Power station produces 13% of Victoria’s and 3% of national emissions and employs 500 people
One of Australia’s dirtiest coal-fired power stations, Yallourn in Victoria’s Latrobe valley, will close four years earlier than scheduled and be replaced, in part, by a grid-scale battery.
EnergyAustralia announced on Wednesday it would shut the 1970s-built, 1,480-megawatt brown coal plant in mid-2028.
Continue reading...SA Health says positive Covid-19 wastewater results may be linked to hotel quarantine, but further investigations are under way. Follow the latest updates
Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has defended the pace of the vaccine rollout saying it can only be rolled out as fast as it’s being supplied by the federal government, reports AAP.
Queensland gave 6,300 people their first doses of the Pfizer jab last week, against a target of 3,000, but there’s been media criticism of the state’s slow rollout compared with other states.
All of this is being done in consultation with the Commonwealth, so please don’t disrespect the process...
We want to get it right, we want it to be rolled out smoothly, and of course we are making sure that the people have the adequate training to do this.
We are adapting very quickly to the numbers that we’re getting, but the Commonwealth are adjusting these numbers on a regular basis how much we’ll get.
And in some cases, as in the figures I was given like last week, we’re getting triple what we expected and they have to last us for a few weeks because they can’t necessarily guarantee (how much) we’re going to get each week.
Wentworth Liberal MP Dave Sharma’s idea for International Women’s Day seems to have backfired this morning after he handed out what I believe are pink carnations to women.
Sharma tweeted this out this morning:
Happy International Women’s Day.
Let’s make it a day when we strive to improve the respect, dignity and equality for every woman, everywhere.#internationalwomensday2021 #IWD2021 pic.twitter.com/pbpqfGdzp7
Sex discrimination commissioner to lead review of parliament culture; Italy blocks 250,000 doses of Covid vaccine under the EU’s export authorisation scheme. Follow latest updates
Morrison has moved on from Covid-19, and is being asked about other matters, including Linda Reynolds’ comments about Brittany Higgins.
Minister Reynolds has offered an apology, as she should. And as I said yesterday. And I didn’t find that acceptable, the comments that were made within her office at that time. They weren’t public statements, of course. These were comments made not in a public space... That doesn’t excuse them. And it was relating... she was not talking about the allegations of sexual assault.
Linda Reynolds is returning. She’s currently on leave and will return to her duties when her leave is finished. She maintains my confidence.
Morrison is also asked about the education sector, and whether that was a consideration when discussing international arrival caps and quarantine facilities. In short, no change, but if universities want to reach agreements with government, they’re willing to chat.
No, there’s no change on that front. It would be good if we could get to that point, but at this stage we’re not at that point. The opening of the international borders, we don’t think is wise at this time, and for the period that we’ve suggested, and that’s totally consistent with the medical advice. And we’ve always been happy to work with the international education sector if they want to put in place supplementary self-funded quarantine arrangements and flight arrangements. That has always been there for the international education industry, the large universities and others to go down that path. They haven’t chosen to go down that path. Our focus has remained on the responsibilities we have as a commonwealth.
Continue reading...Minister expected to declare his innocence and is not planning on stepping down. Follow latest updates
• Full report: cabinet minister to make statement addressing historical rape allegation against him
• Australia’s Covid vaccine tracker: when will you get your jab?
Labor’s assistant shadow treasurer, Andrew Leigh, has been on Sydney radio contrasting the government’s attitude towards companies that got jobkeeper and welfare recipients it pursued in its unlawful and botched robodebt scheme.
At Leigh’s request, auditor-general Grant Hehir is investigating the administration of the $100bn job subsidy scheme, and yesterday Leigh asked for the probe to be extended to touch on stevedore Qube, which got $30m in jobkeeper.
But the bulk of Australian firms haven’t handed it back, and they haven’t received the pressure to do so because the Treasurer hasn’t come out and been clear about how the JobKeeper scheme operated...
In terms of the government, we gave Josh Frydenberg extraordinary latitude to tweak JobKeeper where it wasn’t working as intended. But he hasn’t used that at all to prevent money flowing to shareholders and executives. He’s been as silent on this as the government was noisy about RoboDebt, clawing money out of the hands of social security recipients in an illegal approach.
