Key events
Back to the prime minister’s presser earlier this morning.
Asked about government analysis in the Telegraph suggesting that workers could spend up to $5,000 to start going back into the office, Albanese condemned the Coalition’s push to end work-from-home for public servants. He said:
We know that working from home has had a range of advantages. One of those is less time traveling, whether that be in a private motor vehicle or on public transport to and from home. It’s also enabled people to overcome the tyranny of distance in this great country.
It has also meant for working families, where both parents are working … working from home has enabled them to work full-time, and therefore it has increased workforce participation, particularly for women.
Peter Dutton has said that firstly, he has questioned working from home … And he has said that, oh, well, women in particular can just go out and job share. Well people want to work full-time in order to make sure they can look after their families. This just shows how out of touch Peter Dutton is flexibility in workplaces has brought substantial benefits.
He’s also said, I want you to be at home seven days a week, 24 hours a day, because he’s going to sack 36,000 public servants. He couldn’t even rule out sacking people who work for the National Emergency Management Agency … The idea that there are people sitting around in Canberra doing nothing just shows how out of touch Peter Dutton is.
Dan Jervis-Bardy
The Nationals leader, David Littleproud, was a little blunter when explaining why the Coalition couldn’t afford to oppose the $150 energy rebates.
Littleproud told Nine’s Weekend Today:
Well, we’ll have to back this, otherwise there’ll be Australian families that go broke. This is the last desperate act of a government that has lost control of your power bill and your food bill, they’re intertwined.
Your grocery bills are higher because your energy bills are higher, and this all-renewables approach has a consequence.
Coalition ‘won’t stand in the way’ of $150 energy rebates
Dan Jervis-Bardy
The Coalition has immediately matched the $150 energy bill rebate to be included in Labor’s pre-election budget on Tuesday.
In an interview on Sky News on Sunday, the shadow finance minister, Jane Hume, said:
The Coalition will not stand in the way of much-needed energy relief from these high electricity prices, high gas prices that are caused by Labor’s failed policies.
The government on Sunday announced the new cost-of-living relief, which extends energy rebates for all households until the end of 2025 at a cost of $1.8bn.
The $300 rebates announced in the 2024 budget were due to expire on June 30.
As we reported last week, Peter Dutton was facing internal pressure to match any cost-of-living measures in next week’s budget to neutralise potentially damaging Labor attacks during the election campaign.
PM says cost-of-living support will put downward pressure on inflation
Prime minister Anthony Albanese spoke earlier this morning about the additional $150 in energy bill relief announced last night.
“We wanted to make sure that this energy bill relief was extended through this calendar year to the end of 2025,” he said.
The cost-of-living support will put downward pressure on inflation, Albanese said when asked whether power bills will start to fall on their own by 2026. He continued:
What we’ve seen is that in 2024 power prices fell 25.2%. They would have fallen just 1.6% without rebate. So this is energy bill relief, cost-of-living support that will also have an effect of putting downward pressure on inflation.
From 1 July, every household and about 1 million small businesses will have another $150 in rebates “automatically applied to their electricity bills in quarterly instalments”, the government announced on Saturday night.
Read more from Emily Wind here:
Good Morning
Rafqa Touma
And welcome to the Sunday live news blog.
Overnight, the Albanese government announced another $150 in energy bill relief before Tuesday’s budget, which is tipped to include more cost-of-living support for households.
We reported that the expenses watchdog launched an investigation into then-home affairs minister Peter Dutton’s use of a taxpayer-funded flight to attend a “long lunch” on a luxury island on the Noosa River in 2019, internal documents reveal.
Research found proposed nuclear power plants in Queensland would not have access to enough water to stop a nuclear meltdown and could strain capacity on drinking water and irrigation supplies even under normal operations.
And Australia’s two world heritage-listed reefs – Ningaloo on the west coast and the Great Barrier Reef on the east – have been hit simultaneously by coral bleaching that reef experts have called “heartbreaking” and “a profoundly distressing moment”.
Let’s get into the news of the day.
