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The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
National
Josh T

Morrison responds to IPCC report; New South Wales records 356 new infections – as it happened

The day that was, Tuesday 10 August

That’s where we will leave the live blog for Tuesday.

If you haven’t been one of the millions to fill out your census already, tonight is the night.

Here’s what made the news today:

  • There were over 234,000 doses of vaccine administered across the country on Monday, bringing the total number of doses to just short of 14m.
  • There were 379 local cases of Covid-19 reported across the country, with a record 356 in NSW, 20 in Victoria, and three in Queensland.
  • At least 97 of those in NSW were in the community while infectious, and 15 of the 20 in Victoria were in the community while infectious. All three in Queensland were in quarantine while infectious.
  • NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian said her government has considered further measures to limit movement and interaction but would not introduce harsher restrictions unless they have a proven impact on virus transmission.
  • Victoria has not said whether the lockdown will be extended beyond Thursday, with the health minister, Martin Foley stating decisions were being made on an “hour-by-hour basis” and that he couldn’t tell what the future would bring.
  • Residents of Cairns and the Aboriginal community of Yarrabah will be released from a three-day lockdown on Wednesday if there’s no sign of further infections.
  • Prime minister Scott Morrison is under pressure to discipline Queensland LNP MP George Christensen after he promoted conspiracy theories in parliament that lockdowns and face masks do not work.
  • Morrison has said he wants the country to beat Delta so families can get together by Christmas.

Take care this evening, and we will be back tomorrow with all the latest on the Covid situation in Australia and the parliamentary sitting week.

Updated

The former prime ministers Malcom Turnbull and Kevin Rudd are addressing a La Trobe Asia webinar focused on Australia’s relationship with China.

The discussion has turned to climate action, a day after the IPCC report on the threat the climate emergency poses.

Turnbull says China needs to act on climate - but he adds:

The proposition that we should all down tools until China does more is very naive.

Turnbull says a wealthy developed country like Australia should be at the forefront of climate action:

We’re not. So that’s a huge, huge problem.

This story is horrific.

The treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, has also flagged in a release that just arrived that legislation has passed parliament today allowing companies to continue to hold virtual meetings and use electronic communications until the end of March 2022.

The government plans now to work on legislation to be introduced into parliament later this year to make some of these measures permanent.

Updated

Here is LNP MP George Christensen’s speech to parliament earlier on Covid-19 lockdowns and mask use, including the introduction from Labor leader Anthony Albanese where he refers to what Christensen is saying as misinformation.

There’s a bit happening in the Senate. Nationals backbench senators have just announced they will seek to amend Australia’s Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Act to bring an end to the prohibition on nuclear energy.

The government also voted against the following urgent Greens motion at 4pm:

“The world is rapidly warming and, unless emergency action is taken, could reach 1.5C above pre-industrial temperatures within the next decade, putting Australians at risk of more frequent and more intense heatwaves, fires, droughts and floods.”

And the second part of AAP’s report on the NSW Covid inquiry:

Greens MP Cate Faehrmann asked why premier Gladys Berejiklian had announced the state could ease restrictions after 50% of people were vaccinated, contrary to advice from the Doherty institute.

Faehrmann:

The Doherty institute modelling shows 50%, 60%, or even 70% levels of vaccine coverage would not allow for relaxed restrictions unless we’re prepared for a massive uptake in hospital admissions and death.

Professor Doherty himself said if we open up at 50% that would be insane.

But health minister Brad Hazzard said the premier was trying to give the community a sense of hope and drive up vaccination rates, and they were taking advice and would need to know more before easing public health orders.

The health minister disputed suggestions the government had not listened to the health advice regarding the “moving feast” that was the Covid-19 Delta strain outbreak.

He repeatedly reminded the committee the pair had volunteered their time and were not obliged to answer any questions.

“It would be the first time in history that in the middle of a war, a parliamentary committee called an inquiry to ask us how did you make your decisions,” he said.

Shoebridge said the NSW government was less transparent than Victoria’s after premier Daniel Andrews was available “for the better part of a day” to answer questions.

Updated

NSW unaware of the extent of 'super spreader' party before lockdown

AAP reports the NSW government was not aware of the extent of the Covid-19 outbreak stemming from a “super spreader” party in western Sydney when it waited 10 days to lock down parts of the state, a parliamentary inquiry has been told.

Chief health officer Kerry Chant and health minister Brad Hazzard were quizzed about their handling of the recent Covid outbreak at an inquiry on Tuesday.

Chant:

It was the seeding event in western Sydney ... West Hoxton that wasn’t recognised at the time.

It was thought that cluster had been identified very early but there were issues around containment of that, that weren’t appreciated. Obviously with the benefit of hindsight, there are different decisions that can be made.

Just over 30 people attended the West Hoxton birthday party dubbed a “super spreader” event in late June, before the eastern suburbs were subsequently locked down days later.

Greens MP David Shoebridge asked why this was the case.

Chant:

The initial intelligence was the West Hoxton party was effectively controlled, everyone immediately contacted within the timeframe. There were subsequent emerging issues associated with that and I’d be happy to reflect on the thinking at that particular time.

Updated

Here’s a flashback. The PM talking about Coalition climate policy in 2019. “In a canter” gets a run.

The wonderful Josh Taylor will take you through the evening – a very big thank you to everyone who joined with us today, as we juggled Covid and parliament.

It’s a huge amount of information to take in and I know it’s made more difficult when you are in lockdown, or just frustrated/worried/anxious for answers about what is happening in your community, and it is not something we take lightly. Seven weeks in lockdown, without a clear sight to the end, is mentally, emotionally and physically exhausting and to everyone who is going through it right now – or just battling with this year in general – we understand and we are thinking of you. If there was any way to get the information to you quicker, we would do it – thank you for checking back, and thank you for your comments and questions. We do read them, and we do take them on board. And right now, whatever you need to do to get through is the right thing. It’s hard.

And it can’t be easy being in that position and listening to some of the things we hear our leaders say. We get that too. Remember you are not alone, and if it helps to scream, do that too.

Mike Bowers will be back with us tomorrow, as will your Canberra team of Katharine Murphy, Sarah Martin, Daniel Hurst and Paul Karp. I’ll be with you from early tomorrow morning. In the meantime, please – take care of you.

Updated

Greens senator Larissa Waters has seen a motion pass in the Senate which calls on the government to release documents relating to the awarding of a $21m grant to the fracking company Empire Energy

The order compels the government to produce by 9.30am on Thursday 12 August, all correspondence, lists of applicants and grant guidelines related to its Beetaloo Basin grant scheme, in addition to details of any meetings between Ministers Angus Taylor or Keith Pitt and Empire Energy.

Updated

In case you missed it earlier today (it was during the press conference deluge) Greens senator Rachel Siewert officially announced her retirement:

Updated

Matt Kean: 'George Christensen as qualified to talk about health policy as he is to perform brain surgery'

Matt Kean, the NSW Liberal environment minister also had some things to say about his federal Coalition colleague:

Paul Fletcher may want to indulge the wacko views of George Christensen on this and any other topic but I am certainly not going to. I think that he is as qualified to talk about health policy as he is to perform brain surgery and I think George Christensen would do us all a favour by being a team player, supporting the prime minister and making sure that we can all get out of this crisis on the other side.

... People are entitled to their opinions. They are just not entitled to their own facts. And George is making up his own fact here. What we know is that we need to listen to the science, we need to take the expert advice and put in place policy based on that. We should not just do it when it comes to dealing with Covid-19, we should do it when it comes with dealing with climate change as well and that is what I am arguing on both fronts.

... I think we should call our people who are spreading misinformation and falsehoods in the public square at any time, regardless of what team they play for. I am always respectful of people having a different opinion but I am not very respectful of people putting out this information and making up their own facts. We should call it out, whether it be in regards to Covid-19 or whether it be in regard to climate science. That is what I am doing here today.

Updated

Warren Entsch 'appalled' by George Christensen's comments

Warren Entsch, another LNP MP, has called out George Christensen (something Paul Fletcher, a cabinet minister, didn’t manage to do, despite being asked five times).

Here is Entsch on the ABC:

I have to say I was absolutely appalled by his contribution. I think it was totally inappropriate.

That is the sort of nonsense that I see in protests outside my office from time to time for those with conspiracy theories but I think it is reasonable to say that it was raised in the parliament today, I think it was resoundingly rejected right across the whole political spectrum when the motion was put up it was supported, there was not a single dissenter.

People are entitled to have a view but I think as an elected member you need to be a little more, if you like, careful with the views that you express. It is very, very unhelpful and totally inappropriate in dealing with the situation we are in at the moment and I am glad to see that there is that unity across the political spectrum today when those views were soundly rejected.

Updated

Why is the Coalition so scared of pulling George Christensen into line?

There are two issues at play. One is linked to Christensen himself – the government doesn’t have enough of a buffer in the House any longer to allow it to lose any more MPs, after Craig Kelly moved to the crossbench.

Here’s how Craig Kelly is going, by the way:

(He is apparently using his time in lockdown to set up timers to take sad photos of himself, and tweet, given his feed.)

But back to Christensen – so yes, it would be a problem if he decided to quit. Which he could – he’s threatened it previously, and has nothing to lose.

The other issue, is the Coalition, under John Howard, spent a lot of time courting One Nation voters, who remain in the party, in small but noisy numbers. They help make up a lot of the “base” we hear so much about. And the problem with that is, Christensen (and Kelly) and Matt Canavan and Gerard Rennick speak to those people, and keep them in the tent.

So if you are the Coalition, which is only governing with a tiny majority, in a nation which has spent much of the last six years on a 49.5% to 50.5% split in the vote, you can’t afford to see those people get huffy and take their vote elsewhere, by criticising the people in your party that you are listening to.

It’s the same problem the Coalition has on climate.

So that’s the short answer – the Coalition can’t afford to lose any more numbers in the House, and it has to try and keep a small cohort of its base happy.

Ain’t party politics grand?

Updated

So just a short time after the House condemned comments like the ones George Christensen has made (in a debate where the prime minister couldn’t even say Christensen’s name) Paul Fletcher can’t bring himself to say he disagrees with his colleague on the misleading, false, outright wrong, and dangerous comments he makes in relation to the health response to Covid.

Yup.

Updated

The non-answers continue:

Q: Hallelujah to science because it is the only thing that is going to get us out of this situation. Science is the answer. George Christensen is not relying on science. If you look at his statements. When Craig Kelly was making statements that the government deemed offensive he was dressed down and now sits on the crossbench. Should the same thing happen to George Christensen?

Paul Fletcher:

Again, Patricia, you can engage in all kinds of questions about particular scenarios, what we are focused on is a cabinet and what the prime minister, health minister and government are focused on is dealing with this health crisis and the associated economic difficulties, saving lives, saving livelihoods. We will get on without a lever to others ...

Q: But it is not up to others because you are cabinet ministers ... you are important person in the government, a compliment from me. You have a key role in the government. A cabinet minister in the Morrison government. Here you have someone on the government benches in the Nationals but in the Coalition, saying stuff that I am assuming would be alarming to you. Given it is not based on science fact. So given that, why not denounce him? Why not treat him in the same way that Craig Kelly was treated?

Fletcher:

Well, Patricia, you can keep inviting me to issue denunciations or condemnations but I will stay focused as with the prime minister, as well cabinet, as will government on the challenges in front of us in dealing with those in a calm, methodical way.

Q: Yes, but the misinformation about the vaccine, masks, is contributing to some of this bad behaviour we are seeing around the country is it not?

Fletcher:

Well, what we’re seeing now is significant increases in vaccine take-up numbers. Of course that reflects both the demand and supply side. We have seen, pleasingly I think, Australians around the country coming forward to get vaccinated up I know in my own electorate for example, I am in contact with GPs who are administering vaccines such as the Roseville respiratory clinic, the doctor leading that outstanding work just a couple of days ago said that there was strong demand and they are increasing the amounts of AstraZeneca.

And there has been I think a very strong response from the Australian people, people have identified the challenge that we collectively face and people are coming forward, behaving responsibly in terms of their own health but also in the best outcome for the community. And if you are vaccinated, you are not only greatly improve your own chances of not falling hill and being hospitalised, what you also do is improve overall outcomes for community.

Updated

Paul Fletcher meanwhile, has been asked five or so times whether he disagrees with George Christensen’s statements on Afternoon Briefing, and won’t answer.

Q: Your Coalition colleague George Christensen has called to an end to Covid-19 restrictions. He used a speech to parliament earlier today to describe restrictions as madness arguing masks and lockdowns don’t work. Darren Chester a colleague of his in the party tweeted he doesn’t agree with the minister’s views. What do you think?

Fletcher:

I think our government led by Prime Minister Morrison and Health Minister Hunt and the National Security Committee has a very clear plan and focus in relation to dealing with Covid.

That includes of course, working with state governments, supporting them through lockdowns as they judged appropriate to administer them or to introduce them, providing support through the ADF map and providing very substantial funding support for the Covid disaster payments and business payments in both New South Wales and Victoria. And of course our relentless focus on the vaccine with another 234,000 vaccinated in the last 24 hours, numbers continuing to build ...

Q: That is your focus. Do you denounce what George Christensen has said?

Fletcher:

Look, what we are interested in is focusing on the issues ...

Q: You might be interested in that but with respect minister, if you don’t call out misinformation – is he wrong?

Fletcher:

The government’s position is very clear. In relation to the efficacy of vaccines, it is based on the science. Is George Christensen statement wrong? The government’s position is clear ...

Q: That is not what I am asking you. I am asking about his statements.

Fletcher:

You can ask me whatever you want but the answer I am going to give you is that as a cabinet ministers in the Morrison government, focused on dealing with the largest health crisis are nation has faced for a hundred years, we are focused on taking the scientific advice and implementing measures in response to that.

Updated

Darren Chester, who was dumped from the ministry by Barnaby Joyce, seems to have run out of [patience, what iPhone corrects to ducks you choose].

Updated

The Greens have introduced a bill to the Senate in an attempt to force the Morrison government to explain why it has not imposed any additional sanctions in response to the military coup in Myanmar.

The bill – proposed by the Victorian senator Janet Rice – would also require the minister to respond to referrals from parliament.

The move comes nearly a week after the foreign affairs minister, Marise Payne, announced the government would amend Australia’s existing autonomous sanctions laws to make it easier to impose sanctions for gross human rights abuses or serious corruption. That followed a cross-party parliamentary committee report back in December that called for a standalone Magnitsky-style act for targeted sanctions, like the one in place in the US.

In a speech tabled in the Senate, Rice said the Greens were “very conscious of the extensive evidence the committee received about the shortfalls in the current [sanctions] regime”.

“We agree with many of those critiques – we would prefer to see a full Magnitsky act that is framed to target human rights abuses. However, while we are waiting for the Australian government to act, tragically, human rights abuses are continuing to occur in countries around the world, and the Australian government has tools available in the current sanctions framework which it is not using.”

Rice said the bill would create a referral framework “so that where a number of parliamentary bodies ... pass a resolution in relation to a particular human rights abuser or a person responsible for serious corruption, then the minister will be required to provide a statement” explaining whether or not the government will act. The decision would still rest, however, with the foreign minister.

The bill also “explicitly includes a clause requiring an urgent statement from the foreign minister, as to whether the Australian government will impose targeted sanctions against individuals who have been responsible for, or complicit in, the coup in Myanmar”.

The private senator’s bill will be debated at a later date.

