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The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
National
Elias Visontay and Calla Wahlquist

Six Victorian prisons in lockdown after worker tests positive – as it happened

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What we learned: Tuesday, 21 July

That is where I will leave you tonight. Thanks for reading.

Here’s what we learned today:

  • Victoria recorded 374 new cases of coronavirus in the past 24 hours, and three more people have died. There are now 3,078 active cases of Covid-19 in the state.
  • The federal government announced changes to jobkeeper and jobseeker that will see the payments continue beyond their original September cutoff, but at reduced rates.
  • New South Wales recorded 13 new Covid-19 cases. There are now 50 cases linked to the Crossroads hotel cluster.
  • Fresh details have emerged about the government’s so-called “sports rorts” affair after new documents revealed at least six grants were approved by the minister despite no application form for the money being received for them.
  • Six prisons in Victoria are in lockdown on Tuesday night after a guard at one facility returned a positive test for Covid-19.
  • Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe has given a speech in Canberra saying the path ahead in the jobs market is expected to be “bumpy”, backing the need for government spending to limit the damage to the economy.

Updated

Six prisons in Victoria in lockdown

Six prisons in Victoria are in lockdown after a prison officer tested positive for Covid-19.

A statement from Corrections Victoria said it “has been advised that a GEO prison officer at Ravenhall Correctional Centre has tested positive for coronavirus (Covid-19)”.

“While the officer’s contact with other staff and prisoners is being determined, Ravenhall and a further five prisons have been placed into lockdown, including Hopkins Correctional Centre, Langi Kal Kal, Barwon Prison, Fulham and Loddon.

“The Department of Health and Human Services has been notified and contact tracing is currently under way, with impacted staff and prisoners being notified.

“In line with Corrections Victoria’s coronavirus (Covid-19) management plans, a number of measures have already taken place, including placement of potential prisoner contact in quarantine units, contact tracing and thorough cleaning,” it said.

Updated

My colleague Paul Karp has written about some new developments in the sports rorts saga.

Updated

Covid-19 case confirmed in Port Stephens

NSW Health is urging anyone who visited the Salamander Bay shopping centre on 15 July to watch for Covid-19 symptoms and get tested should any occur, after a man in his 60s tested positive.

The man was visiting Port Stephens from Sydney.

A NSW Health statement said:

The Sydney case also visited the Windsor Castle Hotel in East Maitland between 6-8 pm on 13 July. Anyone who visited the hotel during this timeframe and is experiencing Covid-19 symptoms, should seek testing immediately.

Dr David Durrheim, public health controller for Hunter New England Health’s Covid-19 response, said:

If you were at the Windsor Castle Hotel in East Maitland on the evening of 13 July or Salamander Bay shopping centre on 15 July, you may be at risk of infection and you must be tested for Covid-19 even if you have the mildest of respiratory symptoms.

Anyone with cold or flu-like symptoms such as fever, sore throat, cough or shortness of breath is urged to get tested.

Even those with mild symptoms such as fatigue, new muscle aches or pains, a change in taste or smell or a new runny nose are encouraged to arrange testing.

The NSW Health statement also said additional staff had been deployed to the nearby Tomaree community hospital’s Covid-19 clinic to increase testing capability. Testing is also available at Maitland hospital’s walk-in clinic between 9am-4pm daily.

Updated

Fancy a visit to federal Parliament House?

After the coming sitting fortnight was abandoned due to Covid-19 concerns, Tasmanian senator Jacqui Lambie – frustrated at the cancellation and lack of a virtual alternative for politicians to work – told ABC TV this afternoon that politicians aren’t paid “to skip parliament”.

But one avid reader has contacted the Guardian this afternoon, surprised to see the Parliament House website promoting tours for members of the public on its home page.

While visitors will have to book their free ticket on the website so their details are registered, tour groups for up to 20 people can be booked every day until 31 July.

You can read the details here, but there doesn’t seem to be any fine print stopping a politician from booking a visit.

Updated

Josh Frydenberg refuses to rule out returning the jobseeker payment to the previous Newstart rate from before the Covid-19 pandemic.

Appearing on ABC TV, Frydenberg was asked if he would rule out returning the payment to what amounted to $40 a day per recipient.

Frydenberg said he is “not ruling in or ruling out”.

We have just announced an extension of the jobseeker payment for a further three months, after it ends its legislated increase at the end of September.

As we said today very clearly, we will re-evaluate that payment close to the end of the year. My message for your listeners, whether they’re on jobseeker or some other program or in work, we’re doing everything possible to strengthen the Australian economy.

Everything from business investment incentives, to the support programs, to the skills packages. It’s all designed to create the most dynamic and flexible labour market and employment prospects for people.

Updated

The treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, has denied today’s changes to jobkeeper and jobseeker can be classified as a cut, instead describing the changes as an “extension”.

Earlier today, the government announced changes to jobkeeper and jobseeker to lower payment amounts, but extend them beyond the original September deadline.

Jobkeeper has been extended until January, but reduced from $1,500 a fortnight to $1,200 a fortnight, and from January to March it will reduce to $1,000 a fortnight. There will also be lesser rates for part-time workers.

During an interview with the ABC’s Patricia Karvelas, Frydenberg said he would “take to task” the host over referring to the changes as a cut.

It is not a cut, it is an extension.

This is an $86bn initiative from the federal government. It is the largest single economic measure that any Australian government has ever undertaken.

So we kept faith with the Australian people, until the end of September, there are no changes to this program. After September, rather than ending it, we are actually extending it for up to six months.

Pushed about the terminology, Frydenberg conceded:

It is a lower rate than the initial $1,500 payment, but it is an extension of what was originally legislated under this program. Now there are payments that we have chosen, at $1,200 and $1,000, they are simply coming down gradually. And at $1,200 it is still around 80% of the minimum wage.

Updated

A kid hacker under 16 has been revealed as being behind a website posting sensitive medical information, including information about Covid-19 patients, obtained by accessing a third-party pager system linked to Western Australia’s health system.

Nine News reported on Monday night the website had hundreds of pages of information including alerts, doctor and patient names, addresses, phone numbers and health information.

The issue was an unencrypted pager system where a service takes calls and passes on that information to healthcare officials via text and pager. The pager component has since been disabled.

The Western Australian premier, Mark McGowan, on Tuesday said the website had been shut down and the person involved was under 16 who “spends a lot of their time online”.

There will be a forensic examination, and people who had their data posted online will be informed.

McGowan said he wasn’t aware pager systems were still being used.

Updated

A table from the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services showing the latest Covid-19 numbers:

Updated

Police fine NSW man trying to enter Queensland in boot of vehicle

Queensland police have fined a NSW man $4,003 after he tried to enter the state in the boot of a vehicle at Wallangarra without a border declaration pass.

According to a statement, officers intercepted the vehicle on Border Street around 6.45pm on Sunday night and while conducting a search, located the 41-year-old man hiding in the boot.

“Two women, aged 28 and 29, were also in the vehicle at the time. All three people were refused entry to Queensland,” the statement said.

“Since 12pm on Friday 3 July 2020, anyone entering Queensland is required to complete a border declaration pass, which is valid for seven days or until the person’s circumstances change (whichever is shorter).”

In footage of the discovery, an officer can be heard laughing when first opening the boot, before saying “well hello buddy”.

The man responded “hello”.

Updated

Kidd: Oxford study 'promising' but 'this is still very early days'

Australia’s deputy chief medical officer, Michael Kidd, says reports overnight of an Oxford study that indicates positive progress towards a Covid-19 vaccine are “promising” but that “this is still very early days”.

Kidd says:

While it is very encouraging to see the results that we’ve seen overnight, and that is to see that some of the trial subjects are having an immune response, which results in the development of antibodies to Covid-19, there is still a long way to go with those trials to see if that response is maintained over an extended period of time.

We, of course, have vaccine developers working inAustralia and also we are working in partnership with many of the groups around the world including with the group that’s announced the vaccine trial results today in the UK.

Updated

Michael Kidd says the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee “fully supports” the Victorian government decision to enforce face mask use from midnight tomorrow.

He also says masks should be warn in some areas of Sydney.

Certainly for people in the areas where we’re seeing community transmission in NSW, it would be wise for people to be wearing a mask.

Particularly in situations where physical distancing is not going to be possible and this may include, of course, being on public transport, going into the supermarket if it is crowded, going into elevators in high buildings.

Updated

Michael Kidd says authorities “continue to remain very concerned about the outbreaks that we are seeing in residential aged-care facilities in Melbourne”.

He urges all aged-care staff and visitors to wear masks and practice hand hygiene.

