A daily five-minute news wrap for English learners and people with disability.
Welcome to SBS News in Easy English. I'm Biwa Kwan.
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A former Liberal MP, Pat Farmer, has embarked on an ultra-marathon around Australia to boost support for the Indigenous Voice to Parliament referendum.
The vote will be held later this year.
Australians will be asked to respond - yes or no - on whether they support the creation of an Indigenous Voice to Parliament in the consitution.
The independent body would provide advice to parliament and the federal government on policies affecting Indigenous Australians.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese spoke at the launch of the 14,000km journey in Hobart.
He says Pat Farmer is an ideal example for all Australians.
"He is showing his commitment to reconciliation. And he will, through this run, mobilise these local communities where he visits and I know that, he'll speak in a little while, but I know that he's hoping to mobilise that support."
Mr Farmer says the run will take six months to complete - with his aim to run 80km a day, on average.
"I want to show not just Australians but also the world that Australians are mature, mature enough to reflect on the last couple of hundred years of our history, to learn from the mistakes of our past and to move forward into the future as one nation, one people, one nation, one people. This is not a divisive exercise, this is the exercise of unity. My footsteps are the thread that will weave together this magic tapestry to take us to the future."
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Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has responded to criticism about the implementation of the federal government’s new aged care nursing requirements.
The sector has called for more time to comply with the new rules, which commence from July 1 - and requires a registered nurse to be on site 24 hours a day.
The government has already conceded that not all aged care home are going to meet that deadline, with exemptions made for small facilities in remote areas.
However, Mr Albanese says almost 90 per cent of homes have already met the necessary requirements.
"We're closely monitoring the system together with the [[aged care]] commission but we're confident going forward that people are receiving the right care, that the sector is heading in the right direction and that our reforms are the right ones to make."
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The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission is calling on banks and regulators to better protect consumers from scams.
It comes after a sharp rise in cases, with the commission's latest report finding that Australians lost a record three billion dollars to scammers last year.
That's an 80 per cent increase on total losses compared to the year before.
The top five types of scams related to investment, remote access, payment redirection, romance, and stealing data through malware sent through emails or text messages.
Federal Financial Services Minister Stephen Jones says it is a concerning development, and he urged consumers to be alert to the danger.
"If an investment looks to good to be true, the chances are it is. Don't be giving personal information out if you can't be absolutely certain that the person you are talking is who they say are. Don't be clicking on those blue links, those links that come through on SMS or emails. That is a scammers' paradise."
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Melbourne has been named Australia's biggest city, following an update to the Australian Bureau of Statistics' census in 2021.
That census changed the boundaries of the city to include the district of Melton, which raised the city's total population to nearly 5 million.
Those figures mean Melbourne now has a narrow lead over Sydney, which the Bureau says is a result of rapid population growth on Melbourne's western fringes.
The population of Greater Sydney remains larger than that of Greater Melbourne, yet forecasts predict that will be the case only for a few years.
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The countdown is on to a rare total solar eclipse that will turn day into night, as the sun appears to vanish from the sky.
Tens of thousands people are expected to travel to the remote peninsula of Exmouth in Western Australia to see the eclipse on Thursday.
The moon will cast a 40 kilometre-wide shadow over the World Heritage-listed Ningaloo reef region.
The Astronomical Society of Australia says it's a rare and spectacular phenomenon taking about three hours.
It involves the moon passes between the sun and earth in perfect alignment, with total darkness set to last about a minute from 11.29am [[WST]].
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I'm Biwa Kwan and that's SBS News in Easy English.
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