Protesters in London rally against the Myanmar military.
Protesters in London rally against the Myanmar military. Photograph: Belinda Jiao/SOPA Images/REX/Shutterstock

Updated

Meanwhile, the point of Scott Morrison’s “it’s not how you start the race, but how you finish it” comments (now that he has acknowledged that it is actually a race) is part of the rebranding he has been doing since he came out of quarantine – he wants you to remember that Australia had a good response to the pandemic – and that’s all he want you to remember.

His whole focus is on scrubbing any reference to anything which has happened this year, until now, that the vaccine program is actually moving.

That’s it. He just wants people to remember Australia’s original pandemic response (forgetting that it was mostly led by the states which dragged the commonwealth to decisions like closing the border, locking down, and financial supports) and then remember the end of the year, where the vaccination targets are hopefully met.

So now, it will all be about the end of the race. Expect a lot more sporting analogies, a lot more focus on the finish line, and a lot more scrubbing over very, very recent history.

Updated

For the record, here is what Scott Morrison said on 7 April 7 2019, when he accused Bill Shorten of wanting to end your weekend, with an electric car policy.

Q: Prime minister on electric vehicles you mentioned, the Government is funding rapid recharge stations through the $6 million ARENA initiative.

Morrison: Yeah, we are.

Q: Angus Taylor says they could charge a car in 15 minutes?

Morrison: That’s new technology, not existing technology.

Q: Do you believe him or do you believe, er, how is what he said with 15 minutes different from what Bill Shorten said?

Morrison:

Yeah I’ve heard Labor pushing this around today. There’s two things. First, we don’t have a problem with electric vehicles, in fact, we’ve been facilitating the development of the infrastructure and the new technologies. What Angus Taylor was talking about was technologies that at present are not in general use. What Bill Shorten was talking about is how long it actually takes to charge up a vehicle today. He clearly had no idea. I mean, go online, you can go and find those little cars that kids drive around in, even they take eight or nine hours to charge overnight.

So look, the point about it is not whether electric vehicles are good or bad, in fact, they have a role to play increasingly in the vehicle fleet of Australia over the next decade. The problem here is for Bill Shorten, who doesn’t understand his own policy. But in typical Labor fashion, they want to ram it down the necks of all Australians.

So the cheapest car you can currently buy as an electric vehicle presently, my understanding is that including all on-road costs and all the rest of it, it’s about $45,000 to $50,000. That’s the cheapest car Bill Shorten wants to make available for you to buy in the future.

I’ll tell you what; it’s not going to tow your trailer. It’s not going to tow your boat. It’s not going to get you out to your favourite camping spot with your family. Bill Shorten wants to end the weekend, when it comes to his policy on electric vehicles, where you’ve got Australians who love being out there in their four wheel drives. He wants to say ‘see ya later’ to the SUV when it comes to the choices of Australians.

This is fundamentally the difference between us and Labor when it comes to these issues. We have no problem with the adoption of these new technologies and we facilitate it and we’re part of it. But what Bill Shorten wants to do, without seemingly even understanding what his policy does, is trying to drive people into these decisions. His policies simply don’t have the backing and how he’ll can’t explain how he will achieve these targets.

I’ll give you an example. He still has not explained what would be the impact on petrol and diesel excise revenue over the next decade? I mean the net take out of the excise is about $11bn a year. So Bill, what’s the bill?

Electric SUVs: not for camping.
Electric SUVs: they won’t tow your boat. Photograph: VCG/Visual China Group/Getty Images

Updated

Scott Morrison ends question time.

He also gives a personal explanation. Morrison has always been for electric vehicles.

As they would apparently say in the Shire “how good are electric vehicles”.

Updated

Thankfully, question time was extended, because if it wasn’t, we would have missed the member for Stirling discover the word “fundamental” which he pronounces like he has just been handed a word to stuff in his mouth and is offering it back to the parliament like a mama bird, regurgitating five-day-old bread to hungry baby chicks.

Updated

Peta Murphy asks Scott Morrison whether Australians who had their car parks scrapped before they were started were “winners” (Morrison said Australians were the winners in the car park funding program the auditor general has absolutely torn apart).

Paul Fletcher takes it and says Labor’s position is “mystifyingly schizophrenic” (which is offensive – let’s not use mental health diagnoses to make political points) because he can’t understand how Labor is against the car park funding program, but for car parks.

It’s simple, minister. The auditor general has problems with this particular funding program for these particular car parks and how they were chosen, and there were questions raised in that report, highlighting some of the problems, including the cost, and the list of marginal electorates which were included in the decision making process.

No one is against car parks. That’s not something anyone is suggesting and frankly, it’s a juvenile attempt at false equivalence.

Updated

Given the amount of information in the climate space, Adam Morton and Katharine Murphy have completed a fact check on some of what was said today. It’s a lot – but it is worth it. These things have to be called out.

Parliamentary inquiry for car park rorts

The Senate has agreed to a Greens push to refer the $4.8bn urban congestion fund, which includes the $660m commuter car park fund, to a parliamentary inquiry.

The issue will now be examined by the finance and public administration references committee.

The inquiry will consider whether the fund “meets the highest standards of governance, performance and accountability in the expenditure of public funds”.

The inquiry will also consider “the role of the offices of the minister(s), the prime minister and deputy prime minister, and any external parties, in determining which projects to allocate funding and who would announce these projects”.

We were eager to see if One Nation would support this push, because it’s usually their votes that are required – but in the end the government did not call a division, so the numbers weren’t tested.

Updated

Question time resumes with a dixer.

Updated

Mike Freelander finishes and the motion is passed on the voices – no dissent.

Mike Freelander:

I think it is no longer acceptable to ignore the absolutely disgraceful comments from the member for Dawson, things like ‘wearing mask must make no significant difference, the spread of Covid-19 lockdowns don’t work, lock downs don’t destroy the virus but they destroy people’s lives livelihoods’.

Imagine if you’re locked down in Sydney, and you’re a tradesman, or manual worker and you’re hearing this message from a member of parliament.

Imagine what that does to your confidence in the advice, the medical advice you’re being given.

Now just think about that. All of us in this place, have a responsibility to keep people safe.

What we do does actually matter. We’re not there in intensive care, sucking the secretions, out, out of people who have a tube down their throat, breathing, with the use of a respirator, were not able to visit a grieving mother or father, who is terminally ill with Covid 19, but we can make a difference, and we can make a difference by calling out people who actively seek to undermine error spots.

I’m so grateful for the leader of the opposition moving this motion. It’s one that everyone in this house should support.

And I think it is time that we did all work together and condemn these people, condemn members of our parliament that are undermining our response to this great health crisis, condemn those in the media who are doing the same thing.

We’re undermining our response. We all have to do that. If we all do it together, that’s what will make a difference.

Updated

Labor’s Mike Freelander seconds the motion and speaks, saying as a doctor, it is very personal for him.

He says like Voldemort, Scott Morrison couldn’t even name George Christensen.

Freelander also names Matt Canavan and Gerard Rennick as government MPs who have spoken against health measures, as well as Craig Kelly (a former government member).

Freelander:

Many in my electorate cannot see how they’re going to pay the next mortgage repayment.

They can’t see how they can protect their own kids, they can’t see their kids even going back to school.

And yet we have people on the government benches, actively undermining our response.

Now, I don’t like to see healthcare workers as heroes. And I’m sure that the member for Higgins can understand – what they do is they get up every day and they go to work, some of them putting their lives at risk, because that’s the job they do because they care about people, and they want to make sure that our response is the best that it possibly can be.

And that’s just the job they sign up for, the nurses, the doctors, the cleaners, the pathology technicians.

They’re the people that save lives. I don’t save lives sitting here as a member of parliament and that is something I recognise. That is a huge privilege. And with that privilege comes a huge responsibility.

And when I see people on any side of politics [actively undermining] our response to this crisis, this health crisis, just makes me angry, they should not be ignored.

They should be called out on every occasion. Because what they are doing is disgraceful. And I think any sensible person would understand that the time has to come when they should be called out.

Updated

Then Scott Morrison says it is a race. Sort of.

Morrison:

It doesn’t matter how you start the race, it is how you finish the race. It is how you finish the race.

There were guffaws in the chamber.

Morrison continues:

We are going to finish this race and we are going to race all the way to the finish line but we are going to do it as Team Australia, not in a way which seeks to divide Australians and set Australians against each other.

We are not going to do it in a way that seeks to demonise people in this country, we will listen carefully to the people of Australia, we will listen carefully to their anxieties and concerns and we will work with them. Our vaccine is free. Our vaccine is not mandatory.

It is necessary that during the suppression phase we have the lockdowns and we have the restrictions. And they are necessary for the public health of this nation. Mr Speaker, my government will continue to focus on the job at hand.

My government will continue to focus on the public health of Australians, it will continue to focus on working together with Australians, not to set them apart from another ... my government will focus on the results that Australians want to achieve.

... My government will remain focused on the public health, the lives and livelihoods of Australians as we continue to roll vaccine, Mr Speaker, we will have, by the end of this year, we will be able to say that we have saved the lives of over 30,000 Australians, we have put a million people back into work and we have vaccinated the country, Mr Speaker, and we are achieving the that we have set.

Mr Speaker, that is what Australians are focused on.

They are interested in their jobs, their health, their futures, not interested in the politics of Covid-19.

In the phoney debates, what they are interested in is the results of Australian lives and livelihoods being saved. That’s what we are focused on. That’s what we will focus on every single day.

Updated

In the last three minutes of his allotted time, Scott Morrison gets to George Christensen – but without naming him, or referencing him:

Australians have been carrying Australians through the crisis. And they have had the great support of their governments at unprecedented levels and working each and every day as a team of Australians to get this as right as we possibly can.

One of the key things we have done throughout this as we have been informed by the best possible medical advice, by the best advisers in the world, whether it be the Theraputic Goods Administration, the chief medical officer, the expert medical panel. All of these organisations informing us.

These groups have been meeting almost on a daily basis for 18 months, and my government and the governments led around this country has listened carefully and taken that advice, and acted accordingly, and Australia together has saved lives and livelihoods.

That is what we have done, and that is why my government doesn’t support misinformation in any shape or form.

We do not, Mr Speaker, that is not the position of a government, my government will not support those statements where there is misinformation that is out and about in the community, whether it posted on Facebook, social media, written in articles or make statements. Or anywhere else.

What I am not going to do, Mr Speaker, is not engage in a partisan debate on this. I am not, because what I know is Australians aren’t interested in the politics of Covid, they are not interested in the noise of Covid, they are not interested in the shouting of Covid. What they are interested in is that we make our Australian way through this crisis, and I tell you what – our Australian way through this crisis has stood tall and the world. Australians and this crisis have stood tall, whether it is Bill Gates or whether it is others who have looked at what has happened around the world and they said Australia has stood out.

We haven’t got everything right, but where we haven’t we have applied ourselves to address those problems, fix those problems and get it right.

Updated

Scott Morrison is now speaking on the motion, speaking on what the government has done:

On January 20 2020, the national incident room [for] Covid-19 was activated by the government. It wasn’t until March 12 that the World Health Organisation declared a Covid-19 pandemic but by that time Australia had already called it, Australia had already done its response, Australia had already closed its borders. Mr Speaker, it was only the day after that that the governments of Australia, the states and territories, came together.

I remember the day very, very well. As we were updated during the course of that meeting of the rapid escalation in cases that had been unanticipated I recall at the commencement of that meeting that Brendan Murphy, the then chief health officer, had already reported to ministers and those in attendance.

The governor of the Reserve Bank was that the day to talk about the potential economic consequences. The head of the national coordinating mechanism that had been set up at the Department of Home Affairs to ensure integration between business, industry and governments in response to the pandemic, and that day we agreed the federation would have to operate in a very different way than it has been done throughout history.

Since then, we have come together as Australians of different political persuasions of governments – small and large – to work together to manage our response to the COVID-19 pendant. On 50 occasions we have met in good faith and in a good sense to take the steps necessary to protect Australian lives and livelihoods.

It is true, Mr Speaker, over that time, no government has got everything right, whether here in Australia or anywhere else around the world, but I remember those fears at that time very vividly. I remember the fears of what this could do to our most vulnerable communities, and I particularly recall discussing this with the minister for Indigenous Australians, the community we feared for the most was Indigenous Australians, the impact that would have.

Updated

Anthony Albanese:

The member for Dawson said, ‘it is just like the flu, we will have to live with it, not the constant fear of it’.

Well, I have got to say this. I am scared and Australians are scared of Covid. There is fear because they are fearful of something that is scary. This is having an impact. People are dying. People are dying, people are getting sick. There are almost 30 people in hospital today on ventilators, being kept alive by a machine.

There are almost around double that in hospital, in an ICU. This is a scary disease that requires an appropriate response.

The parliament needs to disassociate itself from the member for Dawson’s comments that was let go for far too long with mad theories of what drugs people should do. We didn’t have what we had in the United States – drinking bleach and various things – but we have had quite inappropriate theories promoted by the member for Dawson, and that is why this should be supported.

Updated

Looks like Anthony Albanese has just found his groove in this speech:

I will tell you what madness is. Madness is saying – let this disease rip. Let people die. Let whole economies be shut down. Let’s stop us being able to return to our way of life. That is what is madness. The madness of conspiracy theorists.

The madness and the replacement of the former Deputy Prime Minister as its leader as a result of being prepared – think of this [member] wagging the National party dog because the former deputy prime minister wouldn’t have a bar of this sort of nonsense, but the current one is quite happy to give it the [tick].

The Liberal National Party is are quite happy to give a voice to the member for Dawson. He is not sitting on the crossbench. I will tell you why – we will take you seriously – we will take the government seriously when the member for Dawson is expelled from the party and is sitting over there with the member for Hughes, because the member for Hughes has also sprouted these sort of conspiracy theories day after day, week after week, month after month at a time when our heroes – our heroes of the pandemic are doing great work each and every day, being undermined by someone paid for by the taxpayer with the great honour of sitting and this house over representatives.

But, with that great honour of sitting in the House of Representatives comes obligation – an obligation to be fair dinkum, an obligation to promote truth, an obligation not to promote conspiracy theories.

An obligation to listen to the health professionals. And the health professionals have had a difficult task.

Updated

Anthony Albanese doesn’t seem prepared for this speech – not surprising, given almost all of Labor’s motion to suspend standing orders are rejected. So we are getting a speech off the cuff, which he seems to be making up as he goes along.

So you are seeing unadulterated, un-scripted Albanese.

Labor suspends standing orders to rebuke George Christensen – and the government allows it

This motion to suspend standing orders was written in response to George Christensen’s 90-second statement before question time (it doesn’t seem to have been planned before hand)

This parliament applauds the sacrifice made by the Australian people to keep each other safe. The parliament thinks the heroes of the pandemic, our scientists, doctors, nurses, aged care and disability workers, cleaners and other essential workers. This house condemns the comments of the member for Dawson prior to question time designed to use our national parliament to spread misinformation and undermine the actions of Australians to defeat Covid.

The house rejects statements that masks do not work, that lockdowns do not work and the describing of our health professionals as, quote, dictatorial medical bureaucrats. The house calls on all members to refrain from making ill-informed comments at a time when the pandemic represents a serious threat to the health of Australians.

Scott Morrison goes and has a chat to the leader of the house – and leave is granted.

Can’t really deny debate on this one.

Scott Morrison speaks to Speaker of the House Tony Smith during question time at Parliament House.
Scott Morrison speaks to Speaker of the House Tony Smith during question time at Parliament House. Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP

Updated

Catherine King to David Littleproud:

My question is to the minister representing the minister for infrastructure, transport and regional development. Does the minister support the creation of electronic vaccination certificates which passengers will need to fly within Australia and overseas?

This is in relation to what Qantas wants – basically a no vax no take off.

