Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Josh Frydenberg’s office intervened in the drafting of a consultation paper to make sure it linked proxy advisers to the issue of compulsory superannuation, a key battleground in the political war over retirement savings, internal Treasury documents show.
The documents, released to Guardian Australia under freedom of information laws, also reveal the paper was developed in just one week.
Pacific island nations are already being battered by king tides, catastrophic cyclones and sustained droughts
Global heating above 1.5C will be “catastrophic” for Pacific island nations and could lead to the loss of entire countries due to sea level rise within the century, experts have warned.
The Pacific has long been seen as the “canary in the coalmine” for the climate crisis, as the region has suffered from king tides, catastrophic cyclones, increasing salinity in water tables making growing crops impossible, sustained droughts, and the loss of low-lying islands to sea level rise. These crises are expected to increase in frequency and severity as the world heats.
All things going as normal, we should hear from the NSW authorities around 11am
A women’s and children’s hospital in St Albans has been listed as a tier one exposure site in Melbourne.
The maternity assessment centre at Joan Kirner women’s and children’s hospital on Furlong Road was listed on the Victorian exposure site list late last night. Anyone who attended the centre between 8.15am and 2.45pm on Friday 6 August has been ordered to isolate immediately for 14 days, get tested, and notify the Department of Health. The pathology lab – Dorevitch Pathology – on the ground floor of the same hospital has also been listed as a tier one site.
The new drive-through vaccination clinic will have capacity to administer 10,000 vaccines per week. That’s a conservative number, Bromley says, and may be limited by Pfizer supply.
She urges people to book ahead before turning up at the drive-through clinic.
To start it will be 10 cars at a time. Obviously this week all the processes will be reviewed and they’ll make it as big and as fast as efficient as possible. But we’ll start with 10 cars coming through.
Bromley says the rest of the state-run clinics will soon be allowed to deliver the AstraZeneca vaccine to under 40s. Only nine will be used initially, to test demand and the informed consent process.
So we’ll just do that initially, open up the nine hubs and the reason for that is, A, we want to see what the demand is. We want to know that we’re going to be able to manage that and we want to make sure that the process, because there is an additional process, as Brett sort of talked through, for these individuals coming through, they will go through a slightly more rigorous consent process. We want to make sure we got the systems and the workforce all set up perfectly so it’s running smoothly and so it doesn’t impact on the overall efficiency of the system.
Competitive suffering shows itself as another face of the trauma we’re going through. But eventually there will be unpredictable moments of delight
It’s coming up on a year since the skies over San Francisco turned red because of smoke from wildfires in surrounding areas, an uncanny reminder of Sydney’s Black Summer of late 2019 and early 2020. Now there is different kind of grim echo, as Sydney goes further into lockdown in the grip of a new surge of coronavirus. Here in California we are cautiously taking off our masks and trying to remember how to talk to friends face to face.
Meanwhile, in a horrible reversal, I see my Sydney friends and family experiencing something like we did in March 2020, when the schools closed, the shelter-in-place order went into effect and there was no certainty about how long it would go on, and how bad it would get.
Cricket Victoria’s indoor training centre in St Kilda has been identified as a tier one exposure site, after a positive case attended on Wednesday night, according to the latest health department update: https://www.coronavirus.vic.gov.au/exposure-sites
And NSW Health has also confirmed some details about the earlier news that tighter restrictions are being enforced for the next week in Armidale:
⚠️PUBLIC HEALTH ALERT – ARMIDALE REGIONAL LGA⚠️
To protect the people of NSW from the evolving COVID-19 outbreak, new restrictions will be introduced for the Armidale Regional Local Government Area, including the towns of Armidale and Guyra, from 5pm today. pic.twitter.com/bwRSE4MZyV
I fancy myself a federationist, but when Victoria closed down, I am ashamed to admit that the old serpent of NSW schadenfreudere-awoke in me
Last time there was a national cabinet in Australia, I was a somewhat dyslexic six-year-old to nine-year-old and the nation was in great peril. And even then the national war cabinets were not along the lines of the Covid national cabinet – the states were beneath making war policy and had no part in it.
Since those days I have seen a gradual accretion of powers to the federal sphere. There was certainly no federal health ministry at federation and, at the last pandemic in 1918-19, quarantine seemed to be the chief health business the federal government was engaged in. A formal federal health ministry was not brought into being until after the pandemic in 1921. As for a federal education ministry, it came into being in 1968, and the first minister was John Gorton.
Europe’s drugs regulator has said it had so far not found a causal link between Covid-19 vaccines and menstrual disorders and advised three new conditions be added as possible side-effects after vaccination with Johnson & Johnson’s coronavirus shot.
Reuters reports that cases of menstrual disorders reported after vaccination were studied by its safety committee, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) said, adding that it had requested for more data from vaccine developers to assess the issue.
Sri Lankan authorities have tightened coronavirus restrictions as reports emerged of Covid patients dying while awaiting admission to overcrowded hospitals.
AFP reports that the government said state ceremonies and public gatherings were banned until 1 September because of the growing health crisis. Public servants had previously been asked to return to work from Monday but that order has now been revoked in a significant u-turn and bosses told to decide who should report for duty on-site.
