Category Archives: Western Australia

Christmas weather forecast: warm and calm conditions for most Australians and a scorcher in Perth

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Bureau of Meteorology’s official prediction for 25 December includes good beach weather for Melbourne and Sydney

Christmas Day will bring warm weather and calm conditions for most Australians, but those in the north should brace for a potential storm, while temperatures are set to soar in the west.

The La Niña downpours of recent weeks are not expected to make an appearance on Christmas Day, with warm and potentially cloudy weather opening the door to outside festivities across most state capitals. The south-eastern cities will enjoy temperatures just shy of 30C, while Queenslanders should prepare for showers. Perth is set for a 40C scorcher and Darwin may be in for a storm.

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Australia live news update: WA to ease hard border from 5 February; $1bn defence deal signed with South Korea

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Mark McGowan announces reopening plan after WA hits 80% fully vaccinated; PM confirms international borders to reopen Wednesday for some visa holders; defence deal inked as Korean leader visits; Greg Hunt says telehealth to be made permanent; Victoria records 1,290 new Covid cases and two deaths; NSW records 536 new cases and no deaths; NT to ramp up Covid rules for some communities after 17 new cases; Queensland records one new local case, with 13 reported in SA. Follow all the day’s developments

Time to chat about next year’s election, and the battle the treasurer is facing from an independent in his home seat.

Michael Rowland:

You are now facing, as we know, Monique Ryan in the seat of Kooyong. She’s a Royal Children’s hospital doctor. You’ve labelled people like she, an independent, as a front for Labor and the Greens. What evidence do you have for that?

Well, at the last election, I had an independent who said they were gonna vote for Labor. That’s a pretty clear indication. We’ve also seen plenty of cases where they’ve just mirrored the policies of our political opponents.

But what evidence do we have at this time?

This is a rinse-and-repeat, Michael. What we’ve seen, we’ve seen obviously a lot of funding going into these independents around the rest of the country, and it’s a democracy, so people can put their hand up.

Just on Omicron, you might have caught up with the news just in the last hour or so, Boris Johnson, the UK prime minister, made an address to the nation there. He’s declared a tidal wave of Omicron case is about to hit the UK.

He’s declared it a public health emergency, and has declared that all British adults over the age of 16 can get a booster shot by the end of the year. Taking that into account, are we being a bit too sanguine about Omicron here in Australia?

We saw the medical advice, and that saw a pause for two weeks of the reopening of the border to international students and to skilled workers.

That was a precautionary measure. But we will continue to listen and follow the health advice, and it has served us well to date.

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Cleo Smith’s alleged abductor Terence Darrell Kelly moved to maximum-security prison

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Kelly, 36, transferred from Carnarvon to Perth in Western Australia after being charged with various offences including one count of taking a child under 16

The man charged with abducting four-year-old Cleo Smith will be transferred from Carnarvon to a maximum-security prison in Perth.

Terence Darrell Kelly, 36, appeared briefly before a magistrate in Carnarvon on Thursday charged with various offences related to the abduction of Cleo, including one count of forcibly taking a child under 16.

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Cleo Smith update: West Australian police charge Terence Kelly, 36, over alleged abduction

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Carnarvon local charged with forcible abduction and other offences after four-year-old girl was allegedly taken from remote WA camping site

West Australian police have charged a 36-year-old man in relation to the alleged abduction of Cleo Smith after the four-year-old was found alive and well 18 days after she disappeared.

Terence Darrell Kelly appeared briefly before a magistrate in Carnarvon on Thursday afternoon.

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Cleo Smith found: first pictures of smiling girl as Australian police detail moment of rescue

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The Western Australia police officer who rescued Cleo said when she was reunited with her mother there were ‘big hugs, kisses and lots of tears’

A photograph of a smiling and waving Cleo Smith eating an icy pole in her hospital bed has been released by Western Australia police after the four-year-old was rescued from a Carnarvon house more than two weeks after she vanished from a remote campsite.

