Summary
That’s where we’ll be leaving the blog at today.
Here’s what happened:
- South Australian police have refused permission for a second Black Lives Matter rally in Adelaide, but the SA government will allow 2,000 AFL spectators into Adelaide Oval to watch the Saturday “showdown” between the Crows and Port Adelaide.
-
300 people protested in Perth outside the headquarters of Rio Tinto after the mining company destroyed a 46,000-year-old sacred Aboriginal site.
- The ABC announced it would cut approximately 250 jobs.
- The Indigenous affairs minister, Ken Wyatt, said the renewed Closing the Gap commitments will include justice targets.
- The Treasury secretary, Steven Kennedy, said he takes responsibility for the $60bn “estimates variation” on jobkeeper.
- The ACT’s single new coronavirus case in weeks was revealed to be a foreign diplomat who was exempted from 14 days quarantine, and who drove from Sydney Airport to Canberra in a private car.
- The search continues for teenager William Callaghan, who is missing near Mount Disappointment in Victoria.
Thanks for reading along, and stay safe.
The women’s rugby league competition, the NRLW, will continue this year, with the season restarting in September.
Read our full story here:
AAP have this report on the protests in WA today:
Hundreds of people have rallied outside Rio Tinto’s Perth headquarters to protest the mining giant’s destruction of a significant indigenous site in Western Australia.
Rio Tinto has apologised but refused to say whether reparations are being considered.
Organiser and Noongar man Robert Eggington told the crowd of about 300 peaceful protesters on Tuesday that Rio had exploited the weakness of WA’s Aboriginal heritage legislation.
“They used that against the people and then turned and blamed (it on) misunderstandings between the company and the custodians of that site,” Mr Eggington said.
“It’s so important to understand how Rio Tinto came like a thief in the night and blew away a site ... that surpassed the last ice age.”
Mr Eggington called upon Rio Tinto iron ore chief executive Chris Salisbury to resign and for a 100km buffer to be placed around the Juukan caves to prevent further damage.
Changes to Australia Post’s delivery model will result in one in four jobs being lost, the Communications, Electrical and Plumbing Union says.
Australia Post says the concerns are speculative.
Here is an update on the search for missing teenager William Callaghan:
An air-and-ground search is continuing for a lost Victorian teenager with non-verbal autism, after life-threatening low temperatures overnight.
Hundreds of people are racing to find William Callaghan, 14, who became lost in steep and rugged terrain on Mount Disappointment about 2.20pm on Monday.
William became separated from his family wearing just blue trackpants and a hoodie ahead of a night where temperatures dropped below zero.
Acting Inspector Christine Lalor said the youngster had been walking to the summit with his family when he raced ahead.
Tuesday’s clear, sunny sky kept hopes high of finding him after an air-and-ground search started on Monday afternoon.
But with another chilly night coming, fears for the boy are growing.
“It’s going to be another cold evening again, hence ... it’s vital that we try to find William before nightfall,” Insp Lalor said. “(His parents) are holding up as well as can be expected.”
Search and Rescue Squad Senior Sergeant Greg Paul told reporters on Tuesday they were fighting against time, but remained hopeful.
The weather bureau expects the temperature on the exposed mountain to drop to zero degrees and -3C in the valleys overnight.
“It’s quite life-threatening weather, but we have had people survived several nights in these weather conditions as well,” he said.
“Luke Shambrook, six years ago ... we found him on day five, he was alive and he’s alive today.”
A mix of four-wheel-drives, people on foot, motor bikes, horseback and those in the air are involved in the search.
More than 200 volunteers joined about 150 police and emergency services who are looking for William.
Sen Sgt Paul said the area had very thick bush from bushfire regrowth and it hampered searches, given the undergrowth.
But they were “giving it our best effort” to search the steep terrain.
“The only advantage is ... there is an opportunity to stay a little bit warm if you can snuggle up in the undergrowth,” he said.
William went missing without food and water and could have covered a lot of distance by now, police said.
He is very energetic and food-focused, with police believing he may have walked into a house to help himself to food, or tuck himself into a bed.
“William doesn’t verbalise so if anyone finds him the best way to communicate with him is to be patient and calm,” Acting Insp Lalor said, adding William taps his chest to communicate.
“If anyone in the area could check their homes, check their beds and any out houses to see if William is in those locations.”
Former Collingwood player Heritier Lumumba has called on his former club and the AFL to publicly acknowledge the racism he says he was subjected to during his playing career, AAP report.
The 33-year-old posted on social media today to detail his experiences during 10 years at the Magpies - which he said were inadequately dealt with.
Lumumba, who retired from football in 2016 after repeated concussion problems, said he endured a “culture of racist jokes” at the Magpies and that coach Nathan Buckley had not supported him when he spoke out against Eddie McGuire in 2013.
Club president McGuire had suggested on radio that Sydney’s Adam Goodes could be used to promote the King Kong movie, and later apologised for doing so.
“I spoke out against McGuire’s racism on 28/5/2013 and was ostracised internally for doing so, particularly from Buckley, who stated, ‘You threw the president under the bus’,” Lumumba said in a Facebook post.
“They viewed what I did as wrong, and remained unapologetic about it, and as a result, I was treated differently, for the worse.
“It had a negative effect on my mental health and general well-being.
“Without a support network within the club/league that could cater to my specific needs, I used psilocybin (mushrooms) out of desperation to deal with my distressed state, which subsequently helped me confront CFC over the issues.”
