What we learned today
Here’s some of the news from today you might have missed:
- Queensland will reopen its border to Victoria on 1 December, along with greater Sydney after Victoria recorded its 26th straight day of no new cases, and 28th day of no cases of unknown origin.
- New South Wales announced that from 1 December people with outdoor spaces at home will be able to have up to 50 visitors, while others will be able to have up to 30. Venues of up to 200 sq metres will be able to apply the 2 sq metre rule without a cap on the total number of patrons.
- The work from home order will be rescinded in NSW from 14 December, meaning people can begin returning to work from the office, if they haven’t already.
- The convicted terrorist Abdul Nacer Benbrika has had his Australian citizenship revoked, being the first onshore person to have their citizenship revoked as the federal government seeks to keep him in jail for another three years.
- The Victorian hotel quarantine inquiry will hold a final hearing on Friday as South Australia announces plans to move returned travellers with Covid-19 into a dedicated medi-hotel with security provided by South Australian police.
Updated
The ACTU national secretary, Sally McManus, is on ABC TV being asked about delivery riders, in the wake of five deaths of riders in the past two months.
McManus says the law needs to change to give those workers the protections of other workers.
“What needs to happen is that our government needs to ensure at a minimum people working for these companies, Deliveroo, Uber Eats, have basic rights at work. They need to change the law in order to do that. They don’t even get the minimum wage, they don’t get safety, sick pay, things like that.”
McManus says it will mean the business model for the delivery apps will need to change.
“There’s quite a big cut those companies are taking for every single delivery. There would have to be a decision made around whether that cut would stay the same. If the minimum wages went up, how much, if any, would be passed on to the consumer.”
McManus says it will create a whole underclass of worker earning under minimum wage unless it is addressed.
“How can we say that some people will earn the minimum wage for doing work, and some people aren’t? We’re going to create a whole class of people – don’t think it will just be delivery riders in that class if we don’t address it.”
Updated
Here’s a bit more background on Abdul Nacer Benbrika from AAP:
Australia’s first convicted terrorist leader was jailed for a maximum of 15 years in 2009.
The self-proclaimed Islamic cleric has been behind bars since his 2005 arrest over plots to attack Melbourne landmarks, including one to blow up the MCG on grand final day that year.
He also said his group of followers needed to kill at least 1000 non-believers to make the Australian government withdraw troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.
The commonwealth wants a continuing detention order requiring Benbrika to remain in prison until November 2023, with the matter still before a court.
Updated
Victorian hotel quarantine inquiry to hold final hearing on Friday
The Victorian hotel quarantine inquiry has just announced it will hold a final hearing on Friday 27 November at 12pm in order to tender final evidence and submissions.
That will be all that came in after the last final hearing in September, including the call records and submissions from chief health officer Brett Sutton, among others.
Updated
Labor’s shadow minister for foreign affairs, Penny Wong, is on ABC News and was asked about Mathias Cormann’s lobbying trip for the head of the OECD.
Wong said it was a double standard for Cormann to get a private jet while 36,000 Australians are still waiting to get home on commercial flights. She said:
They don’t get this sort of treatment, having a RAAF jet. They are required to fly commercial, so I thought that double standard would be pretty hard to hear for some of those families whose relatives are in difficult circumstances, stuck outside Australia.
Wong said Labor supported Cormann’s bid, recognising the importance of Australians on international institutions, but pointed out the Coalition had not been as mature with its “pettiness” around former PM Kevin Rudd’s failed bid for the candidacy for the UN secretary general.
But it’s for the government to explain the costs, the use of of the plane and all the costs associated with this bid.
Updated
Convicted terrorist has citizenship revoked
Home affairs minister Peter Dutton announced one of the terrorists arrested in 2005 as part of Operation Pandanus with plans to carry out terrorist attacks in Australia has had his Australian citizenship revoked, in the first use of the law.
Dutton said he cancelled Abdul Nacer Benbrika’s citizenship on 20 November, the first to have lost his citizenship on Australian shores under the terrorism-related provisions of the act of 2007.
Benbrika was sentenced to 12 years’ jail for plotting terrorist attacks in places including the 2005 AFL grand final, Crown casino and the Lucas Heights nuclear reactor.
