Category Archives: Australia news

Novak Djokovic: refugees hope tennis star’s hotel detention will cast light on their ‘torture’

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‘We came for safety, not to play tennis’. Refugees and asylum seekers speak out against their harsh treatment

Novak Djokovic’s wrangling with authorities over entering Australia has inadvertently highlighted a different plight: those of the refugees and asylum seekers stuck for months, and years, at the Park Hotel.

The infamous detention hotel in Carlton, Melbourne, where the tennis star is likely to spend the weekend as he awaits a court hearing over his visa cancellation has been described by detainees as a “torture cell”.

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Australian Open players given exemptions similar to Novak Djokovic under investigation

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Home affairs minister Karen Andrews says border force officials received intelligence about other players who may not have met entry requirements

The Australian Open could be thrown into further disarray with the home affairs minister, Karen Andrews, revealing other international players and officials are being investigated after Novak Djokovic’s visa was cancelled.

Andrews also defended the government’s treatment of Djokovic, who is in a Melbourne detention hotel waiting for a legal hearing, rejecting his family’s accusation the government was “keeping him captivity”.

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We know the hell we’re in. It will get worse before it gets better | Melbourne ICU nurse

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I’ve seen people die without their family. It used to bring me to tears. Now I just feel weary

My therapist says it’s OK that sometimes I feel dead inside.

I’m a critical care nurse. I worked in intensive care for all of 2020 and 2021.

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In this strange summer it feels like the wheels are falling off faster in 2022 | Brigid Delaney

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Between Christmas and New Year’s, time seems to stretch and purposelessness pervades – and Omicron gives this baggy week a sinister edge

Arriving home to a heatwave, I open the front door to see the house has swollen in the heat. It’s an old miner’s cottage built on dirt, no proper foundations. It seems to breathe and change form depending on the weather. Remember that scene in Willy Wonka where Violet Beauregarde eats the forbidden gum and turns purple then expands like a blueberry? My house is Violet Beauregarde.

The skirting boards have popped off and detached from the wall, a deep crack has appeared in the ceiling, and the ceiling and the wall appears to have separated. Will the house cleave in two if the heatwave continues? And if so, what does that mean? What should I do?

Brigid Delaney is a columnist for Guardian Australia

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Novak Djokovic to remain in detention during court challenge to Australian visa cancellation

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Australian Open champion is challenging his deportation after the Australian prime minister said officials were ‘following the rules’

Novak Djokovic is awaiting his Australian Open fate in a Melbourne immigration hotel as the world No 1 mounts a legal challenge against Australia’s decision to cancel his visa.

Djokovic’s lawyers succeeded in a bid to stop him from being deported on Thursday with a full hearing in the federal circuit court now scheduled for Monday.

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Novak Djokovic wins interim injunction against deportation; more than 72,000 new cases nationwide – As it happened

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Karen Andrews, home affairs minister, did give a hint of how things might play out.

AAP reports that, before Novak Djokovic’s arrival, she said that while the Victorian government and Tennis Australia may allow a non-vaccinated player to compete in the Australian Open, it was the federal government that dealt with border entry requirements.

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Victoria Covid update: state to mandate reporting of positive rapid test results – video

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It will now be mandatory to report positive rapid antigen test results to the health department by phone or using an online form. A positive home test will carry the same obligations as a positive PCR test. Acting chief health officer, Prof Benjamin Cowie, says with significant transmission of the Omicron variant, pressure on the PCR testing system, and millions of rapid tests being ordered by the Victorian government, the rapid antigen tests will now have the same 'authority' as a PCR test

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‘We’re struggling’: Covid surge spoils summer for Australia’s hospitality and tourism businesses

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Staff shortages and a drop in customers dampen peak season as Covid cases skyrocket and testing regimes struggle

For Phil Johnson, the licensee of Aireys Pub, keeping the hotel open seven days a week at what should be peak season has instead become a “day-by-day proposition”.

