A daily 5 minute news wrap for English learners and people with disability.
Welcome to SBS News in Easy English. I'm Deborah Groarke.
The Federal Court has upheld Australia's detention of refugees and asylum seekers in hotels after they've been brought to the country for medical treatment.
Justice Bernard Murphy has dismissed the landmark lawsuit brought by Kurdish Iranian refugee Mostafa Azimitabar, who argued his detention inside two Melbourne hotels for 14 months was unlawful and outside of the government's executive power.
Justice Murphy has found the Immigration Minister has the authority to approve of hotels being used as immigration detention centres.
PHILIP Lowe is facing mounting pressure over his role as governor of the board of the Reserve Bank of Australia.
Dr Lowe, who instigated an interest rate tightening cycle in May last year, is widely expected to leave when his time is up in September, but senior Liberal Jane Hume has said he should be reappointed.
Federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers is reportedly compiling a list of potential replacements with the head of the R-B-A becoming an increasingly unpopular figure.
Senator Hume says the R-B-A governor is being used as a scapegoat by the federal government.
"I do feel that he has been unfairly demonised. It's like the government have pointed to high interest rates and say "see, that's his fault!" but in fact you need to make sure, I mean, poor old Philip Lowe is just doing his job. His job is to keep inflation in that two to three per cent band. If the government isn't doing its fair share of the heavy lifting, of course the RBA has to do all the hard work."
THE federal government has announced a plan to lift the quality of Disability Employment Service (DES) providers.
The jobless rate of working-age Australians with a disability has remained in double-digits for three decades, and the Disability Royal Commission has estimated a $27.7 billion cost to the economy as a result of failures to provide people with disability equal access to services and opportunity.
Social Services Minister Amanda Rishworth says that has to end.
She's released a new Disability Employment Services Quality Framework to assess how well providers are helping their disabled clients into jobs.
AUSTRALIA is bracing for a potential nightmare bushfire season, with warnings of blistering heat and severe drought growing (Thur 6 Jul).
The Bureau of Meteorology says there is a 70 per cent chance of El Nino in coming months, and that a hot and dry weather pattern with below average rainfall is likely, particularly across eastern states.
But National Manager of Climate Services Karl Braganza says the Bureau says does not expect a repeat of the 2019-2020 Black Summer bushfires.
"Typically we find a lot of warming in the central and eastern Pacific, which isn't the typical pattern. What that tends to do is drag rainfall away from the Australian region and cause lower than average rainfall and quite often drought during an El Nino period over spring and summer for Australia. So, compared to the last three years, where we had the opposite of an El Nino or La Nina event in the Pacific, and quite heavy rainfall over Australia, we're now looking at a summer of below average rainfall and possibly heat waves and bushfires."
PRIME Minister Anthony Albanese is preparing to travel to Germany this weekend ahead of the NATO summit in Lithuania.
He will meet with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to discuss bilateral and multilateral trade, and Ukraine.
Details of a major defence export deal between the countries are also expected to be unveiled.
Ahead of the trip, German Ambassador to Australia Markus Ederer has told SBS News the visit is a timely one.
"It comes at a time when the world seems to come apart at the seams and were two leaders of like minded countries will meet, which may be separated by large geographical distance but have converged on a number of geopolitical issues over the last one and a half years."
I'm Deborah Groarke. This is SBS News in Easy English.