WA police on Wednesday afternoon said a 36-year-old man taken into custody following Cleo’s discovery was yet to be charged but they expected that to occur “probably” later in the day.

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Cleo Smith search: WA police examining ‘every inch’ of campsite for ‘disturbances in sand’

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Officers also sifting through garbage collected from roadside bins near where four-year-old went missing

West Australian police are using drones and aircraft to create a detailed map of the Blowholes campsite as they look for “disturbances in the sand” during the ongoing investigation into the disappearance of four-year-old Cleo Smith.

Police recruits are also sifting through a mountain of rubbish collected from roadside bins stretching more than 600km along Western Australia’s north-west coast in the hope of finding any clue that could lead to Cleo.

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Two weeks after Cleo Smith vanished from an Australian campsite, police still hunt for clues

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The search for the missing four-year-old has captured the world’s attention, but police have yet to make a breakthrough in the baffling case

The days are long for Det Supt Rod Wilde, the man tasked with unravelling what happened to four-year-old Cleo Smith at the Blowholes campsite in Western Australia.

With 40 years of policing under his belt, including 18 with the major crime squad, Wilde is no stranger to missing children cases or working under the glare of media scrutiny.

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‘It hurts and it’s wrong’: family of Aboriginal woman shot dead by WA police officer speak out after acquittal

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Supporters of JC say 30 years after the Aboriginal deaths in custody royal commission there is still ‘no equality’

The family of a Geraldton woman shot dead by a Western Australian police officer has said there is “no equality” and “no justice” for Aboriginal people after the constable was acquitted of her murder on Friday.

“In terms of Aboriginal people, we don’t get no fairness, there’s no equality and this is evidence with what’s happened here,” Bernadette Clarke, the sister of the victim, known as JC for cultural reasons, said on the steps outside Perth’s district court.

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Police officer who shot dead Indigenous woman on WA street found not guilty of murder

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First-class constable also acquitted of manslaughter over 2019 death of woman known as JC in Geraldton street

A police officer who shot dead an Indigenous woman carrying a knife on a suburban West Australian street has been acquitted of her murder.

The first-class constable faced a three-week trial in the WA supreme court over the September 2019 killing of the 29-year-old woman, known as JC for cultural reasons, in the state’s Mid West.

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Australia Covid news live update: NSW records 863 cases, 15 deaths; Victoria records 950 cases, seven deaths; one case in Qld

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Worksafe has just issued a statement about charges against the Victorian health department over its hotel quarantine system.

WorkSafe alleges that the Department of Health breached OHS laws by failing to appoint people with infection prevention and control (IPC) expertise to be stationed at hotels it was utilising for the program.

It alleges the department failed to provide security guards with face-to-face infection prevention control training by a person with expertise in IPC prior to them commencing work, and either failed, or initially failed, to provide written instruction for the use of PPE.

Thanks Nino Bucci. Continuing on at the National Press Club, when asked about the implications of Australia’s withdrawal from its deal with France, Turnbull has some strong words:

What seems to have been overlooked is that one of our national security assets is trust, trustworthiness… This is an appalling episode in Australia’s international affairs and the consequences of it will endure to our disadvantage for a very long time.

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Australia Covid live news update: NSW outlines reopening plan as state records 787 cases, 12 deaths; Victoria 705 cases, one death

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ACT eases some restrictions after recording 19 cases, one death; Gladys Berejiklian announces 11 October as day NSW restrictions ease after state records 787 cases and 12 deaths; Victoria records one death and 705 cases; no new cases in Qld; NT continues with reopening plans; 12 new cases in NZ. Follow all the day’s news

A...scamdemic? AAP reports that a record amount has been scammed from Australians this year.

Australians have lost a record $211m to scams so far this year, with people bombarded by bogus calls and texts purportedly from well-known businesses or the government.

The losses between 1 January and 19 September this year have surpassed the $175.6m reported to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s Scamwatch throughout 2020.

The prestigious Melbourne University joins several other tertiary institutions in announcing mandatory vaccination policies.