During summer the hotel’s lawn, which boasts spectacular views of the sea and sunset, is usually packed with holidaymakers who have flocked to the Victorian surf coast town of Aireys Inlet to escape Melbourne’s heat.

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Australia Covid news live update: more than 64,000 new cases recorded; health systems ‘under pressure’ as hospitalisations rise

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NSW health system ‘under pressure’ as Covid hospitalisations rise to 1,491 and state reports 35,054 cases and eight deaths; Victoria records 17,636 cases and 11 deaths, Queensland 6,781 cases, South Australia 3,493, Tasmania 867, and the ACT 810; Victoria says Novak Djokovic exemption not ‘special treatment’. Follow all the day’s news

ACTU president Michele O’Neil wrote to Scott Morrison late yesterday to ask him to reconsider the federal position on rapid antigen tests and make them free.

Overnight the UK PM Boris Johnson announced that his Conservative government will provide 100,000 critical workers with free rapid tests to help keep essential services and supply chains running, allowing workers to take a test every working day.

Unfortunately, to date you have left this problem in the hands of the market. Now, with Omicron upon us, PCR testing sites are at risk of being overwhelmed, Australians are scrambling to find Rapid Antigen Tests and struggling to afford them.

This puts at grave risk public health and our country’s economic recovery.

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‘Appalling message’: outrage over Novak Djokovic’s medical exemption to play Australian Open

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Former AMA president says Djokovic shouldn’t be allowed into Australia, while fellow players express surprise at the decision

The decision to grant Novak Djokovic an exemption from Covid-19 vaccination requirements to play in the Australian Open in Melbourne has been labelled “appalling”, with some players expressing surprise at the late decision.

On Tuesday night, the defending Australian Open champion posted on Instagram that he was coming to Melbourne to participate in the tennis tournament with an “exemption permission”.

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Australia Covid news live update: new daily record of 47,738 cases nationwide; ACCC to ‘name and shame’ over soaring RAT prices

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A key figure in South Australia’s response to Covid has tested positive to the virus this morning.

Police commissioner Grant Stevens is the state’s emergency coordinator during the pandemic. After waking up yesterday with a sore throat he is now isolating at home.

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‘No worries’: how America came to banish Australia’s go-to phrase

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US university puts Australianism in the linguistic naughty corner, but is it all a cultural misunderstanding?

A list of “banished words”, published annually by Michigan’s Lake Superior State University, has this year included the unmistakably Australian “no worries”.

LSSU’s tongue-in-cheek list has been compiled every year since 1976 from submissions on terms deemed “familiar but problematic”. This year’s list also includes, among others, “asking for a friend”, “circle back” and “wait, what?” for elimination.

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Morrison government ‘responsible for largest public policy failure’, says Labor – video

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Opposition leader Anthony Albanese has criticised Scott Morrison’s government over Covid-19 booster and testing shortages. 'This  government is responsible for the largest public policy failure in Australian political history, Albanese said. Labor says it is getting reports of booster shot shortages, particularly in Indigenous communities. Albanese said that, combined with a lack of rapid antigen tests, the shortages show the government’s handling of the pandemic response needs to be questioned

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Boy who died after going missing from remote NT community was mauled by dogs

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Police say three-year-old’s wounds were ‘consistent with an animal attack’

A young boy who died after going missing from a remote central Australian desert community was mauled during a “horrific” dog attack, police say.

The three-year-old’s family reported him missing on Friday evening after searching Hermannsburg, south-west of Alice Springs, for several hours.

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Australia news live update: NSW Covid hospitalisations rise to 1,204; record high new cases in Victoria and Qld; Coalition rules out free RATs

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NSW records 20,794 new Covid cases and Victoria 8,577, with seven deaths across both states; Queensland reports 4,249 cases, ACT 514 and Tasmania 466; Scott Morrison says health systems well equipped as Covid hospitalisations across the country rise; Greg Hunt says more RATs on the way as double-dose vaccination rate hits 91.5%; Josh Frydenberg grilled over rapid antigen tests. Follow all the day’s news

Researchers in Antarctica are dealing with an outbreak of coronavirus despite being based in one of the world’s most remote regions.