Updated

388 new cases of Covid-19 nationally

Australia’s deputy chief medical officer, Michael Kidd, is providing a Covid-19 update.

The 388 cases over the past 24 hours include:

  • 374 cases in Victoria
  • 13 cases in NSW
  • One case in Tasmania

There have now been 126 deaths in Australia.

Kidd says:

We remain deeply concerned about the number of new cases being reported in Australia.

In the past seven days less than 2% of new cases of Covid-19 in Australia have been overseas acquired.

Kidd also addresses those diagnosed with Covid-19 about the importance of adhering to isolation requirements.

Updated

More from the Senate select committee on Covid-19’s hearing this afternoon on the impact of the pandemic on the aviation sector.

Darlene Bailey, an employee of airline catering company dnata in Sydney’s west, told the hearing the denial of jobkeeper to her and her colleagues had “made all of our lives so stressful”.

She spoke of how they were living day to day trying to manage their basic expenses.

This uncertainty has had a heartbreaking effect on colleagues who have had to choose between paying their rent and buying groceries. They have not been able to afford school uniforms for their children; they have put off doctors’ appointments and any expense or bill they could delay.

My co-workers have used all their leave, drained their super, and maxed out their credit cards. But still we have no certainty. We are stuck in no man’s land.

Bailey ended with a plea for Scott Morrison:

I implore you, Mr Morrison, to include all the Australian aviation workers that were dismissed and pushed aside from jobkeeper due to working for a foreign-owned company through no fault of their own.

Updated

The Transport Workers’ Union has accused the government of abandoning “quiet Australians” in their hour of need by excluding employees of foreign government-owned companies from the jobkeeper wage subsidy scheme.

The Senate select committee on Covid-19 is holding a hearing this afternoon on the impact of the pandemic on the aviation sector.

Nick McIntosh, the assistant national secretary of the TWU, congratulated the government for introducing jobkeeper in the first place and for announcing an extension today, “although the rationale for cutting payment levels doesn’t seem to stack up”.

But he said the government needed to be condemned for excluding companies such as the airline catering company dnata, which has told its 5,500 workers it is ineligible for jobkeeper because it is owned by the Emirates Group, in turn owned by the UAE government. Until recently the company was owned by Qantas.

McIntosh said jobkeeper payments were meant to go into the pockets of workers and the company was merely a conduit to distribute the money.

Even though Australian workers of dnata and Cabin Services Australia have paid Australian taxes all their lives and many have never asked the government for anything – the quiet Australians that our prime minister always speaks of – in their hour of need their government has abandoned them.”

Updated

Newcastle’s lord mayor, Nuatali Nelmes, has backed advice from the local health authority that residents avoid travelling to Sydney.

About 120km north of Sydney, it is not uncommon for Novocastrians to commute to the state’s capital for work.

Updated

I’ll leave you now in the very capable hands of Elias Visontay, while I go to make some more reusable masks.

Stay safe, wear a mask when you go out and about in Melbourne (and in crowded places elsewhere) and I’ll see you in the morning.

Updated

The national chief executive of the Australian Hospitality Association, Stephen Ferguson, says the industry is concerned about whether the jobkeeper program will continue to be effective in areas such as Victoria, which are experiencing a second shutdown.

Ferguson says the industry welcomes the program’s extension, but is “concerned as to the effectiveness of jobkeeper for businesses which have suffered long-term shutdowns”.

Given the length of forced shutdowns – and the nature of our highly casualised, mobile and often seasonal workforce – we are seeing the continuity of employment starting to break down.

As jobkeeper is only payable for those employees who were with the employer on 1 March 2020, this would decrease the assistance to those businesses which have been shut down the longest as they are trying to reopen.

There is a real concern when those businesses do reopen their jobkeeper-eligible staff may have already moved on.

Ferguson says the AHA will request the federal government reset employee eligibility for jobkeeper, meaning that in Victoria it could be based on the staff who were employed at the start of the second shutdown on 8 July.

Updated

Speaking of buying face masks, a consumer law expert from the University of Queensland says the spike in the retail prices of face masks following the announcement of the new rules could be considered unconscionable under law.

The competition and consumer law lecturer Lance Rundle said:

Price gouging is where the price of a good is increased significantly over a short period of time, which is not illegal under the Australian consumer law as a business has autonomy to set any price they choose for their product.

But if the price increases are unreasonable, and particularly in a time when the product is in high demand and consumers have no other option, the price increases could be unconscionable conduct under the Australian consumer law.

Rundle said retailers had to be able to show the price rise was justified.

Updated

If you’re living in Melbourne and the Mitchell shire and have not yet managed to buy or make a few reusable masks before they become mandatory at midnight tomorrow, the Victorian government has released a simple guide for how to make a mask using materials you probably already have in your house.

You can find it here.

Updated

Surely the biggest news of the day.

We cut away from the Victorian press conference earlier because of the jobkeeper/jobseeker announcement, but I thought you would be interested in this comment from the chief health officer, Prof Brett Sutton.

He said that while today’s figure of 374 new cases was not what he wanted to see, it’s not indicative of exponential growth – which is what would happen if the spread was uncontrolled.

Certainly we are seeing a rollercoaster of numbers, to a degree, our anxieties rise and fall as the numbers do. There has been some levelling in the last four or five days. We know day-to-day changes can be substantial.

Off the modelling of a couple of weeks ago, if we had been on an exponential curve – which is what happens with Covid-19 – we would have been thousands of cases at this point. And we are not, we are at 374. I’m not satisfied with that but it is better than 3,000.

Updated

The federal government has announced more details about the mutual obligation requirements for people on the jobseeker payment which will resume on 4 August.

In a joint statement, employment minister Michaelia Cash and social services minister Anne Ruston said:

From 4 August 2020, jobseekers are expected to participate in appointments with providers, agree to a job plan, undertake a job search and attend activities if it is safe to do so. If a jobseeker is unable to meet their requirements, no payment suspensions or financial penalties will be applied.

However, the government expects job seekers who are in receipt of an income support payment to be willing to accept any offer of suitable paid work.

From 4 August 2020, if a jobseeker refuses an offer of suitable employment – without a valid reason – they may have their payment cancelled, and may need to wait for four weeks before they can reapply for income support.

Scott Morrison said earlier that the initial requirement would be for people on jobseeker to apply for four jobs a month, “moving to a higher rate of job search” at the end of September.

Sole traders and those who are self-employed will continue to be exempted from mutual obligation requirements to allow them to re-establish their business.

Updated

This is what the social services sector is saying about the changes to the jobseeker payment.

Australian Council of Social Services chief executive Cassandra Goldie said:

The decision to reduce the jobseeker payment in September will hurt millions of people just keeping their heads above water. It means from 25 September, a person on jobseeker will lose $300 per fortnight or $150 per week, and face the prospect of a further cut just after Christmas.

People need financial security and certainty at this anxious time. Today’s announcement gives them neither.

She added:

The government has again today acknowledged $40 per day is completely inadequate, although it has not guaranteed never going back there. We are determined to keep working together to secure an adequate level of income support, put in place permanently.

Brotherhood of St Laurence executive director Conny Lenneberg:

October 1 marks the date that the federal government will plunge people back into poverty, where they’ll once again have to choose between food or a warm house by living on $58.90 a day.

Whilst the increase in the earned income free threshold is welcome, it’s an empty offer. We’re still in the eye of the storm as far as the crisis is concerned. Unemployment numbers are still increasing, a second wave of the virus is ripping through Victoria – this increase only makes a difference when jobs are available, which the research tells us aren’t.

It’s extremely concerning to hear the prime minister justifying cuts on a myth that people are happy not to work and receive income support payments. This puts the blame on Australian families who are unemployed when we know, from the demand for our employment services are experiencing, [they] are doing everything they can to find work.

We’re hearing about the positive impact of an increased rate during the pandemic. People who used to skip on either breakfast or lunch have finally been able to eat healthily, visit the dentist, turn on the heating or buy a jumper to keep warm during the winter. This is not a choice they should be having to make in a country as rich as Australia. It is devastating to think of how many children will now again go to bed hungry and cold as a consequence of this decision.

St Vincent de Paul National Council CEO Toby O’Connor said:

At the end of the day, Covid affects everyone and both those payments should be in place till the end of March. It’s not clear why the jobseeker arrangements have only been extended to December this year.

I would also challenge the need to reintroduce mutual obligation requirements at a time when unemployment is rising with only one job available for every 13 people looking for work.

Updated

I missed this comment earlier from Luke Hilakari, the secretary of the Victorian Trades Hall Council.

In other news, a parliamentary inquiry into the move to merge the Northern Territory’s two lower house electorates into one is underway today.

