Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Trade group chairman says robust regulation is needed to rein in monopolistic tech firms
Facebook’s move to block all media content in Australia shows why countries need robust regulation to stop tech firms behaving like a “schoolyard bully”, the head of the UK’s news media trade group has said.
Henry Faure Walker, the chair of the News Media Association, said Facebook’s ban during a pandemic was “a classic example of a monopoly power being the schoolyard bully, trying to protect its dominant position with scant regard for the citizens and customers it supposedly serves”.
Social media giant blames proposed media bargaining code for decision; some restrictions remain in place in Victoria as businesses reopen. Follow all the developments live
Meanwhile, the government which absolutely tore apart Australia Post executive Christine Holgate for awarding executives Cartier watches as bonuses (Holgate resigned, after Scott Morrison called the combined $20,000 bonus “disgraceful” in a parliament) executives at the NBN Co received $78m in personal bonuses in the second half of last year. During a pandemic.
Paul Fletcher effectively told ABC radio he didn’t have a problem with it, as the NBN was critical with keeping Australia running during the pandemic lockdowns. (One could argue the same for Australia Post, but anyway)
The Australia Institute has reponded to Facebook’s news.
Peter Lewis, director of the Australia Institute’s Centre for Responsible Technology says it might time for people to close their accounts:
Facebook’s decision to prevent users viewing for sharing public interest journalism will make it a weaker social network,”
The social network is destroying its social license to operate. Facebook actions mean the company’s failures in privacy, disinformation, and data protection will require a bigger push for stronger government regulation.
Company says it has made decision ‘with a heavy heart’ in response to proposed media bargaining code
Facebook has followed through on its threat to ban Australians from seeing or posting news content on its site in response to the federal government’s news media code.
The tech giant’s Australian and New Zealand managing director, Will Easton, said this it would block links to Australian publishers from being posted, while all Australian users would not be able to share or see content from any news outlets, both Australian and internation.
Former sex discrimination commissioner Pru Goward is asked about Brittany Higgins’s statement on Afternoon Briefing:
I think we have two start by accepting her position on everything.
It happened to her, she is the aggrieved party and she is entitled absolutely to that view, and I think we have seen a lot of victim blaming in history, and people need to be very careful the way that they choose their words.
Malcolm Turnbull spoke in support of Brittany Higgins this morning.
The strict 14-day hotel quarantine system has been key to keeping the nation’s coronavirus cases low, but major leaks and controversies have forced constant rethinks
Australia’s strict 14-day hotel quarantine system, and simultaneous stifling of its citizens’ ability to travel freely overseas, are widely acknowledged as a major factor in the nation’s successful containment of Covid-19, low death rate and ability to resume a semblance of pre-pandemic life.
However the nation’s quarantine regime has been progressively tightened inresponse to instances of the virus leaking out of hotels since the mandatory order was introduced for international arrivals from all countries in March last year.
Home affairs has made more than 500 requests for information to be removed from social media
The Department of Home Affairs has made more requests for misinformation about the Covid-19 pandemic to be removed from Facebook than any other government department in Australia since March last year, Guardian Australia has learned.
Despite not having direct responsibility over social media companies like Facebook and Twitter, or being responsible for the government’s response to the pandemic, Peter Dutton’s mega agency has sent more than 500 takedown requests for misinformation and scams related to -19, a department spokesperson told Guardian Australia.
Australian National Audit Office launches inquiry into pandemic border policies, including biosecurity and the adequacy of assistance to those stranded overseas
Australia’s international border policies including the outbound travel ban and inbound arrival caps will be examined by the Australian National Audit Office.
After first proposing the audit in September, the ANAO quietly activated the inquiry in mid-January and has called for submissions on the management of the Australian border to prevent the spread of Covid-19.
Despite protestations from both companies, the Australian parliament is set to pass legislation it says is needed to boost public interest journalism
The Australian parliament is poised to pass a landmark media law that would make Google and Facebook pay news publishers for displaying their content.
The Australian law is separate to a deal Facebook made to pay mainstream UK news outlets millions of pounds a year to license their articles, but has a similar motivation.
Prime minister says his wife, Jenny, urged him to respond to Higgins’ allegation ‘as a father first’
Scott Morrison has drafted one of his own MPs and a deputy secretary of his department to develop options to improve “the environment” of Parliament House after allegations from former government staffer Brittany Higgins that she was raped by a colleague in 2019.
