Latest news with #AlbaneseGovernment
News.com.au
2 days ago
- Business
- News.com.au
Treasurer Jim Chalmers has declared his stance on push to increase the GST
Treasurer Jim Chalmers has declared he won't play the 'rule in, rule out' game on future tax changes, including lifting the GST, despite making clear his personal opposition to the idea. Speaking at the National Press Club, the Treasurer outlined his ambition to develop a 'bold' reform agenda. However, he has warned that wherever the debate lands, he won't be discarding the tax reform plans for which he secured a mandate at the last election. That includes his superannuation tax changes targeting wealthy Australians with more than $3 million in retirement savings. 'We're not looking for opportunities to go back on the things that we have got a mandate for,' the Treasurer said. 'We're looking for new ideas.' Despite declaring that the 'rule in, rule out game' was corrosive to public debate about big ideas because it sparked media firestorms, Mr Chalmers was then asked about the inevitable push from the states about lifting the GST. While the International Monetary Fund has previously suggested Australia should expand consumption taxes such as the GST to help repair a blowout in the deficit, that's not an idea the Treasurer has backed. The GST has been stuck at 10 per cent for 23 years. During his speech at the press club, Mr Chalmers was asked if he had an open mind about revisiting the GST ahead of talks from senior economists and business leaders to inform the Albanese Government's future agenda. 'Historically, I've had a view about the GST,' the Treasurer replied. 'I think it's hard to adequately compensate people and I think often an increase in the GST is spent three or four times over with the — by the time people are finished with all the things they want to try and do with it. 'What I'm going to try and do, because I know the states will have a view on it, I'm going to trial not to dismiss every idea that I know that people will bring to the roundtable. 'I suspect the states will have a view about the GST. It's not a view I've been attracted to historically, but I'm going to try not to get in the process of shooting ideas between now and the round table. 'My view has not changed on all of the other times that I've been asked about it. But I think one of the ways I'm going to be inclusive and respectful. I suspect people will raise that question.' 'So you're not ruling it out?,' he was asked, prompting laughter. 'I haven't changed my view on it. And, again, it's a nice little cheeky attempt to get a rule-in-rule-out in,' he said. It sounded to me like you were ruling it out,' Nine's Andrew Probyn said. 'I'm not walking away from those views,' the Treasurer said. 'We genuinely want to hear people's ideas.' Treasurer Jim Chalmers has previously opposed raising the GST or cutting company tax rates, expressing a preference to undertake 'modest but meaningful' tax changes in 'bite-sized chunks'. Two years ago, Mr Chalmers warned that raising the GST would not fix the problem since the tax was collected by the federal government and distributed back to the states. 'From my point of view, there are distributional issues with the GST in particular. Every cent goes to the state and territory governments, so it wouldn't be an opportunity necessarily, at least not directly, to repair the Commonwealth budget,' he said.
The Australian
3 days ago
- Politics
- The Australian
Surge in Australians trying to flee Middle East as Trump hints US intervention
Almost 2000 Australians are seeking government help to flee Israel and Iran as the two longtime foes continue trading deadly strikes and Donald Trump hints at US intervention. The Albanese government has shut embassies across the Middle East, issued do not travel warnings and set up a national crisis team to assist citizens in the region. Jim Chalmers said on Wednesday 'more than 1000 Australians and family members in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories' had registered – more than tripling the number on Monday. He said a further 870 had registered in Iran, where the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade have advised Australians to 'shelter in place'. Treasurer Jim Chalmers says nearly 2000 Australians are seeking evacuation from both Israel and Iran. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman 'We're monitoring developments in that very dangerous part of the world very closely,' the Treasurer told the ABC. 'Obviously, our major focus is on the human cost of this escalating conflict. 'There are economic costs as well. We're monitoring both of those things, and I'll be briefed on all of that in the next hour or so.' Earlier, Richard Marles said there were 'thousands of Australians in both Iran and Israel' and that the Albanese government expected the number requests for help would rise. The Deputy Prime Minister said the 'fundamental issue' with evacuating Australians was 'that the airspace over both Iran and Israel in fact is closed'. Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles says the national crisis team is considering evacuations from Israel by land. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman 'But as soon as there is any opportunity to pursue an assisted departure, we will,' the Deputy Prime Minister told Sky News. Mr Marles said he could not 'give a definitive answer' on when that might be. 'What we're doing is really working up all the options that we've got available to us so that when there is an opportunity we are in a position to provide those assisted departures,' he said. 'And in the meantime … we are advising Australians in the region to shelter in place.' Mr Marles also confirmed DFAT was considering evacuations from Israel by land through Jordan. 'There has been some efforts there, but fundamentally what we are looking at is providing assisted departures by air when there is an opportunity for that to occur,' he said. 'And so they are really the contingencies that we are working up right now.' US President Donald Trump has hinted the US could get involved in the spiralling conflict between Israel and Iran. Picture: Atta Kenare / AFP Donald Trump hinted overnight the US could get involved in the conflict. He posted on social media that the US knew 'exactly where the so-called 'Supreme Leader' is hiding', referring to Iran's leader, Ayotollah Ali Khamenei. 'He is an easy target, but is safe there – We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now,' the US President said. 'But we don't want missiles shot at civilians, or American soldiers. Our patience is wearing thin. Thank you for your attention to this matter!' Minutes later, he posted: 'UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!' It came after he hastily bailed on the G7 summit in Canada and warned 'everyone' to 'evacuate Tehran'. More to come. Read related topics: Donald TrumpIsrael
