Key events
Welcome
Good morning and welcome to our live news blog. I’m Martin Farrer with some of our best overnight stories before Krishani Dhanji takes over.
The share of wealth held by Australia’s bottom 40% has fallen significantly in two decades while 3.3 million people live below the poverty line, according to a damning report by researchers at Monash University that found inequalities across wealth, housing, health and education were worsening. Australia now has proportionately more people below the poverty line than Canada and the UK, and education outcomes were widening between richer and poorer children.
The prime minister is due to say this morning that the national apology to the Stolen Generations made by Kevin Rudd in 2008 was a day “that mattered in the life of our nation”. At a breakfast in Canberra, Anthony Albanese will say: “Of all my days in parliament on which I look on with great pride, it remains the day of which I remain proudest.” More coming up.
The Australian, UK-based human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson has called for an investigation into the English prosecution service decision to charge Sam Kerr, calling it an “attack on free speech”. Robertson said “no one in their right mind” believed that Kerr’s actions could have justified a prison sentence yet the case still reached crown court in a criminal justice system “in chaos” because of years of underfunding.
And the ACTU have fired up in defence of the right to disconnect laws, which the Coalition say they will scrap, but which the unions say have saved Australians from working a billion hours of unpaid work. More on that soon.