The government tries to argue its a question for the health minister, but Labor says it is about aviation, so Littleproud has to take it:

Thank you and I thank the member for her question. As I would hope not only the member and those opposite would appreciate the deputy prime minister is unable to attend and was in fact planning to be here this week but could not because of Covid and, obviously, we’re working through arrangements and I act on his behalf and I am prepared to take that on and work with other relevant agencies such as health and the attorney general, workplace minister, to make sure that there is a proper answer. But if those opposite were serious about this they would have made sure that they forward that to the appropriate minister.

Updated

Karen Andrews seems absolutely shocked that protesters may not follow the rules.

Worth noting that there is a dixer and parliamentary time being taken up by the government on some spray paint outside parliament house and the Lodge, but there has been all but radio silence on the thousands of people who broke lockdown rules to protest anti-vaccination and restrictions.

That was “freedom of speech” according to the prime minister.

Here is Andrews, using her disappointed face, talking about this morning’s Extinction Rebellion protest:

The incidence this morning that were conducted outside this place were not conducted in the usual peaceful way that we are accustomed to seeing events taking place outside this place. They were not registered and they were not expected.

Frankly, they weren’t protests, so let’s call it what it is. It was premeditated vandalism and property damage.

The Australian federal police responded very quickly* to both of these incidents and eight people have been arrested.

Three offenders were put under arrest at the Lodge and AFP officers arrested a further five offenders at Parliament House.

Once again, the AFP has been at the front line and I thank them for their ongoing dedication to keeping our community here safe. I join with the prime minister and other members of this place in saying that this sort of violent**, damaging protest has no place in Australian political debate.

I think Australians will be very shocked by the scenes they will see replayed out the front and in our national capital today because they know that this is not how we get a point across in Australia. We all condemn this sort of wilful, planned behaviour which, frankly, endangers protesters, public and law enforcement officers alike.

This is not the Australian way***. I would also like to make the point, I did when my own office was vandalised about a month ago, damage to public property is not a minor matter. It ends up costing every single taxpayer. It’s stupid, it’s unnecessary and it’s against the law. I say to these people that when you damage public property, you do even more damage to your own cause.

The right to protest is a fundamental right in our society and we all respect peaceful protests that are conducted safely and lawfully.

But our government will not be swayed by attempts to intimidate, through violence or destruction, and our law enforcement agencies will respond swiftly and decisively as they have today to incidents of this nature.

Graffiti saying ‘Duty of Care’ spray painted on the Lodge.’
Graffiti saying ‘Duty of Care’ spray painted on the Lodge.’ Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP

*The protesters had time to spray paint two giant sentences on the parliament, glue themselves to the forecourt and set a pram on fire. Then go to the Lodge and spray “Duty of Care” before they were arrested

**The protests were not violent.

***Australia is literally a nation colonised to act as penal colony.

Updated

Angus Taylor takes another dixer so he can say “technology not taxes” in relation to the climate non-plan a few more times.

“If it is not technology, it is taxes,” Taylor says.

But the slight hitch with this is that no one is talking taxes. Taxes aren’t on the table. Labor hasn’t put forward taxes, it’s not something which is being discussed and no one has mentioned ‘carbon tax’ in quite sometime, because the world has moved on. It is not 2012. It’s 2021. As someone who sometimes inverts numbers, I can understand the confusion, so to make it clear – it is not 2012. No one is talking taxes.

But there is something people are talking about though – tariffs. And that’s not the opposition saying that, it’s Australia’s trading allies. Basically, if Australia doesn’t come to the table, with an actual plan, and commitment, Australia’s trading partners will add tariffs to Australia’s exports. Which is not anything the opposition is considering – but the international community certainly is.

Scott Morrison answers that question from Susan Templeman:

The matter of mandatory vaccinations much aged care workers was the subject of a national cabinet decision attended by the premier of New South Wales, where all – with the exception of Victoria and the ACT, who have a different set of arrangements that relate to public health orders relating to aged care – all including the New South Wales Premier, agreed to put in place those public health orders and I have received several updates from the premier of New South Wales about their progress towards achieving that. I can only refer to those matters as they have been discussed between myself as prime minister and the premier of New South Wales. I can’t speak to the state of knowledge of the minister for health in New South Wales but I will ask the minister for health and Aged Care to add further to the answer.

Greg Hunt:

In relation to aged care staff at this stage, the latest advice I have is there have been 158,204 first vaccinations, or 57.5% of the workforce, 102,771 or 37.3% of the workforce or 260,975 all up.

As the prime minister said in relation to the constructive work we have been able to do with all states and territories, on 28 June of 2021, national cabinet met and agreed to mandate that at least the first dose of a Covid-19 vaccine be administered by mid-September 2021.

That work was carried on on 28 July and 4 August in discussions by the aged care advisory committee of the AHPPC panel. On 2nd August, the AHPPC approved and published the guidelines which were then published 3 August, mandatory vaccination of residential aged care workers, that is publicly available. AHPPC has been meeting daily and this has been raised on multiple occasions on the advice of the deputy chief medical officer, Prof Michael Kidd to me today and on 10 August, following the West Australian public health order, further discussion of AHPPC and indeed the West Australian chief health officer only yesterday published the residential aged care facility worker access directions.

It has been raised in health ministers’ meetings as a matter and what we are seeing is all states and territories making very good progress, not just with the vaccinations but also with the orders. We thank Western Australia for their work. We thank all the states and territories for their cooperation.

Updated

Susan Templeman to Scott Morrison:

The Morrison government promised aged care workers would be fully vaccinated against Covid by Easter. Four months on, more than half are still waiting. Today, the New South Wales minister for health said he’d never been asked by the Morrison government to put in place an order for mandatory vaccination of aged care workers. Will the prime minister take responsibility for his mess, which is leaving vulnerable Australians at risk?

As a reminder, here is what Brad Hazzard said earlier today:

The federal government is responsible for aged care. And if they want to ask me to put in place an order for that, I will. And I may also look at it.

But can I tell you – the issue is, at the same time, there’s a lot of discussion going on in the community about mandatory vaccinations, and I think that needs to be sorted through.

Certainly in terms of the federal government.

They need to make sure that the area they regulate is actually getting what is needed and they need to make sure that the vaccines are getting to them as well.

We’ve had to step up.

The NSW government has stepped up to help the federal government in getting vaccinations for aged care workers.

You might recollect that, originally, the federal government said that they would address all of that and they vaccinated a number of residents in aged care.

They didn’t vaccinate the staff and I guess that was a supply issue, but I’m not sure why they didn’t, when they had people on deck at the aged care facilities.

And I understand they’ve now agreed across the board that they will do whatever they can to try to get staff in the aged care facilities vaccinated with the first dose by the middle of September. And we are certainly supporting that.

If any of the aged care workers, we’ve made it clear, any of the aged care workers who want to come to our hubs, we will vaccinate them. So we’re doing everything we can to assist them, and if at some stage, it moves to the point where we have to put an order in place, and that’s something that the federal government wants to do, we’ll do it.

But that’s well off to mid-September. If they can tell us now and gave us that direction, I’d happily do it. But it’s their facility, their regulation and they’re responsible.

Updated

Sussan Ley is bragging about how the Great Barrier Reef wasn’t listed as “in-danger” after lobbying from the government.

Which just goes to show, despite what Scott Morrison said earlier, about politics not solving climate issues, politics can certainly make climate issues disappear from reports, if the lobbying is good enough.

Australian environment minister Sussan Ley speaks during question time in the House of Representatives. August 10, 2021.
Australian environment minister Sussan Ley speaks during question time in the House of Representatives. August 10, 2021. Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP

Updated

Michelle Rowland to Scott Morrison:

On 24 June, eight days after the Bondi cluster began, the prime minister commended the premier of New South Wales for resisting a lockdown. Melbourne had tackled an outbreak of the Delta strain less than a month earlier.

Cleaners at Bondi Beach public school, which is undergoing a deep clean after a student tested positive to Covid.
Cleaners at Bondi Beach public school, which is undergoing a deep clean after a student tested positive to Covid. Photograph: Dan Himbrechts/AAP

How many people have contracted Covid and been hospitalised since the prime minister told the premier she should resist taking necessary action to keep the community safe?

Morrison:

The figures I have that there are 297 people in New South Wales who are currently in hospital, 60 in ICU and 28 on ventilators. There were 356 cases today. I address this matter in a question, I think it was last week, or recently when the same matter was raised. It has been the case that, in the past, New South Wales has had success in being able to contain outbreaks and to be able to remain open.

That is true. They were able to do that because New South Wales has been acknowledged, has had one of best testing, tracing, isolate and quarantine systems in – not just in Australia but in the world.

But there has certainly been lessons learnt over the course of these past weeks and the government doesn’t deny that. When we came together as a national cabinet, we came to the agreed position across the national cabinet that it was necessary in phase A of this national plan that short, sharp lockdowns is what is necessary in response to the Delta variant.

That is the response that the federal government supports and ... that is why we are backing up that policy with the economic supports that are put in place with the Covid disaster assistance payment which commences from the first day of any lockdown, consistent with the declaration of a commonwealth hot spot.

It is why we have entered into financial support agreements with the states and territories, whether it be in Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, to provide 50-50 support in funding the necessary business supports to make those lock downs a success.

It is why the ADF have been sent in, we have pulled forward doses of the Pfizer vaccine in particular, 386,000 already being brought forward, on top of the existing allocations to New South Wales to address this outbreak in New South Wales. The Delta strain is a great challenge for the country, a great challenge for New South Wales right now and we are going to continue working together to combat the Delta strain in New South Wales and ensure we all get through this and I would seek the support of all in this chamber to support that program and not undermine those efforts.

Updated

The issue with what Scott Morrison is talking about there though is, the Delta variant didn’t come out of the blue. Melbourne had already dealt with an outbreak of Delta, and then, the Morrison government was still pushing back against lockdowns, while dragging its feet on financial supports in lieu of Jobkeeper, because it didn’t want to provide financial incentives for states to lockdown.

So it wasn’t new. There was a serious outbreak in Australia, of the Delta outbreak, in June. It was serious, Victorian authorities warned it was different, spoke of how easily it spread, its contagion and pushed the federal government to act. It also raised the issue of the outbreak in light of low vaccination numbers.

There were warnings from overseas as well, that there was a very contagious new strain of covid which was pushing countries which had dealt with covid quite well in the first wave, to the limit.

It’s not enough to just say now ‘delta is different’. There were many, many canaries in that coal mine, screaming their warnings before we got to this point.

Anthony Albanese to Scott Morrison:

Tragically, Covid infections in New South Wales reached a new daily record today. The NSW premier said today vaccination reduces your chance of spreading, reduces your chance of landing in hospital and it reduces your chance of dying. The NSW premier has also said it is a race. Will the prime minister admit that if he had not bungled the vaccine rollout, NSW would not be in the position it is today?

Large groups of people queue to get into the Lakemba Muslim Association to get vaccinations, 10 August.
Large groups of people queue to get into the Lakemba Muslim Association to get vaccinations, 10 August. Photograph: Jessica Hromas/The Guardian

Morrison:

I don’t agree with the assertion put forward by the leader of the opposition. The federal government has ensured that NSW has been supported to the tune of 386,000 additional doses of Pfizer and on top of that over a million doses of AstraZeneca have been available.

I am pleased at the strong response of the NSW government and the people of Sydney as they have been coming forward and the vaccination rates in Sydney have been lifting, particularly over the last few weeks during the course of the lock down, and in particular in the nine local government areas at the centre of the outbreak in NSW.

We will continue to support the NSW government, both in supporting the effectiveness of the lockdown that is critical to suppressing this virus, the Delta strain, which has completely changed everything when it comes to the Covid response and the plans and the initiatives that are necessary in this phase of our four phase plan.

It is vital that we seek to suppress the virus as much as we can in this phase so we can enter the next phase in the strong position that Australians have worked very hard to achieve.

We know in other countries that have higher vaccination rates than Australia, whether in Singapore, the UK, Denmark - sorry in the Netherlands or other countries around the world, including China, where they have had to go back into lockdowns as a result of the Delta strain.

The leader of the opposition, in raising that question today and putting it in that way, may wish to pretend that the Delta variant is a myth or he may wish to pretend it doesn’t change the responses that are necessary.

He may seek to undermine the efforts of the government as we seek to support the NSW government in dealing with this outbreak. He has one job and that is to undermine the government, not support us in this effort.

We will continue to support the NSW government and the people of NSW, whether it’s in mental health support, the Australian Defence Force on the ground, additional vaccines and targeting those vaccines, particularly in the areas most effected.

Ensuring the regional communities who had vaccines taken away from them, 20,000 vaccines back into the Central Coast, back into the Hunter, back into Armidale and Tamworth which are also in lockdown.

We continue to support the people of NSW as they go through one of the toughest challenges of this Covid-19 pandemic. This year I am advised by the minister for health that the number of cases in 2021 are already – almost 50% higher than the total number of cases in 2020.

That is the difference in 2021 that the Delta variant of this virus is impacting on nations all around the world. The whole world is in a battle against the Delta strain of this virus and in this country, our country continues to perform.

Updated

David Littleproud, taking a dixer, tries to introduce this into the climate talk:

This is the Australian way of solving problems, not senseless vandalism.

Not sure what the senseless vandalism he is referring to is. Much like “taxes” when it comes to this issue, no one is suggesting farming just get shut down.

And the agriculture industry is responding, on its own, because the government isn’t.

Updated

Stuart Robert has just referred to a “customer journey” for people using government websites.

Those “customers” are the Australian people, utilising government services. They are not “customers” of the government. And yet, the man in charge of social services spending consistently refers to people as “customers”.

Bill Shorten to Scott Morrison:

I refer to reports that his government is trying to claw back $32m from low income individuals, including aged pensioners who received jobkeeper payments. Why is the Morrison government harassing and targeting ordinary Australians, but refusing to demand a refund from big corporations who banked $13bn in jobkeeper payments whilst their earnings and profits grew last year?

Australian government services minister, Stuart Robert, doing his best for his ‘customers’.
Australian government services minister, Stuart Robert, doing his best for his ‘customers’. Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP

Stuart Robert:

As everyone knows in the house, governments have responsibilities of all persuasions to ensure the debts are recovered fairly, lawfully, transparently and respectfully.

For example, as at August, $296.6m in overpayments has been recovered by the ATO, of which $185m in cash has been recovered. The ATO is fulfilling its responsibilities, in this case almost a third of a billion dollars in recovering. The same issue and the same standard applies to Australians.

When jobseeker and jobkeeper were put into the Australian population, it was quite clear that Australians knew that you could not claim both.

Indeed the customer journey for every Australian, when they went online or by using the telephony service had to actually read through and acknowledge in the same format and standard as if you were acknowledging a statutory declaration because that is the requirement of the law that all Services Australia government services or human services ministers have worked under for decades. They had to actually state that they were not taking jobseeker and jobkeeper.

The government has a responsibility, as all governments have had to over the decades, to do targeted compliance as required by the Australian National Audit Office and that compliance showed that a number of Australians had unfortunately claimed both of them.

The law requires the government to then respectfully go back to the Australian to point out to them that they’ve claimed both jobseeker and jobkeeper. The leader of the opposition says to me this is about the fair go. With great respect, sir, it’s actually about following the law and the law requires that overpayments are not allowed.

The laws being administered by the ATO, $296m worth of overpayments being recovered, the law also requires that you can’t receive both jobkeeper and jobseeker and every Australian that applied for it acknowledged that they couldn’t receive both of those payments.