Court hears Troy Van Den Bemt was shot dead at a bottle shop by an undercover officer who was monitoring him
Undercover police officers tailing a group of suspected armed robbers deny they knew of a plan to allow the men to commit a crime if they could not be safely arrested first, the Victorian coroner’s court has heard.
Coroner Jacqui Hawkins is holding an inquest into the death of Troy Van Den Bemt, who was killed in 2018 by an officer who had been monitoring the armed robber and his associates as part of an operation in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs.
Hazzard is the asked if the health system is being overwhelmed:
The health system is under stress as you would expect because there are a number of cases that are coming into our hospitals and our patients are being cared for, but they want to thank our nurses, our doctors, our cleaners, administrative staff who are there every day putting themselves at the front line to keep us all safe and I would just say again to people who might want to walk into our hospitals, if you do have COVID symptoms, cough, cold, temperature, anything that you think might be COVID, bring ahead and let them know that you are coming in so that they can keep themselves safe.
We have to keep our health staff safe so you can be safe. But certainly, anybody who thinks the health system in any country where we have a Delta variant is not under stress is getting themselves. Of course it is under stress but our health professionals are doing a great job.
As per usual, health minister Brad Hazzard has given his colourful daily take, today urging HSC students to “go for gold” in getting the Pfizer vaccine, and then listed off all the “stars” who have performed at the Qudos Arena, where the pop-up hub will be set up:
We’ve seen our Olympic stars go for gold, we’ve seen the most amazing stars in the Qudos Bank Arena, I think there has been Lana Del Rey, Keith Urban, Pink, Madonna, you have a chance to go to that stadium next week and get some gold by getting your first vaccination, your first Pfizer vaccination.
This is your big chance to really go for gold. You are getting an opportunity that so many others haven’t yet managed to achieve and is there to light up your future by having your safety and security looked after.
Government expands border ban in a move experts say could be constitutionally invalid and unfairly affect Australians from multicultural backgrounds
The Australian government has quietly expanded its ban on Australian citizens leaving the country to include people who are ordinarily residents in another country, meaning that even people who live overseas may not be allowed to leave Australia.
Prof Kim Rubenstein, an expert in citizenship law from the University of Canberra, said the change would unfairly affect Australians from multicultural backgrounds and could be constitutionally invalid.
With 16 million Australians again plunged into lockdown as authorities struggle to contain Delta variant outbreaks, the national cabinet is set to examine how allowing vaccinated residents to be freed from restrictions could provide a “powerful incentive” to be immunised.
The prime minister, Scott Morrison, will meet with state and territory leaders on Friday amid fresh tensions between New South Wales and the commonwealth over the state’s prolonged and expanding lockdown and as Victoria enters its sixth lockdown following fresh Covid cases.
I have been vocal publicly about our need and want for more vaccines.
We know the vaccines stop the spread. They protect life and keep people out of hospital. That’s why it is so critical and every jurisdiction around the world is finding Delta challenging.
Greece imposed a night-time curfew and banned music on two popular tourist islands on Thursday to contain the spread of Covid-19, its civil protection deputy minister said.
The Mediterranean country, which is trying to rebuild a tourist sector hard hit by the coronavirus pandemic, is also battling a wave of wildfires during a protracted heatwave, Reuters reports.
We call on the residents and visitors in these areas to fully comply with the measures to limit the spread of the virus.
First-of-its-kind ruling paves way for trove of secret documents to be made public
The parliamentary committee scrutinising the Morrison government’s handling of the pandemic will demand a trove of secret documents after an extraordinary judgment finding national cabinet records can be accessed under the freedom of information regime.
The first-of-its-kind case in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal was brought by Senate crossbencher Rex Patrick, who argued the prime minister had no grounds to extend cabinet confidentiality to his national cabinet meetings with state premiers and chief ministers.
About 2,500 students and staff at a school in Melbourne’s west will need to self-isolate and get tested after a teacher caught Covid-19.
Jeroen Weimar, Victoria’s Covid-19 commander, told ABC Melbourne the Al Taqwa College teacher got tested yesterday and her positive result came back today.
Let’s take a look at the market at the close of play, via AAP.
The ASX200 has closed higher than 7500 points for the first time in its history as traders continue to look beyond coronavirus lockdowns.
National cabinet’s pandemic exit strategy only considered modelling for the “transition” phase over the next six months, with the Doherty Institute yet to consider how relaxed restrictions will affect transmission in the community.
The federal government on Tuesday released the modelling that underpinned the updated four-phase roadmap announced on Friday, with the research highlighting the need for a “strategic shift” to targeting young adults who were most likely to transmit the virus.
Hundreds of critical health workers in the Australian state of Queensland have gone into isolation as the country battles a growing Delta outbreak, while New South Wales raced to administer 6m vaccine doses before the scheduled end of lockdown in less than four week’s time.
Anthony Albanese wants the Morrison government to provide a one-off $300 payment to every person who has been fully vaccinated by 1 December. Follow latest updates
David Gillespie has been seen in the parliament – so Christian Porter has been chosen to be the acting leader of the house, ahead of Gillespie who is the deputy leader of the house.
Barnaby Joyce will be holding a press conference in 15 minutes to talk extended support for the aviation industry.
A fire that began at a Victorian big battery near Geelong on Friday has continued to burn for three days.
The blaze began around 10.30am on Friday, during testing at the battery in Moorabool, which was built by the French renewable energy company Neoen using Tesla battery packs.