What happened today, Thursday 3 June
And with that, another hectic day of news comes to an end. Here’s everything that went down today:
- The PM announced the federal government would put in place a ‘national lockdown framework’ that would provide a $500 weekly payment to eligible workers.
- Three new cases were recorded in Victoria overnight, as restrictions in regional Victoria were lifted.
- Two cases linked to the Victorian outbreak were declared false positives.
-
Victoria is facing a shortage of Pfizer vaccine doses.
- The NSW government announced an extension to the health alert for Melbourne travellers.
- There were reports the federal government has agreed to help fund an alternative, purpose built quarantine facility near the Avalon airport in Victoria.
- A two-year-old international traveller was reportedly taken to hospital with Covid.
For everyone in Victoria, here is the Guardian’s quick guide to exposure sites and to lockdown rules. Wishing everyone in lockdown luck and strength.
Updated
So, the app used in NSW for venue check-ins was down for around two hours this afternoon.
Customers are currently unable to login to their MyServiceNSW accounts to perform transactions. COVID Safe Check-In and Dine & Discover vouchers are also impacted. We're working to resolve this ASAP and apologise for any inconvenience. #servicensw pic.twitter.com/E4XosKF52O
— Service NSW (@ServiceNSW) June 3, 2021
Service was restored after about two hours, but the NSW government does advise businesses to take down details during unforeseen circumstances, and even offers a “Visitor Record Template” just in case.
Updated
The New Liberals, the new political party that is not the Liberal Party, has won the right to call themselves Liberals.
The Australian Electoral Commission has rejected the (old) Liberal Party’s objections to the new name, and allowed the (new) Liberals to register their name.
In a very happy email, the New Liberals celebrated the decision:
The Delegate of the Commissioner followed strong legal precedent which states that The Liberal Party of Australia cannot claim property rights over a generic political word like ‘liberal’. Game on!!!
The new party intends to challenge the (old) Liberals, saying they are “economically responsible” and “socially progressive”. We shall see.
Updated
Two cases linked to Victoria outbreak declared false positives
In some breaking news, the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services has declared that an expert panel review has found two cases linked to the outbreak were false positives.
Following analysis by an expert review panel, two cases linked to this outbreak have been declared false positives. pic.twitter.com/MGa0DFeRaU
— VicGovDH (@VicGovDH) June 3, 2021
The two cases include that of a woman believed to have picked up the virus at a Metricon display home in Mickleham and a man who is thought to have been infected at the Brighton Beach Hotel.
Updated
David Littleproud is on the ABC’s Drive this afternoon, discussing the government’s payment plan for workers in lockdown, saying the service will go live on Tuesday morning.
He also said the payment is meant to have “agility and speed” (?):
The speed of it will depend in terms of the information provided...they will not be onerous.
Littleproud also confirmed that any visa class permitted to work in Australia will be eligible for the payment.
An upcoming episode of Four Corners which examines the relationship between Scott Morrison and a supporter of the QAnon conspiracy theory has been delayed after concerns were expressed by the ABC news director, Gaven Morris.
Morris “upwardly referred” the episode to the broadcaster’s managing director, David Anderson, for review, a source told Guardian Australia.
Anyone in the chain of command at the ABC can “upwardly refer” content which they believe needs review.
The program, reported by Louise Milligan, is expected to air at a later date.
“All ABC content is subject to the same rigorous editorial decision-making processes before being published,” an ABC spokesman said on Thursday.
“The decision to publish is only made once all requirements, including editorial and legal requirements, have been met and it is appropriate to do so.”
The ABC is under fire from the Morrison government at the moment over its Christian Porter reporting – also by Milligan.
The broadcaster was accused of “systemic bias” at the Coalition party room meeting this week.
Updated
So the chief executive of the Australian Industry Group, Innes Willox, was on Afternoon Briefing today, and said he welcomed the news the Australian government had agreed to a purpose-built quarantine facility:
It has been needed for some time. Hotel quarantine, while it has been effective, has not been foolproof. We need a long-term system. Purpose-built facilities like the one proposed in Melbourne is heading the right direction. Howard Springs is probably the facility that everybody looks to as the model and, you know, [the] more of those, the better.
This will not be the last of this pandemic. There’ll be more pandemics to come.
When asked why it has taken so long, Willox laid into the national cabinet:
I think this is a question we all have to ask about how effective national cabinet has been around these sort of broader issues on how to handle the pandemic and its consequences. I think this is a real issue and we have to say, what does national Cabinet do? What does it talk about and does it look at these long-term issues?
Updated
I apologise if this is too disgusting for the blog, but honestly this is just insane.
Cod being caught in the Murray are regurgitating mice amid the Australian mouse plague, with some being caught having eaten up to ten mice.
If you can withstand that thought, there is more in the story below:
Updated
The Therapeutic Goods Administration has released its weekly safety update, which includes new cases of blood clots linked to AstraZeneca:
“Eight additional cases of blood clots with low blood platelets have been assessed as thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS) likely to be linked to the AstraZeneca vaccine. When assessed using the United Kingdom (UK) case definition, four cases are confirmed and four are deemed probable TTS. This brings the total number of confirmed and probable TTS cases in Australia to 41.
“Since last week’s report, a further four reports of blood clots and low blood platelets have been assessed as confirmed TTS likely to be linked to the AstraZeneca vaccine. These were in a 40-year-old woman from Victoria who is being treated in NSW, a 70-year-old woman from Victoria, an 82-year-old woman from NSW and a 70-year-old man from Queensland.
In addition, there were four cases classified as probable this week. These were in a 72-year-old man from South Australia, a 61-year-old female from NSW and a 73-year-old man and 67-year-old woman, both from Queensland.
This takes the total Australian reports of cases assessed as TTS following the AstraZeneca vaccine to 31 confirmed cases and 10 probable cases. Based on the most recent information available to us:
- 23 have been discharged from hospital and are recovering
- four have left hospital but require outpatient medical care
- 13 patients remain in hospital
- one patient died in hospital
Nine of these 41 cases were more serious and required treatment in intensive care for a period of time. The most recent information we have indicates that four patients remain in hospital, while four have returned home. One of the newly confirmed patients is currently critically unwell and is in intensive care. As previously reported, a 48-year-old woman from NSW with confirmed TTS sadly died while in intensive care. We recognise the terrible impact that this has had for the person’s family and loved ones and extend our sincere condolences.”
Updated
Good evening everyone, and a quick thanks to the indomitable Amy Remeikis for again marshalling us through another hectic day.
I will be taking you through the evening’s news, and there is still much to get through, so let’s dive in.
Well, that was quite the day (timeless statement) wasn’t it?
I’m going to hand you over to Mostafa Rachwani, who will guide you through the evening, while I go stare at a wall.
I’ll be back tomorrow for the final day of estimates (as scheduled) and national cabinet, so you are not rid of me as yet.
Thank you to everyone who joined along today – you make it all a little easier to wade through the chum.
If you’re in regional Victoria, I’m happy you’ll see a bit of normality return, although I imagine it is of little comfort to those in Melbourne who will be starting another seven day stretch. I can’t imagine how much of a toll it is all taking after all you have already been through. Not that you need me to tell you, but in case you have been trying to force yourself to be positive, you don’t need to. React however you want, and that includes telling the rest of us to go jump.
I hope you all have a lovely evening. I’ll see you tomorrow – please, take care of you.
We learnt in estimates that Jonathan Duniam had been approved to charge his legal fees to the taxpayer for the matter involving Sarah Hanson-Young, which again – happened in an interview with Sky News.
Any fees – including damages – in the Bob Brown Foundation matter will also be covered by the taxpayer. We don’t know how much yet, because he is yet to submit his bill.
Updated
The Bob Brown Foundation has released this statement (thanks to Adam Morton for letting me know) Tasmanian Liberal senator Jonathan Duniam is making his second apology in less than a month for comments he made outside of the chamber (this time on Facebook and on Sky News).
From the statement:
Two weeks after apologising to Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young, Tasmanian Liberal senator and assistant federal minister for forestry Jonathon Duniam has now withdrawn and apologised for false and defamatory statements he made about the Bob Brown Foundation in a Sky News interview and on his website.
Senator Duniam falsely claimed (amongst other things) that the foundation supports the activities of ‘dangerous activists causing harm’ by engaging in unlawful activity and that the foundation is not an organisation formed for the purpose of lawfully pursuing environmental causes.
In his published apology the senator states that ‘the statements I made in relation to the foundation’s charitable status and involvement in illegal activities were false and defamatory of the foundation. I withdraw those statements and I apologise to the foundation for any harm that may have been caused.’ He has also agreed to pay the foundation’s legal costs.
Former Greens leader and foundation patron Bob Brown said:
The Liberals’ top senator and minister from Tasmania got his facts wrong. We do not engage in criminal activity such as tree spiking. We are very active but peaceful defenders of Tasmania’s native forests and wildlife habitats, including the Tarkine.
The foundation supports the crucial work of environmentalists in an age of environmental crisis. It is deeply disappointing that a minister would resort to making false and defamatory statements about the foundation’s work in a nationally-televised broadcast. The foundation swiftly exercised its legal rights to correct the record. It will not hesitate to do so again.
Meanwhile Tasmania Police has not found who was responsible for alleged incidents in tree spiking in central Tasmania last year. The investigation is now closed.
The senator’s apology will be published on his website for at least 14 days.
Senator Duniam had previously apologised to Senator Hanson-Young for comments made during the same programme. See below:
APOLOGY TO SENATOR SARAH HANSON-YOUNG
On 20 April 2021, I participated in an interview on Sky News with Rita Panahi concerning an anti-logging protest.
During that interview I made some allegations about Senator Sarah Hanson-Young. I accept that the claims made about Senator Hanson-Young during that interview were
false and defamatory.
I unconditionally withdraw those claims and unreservedly apologise to Sarah Hanson-Young for the hurt and offense caused to her by reason of my conduct.
Updated
The concept has been around a long time, as Andrew Bragg correctly notes.
And yet, it has taken 18 months into a pandemic to get an agreement from the government to build one.
Updated
Liberal senator Andrew Bragg is asked on Afternoon Briefing about the purpose-built quarantine facility in Victoria and says:
Well, the quarantine facility in the Northern Territory I think has been quite successful. This is a proposal that has come through from the Victorian government and it has been suspected, so that will be constructed and used, I am sure it will be useful for this pandemic, but I think this also has shown that is a need for ongoing federal facilities when you have events like the coronavirus.
So yes, federal facilities.
Bragg:
I think it will be useful. I am sure it will be used again. I mean, certainly the quarantine station in Manly which was used during the Spanish flu is still there intact. I am not sure the technology works as well as it once did, but this concept has been around for a long time. So I think it is quite a good one.
Updated
And the second snippet:
Britain’s tilt to the Indo-Pacific
A UK Carrier Strike Group, led by new aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth, left Britain on 22 May for a 28-week deployment that will include the Indo-Pacific region. Brigadier Marcus Simson, the defence and military adviser at the British High Commission, said one of the aims of the deployment was to uphold freedom of navigation and overflight: “It’s not our intention to raise tensions in the region, through the deployment. And indeed, we are engaging China to explain our posture and our purpose for the deployment - so confident but not confrontational.”
Simson said although the group would not be visiting Australia, a number of interactions between the carrier strike group and the Australian defence force were planned, including bilateral and multilateral training and engagements at sea and in the air. He would not disclose, at this stage, whether such joint exercises would be done in the South China Sea.
Britain is encouraging Australia - together with all countries - to lift its level of ambition on climate action, indicating a target of net zero by 2050 is not enough without strong interim targets to get there. You can see our story on that here:
But here are two other snippets from a media briefing by the British High Commission today:
FTA negotiations
The British high commissioner, Vicki Treadell, said she wanted to “manage expectation” about the free trade agreement currently being negotiated between the UK and Australia. She said both sides were working hard to have an agreement in-principle by the time of the bilateral meeting between Scott Morrison and Boris Johnson on 15 June. The British trade secretary, Liz Truss, had more talks with her Australian counterpart, Dan Tehan, last night, in a process Treadell said was proceeding “at record speed”.
“And let me be clear - an agreement in principle just sets out the framework of what we want to achieve,” leading to a parliamentary process in the second half of this year.
