Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Unesco says ‘the facts are the facts and the science is the science’ after its recommendation is ignored
The Great Barrier Reef will not be placed on a list of world heritage sites “in danger” after a global lobbying effort from Australia against the proposed listing.
New Zealand will suspend its quarantine-free travel bubble with Australia for two months, as the country grapples with a number of serious outbreaks of Covid-19. Travel with the states of New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia had already been paused but will now expand to the entire country. At a press briefing on Friday, the prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, said because of the Delta variant there was 'greater risk now … than when we opened the travel bubble'. While Ardern said she remained committed to the travel bubble, Ardern added 'Covid has changed and so must we'
Premier Gladys Berejiklian says 53 of the new cases were infectious in the community; northern NSW on alert after Covid fragments found in Byron Bay sewage; national cabinet to meet to discuss vaccine rollout. Follow live
NSW chief health officer Kerry Chant is back after a few days, and she is speaking to the tighter restrictions she has recommended.
Chant said:
I have advised the government today that this is a national emergency and requires additional measures to reduce the case numbers. What we are seeing is that the actions we have taken to date have averted many cases.
But what we are not seeing is the turnaround that we would have liked to see at this stage. And I’m concerned that we need to put in place urgent additional measures, what I’m recommending strongly is that our vaccination efforts are refocused on those affected LGAs. Every day, people from those LGAs have to go out to work to keep our city going.
We also know that, as I indicated that the group of workers that keep the society going is this group of workers in the 20 to 49 year old age group in south-western Sydney. Under 40s would not have been routinely eligible for vaccination, in terms of Pfizer. And what I’ve recommended to government is we urgently do mass vaccination of those workers to stem the transmission risk. We know the vaccines do that because they reduce the risk. If you’re vaccinated, even one dose, it reduces your risk of onward transmission.
Gladys Berejiklian has announced a new Covid death in her state, a 89-year-old male.
Details of the death are brief as the death is recent (it happened after 8pm last night) and authorities want to make sure family members have been notified.
I also want to say that tragically, as we see more cases, develop, we will also see more hospitalisations and more people in intensive care and regrettably, we did have an additional death overnight, which I’ve only just learned about.
I just want to foreshadow that unfortunately, we’re going to see more of this as the case numbers increase.
Former Test captain warns of potentially farcical series
Calls on Australian government to issue travel exemptions
Former England cricket captain Michael Vaughan has warned that the upcoming Ashes series in Australia could descend into farce if the families of England players are not allowed into the country.
With the visiting team facing a gruelling months-long schedule likely to be subject to a host of pandemic-related restrictions, Vaughan said some players may choose not to make the trip if they cannot see their loved ones for such a long time.
Sulphur-crested cockatoos’ ability to pry open bins has spread across 44 suburbs in only two years
Sulphur-crested cockatoos are learning from each other to open wheelie bins in order to scavenge for food and the behaviour is rapidly catching on across Sydney, according to new research.
With help from the public, Australian and German ecologists have documented cockatoos learning the bin-diving behaviour through social interactions, with reported sightings of the behaviour growing across Sydney in recent years.
With that, we’ll be closing the blog for today. Thanks for reading, and thanks to Matilda Boseley and Nino Bucci for their work running it earlier today.
Here’s what happened today:
Liquidators of the company that sits atop the failed global finance empire formerly run by Bundaberg sugar farmer Lex Greensill (with advice along the way from Julie Bishop and David Cameron) have released a new report.
The new report covers the affairs of Greensill Capital, which is an Australian company that owned the company’s subsidiaries overseas, including its main trading entity in the UK and a bank in Germany.
Australia’s prime minister has apologised for failures in the disastrous coronavirus vaccine rollout as cases in the states of New South Wales and Victoria grew further despite millions living in lockdown.
One day after notably refusing to apologise for a rollout that has fully vaccinated just 12% of the population since February, Scott Morrison said on Thursday: “I’m certainly sorry we haven’t been able to achieve the marks we had hoped for at the beginning of the year. Of course I am.”
A reporter asked Scott Morrison on Wednesday whether he would consider urging the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (Atagi) to change its latest medical advice on AstraZeneca, opening the inoculation up to people aged 59 and under “given more than half of the population is in lockdown and the situation in Sydney is getting worse”.
NSW has recorded 110 local Covid-19 cases overnight, with 43 of those infectious while in the community. Premier Gladys Berejiklian was questioned as to why that number remained so high even after tighter lockdown restrictions have been introduced.
The Queensland capital wants the world to know how far it has come, with the IOC set to confirm winning Olympic Games bid on Wednesday
The last time Brisbane bid to host the Olympic Games, many locals still referred to the place as “a big country town”.