Lumumba, who made his AFL debut in 2005, also reiterated the claim that he was called “Chimp” by Collingwood teammates before being traded to Melbourne at the end of 2014.
That claim was publicly backed up by former Magpies teammate Andrew Krakouer in 2017.
Lumumba said the AFL and Collingwood did not have the capacity or desire to address the issues he raised.
“They were negligent and did not (take) their internal issues seriously,” he said.
Lumumba played 199 games for Collingwood and added another 24 with Melbourne.
The special inquiry into the Ruby Princess has heard from NSW’s chief human biosecurity officer today.
NSW Health communicable disease senior medical officer Dr Sean Tobin said the ship was low-risk mainly because no passengers had been to countries with worrying Covid-19 outbreaks, AAP reports.
“You’ve said the most significant factor was the absence of passengers and crew who had travelled through China, South Korea, Iran or Italy in the last 14 days before embarkation,” counsel assisting, Richard Beasley SC, read from Tobin’s statement.
Commissioner Bret Walker SC said he thought it was “a bit odd” that clinical judgements were being made without the authorities having seen individual patient records.
“There were a number of key factors we were considering,” Tobin replied.
“I didn’t see anything in this that would suggest that I should look at the ARD log in more detail.”
Tobin told the inquiry earlier he was part of a panel that initially discussed the health and risk assessments of cruise ship entry into NSW and was also involved in providing insight on the states’ draft cruise ship protocol document.
Updated
A man has been charged after he allegedly used the internet to threaten to kill NSW police minister David Elliott.
AAP report that detectives from the fixated persons unit started investigating on Sunday. A home in Belmont, in the state’s Hunter region, was raided on Monday afternoon.
Cannabis, medication without a prescription, two gel blasters and ammunition were found during the search and seized for forensic examination.
A 25-year-old man was arrested at the home.
He was charged with using a carriage service to threaten to kill and possessing drugs and firearms.
He was granted bail to appear at Belmont local court in July.
Updated
Ken Wyatt is on ABC24 talking about the protest outside Rio Tinto's Perth offices, which is happening now. About 300 people are there.
— Calla Wahlquist (@callapilla) June 9, 2020
One of the speakers at the protest is Noongar elder Uncle Ben Taylor, who was frail and hard of hearing last time I saw him ~4 years ago. He'd be in his 80s. He won't stay home when he could be speaking out about injustice, just because he's in a high risk group for Covid-19.
— Calla Wahlquist (@callapilla) June 9, 2020
Wyatt: "We have to watch every other site that exists within that Pilbara region and I would urge
— Calla Wahlquist (@callapilla) June 9, 2020
elders to make sure that they check on those sites to ensure that there is no further damage done in the Pilbara because some of those other sites are 60,000 years plus old."
And here is our story from Amanda Meade:
ABC announces job cuts
The ABC’s managing director, David Anderson, has announced the organisation will have to make job cuts and redundancies.
ABC redundancies
— Joe O'Brien (@JoeABCNews) June 9, 2020
ABC MD says it has to make up $41m/yr budget “gap”
Services will be affected
There will be redundancies
Staff in affected Divisons to receive emails soon re interest in redundancy
Announcement by end of the month#YourABC
ABC MD David Anderson has called for voluntary redundancies from ABC news, regional and specialist divisions to meet $84m budget cut. Story to come
— amanda meade (@meadea) June 9, 2020
This comes after Newscorp Australia also announced that dozens of jobs would be cut at the Daily Telegraph, Herald-Sun and the Australian.
Updated
The NSW supreme court has released its reasons for allowing the Black Lives Matter rally in Sydney on Saturday, and AAP has this report:
The green light was given to Sydney’s Black Lives Matter rally after a judge made legal errors about the organiser’s police application, an appeal court says.
The last-minute go-ahead given to Sydney’s Black Lives Matter rally came down to a narrow legal point rather than competing public interests about protests and the Covid-19 pandemic.
Late on Friday in the supreme court, justice Des Fagan made findings about the Summary Offences Act before declining an oral application to approve the rally because it breached coronavirus restrictions.
But in reasons published on Monday, the appeal court ruled justice Fagan erred in those findings, which related to organiser Raul Bassi’s application to hold the rally on 6 June.
Chief justice Tom Bathurst, sitting with justices Andrew Bell and Mark Leeming, said Bassi on 29 May gave the required seven days’ notice to the NSW police commissioner of a proposed assembly of up to 50 people.
But after realising many more were likely to attend, Bassi suggested to police on 4 June the number of protesters would be up to 5,000 and they would convene at Sydney Town Hall and proceed to Belmore Park.
The appeal court found justice Fagan erred in finding this was a new application and the required seven days’ notice hadn’t been given.
The judges found Bassi’s suggestion was an amendment to the 29 May application, although the particulars of the assembly had changed significantly.
The Summary Offences Act expressly allowed the “particulars” to be amended by agreement, which in fact was given in a police email on 4 June, according to the court.
The court also found Bassi was “given an unequivocal indication that the public assembly in the amended form proposed would occur without opposition from the Commissioner”.
Police later changed their view and opposed the rally.
The court said:
No criticism should be made of that change of stance; we live in challenging and uncertain times where the exigencies of public health are of critical importance and the situation is no doubt extremely fluid.
During Saturday’s urgent hearing at the “heel of the hunt”, the lawyer for police tried to launch a cross-appeal to ban the rally under the Summary Offences Act.
