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Key events
RBA tipped to raise interest rates to 2.35%
The Reserve Bank of Australia is expected to raise interest rates when it meets on Tuesday, AAP reports.
A rise of 50 basis points to 2.35% is expected by economists for September but it is thought that any rate hike will be followed by a pause on action in October.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics will release its national accounts report, which includes the key gross domestic product numbers, for the June quarter on Wednesday.
On Thursday, central bank governor Philip Lowe will deliver a speech on the economic outlook and monetary policy at the Anika Foundation in Sydney.
The ABS will also release trade data as well as payroll jobs figures.
At the end of the week, the National Skills Commission will provide a preliminary update on job vacancies for the month.
The national statistics bureau will also release “monthly business turnover indicator” data on Friday.
Troll site dropped by internet infrastructure firm after threats
Internet infrastructure company Cloudflare has bowed to public pressure and blocked malicious community forum Kiwi Farms after it systematically targeted trans people for harassment and an “escalation” in the number of threats made on the site.
Kiwi Farms is a notorious website that coordinates trolling campaigns against individuals and has recently begun targeting trans people and activists.
Members of the community singled out Canadian Twitch streamer and activist Clara Sorrenti by repeatedly posting their personal information online and making fake calls to emergency service providers in order to send law enforcement to her home.
Cloudfare CEO Matthew Prince initially resisted a community campaign pressuring his company to stop providing services to Kiwi Farms, saying previous efforts to take action against far-right websites 8chan and Daily Stormer set a precedent that prompted authoritarian regimes pressuring it to act against human rights websites.
Just as the telephone company doesn’t terminate your line if you say awful, racist, bigoted things, we have concluded in consultation with politicians, policymakers and experts that turning off security services because we think what you publish is despicable is the wrong policy.
To be clear, just because we did it in a limited set of cases before doesn’t mean we were right when we did. Or that we will ever do it again.
But in a post to Twitter on Sunday Prince said his company had taken action after “the threats on the site escalated in the last 48 hours” and “it became enough of an imminent emergency” that they could not wait for law enforcement to act.
We just blocked Kiwifarms. The threats on the site escalated enough in the last 48 hours that, in spite of proactively working with law enforcement, it became enough of an imminent emergency we could no longer wait for them to act. Details of our decision: https://t.co/xNnSXn65R6
— Matthew Prince 🌥 (@eastdakota) September 3, 2022
Kiwi Farms has been blocked in Australia and New Zealand for hosting the Christchurch terrorist video – but Australia lifted the block after the site stopped hosting the video.
For more on the campaign to force Cloudfare to drop its support for Kiwi Farms, read Guardian technology reporter Josh Taylor’s report:
Tasmania records no new Covid deaths
No one with Covid-19 has died in Tasmania overnight, with the state recording 115 new cases on Sunday morning, 28 people in hospital and no one in ICU.
ACT records no new Covid deaths
No one with Covid-19 has died in the Australian Capital Territory overnight, with the territory recording 122 new cases on Sunday morning, 92 people in hospital, one in ICU and one on ventilation.
ACT COVID-19 update – 4 September 2022
🦠 COVID-19 case numbers
◾ New cases today: 122 (62 PCR and 60 RAT)
◾ Active cases: 1,066
◾ Total cases since March 2020: 203,197 pic.twitter.com/rlliaTnW9d— ACT Health (@ACTHealth) September 4, 2022
Paul Karp
The opposition leader, Peter Dutton, derided it as a union talkfest, but the Albanese government achieved more than could reasonably have been expected from its jobs and skills summit.
Yes, some of it was held over from national cabinet earlier this week (the extra Tafe places, for example). Some items were a long time coming and dictated by the circumstances of massive workforce shortages (permanent migration up to 195,000 and a $36m investment to speed up visa processing). One policy was even a tweak of an idea suggested by Dutton in June (the relaxation of tax rules to allow pensioners to work more).
But, add to that the massive list of industrial relations reforms outlined by Tony Burke on Thursday intended to get wages moving again (and increase workers’ power) and Labor can rightly say the summit was a success.
For more on why Dutton will be hoping Australians weren’t paying attention to the skills summit this week, read Guardian Australia’s political correspondent Paul Karp’s analysis:
And that’s it for Brendan O’Connor – a lot there to go through but the skills and training minister looks calm and confident following the skills summit this week.
O’Connor is asked about measures to keep tradies in apprenticeships, but also crucially what the government was going to do to get people living with disabilities into the workforce – particularly an idea floated by Australian of the Year Dylan Alcott to reduce restrictions so people on the disability support pension can work while receiving support.
When we have a tight labour market we have an opportunity to make sure that people can access the labour market who have been locked out for years, including people with disability, First Nations people and long-term unemployed. We should be making sure that they’re not forgotten here.
This is an interesting response as the government has so far refused to raise social security payments to the poverty.
O’Connor is asked about $1.1bn being set aside for federal, state and territory governments to offer 180,000 fee-free Tafe places, noting that money is for 2023 and raising the question: what happens after that?
O’Connor:
We’ve been able to create five guiding principles to negotiate a five-year-long agreement with the states and territories. They are the deliverers of the sector but it needs reform. The sector but it needs reform.
Notionally we’re looking at the $3.7bn over five years from the commonwealth. That’s on top of what payments are made, subject to negotiation. We understand – we are a big funder of the VET sector. We need to make sure. But let’s be clear: we’ve got that commencing 21 January 2024.
O’Connor is asked abut whether the minimum pay for temporary skilled migrants – $53,900 – should be raised as it has not been increased for “more than a decade”.
O’Connor says the figure should be lifted:
We have to examine that. That meant that it’s fallen in real terms. Obviously if it’s nominally the same for nine years, we have to make sure it’s not about bringing people in to displace local workers. I think there must be a lifting of that measure.
‘We have almost a million visas that are not processed’
Now on migration, O’Connor says the government is attempting to balance competing interests in raising the migration cap, filling skills gaps and ensuring a growing economy without eroding the bargaining power of Australian workers.
O’Connor:
What we had under the previous government, is Peter Dutton and Scott Morrison not understand immigration is also an economic portfolio. We have almost a million visas that are not processed. We have thousands of temporary holders who have been here for a decade in areas of skills shortage who can’t get permanent residency. We had the temporary visa holders not provided any jobkeeper or jobseeker flee the country. It was starve or leave.
We were left with greater skills shortages than should have been the case. That’s if the previous government understood the importance of immigration and temporary and permanent skilled migration to the economy.
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