Australia news LIVE:Queen Elizabeth II farewelled in historic procession;masks scrapped on public transport in NSW,SA

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Here’s a recap of some of our main headlines today:

A public inquiry has found that violent offenders might still be at large despite evidence against them,and some victims might never get justice because of “untrue” statements made by Queensland’s state-run forensics lab.

In a situation Health Minister Yvette D’Ath believes is unheard of in Australia,the statements given to courts and prosecutors will be updated,with authorities set to reprocess samples across what could be thousands of cases including rapes and murders.

The state announced a commission of inquiryin June,after police began reviewing sexual assault cases back to 2018 when aprocess at the lab changed,halting detailed testing of low-DNA samples for major crimes and reporting the results as containing no or insufficient information.

Former Appeal Court president Walter Sofronoff’s interim report,handed to government this week and quickly rushed through cabinet on Tuesday before its public release,found the statements by Forensic and Scientific Services lab had been “untrue” or “misleading”.

“In fact,the possibility of obtaining a profile from these samples cannot be excluded,” because the further technologies and methods previously used could reveal partial or full DNA profiles,Sofronoff wrote.

In finance news,five companies tied to the AMP group have been fined $14.5 million after knowingly charging superannuation clients fees for services they could no longer access.

The AMP companies included AMP Superannuation Limited,AMP Financial Planning Proprietary Limited,Charter Financial Planning Limited and Hillross Financial Services Limited. AMP Life Limited was also involved,but is no longer owned by AMP.

The court found AMP breached its financial services licensing obligations by having no internal procedures or controls to prevent the misconduct.

The penalty was handed down in the Federal Court today after the Australian Securities and Investments Commission took legal action.

More than 1450 superannuation customers were found to paying fees for general financial advice as part of deals between AMP and their employers. But fees continued to be automatically deducted after members left their jobs and no longer had access to the financial advice.

Between July 2015 and September 2018 customers wrongly paid $356,188 in fees. AMP paid back $691,032 to affected members.

Justice Mark Moshinsky found the conduct reflected “very poorly” on AMP,adding it was surprising that despite repeated complaints no one in the organisation questioned whether it was a systemic issue.

“While it is not suggested that senior management were involved in the contraventions,in my opinion it reflects very poorly on the organisational culture that this type of questioning did not occur,” he said.

Swinging back to Canberra now and NDIS Minister Bill Shorten has announced a new oversight committee to “blitz” the backlog of thousands of legal appeals over people’s disability services funding packages.

In an address to disability advocacy group Every Australian Counts,Shorten has announced former disability discrimination commissioner Graeme Innes would head an independent,voluntary committee to help review disputes over NDIS plans.

The committee would provide an alternative to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal,but participants would not lose their spot in the AAT queue if the committee could not resolve the issue.

The appointment of Innes and independent,expert case reviewers was designed to “blitz the thousands of cases at the AAT. To be very clear,this is a voluntary process,no one loses their place in the AAT queue”.

Read James Massola’s full story here.

New national workforce data shows the proportion of registered teachers who are older than 50 is on the rise,while fewer people are entering the profession.

The latest data from the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership,released this afternoon,also showed that in 2020 teachers working full-time reported working 55 hours in a
typical week,or 45 per cent more hours than they’re paid for.

The data showed that between 2018 and 2020 the proportion of teachers aged 30 years or under declined from 14.33 per cent to 12.2 per cent. At the same time,the proportion of teachers aged 50 years or older rose from 35.7 per cent to 38.2 per cent.

Institute chief executive Mark Grant said there simply weren’t enough people entering teaching courses to meet current and future shortfalls.

“With an ageing workforce and a shortfall in new entrants,retention measures will be extremely important to prevent future teacher shortages,” he said.

The 2020 workforce data is based on the survey responses of almost 32,000 teachers across all states and territories.

The consumer watchdog has warned businesses to prepare to substantiate any environmental or sustainability claims when marketing their goods and services.

Australian Competition and Consumer Commission Deputy Chair Delia Rickard said the ACCC was actively targeting “greenwashing” this year,warning businesses who made false or misleading claims undermined consumer trust and confidence in the market. Recent enforcement action in the Netherlands against H&M and Decathlon would see these two large global businesses remove or amend misleading sustainability claims.

