Today is an extremely distressing day for the 1.5 million people on the JobSeeker and Youth Allowance payments who have now had confirmation that the Morrison Government has made the cruel decision to condemn them to poverty. 
 
$44 a day is not enough to live on. This will mean people going without meals, without medication, without the funds to pay for heating or cooling.
 
This should not be happening in a country as wealthy as Australia.
 
This is an appalling slap in the face for all those people trying to survive on Jobseeker.
 

The Greens say that the Government will miss out on opportunities to expand and diversify Australia’s vaccine portfolio if they don’t invest in public capacity to produce mRNA vaccines

The Government’s long overdue Evaluation of the CDC in Ceduna, East Kimberley and the Goldfields Region: Consolidated Report has been publicly released over a year and a half after it was due. 
 

The Greens say quarantine facilities need to be established out of cities and that facilities must be publicly funded and run. 

“Our hotel quarantine system needs to be watertight. The UK, South Africa, Brazil variants are becoming the dominant variants in other parts of the world and we must keep these from getting out into our community”, Greens spokesperson on Health Senator Rachel Siewert said

The Greens say a so-called employment insurance scheme is an appalling idea and that Mr Morrison is being cruel to people on the Jobseeker payment, drip feeding potential plans for the JobSeeker payment through media leaks.

“This so-called insurance scheme would make an already appalling system worse, further entrenching poverty and homelessness”, Greens spokesperson on Family and Community Services Senator Rachel Siewert said. 

“This concept is based on the assumption that has been disproven time and again, that poverty is an incentive to finding work. 

The Greens welcome the news that AstraZeneca has been provisionally approved by the Therapeutic Goods Administration for use in Australia.
 
“However we cannot put all our eggs in one basket. It’s clear with differing rates of efficacy and with new Covid-19 strains developing that we must continue to expand and diversify Australia’s vaccine portfolio”, Australian Greens spokesperson on Health Senator Rachel Siewert said.
 

The Greens say Mr Morrison must announce a permanent increase to the Jobseeker payment and guarantee that nobody is worse off under any new system.

“Mr Morrison is once again muddying the waters with a suggestion that the JobSeeker payment could be paid at a flat rate and targeted supplements abolished. A permanent increase to Jobseeker is the highest priority” Australian Greens spokesperson on Family and Community Services Senator Rachel Siewert said. 

The Greens say that proper regulation of the gambling industry requires a ban on the industry donating to political parties.

“The gambling industry is just rife with conflicts of interest," Australian Greens spokesperson on Gambling Senator Rachel Siewert said. 

“We urgently need a national independent regulator, with gambling companies operating across the country we need a national body regulating them. 

"States which rely heavily on the income gambling generates cannot be in charge of regulating the industry as there is a clear conflict of interest.  

The Greens say that as Crown Resorts has been found to be unfit to operate in Sydney then there are questions around their operations in other states too. 

“The culture and operation of Crown Resorts in Western Australia and Victoria were part of the NSW assessment process and need to be assessed, '' Greens spokesperson on Gambling Senator Rachel Siewert said. 

The Greens say the suspension of the AstraZeneca vaccine roll-out in South Africa shows the need for the government to establish a publicly-owned mRNA vaccine manufacturer in Australia.

Australia needs to be nimble and able to quickly adapt vaccines to ever-mutating strains of COVID, which would only be possible with a local, publicly owned facility that puts health, not profits, first.

Leader of the Australian Greens Adam Bandt MP said: