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Vanessa Hudson to replace Alan Joyce at Qantas
Elias Visontay
Qantas has announced Vanessa Hudson will replace Alan Joyce as the airline’s chief executive when Joyce retires in November.
Hudson is now the chief financial officer of the Qantas group – which includes the budget carrier Jetstar.
She was viewed as one of the favourites to take over from Joyce, who has led Qantas since 2008.
Key events
As our defence correspondent Daniel Hurst reported earlier, the government will offer Australian defence force members a $50,000 bonus if they commit to stay for three years beyond their initial period of service.
The defence minister, Richard Marles, has stepped up this morning to explain the rationale behind the $400m cost to the budget over four years:
Defence does a lot of training and skills people up. Those in the defence force are highly sought after in the wider economy and there are lots of opportunities for people who have had a career in defence to pursue their career in the wider economy.
That’s great, but it also creates a challenge for defence in terms of retaining people in the defence force. With all of those challenges, though, we need to be growing our defence force. We certainly need to be retaining it at the funded strength levels that are in place now, which is why this measure is so important.
Benita Kolovos
Greens call for inquiry into Victoria’s rental crisis
The Victorian Greens will today introduce a motion to the upper house to establish a parliamentary inquiry into the state’s worsening rental crisis.
If passed, the inquiry would investigate:
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The drivers and impacts of low rental supply.
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Options to increase the supply of long-term rentals.
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Options to make renting more affordable.
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How to improve Victoria’s rental standards.
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Options for legislating longer and perpetual leases.
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Further protections for tenants against notices to vacate during and after the termination of a lease.
The Greens will also ask the government to introduce an immediate two-year rent freeze to protect renters while long-term solutions are being investigated.
The party’s spokesperson for renters rights, Gabrielle de Vietri, has urged MPs to back the motion, which will go to a vote next sitting week:
Given the severity of the rental crisis at the moment, we hope to have support from across the political spectrum for this inquiry. It’s not too much to ask that we look into the problems and solutions that many Victorians are facing with the rising costs of rent. I think that any MP who doesn’t support this rental inquiry will have a lot to answer for.
Elias Visontay
Qantas chairman Richard Goyder said the appointment allows for a “smooth transition” from Alan Joyce. A lot of thought has gone into this succession, he said, and the board had a number of high-quality candidates to consider, both internally and externally:
Vanessa has a deep understanding of this business after almost three decades in a range of roles both onshore and offshore, across commercial, customer and finance. She has a huge amount of airline experience and she’s an outstanding leader.
Hudson said:
It’s an absolute honour to be asked to lead the national carrier. This is an exceptional company full of incredibly talented people and it’s very well-positioned for the future.
My focus will be delivering for those we rely on and who rely on us – our customers, our employees, our shareholders and the communities we serve.
Vanessa Hudson to replace Alan Joyce at Qantas
Elias Visontay
Qantas has announced Vanessa Hudson will replace Alan Joyce as the airline’s chief executive when Joyce retires in November.
Hudson is now the chief financial officer of the Qantas group – which includes the budget carrier Jetstar.
She was viewed as one of the favourites to take over from Joyce, who has led Qantas since 2008.
Paul Karp
Unions welcome payday super
The union movement has also welcomed the crackdown on unpaid super.
The Australian Council of Trade Unions’ assistant secretary Scott Connolly said:
Paying superannuation at the same time as wages is a long overdue measure that will make it easier for workers to track their super and ensure they’re getting paid what they’re owed.
Millions of workers have billions of dollars of retirement savings unpaid every year – timing superannuation payment with wages will make this harder.
Working people will also soon have superannuation recognised as a workplace right in the national employment standards, meaning workers and their unions can commence recovery action sooner to stem the haemorrhaging of retirement savings.
Every worker should have the right to have 100% of their super paid on time, all the time. The union movement welcomes the key steps the Albanese government is taking to protect workers’ super.
Industry Super says payday super a ‘big win’ for lower-paid workers
Paul Karp
Industry Super Australia has welcomed the government’s proposal to require employers to pay super on payday, instead of quarterly, saying it could help drastically curb Australia’s unpaid super scourge which cost workers $33bn over seven years.
According to Industry Super the measure could amount to an extra $50,000 for workers at retirement when combined with higher compound interest from more frequent payments.
Industry Super Australia’s chief executive Bernie Dean said:
This is a big win for the three million mostly young and lower paid Australians unfairly deprived the super they’ve earned and will give them a better shot at building a good nest egg for retirement.
The government should be commended for listening and then taking the necessary steps to end the huge super rip off which was undermining the future economic security of too many young women and others on lower incomes.
Aligning payment of super and wages is the right thing to do by workers, boosts government revenue, lifts investment returns and puts all employers on a level playing field.
Melissa Davey
The key questions over Australia’s vaping reforms
In the lead-up to the health minister Mark Butler speaking at the National Press Club in Canberra later today, where he will expand on his groundbreaking vaping reforms, health experts have a few key questions they hope he will answer.
There are still questions over the timeline for the measure to stop the import of non-prescription vaping products, including vapes that do not contain nicotine.
