Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Embassy official dismisses ‘rage and roar’ over tweet; new WA border rules not requiring quarantine to start on 8 December; Paul Fletcher complains to ABC chair about Four Corners program. Follow latest updates
And that’s where we’ll leave the blog for today. Thanks as always for reading, we’ll be back tomorrow, with Amy Remeikis at the helm in the morning.
Here’s what happened today:
And in further weather news, severe thunderstorms are set to hit Sydney in a few minutes. The Bureau of Meteorology has warned of damaging winds and large hailstones.
⚡Detailed Severe Thunderstorm Warning⚡ for DAMAGING WINDS and LARGE HAILSTONES. Forecast to affect Hornsby, Parramatta and Richmond by 7:05 pm and Sydney City, Sydney Olympic Park, Mona Vale and waters off Bondi Beach by 7:35 pm. ⚠️Warnings: https://t.co/qF3XejM6Tvpic.twitter.com/qnSGNfqZND
Former diplomat urges more countries to stand against ‘coercion’ from Beijing, as Chinese state media says Australia is ‘treating China’s goodwill with evil’
France and New Zealand have joined Australia in criticising the Chinese government for its inflammatory tweet about Australian soldiers, as a former senior diplomat called for more countries to take a stand against Beijing’s “coercion”.
The tensions between China and Australia showed no sign of abating on Tuesday, with the Chinese embassy in Canberra accusing the Morrison government of overreacting to the social media post and of stoking the issue for domestic political purposes.
Exclusive: Image obtained by Guardian Australia shows limb being used to down drinks in a special forces bar in Afghanistan
Senior Australian special forces soldiers drank beer out of the prosthetic leg of a dead Taliban soldier at an unauthorised bar in Afghanistan – with a photograph of the act being revealed for the first time by Guardian Australia.
A number of photographs obtained by the Guardian show one senior soldier – who is still serving – sculling from the leg in an unofficial bar known as the Fat Lady’s Arms, which was set up inside Australia’s special forces base in Tarin Kowt, the capital of Uruzgan province, in 2009.
Prime minister calls on China to apologise and seeks removal of tweet; Victoria revamps hotel quarantine program under single agency with private security banned. Follow all the latest
Twitter hasn’t taken the Tweet down, as demanded by Scott Morrison, but it has censored it.
The image defaults to hidden with the message:
Shocked by murder of Afghan civilians & prisoners by Australian soldiers. We strongly condemn such acts, &call for holding them accountable. pic.twitter.com/GYOaucoL5D
And yet, no one is responsible. Governance in Australia is so, so broken
I don’t support wording of Labor’s motion but someone needs to resign over the #robotdebt fiasco. How is it that only female Ministers like Ley and McKenzie resign? Where is the Westminster Ministerial responsibly? #qt#auspolpic.twitter.com/lfAClWfphp
Scott Morrison says China should be ‘totally ashamed’ of digitally altered image depicting Australian soldier posted by foreign ministry
The Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, has demanded the Chinese government apologise and take down a “repugnant” foreign ministry tweet that depicted an Australian soldier cutting the throat of a civilian in Afghanistan.
As the outrage over the digitally altered image threatened to sink already tense relations between the two countries to a new low, Morrison said on Monday the Chinese government “should be totally ashamed of this post”, which he said diminished Beijing on the world stage.
Exclusive: Former finance minister’s pitch pushes ‘zero net emissions as soon as possible’, which contradicts record while in Australian government
Australia’s former finance minister Mathias Cormann is continuing to talk up the importance of a “collective green recovery” on the campaign trail to be the next secretary general of the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
In a “vision statement” for the position obtained by Guardian Australia, Cormann says undertaking “effective global action on climate change is a must and we must get to zero net emissions as soon as possible”.
Frances Adamson urges Beijing to reflect on how its increasingly assertive stance is being received by other countries
Australia’s foreign affairs chief has warned Beijing against resorting to “pressure or coercion”, declaring China would be wrong to assume it was now so powerful it could set the terms of its engagement with the world.
Amid heightened tensions between Australia and its largest trading partner, Frances Adamson used a major speech on Wednesday night to urge the Chinese government to reflect on how its increasingly assertive actions would be received by other countries.
NSW to ease coronavirus restrictions, including the number allowed to visit a home; Queensland prepares for influx of visitors ahead of December 1 border reopening. Follow updates
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.
