As it happened: Fresh debate looms over national integrity commission; Medibank leaks could continue for months

That’s it from me for today. My colleagues will keep the bloggy home fires burning tomorrow, while I’ll be back on Monday afternoon.

For those just catching up, here is a summary of today’s headlines:

• President Joe Biden confirmed he intends to run for re-election in 2024, while Donald Trump’s allies are urging him to delay announcing his run so the Republicans can focus on a run-off Senate race in Georgia.
• COVID-19 cases are surging in Australia, based on new figures out in NSW and Victoria, while long-COVID clinics report they have been inundated with demand.
• The government’s industrial relations bill passed the lower house.
• A parliamentary committee unanimously recommended the bill for the federal integrity commission be passed.
• The Australian Bureau of Statistics has reported same-sex divorce figures for the first time.

The Coalition has accused Australia of lagging behind its allies in responding to the crisis in Iran.

Senator Claire Chandler, the opposition spokesperson on foreign affairs, said in a statement that there were a “series of unanswered questions about Australia’s lack of action in response to violence against women and girls in Iran” in Senate estimates today.

“The Iranian-Australian community has for weeks been highly frustrated that the Australian Government is yet to move beyond statements of condemnation and implement specific measures to hold the Iranian Government to account, as many of our closest allies have done,” Chandler said.

“Today we also heard that the government is aware of multiple reports of intimidation and threats against Iranian-Australians and their families in Iran. This is incredibly serious and adds to the importance of Australia taking a strong stance.”

Foreign Minister Penny Wong earlier told Senate estimates she would not speculate on sanctions.

“It wouldn’t be appropriate for me or any foreign minister to engage in speculation about potential listings. The government’s position about this issue, about the human rights abuses, is clear,” Wong said.

Chandler’s statement also called out Prime Minister Anthony Albanese for telling Question Time yesterday the government was considering the business implications of any action.

As reported on this blog, Albanese said “we actually don’t have a vast number of economic relations between Australia and Iran”, implying that increased sanctions would not have much effect.

He also said: “One of the things we have done is make sure ... that, in any action that’s taken, we’re fully cognisant of the implications for Australian businesses of that.”

Chandler said: “It was tone deaf for the Prime Minister to suggest business implications are a legitimate reason why Australia has not announced concrete actions to hold Iran accountable.

“There are a range of options available for the Australian Government to act upon, and the community is entitled to know why our Government has felt unable to announce tangible actions when nations like the US, UK, Canada and Germany have done so.”

The federal opposition has pledged to back any government action over Iran’s human rights abuses, even if they have economic consequences.

To US politics now, the results of the midterm elections are looking grim for former president Donald Trump.

The disappointing results for the Republicans are raising new questions about Trump’s appeal and the future of a party that has fully embraced him.

Some allies are calling on Trump to delay his planned announcement of a bid to reclaim the presidency in 2024.

They say the party’s full focus needs to be on Georgia, where Trump-backed football great Herschel Walker’s effort to unseat Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock is headed to a runoff that could determine control of the Senate once again.

Trump sought to use the midterms as an opportunity to prove his enduring political influence after losing the White House in 2020. He endorsed more than 330 candidates in races up and down the ballot, often elevating inexperienced and deeply flawed candidates. He revelled in their primary victories. But many of their positions, including echoing Trump’s lies about a stolen 2020 election and embracing hardline views on abortion, were out of step with the political mainstream.

Trump did notch some big wins Tuesday, particularly in Ohio, where his pick for the Senate, Hillbilly Elegy author JD Vance, sailed to easy victory after Trump’s endorsement. In North Carolina, Ted Budd, an early Trump pick, kept an open Senate seat in GOP hands.

But Trump lost some of the night’s biggest prizes, particularly in Pennsylvania, where Dr Mehmet Oz, who only narrowly won his Senate primary with Trump’s backing, lost to Democrat John Fetterman.

Trump-backed candidates also lost governors races in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Maryland, and a Senate race in New Hampshire, though Trump seemed to celebrate the latter, bashing Republican Dan Bolduc for trying to moderate his stances by backing off his embrace of Trump’s election lies.