News.com.au
3 days ago
- Politics
- News.com.au
Surge in Australians trying to flee Middle East as Trump hints US intervention
The number of Australians seeking government help to leave Iran and Israel has more than doubled since Monday, with Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles saying some 1250 had registered for evacuation. Mr Marles said on Wednesday the Albanese government was 'working very hard on providing for assisted departures'. 'The real problem right now is that airspace (in) both Iran and Israel is closed so that is making matters difficult, but we are working on being able to move as soon as there is an opportunity to do so,' Mr Marles told the ABC. 'We've also got our lines open and there have been a number of people in both Iran and Israel who have indicated that they would want to take the opportunity of an assisted departure, so this is very much a focus of our activity right now.' He said the last advice he received 'was about 650 people were interested in an assisted departure out of Iran, and about 600 out of Israel'. 'But, as I say, those numbers are moving, as you would expect, in this moment,' Mr Marles said. 'There are actually thousands of Australians in both Iran and Israel, so we are really preparing for numbers of that order and we're expecting those numbers to rise and so a lot of work is being done to put ourselves in a position to do assisted departures.' Donald Trump overnight hinted the US would get involved in the Middle East conflict. He posted on social media that the US knew 'exactly where the so-called 'Supreme Leader' is hiding', referring to Iran's leader Ayotollah Ali Khamenei. 'He is an easy target, but is safe there – We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now,' the US President said. 'But we don't want missiles shot at civilians, or American soldiers. Our patience is wearing thin. Thank you for your attention to this matter!' Minutes later, he posted: 'UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!' It came after he hastily bailed on the G7 summit in Canada and warned 'everyone' to 'evacuate Tehran'.
ABC News
3 days ago
- Politics
- ABC News
Albanese government's tougher childcare safety rules don't go far enough
As tens of thousands of pages of regulatory childcare documents continue to pour into NSW parliament exposing systemic failures including abuse, neglect and expired or missing Working With Children Checks, the Albanese government has released a new suite of child safety measures. Touted as "tougher child safety rules" and backed by every state and territory, the new measures include 24 hour mandatory reporting of abuse, a vape ban and stricter rules on technology use in childcare centres. While any change is better than none, parents, educators and experts say the reforms are tokenistic, a Band-Aid fix, and ignore the deeper structural failures festering in the childcare system. To put it into perspective, the reforms steer clear of more substantial issues such as establishing a national childcare commission, as recommended in September 2024 by the Productivity Commission, or conducting an independent review into the National Quality Standards and its oversight body, the Australian Children's Education & Care Quality Authority (ACECQA). Nor do they address the growing calls for a national Working With Children Check (WWCC) system, despite the arrest and conviction of paedophile childcare worker Ashley Griffith, whose case exposed dangerous gaps in child protection, particularly the fractured and inconsistent nature of WWCC across states and territories. Critics say these incremental announcements, dropping every few months since the ABC's investigation into the $20 billion childcare sector, are a clear attempt to avoid a royal commission or full parliamentary inquiry and instead offer piecemeal fixes while sidestepping the deeper reckoning many argue the sector urgently needs. The previous reforms included getting tougher on centres that fail to meet the national quality standards from opening new Child Care Subsidy approved services and taking compliance action against existing providers with "egregious and continued breaches". The NSW regulatory documents, which are slowly being released following a call for papers by Greens MP Abigail Boyd, reveal widespread issues including deficient documentation, highlighting deeper failures in training, oversight, and accountability across the early childhood workforce. The documents offer a rare glimpse into what's happening behind closed doors in centres across the country, exposing patterns that go far beyond isolated incidents. Boyd said she sees nothing in the reforms that would prevent the types of horrific incidents she reads about every day in the regulatory documents. "Instead we get these piecemeal reforms that just tinker around the edges and don't face, head on, the systemic problems that have been created by allowing big companies to prey on our children for profit." She said until there is significant systemic reform, there will continue to be neglect and abuse of children and exploitation of workers. "The kind of reform that will re-establish trust in services and restore the sector to one where children are prioritised and workers are respected." In the three months since the stories first aired, thousands of parents, insiders and experts have contacted the ABC, painting a disturbing picture of a sector in crisis. Chey Carter, a former childcare worker and now an industry consultant said if we don't fix the structural issues that drive poor quality and impact child safety, little would change. "If we don't address the foundational issues then we are building compliance on top of dysfunction," she said. Carter, who previously worked for Affinity Education, a major provider owned by private equity, said the real threats to child safety often come from organisational decisions that prioritise profit, convenience, or optics over care. "We cannot legislate our way out of a culture that silences those who raise concerns," she said. Affinity has come under increasing scrutiny after 7.30 obtained leaked