More from AAP:

The NT will lose of one of its seats due to population changes, with the new boundary changes to be decided by September next year.

Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation NT secretary Catherine Hatcher said guaranteeing two seats would help close the gap. She told the inquiry:

We need to have a voice, and to have a voice with one representative from the territory is not good enough.

Australian Council of Trade Unions Indigenous officer Lara Watson said direct community engagement saw more Indigenous people voting.

Losing a seat will have an impact on enrolment rates because you’re ripping resources out of the territory at a time when you need to increase resourcing.

Political analyst Malcolm Mackerras said that in terms of number of voters per seat, the NT is the “second most privileged jurisdiction”.

He said it was only fair for the NT to have one MP in the federal parliament.

My principle is equal representation for equal number of people. That is what it [the changes] seeks to do.

Warren Snowdon, Labor MP for the seat of Lingiari, said it was impossible for one MP to cover the entire NT.

It is not good enough to believe you can do this all remotely, you do have to travel.

Mr Snowdon said face-to-face interactions were important for voters. He only spent eight nights at home a month.

Victoria is set to gain another electorate at the next federal election, rising to 39, while Western Australia will lose one of its 16 seats, taking the lower house numbers back to 150.

Updated

RBA governor says economic recovery in Australia will be 'bumpy'

Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe has given a speech in Canberra saying the path ahead in the jobs market is expected to be “bumpy”.

In an address to the Anika Foundation, Lowe emphatically backed the need for government spending to limit the damage to the economy.

But he warned against the idea of the Reserve Bank creating money to directly finance the government, saying “there is no free lunch” and “the tab always has to be paid and it is paid out of taxes and government revenues in one form or another”.

Lowe argued it was right for the Australian government to be prepared to borrow against future income to “smooth out the hit to our current income”.

For a country that has got used to low budget deficits and low levels of public debt, this is quite a change. But it is a change that is entirely manageable and affordable and it’s the right thing to do in the national interest.

Lowe said the evidence from history was that “the deeper and more protracted a downturn, the more severe are the economic scars”.

He also cited “the damage to the fabric of our society and to people’s lives that is caused by a long spell of unemployment”.

We need to do what we can to limit the severity of these costly scars. These scars have long-term effects and they damage our society and our economy.

Updated

On the changes to the jobseeker payment, Labor finance spokeswoman Katy Gallagher said Labor still wanted the base level jobseeker payment to be increased, and that Scott Morrison today “failed to take the opportunity to rule out going back to $40 a day”.

This should be an easy task for the government in these difficult times, when families are struggling to pay bills, to put food on the table, to find work if they are unemployed. This is what the government needs to do. They need to come up with a plan around jobs and the recovery, but they also need to come up with a long-term solution to what they are going to do for people who rely on Newstart to make ends meet. And they failed to do that today.

Updated

Chalmers said the Morrison government’s Treasury update on Thursday needed to provide comprehensive information about the state of the economy.

We need to see four years of forecasts, and we need to see a plan for jobs in the recovery. We need to know from the government what their expectations are for how bad this recession will get, how much debt will be piled up to add to the record debt which was already there before the crisis, and how high unemployment will be for how long.

Those kinds of updates – a proper comprehensive update – is long overdue. That’s what we need to see on Thursday.

So to recap: Labor is highly likely to support the changes to the jobkeeper payment (subject to checking the detail) and does not quibble with the level of the reduction in fortnightly payments.

Updated

Shadow treasurer Jim Chalmers has been talking in Canberra about the jobseeker and jobkeeper changes.

He said Labor is “inclined to support what the government has announced when it comes to jobkeeper”.

We will work through the detail of what is being proposed. When we see the legislation, if there are improvements that can be made, we will seek to make those improvements. But we have been responsible and constructive throughout this recession, and we will continue to be so.

He said the extension of the jobkeeper payment was a “welcome change of heart from the prime minister”, who in April said the economic measures would “snap back” after six months.

Chalmers criticised the federal government for not expanding the eligibility for the jobkeeper program to include those left out in the first tranche of the program, such as university workers.

And he continued the line Labor has been running about paying some people on jobkeeper more than their average fortnightly wage.

We shouldn’t forget that the government has now fessed up to borrowing $6bn to overpay some Australians, while other Australians were unnecessarily excluded from the scheme.

Jobkeeper has done some good in the economy, it is a good idea, but it has been badly implemented. Too many people have been left out and left behind, and the government has missed an opportunity today to fix some of those obvious errors with the original scheme.

So the test of what the government has announced will be what happens to jobs, in particular, and what happens to the businesses which create those jobs.

Updated

The Australian Council of Trade Unions says it has “concerns” about changes to the jobkeeper program but supports its extension, saying it’s essential to supporting workers during the economic crisis caused by the pandemic.

It also questioned the justification for cutting payments to people working less than 20 hours a week, under the new two-tiered payment system.

Interestingly, the argument the ACTU makes against that reduction for part-time staff is the same justification the Australian government gave for making them eligible for the $1,500 payment in the first place — because people who work part-time often have multiple jobs, and the income support provided by one supplemented the whole of their income.

Labor has been criticising the government for paying some people more than they would ordinarily earn, saying that was a flaw in the system. That’s a “flaw” the two-tiered system is supposed to rectify.

ACTU secretary Sally McManus said:

This announcement has delayed the economic catastrophe that would have resulted from pushing these programs off the cliff during the pandemic, but we need far-reaching government investment to create a path out of recession and to create the jobs we will need to rebuild the economy.

The increase of the income-free threshold to $300 for jobseeker is welcome but the reintroduction of mutual obligations is a worrying return to the punitive approach to welfare payments which we hoped the Morrison government had left behind.

Sally McManus
Sally McManus: ‘We need far-reaching government investment to create a path out of recession.’ Photograph: Bianca de Marchi/AAP

Updated

Western Australia has recorded no new coronavirus cases in the past 24-hours.

It’s also running a regional travel special, which from the position of someone sitting under lockdown in gloomy Melbourne is just cruel.

The $16.6bn extension of the jobkeeper program will run for six months from 28 September to 28 March.

Under the new two-tiered system, employees who were employed for less than 20 hours a week on average in the four weekly pay periods ending before 1 March 2020 will get a lower rate.

From 28 September to 3 January, people on the full-time jobskeeper rate will get $1,200 a fortnight, and $750 on the part-time rate.

From 4 January to 28 March, it will be $1,000 a week for full-time workers and $650 for part-time workers.

The new eligibility requirements are:

  • From 28 September, businesses and not-for-profits will have to reassess their eligibility by reference to their actual June and September quarter turnovers to demonstrate they have suffered an ongoing significant decline in turnover. Organisations will need to demonstrate they have experienced the relevant decline in turnover in both of those quarters to be eligible for the jobkeeper payment in the December quarter.
  • Employers will need to reassess their eligibility again in December to get the payment in the March quarter. They will have to show they have met a decline in turnover in each of the previous three quarters ending on 31 December 2020.

Updated

What is the detail of the jobseeker changes?

The government has released further details of the jobseeker coronavirus supplement, which is being extended to 31 December but cut from its current rate of $550 to $250 a fortnight at a total cost of $3.8bn.

The changes will apply to everyone on a form of income support that is eligible for the coronavirus supplement. So that’s people on jobseeker, youth allowance, Austudy, Abstudy and so on. The full list here.

There are a series of technical changes to means-testing arrangements:

  • From 25 September 2020, the assets test and the liquid assets waiting period will be reintroduced and the jobseeker payment partner income test will increase from 25 cents for every dollar of partner income earned over $996 a fortnight to 27 cents for every dollar of partner income earned over $1,165 a fortnight.
  • The income-free area for jobseeker payment and youth allowance (other) will be raised from $106 a fortnight to $300 a fortnight and will simplify the taper rate from a dual taper of 50 cents and 60 cents to a single taper of 60 cents. This will mean recipients are more easily able to calculate the value of every dollar they earn.
  • Permanent employees who are stood down or lose their employment, sole traders and self-employed people will be able to access jobseeker and youth allowance under the expanded criteria until 31 December.
  • The ordinary waiting period, newly arrived residents waiting period and seasonal work preclusion period will continue to be waived until 31 December.

The government statement said:

These changes will mean individuals will be able to earn up to $300 per fortnight without foregoing any jobseeker payment or affecting their eligibility for the coronavirus supplement.

Updated

I won first prize in my primary school pet parade for “best kept cat” so I’m not one to throw stones at the awarding of extremely specific prizes.

Meanwhile, KPMG says the federal government has “got the balance, length and level” of the new jobkeeper and jobseeker payments “about right”.

