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Michael is joined by Liz Livingstone, CEO of IPART CEO (Independent Pricing & Regulatory Tribunal), which announced yesterday that Sydney Water’s prices would be lower when water supply is plentiful, and provide customers with more control over their bills, under draft recommendations released for consultation.  

 

Under IPART’s proposal, from 1 July 2020 the price paid for water would depend on dam levels.

 

If dam levels are above 60%, you would pay $2.30 per kilolitre of water you consume. But when dam levels fall below 60%, you would pay $3.12 per kilolitre to reflect the increased costs of supplying water in periods of scarcity.

 

This compares to the current price of $2.11 per kilolitre.”

Listen to the full show podcast with Michael Mclaren

Michael is joined by Nick Bonyhady, Industrial relations reporter for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, about the Morrison government backtracking on claims that a cyber-attack helped bring down the Centrelink website on Monday morning.

 

Government Services Minister Stuart Robert admitted under questioning that MyGov went down after huge demand from users triggered the alarm, shutting access after 95,000 people tried to access the site compared to about 6,500 people on a usual day.

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Michael is joined by Brendan Coates, Grattan Institute Household Finances Program Director, about the institute’s new estimates that the bottom 40 percent of working households have the equivalent of three weeks' income or less in the bank… and a quarter of all working households have less than a week's salary put aside for a rainy day - or a pandemic.

Mr Coates warns that working households, where at least one member is in work,  will be the most vulnerable to the current crisis as pensioners and those on government payments like Newstart are already doing it tough, but the crisis would not affect their cash flow.

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Michael chats with Roger Montgomery on how to fix the unfair petrol ripoff.

Michael chats with John Little, the co-author of The Hospital by the River: a story of hope, about the passing of Catherine Hamlin, 'The Saint of Addis Ababa'

Listen to the full show podcast with Michael Mclaren