What we learned: Friday 24 July
That is where I will leave you tonight. Thanks for reading.
Here’s what we learned today:
- Australia has reaffirmed its commitment to a suppression strategy for Covid-19, state and territory leaders agreed during a national cabinet meeting. In light of the ideological battle between elimination and suppression over the past few weeks, prime minister, Scott Morrison said the goal of the suppression strategy was to have no community transmission.
- Victoria recorded 300 new cases of coronavirus overnight, with seven more deaths since yesterday. It means 23 people have died in the past seven days in the state. On Friday, premier Daniel Andrews announced defence force teams would go door-to-door and personally inform Victorians who have not been answering phone calls from health authorities and contact tracers.
- Three schools in Western Sydney were shut after four pupils across the campuses tested positive for coronavirus. On Friday NSW announced seven new Covid-19 cases, six of which were linked to the Thai Rock restaurant cluster. Meanwhile, Queensland recorded two new cases, both in hotel quarantine.
- Tasmanian premier Peter Gutwein announced a “safe travel bubble” with South Australia, the Northern Territory and Western Australia. He said because those three jurisdictions have recorded no community transmission for months they are “equally safe” as Tasmania. The safe travel bubble will come into effect on 7 August.
- South Australia announced tougher border restrictions and limits on gatherings following growing concern about the coronavirus outbreak in Victoria. Weddings and funerals will be capped at a maximum of 100 attendees again, while family gatherings have been capped at 50 people. Border restrictions have also been expanded to prevent South Australians from returning home without a permit.
- Passengers of the fateful Ruby Princess cruise ship voyage and families of those who died after contracting Covid-19 on board have filed a class action against the operators.
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Finally got a response from NSW Health to my questions on seasonal workers being banned from crossing Vic-NSW border. Apparently, they are NOT excluding people based on their visa 🤔 @CitrusAustralia @GermanoEmma @UnitedWorkersOz @theweeklytimes #auspol #agchatoz pic.twitter.com/NTEiuRFt3C
— Natalie Kotsios (@NatalieKotsios) July 24, 2020
With population growth falling, do we need another baby boom? Turns out there might be no aphrodisiac like a strong economy... More here: https://t.co/lslHTKfmuf pic.twitter.com/svrzqWPqHZ
— ABC Politics (@politicsabc) July 24, 2020
Another Sydney pub has been found to have breached Covid-19 safety restrictions.
Royal Hotel in Ryde was fined $5,000 on Friday for breaches that included “not being able to produce a safety plan when asked, no Covid safety marshal or licensee onsite and allowing patrons to stand while consuming alcohol”.
According to a NSW government statement, “uniformed inspectors visited the pub yesterday afternoon and, while observing the QR code posted to the door, were able to enter the premises without needing to sign in”.
“They asked to speak to the licensee, who was not present, and staff were unable to find or produce the business’ Covid-19 Safety Plan,” the statement said.
“The inspectors further observed groups of patrons milling about and standing drinking their beverages, and when asked, staff admitted that they were aware patrons had to be seated to consume food or drinks.”
Dimitri Argeres, director of compliance at Liquor & Gaming NSW Director of Compliance, said the fine was issued on the first time inspectors from his department visited the venue to check compliance.
When the licensee arrived, we were able to get a copy of their safety plan, but it wasn’t made visible or available and the plan itself wasn’t being implemented.
In addition, some of the systems were simply not Covid-safe – for example, gaming machines were not spaced apart and instead staff stated that reserved signs were placed on adjacent machines only after patrons had chosen to play a particular one.
Inspectors did not observe these signs on the machines during their visit, and the staff present were not sufficiently supervising the area in any case.
Overall there was little attempt to manage physical distancing inside the venue. Inspectors observed that customers could go in and out as they pleased, undermining the ability for authorities to conduct effective contact tracing.
All pubs and licensed venues must have their act together, or they risk closure. This example demonstrates a suite of serious health risks, any one of which could contribute to a new cluster.
From Friday, new restrictions apply to not just pubs, but also casinos, clubs, bars, cafes and restaurants, meaning group bookings cannot exceed 10 people per table.
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Earlier this week, we reported Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban were allowed to quarantine separate from the regular hotel quarantine ahead of Kidman’s upcoming Hulu mini-series Nine Perfect Strangers being filmed on the NSW Southern Highlands.
There was some confusion because NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian said cast and crew were quarantined in the one hotel, but news reports said Kidman and Urban and their family had been staying in their Southern Highlands home.
A NSW police spokeswoman said cast and crew were quarantining at an approved facility in the Southern Highlands, but indicated Kidman and Urban had put forward a proposal for an “independent location” that met the same requirements as NSW police managed hotels.
This is a similar arrangement Dannii Minogue was able to secure with the Queensland government.
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NBN Co has once again extended its offer to extend network capacity by up to 40% for free for retail internet providers until 19 September.
It was due to expire in four weeks, but as we previously reported, retail internet providers were saying if it wasn’t extended, due to Victorians still working from home and a general traffic trend upwards, it would have led to slow connections in peak hours or price increases.
NBN says it has saved retailers about $80m since it first began offering the credit in February.
Retail internet providers want something more permanent, however, so it will probably not be surprising if we are having this discussion again in four weeks.
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Three western Sydney schools close after students diagnosed
The NSW Health department is assisting three Catholic schools in western Sydney with deep cleaning and contract tracing after four pupils returned positive Covid-19 tests.
The schools are:
- Cerdon College, Merrylands
- Mary Immaculate Catholic Primary School, Bossley Park
- Freeman Catholic College, Bonnyrigg Heights
A NSW Health statement said:
All four of the cases are associated with the Thai Rock cluster, with two linked to the Our Lady of Lebanon church.
Two of the cases attended Cerdon College in Merrylands. The school is closed while contact tracing and cleaning is underway.
One of the cases attended Mary Immaculate Catholic Primary School in Bossley Park. The school is closed while contact tracing and cleaning is underway.
One of the cases attended Freeman Catholic College at Bonnyrigg Heights School. The school is closed while contact tracing and cleaning is underway.
Close contacts of all the cases are being notified to undertake 14 days self-isolation after their last contact with the case/s and undertake testing for Covid-19 if they develop symptoms.
All other children, staff, and families of those who attend or work at these schools are encouraged to seek testing.
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BREAKING: The Premier says WA‘s Phase Five will be delayed until AT LEAST August 15. @7NewsPerth
— Syan Dougherty (@SyanDougherty) July 24, 2020
Seventh death in Victoria today
There have been seven deaths from Covid-19 in Victoria reported since yesterday, an update from the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services says.
Earlier on Friday, the premier, Daniel Andrews, announced there had been six deaths since yesterday, so this appears to have been reported recently.
The statement said:
There have been seven new deaths from Covid-19 reported since yesterday. They were two men and two women aged in their 80s and two men and one woman aged in their 90s. Five of the deaths are linked to aged care facilities.
In Victoria at the current time:
- 1,181 cases may indicate community transmission
- 3,734 cases are currently active in Victoria
- 206 cases of coronavirus are in hospital, including 41 in intensive care
- 3,450 people have recovered from the virus
- Of the total cases, 6,825 cases are from metropolitan Melbourne, while 424 are from regional Victoria
- Total cases include 3,737 men and 3,574 women
- More than 1,437,200 tests have been processed
- Total number of healthcare workers: 601, active cases: 300
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I am going to hand over to Elias Visontay now, who will take you through the afternoon. We are expecting the Western Australian premier, Mark McGowan, to stand up in the next few minutes, and he will likely talk about this new Covid-safe travel bubble.
Have a safe weekend and, on the east coast, consider staying home even if you are not legally required to do so. Take the word of this Melburnian: best not to risk it.
I’ll see you on Monday.
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Tasmania will create a 'safe travel bubble' with the Northern Territory, South Australia and Western Australia
The Tasmanian premier, Peter Gutwein, has announced a “safe travel bubble” with South Australia, the Northern Territory and Western Australia.
Victoria, New South Wales, the Australian Capital Territory and Queensland are excluded from the bubble, which will probably anger Queensland and cause difficulties for the AFL season.
