Australia politics live: Allegra Spender cancels her Qantas and Virgin lounge memberships, calling for end to free upgrades for MPs | Australia news

Amanda Meade

Outgoing ABC managing director David Anderson is unable to attend senate estimates tomorrow due to a medical issue, ABC chair Kim Williams has told the communications committee.

Anderson resigned in August, a year into his second term after a 35-year career at the ABC, and will remain in the role until the new year.

The acting managing director and chief financial officer Melanie Kleyn, chief people officer Deena Amorelli, director of news Justin Stevens and editorial director Gavin Fang will appear before the committee to answer questions.
Williams notified the chair of the environment and communications committee, senator Karen Grogan, last week that Anderson has taken leave to attend to medical issues. A spokesperson said:

This is only the second time in more than six years as managing director that Mr Anderson has been unable to attend an estimates hearing.

The ABC takes the accountability mechanism provided by senate estimates with great seriousness.

Anderson is due to return to work on December 9.

Emma Shortis has written about how “some of the worst excesses of far-right American politics, led by Trump” have some sway here in Australia:

A second Trump presidency would pose a considerable challenge to our shared democratic values. Are we up to that challenge?

Karen Middleton

DPS chief says it has no written record of former head’s conflict-of-interest declaration

The acting secretary of the Department of Parliamentary Services (DPS), Jaala Hinchcliffe, has acknowledged the department has no written record that the secretary, Rob Stefanic, declared a conflict of interest within the department, despite him reporting having done so to the speaker of the House of Representatives as well as externally to the Australian Public Service commissioner.

The shadow finance minister, Jane Hume, told Monday’s hearing of the finance and public administration estimates committee that she intended to write to the attorney general to seek a review of DPS’s governance practices after evidence that no written record existed of the alleged declaration to the speaker, Milton Dick, exists.

Hume has been asking questions about Stefanic allegedly having declared a personal relationship with his then deputy, Cate Saunders. At estimates hearings in May, Stefanic – who is now on indefinite leave – denied any romantic relationship with Saunders and said he only declared a personal relationship because of “gossip” and “rumour”.

Hume told Hinchcliffe she was concerned at the department’s practices:

So we’ve got no record of the declarations for this contact, we’ve only got recollections. We’ve got inconsistent stories about who knew what and when. We have an inconsistent and at best patchy record of when the department was told about a secondment for the deputy secretary and in fact it may have had more of a role in arranging it than anyone was aware but we won’t know because it appears that nothing has been written down.

We’ve had to take a lot of this on trust because the department is not subject to freedom of information. The only public scrutiny of this department is here. Two ministers and the presiding officers potentially have been misled, given they only found out about the conflict months after the APSC was allegedly told.

Do you think it’s acceptable for people outside of this building who pay taxes to provide for this department that the record-keeping is so inadequate?

Hinchcliffe replied to Hume:

Senator, I would say that in my career as a public servant I have constantly thought about the fact that every single dollar that I spend is taxpayers’ money and the public trust that they put into me to undertake my work with integrity and with efficiency and effectiveness is incredibly important.

That, I think, stands for all of us as public servants and part of how we do that is that we do our jobs well and we do them properly and that includes proper record-keeping.

Hinchcliffe said her experience, including working in oversight agencies, was that record-keeping was often a problem.

It seems to be something that the public service find difficult to get right. It will be an area of focus for us at DPS.

Hinchcliffe has confirmed that DPS has commissioned an independent “fact-finding” exercise into the $300,000 payout that Saunders received when she left the department.

Damaging storms possible in NSW

A quick look at today’s weather warnings from the Bureau of Meteorology. Severe thunderstorms are forecast in the east and north of New South Wales, where residents have been warned of damaging wind gusts, large hail and heavy rain:

To the north, in parts of central and western Queensland, temperatures are above the seasonal average, with the bureau warning of heatwave conditions in Longreach.

Allegra Spender, the independent member for Wentworth, wants an end to free airline upgrades and says she has cancelled her Qantas and Virgin VIP lounge memberships.

The Sydney Morning Herald is reporting that independent MP Helen Haines has “started the process” to quit the Chairman’s Lounge.

Karen Middleton wrote earlier about a testy exchange between Greens senator David Shoebridge and home affairs department secretary Stephanie Foster. Enjoy the full vision here:

Henry Belot

Federal police may search PwC Australia headquarters for ‘several days’ – CEO

PwC Australia’s chief executive, Kevin Burrowes, has told staff the Australian federal police may be searching the firm’s Sydney office for “several days”.

