 43% target, is due to release its report on the bill later today.

Josh Butler

Australian sailors to train on British nuclear submarines

The defence minister, Richard Marles, will tomorrow announce a landmark agreement for Australian sailors to train on British nuclear submarines in the next step forward for acquiring the advanced military hardware under the Aukus pact.

The Times newspaper reports that Marles – currently on a trip to Europe, meeting his ministerial counterparts in Germany, France and the United Kingdom – is working on arrangements with Britain for Australians to train on Astute-class submarines and “access sensitive technology that has been kept secret from foreign nations for decades”.

Guardian Australia has contacted Marles’ office for comment.

“Having the opportunity for Australian submariners to gain experience on the submarines of either the United States or the United Kingdom is going to be absolutely fundamental,” Marles told the Times.

The Aukus pact will see Australia gain access to nuclear technology kept secret by the United States and UK, with a view to acquiring nuclear-powered subs to replace our ageing diesel-powered fleet. A key sticking point is whether Australia will go with American or British models of ship.

The Times says Marles will join the prime minister, Boris Johnson, and the British defence secretary, Ben Wallace, at the commissioning ceremony for a new submarine tomorrow.

Speaking to Radio National this morning, Marles said he would also visit the BAE shipyards where submarines are manufactured, saying the government was “determining what will be the successor platform for the Collins-class submarine. That’s the process we’re working through with both the United States and the UK.”

“We’ve made it really clear that not only do we need to make the choice as to exactly which platform we run with, but we need to be finding options which are sooner rather than later,” he said.

“The former government left us with … a situation of not having a prospective boat in the water until the 2040s. This is a long way into the future and we are trying to examine, with both the United Kingdom and the United States, about whether there is any way in which we can get that date brought forward, and to the extent that there is any capability gap that arises as a result of whenever that date is, ways in which we can fill that capability.”

Paul Karp

Tony Sheldon, Labor senator and the chair of the Senate’s employment legislation committee, has forcefully endorsed unions’ call to be able to bargain with more than one employer at once.

In a speech to the Kingston Reid employment conference , Sheldon said:

There have been proposals made in the lead up to the Summit which warrant serious consideration. In my view, the most important is the ACTU’s proposal to unlock multi-employer bargaining … As workplaces have become more fragmented, an industrial relations system based solely on enterprise level bargaining has become impractical and outdated.

It isn’t working for workers, and it isn’t working for employers, as the Council of Small Businesses [COSBOA] has acknowledged. The ACTU has made a very persuasive case for why multi-employer bargaining is needed in low-paid, often-feminised industries like aged care and childcare…

But the issues with our industrial relations system isn’t limited to those
industries. The textbook case for why single enterprise bargaining is broken is
Qantas. Alan Joyce’s enduring legacy will be that he proved our enterprise bargaining system is broken and can only be fixed through multi-employer bargaining.

Sheldon cited Qantas’ record setting up companies to hire workers through entities like “QF Cabin Crew Australia” and “Qantas Ground Services”.

He said:

If Qantas workers are engaged through 20 or more different employers, single employer bargaining does not work. If Qantas can tell its workers they either sign this agreement or they’ll set up a new company to hire them, single employer bargaining does not work. Alan Joyce has proven that multi-employer bargaining is the only way to protect and improve wages and conditions in aviation.

These comments are even more forward-leaning than those of the workplace relations minister, Tony Burke, who has also been endorsing unions’ key demand for Thursday and Friday’s jobs and skills summit.

ACTU responds to school-aged workers proposals from retail bodies

AAP reported earlier that the Australian Retailers Association was calling for children as young as 13 to help fill labour shortages. Readers with good memories may recall that Scott Morrison took a similar idea for younger forklift drivers to National Cabinet – though that one didn’t last too long.

The ARA’s chief executive, Paul Zahra, said Australia is at a crisis point when it came to labour shortages with more than 40,000 vacancies in the retail sector.

Agreeing to a national framework on young workers would help mobilise a willing and able cohort of people to help address the staffing shortfall.

But the government cannot agree to allow 13 year olds to work if it wants to maintain a commitment to international labour organisation conventions, according to unions.

The president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, Michele O’Neil, said:

We’ll of course hear what’s put forward, but it’s not something that we think is an answer.

Chalmers: Covid support payments ‘can’t continue forever’

From AAP:

Isolation requirements and pandemic leave payments will be at the top of the agenda when federal, state and territory leaders meet for national cabinet.

The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, will host his colleagues in Sydney on Wednesday afternoon where state premiers will push to shorten the Covid-19 isolation time from seven to five days.

But while the federal government will be responsive to the health advice, Australians should not expect the emergency payments to go on forever, the treasurer, Jim Chalmers, said:

The reality … is that kind of support can’t continue forever [and] it’s also contingent on some of the other ways that we’re responding to this health and economic challenge.

One of the issues at play is the length of the isolation period and, not wanting to preempt the discussion that will happen this afternoon, it’s a relevant consideration as well.

I will bring you more when we have it.

Ben Smee

Two Queensland police officers who arrested and handcuffed prominent First Nations writer and academic Chelsea Watego have told a tribunal they did not also approach or investigate an allegedly “aggressive white man” who was also the focus of nightclub security guards at the time they arrived.

ABS: Covid and flu symptoms reporting up but testing down

More Australians reported household members experiencing cold, flu or Covid-19 symptoms, but fewer reported testing for Covid-19, according to survey results released today by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).

David Zago, head of household surveys at the ABS, said:

Our latest household impacts of Covid-19 Survey, conducted between 10 and 30 July 2022, showed 42% of households experienced cold, flu or Covid-19 symptoms, up from 32% with symptoms in April 2022.

However, only 48% of households had a Covid-19 test in the past four weeks, down from 62% in April.

The percentage of households where someone had a positive Covid-19 test in July has remained about the same since April – 27% and 23%, respectively.

The survey also asked Australians about the impacts of Covid-19 on their household’s working arrangements and school or childcare attendance.

Zago said:

One in four Australians reported that the job situation of someone in their household had changed due to Covid-19 in the last four weeks – 23%, up from 18% in April.