“Therefore the FTA - if all that timetable goes to plan - will come into effect sometime next year. I want to manage expectations. We won’t be in an FTA situation - full green-light go on 16 June - but we will have a very clear agreement in principle. And then the detailed work to pin down any outstanding text or issues will be secured in order to be able to put it through respective parliamentary processes before the end of the calendar year.”
Asked about concerns raised by the British farming sector, Treadell said the Australian government’s priorities for the deal included tariff-free access for its agricultural exports and it was “clearly an ongoing negotiation” about how that might be phased in. She said there was “work to be done with our agricultural sector in the UK, to sell them the opportunity end of this because it’s two-way”.
The ACTU’s Sally McManus responds to the news of the MOU while she is speaking to Patricia Karvelas:
The sooner we get purpose-built facilities built the better.
That’s one level of defence, it is not escaping in the first place. The second level of defence is obviously vaccines.
The federal government has sat on its hands for far too long. Like I don’t know, like listening to a whole lot about people in the construction industry, you can work together on these things.
We do it all the time and it will take a couple of weeks to put together something, it may not be like a 5-star hotel, but at least it’s not going to, you know, kill people stopping we’re going to protect our economy. So if it means that both governments are now moving forward with that, I think is a big step forward.
We should also think about the future. If we are going to help the whole part of the economy recover and I’m talking about higher education here, they’ve been absolutely decimated and abandoned by the government, we need to get international students back, and so you can imagine, once eventually the number of Australians wanting to return or needing to return is going to reduce, hopefully, eventually, we will be in a situation we have excess capacity that we can look at boosting up those areas of our economy that have been smashed.
Updated
Here is their national political editor:
Exclusive: Scott Morrison has agreed to help bankroll a new state-run quarantine facility which is expected to be established next to Avalon airport. The PM handed an MOU to the Victorian government this afternoon. @theheraldsun #auspol #springst https://t.co/KbKfTzyrhx
— Tom Minear (@tminear) June 3, 2021
Purpose-built quarantine at Avalon airport reportedly to go ahead
The Herald Sun is reporting the federal government has agreed to help fund an alternative, purpose built quarantine facility near the Avalon airport in Victoria.
Updated
Adam Bandt makes the point that if Jobseeker was above the poverty line, then we wouldn’t need as many emergency payments:
If JobSeeker was above the poverty line back at the $1100 it was that the government deemed necessary during the first lockdown, because that was an admission of what you need to get by in this country, then we may not need to have those case-by-case determinations and you would have people having a much stronger safety net.
Adam Bandt is the Afternoon Briefing guest. He is asked about the Covid payment the government has announced (for those who are eligible):
For someone who works 20 hours a week doing casual work, this payment is less than the minimum wage.
It is less than the average rent for a one-bedroom place in Melbourne and it is below the poverty line.
It is certainly much less than people were getting during previous lockdowns, but the cost is still there.
The costs will still be the same. During lockdown, the costs for many people go up because all of a sudden you are having to order in and take advantage of those services that you previously didn’t have to before.
So costs for many people go up and as a result of this low level of payment I suspect that many people are going to be falling through the cracks this week and next week. The casual shifts dried up in many workplaces instantly. They are not going to be there again next week and this payment won cover the basics that people need.
Updated
This is just good life advice.
“Regardless of Covid, this ball has been touched by many sweaty men on the field. Sanitise your hands before you start eating your chips.”
— 7AFL (@7AFL) June 3, 2021
- SA Public Health Officer
(via @Stevo7AFL)
pic.twitter.com/Nw9PF0M6oG
Updated
It’s a lasagne of cancel culture.
irony is dead https://t.co/gxvwacYrHQ
— Tim Watts MP (@TimWattsMP) June 3, 2021
Updated
NSW extends health alert for Melbourne travelers
NSW has issued a new health alert to anyone who has been in Melbourne since 27 May:
NSW Health is extending its stay-at-home restrictions for people in NSW who have been in Victoria since 4pm on Thursday 27 May for a further seven days. These measures are in line with Victoria’s restrictions and will be reviewed by NSW Health on 10 June.
Anyone in NSW who has been in Victoria, including regional Victoria, after 4pm on Thursday 27 May must continue to follow stay-at-home directions for 14 days, or until the order is lifted.
For NSW residents living along the Victorian border, the stay-at-home requirement will only apply to people who have been outside the defined border region in Victoria since 4pm on Thursday 27 May.
Anyone who has attended a close-contact venue in Victoria must get tested and self-isolate for 14 days since they were at the venue, regardless of their test result.
Anyone who has attended a casual-contact venue in Victoria must get tested and self-isolate until they receive a negative result. They then must continue to follow the stay-at-home order if they have arrived in NSW since 4pm on Thursday 27 May.
NSW Health urges people who have been in Victoria in the past 14 days to regularly check the Victoria Department of Health and Human Services website for recently added venues of concern linked to the latest cases.
If you attended any of the venues identified at the times listed, please contact NSW Health immediately on 1800 943 553.
NSW Health reminds people to continue to present for testing with even the mildest of symptoms. There are more than 300 COVID-19 testing locations across NSW, many of which are open seven days a week. To find your nearest testing clinic, visit: https://www.nsw.gov.au/covid-19/how-to-protect-yourself-and-others/clinics, or contact your GP.
NSW Health also urges everyone to take practical measures to stay COVID-safe, including practising good hand hygiene and always using QR codes to check in to and out of venues.
Mike Bowers was in the last QT for the week.
Updated
The NSW Liberal senator Hollie Hughes has told Senate estimates she has been the victim of “despicable attacks” and online trolling in the past 24 hours.
Hughes said it followed a social media video posted by a lower house MP, though she did not name the person. The Victorian Labor MP Tim Watts posted a clip of Hughes speaking in Estimates to Twitter yesterday (but did not tag the senator).
In that clip, following an extended exchange with Labor senators, Hughes suggests Victoria is “winning the lockdown race”.
Hughes said the post had “led to a series of really quite despicable attacks”.
She said in one case a person had registered a domain name comparing her to a part of the female anatomy.
Anne Ruston, the social services minister, condemned the treatment Hughes said she had been receiving online.
She said the “anonymity of a Twitter handle with a funny name allows you to be able to go out there and say whatever you like”.
We do need to start calling some of this behaviour out. Maybe you shouldn’t be allowed to have a Twitter handle with anonymity.
Hughes replied: “Crazy stuff there, minister. Personally accountability, we couldn’t have that!”
Updated
Here is the official announcement on the temporary Covid payment:
Australians who have had their hours of work and income significantly affected due to state lockdowns, will be eligible for a temporary Covid Disaster Payment.
The rapid support will be paid weekly to those workers who reside or work in a Commonwealth declared hotspot and are therefore unable to attend work and earn an income as a result of state imposed health restrictions, which last for greater than one week.
Eligible recipients will receive up to $500 per week for losing 20 hours or more of work, and $325 per week for losing under 20 hours. They must not have liquid assets of more than $10,000.
The payment will be made in respect of the second and any subsequent weeks of restrictions.
This support will be available for Australian citizens and permanent residents and eligible working visa holders. Individuals who are already receiving income support payments, business support payments, or the Pandemic Leave Disaster Payment will not be eligible for this new payment.
To qualify, people will need to have exhausted any leave entitlements (other than annual leave) or other special pandemic leave.
The payment will complement existing payments including the Pandemic Leave Disaster Payment.
By making these payments available, the Australian Government will ensure that Victorian workers get the financial support they need to stay at home during this outbreak.
Access to Services Australia Disaster Assistance will be open to the public from Tuesday at www.servicesaustralia.gov.au or over the phone on 180 22 66.
Updated
Back to estimates, and Liberal senator Hollie Hughes, who posted about this same exchange herself, says she has been the victim of cyber bullying (her own tweet was ratio’ed)
Liberal senator Hollie Hughes says she's been victim of "despicable attacks" on Twitter over the past 24 hours, after a clip her was posted by a fellow MP yesterday.
— Luke Henriques-Gomes (@lukehgomes) June 3, 2021
This was her response on twitter:
Omg @lindsaylohan! Miss you and wish you could come visit but this is the best. Love your friend, Regina ❤️❤️❤️ https://t.co/aDU7kC4cGk
— Senator Hollie Hughes (@hollieahughes) June 2, 2021
Updated
Dane Swan is now calling for Daniel Andrews to resign, so I guess it’s only a matter of time now. I mean, now that footballers are upset, it’s over right?!
Labor lost the motion, and question time ends.
Anthony Albanese speaks on Clare O’Neil going on maternity leave.
New Zealand is planning repatriation flights for citizens and essential workers stranded by Victoria’s Covid-19 outbreak, as the quarantine-free travel pause stretches into another week.
Covid response minister Chris Hipkins has announced that the travel pause will be extended for another six days, with a review due on Wednesday 9 June.
He also announced plans for “the carefully managed commencement of return ‘green flights’ from Melbourne to New Zealand” from Tuesday 8 June at 11:59pm.
Those flights will require a negative Covid-19 test from passengers 72 hours before leaving, and would only be available to New Zealand citizens, Australian citizens who are normally resident in New Zealand, people with humanitarian exemptions and critical workers now stranded in Victoria. They will not be available to anyone who has visited a location of interest in Victoria in the last 14 days.
In a written statement, Hipkins said “I acknowledge this extension [in the travel pause] will cause further inconvenience to those who have already had their travel plans disrupted. I also acknowledge that having been prevented from returning for almost two weeks, New Zealanders will be wanting some certainty around when they can start to plan to come home.”
Hipkins said “The commencement of flights recognises that by then, people currently in Victoria will have completed 14 days in lockdown. This reflects the equivalent time which might have been spent in managed isolation in New Zealand.”
The foreign minister, Marise Payne, told Senate estimates the decision to close the Australian embassy in Afghanistan says was “very difficult” one but based on advice. That security advice had “frankly put us in a very difficult position”.
“There is an absolute recognition on the part of the government of the contribution that Australia has made in Afghanistan, including the sacrifice.”
Payne paused as she held back tears.
“The basis of that decision is not one taken lightly at all. And I would hope that there is a prospect sooner rather than later of returning.”
Has the government of Afghanistan raised any concerns about the impact of the decision on the bilateral relationship?
Gary Cowan, a Dfat official, replied:
I think partners in many cases would prefer that we remained there, but we have been very clear that we intend to continue very deep engagement with Afghanistan. We’ll be doing that through non-resident ambassador and team and also we’ll be continuing our development program. We’ve made clear to them we will stay deeply engaged with Afghanistan.”
About 40% of welfare recipients on the cashless debit card have less than $10 in their income-managed bank account, Senate estimates has been told.
Department of Social Services officials told estimates on Thursday the most recent data showed there were 5,414 people with between zero and $10 on their cards, which are compulsory for welfare recipients in five trial sites in WA, SA and Queensland.
Cardholders generally also have 20% of their payments paid in cash into their normal bank accounts. The data is taken at a point in time, meaning some participants would be set to receive their next fornightly welfare payment sooner than others. =
But the Labor senator Malarndirri McCarthy was worried those people would be struggling to afford food and other essentials.
“Aren’t you disturbed by that, senator?” McCarthy asked the social services minister, Anne Ruston.
McCarthy argued there were more than 5,000 families “on your policy, the cashless debit card, who today are going hungry”.
Ruston said that the government was doing all it could to get people into work.
“But if the premise of your commentary is that people on income management are getting less money than people who are not ... then I don’t accept the premise of what you’re saying,” she said.
Labor has moved to suspend standing orders – it will be defeated, but I’ll bring you the motion the opposition wants to debate (and won’t be able to).
Updated
Peter Dutton makes it through his signature Sgt Dutton “how safe are you” scare campaign without being sat down. Mostly because he includes the words “policy” as often as possible.
It would be nice to know what it is we need to be so safe from.
Updated
Anthony Albanese to Scott Morrison:
My question is to the prime minister. Does he take responsibility for the words that came out the prime minister’s own mouth that the vaccine rollout is not a race?
Morrison:
I addressed this matter earlier this week.
I stood by the comments as they were made at the time, and I concur with the statements made by Professor Brendan Murphy*, at that time and since in Senate estimates.
I noticed there are similar comments made by Queensland health* and the head of the AMA*.
(*When these comments were made, it was in response to the TGA approval process, not the vaccine rollout itself)
This is, the opposition leader believes this is a matter that he wishes to continue to pursue, I am happy to continue to answer.