Gutwein says those three states have recorded no community transmission for months, and are “equally safe” as Tasmania.
The safe travel bubble will come into effect on 7 August. Travellers will have to apply to enter the state and declare that they haven’t been outside of that safe bubble in the past 14 days, with fines of up to $1,800 or six months’ jail for providing incorrect information.
It also will not be free entry – travellers from the safety bubble states will have to undergo a mandatory health check upon arrival in Tasmania, whether by sea or by air, and anyone with coronavirus symptoms will have to take a mandatory coronavirus test, and remain in hotel or home quarantine until the test results are received.
Anyone who refuses to take the test will have to undergo 14 days of mandatory quarantine, or will be directed to return home on the next flight.
The Spirit of Tasmania will continue to only take passengers who are Tasmanians returning home, or are essential travellers. That’s basically freight and agriculture, for the TT-Line. Gutwein said:
The TT-Line will not be able to bring West Australians or South Australians or those from the Northern Territory to Tasmania.
Furthermore, from next Friday, the 31st of July, we will be insisting on mandatory testing for essential workers at our airports and at our seaport. For those essential workers that have come out of Victoria or have come out of a hotspot area, of which there are currently six in New South Wales.
On relaxing borders with other states, Gutwein said Tasmania would take “a longer view”.
I can’t see Victoria being opened up to Tasmania any time in the near future. But we’ll continue to monitor that situation on a weekly and monthly basis. They will get on top of it and, again, as I’ve said on a number of occasions, our thoughts are with Victorians at the moment. They are in the fight of their lives and, at the end of the day, I hope, in the same way that Tasmanians took responsibility and followed the rules, that Victorians likewise follow the rules and do what’s necessary so that that state can get on top of its challenges.
In terms of Queensland and New South Wales, obviously with the ACT involved as well, we’re going to take a position of caution. We’ll provide an update on 7 August on the possible timeframes and dates.
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Aged care residents have been turned away from hospital, says aged care body
Some Melbourne aged care providers who have tried to have residents with Covid-19 moved into the hospital system have been turned away, Patricia Sparrow, the chief executive of Aged and Community Services Australia says.
At the moment, the decision on whether to send aged care residents who test positive to Covid-19 to hospital is made on a case-by-case basis.
There’s other experts who work in aged care, health professionals, who think residents should be moved. We’re concerned to get the best outcome for the older person. We think that hospital is the best place for someone who has got Covid to go, to get a good health outcome. But we also have additional residents who we’re responsible for. We need to move people to hospital or another facility where they can get the care and treatment they need, and allow us to do everything we can to stop the spread.
She said some aged care providers had told her that they have “sent people to hospital and they’ve been turned around and sent back”.
If there’s an outbreak, the state government and public health units are making the calls. If that hasn’t been the case, providers have sent people to hospital and the hospital has turned around and sent them back.
Sparrow said aged care workers may need to come from interstate to supplement the local workforce, with hundreds of aged care workers in self-isolation after testing positive to Covid-19 or being a close contact of a known case, and with a new rule, announced on Sunday, limiting aged care workers to one facility.
Aged care workers often work casually across a few different facilities.
Sparrow said:
If there’s an outbreak, the surge workforce will come in and support. When it works, it works well. But we know it’s getting more and more difficult even for the surge workforce, or for the agencies that we would normally go to, to get staff. It’s getting more difficult to get staff across the board. That’s why we think we need an overall plan about how we make sure we’ve got staff and if that does mean bringing staff in from interstate, or using the military, using students who had additional training, we need the staff we need.
We have got to get it right in Victoria. This could happen in another area. So we need a plan to stop what is happening in Victoria, but we need to make sure we can stop it occurring from anywhere else, or if it does happen, we can swing into action very quickly because we know what to do to avoid getting to the point we’re in Victoria right now.
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Police in Victoria issued 16 fines for failing to wear a face mask yesterday including a man who believed the coronavirus was a conspiracy theory and a man who, police said, “refused to wear a mask and said he wouldn’t be in the future as the rules don’t apply to him”.
The fines were all issued on the first day of mandatory face mask use in greater Melbourne and the Mitchell Shire, and police have repeatedly said they would show discretion for the first seven days to ensure people understand the rules and have access to a mask or face covering.
They said one of the fines issued yesterday was to a “man in Wyndham who was not wearing a mask and refused to wear one even after it was provided to him by police”.
Police issued 85 over infringements, including fining a man $1,600 for travelling from Laverton to Mordialloc (about 50km) to buy cigarettes.
The owner of a gym in Hume was fined $9,913 fine for continuing to operate in breach of the public health directions, police said.
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Coon cheese to be renamed
Dairy company Saputo says it will rename Coon cheese, a long-running supermarket brand in Australia, because of complaints from anti-racism campaigners.
The Canadian company published this statement on their website a short time ago:
At Saputo, one of our basic principles as an organisation is to treat people with respect and without discrimination and we will not condone behaviour that goes against this.
As such, we performed a careful and diligent review of a sensitive situation involving one of our brands. We wanted to ensure we listened to all the concerns surrounding the COON® brand name, while also considering comments from consumers who cherish the brand and recognise the origin of its founder Edward William Coon, which they feel connected to.
After thorough consideration, Saputo has decided to retire the COON® brand name. We are working to develop a new brand name that will honour the brand-affinity felt by our valued consumers while aligning with current attitudes and perspectives.
We believe we all share in the responsibility to eliminate racism in all its forms and we feel this is an important step we must take to uphold this commitment.
The change was reportedly spurred by a letter from Kullilli man Stephen Hagan, an academic, businessman and activist.
Updated
South Australia has recorded one new case of coronavirus over the past 24-hours.
It recorded two new cases on Wednesday.
SA chief public health officer, Nicola Spurrier, told reporters in Adelaide that the new case was a man whose wife and another friend work in a hospitals in Adelaide, prompting 10 hospital staff to be sent home from work, as a preventative measure.
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South Australia announces tougher border restrictions and limits on gatherings
Weddings and funerals in South Australia will be capped at a maximum of 100 attendees again, following growing concern about the coronavirus outbreak in Victoria.
Family gatherings have also been capped at 50 people, border restrictions have been expanded to prevent South Australians from returning home without a permit.
Premier Steven Marshall said the changes to the border rules would be in effect from midnight on Tuesday, AAP reported.
Quarantine arrangements for people coming from NSW and the ACT will remain in place as concerns also remain over coronavirus clusters in Sydney and the south coast.
Marshall told reporters:
The entire nation is on high alert.
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The amount of money Victorians blew in the state’s gambling dens tumbled by more than a quarter due to coronavirus lockdowns, new figures show.
Victorian “gaming expenditure” – that’s the state regulator’s euphemism – fell by 26.3% to just under $2bn in the 12 months to the end of June, the Victorian Commission for Gambling and Liquor Regulation said.
Gambling venues were closed in March, so the new numbers include three months of them being shuttered.
Victorian readers can check out the impact on their local pokies palace here.
Interestingly, that page doesn’t list the state’s biggest money pit, the James Packer controlled Crown Casino – we’ve asked the VCGLR to clarify whether it’s in the total or not.
And the plunge doesn’t necessarily mean that gamblers have spent less overall: online betting has been going gangbusters during lockdown.
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A hearing into the validity of a Black Lives Matter rally organised for Sydney next week has been underway at the New South Wales supreme court this morning.
It’s the fourth time since 1 June that NSW police has gone to court in an attempt to stop a Black Lives Matter rally from going ahead, on public health grounds. The court has twice ruled that rallies can go ahead, but one ban was upheld.
More on this from AAP:
In the spotlight are comments by NSW police commissioner Mick Fuller to radio station 2GB on Monday morning that a subordinate had been instructed to take the matter to the supreme court.
Acting assistant commissioner Stacey Maloney said she saw news reports of the comments either late Monday morning or in the afternoon.
But they had “absolutely” nothing to do with her decision later that day to sign off on the supreme court challenge.
“I had made up my own mind,” she told the court. “The commissioner has his own view but my name has to sign off on the (court papers).”
