Category Archives: Victoria

Kim Carr bows out after three decades as Labor senator for Victoria

Posted on by

Veteran cites death of Kimberley Kitching and ‘determined urgings’ from his children as reasons for his decision to step down

The veteran Labor senator Kim Carr has bowed out of the Senate contest in Victoria, marking an end to his almost 30-year career in parliament.

Carr had lost the support of powerbrokers to remain on the Senate ticket but had indicated he was prepared to fight to remain in the upper house, to which he was first elected in 1993.

Sign up to receive an email with the top stories from Guardian Australia every morning

Continue reading...

Rising Covid cases force some schools in NSW and Victoria to return to remote learning

Posted on by

State governments leave schools to decide on response as Covid outbreaks lead to widespread teacher shortages

Major staffing shortages have forced schools in New South Wales and Victoria back into remote learning as the new Omicron sub-variant BA.2 sees Covid cases rise.

NSW recorded 23,702 new Covid cases on Friday and seven deaths, with rates of infections in the state highest among those aged 10-19 years old. Victoria recorded 9,244 new cases and nine deaths.

Continue reading...

A week of own-goals leaves Victoria’s opposition bruised

Posted on by

Analysis: the Coalition’s week began with swagger and ended in a whimper after series of stumbles

A week ago, the Victorian opposition was quietly confident.

After struggling to gain any political momentum amid the pandemic, the opposition leader, Matthew Guy’s consistent and disciplined messaging on the triple-zero call response crisis appeared to be cutting through.

Continue reading...

Australia news live update: 26 Covid deaths as Atagi recommends fourth jab; sanctions for Belarusian president; Lambie says refugee deal ‘a line in the sand’

Posted on by

Jacqui Lambie says she did not regret supporting repeal of medevac laws; PM announces $58m funding for endometriosis care and treatment, and $81m for Medicare-supported genetic testing; new sanctions on Belarusian president and Russian propagandists; Peter Dutton says Australia has ‘fantastic’ relationship with Solomon Islands; nation records 26 Covid deaths. Follow all the day’s news live

And Victoria has reported 9,244 new cases and nine deaths overnight:

NSW has reported 23, 702 new Covid cases overnight and seven deaths:

Continue reading...

Japanese encephalitis declared disease of national significance – as it happened

Posted on by

Rex Patrick to reveal political intentions tomorrow after Nick Xenophon announces run for Senate; Japanese encephalitis declared disease of national significance; Liberals select candidate for Bennelong; fifth arrest this week over climate crisis protest; Morrison says having Putin at G20 ‘a step too far’; at least 35 Covid deaths recorded. This blog is now closed

Here’s the latest on that rain to come, which is already hitting Sydney.

Australia is risking its economic security in a future crisis by being too dependent on foreign-flagged commercial ships, a former navy chief, Tim Barrett, has warned.

When push comes to shove, the place where the ship is registered is king. They can tell their ships where to go, what to do and what to carry. We don’t have an ability to do that except for the handful we have left.

To be entirely dependent on others is very concerning.

Continue reading...

Push to protect sexual assault victims’ communications with doctors enters Victorian parliament

Posted on by

Confidential communications often obtained by defence lawyers to undermine victims’ credibility

Victorian alleged sexual assault victims will have the right to defend their confidential communications being aired in court under new amendments to be introduced to state parliament by Justice party MP Stuart Grimley.

The amendments to the justice legislation amendment bill 2022, to be debated in the upper house on Thursday, were recommended in two separate inquiries by the Victorian Law Reform Commission in 2016 and 2021.

Sign up to receive an email with the top stories from Guardian Australia every morning

Continue reading...

Australia news live update: NSW government seeks to suspend MP facing charges; nation records 26 Covid deaths

Posted on by

NSW government seeks to suspend Gareth Ward; Craig Foster lashes treatment of asylum seekers in National Press Club address; new research suggests long-lasting Covid immune response from vaccine-induced T-cells; at least 26 Covid deaths recorded; Atagi expected to green light fourth booster shots for some Australians. Follow all the day’s news live

David Koch:

Have you spoken to the “mean girls” – Kristina Keneally, Penny Wong – in the last week or so since Kimberly Kitching’s death about the allegations of bullying?

I think that term is really unfortunate.

She used it, it is not just us.

There is a lot of people speaking on other people’s behalf at the moment. I think that in politics, there are a range of people who are involved in party politics who play it pretty hard. One of those was Kimberly Kitching. She was somebody who engaged in politics and was passionate about her belief and from time to time that could produce some conflict. But it needs to be done in a way that is respectful, in a way that is understanding, and attempts to reach consensus.

It is rather bizarre ... I am always available and indeed I lobby regularly to be on the Sunrise program. I am always happy to discuss things with the media, but I won’t be taking lectures from a prime minister who visited Lismore and had strict streets shut off so victims of floods could not get near him.

Continue reading...

Law should change to reflect how Victorian budgets affect gender equality, report says

Posted on by

Committee says current moves towards ‘gender responsive budgeting’ should go further

Assessing how the state budget affects Victorians based on their gender should become enshrined in law, a parliamentary committee has found.

