Australia news live: Victorian energy prices to jump almost a third as Bowen calls on Coalition to ‘look in the mirror’

From 1h ago

Chris Bowen throws back to Coalition on energy price rises

The energy minister is borrowing a turn of phrase out of Julia Gillard’s misogyny speech when asked about the Coalition’s suggestion that capping coal and gas prices will, in the longer run, increase prices.

Chris Bowen:

I invite the Coalition to have a look in the mirror. I mean, he had the independent energy regulator this morning pointing out that without the intervention, the price rises would have been closer to 50%.

An intervention that Mr Dutton opposed, like he opposes everything. You can’t complain about higher energy prices and then vote for higher energy prices.

We’ve carefully calibrated the interventions and worked through them carefully. Mr Dutton and his bunch of irrelevancies put themselves out of the process and opposed the package and did not enter into discussions with the government.

Updated at 19.16 EDT

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The Labor premier of South Australia, Peter Malinauskas, has joined senior Australian ministers at the Osborne naval shipyard in Adelaide.

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Malinauskas is excited after the signing of a cooperation agreement between the state and the federal governments. Malinauskas said there was no longer a question about where the work was going to come from in South Australia. It was, instead, a question of how build up the required workforce. He added:

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The fact that the commonwealth sees in South Australia the ability to build the most complex machines that have ever been produced in the history of humanity says a lot about where South Australia is going.

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The acting prime minister, Richard Marles, said the agreement included a headline commitment to work cooperatively together to deliver this project. They are also planning an increase of 800 university places in South Australia over four years, the establishment of a training academy “right here at Osborne”, and a land exchange to allow for a larger construction yard at Osborne.

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Marles said:

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Yesterday’s announcement commits Australia to developing the capacity as quickly as possible to build nuclear-powered submarines here in South Australia right here at Osborne. This is demanded of us by our international partners. It is a massive endeavour.

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Loathed amongst children, loved amongst statisticians, the annual Naplan assessment is kicking off today for 1.3m students.

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This is the first year the test is being held in March instead of May following reforms by the federal government to provide earlier access to results. It’s also taking place fully online, excluding the year 3 writing test which will be on paper.

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Ceo of the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority David de Carvalho said the decision to push the test forward required an “enormous effort” amongst teachers and schools.

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Ministers agreed to moving Naplan into Term 1 so the results would be available earlier in the year to inform teaching and learning programs. It will give teachers earlier insights to support their professional judgment about how their students are progressing against the new proficiency standards and consider what support they might need in the coming year.”

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The national assessment is the only major scale of progress in critical literacy and numeracy skills among students in years 3, 5, 7 and 9 – testing reading, writing, numeracy, grammar, punctuation and spelling.

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De Carvalho:

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It doesn’t measure overall school quality. It’s not meant to tell us everything about a student or their achievement. Naplan tests literacy and numeracy skills that are being developed in the classroom everyday with questions based mostly on what students have been taught from previous years of schooling.

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The results will also be streamlined into four levels of achievement, replacing the previous 10-band structure. Parents will be able to track their children under the categories “exceeding”, “strong”, “developing” and “needs additional support”.

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Assessors will be crossing their fingers this year is more successful than the last Naplan, when secondary student participation experienced the steepest declines on record. Remote, educationally disadvantaged and low-performing children were least likely to complete the tests.

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As we saw in an earlier post, default power prices are likely to lift by more than 20% from 1 July for customers in New South Wales, South Australia and south-east Queensland, according to a draft decision by the Australian Energy Regulator.

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Victoria sets its own default market offer and that is going to increase even more, according to draft decision for consultation. The state’s Essential Services Commission is proposing average annual bill for domestic customers will rise 31.1%, with small business customers facing increases of 33.2%.

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The commission says:

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The draft decision proposes an increase of around $426 for residential customers, with typical bills increasing from $1,403 to around $1,829 per year.

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For small business customers, typical bills would increase by around $1,738, from $5,620 to around $7,358 per year.