Services Australia is now going forward and transparently and respectfully saying “You have claimed both” and is seeking to recover the debts lawfully, as required, that all governments have been required to do for decades and decades and decades. That’s the standard of a highly targeted welfare system that we all, as Australians, enjoy and that many members of the leader of the opposition’s front bench have administered over the years.

Robodebt happened because the government did not follow the law – it was ruled as “unlawful” by the courts. And the government is not lifting a single finger to look at companies who made a profit with jobkeeper. Jobkeeper was confusing for a lot of people, many of who also received benefits which they subsidised with part-time or casual work. The issue is the double standard.

Updated

Helen Haines to Scott Morrison:

Today you said regional communities should not be forced to carry the national burden when it comes to climate change. Regional communities are already carrying this burden, drought, bushfires, floods and future trade costs. Our communities are suffering on top of this with delayed vaccines, lockdowns, economic hardship. But the regions are smart and ready to seize new opportunities, opportunities like community-owned renewable energy. You’re standing in the way. Why won’t you show the leadership that we need and commit to net zero emissions by 2050?

Morrison:

We should achieve net zero as soon as possible and preferably by 2050. That’s what the government’s policy has been.

I can tell you this: I agree with the member that the impacts of climate change are impacted most greatly across our regions and the agricultural sectors, as we have seen across the country for many years, but that doesn’t mean they should shoulder the economic burden of that greater than other parts of the country, I am sure the member would agree when it comes to those issues.

People in regional communities have shown the innovation, particularly our agricultural sector but also our minerals sector. In our mining sector, our global mining companies are leading the way when it comes to transforming their operations to net zero practices.

Our farmers are doing it, our miners, our households are doing it and they are being enabled by the policies of the government to support them to do that.

The way we address this is by ensuring the changes take place at that level right across the country and that no part of the country should have to carry a greater burden. Our policies are designed to support, whether it’s regions or other parts of the economy to make the transformations they are making because they can see that is not only in the country’s national environmental interests and the planet’s environmental interests but it is in their commercial interests and it is important for the future of their communities and their businesses and their farms and jobs.

The member would, I’m sure, agree there are great anxieties about this issue in regional communities and we need to address those anxieties and assure people in regional parts of the country that the plan we have to achieve these outcomes is a plan they can support and a plan they can get behind. There are no blank cheques they are being asked to sign off on.

They are not being asked to live up to a commitment where there is no plan and it’s very important we are straight with the Australian people about how we achieve these things and that they understand what is need and how we achieve the technological advances that are necessary to make this a reality, not just here but all around the world and particularly in developing countries.

That is what we are seeking to do. I welcome the practical initiatives that the member has been putting forward and raising with the government on micro grids and micro grids, a policy of this government, as the member for Leichhardt is aware, these are the practical solutions that take us through to allow regional communities to transition and transform and not be left behind as a result of an unfunded, unplanned commitment that others would seek to make at a great cost to other Australians.

Updated

Tony Burke to Scott Morrison:

Why did the Morrison government advise Anne from Punchbowl who is in lockdown that she would lose her pension if she didn’t provide specific proof-of-age documents which she does not have? Especially given Anne is 102, bed-bound, has been a pensioner for 40 years and were it not for the intervention of my office would have had to travel in an ambulance to ServicesNSW to keep her pension.

Stuart Robert gets this one:

Thanks for the opportunity to respond to the question. Clearly, I’m not across the constituent’s details.

... I am not across the constituent’s details but my office or Minister Reynolds’ office will look at it for you. I am not sure why she would have been sent to ServicesNSW. Updating a pension document would be done online or with Services Australia but send the details through and we’re more than happy to look at it. Everyone’s circumstances are completely different and unique and without looking at the facts of the case, it’s difficult to give a concise answer. Send the details through, more than happy to come back to yourself or the house.

Updated

In the Coalition party room, Nationals senator Sam McMahon announced a plan to seek to amend the EPBC Act to remove the prohibition on nuclear power, which received support from Matt Canavan.

The pair later told the media the policy had been agreed by Nationals senators, which Guardian Australia understands occurred before the recent change in leadership back to Barnaby Joyce. Canavan conceded the move is unlikely to receive the necessary support, although McMahon claimed colleagues including some Liberals had supported it “privately”.

Asked if removing the prohibition could shift his opposition to net zero emissions by 2050, Canavan replied that he “remains opposed” to a net zero target, claiming it will “send thousands of Australian jobs to other countries”. “I can’t see any way I would support a proposal that would not improve the environment but would cost our own jobs.”

Canavan said his support for government spending on despatchable power applied to “all types of power” and noted that the government’s underwriting scheme is “technology neutral”.

“If nuclear power stacked up, yeah, that is something that should be considered.”

Updated

While “technology not taxes” is the eye-twitching mantra of the day, it is worth noting this story from Adam Morton in May:

The Morrison government has vetoed public funding of a windfarm and battery project in northern Queensland, with a cabinet minister declaring it was inconsistent with its goals and policies.

The Northern Australian Infrastructure Facility (Naif), a government agency, in January approved up to $280m funding for the Kaban green energy hub 80km south-west of Cairns. The proponents, Neoen Australia, estimated the development could reduce electricity prices for Queensland consumers by $461m over the life of the project.

Keith Pitt, the minister for resources, water and northern Australia, blocked the loan in March. In a letter to the head of the agency, Pitt said the development would not provide “dispatchable” generation into the national electricity market and he was “not convinced” it would lower power prices.

Chris Bowen to Scott Morrison:

In response to last night’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, the prime minister claimed today we need more technology and no one will be matching our ambition for a technology-driven solution. If that’s true, why did the prime minister claim that electric vehicles would end the weekend?

Morrison:

I will ask the minister for energy and emissions reduction to add to my answer but the claim made by the questioner is false and I will ask the minister to respond.

Morrison on 7 April, 2019:

Bill Shorten wants to end the weekend when it comes to his policy on electric vehicles where you’ve got Australians who love being out there in their four-wheel drives.

So not sure how the claim is false.

Angus Taylor is trying to put words together, but you have heard them all before, but it says absolutely nothing.

Updated

A very important point that needs to be screamed from the rooftops.

Updated

Scott Morrison did not confront questions in the Coalition party room about lockdowns – but spoke at length about party unity in the context of the government’s Covid response.

Morrison said that Australia had the “lowest fatality rate in the world” from Covid-19, and that hopefully Australia would see “families coming together at Christmas, and everyone you hope to be around the table is around the table”, in reference to not losing family members to Covid.

After Australia’s slow start to the vaccination rollout, Morrison acknowledged there had been “frustration in the first half” but claimed the government had “turned it around in the second half”.

Morrison said that he knew “as a Sharks supporter you don’t win the game in the first half you win in the second half”, and recalled West Coast’s win in the fourth quarter of the 2018 AFL grand final.

Morrison noted sacrifices that Australia has made in lockdown and in paying economic supports.

He said:

So the suggestion that somehow we would now say it’s all too hard is absurd - no - Australians have worked too hard to put us in the position we are now and we must preserve that until we move into the next phase. We will get there.”

Morrison said he was “grateful to lead a united team, where individuals have put aside things important to them personally” because the Coalition is “a party not a nest of independents” to be “united and focused on the goal of government”.

He said:

You win together and you lose apart – we have to keep focusing on what we’re fixing and how that’s making a difference.” It’s OK when they [constituents] tell you they’re angry – we all are. No one likes lockdowns and the impacts on businesses. It’s the virus doing this – we have to keep reminding people of what’s ahead.”

Australia is now achieving vaccination rates of 250,000 doses a day, comparable to the per capita rates in the US and UK at their peaks.

Updated

Question time begins

Anthony Albanese starts off by “disassociating” Labor with George Christensen’s comments, which he says are a “disgrace” to people who lost their lives in the pandemic.

He is told to get to his question.

Albanese: Before the horror 2019/20 bushfires, the prime minister ignored warnings from former fire chiefs that Australia was unprepared for the dangers. Now the intergovernmental panel on climate change warns: “The intensity, frequency of duration of fire weather events are projected to increase throughout Australia.” Will the prime minister ignore this warning too?

Morrison (unleashing the passive language):

Australia has not ignored any of those warnings. Our government has been acting on those warnings each and every day. That is why emissions reductions have been 20% on 2005 levels.

It is why we have installed 7GW of renewable energy capacity in 2020, this is around eight times faster than New Zealand, Japan, Italy and the global average per person. It’s three times faster than Germany and the EU.

It is why we have the highest rate of solar uptake on roofs in the world. It is why we have met and beaten our Kyoto target and we will meet and beat our Paris target. It is why we remain steadfast committed to the Paris agreement as a Government. It is why we have invested $20bn in ensuring the technology that not just Australia needs but developing countries, not just in our region like Indonesia and Vietnam and Papua New Guinea and other countries seeking to ensure that they can develop their economies, but do so in a way that deals with a world net zero economy of the future.

We know that every household, farms, businesses, small and large, are making the changes, whether it be in the mining industry, whether it be in the agricultural sector, in manufacturing, wherever it will be, they are supported in the decisions they are taking because of the serious issues that have been confirmed by the IPCC report once again. We will continue to take action.

We must continue to take action. Performance matters and performance counts. Australia is the only country to the best of our knowledge, who reports quarterly on our emissions reductions. Every sector, every gas, every quarter. I wish other countries did the same but that’s what Australia does because Australia knows that the way we achieve this is by equipping our industries, our farmers, equipping Australians who are passionately committed to addressing this urgent action and urgent action that our government is supporting them to take through the policies that we put in place. We are careful to explain to Australians what the costs are involved and how we will manage those risks.

There won’t be handing over of blank cheques on this issue from our government. We will ensure that we can work with Australians, whether they be in regional areas, the suburbs of our cities or wherever they happen to be, we will carry this burden together but we will ensure that burden does not fall on some Australians like in regional Australia and they are carrying the burden for the rest of us.

We will ensure our plan addresses their needs and takes all of Australia with us in addressing this very serious global challenge.

Updated

We get the member for Stirling for 20 seconds.

He is a “MASSIVE FAN OF OCEANS”. That is capped because he all but bellowed it.

He’s cut short by question time. Much like his time as the member for Stirling, after his electorate was scrapped in the latest redistribution

A little update on a story we brought you this morning on thousands of students waiting to get back to Australia to resume in-person classes:

In an interview with Guardian Australia, India’s high commissioner to Australia, Manpreet Vohra, raised concerns over the impact of extended travel bans on thousands of students who cannot get here to take up their studies. He is asking the government to give students hope about when they might be able to get here in a Covid-safe way, saying online education was “not what they signed up for”.

It turns out the federal government has quietly begun planning a campaign “to promote Australia’s world-class education opportunities to prospective students and their parents in India”.

Austrade has published a contract with a supplier, worth about $200,000, for “Study Australia India campaign”.

When asked about the contract, an Austrade spokesperson said it was to develop campaign assets.

“It includes provision for work to extend the Study Australia Masterclass series which showcases Australia’s capability and capacity across a range of global sectors and world issues utilising some of our inspirational academics. The campaign offers students options to start their studies now from home online or to consider their study in Australia options when conditions allow.”

The Austrade spokesperson added that a suite of Study Australia digital resources “has been designed to support current students onshore and offshore, and to promote the range of options available to prospective students now and post-pandemic”.

But it may not be launched immediately. The Austrade spokesperson said the timing of the campaign rollout in India was yet to be confirmed:

“Pandemic conditions are being monitored to determine the best time.”

Over in the House, the 90 second statements are happening and George Christensen, a government backbencher, has just spent his time raging against lockdowns.

“End this madness,” he says.

Which probably happened when he sat back down, but I don’t think that was his point.

The Member for Dawson George Christensen puts on his face mask after delivering a 90 second statement before question time.
The Member for Dawson, George Christensen, puts on his face mask after delivering a 90 second statement before question time.
 Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP

Updated

Adam Bandt:

Scott Morrison’s denial is putting Australian lives at risk. His 2030 targets are a death sentence. It is crystal clear, from this latest report, that we could have 1.5 degrees, which is one of the limits set in the Paris agreement, as early as next decade. 1.5 degrees, extreme droughts, happened twice as often as they did before. Scott Morrison’s targets are a recipe for more droughts in Australia that are worse when they come, for more extreme weather events, and for a wrecking ball to be smashed through our economy and our society, stopping other countries are stepping up to the plate and Scott Morrison is refusing to do so.

These 2030 targets from Scott Morrison are a death sentence but Labor has no 2030 targets at all. The Labor silence on 2030 is letting Scott Morrison off the hook at one of the most crucial times in history.

Updated

Bill Shorten has responded to Luke Henriques-Gomes story highlighting that the government is chasing debts from people who received jobkeeper – but not companies which received jobkeeper and made a profit:

Scott Morrison doesn’t understand how hard people are doing it during lockdown.

At the same time Mr Morrison is gifting $13bn to big corporations who increased earnings during the Covid lockdowns, he is sending out his goons to collect a few dollars off people who lost their jobs.

There are two rules in Scott Morrison’s Australia: If you’re a big corporation, they’ll throw millions at you, but if you are a battler they’ll chase you for everything you’ve got.

Have the people who brought us robodebt learnt nothing.

Updated

They’re still working on cleaning up the parliament forecourt as well.

Nick Evershed has been working his data magic again.

Updated

They are still working to clean off the spray painted “climate duty of care” on the Lodge’s outer walls.

Updated

It’s now 30 minutes until question time.

Prepare yourself for a lot of “plan” talk using the most passive language imaginable.

Updated

Chris Bowen addressed the Smart Energy Council this morning and spoke on the IPCC report – and of course, the Morrison government:

When the IPCC report has starkly laid out the costs of inaction on climate change and compelling benefits of action.

Not just for the world, but for Australia in particular.

The report supports what I regard as two key elements of successfully winning the climate change debate: agency and urgency.

In other words, it is not too late to act, but we must act with speed.

As fires rage through Greece, we are reminded of our own terrible black summer.

And the IPCC report is clear: heat extremes have increased in Australia, and, I quote, ‘the intensity, frequency and duration of weather events are projected to increase throughout Australia’ (high confidence).

You will recall that this is not the first warning that Scott Morrison has received about climate change and natural disasters in Australia.

He refused to meet with the group of eminent former Fire Chiefs who wanted to warn him that the 2019/20 fire season was going to catastrophic due to climate change.

He ignored that warning. He will also ignore this one.

His government is so divided and dysfunctional on the key question of climate policy that he cannot even commit his government to the essential starting point: net zero by 2050.

Updated

Pauline Hanson now wants the international border shut to any non-Australian because of “dangerous” Covid variants. She released a statement:

Australia’s international border should be closed to non-Australian citizens until Christmas to protect the nation from variants of Covid-19 which the government claims are more dangerous.

One Nation leader Senator Pauline Hanson said Prime Minister Scott Morrison should shut the international border or kiss his government goodbye.

Given how many regional communities (Hanson’s traditional base) rely on migrant workforces, it’s probably not the greatest of long-term ideas.

But then that has never been her thing.

This is the same Hanson who proudly boasted she is not vaccinated, because it’s “her choice”.

Updated

This is already being cleaned up.

Extinction Rebellion protestors spray painted the walls at the lodge this morning in Canberra.
Extinction Rebellion protestors spray painted the walls at the Lodge this morning in Canberra. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian
Parliament House workers cover up messages spray painted on the walls by Extinction Rebellion protestors who staged a protest at the front of Parliament House
Parliament House workers cover up messages spray painted on the walls by Extinction Rebellion protestors who staged a protest at the front of Parliament House Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian

Updated

Over in the Senate, Penny Wong wants to debate a motion acknowledging the IPCC report and calling on the government to commit to net zero emissions by 2050.

The government did not support the motion.