The state government announced it would establish a “gender responsive budgeting” unit as part of its 2021/22 budget last year, in a push towards equality for women in budget decisions.

Sign up to receive an email with the top stories from Guardian Australia every morning

Continue reading...

SA hospitals under ‘extraordinary strain’; Perrottet asks MP to resign after charges – as it happened

Posted on by

NSW MP Gareth Ward denies historic sexual abuse allegations; South Australian hospital system ‘under extraordinary strain’ new premier says, as at least 23 Covid deaths recorded nationally; Anthony Albanese proposes award in late Victorian senator Kimberley Kitching’s honour. This blog is now closed

Peter Malinauskas has promised to keep his shirt on from now on, after a photo of his muscled torso made quite a stir in the world of Australian politics.

ABC radio host Patricia Karvelas:

During the campaign, you were photographed shirtless in swimming shorts, and it caused a bit of a stir. I have to ask you ... the Australian’s Greg Sheridan said jokingly on [ABC] Insiders that you’re “far too good looking”. Which I thought was quite a statement. What have you made of the reaction to that picture?

Do you have any idea how much grief I’ve copped around the place as a result of that?

Have they told you just to buff to be premier?

They’ve piled it on, let me tell you. I haven’t stopped copping it, and I deserve every bit of it.

We were announcing a big investment at our major aquatics centre here in South Australia and a whole bunch of us jumped in for a swim in our boardies with our kids there. And, yeah, it got a bit more attention than I anticipated, fair to say.

So you’re going to keep your shirt on from now on?

Damn straight!

I think we’re about to see a federal election where a cost of living is a front and centre issue. And I think Australians get the price of petrol, but they can’t control the price of groceries.

The way we address cost of living as a nation is to start having an incomes policy focus on how we improve working in small businesses to improve the productivity of their labour, so they can earn a higher income. And that’s why education, training and skills is so important.

Continue reading...

Australia news live update: mourners farewell Kimberley Kitching; Peter Malinauskas sworn in as SA premier; six Covid deaths recorded

Posted on by

Labor senator Kimberley Kitching’s funeral held in Melbourne; Peter Malinauskas sworn in as new SA premier; Morrison and Palaszczuk announce infrastructure funding package; Lismore flood victims to dump debris at protest; at least six Covid deaths recorded. Follow all the day’s news

For almost four years Suzanna Sheed has started each parliamentary sitting week by moving the same motion.

The independent MP for Shepparton, a rural electorate of almost 50,000 people in northern Victoria, asks for a non-government business program to be reinstated in the state’s lower house.

They’re having a real impact on people right now, so we’ve been conscious of that. But what we do as a government is we don’t have knee-jerk reactions, we think through carefully how we can best provide the sort of support that we believe the federal government can deliver.

Continue reading...

Victorian government calls for ‘fair’ commonwealth funding for transport projects

Posted on by

Grattan Institute report finds ‘consistent pattern’ of transport funding going to political battleground states

Victorian transport infrastructure minister Jacinta Allan has called on the federal government to provide the state with its “fair share” of funding after a report found the state was being shortchanged compared with New South Wales and Queensland.

The Grattan Institute report, released on Sunday night, found there was a “consistent pattern” of successive federal governments spending more money on transport in New South Wales and Queensland – where elections tend to be won and lost – than in Victoria.

Sign up to receive an email with the top stories from Guardian Australia every morning

Continue reading...

Shane Warne remembered at private funeral in Melbourne

Posted on by

Late cricketing great’s family and friends attended the service at the St Kilda Football Club

Shane Warne’s family and friends have held a private funeral in Melbourne, with about 80 guests gathering to say their goodbyes to the cricketing great.

Warne’s three children, Jackson, Brooke and Summer, and parents Keith and Brigette, along with close friends including retired Test captains Mark Taylor, Allan Border and Michael Clarke and former England skipper Michael Vaughan, attended the service.

Sign up to receive an email with the top stories from Guardian Australia every morning

Continue reading...

Victorian politics of paid sick leave is very different to developer levies

Posted on by

Daniel Andrews was gearing up for a fight with lobby groups, but the main prize was in the electorate

For the second time in a month the Andrews government this week unfurled a big social reform to be funded by a levy on business.

And for the second time in a month, it provoked outrage from the usual quarters, including the state opposition, the federal government and industry groups.

Continue reading...

Farmers welcome provision of extra flood relief funding in NSW – as it happened

Posted on by

Inquest into death of Warlpiri man Kumanjayi Walker to start in September; call for inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women; advice for asthma sufferers during flood clean-up; at least 26 Covid deaths recorded. This blog is now closed

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg is on the telly now (hope he’s saving some juicy bits for his speech later). He’s talking about this idea of returning to some sort of pre-Covid fiscal world. He says:

As you know, we recalibrated our budget strategy when the pandemic first hit and we needed to do that to ensure there was sufficient economic support with programs like jobkeeper, the cash flow boosts, the $750 payments to pensioners, carer, and those on income support. That helped stabilise the economy by opening up the purse strings. Now that the recovery is well underway and the unemployment rate is down to a 14-year low of 4%, it is time to move to the next phase of the budget strategy and that means stabilising debt and then reducing debt as a proportion of the overall economy, and ending those crisis-level, emergency economic support programs.

