What we learned today, Thursday 2 September
That’s it for today, thanks for reading. Here are the main stories from the day:
- New South Wales records 1,288 new cases and seven deaths, with the premier, Gladys Berejiklian, again warning that October will be worse. But restrictions were eased for the 12 LGAs of concern.
- Victoria records 176 cases – the highest daily number this year – as the state announces it will halve the wait between doses of AstraZeneca.
- A person with Covid has been admitted to a Sydney hospital after overdosing on ivermectin and other unproven medications.
- The Indigenous vaccination rate lags in almost every region of Australia, new figures show.
- One new Covid case in Queensland, and 12 new cases in the ACT.
Updated
Interesting little update from AAP about the vaccination situation for police in Queensland.
The commissioner, Katarina Carroll, announced a mandatory vaccination policy on Thursday. She gave all police and civilian staff five months to get vaccinated, but did not reveal the consequences for those who don’t.
Police were included in phase 1B of the vaccine rollout, so have been able to be vaccinated for almost six months.
“While we respect individual choice and we will engage closely with our members as we implement the directive, our overwhelming obligation is to ensure we have safe workplaces and a safe community,” Carroll said.
All police officers and staff members will be required to have their first dose of a Covid-19 vaccine by 4 October and their second dose by 23 January.
But it’s unclear if jobs will be on the line for those who refuse, or if they’ll simply have to wear masks while at work.
The statement outlining the policy said:
All members of the QPS workforce who have not received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine or who are legally exempt will be required to wear a mask while on duty indoors and outdoors where they cannot socially distance.
AAP has sought clarification about the consequences for staff who don’t comply with the policy.
In June this year, following an outbreak of the Delta variant in Victoria, the force in that state told Guardian Australia they would not be providing a “running tally” on vaccination numbers.
Updated
A Victorian ban on Nazi symbols is set to come into effect next year, outlawing the display of swastikas and other hate symbols.
Updated
The Productivity Commission has found Australia’s national water plan needs a greater focus on the impact of climate change and more input from Indigenous people, AAP reports.
The commission on Thursday released its final report of a review into the national water initiative (NWI), a federal-state reform agreement that began in 2004.
The commission was asked to look at progress towards the goals of the NWI.
It said the plan needed a “refresh” by including references to climate change and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
“Since the NWI was agreed, the potentially devastating impacts of climate change on Australia’s water resources have become clearer,” the report said.
“Recognition that all aspects of water resource management and water service provision will need to adapt in the face of these challenges should be reflected in a renewed agreement.”
The report noted capital city populations are projected to increase by 10 million people by 2050.
At the same time, climate projections point to hotter, drier and more extreme weather, particularly in southern Australia.
“This will likely mean material reductions in water availability for most of the country and an increase in the frequency and severity of droughts and floods across the nation.
“And it will accelerate change in irrigated agricultural production. The droughts and water scarcity experienced during the past 20 years are likely to be a harbinger of things to come.”
The commission said Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people had made it clear that they “aspire to much greater access to, and control over, water resources”.
But progress to enable this has been “slow”.
The report found states and territories were still in the process of implementing metering policies for non-urban water users.
As well, water access and reliability remained an area of concern for some rural and regional communities especially in times of drought.
Part of the overhaul of the NWI, the commission said, should involve each state and territory having three-year rolling work programs, and a comprehensive review of national water policy every 10 years.
In a departure from current policy, the commission recommended the “special provision” for the minerals and petroleum industries should be removed.
Updated
Surely you could make a fairly whacky installation with all the discarded syringes too:
Forget the technical jargon – we’re in a recession right now and without jobkeeper, getting out is going to be a lot harder.
Retail spending is falling, especially among hospitality businesses in Sydney and Melbourne that are now completely reliant on takeaway and delivery to keep ticking over.
Rows of empty shops have knocked the teeth out of what were once fashionable retail and entertainment streets.
And while Queensland has so far avoided the lockdowns that have gripped Sydney and Melbourne, it too could tip over if the highly infectious Delta strain crosses the border from New South Wales.
Analysis:
Updated
Australia’s chief health officer, Prof Paul Kelly, says the risk of Covid-19 to children remains low.
Here’s a bit of an update on a locally acquired Covid case in Queensland, from the team at AAP:
Queensland has recorded a new locally acquired case of Covid-19 and separately ordered an entire family into hotel quarantine, with some of them unwell after reportedly returning from Melbourne without quarantining.
Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said a truck driver, who lives at Windaroo, returned a positive result amongst 10,433 virus tests in the 24 hours to 6.30am on Thursday.
The 46-year-old man, who is currently in NSW, was infectious in the community in Logan and the northern Gold Coast between August 28 and September 1.
He is the second truck driver to test positive in as many days.
“We are contacting him to find where he has been in Queensland,” Ms Palaszczuk told parliament on Friday.
“This is an addition to the truck driver reported yesterday.”
Health minister Yvette D’Ath said a Gold Coast family of five have been ordered into hotel quarantine after the children told their classmates they had been to Melbourne.
She said early indications are the family returned to the state undetected via an inland route without going into hotel quarantine.
Some family members are unwell with symptoms and the situation had been complicated by an initial refusal to cooperate with health authorities and contact tracers.
“Some of the family members are unwell, but we don’t know if it’s Covid (so) we have to treat it as if it is,” Ms D’Ath told parliament.
The school, the Australian International Islamic College at Carrara, sent all students home on Thursday.
“I’ve had to ask that all children who attend that same school need to go into quarantine until we’re able to get a test result from these two children,” chief health officer Jeannette Young said on Thursday.
By late Thursday afternoon, health authorities had confirmed all family members had been tested with results expected on Friday.
The first truckie tested positive in NSW after being infectious while in Queensland last Thursday.
He visited service stations at Archerfield in southern Brisbane, Goondawindi and Bundamba, near Ipswich, on August 26.
He later tested positive when he returned to NSW, and Queensland authorities are trying to track down anyone who may have come into contact with him.
The latest Covid-19 case comes with Queensland’s border shut to NSW for all but essential workers who have had at least one vaccine.
Ms Palaszczuk is waiting for further modelling on what will happen to unvaccinated 0 to 12-year-olds if borders reopen as vaccination rates increase.
“The prime minister undertook to get some further work done, is my understanding,” she told parliament.
Federal treasurer Josh Frydenberg earlier urged premiers not to delay opening up.
“My message to the premiers and the chief ministers is very clear: Do not delay the inevitable. You have to learn to live with Covid. Covid may come to your state within a week, it might be a month, it might be a little bit after that. But the reality is we can’t eliminate the virus,” he told Nine’s Today program on Thursday.
Just under 52% of eligible Queenslanders have had one vaccine and 32.28 per cent are fully vaccinated.
Updated
Every Australian should be given a free Viennetta when we get to 70% fully vaccinated
I was disappointed that I did not get to the bottom of how a person born in 1963 could as a child predict an ice cream that was released in the 1980s.
— Barnaby Joyce (@Barnaby_Joyce) September 2, 2021
Albo, the Nostradamus of confectionary! (Maybe he pined for it in front of Netflix and tweeted it on his iPhone in the 1970s) pic.twitter.com/Kx7pux4QNs
Rainier and cooler this spring in the southern states, according to the Bureau.
Thank you Amy. Someone should pay her a cash bonus for all the blogging golds she’s racked up.
The lovely Nino Bucci will take you through the evening, leaving me to sign off for the next six weeks as I head back to general political reporting land.
Politics Live will be back in mid-October, when the parliament returns. But stay tuned to the Guardian site for all of your updates, and of course, you’ll still have a daily blog to stay up to date with.
A giant thank you to Mike Bowers for dragging me through another sitting, and to Katharine Murphy, Sarah Martin, Paul Karp and Daniel Hurst for all the incredible work they do.
Speaking of incredible work, thank you to the entire Guardian team – from the moderators who work as hard as they can keeping the comment sections across multiple stories open, to the producers who clean up my (many) typo messes, to the editors who keep me abreast of what’s happening, and the incredible team of journalists who break out of their day to answer my questions or send me updates when they are trying to balance their own workload. It’s a small but mighty team here at the Guardian, and no one person can take responsibility for the blog project – the conductor is often the least important part.
As we close out today, thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone for reading, for your messages and notes, and for keeping your sense of humour at a time when laughter is pretty scarce. You are all brilliant and we appreciate each one of you.
Take some time for yourself though. Make sure you are taking news and screen breaks. Sitting in the sun (if you have some patches) or just breathing in some fresh air can work wonders. If you need to, dress up for no reason other than to feel good, or wear your robe all day and remind yourself how fabulous you are regardless. There are no rules to this. Everyone is doing their best, and your best is whatever gets you through each hour.
A massive thank you to everyone. I’ll see you soon. Until then, take care of you.
Updated
Well.
The last two weeks have certainly been quite the century.
If you are feeling like you have both seem time fly by and also that time has no meaning and you may as well be in 2020, you are not alone.
The good news is, you won’t have to face any more parliament for six weeks – all MPs are heading back to wherever home/quarantine is, and the daily Guardian Australia blog will revert back to Covid Live.
The bad news is, that won’t stop the politics.
I know it seems overwhelming. And I know there are a lot of people, from all sides of politics, weaponising numbers and cherry-picking details to push their own agendas when it comes to what is ahead for the nation in the coming months.
The truth is – we don’t know for sure, but it is going to be a tough transition. And it is going to mean accepting things in Australia that we haven’t had to accept for much of the pandemic.
As Covid switches from a pandemic to endemic – meaning it is here to stay – people are going to be asked to change up their thinking. That the numbers they spent the better part of two years being told to keep down will rise. Yes, they have done it in parts of Europe, the US and the UK. But in a lot of those cases, people there had no choice but to accept high case numbers, hospitalisations and deaths, because they never saw those numbers suppressed. So loosening restrictions and still seeing high case numbers hasn’t meant a complete mindset change.
For Australia, it will mean shifting mindsets. A pretty huge one too. I said before, we are seeing a black and white debate, when we are all going to be living in the grey, and it’s true.
Change is coming. It is inevitable. It is also going to be hard. People will get sick, people will end up in hospital and people will die. It might be reality, but it doesn’t mean it won’t also be heartbreakingly hard for a lot of people. There are no easy answers, and there is no soundbite which will sum it all up. The coming transition is not something to be glib about. It’s also not something which can be ignored, or wished away.
It’s ok to feel like it is all a bit much, and to feel confused and frustrated, and exasperated at all of it. Pay attention to the detail. If you can, get vaccinated. Prepare yourself for the change as much as you can. And for the moment, discount the politics. None of us know what this ‘new normal’ will look like, but like any big shift, eventually, it just becomes normal.
It’s the in-between grey zones which are always the hardest.
Updated
For those needing some good news:
This daily infographic provides the total number of vaccine doses administered in Australia 🇦🇺 as of 1 September 2021 📅
— Australian Government Department of Health (@healthgovau) September 2, 2021
💻Stay up to date with COVID-19 vaccine information here: https://t.co/lsM33j9wMW pic.twitter.com/YTFfhDfzzC
Stop taking horse paste.
Ivermectin is a prescription medicine that is not approved to prevent or treat #COVID19 disease and should not be imported or prescribed for this indication. https://t.co/2NyBcBEdI3
— TGA Australia (@TGAgovau) September 2, 2021
For those wanting more information, here is the federal government’s official release on medal-winning Paralympians being paid parity with Olympians who won medals (Australian medalists receive $20,000 for gold, $15,000 for silver and $10,000 for bronze):
“Our Government will ensure Australia’s Paralympic athletes receive payments for winning medals at the Tokyo Games in line with the payments to our Tokyo Olympic medallists.
“The decision ensures Paralympics Australia can recognise our champion Paralympic athletes in line with payments made by the Australian Olympic Committee to medal-winning athletes in Tokyo.
“Australia’s para-athletes have represented our nation with great distinction and pride in Tokyo, delivering performances that have buoyed millions during what is a difficult time for the nation.
“Australia is eighth on the overall medal tally with 60 medals and four days of competition still to come.
“Like their Olympic counterparts, Paralympians often have to make major sacrifices in their lives foregoing family and work to train and compete nationally and internationally.
“The Morrison Government is committed to working with Paralympics Australia and other national sporting bodies to grow corporate sponsorship for para-sports.”
Updated
Here is the part Burney and Butler’s release Ken Wyatt accused of being a “backflip” in question time today.
That is after Wyatt attributed the vaccination take up challenges to hesitancy, while workers on the ground have been talking about supply, as well as the need to combat misinformation which took hold, after changes in the Atagi advice and how it was handled:
Misinformation about vaccines continues to spread to vulnerable communities anxious and desperate to stop further transmission of COVID.
The Government needs to ramp up its communication to counter the misinformation in these communities.
It must begin with empowering trusted local Aboriginal community organisations and leaders, but based on what we’re hearing from on the ground and what we’re seeing with the Government’s poor First Nations vaccination rates, this is not happening.
Updated
Linda Burney and Mark Butler have put out a release on First Nations vaccination rates:
“Despite the Morrison-Joyce Government’s rhetoric, First Nations vaccination rates are patchy and unacceptably low in some communities, newly-released localised data shows.
“The Government was forced to reveal the localised data after Labor moved a motion in the Senate last week for an order for the production of documents.
“The data shows low vaccination rates at a localised level by state and territory, with full vaccination rates as low as 13.77 per cent in Far West NSW; 15 per cent in outback South Australia; seven per cent in outback Western Australia and 12 per cent in Cairns and Central Queensland.
“All states and territories apart from Victoria are well below the general population.
“Labor has been demanding localised data for weeks. It is critical to identifying areas of risk and in need of urgent supplies.
This shows that the Government has localised up-to-date data in its possession but chooses not to publish it.”
Updated
The motion to suspend standing orders does not pass, as it has no support outside the usual suspects (on this issue).
Updated
Craig Kelly appears to be suspending standing orders to attempt to debate a motion against vaccine passports.