Updated

There is a brief reprieve before question time which is in just over an hour, so I’m going to take a look over the morning and see if there was anything I missed in that glut of information – but you should all treat yourselves to a tiny break.

Updated

In the Coalition party room, Nationals senator Sam McMahon announced an intention to move an amendment to the EPBC Act to allow for nuclear power, which is currently banned in Australia.

That contribution was supported by Nationals senator Matt Canavan, who noted a nuclear power plant would still have to go through environmental approvals before it could be built.

McMahon and Canavan will stand up at 1.15pm to discuss this nuclear push.

The twin cooling towers of the Byron Generating Station nuclear power plant in Illinois, US.
The twin cooling towers of the Byron Generating Station nuclear power plant in Illinois, US. Photograph: Arturo Fernadez/AP

Guardian Australia understands the plan had already passed the Nationals Senate party room before the leadership change.

The Coalition party room also heard from Scott Morrison on the government’s “technology not taxes” approach to emissions reduction and its approach to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Of most interest there was the fact Morrison warned colleagues not to throw away Australia’s early success against Covid by unlocking too early, labelling it “absurd” that Australia should say it is too hard to suppress Delta until more Australians are vaccinated.

He spoke in rugby league and Australian rules metaphors – games of two halves or four quarters – with the Sharks winning their games in the second half, and West Coast winning the 2018 grand final in the fourth quarter.

The point being: the rollout started slow but judge us by where we end up.

Ben Moreton presented some new electoral bills, including one to shorten pre-poll voting to no more than two weeks. The bills were supported, the only pushback here was from some including Nicolle Flint who think the government should go further to ensure security around polling booths, for example by banning people canvassing voters at polling stations.

Another contributor questioned why the government doesn’t allow online voting.

Updated

The Greens have held their party room meeting - mainly to discuss their tactics in the Senate to draw attention to the IPCC climate report and the issue of global heating.

The Greens are going to throw the kitchen sink at it, targeting both the government for its inadequate emissions reduction target and Labor for edging away from upping the ambition for 2030.

They’ll try to suspend standing orders, second reading amendments in unrelated bills and seek an order for production of documents regarding what the Australian government told the IPCC before the report. There’s also an order of production of documents relating to the Beetaloo basin gas funding.

Remember when the major parties teamed up to prevent motions that required them to vote expressing a view on this or that? It seems like the Greens brains trust has found some alternative ways to bring issues to the Senate’s attention.

The Greens also want to amend the government’s respect at work bill to add recommendations that it didn’t support, such as a call for employers to have a positive duty to eliminate sexual harassment in the workplace.

As noted yesterday, the Senate will also vote this afternoon on Janet Rice’s bid for a parliamentary inquiry into the commuter car park fund, with all eyes on the casting votes in One Nation.

Updated

NBN Co has reported what CEO Stephen Rue says is “another strong year of performance” with revenue rising 21% year on year to $4.6bn in the company’s full-year results on Tuesday.

Labor wrote in July to the auditor-general asking to consider reviewing NBN bonuses as part of its review of the governance of bonuses, following the revelation NBN Co paid out over $77m in bonuses last year.

Part of its criticism of NBN in the letter is that the company consistently writes down its revenue targets from the corporate plan over time, until the point where NBN can easily meet those targets in the actual year.

For example, the revenue target for FY21 was originally $5.4bn in 2018, but was revised down to $4.5bn in the most recent corporate plan, which NBN was able to just pass in its latest results.

In the letter, Labor has questioned whether the bonuses are paid against these targets Labor says are “artificially low”.

When asked about why the target had changed over the past few years, Rue said there were “many different things” that had changed, including pricing changes, the impact of Covid, and the need for bandwidth discounts with more working from home.

He said long term forecasting would change over time:

When you do long term projections you make certain assumptions, and also assumptions can prove to be very, very correct or they can prove to vary depending upon the circumstances of the day. So for example, several years back we didn’t project a $4.5bn further investment into our business and that therefore would get that would then get factored into future long term projections. So, I think, I think with any long term projection and company you can chart the trends as being appropriate, but it can certainly take a one year budget as absolute guidance for the year ahead. But longer term projections always get changed with whatever happens in the economy, in society or within your business or within competition.

Rue said questions about bonuses would need to wait until the company’s annual report was released.

Updated

One slightly interesting and weird thing to come out of the Victorian press conference is the health minister seemingly saying that vaccine efforts have been hampered by a lack of AstraZeneca supply.

Martin Foley:

Yesterday we also saw cars roll up to the first drive-through vaccination centre in Australia at the old Bunnings in Melton, and can I just reinforce that you just can’t drive up. You’ve got to book – we don’t want people being disappointed ... because we still have constraints on supply.

But according to the federal government we are basically swimming in the stuff. So what’s the problem?

Here is what Foley had to say when asked how much AstraZeneca Victoria currently had its hands on:

The last I looked it was over 200,000. But we have put a fair dint in that over recent days. In terms of the actual number, given that it’s actually made just up the road, I’d have to get back to you. But what we want to make sure is that the safe message that AstraZeneca is available and works and is going to be increasingly available is heeded by as many people.

Q: When you talk about supply being the issue, if we have 200,000 AstraZeneca doses, what is the constraint with opening up more mass vaccination hubs or more appointments at those hubs?

Foley:

We are getting it out as soon as it’s allocated to us by the commonwealth ... As soon as it gets to us we get it out.

Updated

There is also no word yet on whether Victoria will be coming out of lockdown as scheduled.

Martin Foley:

It is really a day-to-day proposition, and sometimes an hour-to-hour proposition. But we’ve seen one case a couple of days ago being in quarantine, now we’ve got five and what we want to do is obviously improve on that trend.

That’s in the hands of everyone in metropolitan Melbourne to follow the rules, it’s in the hands of all of us in Victoria to get tested at the slightest of symptoms.

I don’t know what the future brings. The crystal ball hasn’t fired up lately. What we’ll do is follow the public health advice as it comes in.

Updated

On the new cases in Victoria, the state’s deputy secretary of Covid response Kate Matson says:

Ten of those are linked to CS square in Caroline Springs. I’ll break down those 10. Four of them are linked to YPA real estate – three work at that estate agency, one is a household contact. Three are linked to the Jolly Miller Cafe, one worker and two household contacts. One is a worker at the Pacific Smiles Dentist, and the other two have attended the shopping centre precinct in general. That’s 10 cases.

Three cases are linked to the Newport football club, one a player, one a social contact of a confirmed case and one a household contact. That brings us to 13.

Three cases are linked to Mount Alexander College, two are students and one a household contact, bringing us to 16.

Two are household contacts from the original Newport family cluster that we announced last week, 18 cases.

One is a student at Al-Taqwa College, and the final case is linked to the Jolly Miller Cafe but relates to a second workplace ... so that’s 20 cases.

As Jeroen mentioned, we are very concerned about CS Square and Caroline Springs, and 10 cases today are [from] that retail setting. It’s a reminder for all Victorians to check in everywhere every time.

Updated

It looks like the area Victorian health authorities are most acutely worried about is a popular shopping centre in Caroline Springs, in Melbourne’s west.

Victoria’s Covid-19 testing commander Jeroen Weimar reiterated that the shopping centre is now a tier 2 exposure site for a period of 10 days up to August 5, meaning any shoppers who went there must get tested immediately and isolate until they are confirmed to be negative.

There are 111 active cases of coronavirus in Victoria at the moment ... 76 of those are associated with the current outbreak and the remainder are a combination of the old cases coming off the previous outbreak and some hotel quarantine cases.

The area of most concern to us today is Caroline Springs and continues to be Caroline Springs.

We have seen now 25 cases associated with the Caroline Springs Square shopping centre across a number of different ... retail units and people. Some of those are household contacts.

We confirmed the entirety of the Caroline Springs Square shopping centre as a tier 2 site between 27 July and 5 August.

I would again urge everybody who has been to that shopping centre over that period, please come forward and get tested immediately if you have not already done so.

Updated

Victoria press conference

While all of that was happening, Victoria also held its press conference and gave the good news that there is no one in a Victorian ICU because of covid.

Matilda Boseley was listening in:

Yesterday was the first day that Victorian vaccination hubs were open for anyone over the age of 18 to receive the AstraZeneca jab.

State health minister Martin Foley:

We administered 2,366 first doses of that vaccine yesterday. That is a more than threefold increase when compared to the Monday of the previous week.

Victoria administered 22,670 vaccination’s yesterday, the biggest day of jabs in months. This was helped by a pop-up clinic set up at Al-Taqwa College, which is the site of one of the state’s current outbreaks. Students over 16 who come to get tested at the school ground have been offered a Pfizer jab.

Foley:

[The] clinic has so far administered 1,252 doses, in a school community that size, [this] has been extraordinary. That’s more than half the school and keep in mind that many of the families had also gone to other vaccination centres, be it the big hub at Sunshine, the showgrounds, the GP networks and a range of others. Some have already in fact been vaccinated.

Updated

Adam Morton and Katharine Murphy are going to go through that press conference and fact check it for you, so you can see the difference between the spin and the reality.

Because no matter what they say, Australia has no commitment to net zero by 2050 (which is not no emissions by the way, it’s just net zero emissions), the Morrison government is still held hostage (and therefore so is the country) by a small group in the party room, and the main plan is to rely on technology which is yet to be invented, while sprouting off lines like “technology not taxes” (no one is suggesting taxes), “meet and beat” (which is misleading at best) and “we care about climate action”.

Updated

After just 30 minutes and more questions to be asked, Scott Morrison leaves the press conference.

Updated

Scott Morrison calls last question and takes one on Covid.

What I do think remains really important in NSW, and not just for those in Sydney, but for the rest of the country, the whole country, Australians have worked so hard to get us to the situation we are in right now, where we have been able to keep the cases relatively low, compared to the rest of the world.

We have one of the lowest death rates in the world from Covid and we want to be able to continue to achieve that as best as we possibly can as we continue through this suppression phase and that’s why there aren’t any short cuts to lockdowns.

You have got to make them work as best as you possibly can. So in Sydney, please stay home.

Unless you really have an urgent need to go and do something outside the house, for other states, that are going through similar lockdowns now, then please do the same thing. Because we need to keep those cases low.

I want to get there by Christmas, but I want everyone around the table at Christmas.

Updated

What about the cost of inaction?

Will there be modelling done on the cost of inaction?

Scott Morrison:

Well the need to take action is informed by that very point. The cost of inaction globally is very clear, in what the IPCC report sets out today. The government needs no further motivation about the need to take action.

That’s why we are taking it.

That’s why we invested $20 billion over the next 10 years into the technology that transforms this. So it is quite clear that my government understands the need to take action because of the broader cost.

There is not a direct correlation between the action that Australia takes and the temperature in Australia.

I don’t think anyone is suggesting that. The temperature in Australia is determined by what’s happening all over the world. We understand that. Australia has to be part of that.

Australia is part of that. Australia is performing as part of that. And Australia will continue to perform and we will continue to do more and more and more and I’m going to take the entire country with us on that to ensure that all Australians have a future.

Whenever they live today. And they are able to do that based on an economic and an environmental plan that helps them achieve that which we are transparent about and very clear about Australians.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison speaks to the media during a press conference at Parliament House in Canberra
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison speaks to the media during a press conference at Parliament House in Canberra Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP

Updated

So Angus Taylor says we are taking projections to Glasgow for 2030, and then Scott Morrison will get to telling people what that might be.

I’ll make further comments about this about Glasgow and we update our commitments every year. So if there is anything further to say at that time I will say it at that time.

This says absolutely nothing (which is pretty much the same as this government’s plan on climate action).

Scott Morrison:

No what I’m saying today is what I have been consistently saying for a very long time. Australia under my government will have a plan to achieve what we are setting out.

He goes on:

We will be transparent with Australians about what it means. I don’t make blank cheque commitments. I leave that to others. Blank cheque commitments you always end up paying for.

And you always end up paying for it in high taxes. That’s what the alternative approach is.

That’s not my approach.

That’s never been my approach. My approach is finding practical solutions to what are very practical problems and that practical problem is ensuring that the technology that works here needs to work in other parts of the world and we are positioning Australia to be in the forefront of that and our hydrogen strategy, the carbon capture and storage, the soil carbon, all of those initiatives is about positioning Australia to be successful in that world.

Updated

There are a lot of screams being heard in response to this press conference:

Updated

Scott Morrison:

The government’s policy is clear. And the government’s position is very clear.

We need to take action to address climate change.

And are. It’s also the government’s job. In fact it’s everybody in this building’s job to take all Australians forward with this on this.

There are many Australians right across the country, whether they live in our suburbs or in regional areas, who have got anxieties about the changes and what it means for them.

Will they have a job? Will their kids have a job? Will their electricity prices go up? They have serious concerns about that and we can’t be flippant about those or dismiss them. I don’t.

I take them seriously and that’s why the sensible responsible action that our government is taking and having a plan to achieve these things and explaining it to Australians, as I did before the last election, on our 2030 commitments, and will continue to is so important, because we are a very big country.

The pressures on Australians are different right across the country and we can’t be blind to them.

We need to be open to them and we need to explain how the policies, we are putting in place, is protecting them and their future, their jobs, but also their future. And that’s why what our policies are designed to achieve.

Updated

Those industries the prime minister is mentioning there, farming, mining etc, taking action are doing it because the government is not.

That sound you hear is the scream of environmental researchers around the nation at hearing the prime minister say Australia is one of the most transparent nations in the world on emissions data.

As Adam Morton and Katharine Murphy have both reported, numerous times, we like to play a lot of games with our emissions data.

Here is Scott Morrison, who not so long ago held up coal in the parliament and told people not to be afraid of it, speaking of how great we are on emissions:

We need more technology and no one will be matching our ambition for a technology-driven solution*.

Because I believe that’s what will work. And we of course will be updating where we are up to on what we expect to achieve in 2030 when the Glasgow summit is held. We will definitely do that.

As I said, Australia is the most transparent country in the world when it comes to our reporting on emissions reductions. And I will be calling on the rest of the world to match our transparency. They should.

One of the reasons it is so hard to compare Australia’s strong performance against other countries is that because you have to go back several years.

Because that’s the latest data you can get from so many countries.

I think the reporting arrangements and transparency that sits around emissions reduction is a key tool. Angus makes a very good point about what’s being achieved in – on households and on soils.

See, Australian businesses, Australian farmers, Australian manufacturers, Australian miners, they are making the change now. It’s happening.

There is not a shop floor I walk into, a mine I go down in, there is not a farm I visit that is not already making changes. And a point I make particularly to those overseas that one of the biggest movers in transforming how they move to a net zero business is our mining and resources industry.

Whether it’s what Andrew Forest is doing in Fortescue and his work in hydrogen or what Rio and BHP are also doing in those areas.

The biggest miners are having the biggest performance outcomes in how they are transforming our businesses. Australian businesses. Australian farmers, Australian manufacturers are transforming what they are doing. Why? Because they get it.

They get it. Those Australians get it. They know where the world is heading and they know the changes that any need to make to be competitive in that world and to be successful in that world.

Our policies are supporting that. The changes that they are making, our policies have been supporting and that’s why Australia has been able to reduce its emissions more than so many advanced economies around the world.

* It remains a technology ambition because the technology doesn’t exist as yet.

Updated

As Adam Morton says on the “technology not taxes” line:

The government’s response on Monday was to repeat its mantra that “technology, not taxes” could solve the problem. It’s a slogan that ignores that taxes pay for technology development, and technology that can make a difference already exists and, in the words of the ClimateWorks Australia chief Anna Skarbek, is in many cases “mature and available”. The world still needs better technology, but it also needs policy that deploys the available technology at a pace that recognises the scale of the threat.

