Directors with multiple strikes on unpaid wages ‘should be banned'
The Law Council and the Australian Council of Trade Unions are among those who urged harsher penalties for directors for alleged misuse of the Fair Entitlements Guarantee due to concerns it is being used to shift costs from failing businesses onto taxpayers.
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Sydney Morning Herald
4 hours ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
Albanese now has time to bring real change. So timing becomes critical
In the first session of question time this term, Anthony Albanese was asked whether the government was considering certain taxes. A small smile appeared briefly on the prime minister's face as he stepped up to deliver his answer. Then it vanished and he delivered his line, quiet and clear: 'I'll give a big tip to the member for Fairfax: the time to run a scare campaign is just before an election, not after one.' It was a good line. The quiet confidence with which it was delivered left no doubt as to the government's ascendancy. It helped that, as others have noted, Albanese was right. The opposition's attempts to warn of new taxes fell flat. Most voters have just made their decision – based in part on what the government said it would do – and they aren't yet interested in speculations as to what it might do. But Albanese's words contain a lesson for the government too. The prime minister was talking about a specific type of scare campaign – the rule-in-rule-out kind – where the subject is imagined dangers. But the lesson applies to scare campaigns of any stripe, including those about the impact of actual policies. A scare campaign won't work for a while now. This raises a question: what is the optimal timing in which the government might announce significant reform and make the case for it, safe in the knowledge that apocalyptic warnings will fall on deaf ears? A clue as to the government's thinking might lie in the lessons of its first term. Most prime ministers get into habits. They find things that work and repeat them. The first year of the Albanese government was about setting a tone by delivering on election promises. That is what Albanese has said about the first year of this term, too. Most of the last year was about getting election-ready: troublesome policies sidelined, retail politics to the fore. No doubt that will be repeated. This leaves the difficult middle: the period in which the trickiest feats were attempted. That second year was dominated by the campaign for the Indigenous voice to parliament and then by Albanese's decision to break a promise and change Scott Morrison's stage 3 tax cuts. The fact those feats were attempted in the second year meant two things. First, that if the political impacts were bad for the government – frustration at a referendum loss, anger at a broken promise – there was another year in which those feelings might fade. (Though criticism of the government at the weekend's Garma Festival reminds us that the real impacts of the referendum loss will be felt for years; political impact is not the same thing as actual impact.) Loading Just as significant was the fact that Albanese waited. For the tax cuts, this meant that the pressure built. Withstanding such pressure can be difficult, but it can also be immensely helpful: by the time a government acts, it can feel almost inevitable. Then there was a final element of timing. The debate over those tax cuts had been going on for years before Albanese was elected. Pressure for change had been building all that time, not just for the period Labor was in government.
Sydney Morning Herald
4 hours ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
Under-regulated childcare centres allow children to become easy prey
The charging of a worker accused of filming the abuse of 10 children at six Sydney centres is another alarm bell on the booming but under-regulated Australian childcare industry. David James' alleged paedophilia was reported to police and the regulator last year after he had been hired through recruitment agency Randstad and worked at 58 different outside school hours care (OSHC) services across Sydney. The 26-year-old was suspended after a colleague reported witnessing him inappropriately touching a child under 10 at a Primary OSHCare, a service owned by Junior Adventures Group. Incredibly, James remained on the agency's books and was employed by other providers on a casual basis. The Sydney case has thrust private equity firm Quadrant into the centre of another childcare scandal. The ABC has also reported in October a different man was arrested and charged in regional NSW with nine counts of intentionally sexually touching a child under 10 at a Quadrant-owned centre. A leading provider of after-school care in Australia, Quadrant has a majority stake in Junior Adventures Group, prompting industry heads to voice concerns about the OSHC sector, which is becoming increasingly privatised and reliant on an unqualified, young and casualised workforce. Nearly 600,000 children attend OSHC centres. The sector is growing, with an additional 426 services added in the past year, nationally topping 5000 services with large for-profit providers operating 40 per cent of all services. According to Department of Education data, OSHC centres employ 30,500 people. More than half had no qualifications in a relevant field and less than a quarter were studying towards any kind of qualification. Serious questions have loomed over the nation's childcare industry since the arrest of Joshua Dale Brown in Melbourne on allegations he abused eight children and the screening of 1200 preschool-aged children for STDs was made known last month. Loading Despite the risks, private equity and pension firms have piled into childcare, partly because the Albanese government's election platform promised high levels of government support. The result is a sector increasingly dominated by commercial interests in which concerns about quality are mounting. The recent spate of child abuse allegations highlights the serious flaws in childcare regulation. In NSW, some staff hold a Certificate III in Outside School Hours Care or Certificate III in Early Childhood Education and Care; however, NSW is the only jurisdiction in the country where qualifications to work in OSHC are not required.
The Age
4 hours ago
- The Age
Albanese now has time to bring real change. So timing becomes critical
In the first session of question time this term, Anthony Albanese was asked whether the government was considering certain taxes. A small smile appeared briefly on the prime minister's face as he stepped up to deliver his answer. Then it vanished and he delivered his line, quiet and clear: 'I'll give a big tip to the member for Fairfax: the time to run a scare campaign is just before an election, not after one.' It was a good line. The quiet confidence with which it was delivered left no doubt as to the government's ascendancy. It helped that, as others have noted, Albanese was right. The opposition's attempts to warn of new taxes fell flat. Most voters have just made their decision – based in part on what the government said it would do – and they aren't yet interested in speculations as to what it might do. But Albanese's words contain a lesson for the government too. The prime minister was talking about a specific type of scare campaign – the rule-in-rule-out kind – where the subject is imagined dangers. But the lesson applies to scare campaigns of any stripe, including those about the impact of actual policies. A scare campaign won't work for a while now. This raises a question: what is the optimal timing in which the government might announce significant reform and make the case for it, safe in the knowledge that apocalyptic warnings will fall on deaf ears? A clue as to the government's thinking might lie in the lessons of its first term. Most prime ministers get into habits. They find things that work and repeat them. The first year of the Albanese government was about setting a tone by delivering on election promises. That is what Albanese has said about the first year of this term, too. Most of the last year was about getting election-ready: troublesome policies sidelined, retail politics to the fore. No doubt that will be repeated. This leaves the difficult middle: the period in which the trickiest feats were attempted. That second year was dominated by the campaign for the Indigenous voice to parliament and then by Albanese's decision to break a promise and change Scott Morrison's stage 3 tax cuts. The fact those feats were attempted in the second year meant two things. First, that if the political impacts were bad for the government – frustration at a referendum loss, anger at a broken promise – there was another year in which those feelings might fade. (Though criticism of the government at the weekend's Garma Festival reminds us that the real impacts of the referendum loss will be felt for years; political impact is not the same thing as actual impact.) Loading Just as significant was the fact that Albanese waited. For the tax cuts, this meant that the pressure built. Withstanding such pressure can be difficult, but it can also be immensely helpful: by the time a government acts, it can feel almost inevitable. Then there was a final element of timing. The debate over those tax cuts had been going on for years before Albanese was elected. Pressure for change had been building all that time, not just for the period Labor was in government.