footage showing a childcare worker at one of its centres repeatedly slapping a baby and laughing. The footage was posted on Snapchat and reported by a concerned parent who saw it. In a recent workforce survey Carter conducted for NSW educators, 34 per cent of respondents said they had avoided reporting serious child safety concerns due to fear of retaliation. Many described being punished, isolated, or having their hours cut after speaking up. "I witnessed a staff member physically hurt a child," one respondent said. Another said: "I provided a written statement and was told by the second-in-charge that she would follow it up… Following this, my working hours were drastically reduced." And another was quoted saying they reported an incident to the Department of Education and the director started treating her differently after the department came out and investigated. "It was clear the complaint came from me." "If we don't address the foundational issues then we are building compliance on top of dysfunction," she said. Carter said supervision was another serious issue raised in the survey. "Workers told us they are routinely expected to manage unsafe ratios, often left alone with groups of children leaving them unable to safely respond to incidents," she said. The National Quality Framework Review of Child Safety Arrangements Report highlighted that in 2022-23 inadequate supervision was the second most frequently breached section of the National Law. "Being alone with children isn't just a supervision issue, it's a serious child protection risk," Carter said. A common theme in the answers of survey respondents was the chronic staff shortages in the sector. "It's become normalised for one educator to be left alone with an entire group of children when another staff member needs to step away — even just for a bathroom break," one respondent said. The brutal reality is Australia's childcare sector is now dominated by for profits, with more than 73 per cent of long day care operated by the private sector, including private equity, listed companies and investment bankers. It has created unintended consequences as too many centres put profit before care. Centres cut corners by skimping on food, gaming staff to child ratios by rostering just enough staff to meet minimum legal ratios on paper, even if it compromises supervision, overusing trainees and casuals to keep costs down, and some spend less than $1 a child per day on food. It has also created so-called childcare deserts, which are areas deemed financially unviable. These are typically lower-income or regional communities where high overheads and lower fee-paying capacity make it unattractive for for-profit providers to set up services. The result is families left with long waitlists, no access to early learning, and in some cases, parents forced to leave the workforce due to a lack of care. A parent whose child was sexually abused by a predator at childcare, who can't legally reveal her identity, said the mandatory reporting of 24 hours was appropriate and should never have been seven days. But she said it doesn't address the lack of understanding of what should be reported, whether childcare workers should rely on four year olds to disclose their own abuse, employment and visa insecurity. She said the centre her child was at had a policy in place regarding the use of personal devices and service issued devices. "Having policies does not mean that there is a culture of doing the right thing and consequences for doing the wrong thing," she said. "All of it is lots of good sounding words, but pointless without appropriate regulations, changes to legislation, funding for regulators, better screening and monitoring of providers and childcare workers, regulation rather than voluntary compliance and proper consequence," she said. Georgie Dent, the chief executive of The Parenthood, a parent advocacy organisation representing more than 80,000 parents, carers and supporters, said to ensure children's safety and wellbeing there needed to be systemic reform. "There is no question that monitoring educator behaviour is an important safeguard," she said. "But we must also confront the underlying reality — that the current system enables business models where profit can be prioritised over children's safety and wellbeing. "Surveillance alone will not protect children in a system that too often rewards cost-cutting and corner-cutting." She said safety quality, access and affordability needed to go hand in hand. "Band-aid fixes won't deliver the kind of early learning system that every child and every family in this country needs." She said the way to fix it was to reform funding. NSW regulatory documents that the ABC has gained access to in recent months highlight damning evidence the sector is broken. Last year in a southern Sydney suburb, a compliance direction was issued to a childcare centre after allegations emerged that it failed to meet legal obligations, including accusing two educators of child protection breaches. The notice said the nominated supervisor and other staff were aware of the allegations but failed to report them to the Office of the Children's Guardian. It said most staff interviewed by the regulator did not know they were legally required to report such allegations. It said one long-term staff member had worked at the centre for 15 years without ever being informed of her child protection responsibilities. It told the centre it needed to set up processes including "provide evidence that all staff have participated in training around the existence and their obligations under child protection law… reporting via the Department of Communities and Justice and the Office of the Children's Guardian as required." It said failure to comply with the notice was $2200. At a childcare centre near Tamworth in NSW, a March 2024 investigation examined allegations that an educator engaged in inappropriate physical contact by lying next to a child during sleep time and placing an arm across their body. A second educator saw the incident but failed to recognise the interaction as inappropriate and failed to report the matter, according to the documents. Until the sector has meaningful reforms, more of these hideous incidents will continue against children who have no voice. As the National Children's Commissioner Anne Hollonds says: "child safety should never be compromised for commercial or government administrative reasons. Currently we are taking unacceptable risks with the safety of our youngest citizens."