Since 16 December at least 16 of the 25 polar researchers based at Belgium’s Princess Elisabeth Polar Station are now infected with the virus.

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Super poo: the emerging science of stool transplants and designer gut bacteria

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As more people turn to faecal transplants for their health benefits, researchers in Adelaide are harnessing the power of high-quality poo in new treatments that can simply be swallowed

Good poo donors are so hard to find they’re sometimes called “unicorns”. These elusive, healthy creatures service a market for faecal transplants that is growing rapidly as evidence of its benefits mounts.

Emerging science shows that a human’s microbiome – their constellation of gut microbes – has a far greater effect on health than anyone previously imagined. This enormous ecosystem we host in our bodies includes bacteria, fungi, viruses and more.

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Cases rise as Qld tightens mask rules – as it happened

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NSW records 22,577 new cases and four deaths, Victoria 7,442 cases and nine deaths, Queensland 2,266 cases, South Australia 2,100, Tasmania 428, Northern Territory 54 and the ACT 448; Queensland makes masks mandatory indoors; SA clinic sends wrong test result to 11 people. This blog is now closed

We’re still waiting on official stats to be released, but there are reports that Tasmania has recorded 428 new Covid cases – a jump from 148 cases yesterday.

A man has allegedly driven a car through a tent at a campground in Tasmania in the early hours of New Year’s Day, injuring two adults and three children, AAP reports.

They were taken to the Northwest Regional Hospital with injuries ranging from minor lacerations to suspected internal injuries.

The incident occurred about 2am on Saturday at the West Kentish Road Campgrounds in the state’s north-west.

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Go bush for the books: Rosalie Ham reckons you never know who you’ll run into

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The Dressmaker author says literary events in country Australia are all about ‘discussing, catching up and laughing’. Here are some planned for 2022

Rural readers are in for a bumper crop of established and emerging writers festivals taking place in country regions throughout 2022, a harvest that also offers plenty of flavour to city-dwelling book lovers seeking literary-themed getaways.

Jerilderie-born author of The Dressmaker, Rosalie Ham, says events in the bush have always provided a great excuse for a reunion of like minds. Her extensive literary circuit all began with an invitation to talk at a writers festival in country Victoria.

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Australia Covid news live: new close contact and isolation rules come into effect ahead of NYE celebrations

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Thousands now free to leave isolation after changes to close contact definition comes into force; New Year’s Eve plans appear to be going ahead in major cities despite surging coronavirus numbers. Follow all today’s news

So, it appears South Australia will resist the changes to the definition of close contact the National Cabinet agreed to yesterday.

In a Facebook post earlier this morning, premier Steven Marshall lays out his government’s definition of close contacts, resisting the changes introduced by the PM yesterday.

It doesn’t matter to us whether they’re free, subsidised or other some other thing.

What we as an industry have been more concerned about is having a clear role for rapid testing in managing infections, in keeping the economy going and in keeping people safe.

So our representation to them [the federal government] has always been that there needs to be a hybrid system, because it may only be $10 or $15 a test and yes, that may be a lot cheaper than a PCR test.

But $10 or $15 per person per household twice in a seven-day period is still not affordable for some low-income earners.

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How Australia went from Covid-zero to Covid-central in just a few months

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Arrival of Omicron variant coupled with loosening of restrictions has seen ‘fortress Australia’ policy abandoned

Since the Covid-19 pandemic began to emerge across the globe almost two years ago, Australia has often appeared to be living in a parallel reality.

In November last year, when more than 50,000 people had already died in the UK and daily case numbers were hovering at about 33,000 during a suffocating lockdown, the Queensland premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, was boasting of packed crowds at rugby games.

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