QUEENSLAND's resources sector had made a smooth transition to tighter travel restrictions for its fly-in, fly-out (FIFO) workers announced by Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk which were introduced on Saturday night, said the Queensland Resources Council (QRC).
QRC chief executive Ian Macfarlane said the decision to restrict all interstate FIFO workers apart from statutory positions and critical workers was working to change the interstate footprint.
“I’ve spoken with our members today and they are reporting significant drops in the number of interstate FIFO workers as of Saturday night with only critical workers approved,'' Mr Macfarlane said.
“I’d like to personally thank the Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young and the Department of Natural Resources, Mines and Energy for working tirelessly over the past few days to process the statutory and critical worker applications.
“Arrow Energy is reducing its FIFO into Moranbah by about 30 percent while other companies are also cutting intrastate FIFO numbers and moving to full charter flights with temperature testing for intrastate travel."
RACT INSURANCE today unveiled a Covid-19 Community Response Package to help the community not only protect their greatest assets but also keep their community groups alive, by making a $100,000 immediately available to assist community groups through the pandemic.
RACT Insurance CEO Trent Sayers said he understood Tasmanians were suffering considerable emotional and financial stress and RACT Insurance was committed to supporting the community through this difficult time.
“As Tasmanians we are all dealing with the far reaching impacts of Covid-19 on our community, our family and our businesses and we understand that as a local organisation we have an important role to play in supporting our community to do what we can to get through these unprecedented circumstances,” Mr Sayers said,
“In response, RACT Insurance has put together a $100,000 Covid-19 Community Response Fund round specifically focused on responding to the pressures our community groups are facing as a result of Covid-19.
“The Covid-19 Community Response Fund will provide grants to support projects which build resilience and support a community group’s ability to rebound post Covid-19 as well as funding to cover fixed costs which community groups continue to face even though their operations are currently restricted," he said.
“Local community groups make a big difference to life in Tasmania and will play an important role in rebuilding and bringing our communities back together once the threat of Covid-19 is over.”
Mr Sayers said RACT Insurance would be delivering on its promise to help protect customers biggest assets against unforeseen circumstances and damage with a range of support measures now available to make things easier.
“We understand some of our customers may be facing financial hardship because of the impacts of Covid-19 so if you have insurance with us and are experiencing significant challenges please get in touch with us,” he said.
“We have a number of options we can offer to support you, such as placing payments on hold, rescheduling payments or reviewing what’s in your policy including what it covers and looking for opportunities to reduce your premium.
“We can also look at payment flexibility including instalments plans or arranging instalments for excess payments. Along with the application of discounts or waiving of obligations for short periods of time.
“We are all going through this together so I would urge our members to please get in touch by calling 13 27 22 if you need help.
“RACT Insurance will also ensure we extend this support to our partners and the many small businesses we work with on a daily basis.
“We have made a commitment to immediate payment terms for invoices of our preferred repairers and suppliers to support the cash flows of our local panel of suppliers and trades. We are also ensuring we maintain continuity of access to the work available across our local small businesses, repairers, suppliers and trades.
“As Tasmanians we are all in this together and we take our role of supporting our community through this difficult time seriously.”
THE Tax Practitioners Board (TPB) has joined with the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) to outline its shared commitment to working with tax practitioners and professional associations to deliver the Australian Government’s COVID-19 stimulus relief measures effectively.
The joint statement highlights the essential role played by the tax profession in helping the community to respond to the COVID-19 crisis and encourages tax practitioners to work with the ATO and the TPB in ensuring the measures are applied fairly.
TPB chair, Ian Klug, thanked the vast majority of tax practitioners that act with integrity.
"This is clearly a very challenging time for tax practitioners as they juggle the competing demands of dealing with the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on their own business, while supporting their clients," Mr Klug said.
"However, in the current environment there is a risk of misconduct if tax practitioners defraud the stimulus package, intentionally or unintentionally.
"We recognise and appreciate that most tax practitioners do the right thing but where the TPB identifies a serious risk to clients, the public or to revenue, we will act to support the public interest.
"As always, we expect tax practitioners to work in a way that maintains the integrity of the profession and of the taxation system."
Mr Klug said that in applying the government’s COVID-19 relief measures correctly, they may need guidance from the ATO and the TPB.
He also said that a hotline (1300 362 829) and This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. has been established by the TPB to enable tax practitioners to advise the TPB in confidence if they see misconduct occurring.
"The bottom line is that we want to ensure that those clients of tax practitioner services who are genuinely eligible for government relief are provided with it as quickly as possible, to safeguard the economy at this critical time."