It is imperative we move forward as quickly as possible in relation to the vaccination program, and that’s why I’m pleased 141,000 doses were delivered over the last 24 hours, in the last week 720,000 doses, over 700,000 doses in seven days, I’m very pleased that we saw 2 million doses delivered in the last month, it took us over two months to do the first 2 million doses.
I’m very pleased the vaccination program continues to gather pace.
I’m very appreciative of the role played by state and territory governments and GPs around the country, whereby the Australian government, states and territories, the GPs, we are all getting on the job and pharmacists will become part of this.
I am very appreciative of the role of the Royal Flying Doctor Service, going out and supporting 80,000 Australians. We are getting on with the job, but the leader of the opposition is engaged in one job, undermining the government.
That is the second random mention of the royal flying doctor service.
Updated
The Australian government has revealed it made a decision on 13 May to close the embassy in Afghanistan but did not announce it until 25 May.
When pressed to reveal the timeframe during Senate estimates, the foreign minister, Marise Payne, said the cabinet had made the decision “around the 13 May”.
She said the decision had not been made in April, at the time the Australian government announced it would withdraw its final 80 troops from the country by September.
The decision was made a few days after Payne visited Kabul for meetings with senior Afghan government representatives. Payne said she did not mention the closure “in the specific sense” during those meetings but had “indicated in the broad that these [security challenges] presented real challenges for Australia and Australia’s continuing presence.”
Payne then travelled on to the United States, from which she virtually joined the cabinet meeting where the decision to close the embassy on 28 May was made.
She cited “security and operational considerations” as a reason why it was not announced until 25 May - just three days before the closure.
A Dfat official, Gary Cowan, said Afghanistan’s embassy in Australia had been advised on 21 May of the decision. He said locally engaged staff in Kabul were also advised when addressed by Australia’s head of mission on 21 May.
Cowan said individuals could make an application for certification as part of the process of getting visas to come to Australia.
Asked about concerns of ineligibility of Afghan guards who were working for contractors, Cowan said:
“Yes, I can confirm that there was an email sent on 26 May stating that people in that category were ineligible. That email was sent in error and was rectified the following day, 27 May ... after discussions with our mission in Kabul stating that contractors and security staff could make an application.”
Labor’s Penny Wong said that was after media had contacted the department about the matter. Asked whether any arrangements were put in place prior to the announcement of the closure, Cowan pointed to the “longstanding” process for locally engaged staff to apply.
Asked about a recent Guardian story about the Taliban publicly threatening Afghan security guards who have worked for the Australian embassy, and whether Australia was acting rapidly on the matter as its allies have done, Payne said: “Yes, senator.”
Updated
Angus Taylor is taking a dixer on reducing emissions “the Australian way”, which Scott Morrison last night described as the “Frank Sinatra way”, meaning “my way”.
It’s worth noting that Australia’s plan at the G7 meeting is basically going to be to try and bluff the G7 nations who aren’t happy with our emissions progress or targets (or lack of them) into not putting tariffs on Australian exports. Just with, you know, words. Because we have no commitments.
Updated
Ed Husic (who has managed to change out of his hoodie and into a suit jacket for QT, in case you were wondering) asks Scott Morrison if he “takes responsibility for the failure to manufacture mRNA vaccines in Australia.
(You might spot a theme here in Labor’s questions).
There is a lot of what we already know, before Christian Porter says the process to establish a mRNA facility is moving forward (18 months into the pandemic).
It’s worth noting that Covid will not be the only thing which requires mRNA vaccines. Which is why Australia is moving forward with building manufacturing capability for it. But it cannot be denied that this has only been a fairly recent decision.
Updated
Meanwhile, in estimates:
Later on a department official was forced to apologise for telling Senate #estimates the other part of the tender (a $1.5m report into disability employment services) had no recommendations. It made more than 60 https://t.co/nt566RNBos
— Luke Henriques-Gomes (@lukehgomes) June 3, 2021
Updated
Stuart Robert takes a question to Scott Morrison on the Covidsafe app (remember that? – the “sunscreen” that was supposed to protect us all) and insists it is still useful, despite never actually being useful.
It’s too much for the Labor benches, who break from their recent Tony Smith imposed discipline and break out laughing. Smith lets it go for a bit, because he is only human.
I imagine it’s how the inventor of the shoe umbrella felt.
Updated
So has the Victorian Council of Social service’s Emma Cross:
We welcome this announcement from the commonwealth.
The Covid Disaster Relief Payment will mean thousands of Victorians can breathe a sigh of relief.
But this payment isn’t perfect. It has more holes than Swiss cheese.
It doesn’t help you if you’re an underemployed casual, a migrant worker, an asylum seeker or an international student.
It doesn’t help you if you’re currently unemployed.
You’re still meant to rely on the inadequate jobseeker payment.
The eligibility criteria is extremely narrow.
There’s more terms and conditions than getting a new phone.
Some people would be more likely to catch Covid-19, than be eligible for this payment.
But it’s better than nothing.
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The ACTU’s Michele O’Neil has responded to the Covid payment:
The Morrison government has caused the lockdown in Victoria through a combination of a failed vaccine rollout and failure to secure a national quarantine system.
This payment will leave working people with nothing for a full week before a restricted number are able to access a small support payment, a third below the minimum wage and half the standard disaster relief payment, which will not secure their employment.
The Morrison government has been opposing calls for a jobkeeper 2 wage subsidy for more than a week. The payment that has been announced is no replacement for a wage subsidy, available fast to everyone affected, which would keep working people attached to their jobs through a lockdown.
The Morrison government continues to avoid accepting responsibility for any part of the response to the pandemic, and their compounding failures are putting the health and economic strength of the entire country at risk.
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Australians must brace for a major outbreak of Covid-19 “anywhere in the country” the editor-in-chief of the Medical Journal of Australia [MJA], Professor Nick Talley, said.
Speaking in an MJA podcast, Talley said;
Some people seem to think we can have a leisurely pace – that isn’t something [I can] agree with.
The sooner we have most people vaccinated, the safer Australia is going to be – it’s still going to be a problem with this virus, but nothing like the risk we’re currently running.Hotels haven’t done too badly ... but the trouble is, it’s still too many – every few weeks we’re getting an outbreak, or at least somebody is potentially contaminating others.
At some point, one of those is going to escape and cause havoc.
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Ged Kearney to Scott Morrison:
Does the prime minister take responsibility for the failure to have any idea how many aged care workers have been fully vaccinated?
Morrison gives an answer – both first and second doses, but I miss it. I’ll chase that up for you.
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Once again, questioning something which has obvious issues (including the federal government not knowing how many aged care workers, who are in the priority category, have been fully vaccinated, and won’t know until they do a survey) is not undermining vaccines.
Unless we have slipped into a dictatorship. I mean, as someone with an eastern European background, I know it can be easy to do, but I also know when leaders start gaslighting, it’s usually because they know people are starting to pay attention to what is going on.
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Terri Butler to Scott Morrison:
Does the prime minister take responsibility for bungling the aged care vaccine rollout so badly that at one facility in my electorate, half the residents have been fully vaccinated and half have not received their first dose?
Morrison:
I ask the minister for health and aged care to add further to my answer, I don’t accept the characterisation put forward by the member. I don’t, I don’t.
I’m surprised again the Labor party comes into this place, each and every day, seeking to undermine the government [commitment] to keep fighting the virus.
We will keep fighting the virus and Labor will keep fighting us, Australians want us to focus our attention on them, not fighting the Labor party.
Greg Hunt:
Without knowing the facility from the member we will have to seek the details, they could have been provided but that was a decision not to provide those details.
99.7% of facilities around Australia have now received first doses.
In addition to that, what we see is that 80% of facilities around Australia have received second doses.
Around the country, of 185,000 residential aged care facility residents, there are 156,000, or over 84.1% that have received a first dose and all up an average rate of 85% of those facilities which have been visited, and 126,000 have received the second dose.
In relation to an individual facility, it does strike me that if a facility has been fully vaccinated, they have received two visits.
If they have received two visits, then all residents have been offered the opportunity to be vaccinated. It would be a very unusual situation, if having had two visits, both residents had not been offered the opportunity to be vaccinated.
Around the country, we do know there are some circumstances of families who have not consented, without knowing the details of this facility, we would have to find out, but we have made sure that there is the opportunity for every resident in every facility to be vaccinated, and will continue to do that.
If there are individual residents who after having had either first or second visit, have chosen not to, or not been able for some reason to be vaccinated, we would want to know those reasons, we have an inreach program in Victoria, we have 50 mobile residential clinics, which are being delivered during the course of this week. That is assisting both workers and residents around the country. We are going through a program of visits over and above the first and second dose visits.
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Josh Frydenberg takes a dixer on the (convoluted) Covid payment for Victoria and says as part of it:
... Kids that are not in school, families that are apart, businesses that have been closed. It’s a painful reminder that the pandemic is not over.
He’s talking about Victoria, but he could just as easily be talking about the closed international border, which has done much the same thing. Just to different families.
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Mark Butler to Scott Morrison:
Does the prime minister take responsibility for the failure to fully vaccinate aged workers, putting frail and vulnerable aged care workers at risk?
Morrison:
The vaccination program in relation to aged care workers was further reviewed some six weeks ago in national cabinet and additional points of availability for aged care workers to be able to get the vaccination were put in place, and I thank the states and territories for the work they were doing to support the broader national effort that was put in place.
Of course, the national vaccination program which includes the vaccination of all Australians, that is the responsibility of the federal government.
I am the prime minister, and so I take responsibility for that national program. Of course I do.
That is why I take matters to states and territories together to get this job done ....
He moves into the different ways people can get vaccinated (all of which rely on people themselves organising it) before getting to:
... I simply say, there are many methods we can employ to lift the level of vaccination in these occupations, we have increased the point of contact, where they can have those vaccinations, in partnership with states and territories, once again, the Labor party continues to undermine the national effort to get Australia vaccinated.
Which is a favourite attack line of the prime minister lately – all while he preaches co-operation. Tony Smith pulls him up, but Morrison has already sat down. He smiles.
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A toddler who flew into South Australia from overseas is now in hospital after testing positive to Covid-19 while in hotel quarantine with his family.
South Australia’s chief public health officer, Prof Nicola Spurrier, said on Thursday that “this little bub is quite unwell, and has been taken to the Women’s and Children’s hospital”.
“The family have tested negative at this stage,” Spurrier, who is a paediatrician, said.
Spurrier said because children under 12 are not required to wear masks on flights there is concern about other passengers on board also testing positive.
“We’re just a little bit more anxious about that particular flight, and as a result we will be implementing some additional testing for anybody else that was on that flight, and they will be having a day three test as well,” she said.
“My thoughts are with this family today. It’s not nice having a little one, only two, who is very unwell.”
Authorities are expected to provide more detail about the two-year-old boy, including when he flew to South Australia, later on Thursday.
Children can develop Covid-19, though many have no symptoms, and those who become unwell usually experience milder symptoms, which is why they appear to be less likely to spread the virus.
But in rare cases children have developed serious complications and died.
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It is too late in the week to be hearing from the current deputy prime minister. Judging by the faces of those in the chamber, I am not alone.
Not that Tip Top notices. He has jokes and homilies to say and by Jove! he will fumble his way through them and no amount of general ennui can stop him.
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Anthony Albanese to Scott Morrison:
Does the prime minister take responsibility for the 21 failures in quarantine, which have led to lockdowns, statewide lockdowns, severe health impacts, and widespread economic disruption?
Morrison:
I take responsibility for the decision that we took as a nation. In March of last year, as the pandemic struck and as we brought together the leaders of governments around this country in the space of days, where we had to surge quarantine capacity to deal with the pandemic, that was achieved.
That was achieved and I thank the states and territories for coming together in this way to ensure that in this country there is a 99.99% effectiveness rate in relation to hotel quarantine.
Our effectiveness rate in this country, even extends that in New Zealand, which also uses hotel quarantine.
It even exceeds that in New Zealand who have done an amazing job. I take responsibility, indeed, for putting in place a situation that has seen over 300,000 people go through quarantine in this country.
Yes, there have been some 20 outbreaks that have occurred. That is the first ring of steel that is put in place when people come through.
Then there is the contract tracing that extends beyond that to ensure that we further protect Australians. What has been the outcome of this arrangement?
