Finance minister Mathias Cormann has been on ABC News Breakfast this morning, talking about the changes to the jobseeker and jobkeeper payments to be announced today without, er, actually announcing anything.
The current $1,500 per fortnight jobkeeper rate and $1115.70 per fortnight jobseeker rate (that’s the base rate of $565.70 plus the $550 fortnightly coronavirus supplement) will expire on 28 September and be replaced by lower-rate payments, although the federal government has not yet said what that lower rate will be.
Cormann said the lower rate for the jobkeeper payment, which was introduced at the start of the coronavirus-induced economic shutdown in March, was “in recognition of the fact that some Australians have been getting higher payments through jobkeeper than is reflected in the hours worked”.
He said the new payment would have two tiers — a full-time rate, understood by Guardian Australia to be around $1,000 per fortnight, and a lower part-time rate.
He told the ABC:
It means that it more closely aligns the level of support with the level of income that would be received in the ordinary course of events.
Essentially, under the existing flat rate too many people were getting paid more than the government thought they were worth.
Federal MPs should have their pay docked for cancelled parliament sittings, Rex Patrick says
South Australian senator Rex Patrick says federal MPs should have their pay docked by $1,000 for every scheduled parliamentary sitting day which gets cancelled rather than rescheduled.
The federal parliament has sat for fewer days in the first half of 2020 than during the same period in any other year in the past 10 years. The lower house sat for just 27 days from January to July 2020 and the senate 23. That’s almost half the number of sitting days of the next lowest year — the first half of 2019, when the lower house sat for 45 days and the senate 40 despite being suspended for the federal election on 18 May.
Millions of Australians are facing huge financial difficulties as a consequence of COVID-19 lockdowns and restrictions.All too many Australians have lost their jobs and many others are working reduced hours with significantly reduced pay. Federal politicians should not be insulated from the impacts, especially when many MPs are not doing fundamental work they are rightfully expected to do; oversight of Government and reviewing and voting on legislation.
The Centre Alliance senator said that the health advice of the chief medical officer should be followed, prime minister Scott Morrison’s decision to cancel a fortnight of sitting days rather than reschedule them was “highly disappointing and sends precisely the wrong signal to Australians”.
There were only 30 Senate sitting days left for 2020. The prime minister’s decision reduced those planned sittings by more than 20 per cent. Those August sitting days should not have been cancelled, but rather rescheduled to September, which has only three sitting days planned. There is a lot of work to be done.
Patrick said parliament was not able to do its work properly on such a restricted schedule, because it reduced the time to properly scrutinise legislation.
When Parliament does reconvene, the Government will no doubt seek to ram through its legislative agenda in the shortest possible time and with the least possible debate and scrutiny.
Good morning,
Prime minister Scott Morrison and treasurer Josh Frydenberg will today announce changes to the jobseeker and jobkeeper programs, reducing the coronavirus supplement on the former by an unspecified amount and cutting the latter to $1,000 a fortnight. The changes will be effective from 28 September, and jobkeeper will continue until March 2021.
According to a summary of the jobkeeper review, written by the Treasury and circulated in Canberra yesterday, the Treasury found that the payment should continue to be available past September for businesses most impacted by the pandemic, but that:
It may … be appropriate at this juncture to consider reducing payments to wean off businesses from ongoing support.
You can read more on that from our political editor Katharine Murphy here.
The changes to the NSW-Victorian border will come into effect at midnight tonight, making it much harder to cross. They’ve been roundly criticised by the mayors of the twin city of Albury Wodonga, who say the NSW government has not been consultative.
Meanwhile, police in NSW are preparing to go to the court again to stop another proposed Black Lives Matter rally, planned for Tuesday 28 July. Police commissioner Mick Fuller told Sky news holding a protest could “put NSW back five or 10 years economically,” and alluded to the repeatedly disproven claim that the Melbourne Black Lives Matter rally of 6 June had a role in the second wave outbreak in Melbourne. The Victorian chief health officer has repeatedly said it didn’t, and said the whole of the outbreak could be attributed to breaches in hotel quarantine.
Tomorrow marks two weeks since Greater Melbourne and the Mitchell Shire were put back into lockdown. Authorities have repeatedly said they would expect numbers to drop at that point — but despite a substantial reduction yesterday the trend is not going down yet. In NSW, the state recorded its highest number of cases in several months but all were linked to known outbreaks.
Let’s crack on. You can follow me on twitter at @callapilla or email me at calla.wahlquist@theguardian.com