The Queensland capital’s opponents to host the 1992 games argued the city was too small and unknown. There are few similar doubts this time around, as Brisbane is set to be anointed host of the 2032 Olympics.
I was among those who first reported on Eddie Obeid’s dealings in the NSW Upper Hunter. Monday’s supreme court verdict is vindication for many who investigated him
“If it is corruption, then it is corruption on a scale probably unexceeded since the days of the Rum Corps,” counsel assisting the NSW Independent Commission against Corruption, Geoffrey Watson SC, declared theatrically at the opening of the inquiry into the grant of a coal licence at Mount Penny in 2012.
A decade later, the NSW supreme court has found the grant of the controversial coal exploration licence in the Bylong Valley was the result of a criminal conspiracy that resulted in the Obeid family making at least $30m.
We are waiting on an update from South Australia now, but in the meantime, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra has released an ad campaign to encourage people to get vaccinated. It features artists such as Tim Minchin, Rhonda Burchmore and performers from the Australian Ballet.
NSW Health has confirmed that the woman found dead in Green Valley was a confirmed Covid-19 case.
It said in a statement:
NSW Health today sadly reports the death of a woman in her 50s who was a confirmed Covid-19 case. She was a resident of south-western Sydney and a close contact of a Covid case.
This is the 61st death in NSW related to Covid-19 and the fifth of the current outbreak.
Minister Karen Andrews says British far-right commentator entered country with support of NSW government to appear on Seven Network’s Big Brother VIP
The Australian government has cancelled Katie Hopkins’ visa after the far-right commentator boasted about breaching hotel quarantine conditions.
The cancellation was announced by the home affairs minister, Karen Andrews, on Monday – and follows a decision by Endemol Shine Australia to cancel her contract to appear on Seven Network’s Big Brother VIP. Hopkins will now be required to leave the country.
Tian Xuejun rejects Australia’s ‘groundless accusations’ that China influenced the finding to score political points
The Chinese host of a United Nations world heritage committee has defended a proposal to label the Great Barrier Reef as “in danger”, and rejected Australian government suspicion that China influenced the finding for political reasons.
It came as the Morrison government sought to use a new report by Australia’s marine science agency to argue there had been widespread coral recovery on the reef.
Plans to allow only emergency and health staff to leave three south-western Sydney areas at the centre of the city’s Covid-19 outbreak for work were shelved on Sunday, despite another day of more than 100 new cases.
Seven terminates contract and British far-right figure expected to leave country after joking about plans to breach quarantine rules
British far-right figure Katie Hopkins has been dumped as a cast member of Seven’s Big Brother VIP and will leave the country after breaching her contract, Guardian Australia can reveal.
Hopkins, 46, broadcast a live video from what she claimed was a Sydney hotel room on Saturday morning, describing Covid-19 lockdowns as “the greatest hoax in human history” while joking about elaborate plans to breach quarantine rules.
Residents of Fairfield, Canterbury-Bankstown and Liverpool local government areas barred from leaving for work as NSW tries to control spread of Delta variant. Follow the latest developments live
The NSW branches of the Transport Workers’ Union and the Australian Road Transport Industrial Organisation are welcoming an exemption for their workers in the three local government areas where only health and emergency workers are allowed to leave.
The groups say updated advice now includes a list of “authorised workers” permitted to go to work, “which includes freight, logistics, courier and delivery workers, bus drivers, waste workers and airport workers”.
The exemption will come as a relief to the more than 20,000 transport workers in south-west Sydney who yesterday believed they would not be able to go to work. We commend the NSW government for responding quickly to our calls for an exemption, however the advice to workers and operators is still far too sluggish.
Deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce is asked about far-right media figure Katie Hopkins flying into Australia and going into hotel quarantine (maybe to appear on the local reality TV show Big Brother, as is the speculation).
I’m the one who wanted to send home Johnny Depp’s dog, so I have no problem sending home someone who wants to flout our laws. If you want to do that, pack your bongo and get out of country!
Dominic Spooner’s startup Vaulta is working on a reusable battery casing to create less waste and a lighter product
As some of the world’s largest companies invest billions to advance battery technology, Dominic Spooner has been working at solving the next problem: the impact of unwieldy – and environmentally unfriendly – battery casings.
Spooner runs his lightweight battery casing technology firm Vaulta from a shared garage in Brisbane’s north. “Batteries will change our lives in ways that we’re maybe not even totally aware of, but … we can create our own new group of problems if we’re not careful,” he says.
Victoria has entered day two of its latest Covid-19 lockdown to news of a further 19 locally acquired cases.
The state’s health department said all were linked to the current outbreak, which now numbers 43 community cases in total. All but one were active in the community while potentially infectious, as the state identified some 10,000 “primary close contacts”.