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As with the AER, the commission blames “significant increases in wholesale electricity costs” for the higher prices.

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The offer affects about 400,000 households and 55,000 small businesses that are on standing offers. That’s about 15% of households and 19% of small firms.

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Victoria has tended to have lower wholesale prices than other states so it’s curious the state’s default prices have risen more – at least according to the draft decision. A final decision on the increase will be made on 24 May.

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The incoming national secretary of the construction union, Zach Smith, and senator David Pocock have held a press conference in Canberra to discuss building company insolvencies at which both called on Labor to up their ambition on the housing Australia future fund bill.

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The pair were responding to the collapse of PBS Building, with creditors owed an estimated $250m. They called for the government to do more to ensure “security of payments”, ie ensuring workers and other creditors are not out of pocket.

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Pocock said more “political will” was needed to enact solutions such as the proposed developers register in the ACT. Smith cited solutions including statutory trusts (requiring companies to pay progressively into a pot of money reserved for their creditors), and greater action from regulators such as the Fair Work Ombudsman and Tax Office.

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Asked if these demands were forming part of negotiations with the government, Pocock said Labor had committed to reforms recommended by the Murray review so he “shouldn’t have to use” his vote on bills like the future fund as a “negotiating tactic”.

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On that bill, Pocock said he wanted “more ambition” because the plan (to invest $10bn in a future fund that will pay out up to $500m a year) “is not going to touch the sides when it comes to dealing with the scale of the housing crisis that we’ve seen in the ACT”.

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Pocock said there were 3,100 people on the social housing waiting list but it looked as though the government bill “at best will provide 540 additional homes in the ACT”:

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That’s not enough.

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Smith echoed these comments and said the CFMEU was not just concerned about lack of new builds but lack of maintenance of existing housing stock.

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Nurses and midwives are launching legal action against the NSW government over staffing ratios they say are leaving patients without adequate care, AAP reports.

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The NSW Nurses and Midwives’ Association revealed plans today to file a case in the supreme court which accuses the government of repeatedly breaching award conditions.

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It says widespread non-compliance with staffing levels has resulted in patients not receiving more than 100,000 hours of nursing care at multiple public hospitals.

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Nurses and midwives have held repeated industrial action over the past year calling for mandated “safe” staffing ratios, along with better pay and conditions.

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NSW has fallen behind other states in implementing legally mandated ratios, with Victoria, Queensland and the ACT already introducing them, while South Australia and Western Australia are both progressing measures, according to the association.

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The union says it will provide evidence of inadequate staffing at major public hospitals including Royal Prince Alfred, Gosford, Wollongong, Westmead, Liverpool and Nepean.

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General secretary Shaye Candish says the government’s nursing hours per patient day staffing system is not delivering safe care to patients at their most vulnerable.

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The energy minister, Chris Bowen, has stepped up to speak in Sydney after the energy regulator predicting power price increases in NSW, south-east Queensland and South Australia:

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Bowen:

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Firstly, these are big increases. That should be acknowledged and they will hurt for many families.

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Secondly, these increases would have been much, much higher without the intervention of the Albanese government last year working with the governments particularly of New South Wales and Queensland.

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These interventions last year were absolutely vital as the regulator, herself, has made clear this morning.

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In the absence of intervention, these sorts of increases would have had potentially a five in front of it, not a two. These increases of 50% that the government was looking at last year would have crippled many businesses and been a crushing blow to Australian families. Hence we took the intervention we did last year.

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As you would expect, the opposition has seized on the energy market default market offer, with shadow energy minister Ted O’Brien calling it a “broken promise reconfirmed”.

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He is referring to Labor’s promise to lower power bills by $275 by 2025. Labor won’t repeat the commitment now, that is true. It made it during the election, based on modelling showing what adding more renewables to the grid would do (and the rewiring the nation plan).

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But it is also a bit rich for the opposition to be lumping all of this at Labor’s feet, given that Angus Taylor, the former energy minister (minister for lowering power prices, as Scott Morrison used to call him) KNEW power prices would be increasing (as reported here and here).