His sentence expired earlier this month, but the federal government has applied to the supreme court in Victoria to have his sentence extended for another three years. That case will be heard next week.
Dutton said the man had, in the meantime, been notified his citizenship had been revoked and had been given an ex-citizen visa.
Updated
Home affairs minister Peter Dutton has defended the costs – in the hundreds of thousands of dollars – of flying former finance minister Mathias Cormann around the world to lobby for the OECD’s top job.
Dutton said it would be good for Australia if he got the job.
It would be a significant victory for the country of Mathias Cormann could achieve the outcome, for us to have an influence in the OECD, especially in a period of recovery after the Covid-19 virus, over the next five to 10 years.
The world economy ... will have an important impact on Australians, and for somebody who is as successful and is as credentialed as Mathias Cormann to be at the head of that organisation, to speak with the knowledge that he has obtained as having been Australia’s most successful finance minister, I think would be a great win for Australia and something we should be very proud of.
But there is always a cost associated with the visits and with lobbying that goes on to get the requisite votes to take that position, and I hope he is successful because that will be a great outcome for Australia.
Dutton said Australians would understand the cost involved.
Australia has a big role to play in the world, to provide support to other countries, to make sure that the world economy is in as good a shape as it possibly can be, as I hope we rebound from Covid-19 as soon as possible. But there is a cost associated with that, and I think on that basis Australians would support it.
Updated
Culvahouse was asked about his future and said that, as a political appointee, appointed by Trump, he expected to be returned home. He said:
I understand those rules and political ambassadors almost without exception return home when there is a change of administration, and I expect [between] now and January 20 I will head back to the United States.
When he was asked about US president Donald Trump’s refusal to concede defeat to president-elect Joe Biden, Culvahouse said the process was playing out according to the constitution, with states certifying and counting all the votes.
He said it would be ratified by Congress on 8 January, but until then Biden has been given the benefits of transition by the General Services Administration.
I think, if you look at Bush against Gore in the year 2000, it was 37 days before we got to the stage, which we are here now. By that standard, if you are old, this is not unusual and not remarkable.
Updated
The US ambassador to Australia, Arthur B. Culvahouse Jr, is speaking about the so-called list of grievances China has with Australia at an anti-child exploitation event with the home affairs minister, Peter Dutton.
Culvahouse said the list was just “Australia standing up for its own interest”.
You would never see a United States embassy send such a list to a reporter in Australia.
That is not the way to do diplomacy and it’s not the way that one should deal with concerns – it should be done government to government. That sort of interference I don’t think you would see in the United States.
Updated
NSW parliament’s upper house has voted to give the Independent Commission Against Corruption (Icac) $7.3m more funding, after Greens MP David Shoebridge passed an amendment to the parliamentary budget bill with the support of all non-government members.
AAP has more:
Icac itself told a parliamentary inquiry last year that its annual funding had been below inflation for most of the 30 years since its inception, leaving it with a $7.2m budget shortfall.
The $7.3m figure represented 0.0007% of the overall expenditure in the 2020-2021 budget, Shoebridge said on Wednesday.
But the money is not guaranteed to reach Icac, as the amendment requires the approval of the lower house.
Premier Gladys Berejiklian told reporters on Wednesday she would consider the amendment when it reached the lower house.
Updated
Labor has demanded that the government explain why it did not embrace a Zoom-based campaign for Mathias Cormann’s OECD candidacy, after Scott Morrison claimed the former finance minister would have contracted Covid-19 if he had used commercial flights.
Young retail workers to get higher rates of pay
Thousands of young retail workers will earn the full adult rate of pay after the wages umpire scrapped junior rates for some levels of employment, AAP reports.
The Fair Work Commission has decided junior employee rates will no longer apply to retail workers at level four and above.
Retail union nation secretary Gerard Dwyer said previous arrangements discriminated against adult and junior workers.
He said in a statement on Wednesday:
Junior employees could be favoured over adults because of the lower rates.
On the other hand, it discriminated against junior workers because they were doing the work of an adult and getting a lower rate of pay.