Also, some states and territories have been criticised for doing little to enforce the existing laws that ban retail sale of nicotine vapes, so health experts want more detail about how states and territories will do what is required of them and stop blatant illegal retail sales.
Finally, given that the reforms announced by Butler are in line with public health evidence and advice, it will be interesting what Butler says about any expectations of support from the Coalition and the Greens, who have had differing views on the reforms needed.
The outgoing Qantas CEO Alan Joyce will be replaced by the airline’s chief financial officer Vanessa Hudson from November, the Australian Financial Review is reporting.
Qantas chair Richard Goyder said Hudson had “a deep understanding of the business”, the AFR reports, and said:
A lot of thought has gone into this succession and the board had a number of high quality candidates to consider both internally and externally.
NSW hospital workers stop work in push for wage rise
The NSW government is under pressure to deliver a pay rise for hospital staff as workers on the state’s north coast walk off the job for the first of three days of industrial action, AAP reports.
Staff at Tweed hospital will walk off the job for an hour at 10am today and the stoppages will continue at Lismore on Wednesday at midday and Coffs Harbour on Thursday at 2pm.
The Health Services Union, which represents hospital workers such as cleaners, administrative and other support staff, says employees are frustrated that wage negotiations have yet to begin since Labor came to power in NSW on 25 March.
A key plank of Labor’s election campaign was the promise to abolish the public-sector wages cap and negotiate wage rises for frontline workers.
HSU NSW secretary Gerard Hayes said the suppression of wages had led to a crisis in attracting and retaining health staff:
NSW Labor was elected with significant expectations. They need to get moving on fulfilling them.
There are more than 12,000 vacancies in NSW Health, and there is no time to waste in lifting wages and conditions so that we attract and retain the health workers our state needs.
Healthcare workers want the wages cap lifted as well as a real commitment to reviewing their industrial awards, the union said. Hayes said:
Hard-working therapists, wardspeople, security and catering staff are living through a wages recession. Their real incomes are being smashed as the cost of living melts their pay.
April rainfall 35.7% above average
The Bureau of Meteorology’s national climate summary for last month shows rainfall was 35.7% above average across the country.
The April national climate summary shows rainfall was 35.7% above average for Australia.
The national area-average mean temperature was just 0.01 °C above the 1961–1990 average for April, the lowest since 2015.
Learn more: https://t.co/4yW8usQf4L pic.twitter.com/kceY20fGdt
— Bureau of Meteorology, Australia (@BOM_au) May 1, 2023
Melissa Davey
Advocates welcome vaping reforms
The biggest concern among public health experts in the lead-up to the health minister, Mark Butler, announcing vaping reforms was that the reforms would not go far enough to stamp out youth vaping.
They were worried that non-nicotine vapes would still be allowed for importation (which manufacturers have been getting around by removing “nicotine” from labelling while leaving nicotine in the products), and they also feared convenience stories and other retailers would be allowed a permit/licence to import vapes, even though many convenience stores have long been irresponsibly selling vapes to children.
Butler has listened. His vaping reforms ban both nicotine and non-nicotine vapes in a move that goes further than the “preferred” reforms put before the drug regulator before a consultation process that wrapped up in January. The reforms will also close down the sale of vapes in retail settings, ending vape sales in convenience stores, while also making it easier to get a prescription for legitimate therapeutic use.
By only making vaping products available from pharmacists for those wanting to quit smoking, products can be better quality-controlled and they can be kept out of the hands of children. The wide variety of flavours and colourful packaging will also be banned, replaced with clinical, therapeutic packaging.
VicHealth’s policy executive manager, Kristine Cooney, called the reforms “groundbreaking”:
The Australian government is demonstrating its commitment to prioritising the health and wellbeing of its citizens above the profits of the tobacco and e-cigarette industry.
‘You will have to wait for Tuesday’
Mark Butler also acknowledged a higher jobseeker rate would help improve the health outcomes for the disadvantaged but remained coy on whether those over 55 will see a rise.
David Speers:
The Seven Network’s Mark Reilly reported there will be an increase in the budget for jobseeker but only for those over the age of 55, they’re predominantly women, they’re often finding it harder to get back into work at that age, is that what we can expect?
Butler:
I don’t think you are right to say they are predominantly women, male long-term unemployment at that age as well has been a thing for a few decades, but there will be a declaration on Tuesday night about what’s in the budget. There will be speculation, and some of it is wide to the mark and some of it is close to the mark but you will have to wait for Tuesday.
Butler says government is listening to welfare concerns
We brought you what the health minister, Mark Butler, had to say on vaping on Q+A last night. Here’s what he had to say on jobseeker:
The economic inclusion committee that has made a series of recommendations, probably the most significant of which is around the rate of jobseeker.
They also talked about rent assistance and single parent payments and such like and I can assure you that has been very much at the forefront of our deliberations as we [have] … been crafting the budget for next week and you can be sure that a focus on the most vulnerable Australians – and you’re talking about one of the most vulnerable groups of Australians we have – has been a very big part of our budget preparation.
Unfortunately, though, you’re going to have to wait and tune in on Tuesday night next week and watch a very dapper Jim Chalmers deliver his first proper budget, not the election budget.
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