Here's what you need to know this morning
Gareth Ward banned from visiting schools in electorate
NSW independent MP Gareth Ward is officially banned from visiting any schools in his Kiama electorate after being charged with alleged sex crimes, including against a teenage boy.
He was charged on Tuesday with indecently assaulting a 17-year-old boy in 2013 and sexually abusing a man two years later.
The 40-year-old MP says he is innocent of the charges and will fight the allegations. He is also resisting calls to resign.
There will be a vote today in the parliament to suspend him until his case in finalised in the courts.
The vote is likely to be passed, leaving the seat of Kiama on the NSW south coast without parliamentary representation until criminal proceedings are concluded.
Education Minister Sarah Mitchell said given the seriousness of the allegations, she had acted to stop Mr Ward from visiting any schools within his electorate.
Real estate agents in lleged fraud, drug syndicate charged
Three real estate agents have been accused of using their positions of trust at a real estate agency to defraud their clients.
Police charged the trio after an investigation into the alleged use of rental properties for growing cannabis worth $2 million and fraudulent claims for COVID-19 rent relief payments.
Between July and August 2021, police dismantled a number of sophisticated hydroponic cannabis set-ups in homes in the Fairfield area, seizing cannabis with a street value of $2 million.
They will also allege several large-scale fraudulent applications were submitted under the NSW government's COVID-19 Residential Tenancy Support Package scheme.
A 52-year-old real estate agent has been charged with 10 offences, including directing the activities of a criminal group, two counts of cultivating a prohibited plant of commercial quantity and two counts of dishonestly obtaining financial advantage by deception.
He was arrested during a vehicle stop in Cecil Hills at about 7am yesterday, with police allegedly finding $5,000 and mobile phones in the car.
Later that day, a Middleton Grange real estate agent, 35, was charged with nine offences, and a 37-year-old female real estate agent was charged with eight offences, with the offences including participating in a criminal group contributing to criminal activity.
They were all refused bail and are due to appear before Fairfield Local Court today.
A further three people were also arrested for their alleged involvement in the syndicate.
Fairfield Detective Inspector Luke Scott said the nature of the fraud was "scandalous and predatory".
“We will be alleging these people used their position as trusted insiders in the real estate industry to defraud their own clientele and public money meant for those who need it most,” Inspector Scott said.
“The properties that were allegedly utilised by this syndicate to grow cannabis were subleased to members of the public who had no idea their name was on the lease agreement, as was the case when it came to the fraudulently obtained rental relief and bond payments.
"The nature of this fraud is particularly scandalous and predatory; the community won't tolerate it, and those involved now have our court system to answer to."
More RAT kits given to schools
More rapid antigen tests are being distributed to teachers and students in schools across the state as the number of COVID-19 cases continues to spike.
Education Minister Sarah Mitchell said a small number of schools had reverted to learning-from-home arrangements because of the increase in cases.
She said those schools that had a higher number of cases would also reintroduce measures such as mask wearing to try to contain the spread of the virus.
"That will be on advice from our work, health and safety teams at the department to those schools. The intention is that they would come in for a seven-day period, so really to act as that circuit-breaker if we are seeing increased cases in our students and our staff at those particular schools,' Ms Mitchell told the ABC.
"But it will be on a case by case basis."
More rain on the way
The Bureau of Meteorology is warning of more heavy rain and thunderstorms in the north of NSW over the coming days.
A couple of low-pressure troughs are expected to converge in the state's north-east, bringing severe thunderstorms this afternoon.
Senior meteorologist Jordan Notara warned that some already-saturated areas could experience more heavy rainfall over the next three days.
"As we get towards Sunday, there is a level of uncertainty over exactly where the rain is going to become more heavy, with some indication it's going to be around the mid-north coast," he said.
He said there was the potential for additional heavy rainfall over the Northern Rivers, where communities were still cleaning up from the recent floods.