She accepted Fuller said he’d made the decision but insisted that was not part of her consideration and she received no instructions.
The 2GB comments came hours before a conference between local police and rally organiser, Paddy Gibson.
Gibson argues Fuller’s comments invalidate the police-initiated supreme court action as police legally had to take the meeting and other material into consideration.
Ms Maloney rejected the suggestion her consideration of the material was done with “an entirely hollow basis”.
“You were never going to make a decision different to the one your boss had already made?” barrister Felicity Graham said.
“I don’t agree,” the officer replied.
Justice Mark Ierace rejected an application to have Fuller give evidence after hearing Maloney say on oath she had no contact with him between the interview and her decision.
“Little could be added by commissioner Fuller,” he said.
Police argue the risk to public health and safety due to Covid-19 outweighs the right to protest. Should the supreme court rule in its favour, police would be able to move on or arrest demonstrators blocking roads and give $1,000 to those breaching restrictions.
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Let’s decompress from Josh Frydenberg’s national press club address with a brief round of moody Daniel Andrews photography, this time from AAP’s Daniel Pockett.
Frydenberg said wages growth was likely to stagnate.
The key to driving wages ... is a tighter labour market. After a pandemic, or even in the middle of a pandemic, when the labour market has had such a shock, there will be spare capacity. So that is a necessary – that is an understandable or in fact a real consequence of what we have gone through, and when there is spare capacity in a labour market and less competition for labour, then you are going to see an impact on wages.
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Guardian Australia political editor Katharine Murphy asked Frydenberg to outline his fiscal strategy, if it’s not austerity and if the previous rules, set out by the Coalition in 2014 of requiring all new spending to be offset, have been abandoned.
He says the fiscal strategy will be outlined in the budget, in October.
Going forward the key is not higher taxes, the key is not to cut essential services. In fact, spending on essential services has been going up by this government, whether it’s hospitals or schools. What we will continue to do is create incentives. When we put in place tax cuts or business incentives or try to cut red tape or go to the supply side of the equation – that’s going to be critical.
He said they would “encourage supply-side reform”.
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Frydenberg said the debt burden from the record-high debt outlined in the economic update yesterday would be with “you, with me, with our children for many years ahead”.
In terms of what our expectations are, in terms of interest rates, that obviously takes into account medium-term projections and they will be in the context of the budget. What we announced yesterday, given the uncertainty was numbers for ‘19-20 and ‘20-21, but you’ve heard very clearly, Shane, from the [Reserve Bank] governor himself, that we are expecting low interest rates to be around for some time that.
It’s not good news for savers. It is good news for borrowers. In terms of the government, it means that there is more work for fiscal side of public policy as opposed to the monetary policy side, because monetary policy doesn’t have that room to move.
Frydenberg said the government was “rejecting austerity”.
We are not a government of austerity. We are a government that will support the economy at a time that they need it, but we will also be disciplined.
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On the proposed IR reforms, particularly the ‘jobkeeper flexibility’ arrangements, Frydenberg told the Australian Financial Review’s Phil Coorey:
We would like those temporary changes to continue. We are saying until the end of March because that is what we have announced.
The other key point I want to make, Phil, that there are lots of protections in there for the employees. You have to give notice. You have to consult, you have to have a reasonable request. It has to be a safe working environment, it has to be consistent with the business’s purpose and their usual operations.
There is also still the protections for the employees, as there should be, around occupational health and safety, around adverse actions, around coercion, around unfair dismissal. So these changes are absolutely sensible, given the economic environment that they are in. There is an alignment of interests here between employers on the one hand and employees. If you look at the number of cases that have gone to either the Fair Work Commission or the Fair Work Ombudsman, there are not a large number of cases consisting the breadth of this program: 3.5 million workers and nearly one million businesses.
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He said Australia’s relationship with China remained “absolutely critical”.
It is not just important in terms of resources, it is much more broadly. If you look, for example, from Western Australia, which is the key iron ore producer for our country, we are supporting China with 66% of their iron ore. Now, that is key to their economic development. That number has elevated over time as Brazil has had some supply constraints [caused by the scale of the coronavirus outbreak there].
So we are very much focused as a government on ensuring we have a strong economic partnership with China. It is mutually beneficial, more than $200bn annually, but at the same time when it comes to our relationship with China, we will have our principled, consistent and clear positions.
For example, when it came to the outbreak of coronavirus, we supported an independent inquiry by the appropriate international health agency, and we don’t take a backward step, and we are very pleased a number of other countries supported that call. So we will continue to speak out for Australia’s national interest with China, as the prime minister has repeatedly said, we haven’t done anything different, but at the same time that economic partnership is critical to both our countries.
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The first question to Frydenberg from the national press club was from the ABC political reporter Jane Norman, who is hosting today.
She asked what Frydenberg is going to do encourage domestic population growth with overseas migration on the shelf. That is, how is he going to encourage people to have babies?
Remarkably, the treasurer’s answer wasn’t “resume free childcare”.
He said:
I think the best thing that we can do to encourage more children being born across the country is obviously to create a strong economy for them to be born into.
Frydenberg says Australia's 'inflexible industrial relations system' has to change
We now get to the heart of it: industrial relations reform.
Frydenberg said the economic “opportunities” to respond to the coronavirus “will not be fully realised unless we deal with our inflexible industrial relations system”.
The temporary industrial relations changes we have made in response to the crisis have been absolutely critical to keeping more people in work.
Early survey results of the use of these provisions indicate businesses have found the changes to be essential to their ability to adjust and get through these challenging times. Three out of four surveyed employers used the flexibilities provided forby the provisions. Almost all surveyed employers that used the flexibilities have said such access was important to keep their business operating and their employees in jobs. And 80% of surveyed employers support the continuation of the jobkeeper flexibilities for a further period of time with job losses and business closure being the most commonly cited impact of not being able to use the provisions in the future.
Those “jobkeeper flexibilities” are the right for employers whose employees are receiving jobkeeper to ask them to do other work in the business than the work they were hired to do, to fulfil their hours.
These temporary changes have shown us how big an impact a more flexible system can have. There is no doubt that our industrial relations system is overly complex and rigid. For the system to deliver more jobs, the will need to evolve to meet the jobs challenge the country faces.
And this is the reason why the work that the attorney general is leading is so integral to the recovery and why all parties must constantly ask themselves, will the changes they seek create more jobs or less. That is the critical question for all participants.
The reforms he listed including bringing forward the Morrison government’s proposed tax cuts, and looking at broader tax reform “that delivers a simpler, more efficient and sustainable tax system as a pathway to more jobs and investment”.
Frydenberg said he is also, through national cabinet, looking at reforming the licensing and registration systems for trades and occupations, so there is consistency between jurisdictions and it is easier on tradespeople and registered professionals to move.
Based on our recent discussions, among treasurers, we are well-placed to make substantial progress on this issue very soon. We need to trust each other across the federation. If an individual is licensed and registered in one jurisdiction, that should be easily recognised across the country.
Other proposed reforms are in planning and rezoning.
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On youth employment prospects, Frydenberg said:
Treasury analysis shows that Australians graduating into a labour market with high youth unemployment can expect to earn roughly 8% less in their first year of work and 3.5% less after five years.
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Australia predicted to experience its lowest population growth since 1917
At the national press club, treasurer Josh Frydenberg said that Australia has less ability to respond financially to the coronavirus downturn because of the loss of overseas migration, a lever the country previously has relied on to drive growth.
That’s a key difference between this downturn and the global financial crisis, Frydenberg says.
Due to lower net overseas migration, annual population growth is assumed to slow to just 0.6% in 2021 – the lowest rate since 1916-1917.
This time, while we will continue to provide fiscal support through the crisis, sustainable growth will only come from creating the most dynamic and the most flexible economy we possibly can.
He says this is what the Morrison government’s ‘jobmaker’ plan is all about. That’s a new member of the collection, and appears to be the collective term for all industry support packages announced to date, and to be announced.
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Spotted at one of the surf cameras on the Mornington Peninsula. This particular beach is about 100km from the CBD, but it’s still within the greater Melbourne lockdown area.