In this country, sadly we have lost 910 people ... have we experienced the same fatality rate as OECD countries around the world? That number would be over 30,000. It is true.
I am happy to say as the chair of national cabinet and prime minister, that is an outcome we have achieved together.
If you want somebody who wants to take strips off people and fight, get narky on every issue and oppose the government to fix this crisis ...
Tony Smith pulls him up for straying from the relevance of the question and he ends his answer.
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Officials have given an update on the use of the Morrison government’s foreign veto legislation that passed the parliament late last year. This is the power it used recently to cancel Victoria’s Belt and Road agreements with China - a move that sparked a diplomatic rebuke from Beijing.
The legislation gives the foreign minister, Marise Payne, the power to intervene to prevent or cancel certain types of international agreements involving state and territory governments, councils and public universities.
Payne said she had so far made 13 decisions under the legislation. That included four cancellations, as previously announced - the two Victorian deals related to Belt and Road, plus two much older agreements between Victoria and Syrian and Iranian entities.
The other decisions made so far are one approval for a deal and eight approvals to commence proposed negotiations.
The legislation requires states, territories, councils and public universities to notify certain types of agreements to the government, which can then choose whether or not to intervene based on apparent conflict with Australian foreign policy.
Dfat’s chief legal officer, Simon Newnham, said a total of 3,532 arrangements had been notified to the government as of 28 May. These include 401 “core” arrangements (which face a higher level of scrutiny).
If we are following New Zealand in policy now, does that mean we’ll also follow their refugee policy? Or social housing policy? Or just where it suits?
Question time begins
You don’t get any points for guessing what the first questions are on.
Anthony Albanese to Scott Morrison:
For more than a week, thousands of Victorian businesses and workers have lived with no income and no hope for federal support. Last week, a senior minister told them to go to Centrelink, even though there was no help available. Today, the prime minister has finally announced support. Prime minister, what took you so long?
Morrison:
The announcement I made is a standard arrangement, as I learned when I was in New Zealand earlier this week. After seven days, New Zealand, which has also been a successful country in dealing with lockdowns, support payments commence after seven days for post 7-day lockdowns.
In the first seven days, support payments aren’t provided by the national government. Our government, we have taken a similar approach.
We have taken a similar approach, and it is in the first seven days, every state uses to put their state into lockdown, then as was the case in Western Australia and Queensland, when neither of those states made any request to the commonwealth and they knew and understood that they had the resources to support those short-term arrangements, and they proved to be short-term arrangements in West Australia and Queensland.
What we have decided as a government is that where a lockdown extends beyond seven days, then the commonwealth will put in place a temporary Covid- disaster payment.
That payment is $500 per week for those who would normally work more than 20 hours and earn more than $325. That is a support payment, which is not unlike the type of payments that we make in relation to other disasters, whether that is bushfires or floods or cyclones, or the many other areas where the commonwealth government provides that disaster relief.
I see this very much as disaster relief for the people of Victoria.
This is not something they have control about. With the lockdown persisting beyond seven days, we believe that is the responsible thing to do to provide a support payment to those for lockdowns that go beyond seven days. The next much better outcome is that lockdowns do not go beyond seven days. The much better outcome is that students can go back to school. People can go back to work.
... That is the better outcome. The better outcome is that everywhere we possibly can, we give these lockdowns because they impose hardships on businesses and families. I welcome the decision that in regional Victoria, those restrictions will be [eased], and even still, those restrictions are in place in towns and communities across regional Victoria which had not seen a case and a very long time. Those Victorians and regional areas have been denied the opportunity to travel to other states where they were expecting to be with lockdowns. Lockdowns are not the objective.
The commonwealth will continue to provide support when they need it.
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At a doorstop before question time the shadow treasurer, Jim Chalmers, said Labor welcomes “in principle” the fact the Morrison government has finally stepped in, but will need to study the detail to ensure the payment will ensure dollars find their way into people’s pockets.
Chalmers said Labor “doesn’t buy” the argument that income support incentivises states to declare lockdowns.
He accused Morrison of “looking for an excuse to do nothing” for the first week of the Victorian lockdown, and said the fact federal assistance only flows from the second week was not done for policy reasons but for “political considerations”.
The Greens leader, Adam Bandt, said the announcement was an “insult” that will “leave people in poverty”.
Bandt said:
For a casual working 20 hours a week $325 is not enough - that is less than the minimum wage, and below the rent on an average one bedroom apartment ... For most, the $325 will have to stretch over two weeks because they got nothing last week. That’s not enough to cover rent, to cover food. And thousands will fall through the cracks.
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There’s a few minutes until question time now.
Take a bit to compose yourself. That was ... a lot. None of it was great.
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In the House of Representatives, the Morrison government has decisively defeated Labor and Greens second reading amendments to a budget bill, including Adam Bandt’s amendment calling on the Coalition to force profitable companies to pay back jobkeeper.
The government won 66 to 57, despite the Greens believing they had the votes to at least tie the vote.
Most of the crossbench supported the jobkeeper amendment, including Helen Haines, Zali Steggall, Rebekha Sharkie and Andrew Wilkie.
The Greens are adamant they also had the votes of Bob Katter and Craig Kelly - although their names are not recorded in the live minutes of the vote. It also seems not all Labor members were present.
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It has to be said that, while the $500 a week (if you work over 20 hours and meet all the requirements) is half the natural disaster payment, it is still more than you can expect to receive on jobseeker per week.
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Last week I reported that the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine described overcrowding in emergency departments and pressures on the public hospital system as a “bigger public health emergency than Covid”.
The college’s Victoria faculty chair, Dr Mya Cubbit, said a number of factors had created the crisis, including a backlog of people accessing healthcare following the lockdowns in 2020 when patients delayed seeking help.
A lack of beds in wards meant there was also nowhere to send people after they’d been in emergency. There were “overcrowded waiting rooms where 100 people haven’t been able to get through the front doors of the hospital and then tens of people in emergency departments who haven’t been able to be admitted,” she said.
On Thursday, the Australian Medical Association issued a statement, saying ambulance ramping is occurring in public hospitals because of a lack of doctors, nurses and beds. The AMA is calling on national cabinet “to urgently address public hospital funding to pull hospitals ‘back from the brink’,” the statement said.
“Record-breaking ambulance ramping in Perth, a delay in elective surgeries in WA due to overwhelming demand, disturbing incidences of hospitals unable to cope across the country, questions raised in this week’s Senate estimates, and stories coming from NSW parliament’s inquiry into hospital services in rural and regional areas, has forced the issue on to the national agenda,” the statement says.
The AMA says the national cabinet must urgently move to shared 50–50 commonwealth–state funding for public hospitals.
“Our public hospitals are at breaking point and patients are suffering as a consequence,” AMA president Dr Omar Khorshid said.
“We need funding so patients are cared for in beds, not trapped in the back of ramped ambulances. Our hospital performance continues to decline. Prior to the pandemic Australians were waiting 41 days for elective surgery – 8 days longer than in 2008-09. We’ve got the lowest rate of beds per 1,000 people over the age of 65 years. It’s declined 26 years in a row.”
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That press conference ends.
Woo-hee. It went places.
Scott Morrison comes in with the big finish (for some reason, we go to the Royal Australian Doctor Service, which is an excellent service, but has nothing to do with this announcement)
Morrison:
Because getting focused on supporting Victorians and Australians in a nationally consistent way, we don’t have to fear this virus, we just have to keep beating it.
And we have been beating, we will keep beating it and Australians will keep beating it when the governments continue to work together as the commonwealth with the states and territories all the way around the country and focusing on what Australians need, whether they are businesses or try to keep their employers, employees and work, whether it’s employees who are try to keep jobs, families ensuring they can support their families and get kids to school, and people supporting elderly residents, elderly parents or others in their family or those with disabilities, remote Indigenous communities.
The Royal Flying Doctor Services out there, some 80,000 Australian benefited by the work that they are doing.
We’ve just got to keep working the issue, working together, working collaboratively and [keep] saving lives and livelihoods.
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Scott Morrison does not look enthused at all about any of this.
Except when he talks about taking a mark at the football.
He would try to catch a ball kicked into the crowd by a Victorian (the advice from the South Australian chief medical officer to the crowd is to duck if the ball in the Crows v Magpies game this weekend is kicked into the stands) but he thinks that Josh Frydenberg would be much better at it.
“It’s a mark. It’s a mark,” Frydenberg says.
Morrison does not take the interjection.
That was Chris Uhlmann, I think, with: "Should Allen Cheng be surprised that there was a shortage of Pfizer, given he was so (adamant? instrumental?) that AstraZeneca cannot be had by under 50s, and would you catch a football that kicked into a crowd by a Victorian?"
— Calla Wahlquist (@callapilla) June 3, 2021
PM laughs.
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Josh Frydenberg on the cost:
For every 100,000 people that will be $50 million per week. It is the estimate, around a half million casuals in the metropolitan Melbourne area, and obviously bearing in mind that this relates to the commonwealth definition of a hotspot, so Treasury and Finance are working the numbers through, but as the prime minister has indicated, it is a demand driven program.
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What is Scott Morrison’s government doing to actually speed up the vaccine rollout to where it needs to go? Given that, you know, that is the only thing that will actually bring the nation out of the pandemic.
There is a lot about what has happened. Morrison says he hasn’t been asked by Victoria for additional vaccines.
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The payment only kicks in after seven days (so good luck for that first week, I guess) and only where the commonwealth has declared a hotspot.
Scott Morrison:
I see nothing wrong with there being the commonwealth, where we are making the payments. I have no part in the decisions made by state governments and they can choose to do, as they remind me regularly, what they like to do, when they like to do and for how long they like to do it.
[When] it comes to federal taxpayers’ money, we will be relying on the medical advice of the chief medical officer.
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For comparison, the disaster relief payment (for floods, fire, etc) is $1,000 with an extra $400 for each dependent.
Drought relief is offered at $3,000 as a one-off payment.
This is $500, with a lot of strings – if you work more than 20 hours a week. Under 20 hours, and it is $325. And that’s if you haven’t withdrawn $10,000 from your super and have that sitting in your savings somewhere.
Oh – and the states haven’t agreed to it, in terms of how it will be paid, but the federal government wants 50/50. All of that is to be worked out tomorrow at national cabinet.
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Scott Morrison does not sound very happy at all as he delivers this announcement.
He can’t even manage the necessary emoting for the line:
Resilience, strength, character, determination. That is what beats a virus, never fear.
You know what actually beats a virus though? Vaccines. Resilience, strength, character and determination doesn’t really cut it when you’re dealing with a virus. You actually just need antibodies.
So there are quite a lot of strings attached to this payment, and there is no agreement over who is paying for what as yet.
Scott Morrison then says what Victorians want:
Victorians just want to know that they are getting help next week.
That is what matters and they will be able to do this from Tuesday in making an application online with Services Australia and there will also be a number they can contact and there will be further information provided about that.
They want to know they will get that support and if you meet the criteria you will get that support next week and you will get that payment next week.
It will be provided into your bank account, as all of these payments ordinarily are.
So who pays for it?
Morrison:
Who is paying for it and how that is being worked out?
There are two options and I will be discussing these with national cabinet tomorrow.
Costs should be shared.
Presently the Victorian government is doing that directly and 100% with the business support they are providing. What I put to the acting premier last night was that we should split 50-50 both payments.
Go 50-50 on household and 50-50 on business. Alternatively, the states can agree that in these will always provide the household support.
Either way, we will work it out and in national cabinet tomorrow we will have a good discussion about it.
What matters is that businesses get the support they need and households get the support they need and the politicians don’t need to have a discussion in public about how that is going to get done.
They just need to know it is going to get done, going to get that support and we just need to get on with it to ensure they have the confidence about moving forward into the next week.
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$500 for those working more than 20 hours, $325 for those working fewer hours
The “temporary Covid disaster payment” will be made on a week by week basis.
It will be distributed through the existing natural disaster payment arrangements.
Here is how Scott Morrison explains it:
That will be a payment of $500 for those who would ordinarily work more than 20 hours in a week and $325 for those who would work less than 20 hours a week.
It will be available to a person or Australian resident, these are class permitted to work in Australia.
The person is at least 17 years old. The period occurs from the date of activation for an area which has been locked down for more than seven days.
I should stress, this is a similar arrangement that exists in New Zealand where their payments for this type of support kick in after seven days, not before.