George Christensen has seconded it.
Scott Morrison has indicated support for vaccine passports or at least a system where vaccinated people will have more freedoms.
Just a reminder that the current deputy prime minister and Christensen’s party leader praised Christensen in the parliament yesterday. And he had previously said he had warned his colleagues not to “prod the bear” in case he went to the crossbench. So Christensen can continue to do what he likes.
Updated
The Australian War Memorial on Wednesday hosted a virtual tour for 40,000 school students who can’t attend because of lockdowns:
“Developed in response to NSW school cancellations of Year 5/6 excursions to Canberra, the virtual excursion was organised by Distance and Rural Technologies Learning, an initiative of the NSW Department of Education, as part of a virtual week in Canberra.
“Australian War Memorial Education Manager Robyn Siers said over 600 school booking were received for the virtual excursion that was delivered through Zoom and YouTube live technology platforms.”
Updated
Every death is a tragedy and a very big loss.
The TGA’s weekly safety report is out, and reveals two deaths from rare blood clots linked to the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine which, nevertheless, is saving many millions from hospitalisation and death from Covid.
It said:
In the last week, an additional nine reports of blood clots and low blood platelets have been assessed as confirmed or probable TTS. Sadly, two people died this week – a 59-year-old woman from Queensland with confirmed TTS and a 54-year-old man from NSW with probable TTS. Both were following their first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine. The TGA extends its sincerest condolences to their family and loved ones. We are in close communication with the Queensland and NSW authorities who are undertaking further investigation of these cases.
Since the beginning of the vaccine rollout to 29 August 2021, over 19 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been given. So far, the TGA has found that nine reports of deaths were linked to immunisation from 495 reports received and reviewed. These deaths occurred after the first dose of the Vaxzevria (AstraZeneca) vaccine – eight were TTS cases and one was a case of immune thrombocytopenia (ITP).
Updated
The current deputy prime minister will make an address to the press club tomorrow.
(This photo appears to be from 2014)
Barnaby Joyce will address the #NPC tomorrow, from Parliament House in Canberra. Tune in from 12:30pm AEST. https://t.co/LvPoaEEVcn pic.twitter.com/zXq3hyKS3T
— National Press Club (@PressClubAust) September 2, 2021
Here is how Mikey Bowers saw the last question time for six weeks:
(They’re just missing the fourth of the wise monkeys here).
(When you realise it’s almost over and you get to leave this place).
Tip Top, as a treat.
The prime minister can not be thinking of Australia’s history, as he does not appear to be having positive or optimistic thoughts in this minute.
Updated
I have just been reminded of when China’s president, Xi Jinping also “encouraged” education authorities in Macao on Thursday to make further efforts to promote patriotic education in the special administrative region.
From the China Daily report late 2019:
Xi made the remark while inspecting the Premier School Affiliated to Hou Kong Middle School in Macao. He attended a class on Chinese history themed “’one country, two systems’ and Macao”, and delivered a speech to teachers and students at the school.
Xi told them that the class has great and special significance because it demonstrates the fundamental and substantial elements of history and education.
The president stressed the importance of teaching history as a means of consolidating the foundation of patriotism. Every Chinese person should learn the history of the nation, Xi said.
Updated
And that’s it – no more question time for six weeks.
Thank Dolly.
Updated
Chris Hayes to Scott Morrison:
The prime minister said ultimately everything is estate matter. Was it the states or the prime minister which made the claim that Australia was at the forefront of the vaccine queue? The prime minister.
Morrison (with his latest round of “negativity” soundbites):
The Labor party and the questions misrepresent what I said – this is something I have become a very familiar with over the course of the last 18 months.
The government is focused strongly Mr Speaker on delivering our national plan, that includes the fact that 20m doses of that vaccine have been delivered in this country.
Even just this week, 500,000 additional doses secured from Singapore, on top of more than 1m doses we were able to secure from an arrangement with Poland (Poland had announced it had doses for sale the month before Australia purchased the doses).
Mr Speaker, and I can assure you there are irons in the fire here, which means we will be able to continue to support vaccination rates that we have seen so far Mr Speaker, that support the national plan.
The national plan that enables our country to live with this virus.
To live without fear of lockdown. So businesses can plan with confidence.
So Australians can come together again and connect with the rest of the world.
So Australians could travel and go to work as we need ... wherever they are across this country that is what the national play delivers, that is what our government, Mr Speaker, has been focused on.
By contrast, we get the negativity, the undermining, Mr Speaker of an opposition that only knows that way, and provides no hope.
By contrast the Australian people can have confidence that our national plan will see them, Mr Speaker, go forward, our economy move forward Mr Speaker, to defy the negativity and the undermining of those who would seek for Australia to fail, Mr Speaker.
Under our government Mr Speaker, Australia will succeed.
And we are inspired by those Paralympians as well, Mr Speaker, who show us the way.
Visualise the way of optimism and hope Mr Speaker, the hope stealers of those opposite will be dismissed and the Australian people will continue to support the optimistic and positive plan that our government has put in place.
Updated
Freedom of speech warrior and defender of Queen Elizabeth portraits in common rooms of UK colleges, Alan Tudge, apparently thinks the way history is taught in Australia is too negative. So just rose coloured glasses when looking at how Indigenous people were massacred please.
When you look at the history curriculum, it has such a negative view of our history, rather than a positive [confident] optimistic view of our history. This national plan gives us great hope and confidence.
Updated
Stephen Jones to Scott Morrison:
The prime minister said ultimately everything is a state matter. Is it the states or the prime minister who is responsible for half the country being in lockdown because of his quarantine and vaccine failures?
Morrison:
I reject the premise of the question completely. And therefore the answer is no.
Updated
Anne Stanley to Scott Morrison:
The prime minister says ultimately everything is a state matter. Was it the states or the prime minister who said the number of patients in ICU is a measure of success?
How many patients are in ICU today?
Morrison:
Thank you. Again the manner in which that question was asked by the member is again misrepresenting the context of the statement, Mr Speaker. But on the serious issue that is raised, on the number of people in ICU, my advice is that the number is 184.
(He is now getting a bit cranky with questions which start like this. For the record, here is the transcript from that 31 August question:
Q: Prime minister, the national plan is not explicit about state border closures. In your view, should they be ended at 70% vaccination, 80%, or are you saying this is a state matter?
Morrison:
Well, ultimately, everything is a state matter.
But I know that there was agreement to the national plan, which wants to see Australians come together, and we want to do that safely. This is a safe plan. This is a plan that has been based on the best possible scientific evidence to ensure that we can open safely and connect together again safely. And, that is exactly what I would be expecting all of us to be doing.
Updated
Alicia Payne to Scott Morrison:
The prime minister said, “ultimately everything is a state matter”. Is it the states or is it the prime minister who has left First Nations people, including those living in western New South Wales, unvaccinated and unprotected against Covid?
Morrison:
I’ll ask the Minister for Indigenous Australians to add further to my answer and thank him for the tremendous work that he and the minister for health and aged care have been doing ,working particularly closely with the New South Wales government.
Two nights ago I had the opportunity to speak to the Chief Health Officer and the premier of New South Wales where we were reviewing that program and what additional support was required. And to work that issue through.
The question, as it was framed, like others that have been put here, once again seeks to continue to misrepresent matters in this place.
On the serious issue that is raised I’ll ask the minister for Indigenous Australians to add further.
Ken Wyatt:
As of yesterday we had 38 per cent of Indigenous Australians with their first dose and 21 per cent with their second.
Let me say right from the beginning we provided vaccines in the last week of March this year, so they were preparing. We had a steering committee established to develop the vaccine program.
When I look at the membership of that vaccine program I see outstanding leaders ... All of them have been involved in framing the action that is needed on the ground.
That plan has involved using the capacity of every avenue that can provide the levels of support.
Massive coordinated efforts through commonwealth and state governments, Aboriginal health services, ADF, flying doctors, GPs and pharmacies and local community groups. I must admit that it’s been challenging.
What I noticed is the member for Barton and the member for Hindmarsh yesterday talked about the hesitancy being an issue.
Today they put out a new press release saying it’s not that, it’s lack of information.
So it’s a backflip. Let me tell you, it’s a combination of things, and we have to work to make sure that we put into place the programs that are needed.
And it doesn’t matter what you on the other side say.
This is about protecting Indigenous Australians in Aboriginal communities right across ...
Wyatt continues speaking about Chris Mulder and how he “knows the truth is out there” which I think is a dated joke linked to the X Files?
Wyatt:
He went out there and he found the truth. He talked to people on the ground. He listened and was well informed in the article he wrote, which is a reflection of the way in which we’re working. Pat Turner is doing an outstanding job in making sure that the community is engaged.
We will continue to achieve the levels we’re striving for. But you’re not helping with some of the comments you’re making.
Updated
Tony Zappia to Scott Morrison:
I refer to the prime minister’s statement “ultimately everything is a state matter”.
Is it the states or is it the prime minister who is responsible for quarantine? How many quarantine leaks from hotels, built for tourists, have there been?
Morrison:
I thank the member for his question. Since 28 March 2020, when mandatory quarantine commenced, that’s when orders were put in place by the states, to support the decisions of the commonwealth government to close the borders, over 434,000 people have arrived and we have detected and isolated over 4,200 Covid-19 cases.
In about half a dozen cases, there were breaches of those quarantines [which] led to breakouts in the community. Mr Speaker, 434,000 people arriving.
What is extraordinary as a result of that program put in place, with the great support of our premiers and chief ministers in the states and territories, has been a system that has played a central role in saving over 30,000 lives.
Because this is what has been one of the key differences between Australia and the rest of the world.
Now, other countries have engaged in hotel quarantine. New Zealand most significantly, and they have had similar success and continue to run that program, as many others do.
As I understand Taiwan and other places. That has been a program that has been so essential to saving so many lives in the country, and now the quarantine challenge moves to a new place.
Because as we move into phase B and phase C of the plan, when Australians will travel, those who have been vaccinated and more Australians will come home and we want the restraints on Australians coming home lifted, the answer is home quarantine.
And the home quarantine trial that we initiated through the national plan with the South Australian government is going to see more Australians come home and more Australians resume their connection with people all around the world.
We will see families reunited, particularly those in our multicultural communities rights across the country who have carried the hardest and heaviest burden of that international travel ban. They will be reunited.
They will be able to reconnect, and the home quarantine model is one that we know is absolutely vital to the success of the national plan.
Again I want to thank premier [Steven] Marshall for being the one who put up his hand and said “we are going to give that a go” because we know how important that is to the people in his state and important to the entire country. And so I remind this house that it has been Australia’s great fortune to have been able to come through the pandemic, to have been able to isolate the 4,200 cases.
Updated
WA hardens border to Victorian travellers
Mark McGowan has announced new conditions for any Victorian travellers returning to Western Australia:
Following the latest health advice from the Chief Health Officer, we are implementing additional safeguards for approved travellers entering from higher-risk settings like Victoria and the ACT.
Effective 12.01am Monday, September 6, approved travellers from Victoria, or anyone who has travelled through Victoria in the past 14 days, will be subject to additional strict conditions to enter WA:
- proof of a negative Covid-19 PCR test in the 72 hours prior to departure;
- proof of receipt of at least one dose of Covid-19 vaccine, where eligible;
- a mandatory requirement to use the G2G Now app on arrival in WA;
Existing strict exemption, self-quarantine and testing requirements remain. The Chief Health Officer has also recommended additional changes to the medium risk settings under WA’s controlled border arrangements.
Effective 12.01am Monday, September 6, approved travellers from medium risk jurisdictions aged 12 and older are required to undertake a pre-travel COVID-19 test 72 hours prior to departure – ensuring greater certainty of travellers entering WA.
I urge Western Australians who may have gone to Victoria recently to come home now. As we have seen with the tragic situation in NSW, things can change quickly and we won’t hesitate to introduce stricter measures to keep WA safe.
Our thoughts are with our friends in Victoria, the ACT and New South Wales as they battle their growing outbreaks. pic.twitter.com/ilGYjSesf1
— Mark McGowan (@MarkMcGowanMP) September 2, 2021
Updated
Patrick Gorman to Scott Morrison:
My question is to the prime minister. The prime minister said ultimately everything is a state matter.
Was it the states or was it the prime minister who backed Clive Palmer’s attempt to tear down the Western Australian border last year and expose West Australians to Covid? Can the prime minister confirm his support of Clive Palmer cost taxpayers $1 million, some of which went directly to Mr Palmer?
Morrison:
As I have said previously, state border are state matters and the commonwealth did not pursue that matter.
(That is the whole answer)
Updated
Andrew Leigh to Josh Frydenberg:
New analysis shows the Morrison-Joyce government gave more than $300 million of JobKeeper to firms that tripled their revenues. Given the government is chasing pensioners to return welfare overpayments, why is the government letting these businesses keep millions of taxpayer dollars they clearly didn’t need?
Frydenberg (who once again appears to have forgotten how microphones work. And hands, given that catch in the below Keith Pitt video):
It’s hard to work out the member for Fenner. One minute he’s saying that he invented JobKeeper, and now he’s saying that he’s criticising JobKeeper.
The reality is that JobKeeper helped save our economy, Mr Speaker. It helped save our economy.
And that the first six months of the program was based on an anticipated decline in turnover. And the reason why we took Treasury’s advice on that key point ... was because the economy was staring into an economic abyss. At that time we saw that the economy could have unemployment at 15 per cent or above.
That means more than two million Australians. We all remember the images of our fellow Australians lining up outside Centrelink which for many were reminiscent of the Great Depression, and we responded with JobKeeper based on an anticipated decline in turnover.
Then there was a review after three months, and it was recommended that we leave the anticipated decline for another three months before we moved to an actual decline in turnover.
But what the honourable member fails to understand is that a great deal of uncertainty in the economy at that time meant that we gave businesses certainty.
We gave businesses the ability to plan for their future. We gave businesses the opportunity to hang on to their staff.