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.
Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has confirmed Victorians will be able to enter her state without quarantining from 1 December, after Victoria announced no new cases on Tuesday.
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.
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.”
Further to Andrew Hastie’s comments on the Brereton report, which we reported earlier, the WA Liberal MP has been on the ABC expanding on his call for greater parliamentary oversight of the military.
He tells Andrew Probyn:
Defence is a huge organisation. In order for parliament to exercise proper civilian oversight of the military you have to have a baseline understanding of the capabilities, the methods, and the operations of the ADF. If we can’t talk about those things in public, we can’t talk about them at all.
So we need to talk about them in a classified space and right now there is no such mechanism in the parliament to increase parliamentarians’ understanding of defence and therefore enable parliament to hold it to account.
Scott Morrison and the Indonesian president, Joko Widodo, swapped notes on Covid-19 situations in their two countries during a phone call this afternoon.
A readout issued by Morrison’s office says the pair also discussed progress on vaccine trials and they “were encouraged by the more positive trajectory of their economies in the third quarter”.
Prime minister says diplomatic difficulties Australia is navigating are ‘a foretaste’ for others around the world
Scott Morrison has used a speech to the British Policy Exchange to call for a more nuanced appreciation of national interest, and more flexibility, when countries pursue relationships with America and China, because “stark choices are in no one’s interests”.
In a section of his speech outlining the challenges of navigating Australia’s fraught relationship with China in an era of escalating geopolitical competition, Morrison on Monday night said “greater latitude will be required from the world’s largest powers to accommodate the individual interests of their partners and allies” because “we all need a bit more room to move”.
South Australian premier Steven Marshall has reiterated his state is “not out of the woods yet”, a day after one new case of coronavirus was recorded in the community.
The comments follow a decision to lift the state’s Covid-19 lockdown early after authorities learned a key case linked to its emerging cluster out of a quarantine hotel had lied to investigators about working a second job at a pizza restaurant.
You don’t get a second chance to stop a second wave. The advice that we received from health was unequivocal. We had to go hard and go early. We didn’t want a second wave.
We didn’t want to have this seeded in South Australia so that we were managing multiple clusters on an ongoing basis until this particular infection actually, if you like, died out.
We think the people of South Australia deserve some answers on this and we will look at every opportunity for there to be some consequences for this person because it is really important that when a public health official asks you questions you provide them with accurate information otherwise lives can be at stake.
Labor’s Joel Fitzgibbon has backed the sentiment behind a speech to be delivered today by party colleague, Queensland senator Murray Watt, which indicates plans to “reset the party’s approach to coal and gas”.
No doubt he wants to put labour back into the Labor party. And today he speaks to our traditional base, all those people in the hi-vis and blue collar outfits, working hard every day in Queensland.
All they want for us is to give credit to them for what they do, the contribution they make to our economy and community. And we want to encourage them to be proud of what they do as they should be.
We need to be ... very loud and clear in our expressions of support for those industries, and those who work within them.
The Labor party always supported the coal mining industry, it always supported the gas sector, the oil sector, etc our manufacturers, but for some reason we haven’t been that keen to say that loudly and proudly. And if that’s what we’re about to start doing well, I’ll be very very pleased.
Long-running study finds 63% of voters support drug minimisation strategy shunned by governments
Nearly two-thirds of the Australian public are in favour of pill testing at music festivals, new national data shows.
The findings, drawn from the Australian National University’s long-running election study, show strong public support for a drug harm minimisation strategy that has largely been shunned by governments across the country despite high-profile cases of deaths at music festivals.
Australia’s trade minister says China should clarify why other nations maintained workable relations despite differences
China should explain why it appears to have singled out Australia with a range of import restrictions that have disrupted trade flows and undermined trust in the economic relationship, the Australian trade minister has said.
With Australia and its largest trading partner locked in a stalemate over how to end the tensions, Simon Birmingham also used a television interview on Sunday to accuse the Chinese embassy in Canberra of taking a number of unhelpful actions this year.
Exclusive: Beijing ministers won’t speak to counterparts until Canberra discards ‘cold war mentality’, embassy says
Chinese government ministers won’t start answering phone calls from their Australian counterparts unless Canberra stops treating Beijing as a strategic threat, a senior embassy official has warned.
