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Key events
The housing minister, Julie Collins, will meet her state and territory counterparts in Canberra today, where they will discuss pathways to strengthening renters’ rights, Australian Associated Press reports.
Collins has urged the coalition and cross bench to support the government’s $10 billion housing fund, which aims to build thousands of affordable homes.
In an open letter to the nation’s housing ministers, the Greens have called for a two-year freeze followed by a 2% cap on rent increases, and an end to no-grounds evictions.
The Greens say rent caps should apply to the property, not just to individual leases to ensure tenants do not face eviction so their landlords can hike the rent.
They seek to close a loophole allowing landlords to start a bidding war between prospective tenants.
The party will introduce their proposal to parliament during budget week.
Victorian university staff to stage walkout over pay and conditions
Caitlin Cassidy
Thousands of workers from Victorian universities will walk off the job today as part of national industrial action, pushing back against wage theft, casual employment and underfunding.
The week of action, launched by the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) on Monday, comes in protest to chronic casualisation in the sector. Approximately only three in 10 university jobs are currently permanent.
The Victorian branch of the union is the centre of the action today, with protesters from universities across the state including La Trobe University, Monash University, the University of Melbourne and Deakin University to converge on the Victorian Trades Hall at 12.30pm.
Three universities have accepted decasualisation clauses in the past six months, including Western Sydney University, Australian Catholic University and the University of Technology Sydney, while the University of Sydney is poised to enact a clause converting 330 casual positions to permanent.
Monash, Melbourne and Deakin have enterprise bargaining negotiations ongoing.
check out this open letter from staff at Melbourne Law School in support of this Wednesday’s @NTEUnion strike, and expressing our concerns about management’s lack of meaningful engagement with the key enterprise bargaining claims. https://t.co/v4MWko4ydw
— james parker (@farsidevirtual) April 30, 2023
NTEU president Dr Alison Barnes said decasualisation provisions should be rolled out in the enterprise bargaining agreements of every Australian university.
For too long, Australian universities have allowed casualisation and its toxic twin, wage theft, to flourish. We are actively bargaining at 24 universities and intend to give thousands of workers the rights, security and stability that comes with permanent employment.
Welcome
Good morning and welcome to the day’s rolling news coverage. I’m Martin Farrer and these are our top stories you need to know this morning. My colleague Natasha May will be along shortly to take you through another no doubt busy news day.
The attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, has accused the Liberal party of flirting with the “far-right fringe” of the Indigenous voice debate thanks to a segment on a Sky News show hosted by former senator Cory Bernardi. As shadow minister Michaelia Cash appeared as a guest on the show, Bernardi drew comparisons between the Indigenous voice and apartheid, claiming the government’s proposal would “divide us along racial grounds”. Cash, however, said later that she did not endorse the comparison.
The battles over next week’s budget are rumbling on today as we report that the government will increase childcare subsidies by $9bn over four years as Labor fends off criticism that it is not doing enough to combat rising cost of living. It’s also under pressure on jobseeker, as independent senator David Pocock said the Morrison government’s post-Covid decision to lift jobseeker payments by $50 a fortnight helped more people than the Albanese government’s mooted 55-plus budget proposal.
As soaring rents add to the cost of living crisis for many, anxious eyes will turn to Canberra, where the housing minister, Julie Collins, will meet her state and territory counterparts to discuss pathways to strengthening renters’ rights.
Anthony Albanese has had a private audience with King Charles at Buckingham Palace after he arrived in the UK for the monarch’s coronation ceremony on Saturday. It comes as the king’s sister, Princess Anne, said she wasn’t sure that Charles’s idea about a “slimmed-down monarchy” was a very good one. We have a full story on that here and we’ll bring you ore about the PM’s visit as it comes in (though traditionally, such conversations remain private).
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