The day that was, Friday 8 July
We will wrap up the live blog now. Thanks for tuning in.
Here’s what made the news today:
- The Australian parliament will consider extending more rights including on voting to New Zealand citizens living in Australia, following a meeting between NZ PM Jacinda Ardern and Australian PM Anthony Albanese.
- The president of Timor-Leste, José Ramos-Horta, has welcomed the decision to drop prosecution of whistleblower lawyer Bernard Collaery, as Collaery indicates he may seek costs from the government.
- The clean up from the NSW floods has begun around the Hawkesbury, as NSW moves from the emergency response to recovery phase.
- The NSW and federal government added the local government areas of Cumberland, Mid Coast, Muswellbrook, Nambucca, Newcastle, Port Stephens, Randwick, Warren to disaster declared areas, taking the total to 37.
- The Australian Health Protection Principal Committee (AHPPC) has said the reinfection window for Covid-19 should be reduced from 12 weeks to 28 days.
- There were at least 35 Covid-19 deaths reported in Australia.
We will be back again tomorrow, but until then stay safe.
Updated
Welfare payment suspension pause broadened amid Workforce Australia woes
The Albanese government has broadened a 30-day pause on welfare payment suspensions to thousands of jobseekers with disability who risked having their benefits stopped due to the trouble-plagued Workforce Australia rollout.
Five days after the launch of the successor to the much-maligned Jobactive scheme, welfare recipients have told Guardian Australia they are still having trouble logging into the application used to log job search efforts and complete other necessary mutual obligations tasks.
More than 750,000 jobseekers are on the new Workforce Australia system – with its contentious “points-based” mutual obligations rules – but thousands more on the Disability Employment Services (Des) program also need to use the same app to report their activities so their payments are not stopped.
While compliance action has been suspended for 30 days in Workforce Australia, those on Des have not been spared under the government’s plans.
On Friday night, the government announced it would extend the reprieve to Des jobseekers, amid the technical problems with the new system.
The social services minister, Amanda Rishworth, said:
There were more than 70,000 people with disability that may have been disproportionately impacted if these changes were not made by being cut off from their income support payments. The changes have been made to be consistent with Workforce Australia. An Albanese Labor government does not want people to be confused by these changes.
Jobseekers in the Des program will not be subjected to mutual obligations or receive “demerit points” – which can cause further sanctions until 1 August.
A spokesperson for the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations, which administers the Workforce Australia, defended the rollout, saying there had been intermittent issues on Friday “potentially affecting between 1,800 to 2,500 individual participants or .35% of the total cohort”.
They said the issues were resolved by 3.15pm, and that there had been 500,000 logins since Monday.
To support the transition of Workforce Australia participants into the Points Based Activation System [PBAS], compliance action will not be raised for the first month [1 to 31 July 2022] for any mutual obligation requirements.
Updated