Updated
A small update on Clive Palmer’s damages claim lawsuit against Western Australia, from AAP:
A judge has ruled against Palmer in his attempt to bolster a $30bn damages claim against the state of Western Australia.
WA’s parliament in August passed extraordinary legislation to amend a 2002 state agreement with Palmer’s Mineralogy company and terminate arbitration between the two parties.
The bill is designed to block the billionaire mining magnate from claiming damages over a decision by the former Liberal state government not to assess one of his mining projects.
Its validity will be decided by the high court next year.
Updated
The NSW government announced a taskforce into the delivery rider industry yesterday after the fifth death of a rider in the past two months.
Delivery riders kneeling in grief for the loss of their work mates outside @UberEats in Sydney #RightsForRiders pic.twitter.com/G3ie7XlvA5
— Sally McManus (@sallymcmanus) November 25, 2020
Queensland will dismantle every road border checkpoint by 1 December, Queensland police said on Wednesday, with police just randomly checking vehicles for people who may have been in Adelaide, AAP reports.
Police deputy commissioner Steve Gollschewski told reporters:
So the great thing for people coming into Queensland, and particularly our neighbours across the border, [is] it will be back to normal for them.
Gollschewski said taking down the checkpoints meant 200 officers per day could return to normal policing after a “mammoth” nine-month operation.
He said more than 1 million vehicles had been intercepted, 640,000 domestic passengers had been checked and 50,000 people had been ordered into quarantine.
He noted that only 2,500 fines had been issued amid the millions of checks.
Virgin Australia, in which the state holds an equity stake, will offer 38,000 extra seats on ramped up flights between Victoria and Queensland before Christmas.
Updated
Interesting how this might have been different...
Australia recorded 92,015 deaths in the first 8 months of the year, 220 more than the 2015-19 average.
— casey briggs (@CaseyBriggs) November 25, 2020
That's easily within the range of usual variation. pic.twitter.com/GANJXnWqVi
And here’s a little more of what Victorian attorney general Jill Hennessy had to say about the conversion practices ban legislation this morning, via AAP:
Hennessy on Wednesday described the practice of gay conversion therapy as “bigoted quackery”.
She told reporters outside parliament:
Our government is very firmly of the view that gay, lesbian and trans people, they don’t need to be fixed, they are perfect the way they are.
What we won’t stand by is to have services – whether they’re therapeutic health services or pretending to be, or religious techniques – imposing on people something I think is the height of cruelty.
Hennessy said Victorians had been starved, tortured, told to “pray the gay away” and even married off young in an effort to suppress their sexuality or gender identity.
Some of the stories involved what I would call forms of criminal assault.
Updated
Thank you, Elias.
In case you missed it, last night we reported the Victorian government would introduce legislation to outlaw gay and gender conversion practices. That legislation has now been introduced. You can read more about it from my report last night.
I’m passing the blog over to my colleague Josh Taylor, who will take you through the next part of the afternoon.
Have a great afternoon. And now, over to you, Josh.
Updated
A decision on when next year’s Australian Open will be held is imminent, but a delay of a week or two is the “most likely” outcome of talks between the state government, health officials and Tennis Australia.
Guardian Australia’s sport editor, Mike Hytner, has this report, with comments from Victoria’s sports and tourism minister, Martin Pakula, conceding that a postponement of the tournament – scheduled to start on 18 January – is probable.
Updated
Some more from New South Wales premier Gladys Berejiklian about restrictions easing from 1 December:
✅ Up to 50 people (currently 20) can visit a residence as long as an outdoor space is being used, however, it’s recommended no more than 30 people gather if the residence has no outdoor area.
— Gladys Berejiklian (@GladysB) November 25, 2020
✅ Up to 50 people can gather outdoors in a public space (currently 30).
— Gladys Berejiklian (@GladysB) November 25, 2020
✅ Small hospitality venues (up to 200 square metres in size) will be allowed to have one person per two square metres indoors.
— Gladys Berejiklian (@GladysB) November 25, 2020
Scott Morrison has expressed confidence the Australian War Memorial will “respect the defence force” in its handling of findings of alleged war crimes. The prime minister cited appointments to its council, including Tony Abbott, as a guarantee it will handle the matter sensitively.
