Speaker 1: Today's biggest news from The Australian. I'm christinaming it with
Speaker 1: the Front's afternoon headlines. Seventeen fraudsters who routed the multi
Speaker 1: billion dollar National Disability Insurance Scheme have spent a collective
Speaker 1: sixty years in jail since twenty twenty two. That's according
Speaker 1: to new figures released by the government on Tuesday. A
Speaker 1: task force launched four years ago to combat fraud in
Speaker 1: the scheme has received almost ninety thousand tips about allegedly
Speaker 1: fraudulent behavior and has executed dozens of search warrants on
Speaker 1: dodgy NDIS providers. The task force says it seesed luxury
Speaker 1: items like cars and gold coins during the execution of
Speaker 1: search warrants, and more than three point five million dollars
Speaker 1: in illegally obtained funds have been returned to the NDIS
Speaker 1: why so Worlds. The Labour government used the data in
Speaker 1: Parliament to urge the passage of its latest NDIS Bill,
Speaker 1: which aims to dramatically cut the ballooning cost of the scheme.
Speaker 1: Labour wanted the reforms to pass in this sitting period,
Speaker 1: but it's pushed that timeline out while it negotiates with
Speaker 1: the Coalition and the Greens Labour MP Josh Burns has
Speaker 1: called for vilification of Jewish people to be criminalized. That's
Speaker 1: after a campaign of online abuse culminated in an arson
Speaker 1: attack on his Melbourne electorate office.
Speaker 2: I want people to be able to express themselves, to
Speaker 2: criticize government policy, to have a robust democracy and debate.
Speaker 2: But unfortunately where that descends and disintegrates into abuse and
Speaker 2: vilification is when people leave the discussion around policy and
Speaker 2: start making attributes to a particular individual based on their race, religion, gender, ethnicity.
Speaker 2: And I think that we want people to participate freely
Speaker 2: in democracy, but we also want them to be shielded
Speaker 2: from vilification when doing so.
Speaker 1: Burns is the first member of the Albanese government to
Speaker 1: appear before the Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion,
Speaker 1: which entered its third block of public hearings on Monday.
Speaker 1: The Royal Commission will hear what role, if any, social
Speaker 1: media has played in fueling Australia's antisemitism crisis. Treasurer Jim
Speaker 1: Chalmers has left the door open to reforms that could
Speaker 1: see miners paid superannuation by some of Australia's biggest companies.
Speaker 1: About half a million teenagers who work fewer than thirty
Speaker 1: hours per week aren't currently entitled to super after Labour
Speaker 1: reintroduced an exclusion for workers under the age of eighteen.
Speaker 1: But the Greens will move a disallowance motion in the
Speaker 1: Senate on Tuesday night to stop the Treasurer from enacting
Speaker 1: the exemption, and Chalmers says he's up for the discussion.
Speaker 3: Oh, we didn't need the Green's political party to tell
Speaker 3: us that this was an important issue. As it turns out,
Speaker 3: I met with a delegation of young workers just last
Speaker 3: week talking about this. We're always looking for ways to
Speaker 3: strengthen the superannuation system.
Speaker 1: Check out those stories live right now the Australian dot
Speaker 1: com dot au and come back to the front first
Speaker 1: thing in the morning.