The person resides or works in the area defined as a commonwealth determined hotspot.
The person was immediately prior to the state health and commonwealth determined hotspot engaged in paid employment and is unable to attend work and therefore unable to earn an income as a result of state health restrictions.
You’ll be aware that we already have a pandemic leave payment for people who are required to isolate for a 14 day period.
And they could be because they are a close contact, testing or any other number of reasons determined by the state government.
The person self declares that they would normally have worked in the relevant period.
The person self declares a loss of income for the relevant period.
The person will not be required to use annual leave but must have sufficient, must have insufficient other appropriate leave entitlements, including special pandemic sick leave, and have exhausted those entitlements.
So you don’t have to get into your annual leave but if your employer is already providing your lease for these types of purposes than it is reasonable that people would use those in these circumstances.
The person self declares that they have liquid assets of less than $10,000.
You can’t get it if you are receiving jobseeker or other income support.
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Federal government to put in place 'national lockdown framework'
We now get to the actual announcement.
Scott Morrison:
We will be putting in place a national framework for circumstances where there are lockdowns imposed by state, public or health orders in areas that are defined as a commonwealth hotspot by the chief medical officer.
Those arrangements will provide support for periods of time where the lockdown has been greater than seven days.
So the first seven days, they are matters entirely for state and territory governments, as they wish to provide support. If a lockdown, as a result of a state public health order, continues in an area that is also defined by the chief officer of the commonwealth, then we will be providing support for payments for those affected and those affected areas.
Now that could be a particular suburb, defined by postcodes. It could be an entire metropolitan area, as is indeed the case in the Melbourne metropolitan area right now.
Or even more broadly, if the chief medical officer was of the view that a hotspot encompassed an entire state jurisdiction. So the commonwealth’s decision to provide that support will be based on the medical advice received by the chief medical officer of the commonwealth, which is only reasonable, given that the commonwealth has no part in the decisions made by state governments when they are coming to their view as to how they might impose their restrictions.
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Scott Morrison press conference
There is a bit of mumble as Scott Morrison asks Josh Frydenberg for some papers, and then we get into it.
Suddenly, the virus Morrison described as “insidious” yesterday, is now something we don’t have to fear.
Just take a big dose of that resilience and we’ll be fine.
Morrison:
We don’t have to fear this virus. We haven’t got to where we are til now by fearing this virus.
The success Australia has had compared to 70 other countries around the world, both from a health perspective and from an economic perspective has been achieved because we worked together.
Australians have been resilient, they’ve gone about, this been things that have been asked of them time and again that can be very demanding and come at great personal cost, and they haven’t done it out of fear, they’ve done it out of determination and resilience and strength and their good character.
And that’s what we as a government continue to rely on and draw upon as we continue to make our way, our Australian way, through this Covid-19 pandemic, which as we know, continues to rage and it continues to seek out opportunities here in Australia to requite it does.
But it is not something we feel, it is something we fight. Into something we address and we do it safely, effectively, collaboratively and we do it together and that is why we have had so much success to date.
But the challenges keep coming, as we have seen and Victoria, as we saw earlier this year, whether it was in the northern beaches of Sydney or south-western Sydney, up in Brisbane, over in Perth, and now again here in Victoria, and we know that Victoria, more than anywhere, has suffered greater than any other part of the country.
That is a simple fact. And they are going through that even again now.
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Australia has chipped in $50m to the global Covax fund – which is providing vaccine doses to developing nations.
Save the Children’s Sarah Carter says there is more to be done though:
There is an urgent need to ensure vaccination coverage is truly global because it is the only way to help bring an end to this pandemic.
Vaccines are vital, not just to save lives but also to help make societies safe again for children.
Right now, millions of children are still out of school, and run the risk of being forced to work or marry, as schools can’t open because of the pandemic.
It’s simply not acceptable that the world’s poorest countries have received just 1.3% of the world’s vaccines.
This crisis won’t be over for anyone until it’s over for everyone, including children.
That follows activists in America calling for Australia to support a patent waiver for Covid vaccines, to improve access.
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Victoria’s press conference ends – we are just waiting for Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg now.
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Professor Allen Cheng is asked whether Victoria is just unlucky, or whether there are other factors that mean outbreaks spread further than in other states, and says:
I think it is really difficult to know. We thankfully don’t have a huge sample size to say what might be different or not. I think there’s always an element of luck in this.
As I said before, if you have a person in the community with infection, it depends very much on who they are. And we certainly know that 80% of people with Covid don’t transmit to anyone. 20% of them transmit at least to someone and a very small number transmit to a lot of people. So there is an element of luck to it.
I think it’s always difficult to know to what extent things like the climate and these sorts of things that are outside our control have – like India and Singapore and any other countries that have different climates to Australia. So I’m not sure if that is a huge factor in this.
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Labor’s Penny Wong is probing the pre-flight testing regime from India repatriation flights, after more than 70 of the 150 people booked on the first flight after the travel ban was lifted were unable to travel.
Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade first assistant secretary, Lynette Wood, told estimates the pre-flight testing regime is Qantas’s responsibility. The minister, Marise Payne, adds an Ausmat team with an Australian doctor was sent to India to oversee it.
But that doctor only arrived on 17 May, two days after the first flight. Wong asks if that’s because the first flight went so wrong – and claims that Wood nodded but it won’t be picked up by Hansard. Payne said the doctor went on advice from the chief medical officer.
Wong is now probing whether Dfat knew that Qantas’s provider of pre-flight testing had subcontracted to a lab that had its accreditation revoked. Wood said the department became aware of this from media reports.
Dfat was aware of the 70 passengers who were unable to fly before the media – so that’s something! Wood said the “large number” of positives caught their attention, and that caused them to ask the CMO, who advised them to send a public health officer to check the system was “as robust as possible”.
Wood said “as a consequence of the first flight Qantas decided to change the laboratory it was using”.
Dfat is not able to say how many of the 70 have made it back to Australia, they’ve taken it on notice.
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Dipping out of the Victorian press conference now –
The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the foreign minister, Marise Payne, were not consulted about using the Biosecurity Act to pause travel from India to prevent escalating Covid-19 positive cases in quarantine.
Labor’s Penny Wong asked if the department was aware the government was considering the use of Biosecurity Act powers by the health minister, Greg Hunt.
Dfat secretary, Frances Adamson, said: “No I was not aware.”
Payne qualifies the answer by noting that the decision to pause arrivals into Australia was a “decision made at cabinet level”, made through “normal processes”, and she was present.
Wong summarises that while the minister was aware of the intention to implement a pause, she was not aware the Biosecurity Act would be used. This is relevant because the Act contained the penalties of $66,000 fines or five years in prison, which became one of the most controversial aspects of the ban.
Payne says to the best of her recollection Hunt did not tell her that, Dfat was told, who advised her office, which then advised her on 30 April.
Payne: “The determination of the use of Biosecurity Act has from time to time been discussed at cabinet level.” Wong: “Not for this purpose.”
Wong asked why the department and minister were “ridiculously out of the loop”, which Payne rejects.
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Two-year-old international traveller reportedly taken to hospital with Covid
The ABC is reporting a two-year-old child who was in hotel quarantine after arriving from an international flight has been taken to hospital “quite unwell” with Covid.
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You have to check-in in Melbourne now, even if you are somewhere for less than 15 minutes (so takeaways).
James Merlino:
What we have seen with this more infectious and therefore quicker variant, you get a number of cases where it is quite a quick transmission or it is a transmission where the individuals don’t actually meet within that environment.
So therefore the advice from public health is that we need to do away with that 15 minute period where it’s not a requirement to check-in. So if you are grabbing your takeaway coffee and you are standing for a few minutes as the barrister is brewing your coffee, you need to check-in.
Updated
Asked about Victorian MPs who are campaigning against Victoria receiving any federal support, James Merlino says:
I think that is disgraceful and if you talk to any Victorian business, any Victorian worker who are so disadvantaged, devastated by the lockdown that we must enter into, they would be appalled that anyone, anyone would be advocating to the federal government to ignore the needs of Victorian workers.
Updated
James Merlino doesn’t criticise federal government MPs directly, but he doesn’t not criticise them either:
The point I want to make here is that this is not a choice.
We don’t choose to go into lockdown. There is no choice. You either run this variant to ground as we’ve heard, it is a responsibility of everyone in this media conference and communicating it to the people of Victoria, Professor Cheng today has said that it is 50% more infectious, this variant, than what we saw in 2020.
It’s what Professor Sutton has said.
That’s the advice from our public health team. So when we get advice from public health experts that you must go into lockdown and have a series of restrictions in order to run this to ground and ensure it doesn’t escape and become uncontrollable, that is not a choice for government, it’s not a choice for Victorians.
Would Victorians want to see government just ignoring the advice from public health and saying actually we won’t go into lockdown, we won’t have restrictions because it’s all a bit too hard?
That is not a choice available to us. We’ve got a responsibility to make our community safe and to make sure that people don’t get sick and people don’t die. That is our responsibility and we won’t walk away from that and it’s frankly insulting for anyone to suggest that any state or territory would choose to enter into a lockdown period to combat this virus.
Updated
(Sorry for the mistaken spelling of “Alan” in Professor Allen Cheng’s name in previous posts – I have been fighting with the autocorrect all morning and missed those ones).
Updated
Asked if he spoke about an alternative purpose built quarantine facility during his phone call with Scott Morrison, James Merlino says yes, but it was brief:
It is something we are waiting for, in terms of a definitive answer from the federal government ...
The whole purpose of our proposal for an alternative quarantine facility, not just in Victoria but elsewhere, the whole purpose of an alternative quarantine, a Howard Springs-like facility, is that we make our quarantine system safer.
The whole purpose is to ensure that we lower the risk in hotel quarantine.
It would be completely and utterly unacceptable to all Victorians if we have a model that does not lower risk in hotel quarantine. Hotels are built for tourists.
We need a purpose-built facility for our highest risk travellers. Whether it is from where they come from or who they are, we need a system where our highest risk individuals go to a facility that is purpose-built.
That is a line that we will not cross.
We will not accept a model that doesn’t lower risk in hotel quarantine and has an indefinite capacity increase in our hotel quarantine system.
This is all about making our state and our nation safer. So that is the key thing, the key thing in terms of the negotiations and the discussions around state and federal officials, in terms of my discussions with the prime minister and others.
We need to lower the risk in hotel quarantine. We need to have the highest risk individuals going to a purpose-built facility.
Updated
Scott Morrison will hold his press conference at 12.45
James Merlino:
I want to take you through some statistics. I said yesterday that only 2% of our population is fully vaccinated.
Only 2%.
Only two out of 10 people have received their first vaccine. There are countries around the world where they have got fully vaccinated populations well over 50%.
In England, they are almost a 50%. In the United States, they are at something like 52%. In Israel it is 57%. There are countries around the world that are easing restrictions and getting on top of the pandemic because they have rolled out the vaccine program.
We are at 2%.
Nationally, we have been woefully, painfully slow. So when we get advice from public health that we need a lockdown it is a lockdown in an environment where only 2% of our population is fully vaccinated.
Updated
James Merlino:
There are a lot of things we are waiting for when it comes to the Morrison government.
We are waiting for a definitive decision on alternative quarantine.
We are waiting on whether they are going to support Victorian workers or not.
We are waiting on more supply of the vaccine.
There are a lot of things we are waiting for and the point I would make is the only way, the only way out of this pandemic is the successful rollout of the vaccine.
The vaccine is our enemy ... sorry, I will start again. Here we go, that will run tonight.
The virus, the virus is our enemy and the virus doesn’t sleep. The virus mutates, the virus thinks that this is a race.
Updated
James Merlino says he had construction conversations with Scott Morrison overnight about financial support for Victoria, but he will not pre-empt any announcement from the federal government.
Updated
James Merlino on whether the lockdown could end earlier:
As the professor [Cheng] said today and Brett Sutton said yesterday, it is a day by day analysis about how we’re tracking and if we can do things earlier we will, but the advice from public health has been we need a further seven days in Melbourne to chase this down to the end, to follow this outbreak because we cannot afford to let this outbreak loose in Victoria and beyond our state borders.
We have got to drive this to ground and that is why the advice of public health is we need those seven days.
Updated
Is James Merlino worried about Melbourne residents heading to regional Victoria tonight, to avoid another week of lockdown?