My colleague Paul Karp has this report:
Updated
If we keep excusing violence against women, we'll never end violence against women.
— Anthony Albanese (@AlboMP) November 25, 2020
On this International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women and every day, we say:
Let's end this culture of excuses. Let's stop blaming women. Let's change attitudes and save lives. pic.twitter.com/srldqoAGT1
More on the story of Mathias Cormann’s taxpayer-funded jet that is transporting him around the world as he campaigns to become secretary general of the OECD.
News.com.au is reporting Scott Morrison has set up a task force of eight full-time staff dedicated to helping Cormann secure the role.
The PM has set up a task force of eight full-time staff and a VIP private plane to help his ex-finance minister land a $383k job with the OECD. Via @samanthamaidenhttps://t.co/JAHVHRb31a
— news.com.au (@newscomauHQ) November 24, 2020
This morning Morrison defended providing Cormann a Royal Air Force plane, saying there was an “extremely high” risk he would catch Covid if he were forced to travel on commercial flights.
Guardian Australia previously revealed the travel may be costing Australian taxpayers as much as $4,300 an hour, based on records of previous flights by the same type of air force plane that he is using.
Labor senator Murray Watt is calling Cormann “Australia’s most expensive jobseeker”.
Meet Matthias Cormann - Australia’s most expensive JobSeeker. https://t.co/kdQ27uukQc
— Senator Murray Watt (@MurrayWatt) November 25, 2020
Updated
The New South Wales parliament has been forced to sit around the clock in a bid to pass a landmark energy bill which the One Nation MP Mark Latham is seeking to block by moving hundreds of mostly procedural amendments.
My colleague Michael McGowan has this report:
Up to 50 people will be able to visit a NSW home from next week, providing they use outdoor space
The NSW premier is giving more details about the easing of restrictions she foreshadowed earlier today. Gladys Berejiklian said that after meeting with health experts the relaxation of rules was able to go “even further that what we anticipated this morning”.
From Tuesday, 1 December, up to 50 people will able to visit a private residence, provided the gathering is using an outdoor space like a backyard or garden. This is an increase from the current limit of 30.
Smaller homes without an outdoor space will be able to have 30 visitors from 1 December. This is an increase from the current limit of 20.
Venues up to 200 sq m will be able to apply the 2 sq m rule without a cap on the total number of patrons, and authorities are actively considering expanding the list of types of hospitality venues this applies to.
From 14 December the NSW government will also remove the public health order that covers working from home. Berejiklian said:
Private companies and organisations can make decisions about what they do with their employees into the new year. We want to give people time to think about this.
Berejiklian flagged this would mean an increase in crowding on public transport, and urged all users to wear a mask while riding on buses, trains, light rail and ferries.
Updated
NSW recorded no new cases of locally acquired #COVID19 in the 24 hours to 8pm last night.
— NSW Health (@NSWHealth) November 25, 2020
Four cases were reported in overseas travellers in hotel quarantine. pic.twitter.com/CVAf5MhAp1
My colleague Mostafa Rachwani has looked into the Victorian government’s proposed new road usage tax for electric vehicles.
Some critics are saying the tax could dissuade prospective buyers.
Wednesday 25 November – coronavirus cases in Queensland:
— Annastacia Palaszczuk (@AnnastaciaMP) November 24, 2020
• 0 locally acquired cases, 0 acquired overseas
• 14 active cases
• 1,197 total confirmed cases
• 1,336,467 tests conducted
Sadly, six Queenslanders with COVID-19 have died. 1,177 patients have recovered.#covid19 pic.twitter.com/tDEMK6wStx
South Australia’s premier, Steven Marshall, has announced eight steps he will be taking to strengthen hotel quarantine in his state:
1. All returned travellers who test positive for Covid-19 in medi-hotels will be transferred to a “dedicated health facility”. At this stage, the government is considering the Old Wakefield hospital for this.
2. Security at the dedicated hospital will be provided exclusively by South Australia police and South Australia protective security officers.
