Australian Politics
Liberal Pledges to ‘Protect’ Australia Day
The Liberal Party has pledged to “protect Australia Day” by setting new rules for councils to hold citizenship ceremonies on Jan. 26 if it gains power at the next election.
Over 80 councils across Australia have decided to abolish citizenship ceremonies on Jan. 26, after the Albanese government scrapped the former Morrison government’s rule in December 2022 that forced councils to hold citizenship ceremonies on Australia Day.
In Victoria alone, more than a quarter of councils have decided not to mark Australia Day with a citizenship ceremony.
Dan Tehan, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, criticised Labor for trying to change the National Day.
Labor is undermining the significance of Australia Day and is laying the groundwork to abolish January 26 as Australia Day,” he wrote in a statement titled “Labor undermining Australia Day.”
“Australia Day is a proud day for the many thousands of people who will join our multicultural family and become Australian citizens, it should be respected.
“If the Prime Minister wants to change Australia Day he should be upfront with the Australian people instead of working in the shadows to change the date.”
Jan. 26 marks the 1788 landing of the First Fleet in Sydney by Captain Arthur Phillip in Sydney Cove (now known as Circular Quay) and the proclamation of British sovereignty over the eastern seaboard of Australia.
The day has been a source of contention, with those in support of Australia Day viewing Jan. 26 as a celebratory occasion to commemorate the birth of their liberal democracy, while others, such as indigenous rights activists, dubbing the day “Invasion Day” while proposing an alternative date, such as Jan. 29.
The criticism comes as Stephen Smith, Australia’s High Commissioner to the UK, drew criticism for cancelling an Australia Day event due to supposed “sensitivities” around the national celebration.
The Australia Day Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation and the organiser of the annual Australia Day gala dinner, decided not to hold the popular fundraising event in January, which has been held for 20 years in London and normally attracts famous names, as instructed by the top Australian diplomat.
Mr. Tehan promised a future Coalition government will ensure that new citizens “have the choice right around our nation of having their citizenship ceremony on our national day.”
“The Coalition believes that new citizens should have the opportunity to become Australians on our national day,” Mr. Tehan said. “If the Coalition wins the next election, we will do everything we can to unite Australians on Australia Day.”
Leaders of councils that have abolished the Jan. 26 citizenship ceremony cited public support for doing so.
Sydney Mayor Clover Moore, for instance, said “the date of a national celebration should not be on Invasion Day,” and that her council would hold ceremonies on Jan. 29 instead, as it did last year. “The City of Sydney strongly supports changing the date of Australia’s national day to one that can be fully embraced and celebrated by all Australians,” Ms. Moore said.
“Advocating for a change of date won’t resolve the devastating and far-reaching impacts of colonisation, but it does provide a platform for an ongoing and honest conversation.”
On the contrary, Peter Gangemi, Mayor of The Hills Shire in northwest Sydney, whose council was mistakenly listed by the Department of Home Affairs as having no ceremony on Australia Day, said there was “no better way to mark the occasion than with a citizenship ceremony.”
Australia is “the greatest nation on Earth and we have so much to celebrate as a community on the 26th of January,” he said.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/world/liberal-pledges-to-protect-australia-day-5557272
******************************************************Wealthy baby boomers could pay more for aged care in major industry shake-up
There are already severe means tests so new rules might not change much
A huge shake-up is on its way for one of Australia’s biggest industries with wealthy baby boomers set to foot the bill.
Baby boomers who can afford to should be required to pay more for aged care, a federal government taskforce has advised the government.
The taskforce has advised Aged Care Minister Anika Wells to change means-testing for aged care services to require wealthier Australians to pay more out of their own pocket, the Sydney Morning Herald reports.
Currently, taxpayers foot a bill of more than $30bn to support elderly Australians with the cost of aged care.
This is estimated to rise by an eye-watering $29bn over the next decade, according to the Parliamentary Budget Office.
A report will be published by the taskforce before the end of January and is expected to recommend consumers increase their contributions to alleviate the pressure on taxpayers while maintaining the high quality of services.
The federal government is expected to respond to its recommendations later in the year, most likely during the May budget.
Daily living fees for those in residential care, currently set at $61 a day, could also be lifted for those with greater wealth.
Taxpayers currently cover 96 per cent of the total cost of residential aged care, leaving just 4 per cent paid in consumer contributions.
This is largely because existing means tests cap payments at $33,000 a year or $78,500 over a lifetime.
Another significant change is the way the family home contributes to means tests, with the current system requiring the maximum value of the home to sit below $198,000.