I’m not too worried, to be honest. The settings that we have in place, whether it is the 10 kilometre limit that will apply for people living in Melbourne, the additional patrols that Victoria police have, the requirement on regional businesses to ensure that people and patrons coming into their shops are living in regional Victoria or have a reason to be in regional Victoria. I think for all those reasons I am not expecting too much there.
Updated
It is still not clear which member of the family who travelled from NSW’s south coast back home to Melbourne had Covid first. NSW has extended its exposure sites as a precaution, but Cheng says authorities are still trying to work it out.
Updated
Was it reasonable to compare the infectiousness of this strain to the measles?
Allen Cheng:
R-0 is the reproductive number when there is no controls in place, so we think for the virus that we had last year, it is probably about 2.5, that figure for the UK variants, the Alpha strain is probably about 3.75 and for the Delta strain which is not the one that we have here, it is probably about in the order of five, but that’s when you don’t have anything, any controls over the virus.
Even before all of this, despite, we didn’t have lockdown, people were still behaving in a way that they weren’t interacting as much with each other and taking care, and so that probably was suppressing the virus to some extent but it was still able to grow, so they are effective, but the effective reproductive number in that situation was about 2.5.
And then as we’ve tightened up even just before the lockdown, we think that the R effective was 1.1 to 1.3.
We think now with everything we’re doing now, probably it is below one and the national modelling expert estimates at about 0.69. There is a range of uncertainty about that but that is lower than one and it is encouraging to say that, it won’t spread widely but variously [changes] with contact tracing.
Updated
Professor Allen Cheng:
It is more infectious, in the sense that more people get infected for every case, so I think that is accurate to say that.
The other thing I think that there may be some confusion over is, we have talked about the serial interval, so this is the time between when the first person gets sick to the time that the next person they get it to get.
That time is actually shorter when it’s good contact tracing, because people are not transmitting on the 10th day of their illness, we cut of the transmissibility so that development is shorter. So that as a sign of good contact tracing and the fact that we can pick up transmission through relatively short interactions.
Updated
Asked about the debate over the Kappa strain and how contagious it is compared to other strains (some of the language around it has been a bit loose) Allen Cheng says:
There are two parameters there. It is not really controversial to say that these variants have been shown to be more infectious. The way that is looked at is is it enclosed areas - what is the attack rate in households?
What proportion of people get infected? For the variance, including the [Kappa] variant we are dealing with at the moment, it has shown to be higher than the strain we were dealing with last year.
The other thing we have seen is that people – like the case that we had today where we linked it [to a shopping centre] there are certainly people that have been strangers to each other and caught the infection from each other and we know that they are not, you know, shows us that this is a very infectious virus.
It is possible that from our contact tracing that we are taking travel histories from everyone and that we are picking up some of these cases that way, so that reflects contact tracing as well.
Updated
Victoria faces shortage of Pfizer vaccine doses
Asked about reports of a shortage of the Pfizer vaccine in Victoria, professor Allen Cheng says:
We are still vaccinating at the moment. In times of forward bookings, there is a shortage, but I am not sure exactly when that supply will become available. We are trying to do the best we can with the supply we have.
...We would always welcome any state that wanted to give their vaccine to us, but that is a national matter.
...There is a small stockpile and we are using those at the moment. I could not give you the exact figures, but clearly there has been a surge in demand for vaccines and there is not the supply to be able to meet that at the moment.
Updated
Allen Cheng says he thinks over the last few weeks, authorities have tested about 5% of all Victorians.
Updated
Is there a possibility Melbourne could come out of the lockdown earlier?
Professor Allen Cheng:
We are reviewing this every day. Today is not that day, but we are keeping a close eye on things and it really depends on, particularly, the number of cases that you have community exposure and with the lockdown and contact tracing and so on that number should decrease.
One thing we have been able to do - as of this morning, we had linked one of those mystery cases to another case, so there are now three unlinked cases.
That is the case in Whittlesea, the case in Maidstone, the family reported yesterday - whichever the first case was there - there was one other case that lives in the South Melbourne area, and we now, as of this morning, have managed to link that person to another case from an exposure site.
...I do not have full details but I understand they were at a shopping centre at the same time and the same place.
Updated
So, in case you missed it, regional Victoria will come out of lockdown at midnight.
Updated
Professor Allen Cheng is at this press conference.
He goes through the cases:
One is a child of a previously identified case in Whittlesea.
One is a staff member from a port Melbourne workplace. As the facility announced yesterday, one person is in their 90s who is a resident at Arcare Maidstone.
That brings the number of cases that are linked to that facility to five - four within the facility.
Our thoughts are with the Arcare community. We have great faith in the Arcare management and the Western public health unit to help the facility manage this outbreak and protect residents and staff.
Updated
Just breaking in for a moment – Scott Morrison will hold a press conference very soon.
So we can expect some sort of announcement on support for Victoria soon.
Updated
James Merlino:
I want to thank all Victorians for three things in particular:
First, going out and getting tested. It was a record date for tests yesterday. Over 57,000 people received a test that is an incredible effort and I want to thank all Victorians.
Second, for getting vaccinated. It was a record day for vaccinations with over 23,000 administered at state sites.
Third, doing the right thing over the last seven days and for doing the right thing over the next seven days.
We do not do this because we want to. We do not do this because it is a choice. We do this because we have to.
Updated
Victorian press conference
James Merlino has confirmed three new cases for Victoria – all are primary contacts of confirmed cases.
The change in restrictions for Greater Melbourne will come in at midnight - but lockdown remains.
Regional Victoria will come out of lockdown. Social distancing restrictions will remain, but people can once again come out of their homes.
Updated
We are still waiting to find out what support the federal government plans to offer Victoria, but it is clear the Victorian government isn’t too pleased with how discussions have been going.
Throughout the process, Victoria has maintained income support is the job of the federal government. So disaster relief payments (where the commonwealth and states go 50/50) is not exactly what the Victorian government is calling for.
Victoria has announced $459m in support for business and industry so far this lockdown ($250m in an original announcement and $209m yesterday) and now wants the federal government to stump up the income support.
We know that is not something the federal government wants to do - it’s heading towards disaster relief, if anything, so this has some way to play out.
Updated
We’re at the stage of equating particular areas with an entire state.
The issue isn’t who didn’t get it. It’s who needs it. Again, we are 18 months into a pandemic, with lockdowns so expected they form a major part of the federal budget assumptions, and no plan of when to enact support when those lockdowns happen.
The reason Josh Frydenberg and the government keep adding ‘per capita’ on when they are talking about support Victoria received during the height of the pandemic is because, in raw figures, NSW received more. That’s fine - everyone deserves a slice of the pie, and we are a federation, we’re all supposed to help each other out.
But things happen. Disasters happen. No one wants a lockdown. It doesn’t bring the Victorian government any kudos to lockdown an already traumatised population. People need to be able to live, and all this political bunfight is doing is increasing anxiety about how exactly they are going to do that.
Liberal MP Jason Falinski says businesses in Sydney's Northern Beaches didn't get federal support during their lockdown (weren't eligible for JobKeeper) - he says they would think it's unfair that Victorian businesses could now get special support
— Trudy McIntosh (@TrudyMcIntosh) June 3, 2021
Updated
The Victorian presser will be held at 11.40 today.
We’ll find out whether regional Victoria will be able to ease out of restrictions, as planned.
Activists in the US have held a vigil in California, remembering those who have died from Covid – and calling on the Australian government to support “policies needed to increase global access to vaccines and treatments”.
Elias Visontay may be on leave – but he is every vigilant and sent me through this:
The vigil came just days before a major international meeting where governments will discuss waiving intellectual property rights to enable more Covid vaccine, diagnostic and treatment production. The government of Australia is one of the last holdouts to not come out in full support of the waiver.
“Ending a global pandemic requires global solutions. While Californians increasingly have widespread access to COVID vaccination, huge numbers of people around the world aren’t expected to have access to a vaccine for years unless global production is dramatically increased,” said Will Jamil Wiltschko of the California Trade Justice Coalition.
“We’re calling on the government of Australia to stand with the more than one hundred countries around the world in supporting the intellectual property waiver that’s needed for COVID vaccines and treatments to be produced in as many places as possible as quickly as possible.”
The United States, Russia and China recently announced their support for a TRIPS waiver for COVID vaccines, joining over 100 other nations who had earlier backed the concept. Australia is increasingly isolated as one of the only countries that has not come out in favour of the waiver.
Updated
The Greens senator Janet Rice has been questioning the foreign minister, Marise Payne, about why Australia hasn’t imposed more sanctions on Myanmar’s military regime.
Payne replies that it is still the Australian government’s position that sanctions would be counter-productive although the position is constantly under review.
Asked about 397 civil society groups that have called for Australia to impose sanctions, Payne said Australia “certainly respects the perspective those organisations bring” but Australia “must make our decisions on a range of factors”.
Payne said Australia “respects the decisions of partners who have imposed sanctions” - such as the US and EU - but earlier noted that no countries in the region had chosen to do so.
Updated
NSW reports no new local Covid cases
NSW Health has released its update:
NSW recorded no new locally acquired cases of COVID-19 in the 24 hours to 8pm last night.
Two new overseas-acquired cases were recorded in the same period, bringing the total number of cases in NSW since the beginning of the pandemic to 5,401.
There were 18,672 tests reported to 8pm last night, compared with the previous day’s total of 21,551.
NSW Health administered its highest-ever number of vaccines in one day, giving 14,595 vaccines in the 24 hours to 8pm last night, including 5,496 at the vaccination centre at Sydney Olympic Park.
The total number of vaccines administered in NSW is now 1,377,812, with 461,855 doses administered by NSW Health to 8pm last night and 915,957 administered by the GP network and other providers, to 11:59pm on Tuesday 1 June 2021.
Updated
Labor has accused the Morrison government of “hiding” outsourced research into jobseekers after a contract with Boston Consulting Group cost about three times initial internal estimates.
Documents released to Guardian Australia under FoI show that a damning Boston Consulting Group mid-term review of the Disability Employment Services program was expected to cost between $1m and $1.5m.
But the short-term contract agreed last year cost $3.3m, which Department of Social Services officials have subsequently said was amended to add $1.7m for “additional research”.
Mystery surrounds the content of the research and Senate estimates heard on Thursday that Boston Consulting Group did not provide a report for the research. Officials said it was for “high-end” data analysis of the impact of Covid-19 on income support recipients.
“There’s nothing you can show us that you got for it ... It’s more than the price of [Disability Employment Services review],” said the Labor senator Katy Gallagher.
She said: “It looks like you’re hiding research into a contract for something else.”
I can’t see how $1.76m of research, which is more than the report that you’ve commissioned, lines up ... It looks like you’ve outsourced to Boston Consulting Group what you should do on jobseeker.
Officials insisted the additional $1.7m was added to the Boston Consulting Group contract within procurement rules. The department had sought advice on the matter.
They also noted there was pressure on the department at the time due to the pandemic. The department agreed to provide more details about the research on notice.
Kathryn Campbell, the department secretary, said it was “not the case” the department had hidden the research in another contract.
Catherine Rule, another deputy secretary, also apologised for telling Senate estimates last year the Des review made no recommendations. The report, obtained by Guardian Australia under FoI, made more than 60 recommendations. Rule said she had not meant to “mislead” but had been referring to recommendations to government.
The Greens senator Rachel Siewert said that response was “too cute”.
Updated
Here is some of how Mike Bowers has seen the morning:
It is chilly in Canberra today. Frankly though, I would have gone with an oodie.
We were given a tip yesterday that home affairs staff working in Belconnen had been told to work from home while they waiting on the results of a Covid test from a Melbourne visitor last week. The department got back to us late last night:
- The Department can confirm that an all staff message was issued this afternoon (2 June) regarding COVID-19 precautions that have been implemented in one of our worksites.
- These precautions have been implemented out of an abundance of caution in light of the unfolding COVID-19 situation in Victoria and New South Wales.
Updated
Bob Katter has announced he will write to Joe Biden over a US plan to ban kangaroo imports.
I am sure President Biden is waiting by the mailbox for that one.
Updated
Here is that whole “Frank Sinatra” approach quote from Scott Morrison to the miner’s council dinner at parliament last night. (It includes when he mixes up My Way with New York, New York. Also, Sinatra was a Democrat, so not sure he’d be in support of a conservative government, but whatever. Then there was the whole 1974 strike Sinatra caused after he disparaged female journalists, that Bob Hawke and a bottle of brandy had to step in to solve – Sinatra and Australia don’t exactly have the greatest history is what I’m saying.)