That means the unemployment rate today is at 4.6 per cent, a 12-year low (the fall in unemployment most recently is largely down to how many people fell out of the labour market – stopped looking for work, or were unable to be tracked by the ABS).
You know what it was when we came to government? 5.7 per cent. So we’ve been through a recession and the unemployment rate today is lower than when we came to government.
We also know that we have avoided, through this recession, a scarring of the labour market which we saw in the ‘80s and ‘90s recession which would have meant hundreds of thousands of Australians who were long-term unemployed.
It was a well targeted program because in Treasury’s review they found that the average decline in turnover in April was 37 per cent for non-JobKeeper firms. But in JobKeeper firms the decline in turnover was just four per cent. Just four per cent.
It’s been described as no less a figure than the governor of the Reserve Bank has a remarkable program. Today Professor Steven Hamilton, a visiting fellow of tax and transfer policy institute at the ANU writes the following in the AFR.
“At a time of great uncertainty when underpinning confidence was key, it’s not crazy to have opted for the cleanest, simplest scheme that gave business an ironclad guarantee of what they would receive.”
Updated
Mike Freelander to Scott Morrison:
Intensive care at Liverpool hospital is already beyond capacity with Covid patients being sent to other hospitals as far away as Wollongong. There are extra ventilators, yes, but not enough ICU nurses to run them. Why is training and recruitment of additional intensive care nurses only happening now, 18 months into the pandemic?
Greg Hunt gets the question:
I would respectfully correct the member for Macarthur, respect his work in the community but on this occasion he’s wrong. The program for upskilling additional nurses began in February last year.
Through that process we have seen approximately 20,000 nurses who were skilled in ICU, we have seen many other nurses who’ve been brought back into the system. The approach for protecting and preserving and strengthening the hospital system was laid out last year in February in the Australian sector emergency response plan for novel coronavirus.
We’re assisting in five particular ways. One, of course, is in terms of the specific training of nurses, both - the upskilling to ICU, that was commenced not just a year ago, 18 months ago. Secondly, in relation to that, we’re also assisting with beds. Thirdly, with ventilators.
Fourthly, with funding and fifthly with PPE.
In addition to the training of nursing staff and the upskilling, particularly for ICU capacity, the provision of nursing staff through the private hospitals viability guarantee, which has already been activated within New South Wales, and then of course the provision of funding. $6 billion has been provided to the Australian public health system for public hospitals so far. In New South Wales, $1.1 billion has been provided through that partnership.
We are expecting another $1.4 billion. So, if you bring it all together, nursing staff, beds, ICU capacity, ventilation capacity, funding and PPE, these are all of the things which we are bringing on the basis of the plan which was developed 18 months ago, which is being continuously reviewed and which is being implemented at this moment.
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In Senate question time, One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts used a series of questions to laud the “independent professional trucks” who blocked a major highway on the Gold Coast on Monday to protest against border closures and mandatory coronavirus vaccines for essential workers.
Roberts asked the attorney general, Michaelia Cash, to “agree that the Australian people would be looking to parliament for defence of civil liberties exercised in a fair manner, not to trash them”. But in the very next question, Roberts attempted to argue Black Lives Matter had been treated in a different matter.
Cash didn’t take the bait. She said regardless of the issue, people “should always protest in accordance with the law” and “respect the rights of others”.
Updated
If you need a laugh, please watch this just to see Josh Frydenberg perform the world’s most awkward catch.
You thought his walking and talking videos were bad.
Jersey Day is a chance to begin a conversation with family about becoming an organ donor inspired by 13yo Nathan Gremmo. Go to https://t.co/4R4JP58Pzj. Here’s my #jerseydaytrickshot with a little help from friends @ScottMorrisonMP and @Barnaby_Joyce + more #auspol pic.twitter.com/spB07QVPs3
— Keith Pitt MP (@keithjpitt) September 2, 2021
Sharon Claydon to Scott Morrison:
In the six weeks between now and when parliament is due to meet next, the number of Covid patients in New South Wales intensive care units is expected to peak.
Today the Australian Medical Association warned Australia’s hospital systems is unprepared for a sharp increase in critically ill patients.
What extra resources will the prime minister give the nation’s health system, so it can cope?
Morrison:
In my discussions with the New South Wales premier on these very issues, and I believe her public statements have also reflected the fact that they are understanding peaks of the emergency - I should say ICU need in New South Wales will be reached later in October, that’s their most recent information.
They are regularly modelling these issues to ensure that they are mapping their resources and their capacities against their expected demand.
This is an important project that I have initiated through the secretary of the Department of Health and the national cabinet process have been doing this across the country.
This is not new, this is something that has been done by the secretary of the Department of Health for many months, in fact from the start of the pandemic it has been the most regular matter that we have continued to investigate and review to ensure the system capacity.
(He then goes through the numbers he went through earlier in the week)
The government, the commonwealth government, every single time there’s been these needs that have been highlighted has stepped up.
And we have supported our states and territories and we have carried that load with them 50-50, all the way.
The planning continues because the pandemic continues to change, and the secretary of health, Professor Murphy, has been working with his colleagues consistently all throughout the pandemic to ensure that what is required is available.
Updated
Richard Colbeck is facing heat in the Senate over the progress of aged care worker vaccinations. He has stopped short of guaranteeing that the government will meet the 17 September target for all aged care workers to have received a first dose of a Covid-19 vaccine. Colbeck’s formulation is: “We will continue to work with the aged care sector with the objective of vaccinating the entire workforce by 17 September.”
Colbeck accuses Labor of “living in the past” and relying on “very, very old data”. He says:
“As of this morning, 83.4% of the aged care sector have had a first dose. 62% have had a second dose.”
There has been a lot reported today on a three-year-old who was trapped in NSW, and who was unable to return to his parents in Queensland because of the border closure and pause on domestic hotel quarantine places.
Greg Hunt called it a “profound moral failure”.
Following all the reports, Queensland Health has said an exemption for the child, to its knowledge, had not been formally sought or lodged, but CHO Dr Jeannette Young said the family have been tracked down and an exemption had been offered.
Updated
The current deputy prime minister sets up a dixer all so he can build up to repeating a story about Anthony Albanese remembering eating an ice cream cake which was in the Daily Telegraph today, but the speaker sits him down before he can get beyond the first line of what seemed a very laboured joke.
You’ve got to give me 10 out of 10 for trying don’t you,” the current deputy prime minister says, which Scott Morrison apparently finds hilarious.
Tony Smith:
I don’t have to do anything actually.
Anthony Albanese to Scott Morrison:
Eight days after the New South Wales outbreak began the prime minister said, “I commend Premier Berejiklian for resisting going into a full lockdown.” Since then more than 23,000 people in New South Wales have been affected. There are now almost a thousand people in hospital including 160 in intensive care. Does the prime minister regret this comment?
Morrison:
Mr Speaker, we have addressed that matter already in this place, and I draw the member’s attention - I draw the leader of the Labor party’s attention to the work that has been done which has been tracking the outbreaks in Victoria versus the outbreak that has occurred in New South Wales.
And, Mr Speaker, as the Delta variant hit, there were hopes, Mr Speaker, there were hopes that those lockdowns, whether they were implemented - I think seven or eight days in New South Wales after the commencement of the outbreak in New South Wales or even earlier by the Victorian government, and I remember the premier of Victoria making the comments at the time, they wanted to avoid the circumstances which had occurred in New South Wales.
But we now know that the track of that outbreak in Victoria is going along the same path that it is in New South Wales.
That is the nature of the Delta variant. The leader of the Labor party may seek to ascribe all sorts of blame and these sorts of things.
They may seek to do that but ... the Australian people know that the Delta variant of the Covid-19 pandemic it is voracious, and the leader of the Labor party may seek to score political points off a pandemic, but we will remain focused on our response. We will remain focused on delivering the national plan which provides the pathway out.
The leader of the Labor party may want to focus on negativity and blame we will focus on the response. Twenty million doses have been delivered which is going to liberate this country and liberate people from lockdowns. We’re focused on that positive task. We’re focused on the hope. The Labor party focused as usual focused on negative politics and point scoring.
Updated
Things have deteriorated quickly in the Senate.
South Australian Labor senator Marielle Smith asked whether the Morrison-Joyce government could guarantee hospitals in South Australia “will be properly resourced to cope with the increased demand of going into the next phases of the national plan with high case numbers”.
The government frontbencher Richard Colbeck replies by reciting health funding figures, while also pointing to telehealth services, and citing private hospital partnerships.
“And we continue to evolve and work on all of the issues that we need to do to support the public health system and of course, as I’ve said, the Doherty modelling and the national plan is about mitigating cases and controlling a safe opening to support the health system in the Australian community.”
In a follow-up question, Smith cited the AMA president’s warning to Scott Morrison that “if we throw open the doors to Covid we risk seeing our public hospitals collapse”, and asked whether Dr Omar Khorshid was correct.
Colbeck, deciding question time should really be about ministers asking questions of the opposition, replied:
“The issue in that statement is if we throw open the doors. That’s not the plan, Mr President. That is not the plan. It’s all very well - you need to make up your mind senator whether you support the plan or not because I tell you on this side there’s serious questions as to whether Labor actually support the plan or not. Do Labor support the plan? Do Labor support the plan?”
Colbeck then took aim at Annastacia Palaszczuk:
You’ve got the premier of Queensland who clearly doesn’t support the plan, is more interested in fighting the federal election than supporting Australians through Covid. A three-year-old child can’t go and see their mum and dad because of the approach that the Labor party is taking in Queensland. It is outrageous, Mr President, NRL players can go, NRL players and their wives can go. A three-year-old child can’t go to Queensland to see their parents. It is completely outrageous what is being proposed. So Labor need to make up their mind. Do they support the national plan or not?”
Over in the Senate, Richard Colbeck has conceded that parts of the NSW health system are suffering “stress” at the moment.
The minister for seniors and aged care services, when asked by Kristina Keneally whether the NSW health system was coping with the current Covid case levels, said:
“Clearly, some elements of the New South Wales health system are suffering stress right now. Clearly. Can I say to people in New South Wales and to people in Australia generally that the Australian government has been preparing to support the Australian public health system since the beginning of the pandemic. So we began preparing in February 2020 to support the Australian health system and we will continue to develop that program.”
After an interjection from Keneally, Colbeck said:
I would rather take advice from the New South Wales government, the New South Wales health system than someone who led the Australian Labor Party to one of the worst electoral defeats in New South Wales history.”
Keneally pressed him to answer how many excess non-Covid deaths were expected as a result of higher case numbers. Colbeck said Covid-19 “will continue to put stress on the system, but what we’re doing is to work with the states to ensure that there is capacity to support people with Covid”.
Colbeck said the national plan was “about a careful, safe, opening of the economy, so that we can ensure that the hospital system doesn’t get overwhelmed”.
Keneally pointed to the Australian Medical Association’s warnings about the situation, prompting this retort:
If the AMA wants to be modellers, then they should go and be modellers. We worked with the Doherty Institute to do some modelling …” And then this: “I will go to the AMA for health advice and I’ll go to Doherty for modelling advice.”
Updated
Back to QT and the first dixer is on the national plan and particularly how South Australia is on board because it has hosted the home quarantine trial.
Steven Marshall though, has been pretty quiet on what he plans on doing with South Australia’s borders in the future.
Airlines cancel international flights into Sydney
Airlines have begun cancelling international flights into Sydney over coming weeks, two days after the NSW government announced it would temporarily halve its arrival intake so it could redeploy nurses from hotel quarantine to hospitals.
On Tuesday, amid rising hospitalisations, premier Gladys Berejiklian said NSW’s current weekly international arrival intake of about 1,505 – the largest of any state – would shrink to about 750 from next week, but could be scaled up again once the state reaches a 70% double vaccination rate of the adult population in October.
Just now, All Nippon Airways has announced it is “updating its international flight schedule for September and October to select cities due to the ongoing changes to immigration guidelines, recently instituted public health quarantine measures and passenger demand trends”.
In September alone, 15 flights from Tokyo to Sydney have been cancelled. The airline operated about five flights into Sydney each week.
The Japanese airline had already significantly reduced its operations into Australian cities other than Sydney. Arrival caps across Australia were halved in July to about 3,035 a week.
From next week, Australia’s intake will be 2,285 passengers.
Meanwhile, the Board of Airline Representatives of Australia (Bara) has welcomed the NSW government’s plan to ramp up its international intake once it reaches 80% double vaccination and opens up home quarantine. However the group on Thursday pointed out “practical issues” that must be resolved in order for international airlines to be ready to resume services by November.
“International airlines now operate about 13 commercial international passenger flights a day into Sydney Airport, down from over 110 per day. These 13 daily flights carry only about 215 passengers in total, which will reduce to some 108 per day from 8 September. Bara expects international airlines to further reduce flights into NSW in line with the arrival cap reductions,” Bara said in a statement.
Updated
Question time begins
Terri Butler to Scott Morrison:
Why has the prime minister failed Australian women and voted against Labor’s amendments to implement key recommendations by Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins in the respect at work report?
Morrison:
As the member will well recall, the government has provided a full response to the respect at work report.
Our response set out our long-term commitment to preventing and addressing sexual harassment.
It also seeks to build a new culture of respectful behaviour in Australian workplaces by agreeing to in full, part or principal all 55 recommendations in the report, Mr Speaker.
The respect at work Bill implements 16, 20-22 and 29, 30 in line with the government’s commitments in the roadmap for respect that the Attorney General and I outlined many, many months ago.
The bill also clarifies the applicability of the sex discrimination act to Members of parliament and makes key amendments that would immediately strengthen the overarching framework with respect to sex discrimination and harassment.
We prioritised these reforms for immediate reintroduction, recognising that other more complex reforms require further consideration and a stakeholder consultation.
A number of recommendations need to be carefully considered together because they fundamentally change the core function of the Australian rights commission.
