Closing summary
Thank you for joining us on the blog – here is a wrap of the day’s headlines:
The NSW government committed to an emergency $230m package to support the victim-survivors of domestic, family and sexual violence. The state’s premier, Chris Minns, said his government was “very sorry” the package was not released earlier.
Qantas announced an agreement to pay $100m as a civil penalty, and pay out $20m to customers in compensation, after striking a deal with the consumer watchdog over a landmark action for allegedly selling tickets to flights that had already been cancelled in its system.
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, said now was the time to “back police” when asked about Western Australia police stopping short of labelling an alleged attack in Perth as terrorism yesterday.
The Victorian premier, Jacinta Allan, said reports of students ranking female classmates from top to bottom – from “wifey” to “unrapeable” – was “disgraceful and utterly unacceptable”.
Dozens of people gathered in the seaside community of San Miguel in Mexico for a “paddle out” – a late afternoon vigil to honour the Australian brothers Callum and Jake Robinson and their travelling companion Jack Carter Rhoad.
The treasurer, Jim Chalmers, said next Tuesday’s budget would bring “more spending restraint” and more savings.
Military whistleblower David McBride pleaded guilty in a sentencing hearing today to stealing commonwealth information and passing that on to journalists at the ABC, who used the material as the basis for an investigative series exposing war crimes in Afghanistan, titled The Afghan Files. The commonwealth is seeking to impose a substantial jail sentence with a non-parole period against him.
That is all for today – see you tomorrow.
Updated
The Kimberley’s peak Indigenous group apologises for underpaying staff
The Kimberley Land Council (KLC) “sincerely apologises” after an in-depth review into historical wage payments identified underpayments of “certain current and former staff”, according to a statement from the Kimberley region’s peak Indigenous body.
“Underpayments have arisen because base rates of pay for certain employees under the Kimberley Land Council enterprise agreement 2014 fell below the base rate of pay as per the underlying modern award,” the statement said.
The KLC sincerely apologises for the error.
KLC received external legal advice in 2018 “that it was acting in compliance with its obligations”, according to the statement. However, “subsequent legal advice to the contrary” prompted KLC to undertake a payroll recalculation exercise covering the period from 1 July 2016 to 22 October 2019.
KLC’s chief executive, Tyronne Garstone, said:
As an organisation with a strong commitment to our staff and community, we are deeply disappointed that this has occurred.
Our priority is to pay the identified amounts to our current and former affected staff members in a timely manner and to ensure that this does not happen again.
I offer my apologies to our staff and community.
KLC has made a voluntary disclosure of this matter to the fair work ombudsman.
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