But the appeal court said this cross-appeal was made orally within 20 minutes of the rally’s starting time and did not meet any of the required pre-conditions for mounting such an appeal.
Updated
Victoria police are providing an update about the search for William Callaghan, the 14-year-old boy who is missing near Mount Disappointment.
A spokeswoman says:
We have in excess of 450 people out today and many of those are volunteers, so thank you very much.
At this stage, we do have as many volunteers as we need because it starts to become difficult to manage or ensure the safety of those people.
Apart from keeping William warm, he doesn’t really like to be touched. He doesn’t like loud noise. Just to take those things into account and approach in a quiet manner, try and avoid touching, apart from keeping him warm or a blanket or that sort of thing, and obviously call 000 immediately.
Updated
PM warns 'difficult decisions' looming
At a Coalition joint party room meeting today – on the eve of the resumption of parliament tomorrow – Scott Morrison warned that “difficult decisions” were looming.
The prime minister is understood to have told colleagues that the government needed to stay on top of the coronavirus-related health issues but remain focused on jobs and the economy.
He indicated there were “difficult decisions ahead” – in an apparent reference to budget measures – and some of the challenges would “take us outside our comfort zone”, but the Coalition should apply its philosophical principles as it formulated policies.
The deputy prime minister, Michael McCormack, told the same meeting the government had spent a lot of money during the pandemic, but this was to cushion the economy.
The treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, briefed the meeting on recent announcements including the homebuilder package, the extension of the instant asset writeoff and the reintroduction of childcare fees. He said the next election would be a battle about the role of government, claiming that Labor saw it as a “limitless provider” while the Coalition saw it as an “enabler”.
Frydenberg said the government could not afford to keep income supports in place indefinitely. He said there would be some tough times ahead in the lead-up to the budget, with the outcomes of the jobkeeper review to be announced at the end of July.
Updated
Corrective Services NSW has issued a statement about the use of tear gas yesterday at Sydney’s Long Bail jail.
The department said officers fired tear gas to break up a fight in the yard, and then afterwards, inmates spelled out “BLM” on the ground for media helicopters.
Some commentators and media – not including Guardian Australia – reported that tear gas was used to stop a Black Lives Matter demonstration.
In its statement, Corrective Services NSW says it refutes that “yesterday’s Long Bay disturbances were in support of Black Lives Matter”.
CSNSW’s information is that the disturbances were drug-related. The disturbance originated from two fights that broke out in a yard of Long Bay hospital around midday. All six assailants and one of two victims identify as Aboriginal. The other victim is not Aboriginal.
Only at the very end of the incident, an inmate made the letters BLM out of towels on the ground in a separate yard. This was an opportunistic action taken in response to the presence of media helicopters.
Updated
A foreign diplomat, who was exempt from 14 days of quarantine, is the ACT’s first new coronavirus case in weeks.
The ACT chief health officer, Dr Kerryn Coleman, revealed today that the man, who tested positive on Saturday, was a diplomat.
He drove from Sydney Airport to Canberra in a private car, and he and his family are now in isolation.
Coleman said:
He traveled back to Canberra extremely safely in a private car, and no one else was exposed in that trip.
Australia is legally required, under the Vienna Convention, to allow diplomats freedom of movement.
Updated
One more thing that’s worth noting out of the Coalition joint party room meeting:
The attorney general, Christian Porter, seemed to signal to his colleagues that the government was likely to appeal against elements of last week’s federal court ruling that the Labor government’s suspension of live cattle export in 2011 was invalid. My colleague Calla Wahlquist reported details of the ruling here.
The Coalition has long criticised the suspension of the export trade, but is now worried about the impact of the court ruling on ministerial decision-making.
It is understood several Coalition members raised the issue of the recent court decision on live cattle export trade and asked whether the government was intending to appeal against the decision.
Scott Morrison replied that the government was working with the live animal export sector to deal with “the injustices” suffered by that industry. But the prime minister added that the judgment raised “real issues”.
Porter did not commit one way or the other regarding an appeal, but argued the tort of misfeasance was applied here in a way that had not been seen before.
He argued the judge had effectively introduced a new test of proportionality, which could have a significant impact on the capacity of ministers to make decisions. Porter told the meeting he believed it was possible to do justice to those affected by the live export shutdown decision while ensuring there was no impact on democratic decision-making by duly elected ministers.
During the meeting, a number of Coalition members called for support to help north Queensland with rising insurance premiums, while others pressed the need to support domestic manufacturing.
Updated
Mathias Cormann does not commit to release the treasury review of #jobkeeper publicly. "The outcomes and decisions of government will be released publicly...beyond that, I'll inquire with the treasurer." #auspol
— Paul Karp (@Paul_Karp) June 9, 2020
It is understood there was no substantial discussion of the weekend protests in Australia at the Coalition party room meeting today.
But some members of the government referred to events in the United States and the United Kingdom.
The treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, told Coalition colleagues there had been shocking pictures on television screens of looting in New York and the “disgraceful defacing” of a Winston Churchill statue in London. (Somebody sprayed “was a racist” under Churchill’s name, in reference to allegations of his responsibility for the Bengal Famine of 1943.)
Frydenberg approvingly repeated the comment of a commentator who said that if Winston Churchill was a racist, what would you call the guy he stopped?