A number of the remaining recommendations were directed to state and territory governments, two independent agencies, to regulators and the private sector recognising the whole of community approach taken by the sex discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins and again I thank her for her work and will work to implement and co-ordinate these responses is already under way through the inter- government of meetings such as the women safety task force and the work and health and safety ministers.
At my initiation, through the National Cabinet, requested all states and territories to provide their response to the respect at work report which at that time had not been done by state governments but I welcome the fact that that has now all been done by state governments and they have come forward.
Even now, as we speak, the women’s safety summit is under way with the round table discussions already proceeding right now and progressing some of the most important issues that you could imagine in keeping women safe in our country. We are supporting that, particularly with $1.1 billion investment in women’s safety through the 2021/2022 bundle which includes over 60 million implementing the roadmap for respect.
Updated
Question time is delayed for statements on indulgence for the Paralympians.
And in good news (and what should just be the automatic standard) Scott Morrison announces Paralympians who have won medals will receive equivalent payments to Olympians who won medals.
Updated
Mind the bell curve
Just a quick addition to the post I contributed about the Doherty numbers a bit earlier. We suspect (that’s Sarah Martin and me) the Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has extracted her 80 deaths a day number from bell curves on page 10 of the latest Doherty report.
These bell curves appear before the numbers in the tables I shared with you all earlier.
These bell curves map 80 deaths a day at 70% vaccination coverage, with partial TTIQ (tracking, testing, tracing quarantine). But if TTIQ is fully functional, there’s no bell curve. It’s just flat. I mentioned earlier the deaths are broken down by age group.
What about kids? Doherty says there are zero deaths for vaccinated kids under 16, and 46 for unvaccinated kids in the same age group where TTIQ is partially effective at national vaccination rates of 70%.
If TTIQ is optimal, then Doherty says there are zero deaths in that age group at 70% coverage.
Again for complete clarity. These figures are from the latest available Doherty report.
(There are two on the website. These numbers are from version two).
And again: these are scenarios. They are not predictions. They are not forecasts. This is NOT the ten commandments. Modelling is a function of inputs and assumptions. Change those and your numbers change.
Also: these figures map a set of national scenarios. Doherty is doing more work looking regionally.
Updated
It is the final question time for six weeks.
After today, the parliament goes on break until mid-October, so this will be the last time both sides are free to hold us hostage for an hour for quite some time.
Updated
We are on the downhill slide to QT.
George Christensen has been using his time in the house again to be the “quiet and unassuming” George Christensen the current deputy prime minister was praising yesterday – it doesn’t need any further oxygen than that.
On the family who have declined to be tested, Dr Jeannette Young says:
Then we have this family, two adults and three young children under the age of 10, who travelled down to Melbourne and returned, we believe.
Police have informed us that they have information that they’ve returned around three days ago and two of the children went to school and those children told their classmates that they had recently been in Melbourne so police then attended the school yesterday and the family of five is now in hotel quarantine and we are working with them.
I am sure that they are concerned and they are worried and we’re trying to work through that with them.
At this stage, they have not agreed to be tested so therefore I have had to ask that all children who attend that the same school need to go into quarantine until we are able to get a test results from these two children.
If we can’t get those two children tested then that school will be in quarantine for 14 days.
Updated
Queensland CHO Dr Jeannette Young is going through the cases of concern in that state:
So we first have a truck driver who was undergoing his weekly surveillance testing.
He was tested here in Queensland and the result came back positive. Of course, this is a surveillance test, so he continued working before he got that result.
He was actually here in Queensland for five days while infectious and we’re just working through his household to test everyone in his household and we’re trying to contact him so we can find out what exposure venues there have been, so that is concerning given that it has happened over the last five days.
Then we have these other truck drivers that have been positive. We have had quite a few of them recently and the most recent one that I am concerned about is one that New South Wales tested and let us know about late yesterday, and he is actually here, so we were able to get information from him and we have put exposure venues on our website, again, if people could please check those and come forward if they were there at the time listed.
Updated
Rex Patrick has also responded – it was his legal challenge that ended up declaring that national cabinet wasn’t actually subject to cabinet in confidence rules.
He has called Scott Morrison a “sore loser”
Scott Morrison is clearly a sore loser, but more importantly he’s still trying to stifle public scrutiny of national cabinet decision making as well as many other dealings of federal, state and territory governments.
The COAG Legislation Amendment Bill 2021 introduced into Parliament today seeks to exempt the body known as national cabinet and committees of that body from the disclosure provisions of the Freedom of Information Act 1982.”
The Bill further provides for the issuing of conclusive certificates by ministers to prevent the disclosure of national cabinet records in Administrative Appeals Tribunal hearings and to keep records of national cabinet secret in the deepest and darkest vaults of the national archives.”
Numerous other laws are to be amended to ensure the secrecy of national cabinet in all circumstances.”
Updated
Non-government MPs in the senate have referred the legislation Murph updated you on a little earlier this morning, which the government has slipped in hoping to keep national cabinet deliberations secret, to a senate inquiry, which will hold up its passage through the parliament a tad (if the government gets the numbers in the senate it needs to pass it)
Labor’s Mark Dreyfus had some comments:
Just weeks after he was humiliated by a federal court judge over his delusional and arrogant attempt to declare national cabinet exempt from public scrutiny, Mr Morrison is now trying to get the parliament to overturn the tribunal’s decision.
At a time when record amounts of taxpayers’ funds are being spent responding to the pandemic, the Australian people have every right to be kept informed about what is being done in their name and not be fobbed off with more of Mr Morrison’s secrecy and spin.
This is a government addicted to secrecy, and hiding from the Australian public their right to know what their government is doing in their name.”
Updated
Victorian summary
Victorians will be able to be fully vaccinated with AstraZeneca six weeks earlier than planned with the wait reduced from 12 weeks down to six from today, in line with the Pfizer vaccination.
The Delta variant continues to spread across metropolitan Melbourne. There were 176 cases detected overnight, including 93 mystery cases. We don’t know how many people were in isolation throughout their infectious period.
Of particular concern is an outbreak of 17 cases at an Acquire call centre with links to Victoria’s vaccination program, and a positive case detected at a St Kilda backpackers who has been transferred to hotel quarantine.
There are now 1,029 active cases across the state, including three cases detected in hotel quarantine.
There are 61 people being treated in hospital including 21 in intensive care and 13 requiring ventilation.
In better news, Victoria has passed the milestone of 5m vaccination doses since the roll-out began, a trend which will hopefully continue.
Updated
Just quickly, given we are now in the middle of a fierce debate about how many deaths will happen when vaccination rates in the population hit 70%, here are some data points from the Doherty modelling. These numbers are from the latest version of the work on the Doherty Institute website.
But before we get to that just a statement of the obvious: these are scenarios. They are not forecasts or predictions. The estimates reflect the inputs to the model. They are not the ten commandments, just to be clear.
Now to the report. On page 11, Table 4.1, which records
“Cumulative outcomes of interest over the first 180 days by achieved coverage threshold prior to transmission, for the ‘transmission reducing vaccine allocation strategy with partial TTIQ’” (which is tracking, testing tracing and quarantine).
Sticking with being clear. The point of inserting TTIQ as a variable just reflects the obvious: during large outbreaks, contact tracing can break down, and that impacts suppression efforts.
So at this table, with vaccine coverage of 70%, Doherty estimates 1,457 deaths if TTIQ is only partially effective. If it is optimal, then there are 13 deaths.
On the next page, page 12, we hit table 4.3, which is “Cumulative symptomatic infections, ward admissions, ICU admissions and deaths over the first 180 days for coverage thresholds of 50%, 60%, 70% and 80% achieved assuming partial or optimal TTIQ, broken down by vaccination status”.
This table has four columns: the measures are vaccinated and unvaccinated, and the two scenarios are when TTIQ is partially effective or it is optimal.
So at 70% (which is the threshold the Queensland premier nominated), the death estimates are 465 vaccinated people and 992 unvaccinated people (when TTIQ is partially effective) and four vaccinated people and 9 unvaccinated people when TTIQ is optimal.
Doherty also breaks these death estimates down by age groups.
Updated
Greg Hunt also addressed the issue of vaccinating children. Annastacia Palaszczuk says she wants more modelling on what the national plan will mean for under-12-year-olds. Andrew Barr says he is “concerned” and would like to see more information.
Hunt says parents can have confidence in the national plan:
Children are fundamental to our protection. The entire national plan is about protecting all Australians but it is predicated on protecting children and so there have been some comments that they were not considered.
This is false and we want to be clear and precise.
Indeed, there have been comments about vaccinating under 12s. There have been no vaccinations that have been approved and no national programs of which we are aware that have commenced anywhere in the world and following that medical advice is absolutely, is absolutely fundamental.
In fact I think the best response, in a way is what has been written by Queensland health in their children’s health Queensland hospital health service, COVID-19 and kids what you need to know document, dated August five 2021 and I quote, serious illness remains extremely rare in children.
I also quote, even children with serious underlying conditions will mostly only experience a mild illness with Covid-19 and I also quote, the single most effective tool available to prevent infection in children is to reduce infection in adults.
Countries around the world have demonstrated the effectiveness of vaccination in achieving this.
So I think it is very important that we are responsible, that we provide facts and that we provide confidence to Australian parents that the national plan is about protecting each and every Australian.
Updated
Has Victoria’s mental health outreach improved among disadvantaged community groups?
The Victorian presser ends today with a timely reminder that while we are all living through the pandemic, not everyone is affected equally by it.
Chief Psychiatrist Dr Neil Coventry says Victoria’s culturally diverse groups remain particularly vulnerable in this lockdown, despite improvements on last year:
The main message I’d want to give is we need to work in partnership with cultural and linguistic sensitivity. We need to make sure we’re reaching out in the language that’s appropriate and make sure we deliver services in partnership with community organisations and take our advice from experts who work from the community groups, who can tell us the way we might need to adapt the services we provide.
If we think back to the concerns we had last year with public housing and the lockdowns that happened and how we managed that now, everyone has learnt more about cultural sensitivity ... we have learnt a lot and we manage that in a much more culturally sensitive way. We always need to improve, but we’ve taken our advice from experts ... to make sure we do this in a better way. We are never doing enough to help people that are vulnerable.
We need to look in a holistic way at physical and mental health ... it’s always a balance to look at how we best manage this.”
Crisis support services can be reached 24 hours a day: Lifeline 13 11 14; Suicide Call Back Service 1300 659 467; Kids Helpline 1800 55 1800; MensLine Australia 1300 78 99 78; Beyond Blue 1300 22 4636
Updated
In case you missed it during the NSW presser, here are the numbers for western NSW:
There were 23 new cases in the west: 18 in Dubbo, four in Orange, one in Brewarrina. And four new cases in the far west: all in Wilcannia.
Updated
Greg Hunt adds to that answer from Professor Paul Kelly:
I’ll just add that selectively misusing the Doherty modelling breaches good faith and damages public confidence.
Commonwealth chief health officer, professor Paul Kelly, was also asked to comment on Annastacia Palaszczuk’s use of the Doherty Institute modelling.
If NSW is the model of what lies in store for all of us, then serious discussions are needed.
— Annastacia Palaszczuk (@AnnastaciaMP) September 2, 2021
Doherty Institute modelling predicts, even with 70% of the population vaccinated, 80 people will die each day six months after the outbreak.
That’s 2,240 who will die each month.
Now those numbers are in the report, but Palaszczuk is assuming there will be no public health restrictions in place (which isn’t true, under the plan at 70%) and that it will be a constant 80 deaths a day (which is not what the report says).
Kelly doesn’t address Palaszczuk directly, because that is not his job. He is a public servant and supposed to be apolitical, but he does say it is time to “learn to live with this virus”:
We need to start to learn to live with this virus. We’ve been saying that for a while now but this is the time we need to start to learn to live with this virus.
Within a few weeks we’ll have almost all if not all states at that 70% first dose of vaccination.
We have a national plan that everyone has signed up to it’s based on Doherty modelling that shows that every percentage we get above 70% coverage of vaccination changes things.
It changes the way that the virus is transmitted between people and spread around society.
It changes the nature of the severity of the illness. And so we need to start balancing those things. Of course - and no-one has ever denied this and I certainly haven’t - there will be people that die from Covid.
There are people that have died from Covid so far in this pandemic and it’s a terrible thing but we need to start recognising that’s the case, particularly for unvaccinated people, and so there will be deaths, there will be people admitted to hospital and we have good and strong plans for dealing with hospitalisations and ICU rates.
Updated
'A profound moral failure': Greg Hunt on Qld border separations
Greg Hunt has also held a press conference, where he was asked about the three-year-old boy unable to return home to his parents in Queensland from New South Wales.
And he didn’t hold back:
In terms of compassion, we know that league players and their partners have been allowed into Queensland. The fact that beautiful young children or patients with cancer are being denied entry for reuniting with their families or being treated is, I think, a profound moral failure. This is a profound moral failure. Let these people in for medical treatment and for a three-year-old to be fully reunited with their family.
The NRL players and families are not taking Queensland quarantine spots, and 50 families have been allowed access into Queensland’s paused domestic hotel quarantine system, but again, the optics are just absolutely terrible.
Updated
Martin Foley is asked why the Acquire call centre workers linked to a new outbreak of 17 cases weren’t working from home.
Not a bad point with 400 primary close contacts now in isolation.
Martin Foley:
That will be part of the ongoing public health follow up there. It comes back to the point I made earlier: we need to stop and rethink about our work practices. Not talking about this in particular but every industrial and occupational setting. Think about whether people need to be at work or not.
There are many different arrangements in place across industrial and communications landscapes, where different facilities have different arrangements and Covid-19 safe plans.It has been indicated this particular service as I understand it has a range of contracts and a range of different service providers, governments at different levels, private sector, a whole range of things, and so far as its particular COVID-19 plan, I do understand that is part of its arrangements.