Meanwhile, as our North American correspondent Farrah Tomazin reports, President Joe Biden has already declared his intention to run in 2024.

Biden, who is turning 80 this month, said he intended to run regardless of whether Trump entered the race, although a final decision would be made next year.

Asked to respond to those who questioned his fitness for the job, he replied: “Watch me.”

“My intention is that I’m running again,” Biden said, in his first public comments since votes were cast yesterday (Tuesday US time).

“But I’m a great respecter of fate and this is ultimately a family decision. I think everybody wants me to run, but we’re going to have discussions about it and I don’t feel any hurry one way or another to make that judgment.”

Biden characterised the US midterm elections as a victory for democracy, and has vowed to work with Republicans if they take control of Congress, saying Americans had made it clear they didn’t want a “constant political battle”.

With AP

CSIRO chief executive Larry Marshall defended his organisation’s culture at a Senate estimates hearing in Canberra this afternoon, after ACT senator David Pocock quizzed the leader about a staff survey that showed experienced scientists were “deeply unsatisfied” in their roles.

Pocock raised the results of a staff survey, conducted by a private company, that compared the culture of Australia’s top science agency to a list of 1000 top private companies such as Amazon and Google.

He said he was shocked by the results.

“The scientists who had been around the longest were deeply unsatisfied compared to those at the [top 1000] companies,” Pocock said.

Marshall said he was happy with the overall results of the survey, and CSIRO’s culture. He admitted there was “stuff we have to work on” such as “behaviours not aligned with our values”, addressing the top down and command and control” organisational structure.

But he said he was happy with CSIRO’s strengths that emerged in the survey, such as setting clear goals, teamwork and encouraging scientific risk taking.

For the first time, the Australian Bureau of Statistics has released data on same-sex divorces, with 473 couples splitting in 2021.

Michael Koziol reports that included 306 female couples and 167 male couples.

There were 2842 same-sex marriages in that year – 1771 female couples and 1072 male couples – continuing a trend that indicates female couples are more likely to tie the knot than males.

The divorce statistics released on Thursday suggest male and female same-sex marriages break down at roughly the same rates.

It will take some time for the same-sex divorce rate to materialise and become statistically valid.

To the royal commission into the controversial robo-debt scheme, a former senior public servant told the inquiry the public service mistakes were “stuff-up” rather than “conspiracy”.

Former Department of Social Security Secretary Finn Pratt said today: “In my experience in the public service, it is almost always a stuff-up. I cannot think of any examples where a conspiracy has been concocted by people to do something deliberately.”

His comments related to Justice Bernard Murphy’s 2021 Federal Court judgment, which approved a $1.2 billion settlement for robo-debt victims.

Murphy described it as a shameful chapter in public administration with many people wrongly branded welfare cheats, but said he was not convinced the federal government knew the scheme was unlawful from the start.

“I am reminded of the aphorism that, given a choice between a stuff-up and a conspiracy, one should usually choose a stuff-up,” Murphy said.

Pratt told the commission he had read Murphy’s judgment in the last month in preparing to give evidence and also remembered the media report at the time.

“I thought his analysis ... was spot on,” Pratt said.

When asked by Commissioner Catherine Holmes if there had been a conspiracy to conceal a stuff-up, Pratt conceded bureaucracies could be good at trying to minimise the damage from adverse reports.

“But ultimately, it is actually really a requirement for the bureaucracy to answer the question and to give the right information,” he said.

Robo-debt was initiated under the former Coalition government and falsely accused welfare recipients of owing money.

The commission is investigating how the scheme, which operated between 2015 and 2020, went ahead despite government departments knowing the debt calculation method was unlawful and would have required legislative change.

Hundreds of thousands of Australians were sent debt notices under the scheme between 2015 and 2020, which recovered more than $750 million before it stopped operating.

The commission is continuing.

With AAP

Circling back to the energy debate, Woodside boss Meg O’Neill has lobbed a thinly veiled swipe at those calling for price caps and taxes to battle soaring energy prices, saying such steps would only exacerbate the issue.