Now, I want Australia to show the world how resource manufacturing and heavy industries can work in a low emissions and indeed a net zero economy when it comes to emissions.
I call this the Frank Sinatra approach.
We’re going to do it our way in Australia, the Australian way. If we can do it in the Pilbara, if we can do it there, we can do it anywhere, as Frank used to sing about New York.
And this is the approach we have to take, Australia is going to lead the world in low emissions production in the resources sector.
And the very sector, the very sector, that many far from here might suggest, might suggest that is a reason why Australia, they would allege, is not making the commitments that are necessary.
Quite the reverse will be proof. In the resources sector, you will demonstrate, as you already are, how Australia will be successful in the new energy economy in adapting in new technologies, in new fuels, in new methods, in new partnerships, in new supply chains.
You will demonstrate, in fact, the resources sector, in my view, will be the pin-up industry in this country for how Australia will be not just making commitments as many will want to do, but importantly are meeting those commitments and beating those commitments. Australia has already reduced emissions by over 20% on 2005 levels.
Over 20%. That’s a fact. That is something that you have helped achieve.
And the commitments that we’ve made out to 2030, you will help us meet.
And more than help us meet it, I think you will showcase how Australia is beating them.
And so the very industry that many have sought to use to try and talk Australia down when it comes to these issues, is the very industry that will prove Australia is a leader when it comes to new energy, that Australia is a leader in job generation and job creation.
The Australian way, which says we can make these commitments and not forsake our heavy industries, not forsake our mining industries*. And most importantly, not forsake the people of regional Australia, who others would seek to have us ignore for the sake of pursuing those commitments. We believe both can be achieved and will be achieved, because I have great confidence in the skills and capacity of the resources sector to achieve that.
We want to produce amongst the cheapest green hydrogen** in the world by 2030 and 2050.
*This is not what the largest economies in the world are saying, including those countries Australia will be speaking to at the G7
**Hydrogen is only green when it comes from renewable sources. Gas is not a “green” energy source
Updated
It’s 3 June – an exceptionally important day in Australian history:
Today is #MaboDay.
— Banok Rind (@IndigenousX) June 2, 2021
We remember and pay respects to Eddie Koiki Mabo who overturned the big fiction & lie of terra nullius.
We remember his strength, his courage and continue to honour his legacy
💚🖤💙🤍 #AlwaysWasAlwaysWillBe pic.twitter.com/RjEhbflX4N
Updated
Labor’s Penny Wong has established that the foreign affairs minister, Marise Payne, did not ask how many unaccompanied Australian minors are stranded in India.
Payne explained that the department works with families on a case-by-case basis, that numbers change daily, and it “wasn’t working with a total” in that category.
Wong presses – yes – but you didn’t ask?
Payne replies:
The answer is the children are dealt with in the family context. We were aware of the whole number of people in India, plus the vulnerable group. It’s not dealt with in the way you are asserting.
Eventually, Payne concedes, saying “no”, she had not asked for a specific number of unaccompanied minors.
Wong is now asking whether children were given priority to return on repatriation flights. Officials answer yes, to the extent they’re wanting to fly imminently.
But only five children returned from India in the last three repatriation flights in the last week.
Updated
In case you missed this yesterday, here’s what Scott Morrison will be taking in terms of talking points, when he heads to the G7 (and G7 adjacent countries) meeting later this month:
And from AAP, here is what Morrison told mining executives about that meeting:
The prime minister addressed mining executives ahead of the G7 summit in Cornwall.
“I sort of call this the Frank Sinatra approach – we’re going to do it our way in Australia,” he said in Canberra on Wednesday night.
“And if we can do it in the Pilbara, if we can do it there, we can do it anywhere.”
All members of the G7 forum are committed to reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2050, driven by deep emission reductions this decade.
Australia, which will observe the conference from the sidelines, has not committed to the carbon target.
“I want Australia to show the world how resource manufacturing and heavy industries can work in a low emissions and indeed a net-zero economy when it comes to emissions,” Mr Morrison said.
Updated
Anne Ruston, the social services minister, is facing Senate estimates and being she’s tightlipped about potential support for Victoria.
Ruston is responsible for the social security system, including payments like jobseeker. But disaster payments, which are being floated as a possible option, sit within the Department of Home Affairs.
Ruston is not giving much away. She’s noted the comments from the treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, this morning, who says the government is considering options.
Asked by the Greens senator Rachel Siewert when an announcement will be made, Ruston says she will not pre-empt this.
Siewert says:
You accept that people will be getting desperate right now? Particularly those casual workers that are living literally from pay cheque to pay cheque, and they’re not able to work.
Ruston says the situation in Victorian is of “great concern”.
She repeatedly says people who need support should “test their eligibility” for existing payments such as jobseeker, though estimates hears that many affected by the lockdown will be unlikely to qualify.
Updated
There has been a fiery exchange between Penny Wong and Marise Payne stemming from the discussion about stranded Australians in Senate estimates.
Wong prosecutes Labor’s increasingly prominent argument about the federal government’s lack of leadership. She says the consequences are “Australians are less safe, we have more lockdowns” because Scott Morrison and others in government do not want to take responsibility for a safe system of national quarantine.
Payne says “hundreds of thousands of Australians have returned to this country” since the start of the pandemic.
Wong is unimpressed:
There’s always a lot of words, lots of polysyllabic sentences, but the substance is your government walked away from its responsibility for safe national quarantine and you refuse to face up to the consequences of that.
Payne counters:
Senator, the substance is that 500,000 Australians have returned to this country in the midst of a global pandemic and that has been an extensive undertaking. And that is not to detract from the challenges that families and communities have dealt with through this process, not at all.
Payne rebukes Wong for refusing to acknowledge the work of Dfat consular officials around the world have put into this difficult challenge, adding: “Your refusal to acknowledge that is, I think, most unfair.”
The Liberal chair, Eric Abetz, has heard enough. He alludes to Dfat secretary Frances Adamson’s forthcoming appointment as South Australian governor:
Ms Adamson, I trust Government House is going to be quieter than what you are being submitted to at the moment. Can I encourage you to go back to questions and answers.
Updated
209 Australian children stranded in India without their parents
The Dfat session of Senate estimates has turned to the plight of the number of “unaccompanied minors” among the Australians who wish to return from India. Readers will recall that this was a big issue at the Covid committee on 7 May, when officials said there were “173 clients registered as under 18 in India outside a family group – that is, they’re on their own and seeking to return to Australia”.
That number has now risen to 209 minors, according to today’s testimony.
Lynette Wood, first assistant secretary, is not pleased with the terminology that has been used. They are not unaccompanied minors, she says, adding:
A minor is only unaccompanied if they get on a plane by themselves.
While these children may be in India without their parents, they are still staying “with family members or guardians”, Wood says.
The Labor Senate leader, Penny Wong, replies:
You don’t want to say unaccompanied because it sounds bad.
Wood says that in Dfat’s registration platform, the category is described as “minors registered as single travellers”.
Wong wants to know whether anyone from the minister’s office or the department had a discussion with her about not using the term unaccompanied?
No.
Wong then observes:
To the people whose kids are over there, to have you sit there and quibble with the phrase unaccompanied minor … it’s pretty hard for people to hear.
A few more responses to questions in this current bunch of questions:
- How many Australians in India have died from Covid-19?
Dfat is aware of two.
- How many facilitated flights have landed in Australia since travel ban lifted on 15 May?
Eight flights have landed, three to Howard Springs and one each into Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth.
A further five facilitated flights are scheduled before the end of June – three from India and two from Europe.
Updated
Labor backbencher Julian Hill is emerging as one of the opposition’s leading attack MPs. The Victorian MP is who is sent out when Labor has a message it wants attention for.
Here’s today’s serve for Scott Morrison:
I’ll bet my bottom dollar there’s no doubt that in the next couple of days, he’ll panic, he’s getting desperate. I think even he at some level realises the failure the mess that he’s making. He’ll make some kind of announcement saying, “Oh, well, we’ll build a purpose-built quarantine facility.” Well, he’s had on his desk a report for eight months telling him to do this and he’s done nothing. Jane Halton yesterday called him out for this.
How can anyone trust anything this prime minister says now? Frankly, he’s a bullshit artist.
He told us last year, “Don’t worry. There’ll be 4 million people vaccinated by the end of March.” He said, “Don’t worry, we’ve got aged care.” Well, when this outbreak started in Victoria, we found that 40% – only 40% – of aged care residents had been fully vaccinated; 29 homes they hadn’t even turned up for the first dose; 2% of people in disability care vaccinated.
Now it sounds like I’m getting a bit personal with the prime minister. And, I am. I don’t like him. I don’t trust him. I don’t think he’s good at his job. He is a very cunning politician, but he is a failure – an absolute failure – as a leader. He failed the country on bushfires. He’s failed on hotel quarantine. He’s failing on vaccines. And now he’s failing Victoria. This bullshit artist is abandoning Victoria in our hour of need.
Updated
You can expect an announcement on financial assistance for Victorian workers sometime today:
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg tells @3AWNeilMitchell an announcement on financial assistance for locked down Victoria will be announced later today.
— Tom McIlroy (@TomMcIlroy) June 2, 2021
Updated
Just over 35,000 Australians still stranded overseas
The number of Australians stranded overseas now stands at just over 35,000, officials have told a Senate estimates hearing.
Lynette Wood, first assistant secretary, said 35,128 Australians were registered with Dfat as wishing to return home as of 28 May, including 4,260 identified as vulnerable.
India, the UK, the US, the Philippines and Thailand are the top five countries where they are located.
Wood said the number registered in India was 10,994, including 1024 classified as vulnerable.
About a month ago we were told the number of Australians registered as wishing to return from overseas stood at 34,500.
Updated
The social services minister, Anne Ruston, has apologised for a privacy breach that saw a victim’s private and harrowing details of institutional child sexual abuse uploaded to another survivor’s MyGov account. The case was reported by the Ten Network last night.
Asked about the case by the Labor senator Jenny McAllister, Ruston said the department was doing its best to ensure such a breach did not happen again:
I can only apologise for what’s happened.
“It just strikes me that this is a significant breach,” McAllister said.
Ruston said she was happy to speak to the survivor if they wanted.
The Department of Social Services has launched an internal investigationr.
A shocking breach of security has seen a victim's private and harrowing details of institutional child sexual abuse uploaded to another survivor's MyGov account. | @ClareBarnes_10 pic.twitter.com/4FBwMjCyoR
— 10 News First Queensland (@10NewsFirstQLD) June 2, 2021
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Josh Frydenberg has been doing the media rounds this morning, laying the groundwork for the federal government providing some sort of financial support for Victorian workers facing two weeks with no pay due to the lockdown, but not actually committing to it as yet.
The government doesn’t want to set a precedent where states could potentially find it easier to order lockdowns (which is not something the federal government has ever wanted) so you’ll hear a lot about “principles” and “national standards”.
National cabinet meets tomorrow. Eighteen months into the pandemic and there is still not a framework for what would trigger the sort of financial support people need when lockdowns occur – even though the federal budget is built on the assumption there will be more lockdowns.
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The foreign affairs estimates hearing has begun with bipartisan praise for Frances Adamson, the Dfat secretary who will soon leave the department to take up the role of South Australian governor.
The Liberal party chair of the committee, Eric Abetz, and Labor’s Penny Wong both acknowledged it would be her last estimates session and thanked her for her service under both sides of government. Wong thanked Adamson for respecting parliament and the estimates process – an attitude Wong said was not universal. Adamson was the first woman to serve as Dfat secretary and the first woman to be Australian ambassador to China.
The foreign affairs minister, Marise Payne, described Adamson as an “exceptional diplomat and public servant”.
In an opening statement, Payne provided a broader overview of Australia’s foreign policy priorities. Payne said Australia’s focus had been “strong engagement” with its neighbours on vaccines, with the provision of 200,000 doses manufactured in Australia to Pacific nations and Timor-Leste.
She said Australia welcomed the comprehensive report into the pandemic co-led by the former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark. Payne has met with Clark in New Zealand and she said they were positively disposed to seeing constructive further investigations into the matter.