Here’s KPMG’s chief economist, Dr Brendan Rynne:

For jobkeeper, it makes sense that this wage subsidy program is extended beyond September, simply because the economy has not recovered well enough from the initial shock associated with the health policy responses to the coronavirus.

Time has enabled government to adopt a more targeted approach to jobkeeper through the introduction of a two-tier payment structure, plus an acquittal arrangement that ensures support is provided up until a point a business can stand on its own two feet.

Rynne said the first phase of jobkeeper required a “trade-off between timeliness and program features”. He said that despite some recovery in some sectors, such as food and accomodation, the Australian economy was still “very weak” and a further six months of wage support “is appropriate”.

Rynne said KPMG had been advocating for a rise on the base level of the jobseeker payment “for years” and that, with the reduced coronavirus supplement, the payment was “still a healthy rise” on the $560 per fortnight base rate.

But it, combined with the other support benefits provided by government, such as rental assistance, needs to be at an amount lower than the minimum wage so as incentivise people to find employment, otherwise the labour market simply won’t function in the way it should.

You can’t see my eyebrows, dear reader, but I’ll let you imagine their position on that final comment.

Updated

The Australian Greens says it will oppose the reduction of the jobkeeper and jobseeker payments, and that it should not be described as an “extension” of the program when Australia’s second-largest city is back under lockdown.

Greens leader Adam Bandt said:

These cuts will see push part-time and casual workers closer to poverty. Many casual workers are young, insecure, low-paid and underemployed workers desperately seeking more work and higher wages.

With jobkeeper, many workers were getting something close to a living wage, but the Liberals and Labor are readying to throw these vulnerable workers off a financial cliff.

It’s deeply disappointing to hear Anthony Albanese describe a living wage for the lowest income earners as “waste”. It is the sell-out of the century.

Bandt said the jobkeeper scheme was still $44bn under budget, even with the extension, so “there is no excuse for this targeted attack”.

We should be expanding the payment to all workers who need it, not cutting it.

Greens welfare spokeswoman Senator Rachel Siewert said a temporary arrangement for the jobseeker payment was a “mistake”. She said there was no reason the coronavirus supplement — which will be dropped from $550 a fortnight to $250 a fortnight from 28 September to the end of December — should not be extended until the end of March.

We are deeply concerned that this payment will take people below the poverty line and the impact this will have on their lives. We have to give the community and businesses confidence for the long haul.

Siewert added:

It should not be government policy for those without work to live in poverty. The higher level of jobseeker has enabled many people to get out of poverty or stay above the poverty line, which is a key barrier to finding and maintaining employment.

Updated

Eighty people self-isolating in Canberra after attending Batemans Bay club

Eighty people in Canberra are self-isolating after attending the Batemans Bay Soldiers Club last week, ACT chief health officer Dr Kerryn Coleman said.

From 12pm yesterday, anyone who attended the Batemans Bay Soldiers Club on Monday 13 July, Wednesday 15 July, Thursday 16 July and Friday 17 July is legally required in the ACT to self-quarantine for 14 days from the date of their visit.

They’re also advised to get tested, but the self-isolation order doesn’t lift if they get a negative result.

Coleman said:

There are currently more than 80 people in Canberra who were in the Batemans Bay Soldiers Club on the identified dates who have been in contact with us and are doing the right thing by self-quarantining.

I would urge anyone who was in the club on those days and who hasn’t been contacted by us to do the right thing by self-quarantining and contacting the Covid-19 helpline on (02) 6207 7244 so we can talk to you about what we need you to do.

Anyone who was not at the club but holidaying in Batemans Bay is asked to be vigilant with their health and to get tested if they have any symptoms of Covid-19, no matter how mild.

The ACT has recorded no new cases of coronavirus in the past 24 hours.

Updated

Yesterday I spoke with an associate professor of public health at Melbourne’s La Trobe University, Hassan Vally, who said contact tracing was a difficult and specialised task, and experienced contact tracers were a vital resource.

Having said that, however, we can train contact tracers as well as deploy contact tracers from other states to assist in the response.

I would call it both an art and a science and good contract tracers are a valued resource. You need good, rational thinking as well as good people skills. And on top of that you need good sleuthing skills.

Vally said that depending on how long a person with illness may have been infectious, this could be a very time-consuming task.

There is a theoretical point where you have too many cases to be able to contact trace and try and interrupt the transmission of the virus, and in many ways this is a point that we don’t want to get to with this virus.

Once you get to this point you are basically saying that you can’t interrupt transmission by tracking and tracing cases, and that takes out of the equation of one of the most powerful tools we have to control the spread of the virus.

Given the resources we have in Australia, and the fact that contract tracers work on the phone – and so we can deploy these skilled personnel from other states and we can train others – we are not anywhere near this point.

Updated

Daniel Andrews says he 'doesn't accept' Victoria is having issues with contact tracing

Victorian premier Daniel Andrews has been grilled about contact tracing this morning.

With cases increasing, how would staff ensure those who tested positive quickly had their close contacts identified? he is asked. He is also asked by a journalist whether people who test positive should just start contacting their close contacts themselves, ahead of being contacted by the Department of Health. He is told people are on Twitter stating contact tracers have not contacted them despite one of their close contacts, or someone in their workplace, testing positive.

Andrews said:

I don’t accept that we are having [issues with contact tracing].

He said if someone were to get a positive test result, “it’s not like ... moments later someone from the health department is going to ring you”.

There is always time that will be needed to get in contact with you, conduct an interview that could take an hour or more, then begin the painstaking process of contacting each and every person you may have been in contact with.

He said people should not wait until someone from the health department rings before self-isolating. Those who test positive that need support could get it without leaving their home, he said.

Andrews said there was “no harm” in people contacting their close contacts if they tested positive but that compiling a list of people they had been in contact with, ready for the Department of Health, would be helpful.

Contact tracing was “a big and complex task”, he said.

But just because someone sends a tweet saying a meat worker in Colac hasn’t been contact-traced ... it’s wrong. It’s absolutely wrong.

He said the team of contact tracers would continue to be boosted with staff from the private sector.

Updated

That’s the end of the prime minister’s press conference. I’ll bring you another update from Melissa Davey about the Melbourne numbers before running through those changes.

Updated

Guardian Australia’s political reporter, Katharine Murphy, asks about the tapering out of the coronavirus supplement for the jobseeker (née Newstart) payment. Does this mean the government now accepts the old base rate of Newstart was too low?

Morrison says that’s “not a matter we’re looking at at the moment”.

We’ve increased jobseeker significantly through the pandemic and we’re still in the pandemic phase. And given that we have no real — well, certainly no intention of that going back to the original jobseeker base payment, certainly by the end of December — and as I’ve flagged, I would be very surprised if we weren’t to extend it beyond then — then I think those sorts of issues are not ones that the government is contemplating at this point.

I want to clarify what he said there, because it’s a bit garbled. He is not saying they have no intention ever of going back to the original base payment, at least not at this stage. Just that it will remain at a higher rate until the end of December and possibly longer.

Morrison continues:

At some point I imagine that will come into our calculations, at some time. But in the meantime, people are being paid more on jobseeker and they will be continue to be paid more. But with the changes we’ve made to date, connecting people up to employment services, getting them back into training, that’s the important thing. We’ve got to get to the next step.

Updated

Morrison says some people will move from the jobkeeper payment to jobseeker.

He says that’s because the effective unemployment rate shows many people are unemployed but in a holding pattern due to the jobkeeker payment or other support.

The headline [unemployment] rate we know does not reflect the real unemployment situation that’s happening on the ground. We did see a fall in the effective unemployment rate, as we said last week, and that is welcome because the effective unemployment rate washes out the movements of people between different types of payments and definitions. But their circumstances are often, essentially, the same.

So of course we will see some people move from jobkeeper to jobseeker — I expect that. I expect those who are on the second-tier payment, I expect to see quite a number of those come into the jobseeker arrangement. And Services Australia has stood up that ability for applications to be made pretty much from now.

Updated

A reporter asks why the part-time jobkeeper rate — $750 a fortnight — will be lower than the revised jobseeker rate of $800 a fortnight.

Doesn’t that mean someone who works 20 hours a week could receive less income than someone who is unemployed?

Scott Morrison says:

What you’re doing is assuming no one is working. That’s not an assumption you can make, and it is not an assumption Treasury has made.

Treasury has made the point that on jobkeeper, for example, those businesses that may still require it, they will be making payments in addition to jobkeeper to staff doing additional hours. This is why it’s so important that the industrial relations side of all of this is also brought into focus.

