Good morning, this is Tamara Howie bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Tuesday 22 December.
Top stories
NSW authorities are defending their decision to not make masks mandatory as the Avalon Covid cluster grows to 83 and spreads beyond the northern beaches. Some experts have warned that a hard lockdown is needed over the next three days to prevent Christmas and new year celebrations becoming super spreader events. With the growing number of cases and holiday festivities thrown into disarray, many are questioning whether Australia’s vaccination approach should be accelerated. Scott Morrison and Greg Hunt yesterday reiterated that Australians would have to wait until March, despite vaccination programs being rolled out in the UK, the US and the Pfizer vaccine being approved in the EU yesterday.
As NSW tries to contain the latest Covid cluster, Dan Andrews has apologised for failures in Victoria’s hotel quarantine program and for using private security firms instead of police, which led to the state’s second wave. “I want to apologise to the Victorian community for the very clear errors that were made in this program,” he said. “I think that the way in which the program was established … it had to be done quickly. That’s the nature of a global pandemic. There is no rulebook as such.” The final report of inquiry, released yesterday, found “ultimately, the evidence did not identify that any one person decided to engage private security in the program”.
Britain could have been helped financially in tackling the escalating coronavirus crisis if it had remained in the EU, according to the French EU commissioner, Thierry Breton. Breton says the EU could have provided the British government with valuable financial aid through its €750bn recovery plan had the UK chosen to stay in the bloc. “It’s a tragedy what’s happening in Britain, and this Brexit is a tragedy, we see it more and more every day ... consider that if Great Britain had remained as we wished, it would have today, like all other European countries, between €30bn and €50bn in aid,” he said. Boris Johnson has rejected calls by some Conservative MPs to extend Brexit talks beyond 31 December. The comments come as the UK prime minister says his government is working as fast as it can to resolve fright delays over the English Channel after snap border closures in light of an outbreak of a new coronavirus strain.
Australia
Environmentalists have launched a court challenge against approvals for a mega gas project in WA, which they say is “most polluting fossil fuel project ever to be proposed in Australia”. Lawyers for the Conservation Council of Western Australia want a judicial review of decisions made by the state’s environment agency which they say allowed for unlimited amounts of gas to be processed at two plants that are part of the Burrup Hub proposal.
Australia still lacks a large enough surge workforce to prevent deaths in aged care if there are more coronavirus outbreaks. An independent review into a deadly outbreak at two Melbourne nursing homes says they both faced shared common flaws, including “inadequate” emergency planning, and “suboptimal” infection prevention capability.
2020 has been a rough year for Australians. First it was the Black Summer bushfires, followed by severe droughts, flooding and, of course, the pandemic , but some areas were hit harder than others. Guardian Australia has compiled an interactive map of areas affected by multiple disasters this year.
To balance out the doom and gloom 2020 has brought, these are the Australians who rose to prominence in this highly unusual year, including scientists, public servants and a very sweary man.
The world
The disgraced “pharma bro” Martin Shkreli is at the centre of yet another internet frenzy after a viral interview with the journalist Christie Smythe describes how she upended her “perfect little Brooklyn life” after falling in love with him while reporting on his trial.
Two people smugglers have been found guilty of 39 counts of manslaughter in the UK for the suffocation of 39 Vietnamese people in the back of a lorry last year. Two other smugglers were convicted of conspiring to smuggle people into the country unlawfully.
The Hong Kong activist Nathan Law has applied for asylum in the UK, six months after fleeing his home on the eve of the national security law coming into force. He said he had chosen Britain in the hope he could “sound an alarm” over threats to democracy in Europe from the Chinese Communist party.
The US has unveiled new charges against a Libyan man accused of being the bombmaker behind the terrorist attack that blew up Pan Am Flight 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in 1988, killing 270 people.
Recommended reads
‘Is Drew Barrymore’s 2009 directorial debut one of the best-cast teen films ever?’ asks Shaad D’Souza. “In the 10-odd years since Whip It’s release, I’ve watched it many, many times, each time finding myself confused by its lack of commercial success or, at the least, cult status. Now that it’s streaming on Stan, there’s a chance for it to find an audience again.”
“I love summer produce but I hate to ‘cook’ in summer; it’s too hot to be cooped up in a kitchen. This is when I turn to salads,” says Danielle Alvarez. The chef behind the Sydney restaurant Fred’s shares four recipes ideal for a lazy summer lunch – prawns, polenta and pineapple upside-down cake. “I have a lot of love for upside-down cakes. The best part is, this cake could be adapted to any fruit really: plums, nectarines, peaches, apricots, strawberries, blueberries, or, in this case, my favourite of all the upside-down cakes, pineapple.”
The Craig McLachlan case shows how far we’ve come in the fight for consent law reform and how far we have to go, writes Bri Lee: “The contention at the heart of this case is not actually whether or not the complainants were, in their minds, consenting, but rather: what was the defendant thinking? The big and tricky legal issue at the heart of the fight for reform across Australia is about the ‘intent’ of the defendant.”
Listen
While there’s plenty about 2020 you probably don’t want to remember, there are some happy moments we can all take some joy from – here’s some of the lighter moments from pop culture in 2020.
Full Story is Guardian Australia’s daily news podcast. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or any other podcasting app.
Sport
Add whatever sports you like to the Olympics, writes Calla Wahlquist, but don’t drop equestrian. There were fears Australia would not be able to field an equestrian team in Tokyo 2021 when Equestrian Australia went into voluntary administration, but after a governance restructure the Olympic program is back on track. If the Olympics are about myth-making and building national character, frequently around courage, “nowhere in the summer Olympics is courage more required than the in the three-day event”.
The Sydney Test could yet become a victim of Sydney’s Covid outbreak as new border closures and restrictions wreak havoc with the Australian sporting calendar. The Sydney to Hobart yacht race has been cancelled and there have been postponements and logistical upheaval to the Big Bash League, the A-League and the W-League.
Media roundup
The GST distribution row has been ignited again after the Commonwealth Grants Commission raised the potential of Victoria being “compensated” by other states to deal with the economic fallout from Melbourne’s lockdown, reports the Australian Financial Review. Victoria’s top cop, Graham Ashton, has told the Australian Victoria’s hotel quarantine security failures weren’t his fault, despite the inquiry’s findings that he was partially to blame. And vaping nicotine will become more difficult in 2021, with Australia set to ban imports of liquid nicotine without a doctor’s prescription in a bid to deter teenagers from smoking, says the Daily Telegraph.
Coming up
Gladys Berejiklian will provide updated NSW coronavirus case numbers at 11am.
A new federal cabinet will be sworn in at a virtual event.
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