3. Staff working at the dedicated facility will not be deployed to other medi-hotels, or high-risk environments, including aged care facilities, correctional facilities or hospitals. This does not apply to staff at the regular medi-hotels for all returned travellers. The police commissioner, Grant Stevens, said under the rule a worker at a medi-hotel could still work a second job at a pizza bar.
4. All staff who are working in the dedicated medical facility (not medi-hotels) will have access to the a hotel so that they have the option to rest away from their home.
5. SA authorities will discuss all of these risk mitigation strategies with the AHPPC before implementing them, and continue to seek the advice from the AHPPC on secondary employment for medi-hotel staff and other issues.
6. Marshall will ask national cabinet to consider testing all Australian citizens prior to their flight with a view that they must have a negative test result before boarding.
7. The medi-hotel (Peppers hotel) will be thoroughly deep cleaned.
8. Once the above steps are implemented, “We will be able to gradually resume our international arrivals for returning Australians.”
Updated
Prof Nicola Spurrier is giving further detail about investigations into the Parafield outbreak.
South Australia’s chief public health officer said analysis of still frames taken from the Peppers Hotel’s CCTV footage had shown “nobody was in the wrong place at the wrong time”. Further analysis of the video would occur in the coming days.
Spurrier also said she believes the first person infected in the cluster was a security guard at the hotel, not a cleaner:
We now are fairly clear that the index case – the first person, the first staff member that was infected at the hotel – is one of the security guards, and not the cleaner.
We can tell that by knowing who was on what floor at what time. There was also absolutely no incidents of staff going into the travellers’ rooms. And certainly no inappropriate behaviour at all.
At this stage, we will have some hypotheses, working hypotheses about how we think both that initial security guard and then the couple who were the travellers in a room, became infected.
Updated
South Australia records no new cases
South Australian chief health officer Nicola Spurrier announces no new cases in the state.
However she explains why the Parafield cluster has grown to 29, with two returned international travellers that tested positive this week while in hotel quarantine at the Peppers Hotel added to the cluster.
This is because genomic testing showed they had the same strain of Covid-19 as the other Parafield cluster cases.
There are now 38 active cases of Covid-19 in the state. There were 9403 tests conducted yesterday.
Updated
Attention all tennis fans:
Daniel Andrews has he thinks the Australian Open will take place “close to the normal timing” of 18-31 January but that its dates have not yet been finalised.
All players would have to quarantine in Melbourne, the Victorian premier said. He told Seven News:
Tennis Australia has been working closely with health authorities. The rest of the world is on fire so there will be quarantine for anyone coming to our city or state. There is no way around that.
As important as a tennis tournament is, we’re not going to jeopardise our coronavirus status by anything other than the highest standards.
Updated
Photojournalists are worried that “sanitised” and controlled photographs of Scott Morrison have ramped up during the pandemic.
Some media outlets are happy to use the “daggy dad” photos coming from the PM’s official photographer, featuring shorts and thongs, exercise bikes and even a chicken coop, but others view them as propaganda.
My colleague Naaman Zhou has this story:
Updated
Scott Morrison, during his radio interview from quarantine at the Lodge this morning, was also asked about robodebt responsibility.
Asked by the 2GB host Ben Fordham if he took personal responsibility after the government reached a $1.2bn class action settlement over the botched welfare debt-recovery scheme, the prime minister said the Labor party was misrepresenting what the robodebt issue had become.
Fordham asked what Labor was misrepresenting, and Morrison responded:
That they’re misrepresenting is what this decision is about is a thing called income averaging. It’s actually not about the computer. It’s about the assumption made that a debt is raised by averaging people’s incomes. Now the Labor party did that, that policy has been used for years and years and years.
Income averaging was found not to be a valid means of raising a debt. That’s what it’s about. This is just the Labor party trying to throw some mud.
Now, this process has found income averaging not to be a way you can legally raise a debt.
But I’m sure your listeners agree that where there are debts, where there is overpayments made to people, that it’s important the government seeks to recover those debts and the government will continue to seek to do that by the appropriate means, and that is what previous Labor governments did, that’s what our government has done.
We paid back ... some $700m of the debts out of $1.2bn so we’ve got on with fixing it. That’s what we’ve gone on with doing it. Labor wants to just keep kicking it along for their own political reasons.