The prime minister told reporters on Tuesday he had asked Liberal backbencher Celia Hammond, a former university vice-chancellor, to lead a process of internal consultation about how to improve “professional behaviour” in political offices.
Australians have proven highly capable of adapting international conspiracy theories like QAnon to the local context. And the problem is not going away
In his navy suit and blue tie, Malcolm George looked every bit the part as he launched his Liberal party-endorsed campaign for a seat in the Western Australian parliament back in 2016.
A now defunct candidate website lists his priorities for the Baldivis electorate on Perth’s suburban fringe as “a stronger local police presence”, “local job opportunities” and “increased recreational facilities for young families”.
The far-right Proud Boys in Australia sought people trained in combat to help confront police during anti-lockdown protests in Melbourne last year.
Amid repeated warnings from security agencies in Australia and overseas about the way far-right groups have used the Covid-19 pandemic to recruit, Guardian Australia can reveal that senior members of the neo-fascist Proud Boys group were involved in protests during Melbourne’s second-wave lockdown last year.
It’s the third crocodile attack in the state this month, after two swimmers in Cairns and Weipa survived encounters
A second crocodile has been killed and will be examined for human remains after a 69-year-old fisher went missing in north Queensland.
The reptile, measuring about 3 metres, was caught and euthanised by Department of Environment and Science officers near Hinchinbrook Island on Sunday night.
Pressure mounts for Coalition to announce a permanent increase to unemployment payment; Australia closes quarantine-free border to New Zealand after coronavirus cases confirmed as UK variant. Follow all the latest news and updates, live
NSW has recorded no new locally acquired cases - or any cases in hotel quarantine.
So another zero day for NSW
Daniel Andrews:
Again, the types of cases, this UK strain, the fact that despite the amazing efforts of all of our contact traces and testers and lab workers and the work of so many genuine hard-working Victorians, we had a situation where at the same time as we are becoming aware of the primary case, they have already infected their close contacts, that is not something we’ve seen before.
The speed at which this has moved saw our public health team make the very difficult decisions based on the best of science and the best understanding you can possibly have on any outbreak, that this was a difficult but proportionate and necessary thing to do.
Victorian authorities have released a list of public exposure sites visited by a confirmed case of Covid-19.
This comes after a hotel quarantine at one of the hotels used to isolate international tennis players and officials in Melbourne for the Australia Open tested positive to the virus.
The press conference in Wellington, held in response to the discovery of three community cases in Auckland, has now finished. As of 11.59PM tonight Auckland will be placed under tougher restrictions, at level three, while the rest of the country will be moved to level two restrictions. (Details of the alert levels can be found online here).
Ardern said she was asking the public “to be strong and to be kind”:
I know we all feel the same way when this happens, we all get that sense of - not again. But remember we have been here before and that means we know how to get out of this again, and that is together. If you know someone in Auckland reach out, please check on them. If you are in Auckland please check on your neighburs and ensure they are looked after and supported.
Dr Ashley Bloomfield, New Zealand’s director-general of health, said officials were working under the assumption that the new Auckland cases were one of the new variants of Covid-19. “Regardless of where people have come from, these are the common variants and we do know they are more transmissible,” he said.
Ardern said that the decision to introduce tougher restrictions was “not taken lightly”. However, the cost to the economy would be far greater, she said, if the country was slow to react.
With less than a week to go until my big move to the city, everything is slowly falling into place. I’ve just turned 18, and I feel more and more independent, mature and ready to tackle this new life. Already I have come across many obstacles that have proved to me just how challenging life is after high school.
Terminally ill Australian man John Jobber is running out of time to make it back from Ireland and fulfil his wish of dying back home in Tasmania.
After nearly a year of fighting to get Jobber home, his daughter Samantha John finally secured plane tickets to Melbourne for next week, but now she fears Melbourne’s snap lockdown means he will never see home again.
Citizens stuck overseas say the idea of making them list their ‘tragedies’ to be ranked is ‘unspeakable’
The Victorian premier, battling an outbreak of the UK variant of coronavirus, has flagged slashing the number of Australians able to return home, suggesting travellers could only be allowed to enter the country on “compassionate grounds”.
The proposal sparked a furious reaction from citizens stuck overseas, who said the proposal was “unspeakable” because it would lead to people’s misfortunes being compared.