SYDNEY — Four construction workers, Nigel Gould, Peter Carr, Peter Riikonen and Andrew Jones who were sacked from the Thiess Services soil remediation project in Rhodes in June, were granted a “confidential settlement” on August 10. The workers are all members of the Construction Forestry Mining Energy Union (CFMEU).
Graham Matthews
On August 6, the Australian Bureau of Statistics released labour force figures for July that showed unemployment remained steady at 5.8%. However, while the total number of people employed stayed stable, full-time jobs fell by 16,000 while part-time employment rose by 48,200.
On August 4, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) released figures that showed housing prices across Australia’s capital cities rose by 4.2% over the three months ending in June. The rapid increase has worried the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) enough for it to warn of a threat of a housing bubble.
NSW TAFE teachers in NSW will stop work on August 11 after the NSW Department of Education and Training (DET) proposed an increase of 71 teaching hours a week, an end to the allocation of professional development and a lifting of the ceiling on hours taught in any one week.
We’ve heard it all before — especially those of us who can remember the rhetoric of the Hawke and Keating governments. A little pain now and everything will be much better for everyone in the long run.
On July 21, Access Economics released its forecasts for the Australian economy. It predicted Australia was through the worst of the recession.
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On June 10, the federal government’s new occupational health and safety (OH&S) peak body — the Safe Work Australia Council (SWAC) — held its first meeting. Workers in Australia took one more step towards eroded and unsafe working conditions.
Australian cities are growing in population and in geographic spread. Urban sprawl, encouraged by governments at all levels, is pushing suburbia in all directions.
On June 15, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) raised the rate of its standard variable mortgage by 0.1%. For home buyers with the typical $300,000 mortgage, this means repayments go up by $18 a month.
The Business Council of Australia (BCA) representing Australias largest 100 corporations has called for a higher consumption tax and for the company tax to be halved. It did so in a submission to the federal governments review of taxation (the Henry review) made public on June 14
On June 3, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) released its estimates of the national accounts for Australia for the January-March quarter. Following on from a small overall drop in gross domestic product (GDP) of 0.6% for the December quarter, a fall in the March quarter would mean that Australia had entered a technical recession.
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