Day: March 23, 2025

Three-quarters of Australians support ban on gambling ads as recommended by a bipartisan parliamentary review. Follow today’s news live

• Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast

The ACTU has released data claiming one in three Australian workers would be affected if the private sector followed Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s work from home policy.

ACTU president, Michele O’Neil, says clamping down on remote work would be a “productivity killer” and would hurt women the most.

There are many people who can work productively from home. And in fact, it’s very likely that the increase in work from home is one of the reasons that we’ve seen such an increase in the number of women participating in the workforce.

We’re currently at record numbers of women participating in the workforce in Australia, I’d say there’s a fairly good chance that that’s partly due to the work from home increase.

A big chunk of it comes through reducing the reliance on contractors and consultants, which is something that we’ve done in each budget … and that’s a big part of the $2.1 billion. But that is in addition to the savings we’ve found before. So across this Government, we’ve found $95 billion worth of savings, which has allowed us to repair the budget.

Well, that remains to be seen … but every budget that we have done, we have found savings. We found $95 billion worth of savings and that’s helped to get the budget in much better shape.

Continue reading…