Australia news live: Optus fined $800k over phone scam; NSW targets ‘dehumanising’ work systems such as Amazon’s

8.50pm GMT Home affairs minister adds conversations ongoing to make sure laws are ‘fit for purpose’ after neo-Nazi rally Burke added that officials had “significant” powers under current law, but there were ongoing discussions following the neo-Nazi rally. As you’d expect, there are conversations that I’m having with my department to make sure that all the laws that we have are fit for purpose, not only with my department, but obviously the different intelligence and law enforcement and security agencies that are within my portfolio as well. The home affairs minister said he was always “pressure testing” different laws with Asio, the AFP and the criminal intelligence commission, adding you never get to a point where you say, “okay, laws, they’re all fixed”. You’re always reviewing because the nature of the attack and the nature of what people want to do to our social cohesion is always changing. 8.42pm GMT ‘He’s not heading back into the Australia community’, Burke says of man detained after neo-Nazi rally Tony Burke, the minister for home affairs, said the South African man who had his visa cancelled after attending a neo-Nazi rally in Sydney is not welcome in Australia and would soon be on his way to his home country. Related: South African man detained in pre-dawn immigration raid after attending Sydney neo-Nazi rally Burke spoke to RN Breakfast this morning, saying the decision to cancel Matthew Gruter’s visa also sent a message “to the rest of Australia about what we find acceptable”. He went on: He’s not heading back into the Australian community. I think there’s a really simple concept here: that when someone’s on a visa, they’re a guest in Australia, and almost every visa holder is a very welcome guest, and they treat Australia with incredible respect. But if someone turns up as a guest in your home and they just want to create arguments, abuse people, and wreck the place, then you ask them to leave. And this bloke, for whatever reason, has decided that he can arrive in Australia and then tell a whole lot of Australian citizens that they’re not welcome here. Well, the person who’s not welcome is him and he can leave. Burke added that his decision was linked to the need to send a “strong national message out” that “modern Australia and multicultural Australia are the same thing”. Updated at 8.48pm GMT 8.24pm GMT Following on from last post Daley said in his reading of the bill that the court had acknowledged in its findings that there would be a lesser burden on this freedom if the power was narrowed so that it only affected those who are seeking to access or leave a place or worship. He said that this was “always the New South Wales government’s intention”: This bill proposes to clarify the move-on power to give effect to the original intention of this measure … In doing so, the bill clearly expresses the government’s intention to protect people who are entering or exiting the place of worship. He said the maximum penalty for refusing to comply with a police move in this instance would be $220. The catalyst for the first version of the place of worship bill was a protest outside the Great Synagogue where a member of the Israel Defense Forces was speaking. Some Labor MPs had warned their premier, Chris Minns, in an internal meeting before the laws passed that the expanded police powers could be found constitutionally invalid. Updated at 8.26pm GMT 8.15pm GMT NSW government introduces fresh laws restricting protests outside places of worship The NSW government has introduced a fresh bill to restrict protests outside places of worship, with the state’s attorney general telling parliament last night that the new legislation clarifies the scope of police powers after an earlier version was found constitutionally invalid. Michael Daley told parliament in the first reading of the bill last night that the new legislation would give police powers to issue a move-on direction to people participating in a protest taking place in or near a place of worship, but only if the conduct is harassing, intimidating or threatening a person accessing or leaving or attempting to access or leave the place of worship. He said a person can also be moved on if police find they are intentionally blocking, impeding or hindering a person from accessing or leaving a place of worship. Daley acknowledged the supreme court’s findings that struck down an earlier version of this law in October after it found the police powers were constitutionally invalid because it impermissibly burdened the freedom of political communication implied in Australia’s constitution. Those laws, which were successfully challenged by the Palestine Action Group, had given police broad powers to move on someone protesting in or near a place or worship, regardless of what the protest was about. Related: NSW anti-protest law ruled unconstitutional after Palestine Action Group court challenge 8.11pm GMT Good morning, and welcome to Wednesday. Nick Visser here to mind the blog today. Let’s jump in. 7.57pm GMT Job market locking out those who need work the most, says Anglicare Australia’s job market is locking out people who most need a chance to work, Anglicare Australia’s annual Jobs Availability Snapshot has revealed. The Snapshot measures how many jobs are available for people who don’t have qualifications or recent experience. It finds that: For every entry-level vacancy, there are 39 people on the JobSeeker payment. Of those, 25 have barriers to work. This is the highest ratio ever recorded by the Snapshot. Entry-level jobs now make up just 11% of all vacancies. This is their lowest share in a decade. Anglicare Australia executive director, Kasy Chambers, said: All of this shows that people are being failed by a system that treats unemployment as a personal fault instead of a policy failure. Taxpayers are spending billions of dollars on private employment providers whose business model depends on compliance and punishment. They profit whether or not people find work. Meanwhile, people are stuck in endless appointments and meaningless activities – all while competing for jobs that simply aren’t there. It’s time to end this failed experiment. The for-profit model has been running for over 20 years, and long-term unemployment has only grown. 