Updated
Still on Victoria with Caitlin Cassidy:
Q: What impact does the changed AstraZeneca guidelines have on efficacy in protecting people in the long term?
Martin Foley:
That is an excellent question. The reason we had started out with the 12 week spacing was the original clinical trials that were conducted on the AstraZeneca vaccine showed that there was a higher degree of protection at that 12 week spacing, compared to people who had less than six weeks of spacing.
Now, in line with the Atagi guidance, because we have established community transmission in Melbourne, because the risk of infection is increasing, because we know with the Delta variant two doses are critically important for getting those high levels of protection, 70% protection against symptomatic illness, added 90% protection against a severe illness and hospitalisation, it really is important that we get those second doses in. This is in line with Atagi guidance.
People will be able to rebook their AstraZeneca vaccinations.
Updated
Back to Melbourne with Caitlin Cassidy:
Dr Rick Haslam from the Royal Children’s Hospital is up.
He says the hospital is seeing “considerable sustained increases” in young people presenting with mental health concerns:
This is on the back of increases in mental health care that have needed to be provided to Victorian children, year on year, in excess of the increases for acute health such as medical and surgical conditions.
These are also conditions that we are seeing in the Royal Children’s Hospital. The source of children’s issues that we are seeing are anxiety, depression, self-harm, suicidal behaviours, and eating disorders.
We have also seen an increase in young people presenting with aggression, both verbal and physical, and often these are children who might have
developmental difficulties such as autism spectrum disorder.This has been the experience of my colleagues across a regional Victoria, across other jurisdictions in Australia, and in fact internationally, there is a really notable rise in anxiety and depression taking its way through children and adolescents.
My key message for parents is that there is excellent information, trusted and reliable information that is available for you.
What parents really need to know is how to support their children through this time, and also how to recognise that their child or adolescent may be struggling.
It is really important for parents to check in themselves on how they are coping, how they are managing, so they can support their family. Parents should reassure their children that their family is top priority.
I think it is important, as I think it Neil has said, for families to persist with their routines, and with healthy activities such as regular meals, exercise each day, and ... ensuring that your children are getting enough sleep. I encourage parents are to praise and reward of their children when they are doing the sorts of things that they would like to see, I recognise that there will be a degree of demoralisation, a demotivation with regard to things like schoolwork.
I would also finally like to encourage parents to look at ways in which the children and adolescents might be able to help other children, families, neighbours, and the community. Think of ways in which they can support others in this difficult time.
Updated
Barr likes national plan but too much 'alpha male, aggressive posturing' about it
Does Andrew Barr believe the national plan is a workable way forward given the fractures?
Barr:
I believe it is, when you actually look at the detail of it.
And I think the problem has been too much glossing over, too much sort of alpha male, aggressive posturing about it, and that really hasn’t helped.
Because when you read the detail of it, it is a good plan.
It reflects the different circumstances that different states and territories, find themselves in.
And I think my greatest frustration is just how distorted some of the coverage of it is, and I know that that doesn’t originate entirely in some sections of the media, but it is largely this regurgitation of oversimplified shorthand seven second media grabs that come a lot from federal politicians, sadly.
It doesn’t reflect what is in the plan.
States and territories didn’t sign up to the plan, easily.
It was a good discussion, and a number of important protections were kept within it, about what would happen at 70 and what would happen at 80 and beyond.
And too many of those things are glossed over and that is really concerning
Updated
Still on Andrew Barr – the ACT chief minister says NSW opening up at 70% “would be very problematic”.
But I do not believe that that is what New South Wales ... intended.
Now, of course, New South Wales can’t do that under the national plan until the nation has reached 70%. So they would be breaking the national plan and breaking the commitment they’ve made to every other state and territory.
Updated
Stop saying 'opening up': ACT chief minister
Back to the ACT and the chief minister Andrew Barr seems pretty frustrated with how the national plan is being discussed by the federal government and NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian:
It would be preferable if the language used was not ‘opening up’ but instead a gradual easing of restrictions because, that is what the national plan actually says.
And that would be even better if the acknowledgment was clearly that 80% is safer than 70%
Both of those things are part of the narrative of the prime minister and the New South Wales premier and treasurer Frydenberg. It would be very helpful for the national debate and probably the nation’s mental health [if they stopped].
... Premier Berejiklian will use the words that she wants to use. I don’t interpret her words, quite the same way as I think what I have heard her say is that she would grant some additional freedoms, ie easing off some restrictions on fully vaccinated people, once that started to get to over 70%.
So I think they’re two different things. I think they’ve been conflated.
Updated
Please remember there is mental health help available if you need it. It’s not perfect, but it is there.
In Victoria, you can find those services here.
Updated
Victorian chief psychiatrist says 'please reach out to your kids'
Dr Neil Coventry continues with his message – here is one for people with kids:
I want to give a few specific messages that I’d like you to take note of.
The first message is a real positive, that people will be able to cope with this, that children and families are resilient.
They have the capacity to use their strengths to get through this challenging situation for the majority.
I also want to stress that there are a few simple things that parents can do to try and help their kids in the recovery.
Very basic, simple things such as maintaining normal routines.
That’s particularly important when we’ve got a situation of home schooling at the moment to get the balance between study, relaxing downtimes, chill-out times, certainly exercise and meal plans but more importantly around sleep patterns, particularly for our vulnerable teenager.
But the thing I would most like to stress is we need to talk to our kids about how they’re coping.
Please, please, please, reach out to your kids.
Don’t be anxious and afraid to have conversations about how your kids are coping, how are they feeling at the moment, what are their challenges and their confusions about what’s going on? I’d really stress this is a series of conversations.
It’s not a one-off single intense conversation.
Choose your opportunities as a parent when you might be doing an activity with your child where you can have some of those conversations.
It’s a case of less is more and conversations to explore how your child might be feeling.
Do encourage them to ask questions and, as adults, try to answer those questions as truthfully as we’re able to do. It’s really important to acknowledge kids’ feelings, to recognise help them to understand how they can manage the distresses that they’re experiencing.
Updated
Victoria’s chief psychiatrist Dr Neil Coventry has also reminded people in Victoria – who have felt lockdown fatigue harder than anyone in the nation – to please take care of their mental health.
And there is no shame in feeling overwhelmed.
Coventry:
I want to make sure that we think about the impact this is having for all of us.
It’s impacting on our own sense of wellbeing, our anxiety, our stress level. We’re all feeling, to some extent, confused and obviously very uncertain about the future. I want to really emphasise this is a very normal reaction to a very be a normal situation that we’re currently experiencing, but the good news I want to share is that fortunately, most of us will be able to cope with this challenge.
We’ll use our normal resources, our strengths, our sense of resilience and the support that we have around us from our family, loved ones and friends.
However, we also need to acknowledge that some people will really struggle, particularly at the moment, some people are really travelling hard.
The people who are really struggling, I want to emphasise we have help available.
We need to identify the people who are finding this extremely challenging and we need to reach out. We need to think in our networks, our social networks, our family, friends, kids, colleagues at work, schoolmates, who might be finding more difficulty and will need extra help and make sure we can link them in to the help that’s available.
Updated
Victoria halves time between AZ vaccinations
This was discussed yesterday, but it has now been approved – people who receive AstraZeneca can be fully vaccinated earlier under new guidelines set out by the state.
Martin Foley says:
Today, I can also announce that dosage interval - so the spacing between the first and the second dose of AstraZeneca vaccine in Victoria - will be revised down from 12 weeks to 6 weeks in all of our state-run services.
So that matches the dosage interval for the Pfizer vaccine, so it will be six weeks for AstraZeneca and for Pfizer bookings going forward. And these changes will be active in the booking system from today.
Updated
Andrew Barr says he is “very concerned” about the impact on children and he would “welcome” further research on it – mirroring Annastacia Palaszczuk’s position.
No visitors for ACT hospitals (outside exemptions)
Visitors have been banned from ACT hospitals, unless in “exceptional” circumstances – end of life care, pregnancy or for children.
So unless you fall into one of those categories, visitors are out.
Updated
17 cases linked to Melbourne call centre
Back to Melbourne for a moment, with Caitlin Cassidy:
Base Backpackers in St Kilda and an Acquire call centre with links to Victoria’s vaccination program have become new exposure sites of concern.
There are now 17 cases linked to the call centre, with 400 employees who have worked since August 25 classified primary close contacts.
There has been one positive case detected at the St Kilda backpackers’ hostel. The case has since been moved to hotel quarantine.
Martin Foley:
Given the nature of the complex, and the shared communal facilities, we are working with our authorised officers, and with the residents there now to establish a public health response, and ensure that the residents can be quarantined safely.
Updated
It really does not sound like the ACT will be coming out of lockdown anytime soon.
It seems like there will be a gradual easing of restrictions, but the major ones will remain in place until vaccination targets are met, given how Andrew Barr is speaking:
The next few months are going to be difficult.
We can only gradually ease restrictions as the vaccination rate increases. This means there will be inconveniences, frustrations, we will try to ease these as much as possible.
Updated
In south-east metro Melbourne? Get tested.
Caitlin Cassidy reports:
Martin Foley says Covid has recently been detected in wastewater across Burwood East, Forest Hill, Glen Waverly, Scoresby, Vermont South and Wheelers Hill between August 26 and August 30.
This is a callout, if you’re in this particular communities, pay particular attention to any symptoms that you might have ... keep an eye on the exposure sites.
But we have now passed over 1,000 exposure sites, and make sure that in any suburbs, that if you show the earliest or even the most mildest of symptoms, please come forward and get tested in any of our state testing sites, or indeed the commonwealth clinic. It is the most important thing that you can do.
Updated
Victorian cases spreading to Melbourne's south and east
Back to Victoria for a moment and Caitlin Cassidy reports:
Martin Foley is providing a geographic breakdown of Victoria’s case numbers.
- 61 cases were detected in western metropolitan Melbourne
- 67 cases were in northern metropolitan Melbourne
- 22 cases were detected in the eastern and southern metropolitan areas
- 13 cases are linked to the Shepparton outbreak
- 1 case has been detected in greater Geelong
- The “precise” location of three cases remains under investigation.
Foley is particularly concerned about rising case numbers emerging in Melbourne’s outer suburbs:
The truth is, as the premier indicated yesterday, we have rising case numbers, and we all need to be increasingly on high alert to the risks that go with increasing transmission of covid in our community.
We know cases are emerging directly in the northern and western suburbs. We are also now starting to see more cases of spring up in the eastern and southern suburbs of Melbourne – 22 cases reported today are a part of the growing set of concerns that we have in those areas.
Updated
The ACT deputy chief health officer, Dr Vanessa Johnston, says two people are now receiving ventilation – a person in their 40s and a person in their 20s.
There are no underlying health conditions, but neither have received a vaccine as yet.
There are 220 exposure sites in Canberra at the moment.
Updated
But this is good news for the ACT.
ACT residents 75-79 years are the first age cohort to pass the 80 per cent threshold for full vaccinations.
— Tom McIlroy (@TomMcIlroy) September 2, 2021
Updated
ACT records 12 new cases
Chief minister Andrew Barr is giving the update.
Six of the new cases are linked, and six are under investigation. At least four people were in quarantine for their entire infectious period.
There are 13 people in hospital; four are in intensive care.
Barr says the next three months will be tough.
Updated
Victoria has administered 5m vaccine doses
Caitlin Cassidy has the Victorian update for you:
The Victorian health minister Martin Foley is speaking now, confirming that of today’s 176 new locally acquired cases, 83 have been linked to known outbreaks, with the source of 93 cases still under investigation.
It is not yet clear how many cases have been in isolation throughout their infectious period.
There are now 1,029 active cases across the state, with 61 people being treated in hospital including 21 in intensive care and 13 requiring ventilation.
Foley has been joined today by acting chief health officer Ben Cowie, psychiatrist Dr Neil Coventry and Royal Children’s Hospital mental health services director Dr Rick Haslam.
Turning to the vaccination rollout, Victoria has now administered five million doses of vaccines since the rollout began.
Foley:
Yesterday there were 33,720 vaccines administered through the state clinics, and that brings us ... together with the other parts, particularly GPs and pharmacists, to have now passed 5 million doses of a vaccine.
Which also brings us to more than halfway to our recent one million vaccines in the five week’s target that we launched a few weeks ago. Because we know that vaccines continue to be their way out of this pandemic, and the way to gradual easing of the restrictions, and there is no more important thing than either getting tested, if you show any signs, and
getting a vaccine as soon as you can.
Updated
Brad Hazzard takes aim at 'keyboard warriors' not getting vaccinated
NSW Health minister Brad Hazzard was asked about how the NSW health system will cope with what is coming, given it is already “on its knees”.
Hazzard:
It is not. The health system New South Wales is world-class. I want to thank the doctors, the nurses, all of the staff and the hospitals that are looking after our patients, but obviously, as I have said numerous times, hospitals work in a network.
We had [specialists] point out in the last week, both pointed out that the entire system works as a network, transferring patients from time to time from one section in a hospital to a similar section in another hospital is entirely normal.
And that is not to understate the pressure that our hospitals are under.
And that, I think, emphasises the point that we all have a responsibility to go and get vaccinated.
Each of the doctors who have come before this press conference in the last two weeks have stressed that we all have an obligation to go and get vaccinated.
Yesterday we were told not to listen to social media, by people who are not qualified in anything except hiding behind a keyboard.
The short answer here is, science and medicine tells us that we need to get vaccinated. I mean, sometimes when I hear what is going on social media it is like the days of the bubonic plague, you know, the Dark Ages, 1348. We still expect that we won’t have vaccines. Well, we have got vaccines. We are not in the Dark Ages. Some of these people who are ... keyboard warriors, hiding behind their screens and scaring others, not getting vaccinated, they are really quite irresponsible.
Listen to the science, listen to the doctors, get vaccinated, and he will be doing yourself, your community, and your nation a favour.