The University of Melbourne will make having a COVID-19 vaccine a compulsory requirement for attending any of its campuses. Exemptions to apply on medical or eligibility grounds. #springst @UniMelb

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Australia Covid live news update: NSW records 1,405 new cases; Berejiklian unveils roadmap out of lockdown; Victoria records 324 cases; ACT records 15

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NSW freedoms come into effect the Monday after 70% over-16 vaccination is achieved; state confirms five more deaths; new case in Qld quarantine; 107 of Victoria’s new cases linked to known outbreaks – follow the latest updates live

An update on another story I did this week regarding those Craig Kelly text messages everyone has been getting.

We know that under the current legislative situation, there’s nothing preventing political parties like the United Australia Party from sending out those text messages, and people cannot unsubscribe from them.

The carriage of messages is generally a commercial matter for telecommunications providers, except in circumstances where there may be offences against the laws of the commonwealth or states or territories.

Both the Telecommunications Act 1997 and Spam Act 2003 contain provisions about implied freedom of political communications. These provisions set out that the acts or parts of them do not apply to the extent they would infringe on any constitutional doctrine of implied freedom of political communication.

There’s a press conference with the PM at 1.40pm AEST.

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Australia Covid live news update: Morrison announces Pfizer vaccine deal; ACT extends lockdown, three deaths and 1,164 cases in NSW, Victoria 76 cases

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Singapore agrees to vaccine ‘dose swap’ with Australia; NSW confirms 1,164 cases and three deaths; lockdown extended to 17 September in ACT; Victoria records 76 new cases; AMA says vaccinations for healthcare staff must be mandatory. Follow the latest updates live

Andrew Leigh to Josh Frydenberg:

Gerry Harvey has now repaid $6 million in JobKeeper out of the $13 billion that went to companies with rising revenue. Gerry Harvey think it is money should be paid back. Why doesn’t the Treasurer?

Anthony Albanese to Scott Morrison:

My question as to the prime minister. Most economists expect the economic growth to slow in the June quarter and it is now going backwards in the September quarter. Why does the prime minister not take responsibility for the fact that Australia’s economic recovery was always hostage to his failures on vaccines and quarantine?

Australia is one of the few countries in the world that after the Covid-19 recession of last year saw our economy grow back to a level higher than it was before the pandemic started, and that is before Delta hit, and saw 1 million people, a million people get back into work.

That was the product of economic policies that not only provided significant, in fact unprecedented economic support, both to individuals who had lost hours and had been stood down, through jobkeeper but also through ... the many other measures that supported businesses to see their way through at a time. Particularly last year at the outset of Covid when the uncertainty was at such a level that it was like looking into an economic abyss. And so the certainty that was provided by the government that stepped in with the single largest economic intervention in Australia’s history. Gave businesses, gave families, gave individual employees the confidence to be able to get up the next day and see it through, and do it again, day after day, month after month.

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‘Favouring industry’: protesters demand stronger Aboriginal heritage bill to protect sacred WA sites

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Proposed law comes after 46,000-year-old rock shelters destroyed but traditional owners say it doesn’t do enough

Traditional owners and their supporters have marched on Western Australian parliament to demand the government halt its controversial new Aboriginal heritage bill, saying it favours mining and isn’t strong enough to stop another disaster like the destruction of Juukan Gorge.

More than a hundred people, many of whom traveled to Perth from the Kimberley and the Pilbara, protested on Thursday about “fundamental flaws” in the draft law, which they say still leaves control of Aboriginal heritage in the hands of mining companies.

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Australia secures Pfizer doses from Poland as Victoria chases mystery cases – as it happened

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12 Sydney LGAs to get half of the one million extra Pfizer doses secured from Poland; rapid antigen testing to be trialled in some Sydney aged care homes. This blog is now closed

We’ll leave it there for now. Here are today’s main developments:

Police are cracking down on large gatherings in breach of Victoria’s lockdown restrictions, reports AAP.

In the inner city, dozens congregated for a takeaway drink pub crawl event on the streets of Richmond on Saturday, while in Northcote about 200 people gathered for a street party.