Updated
The critical three days leading up to #jobkeeper $60bn underspend announcement... treasury was aware of analysis of 3.3m employee discrepancy before fronting up to Senate Covid-19 committee on 21 May. #auspol pic.twitter.com/p7d4KNlAf7
— Paul Karp (@Paul_Karp) June 9, 2020
Hi all, thanks to Luke and Calla for their work on the blog today.
The Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, has doubled down on his earlier comments that people should not have attended the Black Lives Matter and Indigenous Lives Matter protests over the weekend.
Andrews said it was “a worthy cause but a fundamentally irresponsible thing to do”, according to AAP.
He said the state’s treatment of Indigenous Australians was “something we should all be ashamed of – the fact that so many Indigenous Australians are behind bars and that so many die so young.”
The state recorded no new cases of Covid-19 today.
Updated
I’m going to leave you with my colleague Naaman Zhou. See you soon.
SA police refuse permission for second Black Lives Matter rally in Adelaide
The South Australia police commissioner, Grant Stevens, has just said police will not grant an exemption for a second Black Lives Matter rally in Adelaide at the weekend.
The police allowed people to congregate in Victoria Square on Saturday.
But Stevens says now:
We acknowledged the unique and exceptional circumstances of the protest we saw on Saturday and the public sentiment around the horrific events we saw in the United States. And it was appropriate that we gave consideration to that, also acknowledging that we weren’t able to prevent that from happening.
I think in this current context, and acknowledging the sentiments of the community to continually allow people to disregard the restrictions we have in place, would make a mockery of the good efforts of everybody else who are doing their very best to abide by the restrictions.
Updated
Adelaide Oval to be open to crowds for Saturday AFL showdown
The South Australia government has said it will allow the AFL to have 2,000 spectators at Adelaide Oval for Saturday’s “showdown” between the Crows and Port Adelaide.
Those supporters will be allowed to sit in various general admission sections of the stadium.
The SA police commissioner, Grant Stevens, said:
One decision that was made today was that for the AFL game, the showdown on the weekend, a crowd of 2,000 people will be allowed into the general area of the Adelaide Oval, with an additional about 240 people in private rooms in the stadium complex itself.
The premier, Steven Marshall, said:
South Australia, I think, will be the first with a significant number of people at an AFL match and the first time we have had a significant crowd at any sport in Australia for months and months and months.
Crowds will return in the NRL from this week, but those spectators will be confined to corporate boxes.
Updated
A distillery in the Victorian town of Apollo Bay has recalled a single bottle of gin, which is believed to contain hand sanitiser.
The SS Casino Gin bottle was for sale at the Great Ocean Road Brewhouse between 5pm Friday and 7.30pm on Sunday and has since been recalled by Apollo Bay Distillery, according to a Nine News report.
A recall notice has been issued by Food Standards Australia New Zealand.
Labor’s Katy Gallagher is targeting the Coalition over the fact Scott Morrison appeared to guarantee jobkeeper would stay in place until September on Friday, only to renege by removing the payment from the childcare sector on Monday.
Finance minister Mathias Cormann replied:
I don’t agree that’s what he’s done. Jobkeeper is in place to the end of September. In relation to childcare workers, [it was] replaced with a transition payment and subsidy.
Morrison had said:
The six months provision of jobkeeper has been set out in legislation and people can count on that.
[Q: You can guarantee that? That will be there until the end of September?]
Morrison: Yes.
Cormann said jobkeeper was “always a temporary support”. Although the program was in place until September, there “may well be some further adjustments made at the edges”.
Cormann noted the childcare sector had to agree to keep employment levels up to receive extra subsidy support, but wouldn’t guarantee there would be no job losses.
So the program named jobkeeper will be in place til September, but that doesn’t mean everyone getting the $1,500 fortnightly payment will continue to get it. If only you could pay bills with the name of or legislated end date of a program, instead of cash.
Updated
Treasury secretary Steven Kennedy expects the unemployment rate to be about eight per cent at the end of September. He notes forecasts are being revised down with improved health situation.
— Matt Coughlan (@CoughlanMatt) June 9, 2020
South Australian authorities are grappling with the “difficult” decision on whether to grant permission for a second Black Lives Matter rally in Adelaide amid a possible further easing of Covid-19 restrictions, AAP reports.
Organisers have called for a second protest on Saturday after more than 5,000 gathered at the weekend in an event praised by police.
SA police commissioner Grant Stevens told ABC radio on Tuesday:
I’ll have look at the circumstances and ... determine what the community sentiment is going to be, what the issues are around safety, and find a position that meets all needs.
It’s a difficult decision but one we have to turn our minds to over the next few days.
At the first rally, the city’s Victoria Square was packed with people calling for justice over the death of African-American man George Floyd during his arrest in the US, and ongoing concerns over Indigenous deaths in custody.
Updated
Labor leader Anthony Albanese is attacking the government over its childcare changes, which reverts from free childcare back to the childcare subsidy system.
He says:
What we will see is a snap back in terms of a shutdown of some childcare centres as a result of this.
What we will see is that parents will struggle because they are snapping back to the old system that already had, we know, one of the highest cost childcare systems in the world. We know that. It’s not good enough.
He also points out Scott Morrison had pledged the jobkeeper scheme would be available until the end of September. Yesterday, the government announced it would withdraw jobkeeper from childcare centres on 20 July.