Updated
The Queensland premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, has been addressing this in the state parliament:
I sympathise with people in other states enduring months of lockdown, but my job is to protect the people of Queensland. That's why I'm calling to see the detailed modelling. #covid19 pic.twitter.com/Q10Gyb2OW1
— Annastacia Palaszczuk (@AnnastaciaMP) September 2, 2021
But are the numbers Annastacia Palaszczuk has put up, correct?
Gladys Berejiklian:
The Doherty report is a public document, so everybody can read that document, but those numbers are across the nation.
So if you look at the population of Queensland, you can then extrapolate what that means for Queensland on what it means [for] New South but if New South Wales has 600 to 800 people who die of the flu every year, if you extrapolate that across the nation and tripled it, that is nearly 2500 people across the nation who die of the flu every year.
Now, I know this is a very difficult conversation to have. This is what will get us through, this is the light at the end of the tunnel, accepting Covid is part of our lives, accepting that unfortunately people will die, but they will be less likely to die if everybody is vaccinated and this is the reality.
That is why, as New South Wales is the largest state, we have often had to lead the debate on this, and often I have had to say something is a state leader, as difficult as it has been, it is to help all of us come together and manage the transition to living with Covid normal.
Updated
Gladys Berejiklian is now asked about these figures from Annastacia Palaszczuk:
If NSW is the model of what lies in store for all of us, then serious discussions are needed.
— Annastacia Palaszczuk (@AnnastaciaMP) September 2, 2021
Doherty Institute modelling predicts, even with 70% of the population vaccinated, 80 people will die each day six months after the outbreak.
That’s 2,240 who will die each month.
Berejiklian continues her theme of not speaking about the worst-case scenarios:
I don’t want to comment specifically on those figures, but I will say this.
Firstly, we have to accept we are in a pandemic, and of course reducing the mortality rate and increasing vaccination is key, we also have to put things into perspective.
The sad reality is outside of a pandemic, we lose between 600 and 800 people every year to the flu.
We have to put things into perspective. Nobody likes to talk about this because it is confronting.
But we have to get back to living life as normal as possible, knowing that Covid is among us.
... You have deaths just from the flu. It is a tragedy, I was providing a supportive message to the heart disease foundation every day and 50 people every day lose their lives to heart disease.
Death is horrible. But we also need to put things into perspective, because at the moment there are 8 million citizens who do not have a choice in how they spend their free time, who do not have a choice about what they can do when they leave their homes.
That is no way to live.
And Victoria is going through the same in Victoria has had six major lockdowns.
So life is difficult, and what we have to do is sensibly transition to what living with Covid is like.
Generations earlier, our forefathers and for mothers would have had to have thought about how they live with the flu because flu used to kill, especially those vulnerable, without the vaccine, so we have to get really real about what we are facing, and I know sometimes it is difficult to hear, and I remember specifically the day I said we would never get to Covid zero, but that is the reality. What we need to do is live with Covid normal, and getting to 80% double dose adult population gets us on our way
Updated
Gladys Berejiklian is asked if she can speak to Annastacia Palaszczuk and do something about the three-year-old Queenslander who is stranded in Griffith, NSW.
Berejiklian ignores the part about the phone call and says there are “hundreds” of cases like that every day.
While that case has been highlighted, [there are] hundreds and hundreds of other cases like that. And I just want to put that on the record – while we hear about these cases from time to time, there are hundreds and hundreds of cases like that every day. And that is why all of us, no matter which state we live in, no matter what our circumstances are, all of us have to display a degree of compassion and understanding because perfection in a pandemic can never be achieved.
Updated
Again, when states open, even at those vaccination targets, there are still going to be people with underlying conditions who are vulnerable.
Q: But will you say they’ve had a chance?
Gladys Berejiklian:
Obviously the commonwealth have responsibility for some priority groups and we’re addressing those challenges but there’s ample supply of AstraZeneca.
Anybody should come forward and get vaccinated. We don’t want to see anybody vulnerable without vaccine.
This is I’ve said a couple of times, a pandemic, an epidemic of the unvaccinated. When we see people who are fully vaccinated hospitalised or horribly die, often there are other conditions associated with that. So let’s be very clear.
The evidence is quite stark and I say to the other states – don’t assume because you don’t have cases today you won’t tomorrow or the day after. Get ready. Vaccinate your populations, get intensive care capacity going as we’ve already done to make sure you can meet those challenges, because there is no way that Australia or parts of Australia will be Covid-free, especially once we hit those 70% and 80% double doses.
Updated
What about vulnerable people? Is it the case that once we reach 70% there’s an assumption that everybody has had a chance?
Gladys Berejiklian:
We’ve already started the strategy to make sure we target those initial communities.
When any of us see anybody over 70 who is not vaccinated, that’s a huge concern.
I’m 50. I’ve had AstraZeneca. There’s no reason for anyone not to accept either vaccine and I just urge people who are older, the statistics are the best source of truth.
They tell us if you’re double-dose vaccinated, the chances of you getting into hospital or intensive care are much, much lower, but the risks increase whether you have an illness or a co-morbidity. And what we do when we report the tragic deaths from Covid, we say someone who died with Covid but sometimes people have underlying conditions or serious illness and that’s why we’re completely transparent. But we appreciate how strongly and how well vaccines work.
Updated
Q: When we look at 70% and 80% vaccination doses, will you look at that as a state figure or will you be looking at it in areas of breakdown – if a certain area has not got to 70% will it mean the whole state is in less freedom?
Gladys Berejiklian:
As much as possible, that’s why - and the deputy premier certainly does this with the regions - we keep a keen eye on seeing how every local government area is doing and we would love to see the state move forward together.
Generally speaking, most areas are. Some are doing above that and some below that and if a particular area is not doing as as well as others, we ask why and what we can do to address that.
We’re mindful that we want to bring the state forward together. We’re keen to make sure that when we provide opportunities for people that are vaccinated. It will be across the state for simplicity but also in terms of the fact that when vaccinated people come together, the risk of getting Covid and spreading Covid vastly decreases. And we know from one shot you get protection and double dose you get extra protection but when you have people coming together who are completely vaccinated, the risk of spreading disease and hospitalisation massively declines.
We’ll like everybody to move forward together. We acknowledge there are some communities we have to put concentrated effort into and that’s why it gives me great joy when we look at local government areas of concern, some had rates as low as 19% first dose and now they’re 65% and higher, which is encouraging. So we are working now because obviously hitting the double dose 70% we envisage will happen around mid-October so we have between now and then to focus on communities who may not be traveling as well as others and try and get the rate up as high as possible.
Once we get to 70% single dose during the day, as Dr Chant has said, we’re keeping a keen eye to see how quickly we get to 80% first dose. The more people vaccinated with at least one dose when we open up gives [an] extra layer of protection.
Updated
Here’s what the data looks like:
'Living with Covid is a reality, not an option': Berejiklian
Q: Premier, when will people be able to travel to regional New South Wales for leisure, holidays, to see families? 70%? Or 80%?
Gladys Berejiklian:
They’re the issues we’re discussing at the moment, so we’re looking at all the things that we would love people to do at 70% double dosed and that’s an option on the table.
The deputy premier and I have been discussions on this with the health team in the last 24 hours.
The New South Wales government in conjunction with health experts and agencies across the board are working on finalising our road map on what 70% double dose looks like and 80% double dose.
And we know at 80% double dose we have a keen eye about international travel, about welcoming home more Australians through Sydney Airport.
We have to accept living with Covid is a reality, not an option, and any state premier who thinks it’s an option, unfortunately, is not considering what the real world experience is. And the real world experience is all of us as Australians, no matter where we live, maybe not today or next week, but all Australians have to accept that living with Covid is the future, not an option.
It’s not an option any of us like but it’s an option we have to confront and we have so or our citizens to work their way through. When regional tourism and tourism across the state can start taking shape, we’re certainly looking at those options for 70% double dose and we’ll take the advice of the health experts.
Updated
Dr Kerry Chant can’t say right now how many people are in the health hotels at the moment – the accommodation which has been set up for health staff who can’t isolate at home.
Updated
Health staff are already warning of a staffing crisis. So given what is coming, what is being done to address the staffing resources in NSW hospitals, given it won’t be able to take from other states?
Dr Kerry Chant:
I’d start that question with what can we do to prevent that? We can prevent future cases but not past cases. We can prevent cases into the future by taking up vaccination and making sure we follow the rules and cooperate fully with contact tracers and other public health requirements.
Clearly our ICU capacity is something we’re looking at closely. There have been well developed plans for what sort of surge staffing, and there’s been a lot of retraining of different staff throughout the pandemic in planning for a rise in cases that need intensive care.
Q: How many ICU beds do we have available? And how many are retrained to add to them?
Chant:
I haven’t got that data with me for the press conference but clearly we’re looking at all of the different elements that make up an ICU. And I think a few days ago we had an intensive care doctor speak ... and an intensive care nurse and they talked about the team approach that you need: wardsmen, nurses, nurses that can manage ventilated patients ... and other people that provide care.
All of that work has been done 18 months ago and it will continue to be refined. So the community should be reassured that we have a networked system.
When I heard how hard our intensive care and intensive care nurses and staff in intensive cares are working, of course we want to prevent those cases going to intensive care and that’s why I urge you to get vaccinated.
Updated
What is being done about the backlog of people waiting to be cleared from isolation by NSW Health?
Dr Kerry Chant:
Our clinical teams have had to scale given the high case numbers and so the systems are being refined and put in place. The clinical teams will assess whether someone is symptom-free after 14 days.
There’s a guideline developed by the Communicable Diseases Network of Australia that outlines the release criterium and if you are not immuno-suppressed, if you haven’t got ongoing symptoms, you are released and we’re streamlining those processes.
Can I genuinely apologise for - I’m aware of a few cases where people are at day 15 or day 16 and have no symptoms. Those clinical teams are getting to you and we’re trying to make sure that we have cleared everyone appropriately.
Updated
When does the pandemic end and Covid become endemic?
Dr Kerry Chant:
I think that’s the reality that most of the world has been confronting.
What we’re really pleased to say is we’ve got great vaccines and I’ve indicated before, I think, that we will be getting vaccinated regularly.
There will be new strains that emerge potentially and we’ll have boosters, a bit like seasonal flu. So every year in seasonal flu, they try and predict which strains are the predominating strains and we have a vaccine.
What’s useful is some of the technology, we’ve made vaccines quicker than we’ve ever made them before and so some of the mRNA technology gives us hope that we’ll be able to rapidly accommodate any changes in the virus.
But that’s where we’re going to be and the key message is we need to get that second-dose protection.
Whilst I’m very pleased we are at 70% first dose, as you know, I’ve previously said I want to see the sky as the limit. I think Australia can be the most vaccinated country in the world, because we believe in science and we believe in vaccines.
But what I also need to do is get that second dose into people, because two doses protects.
Updated
Dr Kerry Chant says people need to stop taking the horse paste (ivermectin):
I mean my message would be simple for all these things. Make sure that you’ve got your health care provided by a health care practitioner and that you seek advice before taking any medications. It is important to seek the best health advice. Our doctors in Australia are across the literature in terms of what drugs and therapies are useful in Covid. Please listen to them.
Updated
What is going to happen to people who have recently had Covid and have been advised they can’t get the vaccine for at least three months?
Dr Kerry Chant:
Clearly the advice is that within six weeks of an infection you’re unlikely to be re-infected with Delta but actually natural immunity to Delta or any virus is less effective than a vaccine in terms of long-term immunity. So what we would suggest is that we will probably have to work up a system where people can indicate they’ve had recent Covid and that would be developed into thinking but there may be circumstances where people are in industries or settings where we have a clinical discussion with them and offer the vaccine to those individuals as well. It’s not a cut and dry.
It is a general guide and we will base that on Atagi advice.
Updated
NSW hits 70% first vaccine dose milestone, premier says
When will NSW residents see a roadmap out?
Gladys Berejiklian:
The bottom line is: when it’s safe to do so. You don’t only look at the number of cases in a particular location but also where movements are and where cases are going.
We’re looking at that on a daily basis. The public health team gives me that information on a daily basis. We’re looking to provide further relief for local government areas of concern.
We know that between 70% and 80% of all cases are still coming from those cases. However, there are some councils we’re looking at to see if we can relieve those burdens or even part of councils. That’s ongoing work.
Now we’ve hit 70% first dose across the state, we have some greater flexibility of looking at how we can ease the burden of citizens and that is why I was pleased to announce that all those local government areas of concern will have the same rules for exercise apply to them, that is unlimited [exercise] between 5am and 9pm, which I hope will be a welcome relief for many families who live in households with a number of children in particular.
Updated
And here’s the breakdown of new cases:
Of the 1,288 locally acquired cases reported to 8pm last night, 445 are from Western Sydney Local Health District (LHD), 387 are from South Western Sydney LHD, 149 are from Sydney LHD, 101 are from South Eastern Sydney LHD, 82 are from Nepean Blue Mountains LHD,
— NSW Health (@NSWHealth) September 2, 2021
31 are from Northern Sydney LHD, 23 are from Western NSW LHD, 22 are from Illawarra Shoalhaven LHD, seven are from Central Coast LHD, five are from Far West LHD, four are from Hunter New England LHD, 11 are in a correctional centre and 21 cases are yet to be assigned to an LHD.
— NSW Health (@NSWHealth) September 2, 2021
Updated
Dr Kerry Chant:
We have had some sewage detections in areas where we don’t have cases and that causes us a degree of concern.
So in southern New South Wales, Bega and Cooma, and the Illawarra Shoalhaven in Bomaderry.
So please come and get tested if you have any symptoms and isolate until you receive a negative result.
The areas of concern are Auburn, Guildford, Merrylands, Greenacre, Punchbowl, Blacktown and Liverpool but, as I’ve repeatedly said, everyone has to be at risk.
We are seeing cases increase in other areas and other suburbs so it’s important as we go about daily requirements to practise Covid-safe behaviours.