7.50pm GMT Follows on from previous post The proposed reforms to work health and safety laws clarifies the responsibility around the use of these systems and will allow union representatives to gain access to the algorithms behind the systems so they can fully understand how they are impacting workers – and take action to enforce labour standards, if required. The amendments will place an obligation on the person legally responsible for the business to ensure these digital tools do not lead to unsafe workloads, unreasonable performance tracking, excessive surveillance or discriminatory work allocation. The NSW minister for industrial relations, Sophie Cotsis, said. As digital systems become more common in workplaces, the Minns Labor government is making sure that these systems help businesses without undermining the health and safety of workers. This is about protecting workers’ mental health, preventing harm before it occurs, and giving everyone confidence that workplace technology is used responsibly. The Minns Labor government has also committed to continuing to work with other jurisdictions through the SafeWork Australia process on how digital systems can be kept safe at work. The bill responds to relevant recommendations of a 2022 select committee on the impact of technological on the future of work in NSW (reported in 2022) regarding the rise of digital systems and their real impacts on worker psychosocial health. 7.43pm GMT NSW targets ‘dehumanising’ work systems such as Amazon’s The Minns Labor government will today introduce new laws to put guardrails around the use of digital programs designed to optimise workers’ workloads. Digital work systems, often powered by artificial intelligence, are deployed by companies such as Amazon and Uber in retail and in logistics to devise the most efficient way to determine staffing and to pick and pack items and deliver them. But there are growing concerns that these types of systems can become dehumanising, measuring everything from the speed at which workers work, to the time they spend going to the toilet. Bernie Smith, the NSW secretary of the Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Association (SDA), the union that covers retail and warehousing workers, said that often these systems were purchased off the shelf from the US, where labour standards were different from those in Australia. These systems take out every gap in a worker’s work day, but it is often the gaps that make us human and make our work bearable. Amazon does it to the nth degree but many other workplaces are using them too. It’s not working smarter, it’s just working harder. 7.37pm GMT Optus fined over $826,000 for customers losing $39,000 after scammers compromised ID checks Optus has paid a fine of $826,320 after its subsidiary, Coles Mobile, fell victim to scammers who were able to exploit a vulnerability in third-party ID checks used by Optus to bypass the required verification and gain control of at least four mobile accounts. Telcos are supposed to have strong ID verification settings in place to prevent scammers from porting a number to a different telco. Scammers who successfully port numbers can then intercept the multi-factor authentication verification for banking if SMS is the method the bank uses. In this case, the scammers then used those mobile services to access the bank accounts of those customers, resulting in reported losses of $39,000. Coles Mobile breached anti-scam rules on 44 occasions between September and October 2024, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (Acma) said. Acma member Samantha Yorke said it was a one-off issue that was quickly fixed, but it was inexcusable for any telco to not have robust customer ID systems in place, let alone the second-largest telco in Australia. She said: Scammers are always looking for any weaknesses in systems, and on this occasion Optus left a vulnerability which directly exposed people to harm. This is the maximum financial penalty the Acma was able to give in this matter. It reflects the serious nature of the breaches. 7.30pm GMT Welcome Good morning and welcome to our live news blog. I’m Martin Farrer with the best of the overnight stories before passing the news baton to Nick Visser. Optus has been fined $826,320 after a subsidiary, Coles Mobile, was targeted by scammers who exploited a weakness in third-party ID checks and gained control of at least four mobile accounts, stealing $39,000 from bank accounts. More details shortly. The NSW government has introduced a fresh bill to restrict protests outside places of worship, with the state’s attorney general telling parliament last night that the new legislation clarifies the scope of police powers. It’ll be another busy day in Macquarie Street as the government introduces new laws to protect workers from digital work systems which unions says can be dehumanising, with controls on toilet breaks and the like. More coming up.