The recommendation is not a major shock after Ms Wells indicated during a National Press Club speech in June that the government expected aged care contributions would need to increase to keep up with quality improvements.
“You have to say that if we’re not prepared to accept that cinder-block, linoleum-floor, four-bed room any more, then we need to work out how we’re going to pay for it,” she said.
“Plenty of people have said: ‘I am prepared to pay for an innovative, excellent model of care – I just can’t find it’.”
Ms Wells is expected to formally respond to the taskforce report when it is published in a matter of weeks.
Opposition health spokeswoman Anne Ruston told The Australian last year that the Coalition would consider “any sensible policy solutions put forward by the Aged Care Taskforce and the government in good faith”.
“Ensuring the sustainability of Australia’s aged-care sector is absolutely critical to ensuring future generations have access to the care they need and the care they deserve as they age,” she said.
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‘Bureaucrat state’ of Victoria caught in public sector debt grip
The number of Victorian government employees has jumped by 60 per cent over the past 15 years and at double the pace of population growth, prompting experts to warn the bloated public service will make it harder to repair the state’s shattered budget and pay down the highest debt levels in the country.
The rate of growth in Victorian state workers far outstrips the experience of NSW, where consecutive Liberal governments helped contain the increase in headcount to 28 per cent between 2008 and 2023, not far above a 20 per cent rise in population over the period, an analysis of Australian Bureau of Statistics figures shows.
Growth in the public sector workforce has also been large in Queensland and Western Australia, the data shows, although the roughly 40 per cent increase since 2008 in both states (against population growth of about 30 per cent) still falls far short of the Victorian figures.
Boosted spending on Victoria’s public service has produced higher staffing per capita in key services such as education and policing, but the additional funding has produced a mixed report card on whether Victorians experience better services or living standards than other states.
S&P Global Ratings analyst Anthony Walker said Victoria’s wages bill as measured in budget cash flows has risen steadily since the Labor government came to power in 2014, jumping by 65 per cent between 2015 and 2023.
Mr Walker said the global credit ratings agency had been warning Victoria’s government since 2016 that “we were concerned about the overall growth in the wages bill, which was being masked by very strong migration and that was driving revenue growth”.
“Our concern was that if revenues did slow down, the wages bill would be very difficult for the government to address,” he said.
Mr Walker said that “baking in” much higher spending on public servant salaries had undermined the state’s fiscal resilience, which was exposed when the pandemic hit.
“At that stage we were not predicting Covid, but this was why we had a two-notch downgrade in Victoria (in December 2020 against a smaller downgrade in NSW) – because of the persistent increase in employee expense in Victoria compared to other states,” he said.
Mr Walker said Victoria was in a weaker fiscal position than other states, and that “the fiscal recovery does require a lot of savings measures, including headcount reductions”.
The annual average rise of 7.2 per cent a year in state employees’ total wages contrasted sharply with Victoria’s most recent budget projections that the wages bill would only climb by 3 per cent per annum in the forward estimates.
“They have for a number of years said they would get on top of the wage bill and they have really struggled to do that. Notably, Victoria’s May budget included plans to cut as many as 4000 staff from a Victorian public service of about 55,000 people,” Mr Walker said.
“These are back-office staff, not teachers. But a reduction of about 10 per cent is a very large number. It’s not the first time they have forecast (a much slower rate of growth in wages) and failed to achieve it.”
Independent economist Saul Eslake said the political persuasions of the governments in the country’s two most populous states over the past 15 years explained the wide gap between growth in state employees in NSW and Victoria. “The most obvious explanation is you’ve had a long period of Labor rule in Victoria, and 12 years of Liberal rule in NSW,” he said.
Mr Eslake said that almost all of the growth in government sector workers in Victoria happened under former Labor premier Daniel Andrews, who took power in 2014 before stepping down last September.
“The most charitable interpretation is they (the Victorian government) have prioritised the delivery of public services in education and health and the police, and these are all employee-intensive activities,” Mr Eslake said.
“A less charitable interpretation might put it down to the significant influence public sector unions wield in the Victorian Labor Party.”
With a richer and older population, demand for services such as education, health and aged care are rising, putting more pressure on states and territories.
Mr Eslake said there was “no hard and fast rule” about the “right” number of state workers.
“Economically there is no right or wrong – Scandinavian countries collect more than 50 per cent in GDP in taxes, and they certainly haven’t performed economically worse than countries that collect a lot less in taxes,” he said.
Mr Eslake added: “If you really believe that the people want more public services, then the fiscally responsible thing to do is raise taxes.
“Employing a lot of public servants and paying them with money from taxation is, fiscally, not a bad thing. Employing a lot of public servants and paying them with borrowed money, however, is an unequivocally bad thing.”