Locals do not seem to want their fellow Melburnians to come down, however.
Locals fired up at Gunnamatta this morning. @3AW693 #COVID19Vic pic.twitter.com/h6HxE9UF1Q
— Pat Mitchell (@patty_mitchell) July 24, 2020
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A lot of Frydenberg’s speech is made up of numbers that you have already heard, so I’ll try to focus on those bits which are either new or provide useful context.
Like this one, in which he compares the economic shock experienced in 2020 to previous recessions:
The shock that we are seeing from the coronavirus is considerably sharper than what Australia experienced during the recessions of the 1980s and 1990s. The falls in GDP and employment are around twice as big and occurred over a matter of months, not years.
In those earlier recessions, the impacts were felt more acutely by working aged men in the manufacturing and agricultural sectors. This time around, women have experienced higher job losses than men. Young people have also been badly affected making up more than one third of the jobs lost. The youth unemployment rate has jumped to its highest rate in 20 years.
Since February of this year, the economic impact of Covid-19 has cost us 3.5 years worth of accumulated GDP growth and around three years of hard-won employment growth. All gone through no fault of our own.
Guardian Australia’s political editor Katharine Murphy is in the room in Canberra, and will be providing a more detailed report on this address later.
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A state of play. Four weeks ago, Frydenberg says, on 23 June, Australia recorded just 20 new cases of Covid-19.
Yesterday, in my home state of Victoria, we had over 20 times that number. Over five million Victorians are back in lockdown. And it’s a painful reminder of how quickly the virus can spread and the consequences that flow.
However, we need to remember that six out of our eight states and territories have had almost no cases and no community transmission. We must keep a sense of perspective.
In Australia, as of today, there are 175 active cases for every one million people. Whereas in the United Kingdom, it’s 3,774. And 7,998 in the United States. Our success on the health front has been due to an early and decisive move to close the international borders, to strengthen our health system and to put in place the right health measures.
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Back to Canberra and Frydenberg in the national press club.
He started by praising Australians for continuing to maintain hope through the pandemic (are we?) and said our national character would see us through.
That is:
The selfless bravery of those health workers on the frontline. Our scientists working tirelessly to develop a vaccine and all those quiet Australians who are diligently following the medical advice and playing their part in defeating this relentless and insidious enemy. This is the source of our hope and our strength that we will get through this.
It is our resolve and resilience that will see Australians through. Two world wars and a depression didn’t bring Australia to its knees. And Covid will not either.
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'No limit' on partners remaining in maternity ward, says Brett Sutton
Earlier, the Victorian chief health officer, Prof Brett Sutton, acknowledged there had been some “confusion” on the rules around allowing partners in birthing suites.
The direction states that support person or partner can stay as long as is desired and needed for the labour and birth process, as long as is required. That is not limited at all.
For subsequent days post-delivery, there is a visit limit of one person for two hours. That is a change. It was previously two people for up to two hours.
On antenatal visits, there has been no change. That support person or partner can accompany a pregnant woman for antenatal visits, there are the same restrictions applying there previously, not to attend tests such as ultrasounds, etc. Otherwise the only significant change is a reduction in two visitors for a two hour period to one visits for a two hour period after delivery.
He adds:
If a support person or partner stays continuously, there is no limit to the amount of time they can stay.
Sutton said he “absolutely understand(s) the distress” that the confusion caused.
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The treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, is speaking at the national press club right now. He’s run through some interesting figures on the coronavirus outbreak here, but before we go to that I want to return quickly to some further clarification about the rules concerning maternity wards in Victoria.
That post is coming...now.
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Finally, on aged care, Kelly was asked if there was a federal plan to step in and manage the aged care outbreak. He said there will be an announcement about that in the coming days.
Kelly said the situation in aged care, particularly in Melbourne where six more aged care residents died in the past 24-hours, is a matter of “real concern”.
We’re combining everybody who is involved in aged care in Victoria so that they’re in the same room and working through what else can be done to coordinate that action as there will be announcements over that in the coming days.
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Morrison was then asked a series of questions on the theme of whether he is annoyed at Victoria.
Is he annoyed that Victoria has only announced today that it is sending teams of ADF members to knock on the doors of people who do not answer the phone to contact tracers?
Morrison:
All states, as you know, are very keen to stress their authority over these matters and the decisions that are taken, and the Victorian government are doing that and we’ll give them every support.
Is Morrison concerned about how Victoria is handling “basic protocols” like contact tracing and quarantine?
There are challenges in parts of Melbourne. I think that the premier has been very clear about that, and that’s why we genuinely seek everybody’s cooperation. And all we can do is to give Victoria every support that we can to get the results. If they don’t answer the phone, we’ll knock on the door. If they don’t come for testing, we’ll drive a truck to the end of their street and we’ll test them there.
The way that you deal with this is – you don’t get frustrated about it. You don’t wallow in concern about it. You just take action. You’ve just got to deal with what’s in front of you. You can’t deal with things as you’d like them to be. You’ve got to deal with things as they are and that’s very much how we’re all addressing this issue. So if there’s a challenge, we’ve just got to get on top of it and you learn every single day.
Updated
Morrison said the the draft Closing the Gap strategy, which has been signed off by the joint steering committee and was before national cabinet for the first time today, was “noted”.
It is all with the states and territories right now. So I would hope that they would be able to progress that as soon as possible. Our cabinet has signed off on it and it is now with each every state and territory.
Updated
Morrison said there has been no change to the three-stage exit strategy, outlined way back at the start of May as the plan for Australia to get out of lockdown.
He says Victoria has just moved back a step.
Asked if the single-touch process for environmental approvals would mean the decision was entirely in the hands of the states, or whether it would be subject to federal oversight, Morrison said the whole point was that it would be one touch.
There’s an assurance process in all of these things, David. But the whole point is to have a single touch decision. If we’re both going to make decisions on it, what’s the point in having a single touch decision? You have to get the standards right and you have to get the assurance processes right around the holding of standards.
Guardian Australia’s Paul Karp asked for some more detail on the unanimous agreement for a one-touch EPBC Act process.
Scientists have said the one-touch process could see Australia lose even more threatened species. Environment reporter Lisa Cox has been covering this in-depth for years.
Back to Morrison. He said – and his voice went up as he said it – that the tenure of the conversation on the one-touch process was “really positive”.
There was a great deal of enthusiasm. I had hoped to have a group of first movers, and they were all first movers. They all wanted to be first movers on this, and I think that’s great.
And I think what that demonstrates is the states and territories and commonwealth want to get on with it. We want to create jobs. We want to get projects happening. We want to remove the impediments that are unnecessarily preventing investment and development from taking place.
Now, this process will enable standards to be upheld, but to ensure process doesn’t destroy projects. And, of course, I’m not surprised that the states and territories would be so enthusiastic and supportive of it, because they want jobs and they want to protect the environment, just like I do. So we will start the process now and in particular, WA has been very enthusiastic about this, as I’ve mentioned for sometime. But equally, Queensland was very enthusiastic about it today. New South Wales, I mean, I could run through the lot, because they were all very keen to get moving on this.
And so, there’s still a lot of work to do on this. And the next phase is that we have to move to put interim standards in place. We have to move to put bilateral agreements so that work starts now. It’s a green light.
Updated
Kelly said the states agreed to share that granular information about aged care cases and also community transmission.
So those are the flags. That’s the metrics we’ve agreed to. We’ve agreed to certain flags that will demonstrate that there are issues, and a commitment again to sharing and transparency across the nation so that we can assist where we need.
Updated
The acting chief medical officer, Prof Paul Kelly, said they would be requesting more “granular” information from state health departments to ensure contact tracing and testing is occurring as it should.
We will want that regularly from all of the states and territories to make sure that that testing regime is remaining as it should be. How long from when that test is made available to the local authority until that case is contacted? And the aim there, absolutely, to really stress it is every case, every day. So we’re really pushing hard and making sure that that information is available.
