Victorian government has three weeks to deliver job cuts outline
The Labor Party says its restructuring of departments will cost up to 3,000 jobs – however, it is estimated up to 6,500 workers could be let go.
The Opposition successfully passed a motion in parliament to force the government to make the report public within three weeks.
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AU Financial Review
39 minutes ago
- AU Financial Review
The suffering in Gaza is intolerable
Readers' letters on the Palestine march, workplace mental health, working from home, the need for public servants and home battery subsidies. Thank you to everyone who showed up at the Sydney Harbour Bridge and to the bold organisers who have worked so long and hard to carry reticent Australians towards this moment. It was a privilege to join so many tremendous humans who understood that rain was nothing alongside Palestinian suffering. There were many special moments shared in the middle of the soggy crowd: handing out tiny toy tambourines to fully grown men, joking over spare muesli bars and ponchos, finding out where folk had travelled from. Marg from Grafton (70) doesn't even get internet access, but checked details at the local library and travelled down overnight, (despite flooding on the tracks at Taree) to stay at the Y. Towards the end she borrowed one of my crutches. Mums with babies, families with double strollers, kids on scooters, mum under Disney umbrellas, the halt and lame were all swapping chants, banging pots and smiling widely. Every person seemed clear that the suffering in Gaza is intolerable. Bravo to all who put human rights and common sense ahead of fear, belief, half-truths and self-censorship. Jane Salmon, Killara, NSW I refer to the editorial ' Corporate leaders need to speak up like Ryan Stokes ' and agree that psychological injuries which lead to workers compensation claims need to be addressed. Clearly, for Stokes to raise this issue it's becoming a burden on big business and a headache for insurers. However, Westpac CEO Anthony Miller said ' more could be done ' before legislation is changed. Think about small business, who employ 900,000 people and struggle every day just to pay the bills. One psychological claim because an employee was told to improve his manner could be the first step to bankruptcy. In fact, it's not the size of the claim that destroys small business, but the significant increase in the yearly workers compensation bill. In its current form it's a sleeping cost time bomb. David Button, Breakfast Point, NSW WFH law will make Victoria even less appealing The news item about the Victorian Labor government's plan to legislate to ensure that WFH is a worker's legal right is a classic example of governmental overreach (' Vic government to enshrine WFH two days a week in law '). Premier Jacinta Allan is quoted as saying that 'it's good for the economy'. That viewpoint would be disputed by many and it will no doubt make heavily taxed Victoria an even more unattractive place for some companies and businesses to operate from within. It is disappointing that Allan is not instead focused upon working tirelessly to reduce her spendthrift government's mammoth amount of state debt. Dennis Walker, North Melbourne, Vic Remote-working themselves out of a job Now that working-from-home rosters are being institutionalised in the public sector, you must question if the same jobs could be just as effectively done in Mumbai or Manila. With the rise and rise of AI, mass redundancies are inevitable. This will do wonders for Australia's productivity as the only people left in the workforce force will be those creating and adding value. David Hurburgh, Opossum Bay, Tas Are all these public servants strictly necessary? Rather than arguing about where public servants work, we should be asking why we need them at all. Take aged care and health departments, where over 7000 employees work in non-patient-facing roles. With artificial intelligence and automation revolutionising administrative processes globally, this represents a massive productivity opportunity. Every dollar spent on bureaucratic overhead is a dollar not invested in frontline care, infrastructure, or innovation. While other nations streamline their public sectors using technology, Australia maintains bloated administrative layers that serve the bureaucracy rather than the public. The real issue isn't remote work flexibility – it's relevance. Modern AI systems can process applications, manage compliance and coordinate services faster and more accurately than human administrators. Robotic process automation can handle routine tasks 24/7 without sick leave, superannuation, or office space. Countries like Estonia have demonstrated how digital transformation can deliver better citizen services with dramatically fewer public servants. Their e-governance model processes 99% of public services online, eliminating countless administrative positions while improving service delivery. If Australia seriously wants to lift living standards and national productivity, we need a public service focused on essential functions, not job creation. This means embracing technology to eliminate redundant roles and redirecting resources toward genuine public value – teachers, nurses, police, and infrastructure. The question isn't where public servants should work, but whether many of these positions should exist at all. Peter Worn, Melbourne, Vic Home batteries are good business, too Yes, the battery subsidy really is the easy option (' Labor's home battery subsidy low hanging-fruit in energy transition '). Obviously cheaper than taxpayers footing the whole bill for the energy storage we so badly need, to carry the cheap daytime excess through to the evening. It will not only save for those who invest, it could also drive down the cost of power to all consumers. But these new batteries need to be managed wisely if they are to have the same effect as community batteries or the commercial 'big' batteries. Having played the wholesale electricity market ourselves, with Amber managing our home batteries for the last two years, it has become bleedingly obvious why the overall cost of power has gotten so high. Several times a year, the wholesale spot price for electricity goes through the roof, reaching prices more than 100 times the normal. Those who can sell energy into the market at such times are able to make a small fortune. The wholesale feed-in tariff can get to $15 or more per kilowatt hour. Our two home batteries have earned us as much as $380 in just one day. But our batteries are tiny compared to say the Tallawarra gas-fired 'peaker' across the lake from our home. A quick calculation suggests they could be earning several million dollars an hour in such circumstances. It is an expensive exercise to keep the grid working when the prices get so high, but they do it. To my knowledge, the grid hasn't suffered any blackouts due to power shortages, so we can only assume they have always had enough in reserve to keep the lights on. Clearly our privatised electricity grid can only turn on the last of the big players in the spot market by sending the price through the roof occasionally. And consumers will keep picking up that tab until there are enough suppliers in the market to take away that monopoly. Roll on Snowy 2.0, and more batteries.