News.com.au
4 days ago
- Business
- News.com.au
‘Naive': Australians have their say on proposed super tax
Young voters and Labor voters are among those most in favour of the Albanese government's proposed tax concession reductions for people with more than $3m in superannuation. Half of Australian voters (52 per cent) support the proposal, while about one in four (26 per cent) oppose it, YouGov polling on behalf of The Australia Institute has found. Young people aged 18-24 are about four times as likely to support the proposal as oppose it. Female voters are more than twice as likely to support the proposal as oppose it. Only 0.3 per cent of Australians – some 80,000 – have super balances north of $3m. Under the proposed changes, they would pay an additional 15 per cent on yields, which according to Treasury estimates would pump about $2.7bn into Commonwealth coffers. Speaking to NewsWire, The Australia Institute executive director and former chief economist Richard Denniss said he believed it was naive to suggest young voters should be worried about tax concessions for the ultra-wealthy. 'It seems quite ridiculous to suggest that young people who can't afford to buy a house, young people who are worried about all of the pressures of modern life, should be worried about the feelings of much older people with $3m in superannuation,' he said. 'We are in a cost-of living crisis. To suggest that the big concern for most Australian voters, let alone for most young voters is the feelings of people with more than $3m in super paying a little bit more tax. Well, I just think that's naive.' Some critics have decried the proposal as a tax on unrealised gains, with others warning it could penalise younger generations down the track. However, Mr Denniss said these criticisms misinterpreted or overlooked the realities of the situation. 'The simple reality is only 80,000 of the 26 million people in Australia have got more than $3m in super. If someone finished school and started earning the average earnings on the day they finished school and worked for the rest of their life, they still wouldn't get to $3m in superannuation,' he said. 'To suggest that in time, this will be a big deal for all Australians really suggests that people making that argument have no idea what ordinary Australians are dealing with – $3 is an enormous amount of money to have in superannuation and all the government's proposing is that people that are fortunate enough to have that much get slightly smaller tax concessions than they currently do.' Mr Denniss added that it was 'pretty clear' why young people would think 'sure, pay a bit more tax, because I'd like to have access to better quality health, better quality education, and improvements to my cost of living'. The survey also found that half (50 per cent) of Australian voters believe the additional $2.7bn in revenue from these changes would make no difference to their vote at the next election. However, about one in five (19 per cent) indicated that it would make them more likely to vote Labor. Mr Denniss said that of particular interest was the higher proportion of young voters, female voters and independent voters who were more likely to support the reduction. 'It's very high risk for the Liberal Party to so soon after losing young female voters in inner city areas to come out and defend a policy that overwhelmingly helps higher income men,' he said. The survey found nearly three-quarters (72 per cent) of Australian voters see the main purpose of the superannuation system as funding their retirement. More than half (53 per cent) also believe it's there to reduce reliance on the aged pension. 'We're often told that the point of superannuation is to help people fund a dignified retirement and that the benefit of superannuation is that it takes pressure off the age pension budget. This sounds amazing, but in reality in Australia, there are people with half a billion dollars in their self-managed super funds,' Mr Denniss said. 'So unfortunately, superannuation has become a vehicle for tax minimisation for the very wealthiest Australians and giving huge tax breaks to people with half a billion dollars in super does nothing to take pressure off the age pension budget for the simple reason that someone with half a billion dollars was never going to get the age pension. 'We really need to reflect as a country on what is the point of superannuation and what is the goal of giving tax breaks to superannuation? Because giving tax breaks to people who've got half a billion dollars in their self-managed super fund makes no economic sense and it doesn't make a lot of political sense either.' The 18-34 age group showed the highest likelihood of being swayed to vote Labor due to this policy; however, South Australian voters and Coalition supporters were among the most likely to be less supportive of Labor as a result. 'The reality is that people living in the inner cities of Australia are often the highest income earners, so it's not a surprise that we see a lot of people in regional areas and a lot of people in capital cities like Adelaide and Hobart, where incomes are a lot lower than Sydney and Melbourne, are less concerned about this policy than most,' Mr Denniss said. 'But to be clear, even in the inner city, even in NSW, a majority of Australians actually think that this is a good idea.'