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But O’Brien is leading the opposition charge against the government on this:

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Winter is on the way and I have grave fears that senior citizens and families doing it tough won’t turn on the heater for fear of their energy bill.

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The human impact of Labor’s failure to manage Australia’s energy market should not be underestimated.

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In terms of “managing the Australia’s energy market”, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and supply chain issues have had a pretty big impact – but never let facts get in the way of a good political line.

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As we mentioned a little earlier, we are all waiting on national cabinet to deliver the targeted relief for the east coast states – and hopefully that will take away at least some of the sting.

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The opposition voted against that plan when it went to the parliament in December.

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Acting prime minister and defence minister Richard Marles has spoken to ABC News Breakfast this morning after the $368bn announcement of the Aukus deal yesterday.

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In response to the reaction from China accusing Australia, the US and Britain of embarking on a “path of error and danger”, Marles defends making a decision that is in Australia’s national interest:

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We are seeking to acquire this capability to make our contribution to the collective security of the region and the maintenance of the global rules-based order.

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And one of the issues within our region we are witnessing the largest conventional military build-up that the world has seen since the end of the second world war. And it’s not Australia who is doing that, but that shapes the world in which we live.

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We would be condemned by history if we don’t put ourselves in a position where we can be able to guide Australia through that difficult set of strategic circumstances and maintain our national interests into the future.

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The decision we are making is going to hand to our kids and our grandkids a much more self-reliant country and a country which we will be able to keep safe.

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Households in three states will face increases in the power bills of as much as 23.7% from 1 July if the Australian Energy Regulator’s draft determination is confirmed.

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The increases in the so-called default market offer were outlined in a media release from the regulator this morning.

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The electricity price safety net is in intended to mark the maximum increases for households and small business customers on standard retail plans in South Australia, New South Wales and south-east Queensland. Victoria is likely to release its own default over later today.

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Residential customers on standard retail plans could face price increases of 19.5% to 23.7% depending on their region, the regulator said. Small business customers could face price increases of 14.7% to 25.4% depending on their location.

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Clare Savage, the chair of the AER, told ABC’s Radio National this morning that while the increases were “significant” they could have been as much as 40% to 50% prior to the federal government’s intervention to cap domestic gas and black coal prices.

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Savage said:

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It’s still an increase so it’s not as bad as it could have been. The default market offer isn’t meant to be the cheapest rate out there – quite the opposite. It’s meant to be the maximum price that retailers can charge on default contracts.

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After consultation, the AER will issue its final default offer for the year.

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The foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, has written to the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency to formally request negotiations on oversight of the Aukus nuclear-powered submarine plans, amid ongoing pushback from China.

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In a statement issued overnight, the IAEA’s director general, Rafael Grossi, noted the announcement by the leaders of Australia, the US and the UK “on Australia’s acquisition of conventionally armed, nuclear-powered submarines”.

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In addition to Wong’s letter, Grossi said he had received separate communications on this matter from the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, as well as from the US and the UK, all reaffirming that “maintaining the integrity of the nuclear non-proliferation regime and Agency safeguards remains a core objective in relation to Aukus”. Grossi said:

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I also note Australia’s previous declaration to the Agency that it does not intend to pursue uranium enrichment or reprocessing in relation to Aukus and that it has no plans to undertake nuclear fuel fabrication as part of this effort.

\n

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Grossi vowed to navigate the serious legal and complex technical matters “in an independent, impartial, and professional manner” and said the IAEA “must ensure that no proliferation risks will emanate from this project”.

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He explained that article 14 of the IAEA’s existing comprehensive safeguards agreement “allows Australia to use nuclear material which is required to be safeguarded under the CSA in a nuclear activity, such as nuclear propulsion for submarines, provided that Australia makes an arrangement with the Agency in this regard”. He added:

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\n

Foreign Minister Wong has formally requested the Agency to commence negotiations on an arrangement required under Article 14 of Australia’s CSA. In accordance with the applicable norms (modified Code 3.1 of its Subsidiary Arrangements), Australia has also provided to the Agency preliminary design information related to this project.