Payne said multilateral organisations needed to evolve; Australia was working with partners to push for reform of institutions including the World Health Organization and World Trade Organization.
We don’t yet have an update on the number of stranded Australians (Adamson said the government had facilitated eight flights from India in last three weeks), but it will come up in questioning. Payne said:
The pandemic continues to present us with enormous challenges … that does affect our consular support as well.
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Also in estimates today is the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. There are still thousands of Australians stranded overseas, including Australians trying to get home from India. Daniel Hurst will bring you those updates.
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It is important to note that despite Victorian government officials’ claims that the kappa variant in Melbourne is a “beast” spreading in ways not seen before including “low contact” and “fleeting” contact, the World Health Organization does not classify the variant in Melbourne – dubbed the kappa variant – as a variant of concern (VOC).
Kappa is at the moment graded a variant of interest (VOI). VOC have increased transmissibility, virulence or change in clinical disease, and a decreased effectiveness of public health and social measures.
VOIs, such as Kappa, are those shown to cause community transmission in multiple clusters and have been detected in multiple countries, but have not yet necessarily proven to be more virulent or transmissible.
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I’ll bring you some of Luke’s observations – there is no one better covering these issues across the nation right now:
I'm in lockdown so Senate #estimates is about as good as it gets for a sad loser like me. Will thread some highlights from Community Affairs, where the Department of Social Services is up today.
— Luke Henriques-Gomes (@lukehgomes) June 2, 2021
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While the federal government waits to say whether it will provide financial support to Victorian workers who are facing two weeks without pay because of the lockdown (Brisbane’s lockdown was three days and was only in the city – it was pretty much situation normal in the rest of Queensland, and WA locked down the Perth and Peel region for just three days, so comparing what Victoria is going through to those earlier lockdowns is ridiculous) it’s worth taking a look at the language government ministers are using.
Here was David Coleman on the ABC yesterday when he was asked about it:
The provision of support to Victoria since Covid has been immense: $45bn from the Commonwealth, the highest provision per capita of anywhere in Australia, and in addition to the $13bn of support that the Victorian state government has provided itself, so there’s already been an enormous amount of support.
Coleman had a year’s paid personal leave from December 2019. He was able to deal with what he had to deal with because he had ongoing financial support. He didn’t have to worry about paying bills while he dealt with issues. No one should hold that against him – that is the system we should have.
But it should also be applied across the board. A week’s pay matters. A lot. Two weeks; pay can be the difference between maintaining housing or not. It once took me six months to catch up financially after I lost two weeks’ pay due to illness while a casual worker. I was lucky I could do it. Many aren’t. This wait is doing no one any good.
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Three new locally acquired cases in Victoria
I am assuming one of these is the second aged care resident at the Arcare Maidstone facility we learnt about late yesterday afternoon.
These results are from more than 57,500 tests. I know I have said this all week, but Victoria – you do us all proud.
Reported yesterday: 3 new local cases and no new cases acquired overseas.
— VicGovDH (@VicGovDH) June 2, 2021
- 23,921 vaccine doses were administered
- 57,519 test results were received
More later: https://t.co/lIUrl0ZEco #COVID19Vic #COVID19VicData pic.twitter.com/9cCbYkZ8gZ
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Estimates continued last night.
Here are two sides of one exchange, when Liberal NSW senator Hollie Hughes was determined to have how proud she was of NSW’s “gold standard” on the record as CMO Prof Paul Kelly gave an update on Victoria’s situation.
Hughes tried to talk about the “failure we are seeing in [Victoria’s] hotel quarantine”, sparking a ruckus as the non-government senators reminded her this outbreak stemmed from a breach in South Australia’s hotel quarantine.
“We know Victoria is winning one race and that would be the lockdown race,” Hughes finished.
After 2 days of misinformation from the Labor Senators, I thank 🇦🇺CMO Prof Paul Kelly for providing the actual facts, and proving that NSW under @GladysB really does have the global gold standard managing this pandemic.#auspol #covid #hotelquarantine https://t.co/3hvxbWMiGJ pic.twitter.com/DuWU81UFIy
— Senator Hollie Hughes (@hollieahughes) June 2, 2021
As Victoria faces a 2nd week of COVID restrictions without any support from the Morrison govt, this video shows what Scott Morrison's senators are doing in Senate Estimates.
— Tim Watts MP (@TimWattsMP) June 2, 2021
This exchange began with Professor Kelly telling the hearing that "Victoria is doing a remarkable job." pic.twitter.com/jW3WNryVey
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Gundagai, Goulburn, Jervis Bay, Huskisson and Vincentia among NSW exposure sites
AAP has the latest on the NSW exposure sites:
More alerts have been issued for possible COVID-19 exposure sites by NSW Health as almost 250 people remain in isolation on the South Coast.
Alerts were issued on Wednesday night for venues in Gundagai, Goulburn, Jervis Bay, Huskisson and Vincentia that were visited by a Melbourne family of four last month, who were later diagnosed with COVID-19 after returning home.
The father had symptoms on May 25 after driving back to Melbourne on May 24. He tested positive on Monday, nearly a week later, as did his wife and children.
There have been no cases recorded in NSW but several new testing facilities on the South Coast have been testing locals amid concerns the virus could have spread.
The results of some of those tests should be known on Thursday.
Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant on Wednesday said NSW Health was working with Victorian authorities to determine who in the family contracted the virus first.
“If this gentleman was the source for those individuals, then they were not potentially infectious when they were in NSW, and clearly if the reverse is the case that may take back the exposure period,” she told reporters.
Already 243 people have been instructed to get tested and isolate while they await further instructions from NSW Health.
“We’ve asked [them] to stop and stay until we actually really understand and do a full assessment of the risk,” Dr Chant said.
Victorian authorities believe the strain circulating in the state is much more infectious than previous variants, capable of transmitting between strangers with very minimal contact.
Those concerns prompted the Victorian government to extend the lockdown for Greater Melbourne for at least another seven days until midnight on June 10.
However, Dr Chant downplayed those fears, saying NSW has also had occasions of transmission with very minimal contact.
Premier Gladys Berejiklian said the scare is a reminder of the urgent need for people to get vaccinated, and for testing rates to remain high.
“They know the drill when there are cases in other parts of Australia,” Ms Berejiklian said.
“We’ve seen more than 21,000 people come forward in the last 24 hours in NSW and get tested – that’s outstanding.”
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Josh Frydenberg said a decision on a dedicated quarantine facility in Victoria is just “days” away:
Obviously, you’re talking large sums of money and talking through the details of the location, because more than one location was put forward. And obviously, we’ve had conversations with the state government there. And it’s important to understand that that designated facility in Victoria would be over and above the existing hotel quarantine quarantine facility that exists in important and other states …
Well, days. That’s how I would put it. And obviously, the prime minister and my cabinet colleagues have been discussing these matters.
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Again, Josh Frydenberg is not ruling out support – but he is not announcing it either:
Other states went through short-term lockdowns – namely Queensland and Western Australia.
They didn’t ask for extra support*.
They didn’t receive extra federal support and that was after the end of jobkeeper.
But now that the lockdown has been extended, then we obviously are considering the implications of that and we do understand the need that Victorian families and businesses have right now.
And hopefully, when the details of those, the easing of restrictions are announced by the state government, that that will come as some relief, particularly to regional Victorians, because you’ve got a situation in a regional city like Mildura who are probably watching your show today. More than 50,000 people. Cases where there wasn’t one for 13 months and yet they were subject to the same restrictions and lockdown at the people in inner Melbourne.
So all those responses and decisions by the state government really do need to be proportionate to the challenges that we face.
*This is not comparing apples and apples. Brisbane was locked down for THREE days
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Josh Frydenberg is on ABC News Breakfast, where he is talking around the idea of a one-off payment for Victorian workers but not going into any details:
Well, the pandemic is not over, and neither is the support from the Morrison government.
Last night I had a constructive conversation with my Victorian counterpart, treasurer Tim Pallas. The prime minister spoke to the acting premier, James Merlino.
We recognise that with the extension of the lockdown, Victorian families and businesses are doing it tough, as you know. In Victoria, people have been subject to now a fourth lockdown, something that other states have been spared, and the Morrison government has been there for not just Victorians but for Australians from day one of this crisis, and will continue to provide that support.
So, we’ll stick to the principles that have guided us to date with our economic support packages, namely that it will be temporary, that it will be targeted, that they will be measured and that they’ll be using existing systems. And we’ll have more to say about that in due course.
Which is pretty much what he was saying yesterday as well.
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Paul Karp has taken another look at the sports rorts affair:
Sport Australia’s claim in court that it provided final approval of $100m of grants in the sports rorts program has been undercut by evidence to the Senate inquiry that Bridget McKenzie overturned decisions and gave permission to vary grants.
Minutes from Sport Australia’s finance audit and risk committee revealed that in December 2018 it believed the then-sport minister had “overturned” its recommendations, a “variation in the approval process” that it noted as a risk.
But in the federal court, where it is defending the legality of the program against Beechworth Lawn Tennis Club, Sport Australia claimed it retained the final say on which applications would be approved for funding.
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It will be a little while before Daniel Andrews is back at work. But the tweet threads are back.
I won't talk about how hard this is, or why it matters so much. You all know that.
— Dan Andrews (@DanielAndrewsMP) June 2, 2021
But I did want to send a message to Victorians facing another week off work, away from school, or with the kids at home:
The Victorian premier is still on medical leave but has tweeted out his thoughts on lockdown:
Just because we've had to do this before, doesn't mean it's easy to do again. Some of us will be tired. Some stressed. Some sick to the back teeth of this pandemic. Maybe a mix of all three.
— Dan Andrews (@DanielAndrewsMP) June 2, 2021
But please know that every individual effort you made today, and everything you'll do tomorrow and every day after will save lives.
— Dan Andrews (@DanielAndrewsMP) June 2, 2021
Record tests, record vaccinations, record fight - we're doing this to protect our communities, our state and the entire country.
Be proud of what you've achieved and be proud of our state too.
— Dan Andrews (@DanielAndrewsMP) June 2, 2021
Keep fighting, Victoria.
And on a personal note, I'm sorry I can't be there with everyone but I'm so grateful to @JamesMerlinoMP for his leadership. I have more scans and a meeting with my medical team next week. I'll let you know how that goes and exactly when I'll be back on deck later this month.
— Dan Andrews (@DanielAndrewsMP) June 2, 2021
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Geriatric millennials and Gen X, your time has come in the ACT.
Canberrans between the ages of 40-49 will now be able to book in for a Pfizer COVID-19 vaccination at the ACT COVID-19 mass vaccination clinic at Garran.https://t.co/rmlMjnc1La pic.twitter.com/6Nbhxz19zk
— Andrew Barr MLA (@ABarrMLA) June 2, 2021
Good morning
It’s the last day of parliament for parliament (but it will be back in a week) and estimates continue, but everyone is waiting to see how the federal government will respond to Victoria’s extended lockdown, given that workers are now facing two weeks without pay.
Acting premier James Merlino had talks with Scott Morrison overnight, while Josh Frydenberg spoke with his Victorian counterpart Tim Pallas.
We know jobkeeper is out. But disaster-style payments, which already exist for states and territories when natural disasters strike, is one option. Which makes sense. Losing even a week of pay without notice is a disaster for a lot of people. Rent, loans and utilities all still need to be paid, even in a pandemic. Plus, people need to eat.
We’ll be hearing from Frydenberg soon. It’s been a long week for millions of people, so hopefully we’ll have answers for you soon.
Victorians have responded to the latest outbreak by getting vaccinated in record numbers but, as Christopher Knaus reports, the commonwealth hasn’t increased vaccine supply to Victoria in response. That has led to people being turned away, including aged and disability care workers, who are trying to work out their own vaccinations, given that the only way they can receive that at their work is if there are leftover doses from those supplied for residents.
We should find out today whether restrictions ease in regional Victoria but it’s another long week for Melbourne residents after the lockdown was extended for seven more days.
We’ll bring you all the news on that as well as what’s happening in and around parliament. Mike Bowers and his cameras are already working away, and you have Katharine Murphy, Sarah Martin and Paul Karp with you ferreting out all the news in Canberra. And, it being a parliament day, Amy Remeikis is with you on the blog.
I’ve had coffee and chocolate-covered coffee beans so far this rainy Canberra morning, so who knows where the day will take us.
Ready? Let’s get into it.
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