Updated
Scott Morrison has defended providing Mathias Cormann a government-funded Royal Air Force jet so he can travel around the world as he campaigns to be secretary general of the OECD.
The prime minister said there was an “extremely high” risk Cormann, who recently resigned as finance minister, would catch Covid if he were forced to travel on commercial flights.
The travel may be costing Australian taxpayers as much as $4,300 an hour, based on records of previous flights by the same type of air force plane that he is using.
Morrison told 2GB’s Ben Fordham:
That’s funded by the government because we’re taking this bid very seriously and the reason we need him to do that in the air force jet is because Covid is running rampant in Europe, and this is a very important position, and the OECD is going to play a really important role in the global economic recovery.
There really wasn’t the practical option to use commercial flights in the time we had available, because of Covid. If Mathias was flying around on commercial planes, he would have got Covid. The risk of that was extremely high.
This is about safety. It’s about health but it’s also about campaigning for a position that Alexander Downer was telling me the other night, our longest serving foreign minister, that Australia has never secured such a position before.
Now we’re in the race for it, and it will be very important, Mathias would be an outstanding secretary general of the OECD standing up for those liberal democratic market-based values, which the OECD represents that are going to be so important for the economic recovery.
The Covid environment has really demanded this probably more than anything else.
Updated
Queensland fully reopens to Victoria from 1 December
Annastacia Palaszczuk has confirmed Victorians will be able to enter Queensland without quarantining from 1 December after Victoria announced no new cases.
It comes a day after the same reopening was granted to residents of greater Sydney, as both greater Sydney and Victoria achieved 28 days of no community transmission without an unknown transmission source.
The Queensland premier said:
I just heard and that’s wonderful news and can I congratulate Daniel Andrews, their chief health officer and all of Victorians because this is just such fantastic news. So it means on 1 December, Victorians can also come to Queensland and, of course, Queenslanders can go to Victoria as well. So very, very good news.
We’re absolutely prepared for the influx of people for the Queensland holidays. In fact, just yesterday, we saw a 250% increase in some of our tourism operators across Queensland. So that is absolutely wonderful news.
Palaszczuk said the state would move to a “hotspot regime” for if and when her borders are required to close again to a particular location in the future:
I can’t predict the future.
Updated
Victoria records no new cases
No new cases, lost lives or active cases reported yesterday. 16,409 test results were received – thank you to everyone who got tested. More detail: https://t.co/pcll7ySEgz#StaySafeStayOpen #COVID19Vic #EveryTestHelps pic.twitter.com/aASVMquJ3Z
— VicGovDHHS (@VicGovDHHS) November 24, 2020
Scott Morrison has refused to say whether he supports a move by the Australian War Memorial to incorporate into its exhibits the findings of the Brereton inquiry into alleged war crimes by Australian special forces in Afghanistan.
The prime minister was responding to a report this morning that the war memorial director, Matt Anderson, will give its curators and historians free rein to address the findings in its exhibitions, to be set in the context of the 30,000 Australians who served in Afghanistan honourably.
Morrison, speaking to 2GB’s Ben Fordham from the Lodge where he is quarantining after his return from Japan last week, said he would hold off commenting on the move to incorporate the alleged murders of 39 Afghan civilians and prisoners at the hands of SAS officers at the war memorial until he had seen a specific plan.
He also said he trusts the board of the AWM as having “a lot of very sensible people”, specifically naming members Tony Abbott and Kerry Stokes. Stokes has come under fire for promising to financially support SAS members’ legal costs who are accused of war crimes.
Asked if he agreed with Anderson that the findings of the inquiry should be acknowledged at the memorial, Morrison said:
Um, well, it all depends what that actually means, Ben. I think this is a very sensitive issue, we’ve got to be careful how we handle it.
And so I’m not just going to run off half-cocked in giving a response to something that hasn’t even been formulated yet, I don’t think that would be very wise on my part and I trust the war memorial board directors to exercise the appropriate judgment. That’s why I appointed them.
Asked if he supported the stripping the military citations of 3,000 Australian defence force troops, Morrison said it was “complex”:
I’m waiting for [ADF chief] General [Angus] Campbell, to be able to finalise his set of recommendations about what he proposes to do and I know this is a very sensitive and controversial issue. It’s complex. I mean we haven’t seen a report like this before.