He said the coronavirus numbers in the past week “really demonstrate how aggressively we need to chase down every case, every day, to ensure that they are isolated, to make sure that the contacts of every case are also contacted themselves, and where necessary, be tested and isolate as soon as possible”.
Updated
National cabinet agrees to single-touch environmental approvals
National cabinet agreed to adopt a single-touch process for environmental approvals.
Morrison slipped this sentence in, very quickly in a very long update.
He said:
It was also agreed amongst all the states and territories to move to a single touch-process under the EPBBC Act and that we would now be moving to deal directly for interim standards with some model jurisdictions and forming bilateral agreements with all states and territories to action that agreement.
Updated
Morrison said national cabinet agreed to fast track the approvals processes for 15 major projects, intended to create jobs in the pandemic. Those projects are worth about $72bn, he said.
He said the commonwealth had now spent more than $300bn on the health response and direct fiscal measures, and state governments had spent a further $42bn. He suggested states should spend more.
And so, there is a strong platform for states to take additional economic measures where they see the opportunity to do that, and there’s a very, very significant platform of fiscal support and balancing support that the commonwealth has provided, enables every extra dollar that they spend at a state level to go that much further.
He said seven of the eight states and territories also signed up to the new skills agreement, announced last week (that’s jobtrainer).
Updated
National cabinet will establish a code of allowing freight to move across borders
Morrison said national cabinet also adopted a freight movement protocol, around the movement of freight across state border restrictions and requirements to test drivers.
But he said they also agreed that they needed to establish a national code on freight, rather than just a protocol, so it can be enforced by the states.
All states and territories and the Commonwealth agreed that they needed greater enforcement and it needed to move towards a code, and that’s where we’ll be moving in the days ahead to formalise that further.
And the enforcement of that will obviously be put in place by the states and territories who have those resources.
Now, how they do that, whether that’s by legislation or public health order, that will be a matter for them. In Queensland, for example, they have public health orders that can attend to that.
Updated
National cabinet also formally adopted a principle of integrating the health and emergency response, which is what was already happening in most cases – the state control centres in Victoria and NSW have been stood up.
That is substantially occurring and we’ve just decided to tighten up those processes and procedures to ensure that that occurs even more so in the future. We agreed to an even more comprehensive set of data measures which are necessary to ensure that we are collectively aware of what is occurring in all the states and territories and that we’re picking up at the earliest possible opportunity where there may be some vulnerabilities.
Australia has 'reaffirmed' its suppression strategy
This has become a major ideological issue over the past few weeks – should Australia have adopted an elimination strategy instead of a suppression strategy on controlling the coronavirus?
Morrison said national cabinet today moved an “affirmation of the suppression strategy”.
The goal of that is obviously, and has always been no community transmission. There will always be cases that come because Australia has not completely shut itself off from the world. To do so would be reckless, but that no community transmission, when the vast majority of states and territories have been at now effectively for some time. And that’s certainly where we want to get back to in Victoria and New South Wales, and that’s where our efforts are focused.
Morrison said there are now 3,100 ADF members deployed around Australia to help with the coronavirus response.
About half of them are in Victoria, but there’s also 550 in Queensland, 672 in New South Wales, 141 working federally, 114 in South Australia, 102 in the NT and 57 in WA.
While there is some better news today out of Victoria, that is not something that we can assume will continue. And so we must maintain the full force of effort in Victoria. In New South Wales, the news is better. And I think what this demonstrates is that we’re in this fight and in some fights, we’ll be behind and in some fights we’ll be ahead. But we’re always in the fight in Australia.
And what it demonstrates is that you can deal with outbreaks, you can get on top of them. But you’ve got to be constant about it and you’ve got to throw everything at it. And we will get on top of it in Victoria, and because there is the determination and the cooperation to achieve that. And that was reinforced today. Also, I want to stress that all other states and territories remain on alert and there is very much that sense around all of the other premiers and chief ministers today, where in many cases, like in Western Australia and South Australia, they haven’t had community transmission cases for over 100 days.
Updated
Morrison said he spoke to Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau, French president Emanuel Macron and Israel president Benjamin Netanyahu overnight.
Separately, I assume.
The prime minister Scott Morrison is speaking in Canberra now following this morning’s national cabinet meeting.
Questions. Andrews said he has not received any health advice recommending a move to stage four restrictions, despite calls from the Australian Medical Association.
I’ve got no advice to move to a so-called stage four, or I don’t want to change those rules at the moment.
We believe with masks – which is a change with what we did last time with the stage three stay-at-home orders – and enhanced enforcement activities, and other small changes that may well be significant terms of efficiency and the effectiveness of the public health response rates [we can bring numbers] down to very small numbers of people.
We are confident that these settings are right.
Police in Victoria are handing out face masks
The police minister Lisa Neville said police have been handing out face masks to people without them but have still issued some $200 on-the-spot fines for non-compliance, in the first 24-hours of the mandatory mask rule.
Neville said:
Unfortunately despite the fact that Victorian police have a discretionary policy, they are handing out masks, talking to people around why they need it, they have had to have a handful of fines yesterday of people refusing to wear them.
Be in no doubt, whether you are trying to get through a roadblock, trying to get away with not wearing a mask, whether you’re trying to have a party, Victoria police will be there and finding you if you do the wrong thing. Again, most people are doing the right thing and the heavy lifting out there. We just need everyone out there to do a bit of the heavy lifting. Victoria police will continue to focus on those blatant, obvious, and deliberate features. The discretion for masks will continue over the next seven days.
Neville said the police assistance line, which is the non-emergency line, received 1,300 calls yesterday from people reporting breaches of health orders.
She said police said they are conducting patrols around “high profile areas” like cycling and pedestrian areas.
So that’s the Tan, Princes Park, Albert Park Lake and similar.
They are there to provide reassurance but if people are obviously breaching these rules, they will also be there to find people.
Updated
Andrews said that if Melbourne and the Mitchell shire had not moved to stage three restrictions, the number of coronavirus cases would be much greater.
We would not have been reporting 300 cases a day but thousands. We have it seems avoided that, and that is a wholly good thing because for every thousand people that are positive each day, there will be many hundreds that finish up in hospital and they will be many who die.
We don’t want that and want to avoid that. It would look and seem to me like that is exactly what we have been able to achieve. Some, even relative, and I emphasise the word relative, some relative stability to these numbers is better than the alternative of doubling and doubling again in the space of just a couple of days.
But he says a stabilising of numbers “won’t be good enough for us to reopen”.
ADF personnel will be going door-to-door to conduct contact tracing
Andrews said there will be a “dramatic expansion” of the contact tracing effort in Australia to ensure that all positive cases are contacted within the first 24-hours.
(Regular readers will know that authorities said this week that the team could not be any bigger.)
Andrews said that work will be done by 28-teams of Australian Defence Force personnel, who will go out and knock on the doors of people who are not answering the phone to contact tracers. This seems to be an arrangement that’s come out of this morning’s national cabinet meeting.
There are currently 1,400 ADF personnel on the ground in Victoria.
Andrews said:
So, today’s cases, 300 cases, each of those people, attempts will be made to contact those within the next 24 hours. Many of them will be contacted much sooner than that, but the aim is to have every single one of them contacted within 24 hours.
That is not always possible, principally because some people won’t answer the phone, some people, a much smaller number, may answer the phone but are not particularly interested in making a time to sit down and go through that longer process to be interviewed about all the close contact.
He said in about 25% of positive cases, contact tracers are not able to get through in 24-hours.
It is unacceptable that we have anybody not contacted within that 24-hour period, and when is contacted, not just a phone call outbound, but an actual interview conducted.
What we are going to do, and [this has] happened the last three or four days and it is now going to be dramatically expanded, there will be 28 teams of ADF personnel and authorised officers from the Department of Health.
They will go out in the following circumstances: so with those 300 people who has tested positive today, they are telephoned. They are telephoned again within a 2-hour period. If contact cannot be made with them via those two telephone calls and a 2-hour period, then ADF and authorised officers will be deployed to go and door-knock those people and to conduct that interview on their doorstep, as opposed to doing it over the phone.
