Category: Australia

The Albanese government has quietly wound up the Operation COVID Shield vaccination program, despite millions of Australians being overdue for their boosters and one-fifth of aged care residents waiting for their fourth doses.

In a letter to state emergency operations leaders on Friday, Operation COVID Shield co-ordinator Lieutenant General John Frewen said the government “has advised that Operation COVID Shield will cease on August 1” with functions returning to the Health Department.

“I appreciate your involvement and support in the delivery of Operation COVID Shield and thank you for your assistance during my time as Coordinator General of the National COVID-19 Vaccine Program,” wrote Frewen, who has returned to his post as Defense Chief of Joint Capabilities.

Set up by the former Coalition government after the nation’s vaccination program got off to a slow start, Operation COVID Shield was tasked with ensuring public confidence in the COVID-19 vaccine rollout by overseeing the logistics of vaccine supply and the community messaging. General Frewen’s role circumvented the normal bureaucratic paths and allowed him to deal directly with groups and companies involved in the rollout, meet with state and territory leaders and chief health officers, and report directly to the prime minister.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has called a virtual national cabinet meeting to be held on Thursday after Health Minister Mark Butler raised concerns that millions of Australians had “effectively tapped out of the vaccination program”.

loading

Opposition health spokeswoman Anne Ruston accused the prime minister of removing another important COVID-19 measure “with no explanation” after not extending concession cardholders’ access to free rapid antigen tests and hesitating to extend isolation relief payments.

She called on the government to explain “what advice formed the basis of their decision to remove this most effective operation, particularly at a time when we are clearly still focused on vaccination as the primary defense against the current wave of the pandemic.”

A Health Department spokesman said the vaccination program now sat under “the direct oversight” of Secretary Brendan Murphy.

A volunteer-run mutual aid project backed by the Antipoverty Center has stepped in to supply free rapid antigen tests to concession card holders after a federal government program ended on Sunday.

The Ratbag project raised more than $2500 after launching on Twitter last night to ensure that welfare recipients could access RATs without having to sacrifice funds earmarked for food and other essentials.

“Without a RAT many welfare recipients will be forced to choose between leaving home while contagious or losing their poverty payment. Others will choose between food and testing,” Project coordinator Paul McMillan said.

“At a time when Covid cases are peaking and new strains are emerging, we can’t ask people who are already skipping meals, medication and other essentials to bear even more costs… The government continues to let these people down, but the community is stepping up.”

McMillan said the ending of the program was particularly risky for people who had to do activities to get their Centrelink payment, such as those on JobSeeker.

“While living on just $46 a day, those on unemployment payments are forced to leave home to attend activities. A positive COVID test is required to avoid payment suspension when isolating and PCR tests have become increasingly hard to get.”

He said the idea for the project came when Health Minister Mark Butler confirmed the Albanese government would not be extending the free RATs program launched by the previous Coalition government, against the urging of the Australian Medical Association.

McMillan said system outages on Sunday meant that some welfare recipients were unable to access RATs on the last day of the scheme.

The Ratbag mutual aid project takes donations online and distributes RATs to concession and low income health care card holders who register on its website.

Since launching on Sunday, it has also received donation offers from suppliers able to supply the tests in bulk.

People who do not have a concession card because they are unable to access a welfare payment can also submit a request for access to free RATs through the website.

When it broke the news, The Australian Financial Review‘s Street Talk column said the decision was “welcomed by a growing cohort of the firm’s lawyers who were increasingly uncomfortable with its work defending the church against child abuse claims”.

Younger lawyers in particular were uncomfortable with the connection and reluctant to do the work, and the firm believed this was also affecting Corrs’ appeal to graduates as it sought to rebrand itself as a top-tier commercial firm.

While Corrs only did compensation work for the Melbourne archdiocese, in Sydney it handled almost all its legal work, an account that rival law firm chief executives estimated to be worth at least $3 million.

The church was disappointed there was no prior consultation, and dismayed when the firm tried to cherry-pick the work it would do, especially as it has a long-time client in British American Tobacco.

Corrs also kept his partners in the dark, including Richard Leder, the church’s main contact at the firm for child abuse claims for more than 25 years.

Mr Leder was the architect of the Melbourne Response of 1996, the first compensation scheme in the world set up by a church. It is not clear whether he will join Dentons or keep working for the Melbourne archdiocese at another firm. He is unlikely to stay at Corrs.

Mr Digges, the Sydney Archdiocese’s executive director, administration and finance, said the church would “cease all engagement” with Corrs.

“We are thrilled to be partnering with an Australia-wide legal practice that has a trusted reputation of excellence, prudence and probity around the world,” Mr Digges said.