\n

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Grossi promised to keep the IAEA board of governors and member states informed of the work, and to submit a report on this matter to the next regular session of the board in Vienna in June.

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Institutional shareholders angry at Woodside Energy’s approach to climate change will take their fight to its board for the first time at next month’s AGM, Australian Associated Press reports.

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They are targeting three longstanding directors up for re-election – Queensland Resources Council chief executive and former federal resources minister Ian Macfarlane, Singaporean oil and gas executive Swee Chen Goh and American former oil boss Larry Archibald.

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The non-executive trio are up for another stint on the 10-member board (not including chairman Richard Goyder and managing director Meg O’Neill) and were expected to be rubber-stamped at the annual general meeting.

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But shareholder advocacy group the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility, alongside institutional investors – industry superannuation fund Vision Super and fund manager Betashares – said today they had lost faith in the directors.

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In statements relating to the re-election of directors sent to Woodside, they call for all three to be held to account for repeatedly failing to have a credible climate strategy and continuing to allocate the bulk of Woodside’s capital to developing new oil and gas projects.

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The activist shareholders are also concerned carbon offsets continue to dominate Woodside’s strategy to cut emissions at production sites, according to the statement filed with Woodside before the 23 April AGM.

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Shareholders across the Australian market are increasingly demanding climate accountability and sustainability competence at the board level, and many boards – including Woodside’s – have acknowledged climate change to be an issue that will affect their business.

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Woodside confirmed that members’ statements have been received from ACCR. A spokesperson said:

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These statements were not compliant with the requirements of the Corporations Act, and so will not be included in the upcoming notice of meeting.

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In response ACCR said it was deeply concerned at the apparent denial of shareholders’ ability to voice concerns about governance at the AGM.

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Also on 7.30 last night, Scott Morrison was grilled about the robodebt scandal, which he was inextricably linked to through his time as social services minister, treasurer and prime minister.

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The welfare compliance program, ruled to be illegal and the subject of a royal commission, was conceived during his timee as social services minister and later ended under his prime ministership when it was found to breach the law.

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Asked about the program, Morrison responded on 7.30:

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It is totally regrettable and it is a very sad thing that has occurred.

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He said “there was a lot learned”but defended the intent behind the scheme.

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The idea of ensuring that taxpayers’ money, which is paid, is done properly is the principle and I think that principle is right. But clearly how this was executed on an industrial scale failed that test.

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7.30 host Sarah Ferguson repeatedly asked Morrison if the program was immoral.

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He declined to answer specifically, but said:

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I think the outcome, not the intent, but the outcome was very different from what was intended.

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Morning. I’m Martin Farrer and welcome to our rolling coverage of the day’s news. I’ll bring you some of the best overnight breaking stories before my colleague Natasha May takes over.

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The fallout from the Aukus submarine deal is very much top of the news agenda this morning, with China describing the scheme as a “path of error and danger”. The comments by the Chinese foreign ministry highlight the increasingly clear divide across Asia-Pacific with the US, Australia and UK recalibrating western defence capabilities in the region to counter what is seen as Beijing’s bellicose stance on Taiwan. Former prime minister Scott Morrison told ABC’s 7.30 that the threat from China was “top of the list” of reasons for buying the nuclear subs. We’ve got more on what he said coming up.

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Climate activists have been stepping up action against Woodside Energy, including defacing its Perth offices in protest against the alleged destruction of ancient First Nations art in the Burrup Peninsula. Now three members of the board face a fight for re-election at next month’s AGM after shareholder advocacy group the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility, alongside institutional investors – industry superannuation fund Vision Super and fund manager Betashares – said this morning they had lost faith in the directors and would hold them to account for lacking a clear climate strategy.