Updated
ATO second commissioner Jeremy Hirschhorn has said the error rate on the employee form was 0.1% because (to date) 1,500 employers out of 1 million put a “dramatically wrong number” in the form for the number of employees covered by jobkeeper.
Hirschhorn said the ATO notified Treasury on 20 May it had “identified there was a problem with those [employers] that had moved to application”, but it wasn’t until 21 May it notified Treasury of the separate issue with employers who had not moved to the stage of confirming their enrolled employees.
Labor’s Kristina Keneally is agitated by this because on 21 May, Treasury witnesses gave evidence to the Covid-19 committee that the program covered up to 6.3 million workers. She says this was done “without a caveat, without an asterisk”.
Treasury officials had said on 21 May there would need to be a “reconciliation” between the estimated and actual employee numbers. It wasn’t until Friday 22 May that we found out the reconciliation cleaned up a discrepancy of 3 million employees.
Updated
Closing the Gap to include justice targets, Ken Wyatt says
The Indigenous affairs minister, Ken Wyatt, has said the renewed Closing the Gap commitments – described as a refresh by the government – will include justice targets.
In a statement on Tuesday, Wyatt described every death in custody as “a tragedy”, three days after tens of thousands of people gathered for Black Lives Matter protests across the country.
Unfortunately, there is no simple solution and no single answer.
However, Wyatt confirmed that justice targets would be included in the Closing the Gap refresh.
The Morrison government is progressing with the Closing the Gap refresh in partnership with the Coalition of Peaks. And while we’re still in final negotiations, it has been agreed that there will be justice targets contained within that agreement that focus on incarceration rates.
Wyatt also said:
If we want to reduce the number of deaths in custody, we need to look very closely at what’s happening here in Australia – the factors contributing to incarceration rates and the way in which our systems are handling these incidents. This requires a co-operative approach between government and with communities, particularly when states and territories hold the policies and levers relating to policing and justice matters.
The relationship between Indigenous Australians and the police – both the good and the bad – in respective jurisdictions must also be examined.
The Morrison government, through the National Indigenous Australians Agency, is playing a key role in ensuring that there are additional protections in place for individuals when they are taken into custody through the custody notification system.
But we also need to remember that reducing the number of Indigenous people in contact with the justice system, through addressing the underlying factors that lead to offending, is just as key in addressing the number of deaths in custody.
What’s important is that this ggreement has been developed in partnership with Indigenous Australians and so we’re all working towards better outcomes for all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
Updated
In his opening statement, Steven Kennedy said:
As the secretary of the Treasury, I take full responsibility for the revised costing of the jobkeeper program and all matters associated with the advice that Treasury has provided.
Given the importance of understanding the potential funding needs of a program of the potential size and scope of the jobkeeper program, the trajectory that the virus and economic impacts were on at the time, and the sequential tightening of restrictions that had been imposed over the previous two weeks in Australia and overseas, it was judged prudent to cost using Treasury’s worse-case economic scenario being modelled at the time.
Updated
Treasury secretary takes responsibility for $60bn jobkeeper bungle
The Treasury secretary, Steven Kennedy, says he takes responsibility for the $60bn “estimates variation” on jobkeeper, and backs Cormann’s explanation about parameters changing (because health results were better than expected).
The Covid-19 committee then heard from the ATO commissioner, Chris Jordan, on the second error – that the ATO believed many more employees were covered due to errors in employers’ responses.
Jordan said a small number of the 900,000 businesses made errors such as putting their phone numbers, ABN or bank account details into the employees-covered field, and some put in 1,500 or multiples of 1,500.
He said 0.1% of employers appeared to think the field was asking for “the amount payable to, rather than the number of employees”.
He said many categories of error were picked up but:
We did not build rigorous analytics behind that field that asked for the estimated number of employees that businesses had [claimed for].
Jordan said the ATO told treasury about the error on 21 May, before the public update on 22 May.
Explaining why it took so long to detect, the ATO said the numbers enrolling in jobkeeper “seemed to be on trajectory consistent with estimates ... but once [we] began to confirm employees covered, we identified within a fortnight the numbers were less than expected”.
The ATO conducted outreach to big employers and believed the discrepancy was due to big employers not completing the second stage of their application (confirming which employees they were claiming for). Eventually, it “became evident” there was another factor: the employers mis-entering the number of employees.
Jordan said this “temporarily obscured the size of a demand driven program” but did not result in incorrect payments.
Updated
Cormann defends $60bn jobkeeper 'estimates variation'
The finance minister, Mathias Cormann, is before the Senate Covid-19 committee, explaining that the $60bn underspend in the jobkeeper program (from $130bn to $70bn) was an “estimates variation ... not an accounting error as it has been falsely described by some”.
Cormann explained the government was “expecting the worst” and was “prudently planning for the worst”, but the variation was due to “substantially changed” parameters – as the health outlook was much better than expected.
He said:
It is a usual estimates variation in relation to a demand driven program.
The size [of the variation] is a function of the high degree of uncertainty, and the potential size of the program. Importantly, the revised cost estimate was much lower, not much higher, than anticipated ... a very good thing.
It is important that we erred on the side of prudence, rather than put ourselves at the risk of a potential deteriorating situation, [in which case] we might have been forced to make estimates variation in the other direction, which would not have been good for confidence.
Updated
The health minister, Greg Hunt, is speaking in Queanbeyan.
What we have seen now is that in the last four hours, as the states and territories have made their announcements, on the advice I’ve just had from the National Incidence Centre, there have been so far no cases of community transmission.