These payments have given enormous support to people when they’ve needed it most. But the industrial relations flexibility that has been afforded to employers has also enabled those employers to keep people in jobs.

That’s because the jobkeeper payment is intended as a supplement. Employers are still expected to pay the balance of the wage earned.

Morrison says:

I don’t want to see people lose jobs post-September because of an industrial relations system which is so inflexible that it says to one person, ‘I have to employ you full-time’, and says to the other, ‘so I have to sack you’.

Updated

Asked if the jobkeeper program will need to extend beyond March 2021, particularly for industries like aviation, Morrison said that question was premature.

We’re now three months into a 12-month program. Where the world will be at the end of March is not something that we could speculate upon at this time.

But I think what people — I hope what people — see today was several months ago when these questions were put to us in this courtyard and the suggestion was that somehow the government would not be extending arrangements, all we were simply saying was that we’d be looking at that at the time – we’d make judgements on where the country was at, ... what the health situation was, and that’s exactly what we’ve done.

He added:

We’ll be assessing it and doing what’s best for the country, which is what we’ve sought to do today.

Scott Morrison
‘We’re now three months into a 12-month program’: Scott Morrison. Photograph: Mark Kolbe/Getty Images

Updated

News.com.au reporter Sam Maiden asks if that means that casual workers were overpaid by $6bn in the first few months of the scheme.

Morrison said the alternative was “to not have those payments to those workers at all”.

If you were a part-time worker or a long-time casual, the only option to us in those circumstances at this time is they would not have received jobkeeper and they would have gone into the jobseeker queues and that would have crashed the jobseeker system.

We’re in a position at the end of September to put that two-tiered payment in. So, no, I wouldn’t agree that that was something that could have been done differently or better because the alternate would have been to leave people exposed and, potentially, a stress on the government services system, the Services Australia system.

Under the new split payment system, some people on the part-time rate may be eligible for a mix of payments under both jobkeeper and jobseeker, Josh Frydenberg said.

Updated

Asked if it’s unfair to step down the jobkeeper and jobseeker rates just after Christmas, Morrison says people understand the scheme cannot go on forever.

We have always said that the jobkeeper and the jobseeker coronavirus supplement were temporary measures. And, look, I think Australians understand that.

They know the current scheme that is burning cash, their cash, taxpayers’ cash, to the tune of some $11bn a month cannot go on forever. Australians understand that. They also understand that the jobseeker at the elevated levels cannot go on forever.

Updated

Morrison was asked if the review found, as Labor has been saying all morning, that 870,000 people on jobkeeper were paid more than their normal salary.

Morrison said that jobkeeper could only be paid by one employer, and many people who worked part time or casually worked two or more jobs.

They were the first jobs to go under this Covid recession and the delivery mechanism recognised that. So while they mightn’t have got any income support from the other jobs they were working for, that was channelled through the one employer they did do it through. But by moving to a two-payment system because we’re in a position to be able to a that now and we have been able to extend and boost the capability of Services Australia to respond to the request, we will now have people who are on a lower payment, on the $750 payment or $650 payment.

They’ll also have an eligibility for jobseeker as well. Had we not done that earlier, they would have been getting jobkeeper and applying for jobseeker at exactly the same time putting inordinate stress on the jobkeeper system. And so we are now in a position having bolstered our systems over the last months to enable a two-tiered payment to be put in place, which will diminish those outcomes.

Frydenberg said 39% of the jobs lost across the economy in the first half of this year were secondary jobs. And he said Treasury forecast that income transfer would be halved under the new jobkeeper arrangements.

So the income transfer numbers that the Treasury paper refers to does not take into account how many people lost a second job, nor does it take into account that under the flexible industrial relations changes that came in with jobkeeper, some employers and employers agreed for the employees to do more hours.

Updated

Morrison was asked if there could be some version of the jobkeeper scheme in effect until the next election, and asked if there would be an early federal election. (The last federal election was 18 May last year.)

Morrison is annoyed to have been asked about politics.

Andrew, politics is nowhere near my mind. I don’t think Australians could care less when the next election was and, frankly, right now it’s got nothing factoring into any thinking of mine, not at all. I know it may totally fascinate people who stand in this courtyard, at least some of them, but ... I mean, we have got an outbreak in Victoria and people are dying and you’re asking me questions about when the next election is. I think we need to focus on what the real issue are here and not when the next election is.

Updated

To questions.

Morrison said the full cost of the jobkeeper and jobseeker payments would be summarised in the economic statement, released on Thursday.

Frydenberg said that the original estimate of the program was $70bn, so the $16bn extension brings it to $86bn.

Extending jobkeeper at reduced rate for six month to cost $16bn, says Frydenberg

Frydenberg said the cost of extending the jobkeeper program at the new reduced rate for another six months would be $16bn.

He said the two-tiered payment system would mean people were receiving a payment which was closer to their actual income, pre-coronavirus.

It was a conscious decision to introduce the flat $1,500 payment as it enabled us to get money to people who needed it most as fast as possible. However, one of the consequences of the flat payment equivalent to minimum wage was that some recipients were receiving more under jobkeeper than they were pre-Covid. The two-tiered payment better reflects the pre-Covid income of these recipients.

The payment of $1,200 per fortnight for full-time employees and $750 for part-time employees will run from 28 September to 3 January, at which point it will drop to $1,000 and $650 respectively.

He said the eligibility tests would remain the same, but would be reapplied at the end of September and the start of January.

Employers will need to demonstrate that they have met the relevant decline in turnover in both the June and September quarters to be eligible for the jobkeeper payment in the December quarter, and employers will need to demonstrate that they have met the relevant decline in each of the previous three-quarters ending on 31 December 2020 to remain eligible for the payment in the March quarter 2021.

As the economy gradually improves, Treasury expects that the number of jobkeeper recipients will reduce substantially, with around 1.4m people remaining eligible in the December quarter 2020 and 1m in the March quarter 2021.

Updated

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has been going through the key findings of the jobkeeper review.

He said between 2 million Australians either lost their jobs or saw their household incomes reduced between February and May this year, creating an unemployment rate of 7.4% and effective unemployment rate of 11.3%.

He said the review of the jobkeeper program by the Treasury department found that 30% of the private sector workforce had been supported by the jobkeeper payment.

Treasury’s review found that jobkeeper met its three primary objectives, namely to save jobs and businesses, to maintain the formal connection between employers and employees, and to provide income support.

He said 44% of businesses on jobkeeper said that jobkeeper influenced their decision to keep their staff.

He said that 47.1% of recipients of the program were women, compared with 44.9% of the private sector workforce.

In the four weeks to mid-April, payroll jobs decreased by 8.1% but after jobkeeper, jobs started to stabilise.

Updated

Victoria’s deputy chief health officer Professor Brett Sutton said on the issue of masks, “there is no greater loss of liberty than the loss of your life”.

There have been challenging settings that continue to drive the numbers each day.

He said while community cases were coming down, some settings were causing issues.

There have been growing cases for example in aged care and among health workers.

Sutton said the four reasons people are allowed to leave home, which include for caregiving or for essential services such as grocery shopping, were “still opportunities for transmission”.

It was another reason why masks were important. The health minister, Jenny Mikakos, said the public health team would release more details about mask-wearing in coming days.

With Wednesday marking two weeks since lockdown, the premier Daniel Andrews said it was too early to be talking “next steps or trying to be definitive about what the third or fourth week would look like”.

Updated

Mutual obligation requirements for people on jobseeker will be restarted on 4 August, meaning people will need to undertake four job searches a month.

The penalties regime will kick in if people refuse a job that has been provided and offered through that process. So if there is a job to be taken and a job that is being offered, then it is an obligation, a mutual obligation, for those who are on jobseeker to take those jobs where they’re on offer.

From the end of September, the mutual obligations will increase.

The government will also introduce an asset test for eligibility for payments.

The eased eligibility requirements for sole traders on jobseeker will remain in place, as will the waiving of the ordinary waiting period.

Morrison said the reduced coronavirus supplement of $250 would remain in place until the end of the year, and that further decisions may be made in the October budget.

We will make further decisions about jobseeker at closer to the end of the year or potentially even in the budget. It is our intention that we would expect that there would be likely a need to continue those supplements post-December.

But there is a difference between jobkeeper and jobseeker. Jobkeeper requires that six-month period for employers to be able to plan. For those who are on jobseeker, their plan is there and that is for us to assist them where possible to get them back into employment.

Updated

Coronavirus supplement for jobseeker reduced from $550 to $250 per fortnight

From 28 September, the $550 per fortnight coronavirus supplement, which effectively doubled the fortnightly income support payment, will be reduced to $250.