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Financial analysts reckon that the collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank has slashed the chances of the RBA raising the cash rate next month for what would be the 11th month in a row. The bank’s demise has forced a sharp selloff in banking shares across the world, including in Australia, and appears to have clouded the outlook for western economies. Shares rallied on Wall Street but the markets are jittery and the ASX could be in for a rocky ride today after dropping 1.4% yesterday. Into the bargain, Facebook parent Meta is sacking a further 10,000 workers.

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With that, let’s get going for the day …

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Key events

Filters BETA

Marles:

You’ve just witnessed the Premier and I sign a cooperation agreement between the Commonwealth of Australia and the Commonwealth of Australia and the state of South Australia.

The most important aspect of that is a headline commitment between our two governments to work cooperatively together to deliver this project and that’s really important because that’s going to need to happen not just during the life of our governments but a cross Commonwealth and South Australian governments over the coming decades.

It is a profoundly important statement of intent because unless that is in place, and unless that cooperation is enduring, we will not be able to deliver this capability for our nation.

Federal and South Australian government sign cooperation deal on Aukus

Daniel Hurst

Daniel Hurst

The Labor premier of South Australia, Peter Malinauskas, has joined senior Australian ministers at the Osborne naval shipyard in Adelaide.

Malinauskas is excited after the signing of a cooperation agreement between the state and the federal governments. Malinauskas said there was no longer a question about where the work was going to come from in South Australia. It was, instead, a question of how build up the required workforce. He added:

The fact that the commonwealth sees in South Australia the ability to build the most complex machines that have ever been produced in the history of humanity says a lot about where South Australia is going.

The acting prime minister, Richard Marles, said the agreement included a headline commitment to work cooperatively together to deliver this project. They are also planning an increase of 800 university places in South Australia over four years, the establishment of a training academy “right here at Osborne”, and a land exchange to allow for a larger construction yard at Osborne.

Marles said:

Yesterday’s announcement commits Australia to developing the capacity as quickly as possible to build nuclear-powered submarines here in South Australia right here at Osborne. This is demanded of us by our international partners. It is a massive endeavour.

‘This is going to be building the most complex machinery known to humanity’

Acting prime minister and defence minister Richard Marles is speaking at the Osborne shipyards in Adelaide about – you guessed it – Aukus:

Marles says building submarines in Australia “right here at Osborne, this is demanded of us by our international partners”:

This is a massive endeavour. It is of the same order of magnitude of the Snowy River scheme in the 60s. It’s going to transform our national economy but it is going to transform the South Australian economy. Thousands of jobs, a lifting-up of the technological capability of the broader economy.

What this will see across the three countries of the United States, the UK and Australia is the fourth production line to build nuclear-powered submarines, adding to Huntington’s in the United States and BAE in the United Kingdom.

This is going to be building the most complex machinery known to humanity, which means this site will become one of the centres of highest technology industry in the world. And it is absolutely a vote of confidence in Australian industry but a vote of confidence in South Australian history.

Updated at 19.48 EDT

As La Niña ends, El Niño watch begins …

Straight off the back of three consecutive La Niña periods, the Bureau of Meteorology is predicting an El Niño weather event could be in store during Australia’s winter and spring.

Sarah Scully, a senior meteorologist at the bureau, is speaking to ABC News about when the big wet of the past three years is predicated to end:

La Niña predominantly affects eastern and northern Australia. It officially ended yesterday and it is driven by sea surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific Ocean.

So as we became very familiar with over the last three years, we had above-average sea surface temperatures off north-eastern and northern parts of the country and that provided a whole lot more moisture available for increased rainfall, increased cloud cover that resulted in lower temperatures as well.

As you mentioned, La Niña has ended and we’ve moved into the El Niño watch with a 50% chance of going into an El Niño later this year.

Updated at 19.42 EDT

Naplan kicks off for students across Australia

Caitlin Cassidy

Caitlin Cassidy

Loathed amongst children, loved amongst statisticians, the annual Naplan assessment is kicking off today for 1.3m students.

This is the first year the test is being held in March instead of May following reforms by the federal government to provide earlier access to results. It’s also taking place fully online, excluding the year 3 writing test which will be on paper.