“The action in Netherlands will hopefully see a flow-on benefit for Australian consumers,” she said.

In a speech to theSydney Morning Herald Sustainability Summit today,Rickard said terms including “environmentally friendly,green”,or “sustainable” had limited value and may mislead consumers because they rarely provided enough information about what those terms mean.

“Unfortunately,the ACCC is hearing growing concerns that some businesses are falsely promoting environmental or green credentials to capitalise on changing consumer preferences,” Rickard said.

“It is important that businesses can back up the claims they are making,whether through reliable scientific reports,transparent supply chain information,reputable third-party certification or other forms of evidence. Where we have concerns,we will be asking businesses to substantiate their claims.”

To Western Australia now,where Australian Premier Mark McGowan has railed against the work-from-home culture that emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic.

In response to questions about new legislation to replace the state’s state of emergency powers,McGowan launched a tirade against working from home,warning it breeds poor company culture and hurts CBDs.

McGowan said he was “a bit old-fashioned” about workplace culture but said working from home had several negative impacts on offices and the broader community.

“Sometimes it might work appropriately in individual circumstances but across the board,working from home,I just don’t think it’s good for society or good for the community,” he said.

“Everyone at home on their laptop all day doesn’t reflect the working requirements of lots of other people and I don’t think it breeds a good culture. It also means that your CBDs,retail outlets,shops or cafes,restaurants,all those people trying to make a living lose custom. The same thing occurs across the suburbs and across the town centres all over Western Australia.”

Read the full story here.

Queensland will lift its COVID-19 mask mandate on public transport from tonight.

Health Minister Yvette D’Ath says the move followed similar decisions in other states including NSW.

Masks will no longer be required on public transport statewide from midnight tonight. However,D’Ath said she urged everyone to respect the decisions of people who still wished to wear them.

Western Australia’s government is set to finally end the state of emergency used to close borders during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Premier Mark McGowan has confirmed his government will in coming days introduce urgent legislation to parliament enabling a “temporary COVID-19 declaration”,which would replace the emergency powers first introduced early in 2020.

Under the new arrangement,the government would no longer be able to declare immediate border closures. The police commissioner would retain the power to make declarations about mask-wearing in aged and disability care settings and stay-home orders for positive cases.

WA kept its borders closed for almost two years before finally reopening in March this year.

Mr McGowan said it was the right time to move to “much lesser” powers,with the pandemic threat no longer as serious.

“A lot of people have called for this. We’ve listened,” he told ABC radio on Tuesday.

“We’ve drafted it as quickly as we can but we need to get it through the parliament so we can implement it when the existing state of emergency expires.”

AAP

The Albanese government is being urged to use its first address to the United Nations to deliver funding for famine-stricken regions across the globe.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong is in New York for the 77th meeting of the UN General Assembly,where she will take part in 30 engagements throughout the week.

Senator Wong is expected to deliver Australia’s address to the assembly on Friday after meeting with the foreign ministers of Quad nations,which include the United States,India and Japan.

The war in Ukraine is set to take centre stage. Russia and Ukraine are major exporters of grain and fertiliser,which have been massively stripped back due to the war.

Grain supply shortages coupled with the impacts of climate change,including severe droughts,have pushed countries such as Somalia,Ethiopia,Kenya,South Sudan and Yemen into acute food shortages and to the brink of starvation.

A broad coalition of Australia’s leading aid and development organisations is calling for the government to announce a $150 million emergency famine package.

Help Fight Famine spokesman Tim Costello said the package would show that Australia wouldn’t abandon nations facing starvation.

“With a relatively small investment we can make a huge difference in saving lives and averting a humanitarian catastrophe like the world has never seen,” he said. “But a failure to act would mean there could be more deaths than from COVID. Time has almost run out.”

The US will co-host a food and security summit with European and African nations on the sidelines of the UN.

US ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield said while Ukraine would feature heavily during the general assembly,it would not be the only matter dealt with.

“Other countries have expressed the concern that as we focus on Ukraine we are not paying attention to what is happening in other crises around the world,” she said. “That is not the case.”

AAP