That means the effective maximum jobseeker rate will be about $800.

The government will also increase the income threshold to people on jobseeker to $300.

That will run until the end of the year.

Updated

Eligibility for the jobkeeper payment past 28 September, when the current scheme expires, will be based on whether businesses have shown a 30% reduction in turnover across the past two quarters, and into the next quarter.

Previously, it was a prospective test – businesses who expected to see a 30% reduction.

Updated

Jobkeeper reduced to $1,200 a fortnight, or $750 for those working part-time

Morrison said the $1,500 per fortnight jobkeeper payment will be reduced to $1,200 a fortnight for full-time workers from the end of September, and $750 per fortnight for people working less than 20 hours a week.

That full time payment will be revised down again for the March quarter of 2021 to $1,000 per fortnight, and $650 for part-time workers.

Morrison said that the jobkeeper review (still not released) found the program was working.

Jobkeeper is doing its job and will continue to do its job through the decisions we’re announcing today.

Already just over $30bn has been provided in support through the jobkeeper program to almost a million businesses – 960,000, thereabouts – supporting some 3.5 million employees.

Morrison said the report found jobkeeper had been “effective in stemming the loss of business closures and job losses” and has “saved businesses and it has saved livelihoods”.

The report recommends that we should continue jobkeeper and we shall, but it needs to be done in a way that is responsive to the circumstances, that it needs to be done in a way that’s aligned with changes that we make to jobseeker, and it needs to be reflective of the conditions and how they can change and we have built always into the design of jobkeeper that potential.

Updated

Prime minister Scott Morrison is speaking now. He will announce the jobkeeper and jobseeker changes, but first he outlines the changing nature of the economic consequences of the pandemic.

We have always been addressing this crisis as a dual headed, with a health crisis and the economic crisis. The Covid-19 recession ... as well as the Covid-19 pandemic, and our national response to both of these challenges.

All throughout these crises, we have maintained a disciplined focus on the principles that we have set out for dealing with each of them. In the economic area, ensuring that our measures are scalable with our target, that they are measured, they are temporary, that they are addressing this information as we know it.

One of the great challenges that all countries are facing in dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic and the recession that has been consequential to that, it has been that things change and they change quickly, and there is always new information, and while you seek to give as much forward planning as you possibly can to help businesses and individuals, households, families, to be able to plan for their future, I think there is a genuine understanding in the community that this is a virus that will plot its own course, and it will wreak its own having where it chooses to do so.

Updated

Andrews urged people against analysing a single day’s results. He has said since the lockdown began that he would expect the numbers to drop after two weeks – and the two-week mark is tomorrow.

You’d like to see numbers coming down. At the end of the day, we’re not seeing the doubling and doubling again. So what that says to me, and I’m sure the chief health officer can speak to this in more detail, is that the sorts of measures we have put in place are having a direct impact. But even with stay-at-home orders and a very high degree of compliance, even with mask-wearing that is already occurring across the community but will be a mandatory feature of our daily lives from midnight Wednesday, we still have to follow all of those rules.

He said he was “very grateful” to the people who are following the rules.

We’re all very grateful for that work, that absolute commitment seeing this through and getting beyond this second wave, but there are still a small number of Victorians who are not taking this seriously and are not following those rules.

And the number of infringements, the number of penalties that have been issued by Victoria police tells me two things and should tell all Victorians two things: there are still some people who are not doing the right thing, that’s the first point. And the second point is that Victoria police are out there and they’re not mucking about. They will fine you and not only is it not particularly smart to be breaking the rules, flouting the rules, ignoring the rules, it’s also just not the right thing to do. Each of us have a stake in this, each of us will benefit from this strategy working.

Updated

It’s the second-highest figure in Victoria since the pandemic began.

Victorian premier Daniel Andrews says that 62 of the new cases reported overnight are connected to “known and contained outbreaks” and 312 are under investigation.

There are now 3,078 active coronavirus cases in Victoria and 6,289 cases since 1 January.

There are 174 people in hospital in Victoria, 36 of them in intensive care.

Andrews said 29,464 tests were completed yesterday, and more than 1.36m tests completed since 1 January.

He said the testing rate now exceeds 20,000 tests per 100,000 head of population.

I thank each and every one of those almost 30,000 Victorians who got tested. That gives us the information we need to trace, to track and to isolate and quarantine anyone who is a close contact or, indeed, a positive case.

Updated

Victoria records 374 new cases of coronavirus and three more deaths

Victoria has recorded 374 new cases of coronavirus in the past 24 hours, and three more people have died.

The three people who died are a woman aged over 100, a woman in her 90s and a woman in her 80s.

NSW has recorded 13 new cases of coronavirus

NSW has recorded 13 new cases of coronavirus in the 24 hours to 8pm last night, a statement from NSW health has said.

That brings the total number of cases in NSW to 3,410.

The 13 new cases are:

  • Ten people associated with the Thai Rock Restaurant in Stockland Mall at Wetherill Park: four people who dined at the restaurant and six contacts of people who dined there. The two cases reported on Monday at Our Lady of Lebanon Cathedral are contacts of a diner at Thai Rock.
  • Two people who were contacts of cases linked to the Crossroads Hotel cluster, bringing the size of that cluster to 50.
  • One overseas traveller in hotel quarantine.

Updated

We are expecting to hear the Victorian coronavirus update from premier Daniel Andrews right about now, and prime minister Scott Morrison is also scheduled to announce the changes to the jobkeeper/jobseeker programs at 11am.

We’ll bring you both best we can.

The Victorian government has released its updated advice on wearing face masks.

In greater Melbourne and the Mitchell shire it will be mandatory to wear a face mask when out of your house, but a lot of people have asked questions like, do I have to wear a face mask while running?

The answer to that is:

If you are doing strenuous exercise, such as jogging, running or cycling, you do not need to wear a face covering. You do have to carry a face covering with you so you can wear it before or after exercising.

You must wear a face covering when walking for exercise even if the 1.5 metre physical distancing is maintained unless you have a lawful excuse such as a medical condition, where it would be dangerous to have obstructed breathing while walking around.

You can read the full FAQ here. I’ll go through it in more detail after this round of press conferences.

Updated

In other, non-coronavirus news:

Just to further clarify that last post: Western Australia only introduced mandatory testing of domestic travellers last week, and it was initially restricted to travellers from Victoria and later expanded to people from NSW hotspot areas.

Previously, domestic travellers entering any of the hard border states just had to quarantine for 14 days.

International hotel quarantine is a bit different. And Tasmania has no direct international flights, so premier Peter Gutwein likely is talking about domestic quarantine. I’ll bring you confirmation on that when I can.

Updated

Tasmania to introduce regular voluntary coronavirus testing in hotel quarantine

The Tasmanian government will introduce voluntary coronavirus testings at day five and day 12 of people in hotel quarantine.

I assumed this was already happening, but apparently testing has to date only been available on request. I assume this is only for domestic travellers, as there aren’t any international flights to Tassie.

Premier Peter Gutwein said that as of tomorrow, voluntary testing at day five and day 12 will be strongly recommended for those who are in our quarantine hotels”.

It will not be mandatory, but strongly recommended. We will be testing at the hotel facilities and those that are sequestered in our hotels will be contacted on day five and day 12 and informed that there is the opportunity for a test.

I do want to make the point at the moment, though, that in terms of all of those people who are quarantined in our hotels, testing is available currently for anybody that requests it. That has been in place now for some period of time. So testing is available.

This follows a young Tasmanian woman, who was in hotel quarantine after flying in from Melbourne, testing positive to the coronavirus.

The woman is currently in the Royal Hobart Hospital, so it appears she is unwell.

Gutwein said the fact that the case was picked up in hotel quarantine “indicates that our quarantine hotel system is working”.

Importantly, the very tough border restrictions that we have in place are important to ensure that we continue to protect the health and safety of Tasmanians and overtime, my expectation is that we will see more cases in quarantine. I think that’s just a given.

Given the rate of asymptomatic spread we’ve seen in Victoria, the idea of only testing people in quarantine when they request a test — which they would probably only do if they have symptoms — is probably not ideal.

Updated

Before we hear from the PM, this is what opposition leader Anthony Albanese had to say about the reduction in the jobkeeper rate post 28 September, and the introduction of a two-tiered payment system.

Albanese says they were always concerned that some people were being paid more under the $1,500 per fortnight flat rate offered by jobkeeper than they would ordinarily earn.

We have expressed our concern in the past that some 875,000 people have been given more money now through jobkeeper than they were earning before the crisis. And that has added billions of dollars to the deficit. That never made any sense. And we pointed that out from the beginning. But we’ll look at the detail of what’s put forward today.