In terms of the Central Coast, there have been seven new cases reported in the Central Coast to 8pm last night and three of those are linked to a previously notified case, but unfortunately all seven were infectious in the community. There’s been some unlinked cases in the Central Coast that are raising concern.
Updated
Dr Kerry Chant starts her update:
There are now 957 people with Covid in NSW hospitals.
Chant:
There’s currently 160 people in intensive care and 64 of whom require ventilation.
Sadly, we’ve been notified of seven deaths of people who had Covid-19.
A man in his 80s from south-western Sydney died at Campbelltown Hospital.
He had underlying health conditions and wasn’t vaccinated. A woman in her 80s from south-western district died at Liverpool Hospital. She was not vaccinated.
A man in his 70s from south-western Sydney died at Liverpool Hospital. He acquired his infection at the hospital.
And he’s the 12th death linked to this outbreak.
He had received both doses of a vaccination. He did have significant underlying conditions.
A man in his 80s from Sydney’s north shore died at Hornsby Ku-ring-gai Hospital and he acquired his infection at the hospital.
He had received both doses of vaccination but had significant underlying conditions.
We’ve got a gentleman in his 50s from south-western Sydney who died at Royal North Shore Hospital. Again, he was not vaccinated and had underlying health conditions.
There was a gentleman in his 80s from south-western Sydney. He died at St George Hospital and a woman in her 70s from south-western Sydney who died at Campbelltown Hospital.
Can I extend my deepest sympathy to the families of the loved ones.
Updated
Berejiklian wants more Australians home from overseas for Christmas
Gladys Berejiklian repeats what she said yesterday – she wants to open NSW to overseas vaccinated Australians at the 80% vaccination rate, but she walks it back a tiny bit from what she said yesterday:
I stress that at 80% double-dose vaccination, we anticipate allowing our citizens to access international travel and also to welcoming home Australians through Sydney airport, and that is something we want to do on behalf of the nation because during a pandemic we can’t pretend that we’re separate nations within one nation.
We all need to work together. New South Wales will support the national [plan] and aim to stick to the plan but also to welcome home as many Aussies as possible. I want to see as many Australians as possible across Australia and those who are overseas join their loved ones in Australia for a happy Christmas.
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Unlimited exercise for LGAs of concern in greater Sydney
There has been an ease of restrictions for people in the 12 greater Sydney local government areas of concern.
The curfew is in place, but there is now unlimited exercise.
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Victoria will hold their press conference at 11.30. Caitlin Cassidy will bring you the headlines.
Back to NSW.
NSW records 1,288 new cases and seven deaths
Another seven people in NSW have died during this outbreak.
Gladys Berejiklian says that October will be worse.
More than 120,000 more people received their vaccinations. The premier says NSW will today hit 70% of eligible adults who have had their first dose.
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Liberal senator Andrew Bragg wants the AEC to look at the groups being set up to support independent candidates:
I have written to the Australian Electoral Commission asking it to investigate 40 groups set up almost exclusively in electorates represented by the Government.
In a democracy like Australia, it is critical that people can find out who is behind candidates for public office and where their funding is sourced.
We have laws to ensure these disclosures are made to electors. I am concerned these laws are not being followed. The ‘Voices of…’ or ‘Voices for…’ groups maintain a veneer of being unaligned community groups but are unmistakably political: they intend to unseat Government MPs at the next election.
Unlike proclaimed political groups, ‘Voices of…’ are not held to the same standards of transparency. Under electoral laws websites, social media and other material needs to carry a message of authorisation, but many of these groups fail to do that.
Some have donation portals which have raised tens of thousands of dollars but their donors, many of whom remain completely anonymous, and aren’t forced to disclose whether they are foreigners. The AEC needs to investigate whether these groups are being transparent with their funding. The groups need to provide disclosures to the AEC if their expenditure exceeds the disclosure threshold.
Australians deserve to know who candidates for federal office are and exactly who is funding them. Our laws demand it and they must be enforced.
The NSW press conference is almost upon us.
We’ll bring you that live.
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AAP has chatted to a couple of economists who are not feeling as optimistic as the treasurer that the economy will bounce back as strongly as it did after the last major lockdowns:
RBC Capital Markets chief economist Su-Lin Ong is expecting a larger contraction in the September quarter of three per cent and a slower recovery.
“The odds are we are never going back to zero-type cases, there are likely to be restrictions of some sort well into probably late this year and even into early next year,” Ms Ong told an S&P Global Ratings online panel discussion.
“That is going to temper activity. I don’t think we are going back to the type of world we were in prior to Delta.
HSBC chief economist Paul Bloxham has a similar view.
“We had ‘V’ shaped recoveries last year because we got back to zero cases and we reopened,” he said.
“This time round we think the recovery is going to be much, much more gradual.”
However, they both thought there would be a positive growth result in the December quarter, avoiding a technical recession of two consecutive negative quarters, but only partially recovering from the September quarter dive in activity.
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Meanwhile in Victoria:
BREAKING: Victoria will become the first state in Australia to BAN the public display of Nazi symbols, including the Swastika. @10NewsFirstMelb
— Patrick Murrell (@pamurrell) September 2, 2021
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Meanwhile, the Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk is making her national plan view clearer – she wants more modelling.
If NSW is the model of what lies in store for all of us, then serious discussions are needed.
— Annastacia Palaszczuk (@AnnastaciaMP) September 2, 2021
Doherty Institute modelling predicts, even with 70% of the population vaccinated, 80 people will die each day six months after the outbreak.
That’s 2,240 who will die each month.
I sympathise with people interstate enduring months of lockdown, but my job is to protect Queenslanders.
— Annastacia Palaszczuk (@AnnastaciaMP) September 2, 2021
That’s what we’ve done since the start of the pandemic and we will continue to do.
That's why I'm calling to see detailed modelling so we can give Queenslanders answers.
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Government moves to protect national cabinet secrecy
Morning all. Well this is pretty interesting.
Down in the House, the government has just introduced the Coag Legislation Amendment Bill 2021.
Sounds pretty dull until you look at what it does. According to the explanatory memorandum, this bill makes clear “that where commonwealth legislation makes provisions to protect from disclosure the deliberations and decisions of the cabinet and its committees, these provisions apply to the deliberations and decisions of the committee of cabinet known as the national cabinet”.
This looks like clean up legislation in response to a recent significant victory the independent senator Rex Patrick had in a legal case to gain access to minutes of the national cabinet.
Patrick argued the prime minister had no grounds to extend cabinet confidentiality to his national cabinet meetings with state premiers and chief ministers.
Justice Richard White agreed, finding the national cabinet was not, as the prime minister had contended, a subcommittee of the federal cabinet.
Looks like the government wants to ensure secrecy stays despite the AAT ruling.
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Rex Patrick has put on record that One Nation had indicated they would support his far more extensive jobkeeper disclosure amendment, and asked them why they’re no longer backing it.
Senator Pauline Hanson has conceded that One Nation had said “yes, it sounded good to hold companies accountable’” but had changed their view when they concluded it is “not going to achieve what it intended”.
Senator Malcolm Roberts explained the reason for this is there is “no way to match the jobkeeper information with other financial information”. Without knowing whether the companies that received wage subsidies made a profit or loss, one can’t tell whether jobkeeper was wasted, and can’t “separate those who have rorted from those who did the right thing by employees”.
Roberts also argued that companies won’t be required to return the money. Which is a curious argument, because One Nation haven’t put up an amendment that does that either.
Roberts argued the “power of shame is ineffective against the shameless” – it was a reference to companies that can’t be compelled to repay jobkeeper, but perhaps the same is also true of politicians?
Reader – you be the judge.
Hanson also noted that Labor and crossbench amendments will fail in the house, whereas One Nation’s can pass with government support.
Patrick is now replying. He noted naming and shaming does work – in New Zealand where recipients are published 5% of wage subsidies have been paid back, but just 0.25% has been paid back in Australia.
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Queensland family refusing testing, may have travelled to Melbourne: D'ath
And here is Yvette D’Ath explaining the concerns around a family of five who may have traveled to Melbourne and came back undetected. Members of the family are now unwell, but are refusing testing.
D’Ath:
I can also inform the House that authorities are seeking information from a family of five on the Gold Coast who have been placed in hotel quarantine.
Early indications are this family recently travelled to Melbourne before returning undetected to the Gold Coast via an inland route.
Unfortunately, this family is refusing to be tested and so far, is not cooperating with authorities and refusing to reveal where they’ve been.
However, we do know the children in this family did attend school on 31 August at the Australian International Islamic College in Carrara.
In light of these developments in Logan and on the Gold Coast, we’re encouraging anyone in these LGAs to get tested and isolate until they receive their results.
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Here was the Queensland health minister, Yvette D’Ath, telling the Queensland parliament about the new Covid case:
A 46-year-old male truck driver from Windaroo, who tested positive in Pimpama and is deemed infectious from 27 August.
He was in the Queensland community between 28
August and 1 September.The man is currently in NSW and Queensland Health is seeking to locate this man, to commence contact tracing in order to identify any local exposure sites.
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Remember how Rex Patrick successfully challenged the national cabinet being considered cabinet in confidence?
Well, Murph tells me the government has just introduced legislation into the house to protect the secrecy of the national cabinet, which if passed would circumvent the court ruling.
She’ll have more on that for you very soon.
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The new Queensland case is being spoken about in the state’s parliamentary sitting, through ministerial statements.
The truck driver who was reported yesterday was infectious for one day in Queensland – but is counted as a NSW case, as he was tested in NSW.
The truck driver reported today is back in NSW, so Queensland Health is still investigating where he may have been while in Queensland.
A family of five has been placed in hotel quarantine, with concerns they may have traveled interstate and back. They are not co-operating with authorities, so there seems to be a bit of confusion around this case.
Basically, if you are in south-east Queensland, check the exposure sites.
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In the Senate, Pauline Hanson’s One Nation has lodged amendments to a government treasury bill requiring publicly-listed companies to disclose how much jobkeeper they received.
The problem is, listed companies already do this in their annual reports. So other than consolidating the information in one place, to be published by Asic, the amendments don’t really improve transparency in the scheme.
Independent Rex Patrick, Labor, the Greens, and the rest of the crossbench had been pushing for an amendment for all companies to disclose their jobkeeper receipts.
Last night Patrick told the Senate the One Nation amendment is “a dud – it actually doesn’t do very much” and that “big private companies” will be “clinking their champagne glasses tonight, toasting to Pauline Hanson”.
Patrick then listed all the companies One Nation, with the government’s support, is letting off the hook:
It does not include hundreds of foreign controlled companies operating in this country that may have put up their hands for jobkeeper, because they’re not listed on the Australian stock market. So everyone should absolutely know what’s happening here.
Senator Hanson and One Nation are permitting foreign controlled companies to get away with taking Australian taxpayers’ money that was given to them by way of jobkeeper. That’s what’s happening—companies such as the Bank of China, Jemena and Wilson. They’re all companies that are Chinese-owned and are not listed on the stock market yet may well have received jobkeeper. I’ll go to some other ones. The big four consultants, with their very secretive partnerships, are not required under this amendment to disclose how much jobkeeper they may or may not have received.
It doesn’t include clubs. It doesn’t include private schools. It doesn’t include political parties that have stuck their hands up for jobkeeper and may not have had a change in revenue at all but are basking in taxpayers’ money and will continue to do so because Senator Hanson and One Nation have moved an amendment which will get government support, and I presume that, as a result of that, they’re not going to support my far more encompassing amendment. So those political parties may well enjoy that taxpayer funded benefit, money that could have been used for other things.
What about the very large private companies? We’ve all been talking about these large companies that don’t even have to file financial reports because they’re grandfathered. Not only do they not have to file financial reports but One Nation has given them a free kick.
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There was an alert yesterday about a Covid-positive NSW truck driver who passed through Queensland.
But the latest Queensland case seems to be a new infection.
This driver, who lives on the Gold Coast, is believed to have been infectious in the community for the past five days.
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NSW will hold its daily press conference at 11am.
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Queensland records new Covid case
Queensland has recorded one new case of Covid – a truck driver who had traveled to NSW.
His family has been placed in quarantine.
Thursday 2 September – coronavirus cases in Queensland:
— Annastacia Palaszczuk (@AnnastaciaMP) September 1, 2021
1 new locally acquired case.
1 new overseas acquired case, detected in hotel quarantine.#covid19 pic.twitter.com/3DcRwexRv8
New exposure sites have been added:
⚠️ Public Health Alert ⚠️
— Queensland Health (@qldhealthnews) September 1, 2021
Queensland Health is issuing new contact tracing locations for: 📍 Bundamba
Full details can be found at: https://t.co/rujm8ELPTw pic.twitter.com/wCrtnfr61B
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Anthony Albanese held a doorstop to talk about Labor’s plan for a defence force posture review (basically, what do Australia’s defences actually look like) but spent the whole time answering questions on Annastacia Palaszczuk’s stance that under-12s need to be vaccinated (yes, there are trials, but there is no vaccine which has been approved for children that young as yet – anywhere).
Q: Annastacia Palaszczuk said yesterday that she would effectively keep her border closed until children under the age of 12 are vaccinated. Employment minister Stuart Robert says if she sticks to that plan, it’ll mean economic Armageddon for Queensland.
Albanese: Well, I support the national plan. And what the national plan provides for is for a reduction in restrictions upon achieving the 70% and 80% full vaccination rates. Now, there is also a case that the prime minister and the government need to outline what the plan is to vaccinate 12- to 15-year olds, and whether those numbers should be included as part of those targets. Labor has said that is a matter for the national cabinet, although we are in favour of it. But that is a decision for the national cabinet to consider as the national plan is adjusted going forward. But at the moment, there aren’t vaccines that have been approved for those people under 12. And we do need to open up when it is safe to do so.
Q: So is Annastacia Palaszczuk scaremongering when she talks about the risks to children under the age of 12?