Angus Taylor and Scott Morrison are both speaking about solar take-up as proof Australia is doing its part.

Yes, there has been a high take-up of solar power in Australia. Because of state-based policies, which provided subsidies for installation and very generous feed-in-tariffs to get people across the line.

Updated

On emissions falling, as Adam Morton reports:

In reality, as analyses by government officials and others have shown, fossil fuel use in Australia has barely moved. The government has been able to claim it is taking action purely because the historically rapid rate of forest clearing for farming, logging and development slowed – but not stopped – earlier this decade.

This land-based fall in emissions mostly happened under Labor, not the Coalition, and mostly had nothing to do with federal policy. It was possible only because Australia has not yet finished cutting down its native forests. Most other wealthy nations were cleared centuries ago.

Here is the key point, as spelled out this week in a study by energy analyst Hugh Saddler: if changes in farming and land-clearing are excluded, fossil fuel emissions in Australia increased by more than 6% between 2005 and when Covid-19 struck. Try selling that number as evidence of an inevitable economic transformation under way.

There is a lot in this press conference already, which is simply just rewriting reality.

I urge you to read this from Adam Morton where he addresses a lot of these issues:

Updated

Scott Morrison is now going harder on the Extinction Rebellion protesters than he has on the anti-vaxxer and anti-lockdown protesters:

I tell you what the Australian way isn’t, the Australian way is not what we have seen with the vandalism in our capital today.

I don’t associate in any way, shape or form that foolishness with the good-hearted nature of Australians who care deeply about this issue, as I do.

And my government does.

I don’t associate them with this. They have no part with that foolishness today.

Any more than we have seen in other selfish protests around this country. Australians care deeply about this issue and so does our government.

Action will be taken against those who have committed those offences in our capital today, as they should. And I think Australians who, regardless of what their position on this issue, would agree with that.

That is not the way we go forward. There is a woman that I waved to almost every morning when I come into this building, as I drive up, and there is often people as you all know who will be putting their point across peacefully and calmly down there on the ramp coming up into Parliament House.

She’s there almost every morning, and she makes this point every day, and she gives me a wave and she gives me a smile. I tell you what, I’m listening to her. I’m listening to Australians about this issue. And more than that, we are taking action that I think will actually make the difference.

A woman is seen with a burning pram during an Extinction Rebellion protest outside Parliament House in Canberra
A woman is seen with a burning pram during an Extinction Rebellion protest outside Parliament House in Canberra. Photograph: Extinction Rebellion/AAP

Updated

This is a very defensive speech from the prime minister.

Not sure who he is talking to here – whether it is world leaders ahead of the climate meeting in November, his party room, or voters.

Scott Morrison:

Australia is part of the solution, Australia is doing its part as part of the solution.

And Australia will continue to do more as part of that solution because we understand what it means for our country.

Our commitments are backed up by plans.

And we don’t make them lightly. We consider them carefully. Australians deserve to know the implications and the costs and what the plans are.

I did that before the last election. I said what our 2030 commitment was, I explained how I thought we would get there. I explained the costs to Australians and Australians supported us.

I will do that again as we go into the commitments later this year.

I will do it again before the next election. I won’t be signing a blank cheque on behalf of Australians to targets without plans.

We will set out a clear plan as we have been working to do. Australians deserve to know and they will from us, regional communities should not be forced to carry the national burden and I won’t let them.

Essentially the message here is Australia doesn’t need to change (despite allies like the UK and Europe calling for an end to fossil fuels like coal) it just needs to focus on technology being invented.

Scott Morrison:

We will still have serious issues when it comes to how this virus would continue to impact on the planet.

It’s no different when it comes to addressing the challenge of global climate change.

Unless we can get the change in the developing countries of the world then what we are seeing in the IPCC reports will occur. And so we need to take a different approach.

We need to focus on the technological breakthroughs that are necessary to change the world, and how we operate. And make sure that is done right across the world.

Not just in advanced countries, it’s not enough. Australia is, must and continue to do its part and Australia has a strong track record of performance.

And we intend for that to continue to increase in the years ahead and Angus [Taylor] will speak more to that, about what’s being achieved and what’s being planned and how that is occurring. Australia is part of the solution, our emissions have fallen by 20% since 2005.

We are the only country to our knowledge that engages in the transparency of reporting our emissions reductions every sector, every gas, every quarter. No other country to our knowledge does that. They may do it on this one or that one, but not every – not every sector, every gas, and every quarter.

Updated

Scott Morrison then moves on to talk technology (much of which we are still waiting to be invented).

World history teaches one thing. Technology changes everything. That is the game changer.

Governments, political leaders, can pretend to these things, but I’ll tell you what makes the difference – technology changes on the ground.

And that is why our approach is technology and not taxes to solving this problem. It’s not enough for the technology to work with a tax in an advanced economy.

That doesn’t solve the problem, because it doesn’t solve the problem in India. It doesn’t solve the problem in Vietnam or in Indonesia or in China or in South Africa. It doesn’t solve the problem.

The emissions keep going on. So what is important is we ensure the technology breakthroughs that are necessary to transform the world over the next 10, 20, and 30 years are realised.

Updated

Scott Morrison then goes on the defensive when it comes to the IPCC report:

We must take action as we, indeed are, and continue to take action as we will continue to in developed countries and advanced economies.

But we cannot ignore the fact that the developing world accounts for two-thirds of global emissions and those emissions are rising.

That is a stark fact.

It is also a clear fact that China’s emissions account for more than the OECD combined.

Now, I make that point, not to say that we should be opposing taxes on these countries – quite the contrary.

I totally understand and accept that the advanced world, the advanced economies of the world, have developed their economies over a long time, principally on the basis of fossil fuel industries. That is accepted.

And I think it’s a very fair argument that the developing world makes, which says – why should our economic futures be denied when advanced economies around the world have been able to go forward on that basis of their energy economies over a long period of time? I think that’s a very fair point. But it doesn’t change the calculus of climate change.

The Australian approach is not to tax them or deny them the employment and the jobs and the industries that they should have, just as we should have them here in this country, but to enable.

Updated

Scott Morrison press conference

The prime minister starts with a small speech on NSW:

The news out of NSW today is hard news. Really difficult news – 356 cases, four reported deaths. We are in a tough, tough fight with this Delta strain. A tough fight. And I want to thank everyone across NSW, right across the country, other places going through lockdowns as well.

But we know that the fight in NSW is the toughest of all those fights and there’s a lot at stake.

Now, I want Australia to get to Christmas, but I want everybody around that table at Christmas time.

And we will do everything we can to achieve that goal.

Updated

NSW finished its press conference.

We then jump to the prime minister, who is holding a press conference on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report.

Updated

There is a clear blame shift to the NSW community in this press conference.

Brad Hazzard:

My frustration here is that you would have to be living under a rock not to know that we have a serious issue with Covid in south-west Sydney. And then to deliberately go to Newcastle or outside Sydney with no apparent reasonable excuse is just completely unacceptable.

But that’s the sort of thing we’re getting and it’s enormously frustrating. I’ve got to say, I think that the police are doing an amazing job.

They do have, for example, registration plate detection and they can see who is coming from where and that’s causing them to be able to stop people. And they are, as you heard from the deputy commissioner, turning people around. And where there are clear breach, they take action.

Updated

In terms of compliance, seven vehicles were turned around yesterday by police.

Gladys Berejiklian:

Police stopped and turned around seven vehicles yesterday. Seven times yesterday, the NSW police prevented someone potentially spreading the to us the region.

Thank you to the police force and the Australian Defence Force for doing that.

As Deputy Commissioner Worboys said, they prevented and tracked down people who should have been staying at home and weren’t at home. Again, another example of what they need to do. If there are additional recommendations we get from Dr Chant, of course we’ll consider and implement those.

Updated

Gladys Berejiklian has another “please know” (one of her favourite phrases) – this time that the police minister and AG are consulted regularly as part of the NSW crisis cabinet.

So how do the police stop people from travelling to the regions?

Deputy commissioner Gary Worboys:

I think that the way that we get to that, the quickest, is that people abide by the public health orders themselves.

What we are seeing is people making conscious decisions to go outside, to contravene the public health orders at a risk to themselves and the community and the whole strategy around getting NSW back to normal as quickly as possible.

I’ve outlined what happened in Northbridge and, just in the last 24 hours, a significant police presence.

Traffic and highway patrol, local police, our transport command in pulling over vehicles and making sure that they had a good and proper reason to travel.

Some were turned around and some issued with penalty infringement notices.

That will not only happen in northern but in western and southern regions and we’ll continue to treat Greater Sydney in terms of its merits where the transmission is, where people need additional efforts around compliance that will happen.

And NSW police have shown that they are up to the task. It’s reviewed every day at our police operations centre that is working 24-7 on the police deployment issue.

We’re assisted by the ADF. We’re in a very good position to continue to ratchet up that compliance, that visibility and that policing effort to make sure that people comply with public health orders.

Updated

Is the contact tracing system too stressed?

Dr Kerry Chant:

Case numbers are increasing and obviously that stresses all parts of the system. Both the operational health aspects of the system and our contact tracers. However, we have scaled up and I want to acknowledge the role of Defence in coming forward to help us as well as part of our team approach to contact tracing.

But I just want to explain that why you don’t immediately know about a venue is because a person gets a test, the test result might come back 24-48 hours later and then you interview the person.

And so, obviously, you take the two days before you find out that they’ve got symptoms and. unfortunately, some people actually have symptoms for a while.

I mean, unfortunately, the reason we, for instance, announced the lockdown in relation to the Northern Rivers is because we knew that that gentleman was in infectious in the community for upwards of eight days, as were potentially the children as well. So they’re factors.

If we can have people coming forward at the earliest symptoms for getting tested, that will also help us.

NSW Chief Health Officer Dr Kerry Chant addresses media during a press conference in Sydney
NSW Chief Health Officer Dr Kerry Chant addresses media during a press conference in Sydney Photograph: Dan Himbrechts/AAP

Updated

But it is not working is it?

Dr Kerry Chant:

Once you’ve got that force of infection, it’s really hard to turn it around. And that’s why I think we all need to redouble our efforts.

And I just ... I appreciate that those communities have been heavily impacted. But there is also the disease burden in those communities.

And so, I think it is ... I think that we need to further work with those communities to really ensure that compliance ... And as I said, it’s a whole of government approach to supporting those communities to adhere to the public health orders.

Updated

So what exactly then?

Dr Kerry Chant:

My public health advice is that we need to put in further look at how we can stop people going into the regions.

How?

Chant:

I’m not in the position to understand the operational impacts of how you would do it. So that’s been passed on to police and police have put in an increased regime of compliance.

A curfew?

Chant:

I think that the evidence about curfews is not strong. But I think what I’m concerned about is the crowding in shopping centres and places where we have seen transmission events in small shops. So I’ve asked police particularly to focus on adherence to those density restrictions. I think I’ve repeatedly messaged about the fact that I really want people to be staying outside of shops and waiting outside and going in almost one at a time into shops.

It is seven weeks in and numbers aren’t going down (although vaccinations are obviously increasing). So does something different need to be done?

Chant:

Government is always considering about how better to support the community to comply. So I think that the premier has announced additional support and we’ve certainly provided funding to the non-government organisations to better support the communities through organisations such as Red Cross and others. So those strategies will mean that there are less barriers for people doing the wrong thing. And I think the government is actively looking at a range of strategies.

Updated

So what exactly does Dr Kerry Chant want to see?

There’s the issue of the orders and what is the rules? And there’s the issue of the community complying with those.

As I said, a large proportion of the community do.

But a small proportion of the community don’t.

And that requires a whole of government action and one is to support people with food and access so they don’t have to take actions to go to work when they’re sick.

It’s about policing in terms of increasing compliance. It’s also about working with community leaders to better explain, as the premier has said.

There are some communities where we need to increase the understanding about the seriousness of Covid – how it’s transmitted and the implications.

We also need to discuss vaccination. If there was a simple silver bullet, that would be the case. But from my public health perspective, I’m not happy that the case numbers are increasing and we certainly need to do all we can. But compliance will be one of those components of it.

Updated

So what else needs to be done then?

Dr Kerry Chant:

In general terms, we need to further decrease mobility and the community needs to adhere to the orders.

So we’re still seeing a lot of unnecessary movement of people.

We’re also seeing compliance gaps. I mean, an example – when I was talking to one of my public health units, that they reported a case had visited ... a partner had visited a close contact. These are not the actions that we want to see when we’re dealing with a virus as transmissible as Covid.

So, for me, decreasing mobility, decreasing the possibly for interactions. Meeting the density restrictions. Adhering to your local government areas if you’re in those affected communities and also for people outside – not going into those affected communities. We need to do more if we’re going to see the case numbers drop down.

Updated

Dr Kerry Chant is then asked if it was her advice that further restrictions won’t work.

Chant says that is not what she heard the premier say.

Gladys Berejiklian jumps in to say she didn’t say that – she was talking about particular restrictions.

I’m sorry, this is a very important point. I was asked about specific actions and why they weren’t taken and I said very clearly that if we need to do more, of course we would based on the health advice. But we’re not in the business of putting in provisions or asking people to do things if they’re not going to have an effect in reducing the case numbers. Now, that is a very important point to make. We are all about reducing the case number, increasing vaccination rates and we’ll take any action we need to.

There’s a lot of crosstalk from reporters all asking questions at once, to which Berejiklian says “people at home don’t like when you do that”.

Should all health workers in NSW be vaccinated?

Brad Hazzard:

I am of the view, as the health minister, that I would like to see all health workers in NSW vaccinated.

But health ministers don’t always get their way immediately. I have initiated discussions with the unions.

I’ve spoken to two union leaders this morning. And indicated that I believe that if you want to work inside a health facility, if you want to care for patients, you should be vaccinated, because this particular virus is extremely dangerous.

And there are precedents for compulsory, or mandatorily required vaccines in other areas, so I’ve asked NSW Health to work with the unions.

As I said, I’ve picked up the phone and spoken to them as well and I’m hopeful we might be able to get to a point where we might get to a consensus view.

My strong view is that health workers, they go into the business of looking after people because they care about them. And I think that the majority of people in Health will get vaccinated.

Obviously, there have been some constraints about the vaccine supply. But most of them are on board.

But even a small number is concerning and we’ve seen some situations where, obviously, negative consequences have occurred and we’re here to look after people and patients and hopefully that’s what all health workers want to do.

Updated

What is the hold-up with aged care staff vaccinations in NSW? The federal government says no state, including NSW, has put a public health order out to mandate vaccines for aged care staff.

Brad Hazzard drops a bucket on the federal government:

The federal government is responsible for aged care. And if they want to ask me to put in place an order for that, I will. And I may also look at it.

But can I tell you – the issue is, at the same time, there’s a lot of discussion going on in the community about mandatory vaccinations, and I think that needs to be sorted through.

Certainly in terms of the federal government.

They need to make sure that the area they regulate is actually getting what is needed and they need to make sure that the vaccines are getting to them as well.

We’ve had to step up.

The NSW government has stepped up to help the federal government in getting vaccinations for aged care workers.

You might recollect that, originally, the federal government said that they would address all of that and they vaccinated a number of residents in aged care.

They didn’t vaccinate the staff and I guess that was a supply issue, but I’m not sure why they didn’t, when they had people on deck at the aged care facilities.

And I understand they’ve now agreed across-the-board that they will do whatever they can to try to get staff in the aged care facilities vaccinated with the first dose by the middle of September. And we are certainly supporting that.