It’s not about making judgements about people being willing or otherwise. It’s just a practical challenge on any list of people that you ring, there will always be some that you can’t get through to. This is about going that extra step to make sure that we cannot just call, but we can connect and have that meaningful interaction, get that interview done and then begin the process of tracing contact.
It goes without saying though, if you were door knocked and you were not found at home, then you are in breach of the orders because you are a positive case and you should be at home. So that would almost certainly lead to you being fined.
Updated
There have been 2,240 cases of coronavirus recorded in Victoria since last Friday, 17 July.
That’s a lot.
There are now 206 people in hospital, Victorian premier Daniel Andrews said, and 41 are in intensive care.
Victoria has recorded 300 new cases of coronavirus and six more deaths
Victoria has recorded 300 new cases of coronavirus overnight, and six more people have died.
All of the people who died were connected to aged care. Three were aged in their 90s, three were in their 80s. Twenty-two people have died in the past seven days.
Yesterday’s numbers were 403 new cases and five deaths, three of which were connected to aged care clusters.
Updated
We are expecting Victorian premier Daniel Andrews to give the coronavirus update any moment now.
Early reports are the numbers are lower today.
Queensland records two new cases of coronavirus
Queensland has recorded two new cases of coronavirus overnight, both in people who are in hotel quarantine. They both tested positive on day 11 of their 14-day quarantine.
The Queensland chief health officer, Dr Jeanette Young, said that “shows that our quarantine process is working”.
I know how hard it is for those people who are there in quarantine, having to stay there for 14 days, but it is absolutely critical to the safety of Queenslanders.
The mandatory 14-day quarantine requirement applies to people arriving from overseas, as well as anyone who has been in Victoria in the past 14 days, or in the Sydney local government areas of Campbelltown, Liverpool and Fairfield which have all been declared coronavirus hotspots by the Queensland government.
Young said the Queensland health service would make sure the two new cases got the “best possible care”.
The quicker we can find people who are positive, the best for themselves, for their own health, for their family so they don’t spread it and for the community, and that is why I thank those 6,200 Queenslanders who got tested yesterday. And the people who got tested the day before, and before.
That is the most important thing all of us can do to protect ourselves, our families and our communities. At the first sign of being unwell, to isolate yourself immediately and get tested, because my aim is that we find the first case in a cluster. Not the 65th case in the cluster because if you find them at 65, it’s very, very, very hard to control and we will have to immediately put restrictions back on everyone.
Updated
NSW also conducted a record number of coronavirus tests, with 36,169 tests reported in the 24-hours to 8pm yesterday.
That’s almost 12,000 more than the day before.
NSW health is also now directing all patients and health workers in public hospitals to wear a face mask.
Given the current context of local transmission, NSW Health has directed all public hospitals that health workers must now wear a surgical mask if they are within 1.5m of patients.
Patients are also required to wear a mask, where possible. This advice applies to hospital and community health settings and comes into effect today.
NSW records seven new cases of Covid-19
NSW has recorded seven new cases of Covid-19 in the 24-hours to 8pm last night, a significant decrease on the 16 cases recorded yesterday.
Six of the new cases are associated with the Thai Rock restaurant cluster, bringing the total number to 52. Of those, three are connected to the Our Lady of Lebanon church sub-cluster and three are close contacts of other confirmed cases, including two people who caught the virus at their workplace.
The other new case has no identified source.
People who attended the Costco at Marsden Park on 19 July, from 11am to 2pm, have been asked to monitor themselves for symptoms.
You may have seen the post earlier on the rules around partners and support people in maternity wards in the Melbourne and Mitchell shire lockdown area.
The health minister Jenny Mikakos said this morning that they can stay as long as is needed for the birth and as long as they want post-birth, but that subsequent visits will be capped at two hours.
As of right now, more than 36,000 people have signed a petition against the two-hour restriction. They say a partner or nominated support person should be able to remain with the person who gave birth for as long as is needed, until the person is discharged.
The Victorian premier Daniel Andrews will give the daily update today alongside the police minister, Lisa Neville, at 11.30am.
IR reforms 'an important feature of economic recovery', says Frydenberg
Josh Frydenberg has appeared on Sky defending the government’s plan to extend powers for employers to cut hours and change workers’ duties for firms who claimed jobkeeper wage subsidies.
On Thursday, the treasurer said:
I can tell you the first cab off the rank will be labour market flexibility and a continuation of the industrial relations reforms that accompanied the jobkeeper introduction. Now, our view is that those flexibilities that apply ... should be continued, not just for those firms that meet the reapplied eligibility test, but should apply to those firms who are on jobkeeper right now.
On Friday, Frydenberg appeared to go further, telling Sky the IR flexibilities are “an important feature of the economic recovery”.
I have asked whether this means all firms should get them – not just those who have claimed jobkeeper.
Labor’s industrial relations spokesman, Tony Burke, held a press conference attacking the proposal that firms no longer claiming jobkeeper should continue to have the powers.
Burke noted employers and employees can already agree to work in a different area or perform different duties, and the flexibility just allowed employers to direct employees (against their will).
He said:
The reasoning they provided for those flexibilities was that the Australian taxpayer was subsidising the wage. Now they’re saying that where there is no wage subsidy, changes don’t need to be done by agreement, so cutting hours, cutting conditions, moving a full timer to part time, a direct attack on job security. We won’t be a part of attacking job security during a pandemic.
'No excuses' for NSW businesses not complying with new public health orders
NSW businesses have been warned that they face fines or closure if they fail to comply with new health orders which came into effect today. You can read them here.
The new orders include limiting group bookings at hospitality venues to a maximum of 10 people, mandatory registration of Covid-safe plans and as a Covid-safe business, and creating a digital record of everyone who attended the venue within 24-hours.
The orders also limit weddings and corporate events to 150 people, provided there isn’t more than one person per four square metres in the venue, and “strict Covid-safe plans must be in place and high-risk activities including choirs and dancing must not occur”.
Funerals and places of worship can have a maximum of 100 attendees, subject to the four square metre rule.
NSW customer service minister Victor Dominello said there will be more inspectors out over the weekend and they will “throw the book at” any business that’s not complying with the new directions.
Any business found blatantly breaking the rules will have the book thrown at them. We won’t be listening to any excuses.
Businesses that aren’t serious about safety should not be in business. Those who disregard the restrictions should expect a visit from an inspector.
We also encourage customers to report wrongdoing. We have a shared responsibility to ensure NSW remains safe.
Updated
We’re coming up on 11am which has become the press conference hour, but it looks like things could be pushed a bit later today. We have no alerts at this stage.
There is a national cabinet meeting this morning, which seems is setting everything else back. I’ll let you know when we can expect those updates as soon as we know.
Thirty-seven Aboriginal people have tested positive to Covid-19 in Victoria, the Victorian Aboriginal community controlled health organisation (VACCHO) has said.
That’s an increase of nine from the figure released by yesterday VACCHO yesterday, although it’s due to a delay in information coming through from the Victorian health department not a sudden jump in cases.
VACCHO yesterday released a statement “strongly encouraging” Aboriginal people in regional Victoria to wear a face mask, even though it’s only mandatory in Melbourne and the Mitchell shire.
It also urged Aboriginal people to stay at home when they can and get tested as soon as they feel unwell, after two Aboriginal people tested positive to Covid-19 in Ballarat.
CEO Jill Gallagher said:
We know communities have been working hard to minimise any infections which has been quite successful to date, but we are entering a very challenging period. We are seeing alarming rates of community transmission - unlike the first lockdown period.
To protect our loved ones and our elder Aboriginal communities, people must continue to stay home where they can, wear masks, practice good hygiene, practice physical distancing, and follow the limits for public gatherings.
Two people fined in NSW for breaching quarantine
Two people in NSW have been fined $1,000 each for breaching quarantine orders.
In a statement, police said a 39-year-old woman from Redfern was issued with an infringement notice on Wednesday for failing to self-isolate after returning to the state from Victoria.
The woman was granted a permit on 13 July to fly into Sydney on Monday, 20 July. She was ordered to self-isolate at her home in Redfern until 4 August.