About the Tax Practitioners Board
The Tax Practitioners Board regulates tax practitioners in order to protect consumers. The TPB aims to assure the community that tax practitioners meet appropriate standards of professional and ethical conduct.
THE International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) have called on the Australian Prime Minister to do the “right thing” for the thousands of seafarers stranded on cruise vessels drifting off the coast of Australia.
On March 29, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said it was “important that Australia does the right thing about those who have fallen into our care to ensure that I can say with great moral authority that Australians are doing the right thing, and we would ask you to do the right thing".
ITF president Paddy Crumlin today wrote to Prime Minister Scott Morrison appealing to him to show the same humanity to the men and women working onboard the cruise ships off the coast of Australia as he has expressed needs to be shown to the cruise passengers, and the same humanity that the US Government has offered Australians being repatriated from Florida in the next 24 to 48 hours.
It is estimated that around 314 out of 385 cruise ships that are owned and operated by the major cruise lines are currently laid up.
Many of the vessels have hundreds of seafarers onboard as governments refuse to allow them to disembark and transit through their ports and airports for repatriation. This is despite guarantees from cruise lines that they will charter flights to get the seafarers home.
Over 80 percent of the world's cruise ships are covered by an ITF agreement. ITF affiliated seafarers’ unions have been working with the ITF and its social partners to get the seafarers repatriated, but travel and port restrictions that governments have implemented have made this impossible with no solution currently in sight.
“This is not a sustainable situation,” said ITF Cruise Ship Task Force chair Johan Øyen. "Seafarers have the right to be treated with the same decency and dignity as everyone else.
"Governments have to ‘do the right thing’ and ensure that the thousands of men and women that have provided their services to the world’s cruise passengers are shown the same compassion and be allowed to return home.”
About the ITF
The International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF) is a democratic global union federation of 665 transport workers trade unions representing 20 million workers in 147 countries. The ITF works to improve the lives of transport workers globally, encouraging and organising international solidarity among its network of affiliates. The ITF represents the interests of transport workers' unions in bodies that take decisions affecting jobs, employment conditions and safety in the transport industry.
THE Australian Lottery and Newsagents Association (ALNA) is urging landlords to step up and create arrangements with their retailers that properly acknowledge the significant reductions in turnover occurring, as the Federal Government has done.
Despite newsagents, regarded an essential service, asking for sensible rent relief, there has been no attempt to do their part in making sure tenants can survive to continue paying rent in the long-term.
ALNA CEO Ben Kearney said, “We are imploring landlords to work with us on this to find a sensible solution now. This remains the big piece of the puzzle that is still unresolved and urgently required to make it possible for small businesses to go into a semi-hibernation state while very prudently maintaining essential services during the crisis and to not lose the capacity to come out the other side.”
Mr Kearney said there were more than 4000 lottery retailers and newsagents in Australia. They are an important and trusted part of Australian communities and approximately 35 percent of the Australian population visit these small businesses at least once a week (source - Retail Doctor Group Insights study).
“Their biggest immediate concern now to surviving this crisis, is their financial capacity to continue to pay rent to their landlords during the crisis," Mr Kearney said. "Many are reporting that they will have limited capacity to continue to pay rent over the several months it may now take before any recovery in customer visitation occurs after social restrictions are lifted.
“When they have reached out to landlords and their representatives as almost all have, and as the Prime Minister has suggested they do, to have a conversation about sensible rent relief and abatement to meet the requirements of their business in surviving this crisis and that is no fault of their own, they are consistently and overwhelmingly met with delay and obfuscation.”
Responses from landlords have included landlords asking tenants to sign a confidentiality agreement before any discussions can occur, delaying tactics, opportunistically cashing in bank guarantees, and chasing April invoices.
“The current COVID-19 pandemic is impacting our small retailers’ businesses in a significant way. Newsagents and lottery agents are not businesses with huge financial capacity or large margins. They are generally mums and dads, family enterprises, and first-generation Australians, who are having a go and working hard to make a success of their business."
Consequently, ALNA has written to the Shopping Centre Council of Australia to ask its industry to step up to support its tenants who can with immediate short-term assistance continue to provide good long-term income.
“We are asking for landlords to show some leadership and to genuinely partner with their commercial tenants, to help see them through this crisis by entering immediate dialogue and delivering rapid outcomes," Mr Kearney said.
"We are not asking them to go out of business, but to work on a common sense solution and the only reasonable option for both their businesses and their tenants."
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