Albanese: Look, parents are very worried about their children. Parents are worried about homeschooling in states that are locked down. In states that aren’t locked down, they’re worried about the impact that this disease could have. And that’s why it’s important that 12- to 15-year olds be fully vaccinated. But we need to follow the health advice.
Q: But she’s talking about under-12s in this scenario. So is she scaremongering?
Albanese: We need to ensure that we follow the advice. Federal Labor has been very clear. We support the national plan. All these matters will be a matter, I’m sure, for debate going forward, but at the moment what’s been approved is the vaccine for 12- to 15-year olds.
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This explains why my phone now says #letsVaxx
Telstra has launched its own vaccination campaign, which includes ... incentives (from its statement):
1. Fully vaccinated members of our Telstra Plus loyalty program will receive 2,500 bonus Telstra Plus points.
2. When claiming their points, fully vaccinated Telstra Plus members will go into a 100 million point major prize draw, with 20 winners to receive five million Telstra Plus points each and $3,500 credit to cover the cost of eligible Telstra services for a year.
3. All Telstra Plus members, regardless of vaccination, will receive a digital care package including a Telstra TV Box Office movie, discounts on food delivery and access to discounts in the Telstra Plus rewards store.
Pretty mad at @markhumphries for making me retweet a promoted tweet. https://t.co/Bhm9VFpnb7
— Calla Wahlquist (@callapilla) September 1, 2021
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Especially when it comes to the Queensland premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk:
The Queensland premier can speak for herself. The point that we’re making is that she is reflecting a lot of concern, a lot of anxiety in the community, that people have about the vaccination of our kids.
Q: She’s been accused of scaremongering though. Is she scaremongering?
Chalmers:
Well not by me. No, of course not. And the premier right throughout this pandemic has made the right decisions on the basis of good health advice to keep Queenslanders safe.
I’m here on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, and the businesses here want to see the economy open up but they want to see it opened up safely. And that means making sure that we limit the spread of the virus and the premier has been spectacularly successful at that. She’s earned the right to have an opinion about these issues. The point that I’m making, is that the Prime Minister doesn’t even have a plan to vaccinate the twelve to fifteen year olds, before we even get to the under twelves. There is a lot of anxiety amongst Australian parents, they haven’t heard from the Prime Minister how he intends to vaccinate our kids. That seems to be a key gap in the national plan. We want to see the national plan implemented, but in order to do that we’ve got to have a plan for kids, we’ve got to have a plan for hospitals, for isolation, for quarantine, for tracing. All of these issues, priority groups, making sure they’re vaccinated. This national plan talks about seven or eight in ten Australians being fully vaccinated, we’re at barely three in ten at the moment. And that’s because the prime minister hasn’t got his act together. That’s why the economy is slowing last quarter and shrinking this quarter, it’s why there’s all this social dislocation and economic damage being done.
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Queensland Labor MP Jim Chalmer’s main job at the moment seems to be explaining the mindset of state premiers who are urging caution with the national plan, while trying to remind people of the federal government’s role:
Here he is on the ABC this morning:
I think the premiers, in different ways around the country, are saying it’s one thing to have a national plan but let’s make sure that we get all the constituent parts of that right. Our view in federal Labor is we support the national plan but what it requires is us to get a few things right as a nation - whether it’s test, and trace, and track, and isolate, and quarantine, whether it’s making sure that hospitals can cope, not leaving people behind, making sure there’s a plan for twelve to fifteen year olds – we need to make sure that we can get all these things right. We want to open up as a country but we need to do that safely and confidently. That requires those things to go well. But most fundamentally, the reason we’re locked down, the reason the economy was slowing in the last quarter and shrinking in this quarter, is because the prime minister hasn’t done his job on vaccines and quarantine. Those are the two most important things that Scott Morrison needs to get right if we are to open up like people want us to.
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Further to what we were saying on the economy, here is Grogs:
In June the recovery had already begun to slow, if (as some predict) Sept has a 4% fall, then we lose a lot of ground https://t.co/W0G9lAR71c pic.twitter.com/6gMLzehVqW
— Greg Jericho (@GrogsGamut) September 1, 2021
We have said it before, but one of the hardest switches of the transition with the national plan will be switching up people’s mindsets. After spending the better part of two years with an aggressive suppression strategy, which let people live (outside of those months and months in Victoria) a fairly regular life within their states (with some domestic travel at times) suddenly accepting that big numbers are going to be a part of life, when we’ve been told to keep those down, is going to be tough.
Vaccinations will offer protection. At the 80% target though (adult population) there will still be a lot of people getting sick, hospitalised and yes, dying. Leaders are calling that switch ‘managing a pandemic of the unvaccinated’ which they say will be easier for the health system to handle. But that doesn’t mean it won’t be rough, that the people getting sick don’t have people who love them, or that the health system is not in for an exceptionally tough time, which for the most part, most of the country had previously avoided.
There is a lot of nuance in this debate which is being missed as leaders, and people, pick their black and white corners. We are all going to be living in the grey zone though. More needs to be done to get people ready for that.
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Victoria records 176 new Covid cases
83 have been linked:
Reported yesterday: 176 new local cases and no new cases acquired overseas.
— VicGovDH (@VicGovDH) September 1, 2021
- 33,720 vaccine doses were administered
- 48,372 test results were received
More later: https://t.co/lIUrl1hf3W#COVID19Vic #COVID19VicData [1/2] pic.twitter.com/bguhXFw66S
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We haven’t heard much of the eye twitching ‘technology not taxes’ slogan from the government this week (no one is suggesting taxes, so it doesn’t even make sense) but Guardian Australia environment and science team have an update – scientists just want the government to get on with it.
In an explicit response to the government’s “technology, not taxes” approach to reducing emissions, the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering has released a position statement calling on the government to “prioritise the immediate deployment of existing mature, low-carbon technologies which can make deep cuts to high-emitting sectors before 2030”.
The academy has also urged the government to set a more ambitious emissions target for 2030 ahead of the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow, following calls by diplomats, scientists, business leaders, and backbench Coalition MPs Warren Entsch and Jason Falinski.
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Lodge sleepover buddies, Josh Frydenberg and Scott Morrison (Frydenberg has been staying at the Lodge while he is in Canberra for this sitting) have been very keen to talk about the economy ‘bouncing back’ (no longer a snap back) once lockdowns end, pointing out that it has done it before.
But ‘before’ there was A LOT more government financial support. For individuals, it was about double. The last time the nation’s biggest state was in lockdown, jobkeeper was at its highest levels, and there was more support in general (free childcare, boosted jobseeker payments etc)
That’s been cut.
Frydenberg was pushed on that point while appearing on ABC News Breakfast this morning:
I’m confident that once restrictions are eased that the economy will bounce back. That being said, we saw in the March quarter a resilient economy with growth above expectations.
Q: There was more government money going into the economy. It’s completely different. All the experts yesterday [were] saying it’s not going to have the same bounce back.
Frydenberg:
What the experts have said is that yesterday was a solid result. For 29 days out of the June quarter we saw lockdowns in one part of the country or another. Treasury are expecting the economy to contract by 2% and that’s a function of New South Wales and Victoria being in lockdown. But once we hit those 70 to 80% targets, we’ll see an easing of restrictions. And that will be very important to boost household consumption, to give businesses certainty to invest and obviously to support the creation of more jobs. The economy’s recovery very much depends on sticking to this plan.
It also depends on how much money people have when lockdown ends as well.
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It took quite a while for the federal government to include them in the rollout, but pharmacies have given a boost to the vaccination program – the Pharmacies Guild of Australia has reported in Queensland, pharmacies have administered 52,000 vaccines.
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Here is a little more from the AMA’s release on its letter to the nation’s leader asking for new modelling on the capacity of health and hospital systems to deal with the Covid transition.
Dr Omar Khorshid, the head of the AMA, says a “vaccination rate higher than 80% of the adult population is likely to be required to avoid repeated lockdowns given the existing constraints on hospital capacity and staffing”.
If we throw open the doors to Covid we risk seeing our public hospitals collapse and part of this stems from a long term lack of investment in public hospital capacity by state and federal governments.
Our hospitals are not starting from a position of strength. Far from it. As well as ambulance ramping, we have the lowest bed-to-patient ratio in decades, our emergency and elective performance continues to decline, and our doctors and nurses continue to barely cope with their workloads and the constraints of the system.
The AMA is calling for national cabinet to urgently commit the necessary funding to prepare our hospitals.
Without a commitment to a new reform agreement – one that provides the increased beds, the extra staff, addresses avoidable admissions and readmissions and supports performance improvement – we will lock our hospitals and those who need them into a permanent cycle of crisis.
Too often we hear tragic stories of late-stage cancer diagnosis, emergency treatment delayed and sadly, avoidable deaths all resulting from an overworked system. This is only going to get worse with Covid and we cannot afford to wait any longer.
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Yesterday, Daniel Andrews and professor Brett Sutton warned Victorians the numbers of Covid infections were going to continue to increase.
There are reports on social media of numbers which are higher than yesterday’s 120 confirmed cases. We won’t run the number until we have had it confirmed, which is usually around 8.30 or so (although it can be later if the data is a little more complex).
There is so much angst around these daily figures, we don’t want to add to it by publishing before we have it confirmed.
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The Australian has obtained emails under FOI laws which have shone more light on how year 12 students at the prestigious St Joseph’s College were vaccinated ahead of priority groups.
At one stage, NSW authorities said it occurred in ‘error’.
The Australian reports a NSW health official made a “personal approach” to secure the vaccines:
Emails obtained by The Australian under freedom of information laws show a NSW Health employee sought to vaccinate all seniors at the prestigious school before the end of term – not just the college’s Indigenous students.
...But in one email, sent on July 6, the NSW Health employee wrote to NSW chief health officer Kerry Chant and said he had made a ‘personal approach’ to Dr Anderson because he knew the ‘Joeys situation well’.
‘Kerry [Chant], I am really sorry that this has blown up in this way. I want to personally apologise that this has blown up for you at this most hectic time,’ the official, whose name was redacted, wrote.
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That people would not trust a vaccine proven to be safe and effective, but are putting random things like horse de-wormer into their bodies is a very 2021 story, but here we are.
News.com.au has a story on how one of those ‘cures’ went:
A Sydney Covid patient landed themselves in hospital after overdosing on a supposed cure for the virus they discovered online.
A Western Sydney health toxicologist has issued a community warning for people not to ‘rely on online sham cures for Covid-19’ after the patient got a stark dose of reality.
The positive case presented to Westmead Hospital’s emergency department with vomiting and diarrhoea recently from an overdose of the drug ivermectin and other supposed Covid cures they ordered online.
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Good morning
It’s the last day of sittings for six weeks, with the parliament headed for a spring break once it rises today.
Which is probably a blessing for all of us. The last two weeks have been painful to watch. Question time even worse. With everything going on, it’s the last thing anyone needs. So best for everyone to retreat to their quarantine corners and calm their farms for a bit.
Not that the news will slow down with parliament’s absence. It’s all been about what is happening in the lockdowns, which given the Delta situation is completely understandable.
Yesterday, Victoria admitted Covid zero was impossible in the current variant climate, particularly when you factored in lockdown fatigue. So now the strategy is to suppress as much as possible, don’t let it get to NSW levels and vaccinate, with the lockdown extended to at least October when Victoria should hit its 80% target.
NSW seems to have accepted where its case numbers are, and is focussed solely on vaccination (70% of adults have received at least one dose now) with the plan to open up the state at 80%, no matter where case numbers are. But so far, Gladys Berejiklian is holding firm on not releasing any modelling on what that will look like. The NSW premier is very focussed on the positives, but said she ‘can’t recall’ the numbers around the worst case scenario. No matter how many times reporters ask her, no matter all the different ways they ask her, so far, she’s not budging on releasing those figures.
But now the AMA have come on board, writing to the prime minister and all state and territory leaders wanting modelling on where the nation’s hospital capacity is at, because it’s concerned it’s not ready for the ‘living with Covid’ transition,
AMA president Dr Omar Khorshid’s letter said our hospital system is not ready to cope with an easing of restrictions – even with increased vaccination rates – and a detailed understanding of current hospital capacity must be developed, modelling the impact of ‘living with Covid-19’.
Even pre-Covid, emergency departments were full, ambulances ramped, and waiting times for elective surgery too long.
We must urgently prepare our health system before opening up and to do that we need new modelling based on our hospitals’ ability to cope with the associated increase in caseload.
This modelling should contemplate all aspects of the impact of Covid-19 on our hospitals and primary care sector. Staffing, for instance, is already a significant problem right across the health sector, exacerbated by international border closures.
WA is already reporting problems with its health system and the borders are closed. Same with South Australia. Queensland has had its issues. NSW is being told that October will be the worst month so far for the health system and health advocates are warning staff are already at the edge. Because it’s not just about ICU capacity and ventilators. It’s about the people who staff it. If they’re already exhausted and under resourced now, because of border closures and just sheer burnout, then what happens when more pressure is added to the system? And shouldn’t people be told what the situation is, and what to expect in the coming transition?
We’ll cover whatever answers we get on those questions and more as the day rolls on.
Meanwhile the national plan debate continues, with Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk wanting a plan for the vaccination of under 12s, despite there being no vaccine in the world approved for children that young as yet. WA premier Mark McGowan is holding onto his strict border policy, leaving open a situation where vaccinated residents of NSW might be able to travel overseas before they are allowed to enter the west. SA, Tasmania and the NT are keeping quiet but haven’t made any moves to show they’re willing to open either. And the ACT has called it a ‘balancing act’.
It being a sitting day, Amy Remeikis is with you on the blog, with Mike Bowers already busy at work. The whole Canberra team of Katharine Murphy, Sarah Martin, Paul Karp and Daniel Hurst is on deck, and you’ll hear plenty from the rest of the Guardian brains trust throughout the day.
I will be absolutely mainlining coffee today. Just hooking it into my veins. Take a moment and then when you’re ready, let’s get into it.
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