Australia news live: Albanese promises power price action ‘before Christmas’ but rules out mining resource rent tax option | Australia news

Queenslanders encouraged to mask up as state enters fourth Covid wave

AAP reports:

Queenslanders are again being urged to don face masks and take added precautions as the state enters its fourth wave of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The government has raised its virus alert from green to amber, which means masks are recommended indoors when people cannot socially distance in healthcare facilities and around older or vulnerable people.

Masks are also urged while on public transport and in crowded settings.

However, the state’s chief health officer, John Gerrard, says there is no need for alarm and Queensland will not return to forced mask mandates.

“We are entering another wave here in Queensland as in other states of Australia, and this is not unexpected, but these waves will probably go on for some months or even longer,” Dr Gerrard told ABC Radio on Friday.

He said said the wave’s peak was expected within weeks.

“The duration of these waves is unclear … we believe the peak will certainly be before Christmas, some time early in December.”

Hospitalisations have more than doubled to 205 in the past week, while 73 people have died and 21,761 new cases have been recorded since the beginning of October.

Case numbers have erupted since the weekend with the BQ.1 variant, which has swept Europe and the US, spreading in northern Brisbane and on the Gold Coast.

Not that it went anywhere, but another Covid wave is impacting Australia.

NSW and Victoria have reported their weekly figures.

Katharine Murphy has a preview on what summit season will look like for Anthony Albanese over the next week.

Murph is travelling with the media following Albanese (everyone pays their own way, even when flying on the PM’s plane) and so will bring you updates as they come.

ACCC releases interim report on digital platforms

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has released its latest interim report into digital platforms (this is part of a series which will go until 2025)

Jim Chalmers, Stephen Jones and Andrew Leigh have a joint statement out on the report, which, as you would expect, doesn’t paint the rosiest of pictures:

The inquiry has identified significant consumer and competition issues across a range of digital platform services including search engines, social media, online private messaging, app stores, online retail marketplaces and digital advertising.

The interim report released today makes four recommendations to strengthen consumer and competition laws:

• the introduction of economy-wide consumer measures, including to prohibit unfair trading practices and unfair contract terms;

• digital platform-specific consumer measures to prevent and remove scams, harmful apps and fake reviews, including dispute resolution processes;

• mandatory codes of conduct for designated digital platforms to address competition harms; and

• targeted competition obligations for designated platforms based on legislated principles.

The government will consult before looking at any legislative changes.

Labor’s industrial relations bill passes House of Representatives

After four hours of back and forth, the government’s IR bill passed the house. That was never going to be a problem – the government has the numbers in the house. The issue were the amendments that other MPs wanted to make to the bill.

That was a taster of what is coming in the senate, where the bill will most likely go through the wringer and emerge watered down in order to get it passed.

The big sticking point is multi-employer bargaining, with those against the bill (and that part in particular) warning it will pit small business against unions, which the Centre Alliance’s Rebekha Sharkie said would be an unfair contest.

But that ignores the fact that employees of small businesses have never really been unionised. Not when unions were at their peak in the 1970s and certainly not now that union membership is about 14% of all workers.

As the Australian Council of Trade Unions’ secretary, Sally McManus, told the ABC:

We are not organising multi-employer bargains in small businesses. We’ve never had high union membership in small businesses, even when we had 60% membership and we’ve got 14% now, it is not going to happen. This is really a scare campaign.

Nothing will happen to small businesses. These laws will pass. Life will go on for them. It’s just a scare campaign that’s been run because … big business don’t want to face up to the fact that they really need to give people pay rises.

The threshold for a small business in the bill is 15 employees and up; Some want that threshold increased. Tony Burke, the workplace relations minister, has already changed the bill so it now requires a majority in each workplace to sign on, rather than a majority across the sector.

It is interesting to note that the small business line is being run quite hard by interest groups which represent big business. We’ll see how that all plays out.

PM calls Medibank hacked information release ‘totally reprehensible’

Anthony Albanese was also asked about the Medibank hack:

Well we know it’s already incredibly distressing. The fact that information was published going to very personal health details of Australian citizens is disgusting, and something that is I think, just totally reprehensible. And it’s causing a great deal of distress in the community. The government acknowledges this and we’re doing all we can to limit the impact of this and to provide that support to people who are going through this distressing time.

Albanese: we want to see a stabilisation in Australia-China relationship

What does Australia want from China for the relationship between the two countries to get back to a constructive footing, Sabra Lane asks Anthony Albanese?