Police conducted a compliance check at the woman’s Redfern address on Tuesday evening and found the woman was not at home. She returned home while police were at her address and was warned in relation to the breach.
About 2.30am the following morning, officers were patrolling the Redfern area when they stopped a vehicle in order to breath-test the driver. When officers approached the car, they immediately recognised the woman as being the person they had warned only hours before.
She was returned home and issued with a $1000 Penalty Infringement Notice for failing to comply with a requirement of the Public Health Order.
Another person was issued with a fine for breaching the self-isolation order to go to the gym and the chemist.
The 37-year-old man was self-isolating at a holiday unit in Temora, in the NSW Riverina region. He was granted a permit to enter NSW from Victoria because he planned to move to Queensland.
Updated
Peter Dutton was on Channel Nine’s Today show this morning, criticising Victoria for failing to accept assistance from the ADF. (There are more than 1,500 ADF members currently helping with the health response and maintaining lockdown checkpoints in Victoria.)
Said Dutton:
I think everybody around the country wants the best for Victoria. All of us who have got family and friends in Victoria and people are doing it tough. People had businesses that have had to re-close. People have loved ones in aged care facilities and the numbers speak for themselves. The point I made yesterday, it was we just want to provide whatever assistance we can to Victoria and I hope that they accept it.
Both Victorian premier Daniel Andrews and prime minister Scott Morrison have said Victoria has an open book with the federal government and is using it, and that they are working together well. But, Dutton.
He says Victoria has a “track record” of accepting less federal assistance in this pandemic than states like Queensland and NSW.
I just want to make sure that we can help him and help his government and ultimately the people of Victoria. I think that’s all that’s at play here, and I really genuinely want us to do whatever we can, and I don’t see why Victoria wouldn’t accept that offer of assistance.
(They are accepting federal assistance.)
Labor deputy leader Richard Marles, who was on the same panel on Today, said there had been cooperation between the Victorian and Commonwealth governments, so “I’m not sure that now is the moment for a manufactured political fight”.
I think there is a high degree of cooperation between the two tiers of government. Look, it is very scary here right now. I mean, for businesses that are unable to operate and people are beside themselves about how long that situation is going to continue, if you’ve got family in aged care or if you’re in aged care, or if you work in aged care, it is utterly terrifying. And really, now, is the moment to try and work together to get through this.
And I don’t think people want to have a manufactured political stoush. I think we just want to get through this moment. I mean, we’re all holding our breath to see these numbers come down, but every day where there is a new figure with ‘4’ in front of it is a scary day, and right now we’re just trying to get through this.
The AFL roadshow continues with a mini-hub to be created in Cairns, Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has confirmed.
Two yet-to-be named teams will base themselves in the city, and three games will be played at Cazaly’s Stadium. Strict quarantine protocols and the Covidsafe Industry Plan will be rigorously employed, as is the norm these days.
Palaszczuk tweeted earlier this morning:
Three @AFL Premiership games will be played at Cazaly’s Stadium and two clubs will relocate to Cairns temporarily with strict quarantine protocols and the COVID Safe Industry Plan in place. It will inject millions of dollars into the local economy and support jobs. #AFL #qldjobs pic.twitter.com/MiILnH1DjX
— Annastacia Palaszczuk (@AnnastaciaMP) July 23, 2020
Queensland is also set to host the entire Super Netball season after teams relocated there in preparation for the 2020 season, which starts on 1 August. A condensed draw is expected to be announced later today, with games featuring all eight teams to be played in the state for at least the majority of the campaign.
The Australian Education Union says that senior school students and specialist school students should also be allowed to move to flexible learning because of increasing rates of community transmission in Victoria.
More from AAP:
Year 11 and 12 students are being taught in the classroom ahead of exams, as are special school students.
AEU Victorian branch president Meredith Peace said the rigid approach meant some students were missing out and there was additional stress for principals, teachers and support staff.
“We’re seeing drop-offs in attendance rates, particularly in our special schools, and because schools have not been authorised to make local decisions those kids who aren’t physically attending school are getting limited, if any education,” Peace said in a statement.
The union says it has heard of schools reporting attendance of 50 per cent as many parents choose to keep their children at home because of Victoria’s high coronavirus numbers.
As always, you can follow our rolling global coronavirus coverage here.
Some much needed good news. Behrouz Boochani has had his refugee status formally recognised and been granted a visa to live in New Zealand.
The Kurdish Iranian journalist’s reports from inside the Australian immigration detention centre on Manus Island have been published globally, including in The Guardian and in Boochani’s award-winning book.
He told The Guardian from Christchurch:
I am very happy some certainty about my future, I feel relieved and secure finally.
But, at the same time, I cannot fully celebrate this because so many people who were incarcerated with me are still struggling to get freedom, still in PNG, on Nauru, in detention in Australia. And even if they are released, Australia’s policy still exists.
People who give birth under lockdown can have their partner with them for more than two hours post birth, minister clarifies
People giving birth in the greater Melbourne and Mitchell shire lockdown area will be able to have a partner or support person with them in hospital for as long as they need, health minister Jenny Mikakos has said.
A statement from Mikakos’s office said that partners will not be kicked out two hours after birth but there would be a two-hour limit to any subsequent visits. It said the only change to the health directions from the start of the pandemic is the number of support people a pregnant person can nominate has dropped from two to one.
Her office is framing this as a clarification of the rules, and it may be but it’s not the impression she gave yesterday.
Yesterday, Mikakos said a person giving birth can have their partner or a support person “with her for as long as is required for the entire labour and birth ... and then their partner or support person is able to be with them for a two-hour visit after the baby is born”. You can see her full answer on this question at the press conference here.
That caused a lot of distress among pregnant people and their partners, including a few readers of this blog. But then, last night, Mikakos said that there is not a two hour limit.
Jodi that’s not what the legal direction says. The only thing that’s changed is a pregnant woman giving birth can now have one visitor when before it was 2. Her partner/support person can stay for as long as they wish during labour & birth & after the baby is born. 1/2
— Jenny Mikakos MP #StayHomeSaveLives (@JennyMikakos) July 23, 2020
The 2 hour visit relates to subsequent visits and is the same as what applied in the previous directions too. The new directions should improve access for women post birth as a number of hospitals recently banned visits altogether. 2/2
— Jenny Mikakos MP #StayHomeSaveLives (@JennyMikakos) July 23, 2020
However, as the National leader Steph Ryan points out, the health directions do limit visits to maternity wards to one visitor for a maximum of two hours.
It IS what your legal directions say @JennyMikakos. Below - a partner / support person can stay during labour but only on a maternity ward for a maximum of two hours a day. More mixed messages. If you think this is wrong it needs to be urgently fixed. #springst pic.twitter.com/Oe17CqGb18
— Steph Ryan (@StephRyanNats) July 23, 2020
The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians released a statement last night expressing concerns about the two-hour limit, which it said would “unfairly disadvantage expectant mothers and their families, with potential significant mental health consequences”.
However, this morning RANZCOG president Dr Vijay Roach told Radio National that they have since been told that has changed.
I have just been told that the health minister from Victoria has issued a statement making it very clear now that a partner or support person can stay as long as they wish during the birth and after the birth.
Updated
Labor’s housing spokesman, Jason Clare, is out and about this morning pointing out that it takes less time to climb Mount Everest than it’s taken the Morrison government to allow most Australians to apply for its homebuilder scheme.
That’s the stimulus package where you can get $25,000 to help build a new home or renovate an existing one (as long as your reno meets a list of focus-group friendly criteria that includes your house being worth less than $1.5m and not building a pool or a tennis court).
Clare – beware, mountainous puns ahead:
The average time from arriving at Base Camp to reaching the peak of Mount Everest is 40 days.
Today marks 43 days since the HomeBuilder Scheme was announced – and unless you live in Tasmania or South Australia you still can’t even apply.
Seriously, it shouldn’t take this long to develop an application form.
Its been more than seven weeks since the scheme was announced. Hurry up.
Homebuyers are being left out in the cold and tradie jobs are on ice.
This is the peak of incompetence.
