Emboldened Qantas Union Says More Bad Bosses Are in Its Sights
The Federal Court of Australia on Monday fined Qantas A$90 million ($58 million), a record penalty for workplace wrongdoing, for illegally sacking almost 2,000 ground workers during the pandemic. More than half — A$50 million — was awarded to the Transport Workers' Union, with the presiding judge encouraging it and other unions to act as enforcers of industrial relations legislation.
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Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Enraged locals face $20,000 cash charge as 'disgraceful' banking trend sweeps Australia: '64 kilometres away'
The Victorian town of Yarram will be left without a bank branch next month when Bendigo Bank closes its doors. The South Gippsland farming community is one of five Aussie towns that will no longer have access to in-person banking by late October. David Phelan, director of livestock and property agency Phelan & Henderson & Co, is one resident who is fighting against the branch closure. The 73-year-old told Yahoo Finance he was one of the branch's biggest customers, with his business turning over $25 million last financial year. 'It's a disgrace,' he said. RELATED Cashless revolt to hit back against horror bank trend decimating Aussie towns Centrelink alert for retiring Baby Boomers wanting to caravan around Australia Little-known superannuation rule sparks warning for millions of Aussies The Bendigo Bank branch is the last remaining bank in the town. It was previously home to all of the Big Four banks, with Commonwealth Bank the last of the majors to close its doors in 2021. Phelan said he shifted his accounts to Bendigo Bank after this closure and had encouraged other residents to do the same. '[I said] if we all go to the Bendigo, they can't possibly afford to leave. However, I was wrong,' he said. When the branch closes on September 26, the nearest Bendigo Bank will be in Traralgon, which is 64 kilometres away and takes about a 50-minute drive to get Phelan's business no longer handles cash, he said some of his older clients still pay by cheque. 'When you're dealing with the farming community, there's a lot of people that don't have bloody computers, and if they did have they wouldn't know the first thing about how to get in,' he said. 'A lot of these pensioners hear so many things about people being scammed. "They've got a little bit of hard-earned money, they don't want to open themselves up to get scammed and have the money taken off them.' Phelan said other businesses in town were concerned about having to cart their money through the hills to the branch. The Yarram Country Club has been looking into the cost of hiring an armed cash transfer business to transfer the money securely, but Phelan said it would cost them around $20,000 a year. 'The government needs to step in and say, no more bank closures. If you're the last one in town, you've got to stay there and provide a service,' Phelan said. Bendigo Bank sorry for 'inconvenience' A Bendigo Bank spokesperson told Yahoo Finance 'evolving customer preferences, a reduction in business activity and an increase in cost' were behind the bank's 'difficult decision' to permanently close its Yarram branch and ATM. The bank noted more people were choosing to bank online and fewer customers were visiting branches to do their banking. It also noted customers who did visit a branch were doing so less often, and customers had also chosen other locations to conduct their banking. According to branch data, 63 per cent of its Yarram customers regularly use internet banking and/or phone banking, while 28 per cent choose to bank in-branch only. 'The Bank apologises to its customers for the inconvenience. Bendigo Bank is proud of its regional heritage and operates Australia's second largest regional branch network,' the spokesperson said. 'To preserve our ability to continue delivering for our customers and communities, we must ensure our branches are adequately supported and resourced.' The bank, which says it operates Australia's second-largest regional branch network, has advised customers that they can bank using Australia Post's Bank@Post service, which offers basic cash deposits and withdrawals. The Yarram branch is one of 10 branches across Victoria, Queensland and Tasmania that Bendigo Bank will close from this month, along with its 28 agency locations. Two other Victorian communities, Bannockburn and Korumburra, along with Malanda in Queensland and Queenstown in Tasmania will lose their last local bank branch. Queenstown residents will face a two-hour drive to their nearest bank in Burnie when the branch closes in September. West Coast Council Mayor Shane Pitt told Yahoo Finance there had been "no consultation at all" with the community about the closure and called it a "kick in the guts" for tourism and residents. "This is the last bank on the West Coast of Tasmania. So it's going to [have] a huge impact, especially given that we've got an ageing population and a lot of people still like face-to-face banking," he said. Calls to protect regional banking The federal government inquiry into bank closures in regional Australia released its final report in May last year and laid out eight recommendations. That included setting up a regional community banking branch program to help underwrite the establishment of community bank branches, guaranteeing reasonable access to cash and financial services for all Aussies, and establishing a mandatory code of conduct that would force banks to have meaningful consultation with communities before a branch is closed. Shadow Minister for Financial Services Pat Conaghan and his National party colleagues wrote to Treasurer Jim Chalmers and Financial Services Minister Daniel Mulino on Friday calling on the government to urgently table its response to the inquiry and to 'work with all sides of the floor to urgently protect our regional banking services'. It has also called for the moratorium on regional bank closures to be extended to other banks. The federal government struck a deal with the Big Four banks in February to keep their regional banks open until at least mid-2027, but this doesn't cover mid-tier banks like Bendigo. 'It's not binding, came too late for many towns in our communities, and does not cover the mid-tier banks that regional Australians rely on,' Conaghan said. 'Every day the Labor Government delays, more regional communities lose services that small businesses, older Australians, and families rely on. We need an immediate and practical plan in place before any more doors are shut. 'Access to banking and financial services is a right, not a privilege.' Aussie residents to keep fighting Bendigo Bank has confirmed it will close its Yarram branch in September and has informed Mayor Scott Rosetti it would not take up a proposal for a locally operated community bank. It claimed the model would face the same challenges as the current branch and could not be sustained. The Wellington Shire Council said the decision was a 'bitter blow' for Yarram and came despite strong community backing for keeping local banking services. Phelan said he had never seen the community 'so enraged' as he had over this branch closure. 'They say that they are the better big bank, we're the ones for the bush, we want to help the bush. They're not helping the bush, they're only helping their bloody own pockets,' he said. But Phelan said the fight was not over and the community was now trying to see if they could encourage one of the major banks to return to the town. 'We won't give up. We'll keep fighting,' he said.