Albanese:

Well, firstly to lift its economic sanctions, they total some $20bn. They’re not in Australia’s interests, of the wine industry, the meat industry and other industries where sanctions have been placed on, but it’s also not in the interests of China. This is a counterproductive measure because the products that Australia sells to China are the best-quality products in my view in the world. And it makes sense to actually normalise the relationships. We want to see a stabilisation in the relationship.

And what would China want from Australia for things to return to normal?

Albanese:

Well, it’s not up to me to put forward their case, it’s up to me to continue to pursue Australia’s national interests. We’ll always stand up for human rights, we’ll stand up for our values, and we won’t be compromising on that and nor should we. But that should be respected, just as we should have open and constructive dialogue with other international partners.

Albanese on Xi Jinping: ‘we will no doubt be at the same meetings’

Will Anthony Albanese meet with China’s president Xi Jinping in the coming week? He’s staying mum.

He told ABC Radio AM:

What I want to see with the relationship with China is cooperation where we can, but we of course will maintain our Australian values where we must. So dialogue is always good, a meeting is not locked in at this point in time. But we will no doubt be at the same meetings. The East Asia summit, the G20, and Apec is going to be a busy time in international diplomacy.

Liberal deputy to female victims of Medibank hack: ‘we hear you, we are with you’

Deputy Liberal leader Sussan Ley was part of that same interview:

Now this act is just disgusting, targeting women who have had a pregnancy termination is about as cowardly as you can get.

I just want to say to those women this morning, we hear you, we are with you, and we love you. If you need help, please reach out and we are absolutely determined to target the criminals who have done this disgusting act.

You know, I feel sick when I hear more and more of this awful information being released. And as you and Jason have said, the intensely private nature of this is something that really cuts to the core for every single woman. So for women who are nervous and upset, just please reach out for help. Help is available, and everything that can be done I am sure the government will do, in order to, not just to get the criminals, but to make sure we don’t have this happen again.

Medibank has much work to do, and I know that they’re doing that, and I know that they have a line that people can call and that’s perhaps the first step to take. But remember, there’s a range of supports and the community will wrap around the people who are affected by this because every single person realises how absolutely disgusting it is.

Information on pregnancy terminations included in stolen data Medibank data hackers posted

The education minister, Jason Clare, spoke to the Seven network this morning and said the government is working on the information not being spread further:

This is serious. You’re talking about rolled gold mongrels here. It doesn’t get much worse than releasing people’s abortion details. So that’s what we’re seeing happening here. There’s a number of things the government’s doing first and foremost is what the federal police and the Australian Securities Directorate are doing, which is to hunt down these criminals.

The second is getting Services Australia embedded inside Medibank to help them with the work that they’re doing. It’s also the work that we’re doing with social media companies to make sure that they don’t spread this information on the internet.

And then finally, for everybody that’s a Medibank customer, there’s a phone number that you should have at your fingertips, which is 13 23 31. That’s a phone number which is a one stop shop for you if you need to talk to Medibank or state governments, territory governments, or federal governments, about anything related to your data which could be being released by these criminals.

Albanese speaks on power prices and potential meeting with Chinese leader

Paul Karp

The counting for the US midterms might still be going, but people are already demanding more action.

Teterboro airport is one of the busiest private airports in the world. Kylie Jenner regularly flies from there (Jenner having recently drawn ire for her short private jet trips, and resulting carbon emissions).

Plibersek on temporary shutdown of recycling program: first thing we can do is ‘use less plastic’

There’s no solution at yet for the Coles and Woolworths recycling program not actually managing to, well recycle. (Which one would think is a key part of a recycling program)

Tanya Plibersek has told ABC radio RN Breakfast that state and territory environment ministers are working on local solutions. But she also says people have a role to play;

Good morning from Amy

A former New South Wales premier and the boss of construction giant Grocon will face a parliamentary inquiry today into potential bias during the alleged “wild west” planning of multibillion-dollar harbourside development Barangaroo, AAP reports.

The state parliamentary committee is examining “any actual or perceived biases” during negotiations between the government, builder Lendlease and casino and resort company Crown.

The key issue is sight lines of Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Opera House.

Grocon is due to tell MPs on Friday it was misled by Infrastructure NSW on sight lines, causing a key project to fail.

What is it like to find out that a massive, terrible war you are fighting has ended? To coincide with Armistice Day, the Australian War Memorial has digitised a trove of diaries and letters written by soldiers. Natasha May has this fascinating read delving into anecdotes on how troops welcomed the news from the western front to London, and explores their sense of joy, relief and loss.

A pre-Amy good morning