Ceo of the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority David de Carvalho said the decision to push the test forward required an “enormous effort” amongst teachers and schools.

Ministers agreed to moving Naplan into Term 1 so the results would be available earlier in the year to inform teaching and learning programs. It will give teachers earlier insights to support their professional judgment about how their students are progressing against the new proficiency standards and consider what support they might need in the coming year.”

The national assessment is the only major scale of progress in critical literacy and numeracy skills among students in years 3, 5, 7 and 9 – testing reading, writing, numeracy, grammar, punctuation and spelling.

De Carvalho:

It doesn’t measure overall school quality. It’s not meant to tell us everything about a student or their achievement. Naplan tests literacy and numeracy skills that are being developed in the classroom everyday with questions based mostly on what students have been taught from previous years of schooling.

The results will also be streamlined into four levels of achievement, replacing the previous 10-band structure. Parents will be able to track their children under the categories “exceeding”, “strong”, “developing” and “needs additional support”.

Assessors will be crossing their fingers this year is more successful than the last Naplan, when secondary student participation experienced the steepest declines on record. Remote, educationally disadvantaged and low-performing children were least likely to complete the tests.

Paul Karp

Paul Karp

Pocock highlights ‘enormous’ $368bn Aukus price tag

Senator David Pocock was also asked about the $368bn price tag of the 30-year Aukus nuclear submarine acquisition plan, and whether this makes a mockery of government claims about a tight budget.

ACT senator David Pocock
ACT senator David Pocock. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP

Pocock:

We’ve heard so much about how tight the budget is, and it is. We have some huge challenges we’re facing. And we’ve heard that we can’t spend money on things that are really important to our communities and to our country.

And this [Aukus] is a massive spending commitment for decades to come. Clearly, that money has to come from somewhere. So I’m certainly pushing and would welcome a conversation about where that comes from.

We’ve got stage three-tax cuts, $250bn, slated to come in to effect and we’ve got the major parties who won’t touch things like revisiting negative gearing, capital gains tax discounts on investment properties. All of these things that I think a lot of Australians are starting to question and particularly when it comes to this enormous commitment of spending for decades to come. That money’s going to have to come from somewhere. If we are going to be responsible with the budget, then there’s some very tough conversations ahead for the for the major parties.

On Tuesday the treasurer, Jim Chalmers, said despite the need to pay for Aukus there was no change to Labor’s policy on stage-three tax cuts.

Updated at 19.31 EDT

Victorian power prices to jump almost a third, government agency says

Peter Hannam

Peter Hannam

As we saw in an earlier post, default power prices are likely to lift by more than 20% from 1 July for customers in New South Wales, South Australia and south-east Queensland, according to a draft decision by the Australian Energy Regulator.

Victoria sets its own default market offer and that is going to increase even more, according to draft decision for consultation. The state’s Essential Services Commission is proposing average annual bill for domestic customers will rise 31.1%, with small business customers facing increases of 33.2%.

The commission says:

The draft decision proposes an increase of around $426 for residential customers, with typical bills increasing from $1,403 to around $1,829 per year.

For small business customers, typical bills would increase by around $1,738, from $5,620 to around $7,358 per year.

As with the AER, the commission blames “significant increases in wholesale electricity costs” for the higher prices.

The offer affects about 400,000 households and 55,000 small businesses that are on standing offers. That’s about 15% of households and 19% of small firms.

Victoria has tended to have lower wholesale prices than other states so it’s curious the state’s default prices have risen more – at least according to the draft decision. A final decision on the increase will be made on 24 May.

Updated at 19.27 EDT

David Pocock and CFMEU want ‘more ambition’ in Labor housing bill

Paul Karp

Paul Karp

The incoming national secretary of the construction union, Zach Smith, and senator David Pocock have held a press conference in Canberra to discuss building company insolvencies at which both called on Labor to up their ambition on the housing Australia future fund bill.

The pair were responding to the collapse of PBS Building, with creditors owed an estimated $250m. They called for the government to do more to ensure “security of payments”, ie ensuring workers and other creditors are not out of pocket.