Fox News
2 hours ago
- Fox News
Second federal judge blocks Justice Department bid to release Jeffrey Epstein grand jury files
A second federal judge has denied a motion from the Justice Department to release grand jury materials connected to the Jeffrey Epstein case, calling them a "diversion." U.S. District Judge Richard M. Berman denied the request in a 14-page decision published Wednesday. While it's rare for the government to seek the unsealing of grand jury materials, Berman wrote that there were about 70 pages of Epstein grand jury materials – compared to 100,000 pages in possession of the government. "The Government is the logical party to make comprehensive disclosure to the public of the Epstein Files," he wrote. "By comparison, the instant grand jury motion appears to be a 'diversion' from the breadth and scope of the Epstein Files in the Government's possession." While the materials themselves remain sealed, Berman described them as a 56-page transcript of an FBI agent's presentation on June 18, 2019, a 14-page transcript of the agent's presentation on July 2, a PowerPoint exhibit and a call log. Read Judge Berman's decision: The judge also voiced safety concerns raised by a group of victims' rights lawyers who objected to the release of anything that could expose the identities of the victims. While 23 victims addressed the court after Epstein's death in 2019, there are more than 1,000 of them in all, Berman wrote, citing a joint Justice Department/FBI memo released earlier this year. "It is difficult to know exactly how many victims favor unsealing and how many favor continued sealing," the judge continued. "It is likely that victims who favor disclosure do so on the assumption that their safety, privacy and dignity will be protected." While Epstein is not alive to oppose the unsealing, and his estate took no position on the matter, Berman wrote that public interest in the case is nevertheless not enough to justify unsealing the grand jury materials. U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer denied a similar request in the case against Epstein's convicted accomplice and former lover, Ghislaine Maxwell, on Aug. 11. In the earlier decision, Engelmayer wrote that the grand jury in Maxwell's case was not empaneled as part of the investigation – but afterward – and as a result there was no firsthand witness testimony. Berman also used this line of reasoning, noting that not a single victim testified before grand jurors in Epstein's case. Maxwell is serving a 20-year prison sentence after she was convicted at trial in 2021 of helping Epstein traffic teen girls. She has an ongoing appeal and has signaled that she is willing to sit for interviews with both federal prosecutors and Congress. Epstein died in a federal jail cell in 2019 before he faced trial himself. His official cause of death has been ruled a suicide, a conclusion rejected by his brother.
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
DOJ goes 0-3 in requests to unseal Jeffrey Epstein grand jury materials
NEW YORK — A federal judge on Wednesday rejected the Justice Department's effort to unseal grand jury transcripts and exhibits in the Jeffrey Epstein case, writing that the government itself is the "logical party" to make the Epstein files public and criticizing its motion as a 'diversion' tactic. "The information contained in the Epstein grand jury transcripts pales in comparison to the Epstein investigation information and materials in the hands of the Department of Justice,' U.S. District Judge Richard Berman, a Bill Clinton appointee, wrote in a 14-page opinion. Berman's decision is the third by a federal judge to deny nearly identical motions by the Justice Department to make public certain grand jury material in the cases of Epstein, the disgraced financier who died by suicide in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges, and his onetime girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell. Maxwell is serving a 20-year prison sentence for aiding and participating in his sex trafficking ring. She is appealing her conviction. Berman's opinion, however, comes as the Justice Department is being forced to disclose the Epstein files through another channel. On Friday, the department is expected to begin turning over Epstein-related records to congressional lawmakers in response to a subpoena from the House Oversight Committee. And as Berman noted, the Justice Department's 100,000 pages of Epstein materials, which it could release at any time and which are the target of the congressional subpoena, 'dwarf' the roughly 70 pages of grand jury material it asked the federal judges to unseal. 'The Government is the logical party to make comprehensive disclosure to the public of the Epstein files,' the judge wrote. 'The grand jury testimony is merely a hearsay snippet of Jeffrey Epstein's alleged conduct.' Solve the daily Crossword