Albanese also told host Virginia Tiroli he was concerned about wage stagnation pre-coronavirus, and about the level of debt Australia was in.

Asked by Trioli if we should expect that any government would have to rely on stimulus packages to get Australia out of the economic hole caused by the pandemic, Albanese said:

Well, we can expect for there to not be waste. And there has been waste in this package with those 875,000 people paid more than they were.

So: wage growth good, people getting paid more than their usual income through a wage supplement ... bad?

However, Albanese said he did not like the argument that the jobkeeper payment could, at its current rate, be a “disincentive” to work.

Look, what’s not fair is if we return to old arguments about people not wanting to work. The fact is that there aren’t enough jobs out there. And there’s 13 people for every job that’s made available.

I have a friend of mine who this morning contacted me, and she unfortunately missed out on a job where they were over 1,500 applications for this job. She was shortlisted and went through a whole process. And that’s a familiar tale out there. Common sense tells you that.

So, I think some of the government’s rhetoric on this is quite contradictory. They know that the jobs aren’t there. That’s why you need to extend jobkeeper and keep that relationship between employers and employees at this difficult time.

Updated

Alert just came through, the prime minister is indeed giving a press conference at 11am.

Fabric and elastic are going the way of toilet paper in March, as people in Victoria rush to make their own fabric masks ahead of masks becoming mandatory in Greater Melbourne and the Mitchell Shire at midnight tomorrow.

Wearing a mask is now also recommended in regional Victoria.

An old cotton T-shirt is good mask material, FYI. Particularly for the inner layers, as it’s likely to be very soft.

Updated

Victorian premier Daniel Andrews and health minister Jenny Mikakos are giving a press conference at 11am.

I’ve been told the prime minister is also giving a press conference at 11am.

Guys. GUYS. There are other times!

While we’re talking about the South Australian border, two more Victorians have allegedly tried to cross without a permit.

SA police say they arrested the two men, a 44-year-old from Cragieburn and a 35-year-old from Wollert, when they were located by police patrols at Mount Barker, which is just 33km from the centre of Adelaide.

Meanwhile, Cragieburn and Wollert are both in Melbourne’s north – in areas with high rates of coronavirus cases and under the stage-three lockdown orders.

In a statement, police said the men drove through a checkpoint on the Dukes Highway at the Victorian-SA border at 9.30pm last night “by allegedly hiding between two trucks before driving off towards Keith”.

Keith is a small town in SA, about 68km over the border.

Patrols located the SUV and both occupants just before 1am on the South Eastern Freeway at Mount Barker. Both were considered non-essential travellers as neither had pre-approval to enter South Australia and the pair were arrested.

The men were taken to the city watch house in Adelaide and charged with failing to comply with a direction. They were refused bail and will appear before the Adelaide magistrates court later today.

Updated

People who breach South Australia’s coronavirus border restrictions could be jailed for up to two years, under legislation that will go before state parliament today.

It would give SA the harshest coronavirus penalties of any Australian jurisdiction.

SA attorney general Vickie Chapman said:

As a government, we want to send the strongest possible message to those who break the law. We can’t be too casual when it comes to protecting our state from the second wave of Covid-19 our Victorian neighbours are currently facing.

According to AAP, the amendments to the Emergency Management Act will be go before parliament today. Other changes in the bill include a provision allowing the state to charge returning overseas travellers $3,000 for two weeks of supervised quarantine.

The current penalties for breaching the SA border restrictions do not include jail time, but do include a maximum fine of $20,000. Four men who stowed away on a train from Melbourne to Adelaide last week returned to Victoria on good behaviour bonds, and three people from Victoria who illegally drove across the border were fined a combined $10,000.

Chapman told AAP that people illegally entering SA could wind back its suppression of the virus.

From the very beginning of this pandemic, we have always followed the advice of our health and law enforcement authorities, and this was no exception. As soon as the police commissioner expressed his support for a term of imprisonment, we acted.

Updated

Thank you, Bill Shorten, for prompting me to update the Covidsafe app and the other ... 63 apps on my phone that apparently require updating. I didn’t even realise I had that many apps.

Updated

Scaling back the jobkeeper payment is expected to “ramp up business bankruptcies and unemployment”, said a senior industry analyst from IbisWorld, Matthew Barry.

More than 870,000 Australian businesses have signed up to the jobkeeper scheme since the money started flowing in May. Or, as the federal government often describes it, almost 1m businesses.

Barry said businesses were expected to downsize when jobkeeper payments are reduced (to a still unspecified figure) on 28 September, which could cause the national unemployment rate to rise to 8.4%.

Updated

Meanwhile, the Labor leader, Anthony Albanese, will give a press conference from Narooma at 11.45am, alongside the now formally elected new member for Eden-Monaro, Kristy McBain.

Updated

On the morning’s press conferences, we know that the Tasmanian premier, Peter Gutwein, is stepping up at 10am to talk about that state’s first case in 65 days. A Victorian woman tested positive in hotel quarantine and is now being treated at the Royal Hobart hospital.

Victoria and NSW have both been giving their daily updates at 11am for the past week, so it’s a good chance we could hear from them at that time again.

And I haven’t yet got an alert for the prime minister’s press conference on the new jobkeeper and jobseeker rates.

Updated

Sydney residents 'strongly encouraged' to wear face masks

Coatsworth said the number of community transmission clusters in New South Wales is “concerning” and that people in Sydney should be encouraged to wear face masks in crowded situations.

That said there are some differences to the early outbreak in Victoria which are that the cases are being traced to single point sources, single outbreaks, rather than a more dispersed outbreak in the community which is what our Victorian colleagues had to deal with, and has proved to be obviously immensely challenging.

So I think there’s still a reasonable chance that the New South Wales public health team will get this under control. But we do have to start to consider things like mask use on public transport where we can can’t socially distance. And that’s something that we would start to encourage Sydneysiders to strongly consider.

But Coatsworth said making face masks mandatory, as they will be in Victoria from midnight tomorrow, was “a big policy intervention” and would not be a proportionate response in NSW.

I think what we would say clearly at the moment is [given] the number of cases in New South Wales, the proportionate response is to encourage people who can’t socially distance to start getting used to wearing masks. These are medical masks or cloth masks.

He said there were issues of complacency around social distancing in NSW, and other states and territories outside of Melbourne.

Until we get that vaccine that we discussed earlier, we need to maintain the behaviours — physical distance, hygiene, getting tested when we’re unwell. That has to be part of daily living. If people don’t get the message, they will find themselves in the situation that greater Melbourne and Mitchell Shire are in at the moment.

Oxford's coronavirus vaccine results are 'very encouraging', Coatsworth says

Australia’s deputy chief medical officer, Dr Nick Coatsworth, says the coronavirus vaccine being developed by Oxford University looks “very encouraging”.

The first results of a human trial of the experimental version of the vaccine show that it is safe and able to generate a strong immune result.

Coatsworth told the ABC:

The response of this vaccine has been to create increased number of antibody levels and T-cell activation. They’re the two parts of the immune system that will work in concert to protect against Covid-19. So what we’re actually seeing is that those two elements of the immune system are boosted by the vaccine. What we need to see now is that boosting actually translate into protection from Covid when it’s rolled out and I, too, have seen the reports this morning that they’re aiming to enrol up to 50,000 people in the next six to eight weeks.

So this is encouraging news. We still have to make sure that over a large population it’s a safe vaccine and most importantly an effective vaccine.

If the next phase of the trial goes well, Coatsworth said he hopes the vaccine will be available “as soon as possible”.

There were “still some significant steps to get through” if the vaccine proved effective in broader trials, especially in terms of procurement and manufacturing. But he said all those issues were being monitored:

So the finger is absolutely on the pulse here to make sure that we understand if and when the vaccine is going to become available for Australians.

Updated

An interesting line for a Labor leader to take …

Updated

On looking forward, the RN Breakfast host, Fran Kelly, asked Sally Capp if Melbourne would be able to host events like its New Year’s Eve fireworks this year.

Capp said the council was working on socially distanced contingencies to the usual event, but that “we do know at this stage that it’s highly unlikely we are going to be able to welcome 400,000 people into the city centre”.

She said it was important, this year in particular, to give people the chance to collectively see the back of an awful year:

We are thinking about how do we help people say goodbye to 2020, because I feel like there’s going to be a lot of people who want to kiss goodbye to 2020 and say hello to a hopefully better 2021.

Updated

Melbourne’s lord mayor, Sally Capp, says 8% of the hospitality businesses in the CBD which are now closed owing to coronavirus restrictions have told the council that they will not reopen. A further 7% say they are unlikely to be able to reopen.