I want to repeat that. On the latest advice I have, so far, there have been no cases of community transmission, two cases overseas-acquired. That explains why our border protections remain so fundamental. Fifty-nine cases in the last seven days.
Of those, 69% have been detected through the hotel quarantine or our border protection processes.
Hunt says the Covidsafe app has now been downloaded 6.2m times.
Updated
Berejiklian says NSW will punish businesses breaking coronavirus rules
The NSW premier was also asked about reports that Sal Navarra, who owns the Sydney wedding venue company Navarra Venues, claimed he was going to “reopen to any numbers” next month.
“We are reopening and we are reopening to any numbers,” Navarra reportedly said in an Instagram post, linking his decision to the recent Black Lives Matter protests.
Gladys Berejiklian said authorities would “absolutely” punish any businesses that flout the rules.
Can I say, can I just ask everybody to please be patient. There isn’t much more to wait in terms of making sure that every aspect of businesses that have felt restricted will have some pressure released in the near future, so long as all of us keep doing the right thing.
Wedding venues in NSW are currently restricted to 20 guests, compared with 50 for cafes and clubs.
Updated
Mutual obligations for welfare recipients return today.
There are now about 1.6 million people receiving the unemployment benefit jobseeker. Before the pandemic, the figure was about 700,000.
Mutual obligations return today & will be gradually phased in.
— Rachel Siewert (@SenatorSiewert) June 9, 2020
We are in Phase 1 meaning there are no financial penalties for not meeting activity requirements.
We don't have a timeline of each "phase" but I will keep following up with the Minister for more clarity.
Updated
The NSW premier, Gladys Berejiklian, was giving a press conference just now. She was pressed on comments from her police minister, David Elliott, who said yesterday that police would not approve future permit protests that did not comply for the health guidelines.
Does she agree with Elliott? She says:
Well, obviously that is what we’ll look at. Because we want people to respect the health orders.
But she adds:
I think we need to draw a line in the sand in what happened on the weekend. It wasn’t just what happened in Sydney, it happened all across Australia.
And as disappointing as it was, we need to draw a line in the sand and move forward.
Updated
We have a total of two new cases in Australia today. The last time that occurred was Saturday.
As NSW authorities noted, both new cases in that state today were from returning overseas travellers.
You have to go back to 29 February for the last time there were no new cases reported in Australia.
The NSW premier, Gladys Berejiklian, says the two new cases in NSW were from overseas, which means “there were no extra or new community transmission cases overnight”.
Updated
Western Australia reports no new Covid-19 cases
Mark McGowan says there were no new cases of Covid-19 in WA.
“And that means at this point in time we’ve had 599 cases across the state,” the premier said. “The latest advice I have is no one is in hospital across the state with Covid.”
Updated
NSW reports two new Covid-19 cases
NSW has recorded two new cases of Covid-19, bringing the total to 3,114.
A statement from NSW Health said there were 66 cases now being treated. No patients were in intensive care.
Updated
Queensland reports no new Covid-19 cases, and only three active cases in state
Annastacia Palaszczuk has told a media conference the state has had 1,062 coronavirus cases – and only three that are still active.
There were no new cases overnight.
Tuesday, 9 June – coronavirus cases in Queensland:
— Annastacia Palaszczuk (@AnnastaciaMP) June 9, 2020
• 0 new confirmed cases
• 3 active cases
• 1,062 total confirmed cases
• 224,050 tests conducted
Sadly, six Queenslanders with COVID-19 have died. 1,051 patients have recovered.#COVID_19 pic.twitter.com/4ys83g68mA
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No AFL crowds just yet, chief executive Gillon McLachlan says
Meanwhile, the AFL chief executive, Gillon McLachlan, says the league has not yet received authorisation to have crowds back in venues for the competition’s return this week but it’s ready if that changes.
It comes despite reports the Queensland government had given the green light for the Gabba and Metricon Stadium to be at 25% capacity for games as soon as this weekend.
GWS have also raised the prospect of hosting corporate supporters at their round-two match against North Melbourne at Giants Stadium on Sunday, according to AAP.
McLachlan told SEN on Tuesday morning his understanding is that, as things stand, no crowds are allowed to attend matches in Queensland or NSW this week:
I think there will be announcements this week but as we sit here … my understanding is there’s not an authorisation in Queensland and there’s not an authorisation in NSW.
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Federal government considering capped NRL crowds
The federal government is considering “decreased capacity” for NRL games, according to the deputy chief medical officer Dr Nick Coatsworth.
AAP reports that the NSW state government has already ticked off on corporate boxes, with one person for every 4 sq m and up to 50 people, being open from this weekend.
But discussions have begun about opening up the grandstands, with the ARL Commission chairman, Peter V’landys, aiming for a 1 July return for fans.
Coatsworth said it would be easier to maintain social distancing in stadiums than protests, which were given the green light at the weekend. He told Nine’s Today Show:
The important thing of course about the footy is you have a large number of people, like we saw on the weekend with the protests of course, coming together in different parts of the city and then dispersing into the city. You can be a little more controlled in a stadium than you can in a protest.
That’s an important thing to note, and we could consider going back to situations of decreased capacity in stadiums. Ultimately that’s going to be a matter for states and territories, but it is something we are considering now. Hopefully within before the footy season finishes, that’ll be good.
At this stage, only NSW venues have been given the green light to open up their corporate boxes, with Queensland considering doing the same.