The effectiveness of increased spending on high state government headcounts is hard to measure, but a review of the Productivity Commission’s rolling reports on government services suggests the additional spending has not created clearly superior outcomes for Victorian residents, compared with other states.
As at June 2022, there were 313 “operational staff” per 100,000 people in Victoria’s police force, well above the rate of 239 in NSW. In Queensland and Western Australian there were 285 and 282 operational police, respectively, per 100,000 people.
But the rate of physical assaults per 100,000 residents in Victoria was 1840 in 2021-22, according to best estimates quoted by the commission, higher than the 1540 assaults per 100,000 in NSW, although better than the roughly 2300 rate in Queensland and Western Australia.
In health, the availability of public hospital beds was also worse in Victoria than in the other states, at 2.2 beds per 1000 Victorians, versus an equivalent rate of 2.6 in NSW, 2.5 in Queensland, and 2.3 in Western Australia.
Ambulance wait times are not directly comparable between all states, but the proportion of public hospital emergency patients seen on time in Victoria is the lowest among the three big east coast states – at 63 per cent of patients, against 68 per cent in Queensland and 77 per cent of patients in NSW.
Victoria’s public schools had a notably lower student-to-teacher ratio than the other states, at 12.7 students per teacher in 2022, versus 14.2 students in NSW, 14.1 in Western Australia, and 13.2 in Queensland.
The higher teacher staffing ratios in Victoria against NSW, however, have not translated into better NAPLAN results, with 95.5 per cent of year seven students in both states scoring at or above the national minimum standards for reading in 2022. On the same metric for numeracy, 91.9 per cent of Victorian students achieved at least the minimum standard, only slightly above the 91.6 per cent of NSW year sevens.
Centre for Independent Studies senior fellow Robert Carling said the ABS numbers, while distorted by a change in methodology in the most recent financial year, confirmed his own research showing runaway spending and hiring on state employees in Victoria under Mr Andrews.
“Maybe in part it was an adjustment to the more standard levels of employment in police and public hospitals, but it goes beyond that,” Mr Carling said.
Moody’s analyst John Manning said the significant disruptions from the pandemic married with Victoria’s decision to quadruple its annual infrastructure spending to about $20bn through the pandemic had left the state in the weakest fiscal position of its peers. Mr Manning said the challenge was for Victoria to move “to a sustained operating surplus, and to manage the capital spending program such that the debt burden can stabilise in the immediate term, and then revert to more sustainable levels going forward”.
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World Heritage has split leaders
A UNESCO World Heritage listing for Cape York has been a long-term ambition for Labor federally and in Queensland but it is one that has not been shared by all of the area’s Indigenous groups, who first must give their free and informed consent. With a Queensland election looming, it is no surprise that former federal environment minister, rock singer Peter Garrett, and veteran environmentalist Don Henry have been pushed into service in another attempt to get things over the line.
World Heritage listings play well for inner-city green groups who want to frustrate mining projects and other economic developments in remote locations. But the green tape that comes with UNESCO oversight is not necessarily as attractive for the people who work and live there. Repeated attempts to list parts of Cape York have proved difficult for successive governments because of a lack of Indigenous agreement.
Former environment minister Tony Burke spent a lot of time trying to secure agreement before the idea was scuttled in 2014 by the Abbott government and Campbell Newman in Queensland. Ironically, free and informed consent is a condition of the World Heritage listing process that was introduced after the Hawke government failed to consult the Eastern Kuku Yalanji people over a World Heritage listing of the Daintree.
The resurfaced Cape York ambition is an opportunity for the Albanese government to deliver on its promise to give Indigenous leaders a voice on decisions that will affect them. The evidence is, however, that there is not a unified view among Cape York Indigenous leaders. Gerhard Pearson, executive director of the Balkanu Cape York Development Corporation, said the listing proposal was a cynical exercise linked to the expansion of exploration permits and leading up to the October state election.
Labor is reluctant to outline what it hopes to include in a proposal to UNESCO for a “tentative listing”. But a World Heritage listing would give the federal government automatic standing in development decisions in the area under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Act. For this reason, even a tentative listing would act as an insurance policy for green groups in the event of a future LNP state government.
As things stand, the Cape York proposal has all the hallmarks of being a vanity project by Labor calculated to win the support of inner-city environmentalists who are unlikely to ever visit Cape York, let alone live there.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Evelyn Rae, a conservative Australian political commentator
Margo Robbie -- a beautiful australian
My son Joe at ANU
One of the happiest pictures ever -- Cleo Smith, aged 4
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