Pocock said more “political will” was needed to enact solutions such as the proposed developers register in the ACT. Smith cited solutions including statutory trusts (requiring companies to pay progressively into a pot of money reserved for their creditors), and greater action from regulators such as the Fair Work Ombudsman and Tax Office.

Asked if these demands were forming part of negotiations with the government, Pocock said Labor had committed to reforms recommended by the Murray review so he “shouldn’t have to use” his vote on bills like the future fund as a “negotiating tactic”.

On that bill, Pocock said he wanted “more ambition” because the plan (to invest $10bn in a future fund that will pay out up to $500m a year) “is not going to touch the sides when it comes to dealing with the scale of the housing crisis that we’ve seen in the ACT”.

Pocock said there were 3,100 people on the social housing waiting list but it looked as though the government bill “at best will provide 540 additional homes in the ACT”:

That’s not enough.

Smith echoed these comments and said the CFMEU was not just concerned about lack of new builds but lack of maintenance of existing housing stock.

Updated at 19.26 EDT

Nurses to sue NSW government over staff numbers

Nurses and midwives are launching legal action against the NSW government over staffing ratios they say are leaving patients without adequate care, AAP reports.

The NSW Nurses and Midwives’ Association revealed plans today to file a case in the supreme court which accuses the government of repeatedly breaching award conditions.

It says widespread non-compliance with staffing levels has resulted in patients not receiving more than 100,000 hours of nursing care at multiple public hospitals.

Nurses and midwives have held repeated industrial action over the past year calling for mandated “safe” staffing ratios, along with better pay and conditions.

NSW has fallen behind other states in implementing legally mandated ratios, with Victoria, Queensland and the ACT already introducing them, while South Australia and Western Australia are both progressing measures, according to the association.

The union says it will provide evidence of inadequate staffing at major public hospitals including Royal Prince Alfred, Gosford, Wollongong, Westmead, Liverpool and Nepean.

General secretary Shaye Candish says the government’s nursing hours per patient day staffing system is not delivering safe care to patients at their most vulnerable.

Updated at 19.21 EDT

Renewables push

Asked about whether it could be time to reopen the discussion about nuclear power in Australia, Chris Bowen says the opposition’s plan is a “fantasy” because nuclear is the most expensive form of energy available and Australia would be starting from scratch without the infrastructure and resources necessary:

Well, it would be a particularly bizarre discussion. It would be particularly bizarre conversation to say that the answer to high power prices is to introduce the most expensive form of energy available – nuclear. That’s the Liberal plan.

Mr O’Brien, my shadow minister, takes himself off doing little videos in in Japan, “Nuclear: what we can learn from Hiroshima” and “Nuclear: what we can learn from Fukushima”. Particularly bizarre little intervention but bizarre in policy substance. The cheapest energy is renewable energy.

(You can read about that from Josh Butler🙂

We’re working to get our energy grid to 82% renewables by 2030. We will. Right around the world, experts recognise that nuclear is very expensive. Particularly expensive in Australia, because we don’t have a nuclear industry to start with.

We’d be starting from scratch without the infrastructure and the resources necessary to underpin a nuclear industry. Nuclear power plants are very expensive. They run over budget. They run over time.

Mr Dutton can go off on the fantasy frolic if he wants. We’ll remain focused on the job of introducing more of the cheapest form of energy, the cheapest form of energy, which is renewables.

Updated at 19.20 EDT

‘I’m not about to give up for working for lower power prices’

Chris Bowen is asked about the election promise to lower power bills by $275 by 2025, which the opposition keeps bringing up (without mentioning the fact that the Coalition delayed news that electricity prices were set to rise until after federal election).

But the energy minister is indicating he’s not giving up on lowering power prices.

Reporter:

Given the ongoing price rises, will you be able to achieve the $270 price cut?

Bowen:

Of course, we indicated that that would be there. I’m not about to give up for working for lower power prices.

Updated at 19.18 EDT

The Guardian

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