Perth Now
3 hours ago
- Perth Now
Huge call on new Aussie WFH laws
Senior Labor MP Tanya Plibersek has been grilled on if Labor will look to overturn new work-from-home legislation being introduced in Victoria to enshrine two days of WFH per week as a right or introduce it themselves. Ms Plibersek said the government supported working from home as long as it could be done 'sensibly', but the legislation was ultimately a matter for the Victorian government. 'We're making it very clear that we support work from home at a federal level as long as it can be done sensibly in negotiation between employers and employees,' Ms Plibersek said on Sunrise. 'We've got a lot of public servants, for example, who work a couple of days a week from home. It's supported productivity.' Tanya Plibersek said the legislation was a matter for the Victorian government, but Labor supported work-from-home policies. NewsWire / Martin Ollman Credit: News Corp Australia Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan announced plans to legislate WFH protections for workers who could 'reasonably' carry out their duties from home. Ms Allan said the reform was about recognising modern work patterns and protecting employees from having flexible arrangements arbitrarily revoked. 'It's working now, but we know that we need to protect it,' Ms Allan said on Today. 'We need to protect it for workers but also make it really clear for employers as well who are already doing this that working from home should be a right, not a request.' When asked if the federal government supported or would overrule the proposed legislation, Ms Plibersek said how the plan would work was up to the Victorian government. 'That's up to the Victorian government. We're not going to put a tick or a cross,' she told Sunrise. Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan announced the bold plan to legislate work from home two days a week as a legal right. NewsWire / Nadir Kinani Credit: News Corp Australia Ms Plibersek acknowledged remote work wasn't possible for some professions, but the benefits were clear where it could be used. 'If you're a nurse in emergency, you can't work from home. If you're a bus driver, you can't work from home. But we support work from home for Australian workers where it's practical, that fits in with the requirements of their job,' she said. 'Our position as a Commonwealth government is very clear. We support work from home.' The Victorian Chamber of Commerce has raised 'major concerns' on whether the plan could create 'inequality' in the workforce due to the small percentage of people being granted such a right. Concerns have also been raised by the chamber about whether the WFH proposal is unconstitutional if enterprise bargaining agreements are already in place, as they operate under the federal jurisdiction. Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce said legislating WFH rights was 'silly'. NewsWire / Martin Ollman Credit: News Corp Australia Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce criticised the idea of legislating WFH rights, calling it 'silly' and warning against government interference in workplace agreements. 'I think it's something that's got to be worked out between the employer and the employee, and legislating that you can is just as silly as saying you're not allowed to,' Mr Joyce said on Sunrise. 'It's not for us to jump into that space, but the government legislating is doing precisely that … I don't think the government should be there.' Despite the concerns, Ms Plibersek said support for WFH remained high. 'We know that Australians value it and when Peter Dutton tried to get rid of it in the last election, there was quite a backlash,' she said.
