Wake Up Australia

Listen to the full show podcast with Luke Grant filling in for Michael Mclaren

Today the Australian Bureau of Statistics is releasing Causes of Death data for 2018.

 

Luke Grant talks to Shayne Connell & Sharon Jenkins, who are calling for investment in saving the lives of those who are charged each day with saving ours

 

Whether the number of suicide deaths confirmed go up, down or stay the same is irrelevant for Sharon Jenkins, who lost her paramedic husband Tony to suicide last year. 

 

Mrs Jenkins is calling on every State & Territory to invest in saving the lives of those who are charged on a daily basis with saving ours.

 

She has partnered with leading international suicide intervention training organisation LivingWorks to channel her grief into positive action and wants every paramedic to be supported to do LivingWorks Start, a new one-hour online skills-based suicide prevention program accessible to every Australian.

 

“I don’t want other families, workplaces and communities to go through the immense loss we have. If every single person in this country did a LivingWorks Start, so many of us will be better equipped to have those tough conversations.

 

I for one will be making it my life’s work to support paramedics to learn these invaluable skills.

 

Not only could it help them save lives in the work they do but it could also save the life of one of their loved ones.”

 

LivingWorks Australia Director, Shayne Connell, said with his background in psychology and 20 years' experience in suicide prevention and training, he hasn’t seen anything like this before and welcomes Ms Jenkins support for LivingWorks Start.

Luke Grant catches up with Tanya Davies MP, Liberal Member for Mulgoa, to get her assessment of where the abortion legislation is up to in the New South Wales Upper House… and particularly where she now stands with her threat to join the cross benches going forward in the legislation isn’t appropriately amended.  

 

Upper house members have put forward new amendments to the controversial abortion legislation including one that would require painkillers to be administered to a foetus if a person is 20-weeks pregnant or more.

Listen to the full show podcast with Luke Grant filling in for Michael Mclaren

David LLewellyn Smith, Macrobusiness.com contributor & founder, about

EnergyAustralia, Australia’s third-largest energy retailer, agreeing on Wednesday to buy gas from a liquefied natural gas (LNG)import terminal planned by a Japanese-backed joint venture… in the first of several deals needed for the project to go ahead.

 

The Port Kembla LNG terminal is one of five proposed LNG import terminals that could help meet a looming gas shortage in southeastern Australia, even as the country is set to become the world’s top LNG exporter.

 

EnergyAustralia is the first customer to sign up to buy gas from Port Kembla, to be operated by a joint venture called Australian Industrial Energy (AIE) consisting of Japan’s JERA and Marubeni Corp and mining magnate Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest’s Squadron Energy.

Denita Wawn, CEO of Master Builders Australia, about another case of the CFMMEU bullying a small business which shows the need for ensuring integrity laws.

 

The Federal Court has handed down penalties that total $108,875 against the CFMMEU and a group of its officials, after finding they bullied and threatened a small business into signing a union deal. Included in this fine was a $9000 ‘personal payment order’ against one official who the Court found has a history of repeatedly breaking industrial laws. 

 

Denita Wawn, CEO of Master Builders Australia said, “this is the second judgment handed down by a Court in less than seven days that shows how the CFMMEU treats small businesses – it’s the union way – or the highway,” 

 

“This is yet more evidence that fines and penalties are not enough to convince building unions to change their ways or to protect the small businesses and sub-contractors in our industry. This is why we need the Parliament to pass the Ensuring Integrity laws as soon as possible,” she said. 

 

“Only when these laws pass might building unions see these fines as more than just ‘the cost of doing business and be held accountable for their actions. Bullies and thugs should not be in charge of unions,” Denita Wawn said.

Luke Grant is joined by Ian Henschke, Chief Advocate for National Seniors Australia, who says the recent cut to deeming rates in July was not enough and with another interest rate cut expected, it’s time to put an end to this unfairness.

 

A lower deeming rate would also put extra spending money in the pockets of a million pensioners, boosting Australia’s sluggish economy.

 

The rates are used to deem the amount of income from investments, including savings. The more you are deemed to have earned the less pension you get. As the cash rate has dropped, the higher deeming rate of 3% on savings over $51,800 is now double the typical return on a term deposit.

 

This is costing pensioners but boosting the government’s budget. National Seniors Chief Advocate Ian Henschke says when interest rates are cut again, it would increase the unfairness and show the way the government is balancing its budget on the backs of pensioners.

 

 

“This is a ballooning budget burden on pensioners, who can least afford it.” he says.

Listen to the full show podcast with Luke Grant filling in for Michael Mclaren

Steph Ryan, Victorian Shadow Minister for water & Deputy Leader of the Nationals Victoria’s Water Minister Lisa Neville has announcing plans to make Melbourne’s expensive desalination plant even bigger today, while doubling down on Labor’s no dams policy.

 

Ms Ryan says Minister Neville’s comments again prove how short-sighted the Andrews Labor Government is when it comes to planning for Victoria’s future water needs

Gerald Quigley, Pharmacist, master herbalist & co-host of Macquarie Media's House of Wellness, joins Luke Grant regarding patients still being prescribed hundreds of Xanax tablets a year despite a cut in government subsidies.

 

Used for the short-term treatment of conditions including insomnia and anxiety, the government made changes to the public subsidy of Xanax in 2017 in an effort to limit its misuse.