The government reckons it will spend $680m on homebuilder, which in the context of the Australian economy already isn’t actually very much. And of course if hardly anyone applies it won’t even hit that mark.
latest trend map update for Victoria continues to show increasing cases in the south west outside the metro lockdown area https://t.co/yiBO0ni3q7 pic.twitter.com/XUyGEZjokr
— Nick Evershed (@NickEvershed) July 23, 2020
I’m delighted to inform you that the South Australian town of Keith, fast becoming my favourite place, has featured in the news again.
Sadly for the good people of Keith, it’s again because Victorians are trying to break in.
According to a statement from South Australian police, two men, a 25-year-old from Osborne, a suburb of Adelaide, and a 26-year-old from Brooklyn Park, a suburb of Melbourne, were arrested in the early hours of this morning after they allegedly sped past police at the border checkpoint on the Dukes Highway at Wolseley.
That’s a crossing point about halfway up the border. Nearest big town is Horsham.
The men were driving separate cars – both Holdens, which is appropriate.
In a statement, police said:
Police signalled for the vehicles to stop however both cars failed to do so and sped past police toward Bordertown. Police followed the cars for a short distance but lost sight of them on the Highway. Back up patrols were called in including the police helicopter PolAir.
The cars were briefly sighted at a petrol station at Keith before speeding off again toward Adelaide. The cars were again sighted just out of Tailem Bend (190km away) and police activated their emergency lights in attempts to stop the cars, but they refused and a short pursuit ensued.
Thankfully patrols were waiting with road spikes on the Princes Highway, just near the Tailem Bend Hospital. The Holden Captiva was successfully spiked and came to a stop a short distance away, the Holden Calais stopped at this location as well.
The men were taken to the Adelaide city watch house and both charged with failing to comply with covid directions, failing to stop and driving unlicenced. They were refused bail and will appear in the Adelaide Magistrates Court today.
Ruby Princess passengers file class action against cruise line
Passengers of the fateful Ruby Princess cruise ship voyage and families of those who died after contracting Covid-19 on board have filed a class action against the operators.
The class action is being run by Shine Lawyers. Class actions practice leader, Vicky Antzoulatos said it was alleged that Carnival and Princess Cruise Lines broke Australian consumer law by breaching consumer guarantees and by engaging in conduct that was misleading and deceptive. The legal action will also allege that operators of the Ruby Princess were negligent and failed in their duty of care to provide passengers with a safe cruise.
There were 2,700 passengers on the voyage.
Antzoulatos:
We say the owner and operator knew of the risks that passengers may contract coronavirus before the ship left and they failed to take steps to ensure their passengers were safe and protected.
People on board the ship trusted Carnival to do the right thing but they were not told about the risk of coronavirus and some paid the ultimate price for it.
More than 20 people have died, many remain gravely ill, while others struggle daily with the grief of having lost a loved one or having to care for a very sick relative.
One of the class action members, Graeme Lake, lost his wife, Karla, to Covid-19 10 days after the Ruby Princess returned to Sydney from an 11-day cruise on 19 March.
It broke me, it broke the kids, and she didn’t deserve it. Karla went on that cruise to celebrate her 75th birthday and what happened to her has destroyed us. I am doing everything I can to get justice.
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McManus said that if Australia had the biggest budget deficit since the second world war, it should also have the biggest investment in nation-building projects since the war too.
Yesterday, the treasurer said that it is just as bad as after world war II. After world war II, what did we do? The government invested in big national infrastructure projects and local manufacturing in all of those things ... it left a legacy and that’s how we have to look at this, as a country.
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The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) has stepped up its calls for national paid pandemic leave to ensure that people are encouraged and supported to self-isolate when necessary.
Lack of sick leave and insecure work have driven much of the spread of the coronavirus in Melbourne’s northern and western suburbs, according to the Victorian government, which has said nine out of 10 people do not self-isolate when they get sick and one in two don’t self-isolate while waiting for their Covid-19 test result.
Victoria yesterday announced a new $300 hardship payment for people who have been tested for Covid-19 and are awaiting their test result, on top of the $1,500 one-off payment available to people who do test positive. But that’s well below what workers may have earned in a fortnight — and they could be off work for much longer.
The ACTU secretary, Sally McManus, told ABC News Breakfast the “economic and health issues are entwined”.
We can’t recover unless we can get the virus under control. A bit like having a leaky pipe. Workers are unfortunately going to work when they’re waiting for test results or when they’ve got symptoms. So we’ve got to plug the leaks. We know that they’re there, and the way to do it is to take away the punishment that people have when they stay at home and isolate, which is sometimes losing their job, but quite often, losing all their wage.
So if we could take that away, that is one way of controlling the virus, because people know that they can safely isolate and they’re going to be supported. They won’t lose their pay and it means that so many more people will stay at home because we just take away that punishment for isolating.
McManus said it wasn’t possible to say how long people might have to be on leave for, because it depended on the test waiting times in the state they were living in, the nature of the exposure to the virus, and the test result.
She said the pandemic should spur a conversation about workforce insecurity – and that conversation should happen now.
The whole coronavirus situation has exposed just how vulnerable insecure workers are. One in three workers in our country don’t have paid leave … If we can take something good out of this coronavirus, let’s emerge stronger and let’s reduce the number of insecure jobs we’ve got.
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Chalmers said an economic crisis of this magnitude, with unemployment queues this long, “will inevitably change how we think about government” in this country.
He said the risk of mismanaging it is you could create “pockets of unemployment that cascade through the generations”.
Interestingly, in this interview Chalmers is only talking about training as it applies directly to jobs, not education generally. I would have thought the impact of school disruptions, particularly for students in preschool and early primary, and then at the other end in year 11 and 12, would have an even more devastating impact.
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The shadow treasurer, Jim Chalmers, has been on Radio National this morning, again criticising the Morrison government for not announcing a plan to rebuild the economy when it announced that huge deficit and record high debt.
Chalmers said there “needs to be a plan for jobs in the economy when jobkeeper trails away”.
That’s March next year, when it will already be just two-thirds of what it is now and, for part-time workers, less than half of what it is now.
Chalmers said Australia “should be doing better than the rest of the world”. We went into the pandemic in a better position. We’re pretty rich, generally.
For the government to say ‘oh our jobless queues are better than they are in Trump’s America’, I don’t think that washes with people, I think that’s cold comfort to them.
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Before we get into the news of the day, let’s take a moment to reflect on what the news would have been had the pandemic not happened.
The opening ceremony for the Tokyo Olympic Games was scheduled to be held today. It’s been postponed by to 2021, and last night Olympic rings were lit up in the city to mark there was one year to go.
The Australian sporting sector is still working through the cost of the postponement, with no guarantee the games will actually go ahead next year.
Good morning,
National cabinet will meet today to discuss the growing coronavirus outbreak in Victoria as well as the economic update, which yesterday announced Australia was facing deficits of $85.8bn in 2019-20 and $184.5bn in 2020-21 – the highest since the second world war. It will also discuss the new Closing the Gap strategy, which has been approved by the joint council but still doesn’t have any new money attached to it – and with the new fiscal position announced yesterday, that seems increasingly unlikely.
Tighter restrictions will come into force in NSW today. They cap group bookings at restaurants, clubs and cafes at 10 and venue capacities at 300 — the same rules that are already applied to pubs. Funerals will be limited to 100 guests and weddings and corporates to 150, with strict “no dancing, no singing, no mingling” rules.
In Victoria, the Australian Medical Association is warning that the aged care system is on the verge of “collapse”, made worse by plans to limit aged care workers to working at a single facility to stop the spread of the virus. The sector is highly casualised, and many people work across different facilities to make a living.
The president of the Victorian AMA, Dr Julian Rait, said:
We are concerned aged care may be so under pressure in just the next few days it will cause collapse and severe system stress.
And finally, Queensland has added the Sydney local government area of Fairfield to its declared hotspot areas, subject to strict border controls, because of the growing outbreak linked back to the the Thai Rock restaurant in Weatherill Park.
Let’s crack on. You can follow me on twitter @callapilla or email me at calla.wahlquist@theguardian.com.
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