ABC News
5 hours ago
- ABC News
Albanese spoke of economic empowerment at Garma, but what he didn't address dominated the mood
Two years after the bruising rejection of the Voice referendum, the prime minister trekked north this weekend to a place pivotal in the long journey toward Indigenous rights and recognition. At Gulkula, the lush site of the Garma Festival, where the Yolŋu people have led with fire and heart for a better relationship between black and white Australia, he addressed crowds for the second time since his long-term dream of a unifying national moment was shattered. For Aboriginal people, the space between the referendum to now has been quiet and disheartening as one chapter closed on the fight for political advocacy and rights. First Nations people — who in the main voted for the Voice — were exposed to the ugly underbelly of Australian society, despite the diversity of views on the proposal for an Indigenous advisory body. After the defeat of the Voice, the fast-moving political caravan — which rarely pauses for long on Aboriginal lands — quickly reversed and drove instead towards momentous challenges in global instability and a consequential federal election. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were barely mentioned in the election campaign as the Labor Party made a brutal political calculation to zero in on the cost-of-living, which ultimately delivered a decisive mandate. Few political leaders have had the gumption to acknowledge the enormous toll the referendum took on Indigenous communities. Some Aboriginal leaders feared the loss of the Voice meant the prime minister had lost his voice on First Nations reform, especially on the question of what to do with the question of truth-telling and treaties. The prime minister has appeared more subdued on Indigenous affairs since 2023, but there is hope in Arnhem Land that a second term may renew his ambition. Three years ago, Anthony Albanese came to Garma in Arnhem Land to make a "solemn promise" to implement the Uluru Statement from the Heart — Voice, Treaty, Truth. He held to that commitment and boldly called a referendum in his first term, but the government then retreated on a truth-telling commission and a federal path to treaty making. Returning to Garma this weekend, the prime minister praised the work of Victoria's Yoorrook Justice Commission, saying the truth-telling commission found that Aboriginal people were cut off from the wealth of their land and waters "by design". "As a nation, we are still coming to terms with the full truth and toll of this exclusion," he said. That historic segregation is the reason why too many First Nations communities are underemployed and why poverty plagues communities even with ownership and access to their own land. The government wants Indigenous-owned land to be central to Australia's transition to renewable energy, led by Indigenous decisions, not solely corporate profit. It will spend $145 million to drive investment opportunities for traditional owners to make better deals for their country, and crucially, the plan has been guided by First Nations economic expertise. Mr Albanese's address at Garma this weekend contained strong commitments on economic development and land rights, but it was what was left unsaid that became a talking point. Hundreds of influential Aboriginal leaders came to Arnhem Land for a tougher, bolder vision for their children from a prime minister with a powerful majority. He did not outline a clear plan on what the government intends to do with disastrous policy failures in the Closing the Gap agreement, where the most heartbreaking targets to reduce suicide, incarceration, and child removals are getting worse. The Garma Festival, surrounded by the beauty of the stringybark country on the escarpments of north-east Arnhem Land, belies a deep grief. Grief over broken promises and empty words. "In our law, words of promises are sacred," said Gumatj leader Djawa Yunupingu. "Given between senior people, words are everlasting. They are carved into our hearts. And our minds." Before he began his speech at Garma, Mr Albanese shook hands with Warlpiri elder Ned Jampijinpa Hargraves, whose grandson Kumanjayi White died in June, held down by police in a supermarket at 24 years of age. The deaths and treatment of Aboriginal people in custody is a looming catastrophe that Indigenous Affairs Minister Malarndirri McCarthy says she is "deeply troubled" by. Young Yolŋu people are too often far from home, incarcerated in Darwin and Palmerston in conditions human rights groups label as inhumane. In the Northern Territory, spit hoods are coming back, the prison population is soaring, watch houses are full, and little girls are kept in solitary confinement with the lights on for 24 hours at a time. The federal government is facing mounting pressure to make some bold calls to influence the direction in the NT — the Commonwealth largely funds the territory — but the prime minister has seemed reluctant to appear interventionist. Aboriginal communities have no other lifeline. There is no Voice. No formal national mechanism by which they can have a permanent and direct line to the government about their exclusion from policy decisions. The Country Liberal Party, which swept to power last year, has no Indigenous representatives and has presided over a deteriorating relationship with major Aboriginal organisations. The Productivity Commission says if state and territory governments continue to pass legislation that contravenes and directly undermines closing the gap, the Commonwealth could look at pulling some funding levers. It would be the boldest action yet on Closing the Gap. If the prime minister's first term was dominated by the referendum, his second term is likely to present a challenge to him to raise a powerful voice on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in jail and kids in child-protection systems. At Garma three years ago, the prime minister promised to govern with "humility". "Humility because — so many times — the gap between the words and deeds of governments has been as wide as this great continent," he said. The growing gap excluding Indigenous children from society needs urgent leadership, and the prime minister knows the solution lies between the words and the deeds.