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Australia politics live: four states on edge as Covid cases rise and bold plan for vaccination providers flagged

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Mystery infections emerge in Victoria and Western Australia; dieticians, midwives could bolster vaccine rollout program. Follow all the day’s news

Scott Morrison will deliver a Closing the Gap update today in the parliament.

Labor will also make a statement.

It seems like Monday was years ago, but we have made it to the last sitting day of the first week of spring sittings.

Barely.

Related: Dentists, midwives and physiotherapists could deliver Covid jabs to bolster Australia’s rollout

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Australia Covid live update: Sydney to open walk-in AstraZeneca clinics as NSW records 145 cases; Victoria records 11; Queensland and SA record one new local case each

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NSW reports 145 local Covid-19 cases overnight; no lockdown announcement for Victoria today after 11 new local cases recorded; SA to lift lockdown from midnight tomorrow and another vaccine record. Follow the latest updates

Brittany Higgins has welcomed the government’s decision to accept all 10 recommendations of the Foster review into how federal parliament responds to serious incidents.

The government put out a press release announcing this earlier today.

I am so pleased to hear that all 10 recommendations of the Foster Review will be implemented.

These reforms, most notably the independent complaints mechanism, will ensure Parliament House is a safer workplace for all future employees. https://t.co/wNNkVy4y9D

Sydney Covid crisis could take months to recede if other outbreaks are anything to go by - depressing read (but with good charts) from @joshcnicholas looking at peaks and troughs of covid waves https://t.co/slr3A5O9gX pic.twitter.com/4zR7STbB3i

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Plan to build world’s biggest renewable energy hub in Western Australia

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A site in WA the size of greater Sydney has been chosen for the $100bn project to convert wind and solar power into green fuels

An international consortium wants to build what would be the world’s biggest renewable energy hub in Australia’s south-west to convert wind and solar power into green fuels like hydrogen.

The group of energy companies announced the proposal over a 15,000 sq km area that could have a 50 gigawatt capacity and cost $100bn.

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Two decades of Indigenous photography: the work of Wayne Quilliam – in pictures

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For more than 20 years, Aboriginal photographer Wayne Quilliam has captured significant Indigenous events across Australia, from the national apology to the Stolen Generations to the Garma, Barunga and Yeperenye festivals. In his travels through country, Quilliam often visits communities to teach Indigenous youth how to capture their own lives through a lens. His book, Culture is Life, is a modern, photographic celebration of the diversity of Indigenous Australians

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Covid Australia live updates: 620 NSW health staff isolating and visitors restricted as all Greater Sydney hospitals on ‘red alert’

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New Zealand restarts the travel bubble with Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia and the ACT; infected aged care resident at SummitCare home in NSW was not vaccinated. Follow latest updates

Circling back on that story involving the NRL penalties handed out to St George Illawarra players for attending a party in breach of Covid-19 restrictions.

Sure, there’s enormous fines of $305,000 total for the 13 players. But the suspensions are also fairly significant, ranging from eight matches, handed down to Paul Vaughan, who hosted the party, to one match for some of the attendees.

The NRL alleges that player Paul Vaughan invited players to a gathering at his home on Saturday 3 July which was attended by 12 teammates, in breach of NSW Public Health Orders and the Game’s biosecurity protocols. It’s alleged a number of players hid or fled the residence when NSW Police attended the home after complaints from neighbours.

It’s also alleged that a number of players gave or were involved in giving misleading information about the event during the NRL’s investigation into the breaches and that some of the players conspired to withhold key information from the NRL. The notices allege that all players involved knowingly breached the game’s biosecurity rules by attending the premeditated gathering. They were made aware of the game’s Biosecurity Protocols by the club and admit they knew they were breaching the game’s rules.

It has been very hot in New Zealand, which is not a great sign for the planet (but worth considering if you’re planning on travelling there now the bubble has reformed):

Related: New Zealand experiences hottest June on record despite polar blast

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