“That type of market manipulation would have serious long-term consequences, reducing investment in new supply [and] making the energy shortfall and price pressure worse in future years,” O’Neill told a business breakfast in Perth today.

Federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers has vowed to tackle the skyrocketing power bills confronting households and businesses amid government forecasts prices will jump 56 per cent over the next two years in the global energy crunch driven by Russia’s war on Ukraine.

O’Neill said she believed the focus on market intervention was misplaced and stability was crucial.

“Western Australia has to date been largely immune from the supply and price shocks we have seen on the east coast and internationally, through a combination of natural advantages and stable policy settings,” she said.

“It is absolutely critical, both for our industry and for many of the businesses represented here today, that this remains the case.”

Staying on the topic of COVID-19, we reported earlier that Australia’s long COVID clinics are so under-resourced that patients are waiting almost a year for treatment.

The story, by our national science reporter Liam Mannix, reveals that the Victorian government provided the nation’s first official modelling of long COVID in a submission to a federal inquiry.

The submission estimated that long COVID disease affected 218,000 Victorians, of whom 41,000 had a severe form. Actual numbers are unclear.

Around the country, long COVID clinics are under-funded and struggling to meet demand. For example, St Vincent’s in Sydney has an 11-month waitlist, as does the clinic at the Royal Melbourne Hospital.

Mannix has written a series of excellent articles on long COVID, which includes symptoms such as brain fog, fatigue, headaches and nausea persisting for months or even years.

The question of how likely anyone is to get it is far from settled, though it can sometimes happen when a person only had mild symptoms in the initial phase of infection.

Mannix has reported previously that Australia needs high-quality prevalence studies, particularly because our risk will be different to other countries: most people infected with COVID in Australia were already vaccinated.

But, he says, even if the true risk is very small, the absolute number of people with long COVID is going to be large because so many people have been infected.

These people also fall between the gaps in Australia’s safety net system, once they run out of sick leave. To qualify for JobSeeker, you need to be looking for work. To qualify for the National Disability Insurance Scheme, you need to be permanently disabled.

The Australian government commissioned the parliamentary inquiry into long COVID in September and its findings will inform a national response.

Readers of the blog will know that Australia is in the early stages of a new COVID wave, with a mix of Omicron subvariants causing rising cases around the nation.

The Herald’s health editor Kate Aubusson brings this update from NSW.

NSW has recorded a significant rise in COVID cases and hospital admissions.

There were 14,089 people diagnosed with COVID-19 in the week ending November 5, a 39.3 per cent rise since the previous week, the state’s latest Covid surveillance report shows.

There were 310 Covid cases admitted to hospital and 25 to intensive care in the same week.

The seven-day rolling average of daily hospitalisations rose to an average of 44 admissions by November 5 compared to 38 admissions at the end of the previous week.

Emergency department presentations of people with COVID who were sick enough to be admitted to hospital rose to 160 from 123 in the previous week.

A mix of Omicron subvariants is driving the current wave of transmissions. NSW Health is monitoring them, as well as other emerging variants, the report said.

Meanwhile, in Victoria, which still provides some (not all) COVID-19 data daily, the total number of infections is 60 per cent higher than a week ago. The official weekly Victorian figures will be out tomorrow.

This pandemic ain’t over yet.

It’s Caitlin Fitzsimmons here and I’m your host for the national news blog this afternoon. I have been with you since 2pm, but I’ve just finished blogging question time in the House of Representatives.

In case you missed it, here are the main headlines of the day:

• In the US midterm elections, Republicans made modest gains, but control of the US House of Representatives and Senate remains unclear. Officials have confirmed there are no known instances of digital interference that have affected the counting of votes.
• Russia’s military says it’s withdrawing from the Ukrainian city of Kherson, which it has occupied since March.
• A parliamentary committee has handed down a unanimous report recommending the legislation for the national integrity commission be passed.
• Labor’s controversial industrial relations bill, which allows for multi-employer workplace bargaining, has passed the House of Representatives.