Good morning. There is a push to send Australia’s excess AstraZeneca stock abroad, the Brazilian president is facing calls he be charged with crimes against humanity, and Aboriginal child welfare advocates call for legislative review in NSW.
Doctors and pharmacists are being urged to use excess AstraZeneca vaccine stock amid fears much of the current 7m surplus doses could go to waste, Guardian Australia has revealed. None of the excess stock has been earmarked for foreign aid, with the volume of supply available to Pacific neighbours declining to just 26,500 last week. Former AMA president, Dr Mukesh Haikerwal, condemned “a very good vaccine going to waste”, as declining public take-up causes stock held by suburban GPs to pass expiration dates.
Brazilian parliamentarians have called for populist president Jair Bolsonaro to be charged with crimes against humanity, due to his administration’s “slovenly” pandemic response. More than 600,000 Brazilians have died during the Covid pandemic, with a disproportionate amount of those dying indigenous Brazilians, but accusations of murder and genocide were left out of a 1,180 page congressional inquiry report. “The report assigns more than 100 years in prison to the president of the republic. That is what the collection of suggested crimes points to,” the inquiry’s vice president, Randolfe Rodrigues said.
Failure to instigate needed changes to child protection laws in NSW will condemn another generation of Aboriginal children to trauma, child welfare advocates have warned. The state government has advised that it plans to revisit the legislation in question in 2024, despite a review being a central recommendation of one of its own reports, released in 2019. Aboriginal children constitute 41.3% of all children in out-of-home care within the state, with 952 Indigenous kids taken into care in 2019-20 – an increase of 2.7% on the year before. UTS professor Paul Gray has called the failure to act “systematic neglect”, with two previous reviews of the state’s out-of-home care system painting a picture of a “system in crisis”.
Australia
Independent MP Helen Haines has warned Scott Morrison she will lobby “concerned” government backbenchers for support for her proposed anti-corruption bill to deliver a new federal integrity commission. The prime minister denied her prior request to allow the bill to be debated.
Australia has hit its 70% vaccination target, health minister Greg Hunt has announced. A “critical meeting” has been pencilled for next week to discuss Pfizer’s booster dose program.
A NSW government investment fund has hundreds of millions in offshore accounts ranging from the Cayman Islands, to Russia, to Angola, new disclosures have revealed. State Labor has said the money would be better used funding schools and hospitals than “lending it to Vladimir Putin’s Russia”.
The charity at the centre of a landmark case giving NGOs greater freedoms to engage in political advocacy is welcoming a “huge win”. Global Citizen had seen its public benevolent institution (PBI) status revoked due to previous political engagement, and is now keen for legislation around PBI to be modernised.
The world
Russia has hosted Taliban leaders in high-profile international talks, but the Kremlin has indicated any injection of aid to assist the nation’s crippled economy will only arrive if the Taliban broaden the inclusivity of their government.
Latvia has become the first European nation to reimpose far-reaching Covid-19 restrictions, announcing a month-long lockdown, including a curfew from 8pm to 5am. The Baltic nation currently has one of the highest new cases per capita ratio in the world.
Donald Trump’s former chief strategist, Steve Bannon, faces a vote in the US House of Representatives over whether he should face criminal charges. Bannon stands accused of refusing to cooperate during Congress’s investigation into the Capitol insurrection.
Recommended reads
For Sarah Doyle, surfing is a source of power, connection and happiness. But returning to Australia during the pandemic, Doyle found finding surfing companions really tricky: until she placed a random ad on Gumtree seeking partners in brine. “I immediately liked them. They are two of the most positive, open and friendly guys I have met in ages. It felt exhilarating to have set this up, and there was an air of jolly between us.” It ended up a social experiment gone very right.
With unemployment dipping and job openings going up, the Covid-counterswing appears in robust health. But not everybody is enjoying the uptick in employment circumstances, Greg Jericho explains. Including zero hour contracts into the figures paints a different spin on employment, and when it comes to disadvantaged workers many are still finding it incredibly tough. “There will always be arguments over the strength of the economy, especially when we have such odd constraints as we do now. But the need to help the most disadvantaged is always there – and perhaps even more so when the temptation is to think the big-picture numbers suggest everything is good.”
For Concetta Caristo, memes about the poem from her school certificate English exam showed her the powerful potential of the internet. And as our guest curator for this week’s 10 funniest things on the internet, she’s serving up Mick Jagger done several ways, the inside monologue of a fly, and some very bad coffee shop art.
Listen
Millions of children are heading back to school. It’s a standard headline – unless this takes place during a global Covid pandemic. Despite NSW and Victoria hitting 70% double-dose vaccination targets, it’s still a prospect that scares some, as this episode of Full Story explores.
Full Story is Guardian Australia’s daily news podcast. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or any other podcasting app.
Sport
It was one of the best funded Australian teams at the Olympic Games, but after returning with a solitary bronze medal a post-mortem is under way into why Australia’s track cycling team fared so poorly. Kieran Pender takes a closer look.
The Wallabies have only played Japan once on their home soil. But the forthcoming Test looms as an important one for southern hemisphere rugby, Bret Harris writes, with the Rugby Championship keenly monitoring the rise of the game in an important, and lucrative, market.
Media roundup
Atlassian co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes has pledged $1.5bn to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees, the Financial Review reports. Australia’s third-richest man and tech mogul has urged other wealthy Australians to try and resolve the political paralysis around climate change, ahead of the Cop26 summit. Australia has accused China of breaking WTO rules by imposing economic sanctions in retaliation for political disputes, the ABC claims, thereby undermining the global “multilateral trade system”. And, Queensland has seen its lowest week for first-dose vaccination in months, the Courier Mail writes, listing 100 school locations where Queenslanders can get vaccinated this weekend.
Coming up
NSW Icac hearings into former premier Gladys Berejiklian will continue.
The Climate Council will release new modelling into Australia’s performance on emissions reductions.
And if you’ve read this far …
An English AI artist robot is at the centre of an international incident, after Egyptian security forces detained her at customs, on suspicions of espionage. Ai-Da, the world’s “first ultra-realistic robot artist” was set to open an exhibition of her works at the Great Pyramid of Giza. But after 10 days in custody, she’s now free to paint again.
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