The figures come from a council survey, Capp told Radio National this morning. She says about 45% of all hospitality businesses in the CBD are now closed, while the remaining 55% are trying to remain viable by offering takeaway and delivery services.

It’s the most difficult circumstances i’ve ever seen in my lifetime ... there is no rulebook for this. Everybody I think is genuinely trying their best to survive in very uncertain and challenging times … Initiatives like jobkeeper certainly give hope.

Capp said the CBD businesses were “very heavily regulated” and regularly visited by both Melbourne city council staff and police officers to ensure they were complying with coronavirus restrictions and social distancing rules:

Many of them have commented to us that they feel they get more than due attention.

Her comments come as Victorian health officials said 80% of the new transmissions of the coronavirus in the Melbourne region come from workplace interactions. Capp said:

A big part of the transmission in workplaces has bene the mobility of people across different workplaces ... certainly our offices are doing their best to make sure the businesses are supported in understanding what the restrictions are in adherence to them.

She said there was “a lot of frustration at the situation we find ourselves in” but urged people to keep looking forward and following the stay-at-home restrictions.

Updated

The Australian Medical Association has called on the NSW government to match the Australian government’s commitment of “zero healthcare worker deaths” from Covid-19.

This morning the AMA NSW president, Dr Danielle McMullen, said:

The Federal Government’s commitment to zero healthcare worker deaths is reassuring, but it is not enough. The State Government also needs to be accountable to healthcare workers and give frontline workers confidence that they are supported during this crisis …

As the number of new cases rise, so does the anxiety of healthcare workers. Committing to a target of zero deaths sends a strong signal to the profession that their work and the sacrifices they are making during this pandemic are valued.

If you (like me) are wondering what such a commitment looks like in practice, McMullen says it is: providing appropriate PPE in all healthcare settings; transparent information about the range and usage of PPE; appropriate reporting of healthcare worker infection data, particularly where the infection was caused by work-related exposure; and making the safety and welfare of healthcare workers a key priority in decisions around restrictions or closures.

There have been issues around the reporting of data about healthcare workers who have contracted the coronavirus in Victoria or are a close contact of a known case. Melissa Davey has been following this issue for Guardian Australia, and reports today that the AMA in Victoria has called for greater transparency.

The AMA Victoria president, Assoc Prof Julian Rait, told her:

We still don’t have transparency around the true numbers of cases being acquired in the workplace despite assurances we would be in receipt of that information.

There are 429 Victorian healthcare workers who have been infected with the virus and 164 of those cases are active, with hundreds of others in quarantine.

McMullen said healthcare workers in NSW were concerned they could be in the same position as Victoria if the spread of the virus continues.

Updated

On the jobseeker payment, Cormann would not say what the fortnightly rate would be after 28 September but said some form of supplementary payment would continue for the next six months.

It will not be the full $550 coronavirus supplement, which effectively doubled the rate of jobseeker to $1,100. Cormann said the supplementary payment to be provided for the next six months, through to March 2021, would be at “somewhat lower levels”:

What the ongoing arrangements will be after that will be a matter for the budget in October.

Cormann rejected the suggestion that extending the payments was simply pushing the economic problems of withdrawing income support into next year. He said the government was working on “a transition out of the transition ... instead of imposing a fiscal cliff which would have been the case if we had stopped payments from one day to the next at the end of September”.

Updated

Mathias Cormann said the reduced jobkeeper rate would not be enough to solve the problem of “zombie businesses” – those that are no longer viable entities but are just continuing to exist as a conduit for their employees to receive jobkeeper payments.

The reduced payment will run until March 2021. Cormann said jobkeeper had been introduced in March 2020 because it “was very important to get macroeconomic support into the economy very quickly” but that “it certainly does create certain distortions”:

You keep businesses afloat that might not otherwise survive without this support being ongoing. And it is temporary support. It is not ongoing support. So this is why we’re starting to lower those payments in an effort to start weaning businesses off, because ultimately, we need to get back to a situation after this six months where all businesses can pay for the wages of their employee out of their income, rather than having to rely on taxpayer support.

To be eligible for the existing jobkeeper payment, businesses had to show a 30% reduction in their turnover. Cormann said that turnover test would be reapplied in October and again in January, to make sure businesses still required the support.

Updated

Mathias Cormann has been on ABC News Breakfast this morning, talking about the changes to the jobseeker and jobkeeper payments to be announced today without, er, actually announcing anything.

The current $1,500-a-fortnight jobkeeper rate and $1115.70-a-fortnight jobseeker rate (that’s the base rate of $565.70 plus the $550 fortnightly coronavirus supplement) will expire on 28 September and be replaced by lower-rate payments, although the federal government has not yet said what that lower rate will be.

The finance minister said the lower rate for the jobkeeper payment, which was introduced at the start of the coronavirus-induced economic shutdown in March, was “in recognition of the fact that some Australians have been getting higher payments through jobkeeper than is reflected in the hours worked”.

He said the new payment would have two tiers – a full-time rate, understood by Guardian Australia to be around $1,000 a fortnight, and a lower, part-time rate. He told the ABC:

It means that it more closely aligns the level of support with the level of income that would be received in the ordinary course of events.

Essentially, under the existing flat rate too many people were getting paid more than the government thought they were worth.

Updated

Federal MPs should have their pay docked for cancelled parliament sittings, Rex Patrick says

The South Australian senator Rex Patrick says federal MPs should have their pay docked by $1,000 for every scheduled parliamentary sitting day that gets cancelled rather than rescheduled.

The federal parliament has sat for fewer days in the first half of 2020 than during the same period in any other year in the past 10 years. The lower house sat for just 27 days from January to July 2020 and the Senate 23. That’s almost half the number of sitting days of the next lowest year – the first half of 2019, when the lower house sat for 45 days and the Senate 40 despite being suspended for the federal election on 18 May:

Millions of Australians are facing huge financial difficulties as a consequence of COVID-19 lockdowns and restrictions. All too many Australians have lost their jobs and many others are working reduced hours with significantly reduced pay. Federal politicians should not be insulated from the impacts, especially when many MPs are not doing fundamental work they are rightfully expected to do; oversight of Government and reviewing and voting on legislation.

The Centre Alliance senator said the health advice of the chief medical officer should be followed but Scott Morrison’s decision to cancel a fortnight of sitting days rather than reschedule them was “highly disappointing and sends precisely the wrong signal to Australians”:

There were only 30 Senate sitting days left for 2020. The prime minister’s decision reduced those planned sittings by more than 20 per cent. Those August sitting days should not have been cancelled, but rather rescheduled to September, which has only three sitting days planned. There is a lot of work to be done.

Patrick said parliament was not able to do its work properly on such a restricted schedule because it reduced the time to properly scrutinise legislation:

When Parliament does reconvene, the Government will no doubt seek to ram through its legislative agenda in the shortest possible time and with the least possible debate and scrutiny.

Updated

Good morning,

Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg will today announce changes to the jobseeker and jobkeeper programs, reducing the coronavirus supplement on the former by an unspecified amount and cutting the latter to $1,000 a fortnight. The changes will be effective from 28 September, and jobkeeper will continue until March 2021.

According to a summary of the jobkeeper review, circulated in Canberra yesterday, the Treasury found that the payment should continue to be available past September for businesses most impacted by the pandemic, but that:

It may … be appropriate at this juncture to consider reducing payments to wean off businesses from ongoing support.

You can read more on that from our political editor, Katharine Murphy, here.

The changes to the NSW-Victorian border will come into effect at midnight tonight, making it much harder to cross. They’ve been roundly criticised by the mayors of the twin city of Albury Wodonga, who say the NSW government has not been consultative.

Meanwhile, police in NSW are preparing to go to the court again to stop another proposed Black Lives Matter rally, planned for Tuesday 28 July. The police commissioner, Mick Fuller, told Sky news that holding a protest could “put NSW back five or 10 years economically” and alluded to the repeatedly disproven claim that the Melbourne Black Lives Matter rally of 6 June had a role in the second wave outbreak in that city. The Victorian chief health officer has repeatedly said it didn’t, and said the whole of the outbreak could be attributed to breaches in hotel quarantine.

Tomorrow marks two weeks since greater Melbourne and Mitchell shire were put back into lockdown. Authorities have repeatedly said they would expect numbers to drop at this point — but despite a substantial reduction yesterday the trend is not going down yet. NSW recorded its highest number of cases in several months but all were linked to known outbreaks.

Let’s crack on. You can follow me on Twitter at @callapilla or email me at calla.wahlquist@theguardian.com.

Updated

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