China is urging the Morrison government to make a clear decision on whether it sees Beijing as a “threat” or an “opportunity”, setting this up as a key precondition for resuming ministerial-level talks, which have been frozen since early this year.
South Australia reports three new cases in quarantine and lifts many lockdown restrictions. No new locally acquired coronavirus cases in NSW or Victoria. Follow live
If you’re still confused about what happened in South Australia, Josh Taylor has stepped it out in this report. He writes:
The state’s premier, Steven Marshall, made the admission after contact tracers further investigated a male with Covid-19 who claimed to have only picked up a pizza from the Woodville Pizza Bar.
A security guard who tested positive from the Peppers medi-hotel for returned travellers had a second job at the restaurant, and because the person claimed to have just been a customer, health authorities feared a wide range of people may have been exposed to Covid-19 through casual transmission at the pizza bar.
To Tasmania now, where a Hobart man in possession of enough fake luxury watches to keep Australia Post in bonuses for decades has been arrested by the Australian federal police.
More from AAP:
More than a thousand fake luxury watches and pieces of jewellery, a deceptive passport and 4000 steroid tablets have been seized by police from a man’s house in Hobart.
The 49-year-old is facing a string of criminal charges, including making false travel statements, after the Australian Federal Police raid this week.
Retirement income review to emphasise Australians using ‘voluntary savings’, saying a lift in compulsory super rate would hurt wages growth
The Morrison government is laying the groundwork to scrap the already legislated increase to the superannuation guarantee, declaring the retirement income review has found current policy settings are suitable.
A summation of the retirement income review distributed by treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s office ahead of the report’s official release on Friday put greater emphasis on Australians using “voluntary savings”, including equity within their homes, ahead of raising compulsory superannuation contributions.
Australian ministers urge dialogue to resolve dispute as Beijing says countries may pay ‘corresponding price’
Australia and Japan will “pay a corresponding price” if their new defence pact threatens China’s security, Chinese state media has warned, as Scott Morrison insisted the deal should not cause any concerns to Beijing.
The state-run Global Times newspaper declared the new agreement “accelerates the confrontational atmosphere in the Asia-Pacific region” and was aimed against China.
Insurance companies have lost a crucial test case on whether they have to pay businesses who shut their doors due to the coronavirus pandemic under business interruption policies.
The NSW Court of Appeal says they do, and has thrown out arguments from insurers that coronavirus is excluded from policies.
Meanwhile, a huge chunk of Darwin and surrounds is experiencing a blackout, with the temperature expected to climb to 35C.
Wide spread power outages affecting Darwin and surrounding areas. #DarwinNT Crew responding.
SA will reintroduce coronavirus restrictions after the number of confirmed and probable cases rises to 20; NSW announces that residents will receive four $25 vouchers to spend on eating out and entertainment. Follow the latest updates
Returned travellers quarantining in an Adelaide hotel linked to a coronavirus cluster are being told they may have to re-quarantine in a new hotel, regardless of how many days they have already served.
It means some returned travellers may be forced to quarantine for up to 28 days.
Travellers quarantining in an Adelaide hotel linked to a Covid-19 cluster are being told they may have to re-quarantine in a new hotel. Those due to finish today may be forced to quarantine for 28 days. These documents were given to guests @GuardianAushttps://t.co/guSOkfaEWnpic.twitter.com/GrBY9211J6
It’s stressful, because they literally shove a letter under the door, but there was no knock or assistance to explain it to us ... People are due to leave this morning. Imagine being told you had to do it all again, imagine if you missed your flight.
Our room door has been closed since we moved in, nothing has been breached here. Moving us through and putting us on a bus, surely that brings more risk of spreading the virus?
The Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) lands (located in the remote north west of South Australia) will close their borders to for three weeks as the Covid-19 threat rises in South Australia.
The APY Board of Management closed the borders at midnight and says it will manage its borders via the legislated system of permits.
Some 400,000 Australians will share $112m in extra compensation, lawyers say
The Australian government has agreed to a $1.2bn settlement for a class action brought on behalf of hundreds of thousands of robodebt victims.
In a deal struck the day a federal court trial was set to begin, 400,000 people will share in $112m in additional compensation, the firm running the action, Gordon Legal, announced on Monday.