“The Catholic Church in Australia remains committed to continuing responsibility towards survivors of historical abuse, while also providing relief, reassurance and support to all of those currently struggling in society today.

“We would like to thank Corrs Chambers Westgarth for their service over the past 20 years.”

Doug Stipanicev, the chairman of Denton’s Australia, said the firm was “grateful to have demonstrated their suitability and commitment to the role”.

“With the Catholic Church being the country’s largest non-government provider of education, health, aged care and social services, we bring a diverse range of skills and experience needed to support the Archdiocese of Sydney.”

Corrs chief executive Gavin MacLaren has declined to answer any questions about why he asked the church to move all its abuse claims work to other law firms.

The most recent statement put out by the firm last Wednesday said “Corrs continues to act for the Catholic Church” and that “Richard Leder remains a partner at the firm”.

As someone who has spent most of his life working full-time and paying taxes, I’m aware that it’s hard for people with a regular income to understand what it’s like to survive on a shoestring budget. Living on Jobseeker involves hard choices. These are between healthcare or food, shelter or utilities, and other fundamentals. It’s not enough to assist people to find employment. A hungry or unwell applicant will not perform well at an interview, or undertake an aptitude test. Most recruiters now use online testing for reasoning, problem-solving and basic literacy and numeracy. Transport fares or running a vehicle is a huge impost.

loading

Some people argue if Jobseeker increases there will be a disincentive for people to seek employment. This is a nonsensical view. The current maximum rate is about 40 per cent of the minimum wage. It is below the two most widely used poverty lines. Even if Jobseeker were doubled it would still be well below the minimum wage.

We are a wealthy nation, and the burden of economic repair should not be carried by the lowest income households in our country. It makes no sense on moral, ethical or humanitarian grounds. It also makes no economic sense.

Increasing Jobseeker will improve the quality of life of recipients in that they would be able to buy food, including fresh fruit and vegetables, boosting sales for Australian businesses and farmers. By contrast, higher income earners receiving the tax cuts set to go ahead in 2024 are likely to spend more of that on discretionary goods, such as cars, electronics and higher-end merchandise. As we do not make those items here, the winners will be the shareholders in Tokyo, Seoul, Shanghai, New York and London.

If that money was redirected to those on income support, more of that money would remain here. The evidence was clearly demonstrated during COVID when Jobseeker and Youth Allowance were temporarily boosted.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told us the new Labor government would not leave anyone behind, yet he and ministers have indicated that Jobseeker will not be increased or reviewed in the first budget. As the cost of just about everything rises, how are those struggling not being left behind?

For the unemployed, every dollar counts, and any rise is welcome. But to enable the impoverished to live with dignity, the Jobseeker payment should be increased to about $80 per day.

“It’s very human to kind of want a concrete, tangible solution to something and be able to say, ‘here’s this step we’ve taken, it’s in the curriculum now,” Ms Marson said.

“But comprehensive relationships and sexuality education take so many different moving parts moving in unison to be delivered effectively. There’s no point producing curriculum if the teacher in front of the classroom doesn’t feel confident or isn’t trained to deliver that curriculum.

“It doesn’t work if it’s just a one-off lesson once a year, or if it gets crammed into something because the teaching staff isn’t competent or they don’t have enough time for it or they are concerned there might be backlash from parents.”

The author (her book on the topic, Legitimate Sexpectations is released this week) pointed to the Netherlands as the world leaders in what such education should include, saying it was incorporated into curriculum early and involved learning how to recognize certain feelings and how to respond to them.

This could include playing with different textures in kindergarten and verbalizing how they physically felt to touch, she said, noting that many negative sexual experiences arose when people felt unable to speak up about their feelings.

She also pointed to Germany as a world leader, with the government there setting up infrastructure within its health department to position relationships and sexual education as a wellbeing and public health issue.

Having subject matter experts teach aspects of the programs could also help improve effectiveness, she said, with some successful programs involving getting external providers to teach dedicated days of relationship education.

Ms Marson said pushback from parents was often a barrier to developing meaningful sex education programs, but that parents and carers needed to accept that they also had a responsibility for helping develop children’s understandings of consent.

“It’s a collective responsibility and we need to shift our perspective to see that young people are actually entitled to this [education].

“We recognize that they have a right to learn how to drive and swim and all these other skills that they need to live a safe and fulfilling life, but then we deny them this. So, we can debate how we go about fulfilling that right, but unless we do so we are just letting them down and I just can’t see how we can justify that.”

She added that curriculum commitments were still helpful to give schools “some kind of mandate”, noting the countries she visited with the most advanced sex education programs all had political mandates backing their development.