As mentioned earlier, the search relates to an ongoing investigation into alleged misconduct by former staff, after confidential Treasury information was shared in breach of disclosure laws.

Here’s part of an email Burrowes sent to staff earlier today:

I am writing to advise the Australian federal police is attending our Sydney office today and may be on the premises for several days.

This step is an expected development in relation to an investigation the AFP commenced in 2023 into the historical tax matter and individuals who have left our firm.

We have been working with the AFP to facilitate its attendance and will continue to cooperate with its investigation.

Please carry on as usual and remain focused on the important work we’re delivering with our clients and in the community.

Federal police search PwC headquarters over tax leaks scandal

Henry Belot

The Australian federal police are conducting a search at PwC Australia’s headquarters in Sydney.

The search for documents relates to an ongoing investigation into alleged misconduct by former PwC Australia staff, after confidential Treasury information was shared in breach of disclosure laws.

A source familiar with the police search stressed it did not relate to current PwC Australia staff.

Here’s the statement from PwC Australia:

This step is part of the existing investigation that began in 2023 regarding the historical tax matter, and is an investigation into individuals who have left the firm.

We have been working with the Australian federal police (AFP) to facilitate their attendance and will continue to fully cooperate with their investigation, as we have from the beginning.

In the past 18 months, PwC has introduced significant governance, business and cultural reforms, and our people remain focused on delivering the best outcomes for our clients and communities.

The federal treasury referred the PwC tax scandal to the Australian federal police for a criminal investigation in May.

The AFP has been contacted for comment.

Student union says Labor’s Hecs relief plan a ‘disingenuous’ bid for votes

Oh dear. University students are unhappy with the federal government’s plans to reduce student debt. AAP reports that the National Union of Students (Nus) has described it as “disingenuous”.

President Ngaire Bogemann said it was little more than an attempt to win votes and would not address concerns held by students. She told ABC Radio:

If you want to talk about creating a fairer and more accessible higher education system, wiping debts to 20% is not actually getting to the root cause of the issue.

The root cause was indexation, which kept debts growing, Bogemann said.

This seems a bit of a disingenuous attempt to bring some people in, vote-wise, and not an attempt to actually create change.

Bogemann said Hecs indexation levels would result in many students back where they started in terms of their debt levels, even after the 20% reduction.

“We’ve seen young Australians denied home loans because the Hecs debts are so large,” she said.

There are a whole heap of other issues here that I think are probably going to create more of an impact if they change.

The federal government moved earlier in 2024 to cap indexation on Hecs at either the rate of inflation or the wage price index, whichever of the two is lower, after the indexation rate increased rapidly above 7%.

Natasha May

Loneliness levels no different when working from home at times, forum told

The mandate to get workers back to the office is not justified to improve loneliness, a conference dedicated to the subject has heard.

Ending Loneliness Together’s research and policy symposium held in partnership with the University of Sydney’s prevention research collaboration unit and Wallis Social Research is being held in Sydney today.

Associate Prof Sarah Wright, from University of Canterbury business school, discussed her study published in the December issue of the Harvard Business Review which looked at 1,000 knowledge workers employed by companies in the United States in more than 20 industries, including financial services, healthcare, technology and manufacturing.

Wright said fully remote employees are lonelier but they found there was no difference between those working hybrid and those working five days in person when it comes to level of loneliness.

In fact, they found highly lonely participants reported conducting nearly half (47%) of their prior month’s work interactions in person, which shows that even a substantial amount of face-to-face work does not automatically translate into less loneliness.

Wright told the conference:

The mandate to pull people back to the office is not justified to improve loneliness.

Heath minister eyes private sector changes

Butler says he has asked the health department to look at the private health sector and potential short-, medium- and long-term reforms.

I don’t have a view about what they may look like into the future. I just want to encourage all different parts of this sector, which sometimes have competing interests, to continue the very cooperative way in which they undertook the process over the last few months.

On the Covid inquiry, Butler says it will take a “determined effort on the part of all governments” and stakeholders to rebuild trust, including through measures such as establishing a national centre for disease control. He says:

As much people don’t want to go back and don’t want to think about what was such a painful period for our community, I thought there was a really constructive community debate about some of the things that happened and some of the things that we could do better.