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Illicit drug prices soar in Australia as travel restrictions hit Mexican cartels
The Covid-19 pandemic is making it hard for Mexican drug cartels to smuggle cocaine and methamphetamine into Australia, AAP reports.
Travel restrictions and ramped-up border security have led to dwindling supplies in Australia and skyrocketing prices.
The US Drug Enforcement Administration estimates a kilo of meth was worth between US$90,000 and US$130,000 (A$128,000 and A$185,000) in Australia before the pandemic, but now sells for about US$200,000.
Cocaine followed a similar spike, with dealers passing the price rise to users.
“As businesses are having to adjust, every arm of cartels are having to adjust,” the DEA’s Australia attache, Kevin Merkel, told the Louisville Courier Journal.
Australia was the cartels’ “most sought-after illicit drug market”, with Australians more willing to pay a higher price for top-quality Mexican meth than US buyers.
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Victoria reports no new Covid-19 cases
Daniel Andrews has started a media conference. He says there have been 1,687 Covid-19 cases in Victoria – meaning there were no new cases yesterday.
There are seven people in hospital; one person is in an ICU.
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Hi everyone. Thanks to Calla for her work this morning. I’ll be with you for the next few hours. If you want to get in touch, send an email to luke.henriques-gomes@theguardian.com or a message via Twitter: @lukehgomes.
I am going to hand over to Luke Henriques-Gomes to take you through the morning.
Authorities in Western Australia have rejected reports that a woman was “body-slammed” by a guard at Bandyup women’s prison before suffering a medical episode on Saturday morning.
A spokesperson for the WA Department of Justice said that, while the investigation by the department’s professional standards division was ongoing, “a preliminary assessment has found no evidence of any unreasonable force or an alleged ‘body slam’ incident as reported in the media”:
The Departments Professional Standards Division attended Bandyup Women’s Prison and were advised that the prisoner had been found trying to access a vending machine and was ushered back to her cell.
The hospitalisation the following day appears to be related to an existing medical condition. The investigation continues tomorrow.
A 2018 report by the inspector of custodial services said the prison had “for many years suffered from neglect, indifference, and structural inequality”.
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If you’re looking to cultivate some positive habits from lockdown, this list might provide some inspiration. Have you also begun jogging, started meal planning or made a dint in your to-read list?
Personally I have only developed, or further entrenched, bad habits. But my baking has never been better.
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This is the scene at Mount Disappointment this morning.
Search and rescue teams at Mt Disappointment, hoping to find missing 14yo boy William Callaghan in near-freezing temps @abcnews @abcmelbourne @BreakfastNews pic.twitter.com/H5o9oQNcof
— Stephanie Ferrier (@FerrierSteph) June 8, 2020
The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners has called for more support for GPs to battle Covid-19.
In a submission to the Covid-19 Senate inquiry, the RACGP asked for a GP representative to be put on the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee to ensure the needs of GPs are represented.
The submission also called for the coordination of urgent supplies of personal protective equipment and adequate supplies of the flu vaccine; a public information campaign on the importance of not delaying other medical care during the pandemic; and a government campaign about the importance of vaccinations.
The president, Dr Harry Nespolon, said:
Because state and territory governments manage the health crisis response and the federal government has primary responsibility for general practice, GPs have not been properly embedded into the wider pandemic response. This is not new, we have been drawing attention to this problem for years.
However, the pandemic exposed the full scope of these shortcomings and we believe the role of GPs as frontline health providers must be formally recognised in pandemic preparation, mitigation, response and recovery. GPs know their communities and will be there for patients during and after this pandemic so we should be front and centre.
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Autistic boy lost in 'life-threatening cold'
Police are holding a press conference at Mount Disappointment this morning about the search for a 14-year-old, William Callaghan, who has been missing since 2.30pm yesterday and spent the night in the “life-threatening cold”.
William has autism and is nonverbal. About 100 people searched for him overnight, many of them volunteers.
Sergeant Christine Lalor told reporters at a press conference at Mount Disappointment, 60km north of Melbourne, that it was possible William had gone into someone’s home to seek shelter:
William doesn’t verbalise, so if anyone finds him, the best way to communicate with him is just to be patient and calm with him.
What we would like to let the public know, William is capable of wandering a fair distance. He does like food and water, and there is a chance that he could go into houses or you know, places to seek food or water. So, if anyone in the area could please check their homes, check their beds.
If William is found, please call triple-zero straight away. Obviously, keep him calm and keep him warm. This is very concerning. Obviously, it’s been a cold night.
Senior Sergeant Greg Paul from search and rescue said it had been life-threateningly cold overnight:
Obviously, there’s no sugar-coating it. It was a very cold night last night, life-threatening cold, no doubt about that, down to zero, or close to zero.
He said the thick vegetation from bushfire regrowth made it difficult for searchers, but may provide some shelter:
There’s an opportunity to stay a little bit warm if you can snuggle up in the undergrowth and try a stay a bit warm and seek a bit of insulation through that forest, so it’s a positive and a negative. But in terms of the actual searching, it’s very difficult countryside.
Paul said there was a real risk of hypothermia, particularly if William remained missing for several nights:
We’re pulling out everything to try and find this young fellow ... We really don’t want to have this turn badly. We want to find Will as soon as possible. So we really appreciate all the people coming out today last night, searching all night and today, with the sun coming up and the bit of warmth that that brings in, we’re feeling like, you know, it could be a positive day. We hope.