Continue reading...

‘Just not the right time’: Victoria urged to keep mask rules for key workers

Posted on by

Epidemiologists say calls by business to relax mask rules as case numbers escalate is ‘down the rabbit hole thinking’

Victorian business leaders pushing to scrap mask mandates for hospitality and retail workers are “clearly not following the trend” in rising cases, according to epidemiologists who say now is not the time to relax rules.

The state’s premier, Daniel Andrews, on Thursday rejected a push from the Australian Hotels Association, the Australian ­Retailers Association and the Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry who told the Herald Sun they wanted national consistency on mask mandates and warned workers could leave the sectors for other jobs.

Continue reading...

Australia live news updates: call for inquiry into NSW flood response; at least 22 Covid deaths recorded

Posted on by

AFLW final postponed after Covid outbreak; NSW Labor calls for inquiry into flood response; Ukraine embassy calls for Australian sanctions against two Russian oligarchs; at least 22 Covid deaths recorded. Follow all the day’s news live

From senior economics reporter Ben Butler and foreign affairs and defence correspondent Daniel Hurst:

Ukraine’s embassy in Canberra has joined calls for the Australian government to sanction two Russian oligarchs who have assets here, Oleg Deripaska and Viktor Vekselberg.

The government of Ukraine is grateful to the government of Australia for its proactive and extensive sanctions policy against Russia, which is the biggest among the Indo-Pacific countries ...

We hope that those Russian oligarchs will be included in the next round of sanctions.

Vekselberg has already been sanctioned by the British and US governments. It’s curious that the Australian government has not yet followed suit given its claims of being in lockstep with the US and UK.

Vekselberg’s interest in Falcon pre-dates Origin’s farm-in agreement agreed in 2015, so Origin was entered into the joint venture with eyes wide open.

We certainly have had very limited capability to conduct experimental fires under extreme conditions. Nobody in their right mind is going to give us the go ahead to light a fire on a Black Saturday-type day ...

This lab means we’ll be able to study particular aspects of fire behaviour under the extreme conditions that are more likely to occur under climate change.

By using the data collected by the pyrotron, our prediction tools become more accurate. And that means better decision making about where firefighters can safely go, what firefighting strategies to use, and also improved emergency warnings for communities.

Continue reading...

Seventh Japanese encephalitis case in NSW; nation records 17 Covid deaths – as it happened

Posted on by

PM highlights China’s ‘chilling silence’ on Russian invasion as Labor says China has ‘responsibility’ to call out Putin’s actions; NSW Health confirms seventh case of Japanese encephalitis; man in court over Sydney boarding house fire; Coalition to spend $243m on four mining projects; a man has died in Broken Hill after driving his ute into flood waters; nation records at least 17 Covid deaths. This blog is now closed

NSW Health has added the results from 10,000 additional positive rapid antigen tests to its official numbers after a data error meant they were left out.

The results were registered between Sunday 13 March and Monday 14 March, with NSW Health warning the numbers will “inflate the cases being reported today for the 24 hours to 4pm yesterday (Tuesday)”.

Continue reading...

Covid cases rise sharply in NSW to more than 30,000 with data glitch only partly to blame

Posted on by

Victoria also recorded its highest daily coronavirus case total in five weeks as the more-infectious Omicron subvariant spreads

Covid-19 cases have spiked dramatically in New South Wales, with 30,402 new infections recorded, but authorities say it’s at least partly due to a data glitch.

NSW Health says about 10,000 positive rapid antigen tests registered between Sunday and Monday are included in figures released on Wednesday due to a data processing problem.

Continue reading...

‘I never felt right’: DNA test reveals Melbourne woman introduced to wrong ‘biological mother’

Posted on by

Penny Mackieson bonded for two decades with a woman she was told put her up for adoption

Penny Mackieson finally has the name that feels right to her, nearly 60 years after she was inadvertently swapped with another baby when the infants were placed for adoption.

After mustering the courage to contact the person that records indicated was her biological mother, the Melbourne woman spent two decades getting to know and love the woman and her family.

Continue reading...

Cruise ship ban to end; nation records 24 Covid deaths – as it happened

Posted on by

Search for owner after bodies found in Newtown boarding house fire police believe was ‘maliciously lit’; cruise ship ban to end on April 17; Victorian health minister says Omicron subvariant ‘slowly asserting itself’; nation records at least 24 Covid deaths with 10 in Queensland. This blog is now closed

The government has decided to withdraw a women’s network logo that was widely mocked online for its phallic shape.

The Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet issued a statement today saying the logo had been removed from its website “pending consultation with staff”:

The women’s network logo retained a ‘W’ icon which staff had been using for a number of years.

The rebrand was completed internally, using existing resources, and designs were consulted on widely. No external providers were engaged for this work.

Continue reading...