If any of the aged care workers, we’ve made it clear, any of the aged care workers who want to come to our hubs, we will vaccinate them. So we’re doing everything we can to assist them, and if at some stage, it moves to the point where we have to put an order in place, and that’s something that the federal government wants to do, we’ll do it.

But that’s well off to mid-September. If they can tell us now and gave us that direction, I’d happily do it. But it’s their facility, their regulation and they’re responsible.

Updated

Brad Hazzard on the existing health orders:

We have been on this journey in NSW for 20 months.

Delta is an extremely dangerous variant. It is wreaking havoc across the world.

In NSW it is people within a small element, a small group who have caused these problems, if they would just behave themselves and have an element of decency towards the rest of the community, we would sort this problem out.

The laws are there.

Comply with them and we will get through this.

Updated

Brad Hazzard is doing a lot of commenting here for someone who isn’t commenting:

I’m conscious that when police are investigating, we should allow them to take their investigations and not prejudice those investigations. Hopefully, any activity that might have been inappropriate or illegal will be dealt with by the police and courts.

I’m not prepared to comment except to say that every individual should comply with Health. When Health ask you questions, it is to try to save you and your family and friends and your community. The answer is, be very open with them. As to police, if the police come after you, it is for a reason generally.

Updated

Brad Hazzard is asked about the Byron Bay case:

All I am prepared to say about our traveller to Byron is the police are looking extremely closely what he was doing in that area. I trust the police will be able to take appropriate action in due course.

There are matters where one has to be a bit cautious because I’m not going to prejudice part of the police investigations or the police actions. I am certainly hopeful there will be both.

Pushed on the issue, Hazzard says:

I’ve said all I prepared to say. You can draw your conclusions but the premier has said we have the strictest of orders in NSW.

If people start with what they are asked to do, this Delta virus would be finding itself being beaten back into submission.

The fact that people are ignoring the rules and, I have to say, I’m being fair, probably something in order of 95%, a high percentage of people are complying.

You see that in Fairfield, who have made such a difference and what the numbers down to such a low level. I thank the people of Fairfield.

There are other communities and people from other backgrounds who don’t seem to think that it is necessary to comply with the law and who don’t really give great consideration to what they do in terms of its impact on the rest of the community.

I do say to them, you need to because otherwise the forces of the law are coming after you.

Updated

NSW looking at travel rules

Asked about rules which still allow people to travel to look at real estate, or to travel between second homes, Brad Hazzard is asked whether there are any moves to change those rules.

Hazzard:

The issue is that it is difficult in regards to houses in different areas but examples would be if you had a doctor who lived in Sydney but also went to somewhere in the regions for three days a week, for five days a week.

If you had another house there, if you had a family split up and one partner wanted to move and look at a house to find accommodation to take their children or his children.

It is challenging. Having said that, I asked the legal department to look at what we can do to tighten it up as far as possible.

Clearly, the rules now are that you shouldn’t just travel from house to another for the sake of moving to the other house. Choose the property you are living in and stay there.

What worries me is no matter what legal orders or requirements are in place, you can’t legislate against stupidity, arrogance and entitlement.

People will still try and do it, which is why the premier has made the point that we have asked in the epicentre at the moment of this virus that is at Canterbury-Bankstown for the police to reinforce the existing rules.

If people applied the rules, if they complied with the rules and law and applied an element of common sense and modicum of decency to the rest of the committee, we would be fine.

Updated

Asked about opening up, given that children can’t get vaccinated, Gladys Berejiklian says:

The NSW government never has and never would take decisions which would impact the safety of our citizens.

We are always speaking about the safety of our community but, having said that, higher risks of vaccination among adults gives you the opportunity to do things differently in September and October.

We are looking forward to so we aren’t making decisions that aren’t going to keep our community safe.

The reason why we have a strategy to vaccinate year 12 students in those LGAs of concern is to ensure they can safely sit their exams and HSC requirement.

I’m using that as an example. To year 12 students, please know that you will be able to sit for your exams and attain your HSC and, more broadly, when it comes, decisions around school and education in young people, we will follow and take health advice as we always have. But we also know that in particular demographics and populations ... we will never compromise the safety of our citizens. We have to be upfront about vaccines being a key tool.

Anyone who thinks it isn’t a key tool in dealing with Delta, listen to the facts. They aren’t listening to health advice. It is very important for us to make all our decisions based on health advice and the facts and populations need moving forward.

Updated

Asked whether the NSW government would put harsher restrictions on areas of concern (currently Canterbury-Bankstown) Gladys Berejiklian says:

I ask people to look at the facts as to how harsh the lockdown is in those LGAs.

For example, other states have an authorised workers list going to 17 pages.

The list for those eight or nine LGAs is very short compared to what other states had but the different point is the Delta.

When you have a virus that is not contagious and when you have an unvaccinated population, that is the threat of Delta.

Strong suppression in our state of works in that we don’t have hundreds of thousands of cases and deaths. We managed to avoid those but Delta is different.

We need to treat it differently and the NSW government doesn’t have any intention of putting any strategies that aren’t going to work.

We need is to ensure we have greater compliance and the police know and are providing us advice, working with the ADF on a daily basis to ensure compliance.

Day-to-day we get updates on what those compliance activities demonstrate.

We also have to accept that when you are allowing critical workers, and aged care or providing food services, venturing out of those committees with high rates of transmission, you need those high rates of testing and high rates of vaccine. That is why we are keen to provide any incentives we can to people in those communities to get their vaccine.

It was a great joy yesterday in what has been a very difficult couple of weeks and will be for the next few weeks a great joy to see HSC students come forward and get the vaccine. The other of the strategies in those LGAs is to continue to adapt to ensure we reduce the spread and make sure we reduce the chance, rate of people being hospitalised.

NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian addresses media during a press conference in Sydney.
NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian addresses media during a press conference in Sydney. Photograph: Dan Himbrechts/AAP

Updated

Has the NSW government given up on reaching zero cases, and is just relying on vaccinations?

Gladys Berejiklian:

The NSW government has always said that our strategy is to get to as close to zero as we can to those cases infectious in the community but regrettably we have seen those numbers increase in the last few days.

It is always the binding principle which national cabinet has to follow.

However, we have said NSW, as I’ve said continuously, at higher vaccination rates will give us additional freedoms.

There is no doubt about that because what we need to prevent is people ending up in hospital.

One positive aspect of the last few weeks is confirmation that vaccination prevents people ending up in hospital.

It reduces the spread so a targeted vaccine strategy and those LGAs of concern is key to us moving forward in NSW. It is clear to us having greater freedom and key to us making sure we get those vaccination targets. Getting to 6 million jabs by the end of August will give us some chances in September and we are looking forward to that. We are taking advice from a health experts and others across government to see what September and October look like.

Let me assure you that NSW strongly supports was in the Doherty report.

That is having all states abiding by the code which says you have strong suppression studies in place until you get to 70% double doses. That is certainly our strategy.

Updated

Gladys Berejiklian on that same point:

If the health advice said to us there was further we need to do, we would do it.

We have to accept that part of the challenge we have in NSW is because of lack of compliance, and part of the challenge is because Delta is very different to anything we have seen before.

Part of the challenge is having people accept, a small handful of people, accept this is serious.

There are still pockets of people who think this isn’t a serious illness, unfortunately, who don’t believe the need to follow health orders and that impacts everybody but, moreover than anything else, it is the way this virus spreads and the way the virus moves.

I assure you that short of not having authorised workers do what is necessary, it is really difficult us to get to lower case numbers without that targeted vaccine strategy.

Updated

The first question is when will there be more compliance measures – a “ring of steel” (which is just, as has been pointed out, a nice way of saying police and the army around Sydney stopping people from leaving) and curfews (which the Victorian response admitted was to help police the restrictions, not part of the health advice itself).

Gladys Berejiklian says the Delta variant needs a different response:

What we also have to accept is the basic fact that Delta is very different to other strains we have had.

Policy positions that may have worked in the past aren’t going to have effect with Delta.

It is something we need to accept. Except this is a different variant and we need to approach it differently. I’ll finish my sentence. In relation to that point, based on the health expert advice, vaccination reduces your chance of spreading, reduces your chance of laying in hospital and reduces your chance of dying.

That is why a targeted approach in those local government areas with our vaccine strategies is a key to see us maintain and reduce those case numbers.

Please know that had we not been in this difficult lockdown for six or seven weeks, the case numbers would undoubtedly have been in their thousands and thousands every day. That is no doubt.

There is also no doubt that the Delta strain is different to other types of Covid have had in Australia. Your approach has to be different.

Updated

Gladys Berejiklian says NSW will “always consider options” which will reduce case numbers. She means police enforcement, because she then goes to deputy police commissioner Gary Worboys for an update.

Worboys:

The last 24 hours over 1,000 compliance checks in that south-west LGA area of concern with police and ADF.

It was yesterday that they found two people who were meant to be inside a house that weren’t there.

They were located and health are advised they were returned to where they should be.

These compliance checks are working and having an impact ... In the north of the state in the last 24 hours, over 400 vehicles were stopped by police specifically for those breaches that might be occurring in and around public health orders and people travelling without a reasonable excuse.

Seventeen infringement notices were issued and seven vehicles were turned around and sent back to locations where they came from because they had no reasonable excuse. It is a challenging time for the community and police but NSW police won’t back down in their endeavour to ensure people comply with the public health orders across the state.

Particular emphasis in those eight LGAs, those nine LGAs and into the Canterbury-Bankstown area, but let’s be clear that right across the state there are now risks and threats with people reaching public health orders and the police have specific operations at each of the areas to ensure people comply and put us in a position where we can best get through this challenging time.

Australian defence force soldiers and members of the NSW police patrol in the Bankstown CBD
Australian defence force soldiers and members of the NSW police patrol in the Bankstown CBD. Photograph: Brook Mitchell/Getty Images

Updated

There has been a confirmed case at an aged care centre, Dr Kerry Chant says:

We have had a confirmed case at the St George aged care centre in Bexley. A confirmed case in a staff member who worked one shift while infectious on one level at the facility. Four out of eight residents have tested positive. All eight of the residents were vaccinated. The staff member received their first dose of vaccination. Appropriate care is being provided.

The message now, Dr Kerry Chant says, is if you are heading out in an affected LGA in Sydney, you could be coming into contact with the virus:

We are seeing people infectious in the community so the clear message is, every time you leave home assume you are coming into contact with someone with Covid-19.

Chant also gives an update on the Liverpool hospital:

As part of that Liverpool hospital outbreak we had seven staff and a student nurse and 29 patients impacted.

There have been six deaths with this outbreak. NSW Health and the staff at Liverpool hospital extend their sincere sympathies to their families and friends of these patients.

The death of any patient is felt deeply by the healthcare professionals who care for them and a situation like this is tragic for everyone. The exposures occurred on a geriatric and neurology ward and these patients were receiving the best possible care but sadly many are older and have health conditions which leave them very vulnerable to the harmful effects of Covid. Staff at Liverpool hospital are providing care and support for these patients in extremely difficult circumstances. The hospital is one of the busiest in the state.

Updated

Gladys Berejiklian makes another plea for vaccinations:

As always, it is so sad when you hear about deaths, especially from elderly people who unfortunately, for whatever reason, weren’t vaccinated because that is proving to be an ongoing challenge.

Those who have had two doses of vaccination have so far avoided any ICU, mortality. Unfortunately those that are unvaccinated of any age, of any age, continue to be vulnerable. With case numbers where they are, unfortunately, if you live in those LGAs of concern, there is a high chance you could get the virus.

Protect yourself, your family and loved ones and community by getting vaccinated. Through your GP, pharmacist, whatever NSW Health clinics, whether through your local place of worship or community centre if there is a vaccine hub near you, come forward and get vaccinated.

It is the type to protect yourself and family and loved ones and I issue a plea [that] if you want to get back to work and back to normal life, please get your vaccine. It is clear to what we can do potentially in September and October.

Doses of the Pfizer vaccine are seen at a mass vaccination hub at Sydney Olympic Park.
Doses of the Pfizer vaccine are seen at a mass vaccination hub at Sydney Olympic Park. Photograph: Reuters

Updated

Here is how the data is looking:

Updated

The Canterbury-Bankstown area is still the main area of concern.

Gladys Berejiklian:

Canterbury-Bankstown remains the central area where Covid-19 cases are increasing and we have seen stabilisation and substantial decline in areas like Fairfield so communities that are responding to health orders and to what we are asking them to do are seeing a decline in their LGAs.

There are no additional cases in Armidale or Tamworth and the north coast is investigating one potential additional case but that isn’t linked to the gentleman in Byron Bay.

Armidale and Tamworth have no additional cases and potentially one north coast, not related to the gentleman in Byron. Hunter has continued to have additional cases.

Updated

NSW authorities know that just 102 or the new cases were in isolation for their entire infectious period.

NSW press conference – 356 community cases

There have been three more deaths reported as part of this outbreak. None of the three were vaccinated and all were in hospitals.

A returned traveller from overseas has also died.

Updated

As expected, both NSW and Victoria will hold their press conferences at 11am.

We’ll bring you NSW first, given we are still waiting on those numbers (with the headlines from Victoria, but will have it all covered off.

Victoria has recorded 20 new cases – only five were in isolation for their infectious period, but all cases have been linked. At this point, it is looking unlikely the lockdown will lift at the end of the scheduled seven days but, as we know – nothing is known, until it is actually known.

Updated

Queensland summary

Good news for Queensland.

  • Three new community cases – all linked, and none were in the community while infectious.
  • More than 13,000 people remain in home quarantine.
  • Contact tracing in Cairns is going back to 23 July.
  • Cairns has reported no new cases.
  • Police enforcement at the border is increasing in response to the NSW northern rivers lockdown.
  • If anyone in Queensland has been in one of those affected northern rivers LGAs since 31 July, they are required to go into the same lockdown restrictions as NSW has ordered (stay at home).
  • A new $70m package has been announced to support tourism and hospitality businesses.
  • Annastacia Palaszczuk has denied focus-group testing influenced her pandemic response decisions.

Updated

And before the “aren’t spray cans bad for the environment” message takes hold – Australia ceased its use of CFC propellants in cans before 1989.

Updated

Annastacia Palaszczuk says the focus group didn’t guide her decision making:

It can ask that. That won’t guide my decision-making. It won’t guide my decision-making. Guide my decision-making? This wonderful woman to the left of me [Dr Jeannette Young] has helped keep Queenslanders safe.

...Every state and territory including the Federal Government would have invested money into sentiment testing and into some research. It would be absolutely negligent not to do that.

...You know clearly everyone was yelling at me to open the borders. Don’t talk to me about popularity. Everyone was attacking me when I stood my ground here and backed in the Chief Health Officer’s advice to me when it was seen as being not popular out there in the public and it kept Queenslanders safe. and it kept Queenslanders safe.

Palaszczuk says she hasn’t seen all the polling, but won’t go into what parts she has seen:

I’m not going into all of that today. That’s ridiculous.

Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk is being questioned over a report in the Australian newspaper that the Queensland government has been focus-testing its pandemic response.

(The federal government has also engaged focus groups for its pandemic response.)

Palaszczuk says it’s normal:

The research was done to help the advertising campaigns that the Covid-19 taskforce put in place. Everyone knows clearly how much I was personally attacked and the government was personally attacked for some of the strongest answers that we took taking on advice. Dr Young’s clear advice about the health. There has been high court cases that have backed our decision-making and it is interesting to see that when we were one of the first to come out and do these hard and fast lockdowns, it has now become the mantra of nearly every other state and territory, including the federal government.

Q: According to the documents, your department has offered it, it isn’t about messaging or advertising. It says, quote, “this research will help guide the decision-making and communications approach around the lifting of restrictions”.