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Josh Frydenberg also reportedly told Sky News this morning that the federal government’s $150,000 instant asset write-off scheme would be extended until the end of the year.
The extension will cost $300m and help 3.5m businesses, AAP reported.
Frydenberg told Sky:
[They] will be able to go and buy equipment or machinery, other materials for their business – up to $150,000 – and write it off straight away.
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Josh Frydenberg has been doorstopped this morning about the end of the free childcare program:
What we’re seeing is more people start to use those childcare support services. When we first announced the reform package, the viability of a number of childcare centres was threatened. And we had to ensure that childcare centres could be provided, particularly for children of essential workers, because we needed to get them to the frontline.
That support has worked: 99% of childcare businesses remained operational. Now we move to the next stage, which is an effective transition.
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In other (extremely British) news, PG Tips and Yorkshire Tea are now anti-racist.
Yeah it does suck, Pamela. If you are boycotting teas that stand against racism, you're going to have to find two new tea brands now. #blacklivesmatter #solidaritea
— PG tips (@PGtips) June 8, 2020
Please don't buy our tea again.
— Yorkshire Tea (@YorkshireTea) June 8, 2020
We're taking some time to educate ourselves and plan proper action before we post. We stand against racism.
#BlackLivesMatter
Considering the colonial history of tea, this is probably the least they could do.
We have just passed the first long weekend in 12 weeks in which people were allowed to head up the coast, and Sydney had the traffic jams to show for it.
The Sydney Morning Herald reports that “several spots on the M1 remained heavily backed up into the night” as holidaymakers returned form the mid-north coast.
The M1 is clogged. Nature is healing.
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Protesters should 'self-monitor' and get tested early, deputy CMO says
The federal deputy chief medical officer Nick Coatsworth says that everyone who attended a Black Lives Matter protest at the weekend should “self-monitor” and get a Covid-19 test if they experience any symptoms. He says there’s no need to quarantine unless you are unwell:
If you were at a protest and you get any sort of symptoms the most important thing is to get tested as soon as possible.
Speaking on Radio National, Coatsworth dismissed a suggestion that politicians who attended a protest should not attend parliament, saying that if ordinary Australians can attend work then politicians can attend parliament.
There’s no difference between a politician and any other Australian. Our advice on the weekend was don’t attend a protest and, if they did, they need to self-monitor.
Coatsworth said the protests, attended by tens of thousands of people, should not be taken as a signal that other mass gatherings should take place. Even if the protests did not result in a spike, he said, that would be “but one indicator” of rates of community spread and would not necessarily mean it was safe for crowds to return to the football or for nightclubs to reopen.
Asked when crowds would return to the football, he says: “It will be, I think, before the end of the footy season.”
He said New Zealand’s lifting of restrictions, after it was declared Covid-free on Monday, should also not be taken as an indicator that Australia was safe to open up:
We’re two very different countries and I think there has been a lot of temptation over the past few days to say that we’re in the same race, we’re in a different race ... We have to acknowledge again that the virus is going to set its own timetable, but there are states and territories that have gone to stage three lifting of restrictions very quickly.
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The education minister, Dan Tehan, has been on ABC News Breakfast this morning explaining the decision to end the free childcare package on 12 July and stop paying the jobkeeper payment to childcare services from 20 July.
Asked if this was a broken promise, when jobkeeper was initially set to last for six months and expire in September, Tehan said the government “always said that we would review jobkeeper”.
We said that we would review it in June. We said that we would make changes if it needed to be more targeted. We had discussions with the sector, and it was seen that it was much more equitable to have a transition payment that went right across the sector, which enabled the sector to be able to transition from the relief package that we put in place to these new arrangements ...
Now, obviously jobkeeper will be reviewed, and decisions will be made on that after the review. But it was done on consultation with the sector, and it was seen as a much more equitable way for us to be able to provide the transitional support that the sector needs.
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In some depressing news, a study published today has found that 75% of Australians hold implicit bias against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
The data comes from 10 years of responses to an implicit association test. More than 11,000 responses were analysed. The study found there was no correlation between higher education and a reduction in implicit bias, and those younger than 25 and older than 60 held higher rates of bias than those in the middle.
The group with the lowest rates of bias, either towards or against Indigenous peoples, were Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples themselves, who “statistically speaking they are unbiased”.
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Good morning and welcome to our continued live coverage of the coronavirus in Australia.
The finance minister, Mathias Cormann, the Treasury boss, Dr Steven Kennedy, and officials from the Australian Taxation Office, including the taxation commissioner, Chris Jordan, will face the Covid-19 Senate inquiry this afternoon to explain the $60bn accounting error in the budget for the jobkeeper program. You’ll recall the $1,500-a-fortnight program was initially forecast to cost $130bn and cover 6 million workers, but then revised down to a $70bn program with only 3 million applicants.
Today is also the first day back at school for the final cohort of Victorian students. Students in years three to 10 will return to the classroom, and schools have implemented staggered start times and banned access to drinking fountains in an attempt to minimise the spread of any infection.
Meanwhile, the federal deputy chief medical officer Nick Coatsworth said it would take two to three weeks before it was known if the Black Lives Matter protests at the weekend had caused a spike in cases. The Australian Medical Association yesterday called for everyone who attended a protest to quarantine for 14 days as a precaution.
And, if you need the reminder: today is Tuesday.
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