There are obviously things that need to be addressed within the ADF. And there is a proper justice process that needs to go through as we’ve both said where you’re always innocent until proven guilty in this country – that’s what doing things by Australia’s rule of law means.
Updated
New South Wales to ease gathering restrictions
Gladys Berejiklian has said the number of visitors allowed in homes in her state will increase from 20 to 30 as she foreshadowed that a range of Covid-19 restrictions would be eased next week.
AAP reports that in addition to the changes for visitors to a NSW home, cafes, restaurants, pubs and clubs will be allowed to double their capacity, with one person allowed for every 2 sq m.
As many as 50 people, up from 30, will be allowed to gather outdoors and 50 patrons will be allowed in small hospitality venues up to 200 sq m from Tuesday.
The NSW premier foreshadowed the changes before a meeting of her government’s crisis cabinet on Wednesday morning, telling Sydney media outlets the community had “done an incredible job this year under trying circumstances”.
“I hope these changes provide a boost to the hospitality industry and give people certainty in how they can celebrate safely with family, friends and colleagues over the Christmas and New Year period,” she said.
And from 14 December public health orders requiring employers to allow staff to work from home will end with the government keen to get workers back to the Sydney CBD.
The changes come a day after Queensland announced it would open its border to Sydney from Tuesday.
NSW has now gone 17 days without a single case of locally acquired case of Covid-19.
Updated
Hotel quarantine workers in Victoria will have their contacts and members of their house traced in advance, and some will be made to live in the hotel, when the state fully resumes its quarantine system that was the subject of a lengthy inquiry.
Announcing the tighter protocols, Daniel Andrews also said there would be an “exclusive workforce” that would only work in the state’s hotel quarantine.
The premier told ABC News:
To give you a sense of what I can say today, we’ll have an exclusive workforce that will only work for us. They won’t have any second jobs.
We may well have groups, not necessarily every staff member, but some staff members who actually live in the hotel. A bit of a fly-in-fly-out arrangement. We’ll advance contact trace all of those people and know who they live with and what the people that they live with do for a living.
So someone working wouldn’t share a house with someone in an aged care facility, for example. All of that work is going on to make sure that when the program is reset, it is safe and I’m confident that that is what people will be able to do.
Andrews also said he had been exchanging texts with Annastacia Palaszczuk and was confident Queensland would fully reopen its border to arrivals from Victoria. On Tuesday, the Queensland premier said she would announce such a move if Victoria recorded no new cases in its update today.
The Victorian leader said that as of midnight there had been no new cases, but today’s official numbers are yet to be released.
He said he was not critical of Palaszczuk’s handling of her border, “but the time, I think, is fast approaching, if it hasn’t already arrived, to get the borders open”.
Updated
Good morning, Elias Visontay here to take you through all the day’s news in Australia.
Gladys Berejiklian has admitted she had failed to self-isolate and voted in parliament while waiting for Covid test results. The NSW premier said she had received a Covid test about 4pm last Tuesday and had received the negative result “just after six or thereabouts”.
- Australian universities made $2.3bn profit in 2019 but $10bn of revenue was overseas student fees according to new figures that point to the financial pressure the sector is now experiencing from international border closures.
- Australia’s consumer watchdog has received more than 24,000 complaints about travel this year – a 500% increase due to Covid. The ACCC commissioner said the office had received a wide range of complaints, with the most common featuring “businesses misleading consumers” about refunds and cancellation fees.
- Hundreds of thousands of renters could face eviction when moratoriums end around Australia, according to the Better Renting report.
- With a month until Christmas, many countries are assessing Covid options to allow families to gather for the festive season. In Australia the Queensland border will reopen to Sydney residents and travel restrictions will be relaxed from 1 December.
- On Tuesday the Queensland premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, said she would also fully reopen her state to arrivals from Victoria from 1 December, provided that state records no new Covid-19 cases today.
If you see anything in your area or a line you think I should know about, you can get in touch with me by email at elias.visontay@theguardian.com, or via Twitter @EliasVisontay.
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