Palaszczuk:

[Not] the decision-making. That is not correct. I reject that.

Q:

It also says there are 17 waves of research that are coming in and again it shows that it is about guiding your decision-making.

Palaszczuk:

But is not correct. You’ll find that nearly every state including the federal government from time to time does sentiment testing and research especially to guide their advertising campaigns. Those campaigns have to be based on value for money and making sure there is clear messaging to the public what are do with the Covid-19 and social distancing and staying at home, these are important messaging that needs to happen.

Updated

There was talk about this yesterday.

Labor was saying it was open to changing the parliamentary calendar but was only approached by the government late last week, after hotel bookings and arrangements had already been made.

It’s also worth noting that the government has the numbers on the floor – and can make any changes to the sitting calendar, for the House, that it wants – because it has the numbers.

For the record, the change which was being discussed was going straight into the third week of sittings (removing the week break) and then dropping off the fourth week of sittings (so three weeks instead of four, but no break).

Updated

Queensland treasurer Cameron Dick (Milton’s brother, for federal watchers) has announced a new support package for tourism and hospitality businesses:

We are waiving, refunding or deferring a range of fees and charges across government for eligible tourism hospitality business across the state for 12 months so for this financially until 30 June 2022.

There are a range of fees and charges which will be refunded or waived.

We are awaiting or refunding all the licensing fees for tourism and hospitality businesses for this financial year, a benefit of around $22m for business and industry in the tourism and hospitality space.

The extent of $5,000 business support grants to all large tourism and hospitality businesses across Queensland. The government is setting aside $20m for a Covid cleaning rebate.

It will pay 80% of small and medium sized businesses cleaning costs if they are a Covid exposed site up to a maximum of $10,000. We hope that will help businesses who may become Covid exposed sites.

Updated

Panic buying has hit far north Queensland, deputy premier Steven Miles says:

We are aware of some shortage of product lines in supermarkets in and around Cairns.

These aren’t caused by a shortage of products in the state but panic buying.

Supermarkets will deploy additional products to those stores but it is important to underline to people in Cairns that they will not run out of goods. Only buy what you need and only shop alone if you can, not in groups.

Please be kind to our essential workers.

On the Byron case, if you were in Byron since 31 July and are now in Queensland, you have to isolate.

Dr Jeannette Young:

It is really important that anyone in Queensland who has been any of those for local government areas since or on 31 July, when the man drove up from Sydney to Byron Bay while infectious, that you now are bound by those same requirements that NSW has put in place.

Anyone who has been in those four LGAs and have gotten anywhere else out of those four LGAs, whether in NSW or Queensland or anywhere else, now needs to stay at home except for those for reasons that we are all used to. It is really important because he was infectious in the community from 31 July. It has been confirmed that he never travelled into his land.

He travelled from Sydney to Byron Bay on 31 July and never travelled into Queensland. That is good. It is reassuring but having said that, anyone who has been in those four LGAs while he was there needs to now stay-at-home except those essential reasons.

Updated

In terms of the Cairns alert, CHO Dr Jeannette Young says they are going back to 23 July:

You might remember that that marine pilot developed symptoms on 31 July, meaning he had an infectious period from 29 July two days before but he was fully vaccinated, and we know that can change whether or not someone gets any symptoms at all.

We now have this information from New Zealand about the ship that he piloted, coming off that on 23 July and everything that is probably where he acquired it.

We will have to go back and contact traced to 23 July.

The taxi driver then took the pilot to the airport on 26 July and we know through whole genome sequencing that those two are linked but that was before we thought he was infectious which is why he wasn’t up on contact tracing but we are now going back further. People in Cairns, there will be venues put up there and please just take note because you might have been in one of those venues going back to that 23 July. That is really important.

Updated

Given the northern rivers lockdown in NSW, Queensland will increase its police presence on the border.

Updated

Queensland update

Annastacia Palaszczuk says there are only three cases in Queensland today, all linked, and all in home quarantine.

A total of 20,484 tests have been completed.

In Cairns, there were more than 4,400 tests (it’s in lockdown at the moment)

There are 155 active cases.

13,271 people are in home quarantine.

11,000 people have received their vaccinations in the last 24 hours.

More than 50,000 people have registered for the mass vaccination hub.

Updated

If you are wondering where all the MPs are – it’s party room meeting day, which means they are all having their group chats.

I mean, it’s not like they are trying to hide it

The Extinction Rebellion protesters, who held a protest outside Parliament House, moved on to The Lodge (it is just down the road) where they spray-painted the same message, “duty of care”, onto the wall that separates the residence from the public.

It looks like the AFP have now turned up.

Updated

Queensland will give its update at 10am (Cairns is still in lockdown).

We’re expecting NSW and Victoria to both be around 11am.

We’ll bring you all the information as soon as we get it.

Updated

There is a climate protest out the front of Parliament House following the IPCC report. A pram has also been set on fire.

Updated

Meanwhile, in the United States (via AAP):

Members of the US military will be required to get the Covid-19 vaccine beginning next month under a plan laid out by the Pentagon and endorsed by President Joe Biden.

In memos distributed to all troops on Monday, top Pentagon leaders said the vaccine is a necessary step to maintain military readiness.

Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said the mid-September deadline could be accelerated if the vaccine receives final FDA approval or infection rates continue to rise.

“I will seek the president’s approval to make the vaccines mandatory no later than mid-September, or immediately upon” licensure by the Food and Drug Administration “whichever comes first”, Austin said in his memo, warning them to prepare for the requirement.

The Pentagon plan provides time for the FDA to give final approval to the Pfizer vaccine, which is expected early next month. Without that formal approval, Austin needs a waiver from Biden to make the shots mandatory, and Biden has already made clear he supports it.

Austin’s decision reflects similar moves by governments and companies around the world, as nations struggle with the highly contagious delta variant that has sent new US cases, hospitalisations and deaths surging to heights not seen since last winter.

The concerns are especially acute in the military, where service members live and work closely together in barracks and on ships, increasing the risks of rapid spreading. Any large virus outbreak in the military could affect America’s ability to defend itself in any security crisis.

Austin warned that if infection rates rise and potentially affect military readiness, “I will not hesitate to act sooner or recommend a different course to the president if l feel the need to do so. To defend this nation, we need a healthy and ready force.”

In a statement on Monday, Biden said he strongly supports Austin’s message to the force and the plan to add the Covid vaccine “to the list of required vaccinations for our service members not later than mid-September”.

Biden said the country is still on a wartime footing and “being vaccinated will enable our service members to stay healthy, to better protect their families, and to ensure that our force is ready to operate anywhere in the world.”

The US is averaging about 108,000 new infections and 700,000 vaccines administered a day.

Updated

Josh Nicholas and the data team have updated the Victorian charts:

Still on Josh Frydenberg, he was asked whether, with lockdowns extending, Australia was headed for recession and said:

The September quarter is likely to be negative where the economy will contract, as a function of seeing our big states in lockdown.

Frydenberg says there is “light at the end of the tunnel” though.

Updated

Yesterday, Scott Morrison said the government wouldn’t indemnify employers who mandate the vaccine because that would be an endorsement of mandatory vaccines. Greg Hunt, though, said employers were already indemnified because it was a commonwealth sponsored vaccine.

So, clear as mud there.

Updated

Josh Frydenberg was sent out this morning to explain why the government won’t be making the Covid vaccination mandatory, and why it won’t be helping businesses which decide to make it mandatory for its employees.

Here he is on the Seven Network this morning:

We have a broad principle that the vaccines are both free but also voluntary.

There are exceptions with respect to workers in aged care, as well as in quarantine.

Whether an employer can make a reasonable direction to the employees to receive the vaccine will depend on the individual circumstances in that case.

Safe Work Australia and the fair work ombudsman have provided information and guidelines, and it will depend on whether the employees in that business, public facing, whether they are dealing with vulnerable cohorts of workers, or people, customers who may come into get the Covid virus, or indeed other relevant factors.

Pressed on that, with this question:

I can’t visit my mate at a nursing home unless I have a flu shot. Can I sue the nursing home for being discriminatory? When we went to Rio for the last Olympics, you made me have a yellow fever injection and would let me back in unless I had one. Can I sue you? What if I get sick from my colleague here that is unvaccinated, can I sue my employer? This is stupid. You’ve got to give clear guidelines to say that people should be vaccinated. It’s a health emergency.

Frydenberg says:

It will depend upon the individual circumstances.

Host: That’s too wishy-washy.

Frydenberg:

If you look at the guidelines, it made it very clear that it does depend on the situation. If you’ve got dealing with vulnerable cohorts of people and your employees are public facing or a range of other factors that are at play, that will go to whether it’s reasonable for an employer to make the call.

Updated

Michael Sukkar says around 3.3 million Australian households have already completed their census.

The official deadline is tonight.

Updated

Victoria records 20 new cases

All 20 are linked, and five were in isolation for their infectious period:

Moderna received provisional approval from the TGA yesterday, although it has been used successfully across the world for quite some time.

Part of the reason Australia was late to the Moderna vaccine party was because the agreement wasn’t signed until May this year.

As Jim Chalmers told the Seven Network:

Well, let’s talk about Moderna. I mean, most countries had Moderna if not last year then certainly the early months of this year. These Moderna vaccines for Australia were announced in May, we’re now approaching the middle of August. I think the prime minister sees this as a political race rather than a public health race. That’s why we see all this kind of faux urgency now from the prime minister. The rest of us have known for a long time now that this all hinges on vaccine rollout. He was slow off the mark, said it wasn’t a race, made all kinds of excuses, but Australians are paying the price for those failures now. We’re seeing that in NSW, we’ve seen it in other parts of the country at different times. Until we get on top of that, until the prime minister fixes the mess that he’s made with this vaccine rollout, then more people will suffer for longer.

Updated

Labor’s Jim Chalmers, a Queenslander, had some advice for NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian while talking to the Seven Network this morning. But he made sure to keep the message (that the Morrison government has to take ultimate responsibility) on track:

I think we’ve got to get the cases down obviously, it’s been devastating for the whole country to watch these New South Wales cases in their hundreds. I think this is a reminder that the sorts of things that Premier Berejiklian is contemplating, this is a reminder that decisions taken in any part of Australia have consequences for other parts of Australia.

But it all comes back, in one way or another, to getting the vaccine rollout right and building that purpose-built quarantine. Until or unless we can do that, and those are federal government responsibilities, then we’ll continue to have this kind of patchwork quilt of different arrangements in different parts of Australia, and all the damage that that does to the national economy.

Just how much of NSW’s population are under lockdown?

Most of it, reports AAP:

More than 80 per cent of the NSW population is now in lockdown as the state struggles to curb the spread of the Delta Covid-19 strain beyond Greater Sydney and into the regions.

About 6,571,800 residents have now been placed into lockdown.

Byron Bay and surrounding local government areas in northern NSW entered a snap seven-day lockdown from 6pm on Monday after a man from Sydney travelled there about a week ago and subsequently tested positive to Covid-19.

Byron Shire mayor Michael Lyon said locals feared an outbreak and there was no record of venues the man had visited.

“What we do know is he hadn’t been checking in anywhere, hasn’t used QR codes, hasn’t been self-isolating when he got sick, he didn’t get tested until he was really sick,” he told ABC radio on Tuesday.

The lockdown came as the regional city of Tamworth also joined the Hunter region and Armidale in a seven-day lockdown after an infected young woman visited the area from Newcastle.

Meanwhile, Sydney’s Bondi Beach Public School and Shortland Public School in Newcastle are closed for cleaning on Tuesday after Covid cases there, while Kingswood Public School in Sydney’s west and Armidale Secondary College in the New England region have reopened after cases of the virus there.

Meanwhile the ABC reports another apartment block in Sydney’s west has been put into lockdown.

Residents in the 58 units in the Astina apartments in Penrith are all considered close contacts after the building was listed by NSW Health as an exposure site for three days last week with residents and visitors needing to get tested and isolate for 14 days.

In the 24 hours to 8pm on Sunday NSW recorded 283 local Covid-19 cases, 106 of which were in the community while infectious.

Updated

The Coalition’s ideological block against acting on climate in Australia is not conservatism – Boris Johnson is a conservative, Angela Merkel is a conservative, and yet both are pushing for action. Mostly because it makes economic sense – it is where the markets, and the money is going.

In Australia, though, we are held hostage by a handful of people in a party room, representing must-win electorates, so we keep hearing the same fairy tales, without the much-needed dose of reality. It is possible to transition our energy needs, there are jobs on the other side, and new industries offer new alternatives for livelihoods as well as offering hope for the future – that hope being that we can contain the planet’s warming to 1.5 degrees.

Updated

Both Angus Taylor and Sussan Ley (most recently in the news for lobbying countries to remove the Great Barrier Reef’s draft in-danger listing) on ABC News Breakfast this morning.

They will speak on it though – in dixers in parliament, where they can talk about just how much Australia is doing (which is not anywhere near enough) and how it will be technology not taxes which gets Australia to wherever it is we are apparently going (no one is suggesting taxes, because it is not 2012, despite the Coalition attempting to prosecute the same battles).

Updated

In case you haven’t already, remember to fill out your census form tonight.

Even if it doesn’t really count everybody because, once again, the culture wars rule everything in Australia.

As Josh Taylor reports:

As millions of households fill out their 2021 census across the country on Tuesday, the two questions unsurprisingly causing the most controversy are about a person’s religion and sex, a demographer says.

Ahead of the official census date on Tuesday, 2.3m of the 10m households across Australia had already filled out their forms, after the Australian Bureau of Statistics allowed people to complete the questionnaire ahead of time.

The early access to the census has drawn focus on some of the questions, as well as questions some believe are missing.

Updated

Good morning

We’ve all made it through another day to land on Tuesday, where the parties will hold their meetings and the Coalition will tell us how it’s doing the mostest on climate, despite the IPCC report.

It’s that sort of day. You can feel it.

But while we’re on eyebrow raising topics, there is this story from Luke Henriques-Gomes that I hope everyone gets a chance to read today:

The federal government has sent more than 11,000 people Centrelink debt letters worth a total of $32m claiming they were overpaid due to jobkeeper, while resisting calls to claw back money from businesses who got the wage subsidy and then made a profit.

Services Australia has told senate estimates 11,771 people have had a debt raised “after the completion of a review of their income support payments and the jobkeeper income that was paid to them by their employer”.

So a day after the government fought (and won) a change from the Senate to stop businesses who received jobkeeper and didn’t need it (as well as how much they paid) from becoming public, we learn that the government is chasing employees of businesses which received jobkeeper for debts. But the businesses are fine, even if they used the funds for dividends and bonuses, which we know some of them did.

Meanwhile, NSW is still struggling to keep a lid on its Covid outbreak, with large parts of the regions now in lockdown. The Hunter and upper Hunter, Tamworth, Armidale and now the northern rivers, which includes Byron Bay, have been locked down after Covid cases were discovered.

Gladys Berejiklian is concentrating on vaccination as the way out, with the lockdown not seemingly focused on getting to zero cases, but instead acting as a speed hump for infections. But the rest of the states seem inclined to keep NSW cordoned off until the nation reaches the 70% to 80% vaccination target, if Australia’s largest state keeps seeing case numbers in the hundreds, while continuing to spread beyond Sydney.

We’ll bring you all the updates, both political and covid, as the day rolls on. Mike Bowers is on assignment, so you have Amy Remeikis at the moment, with Katharine Murphy, Paul Karp, Daniel Hurst and Sarah Martin at your disposal.

There is a bit to get through already, so grab your coffee (I am on number three) and let’s get into it.

Updated

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