Attention at the Albanese press conference has now turned to the historic rape allegation levelled against a (currently unnamed) cabinet minister in the Liberal government.
Albanese has been asked if he thinks the minister should stand down:
Quite clearly, this woman told multiple people, including people in public life, but also her friends that she wanted an investigation of this. It is very clear [the government] are pretending that this will go away, it will not ...
It is very clear that, in my mind, that this will require further leadership and action ... and I await the statement by the minister involved, the presumption of innocence is a critical part of our legal system but now that the existing legal processes have been unable to proceed, certainly in terms of NSW police, I think people will be looking for further responses beyond any statement that might be made today by the minister.
I was very disappointed by Scott Morrison’s statement yesterday where he said that he hadn’t read the documentation that was forwarded to him by the woman who was at the centre of the allegation who then took her own life by her friends.
He then also said, essentially, that he had spoken to the minister and that he believed the minister. That stands in stark contrast to what Scott Morrison said in May of 2019. About the need to believe people. Who come forward.
Continue reading...Exclusive: The street artist’s latest work saw 60 people parade through Lake Cawndilla in NSW, holding aloft enormous portraits of local farmers and leaders as they fight to save Australia’s vital river system
The mood around Lake Cawndilla in western New South Wales on Saturday is funereal but defiant, as a procession of around 60 locals parade through scrub and sand around its banks.
They carry between them a series of 30m-long cloth figures: three local citrus farmers and prominent Baakandji artist William Badger Bates.
Continue reading...A rogue sheep found wandering in rural Victoria has been shorn of his heavily overgrown 35kg fleece. Nicknamed Baarack by his rescuers, the merino ram was taken to Edgar's Mission farm sanctuary, where the fleece was removed to save his life. 'He was in a bit of a bad way,' Kyle Behrend of the sanctuary said. 'He was underweight and, due to all of the wool around his face, he could barely see'
Continue reading...Phase 1a of the vaccine program starts today; questions about the government’s response to Brittany Higgins’ rape allegations dominate parliament. Follow all the latest news and updates, live
• Melbourne doctors under review for promoting discredited Covid treatment
• Australia’s first Covid vaccinations rollout out
• Follow the global liveblog
It’s another for the ‘always look at the bright side’ file.
From AAP:
The Morrison government has released the findings of an investigation that the environment minister, Sussan Ley, ordered into her own department over the export of rare and endangered Australian parrots to Germany.
The investigation was prompted by a 2018 investigation by Guardian Australia’s Lisa Cox and Berlin bureau chief Philip Oltermann.
Quarantine-free travel for New Zealanders entering Australia will restart from Sunday
Australia’s coronavirus travel bubble with New Zealand will recommence on Sunday, the Department of Health has announced.
In a statement issued on Saturday afternoon, the department said “green zone” flights from New Zealand could resume at 12.01am on Sunday, subject to some conditions.
Continue reading...The former government staffer says in a statement ‘the government has questions to answer about its own conduct’. Follow live
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.
Kevin Rudd has now issued a statement.
Continue reading...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 in response 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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...Messages on anti-lockdown social media groups reveal role of the far-right group in Covid-related protests
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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...Here are the current coronavirus hotspots in Victoria and what to do if you’ve visited them
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.
Continue reading...Victoria’s Holiday Inn outbreak rises to 16 cases on second day of state lockdown; Boris Johnson urges G7 leader to unite against virus. Follow the latest updates live
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.
Related: New Zealand Covid outbreak: Ardern puts Auckland into three-day lockdown
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.
Continue reading... This blog is now closed. We’ve launched a new blog at the link below:
We’ve launched a new blog at the link below – head there for the latest:
Continue reading...
John Jobber’s flight home, after being stuck in Ireland, will not be accepted due to lockdown restrictions
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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...Victoria will enter a snap five-day coronavirus lockdown from Saturday in an attempt to halt the spread of a UK variant outbreak in response to its hyper-infectivity. Premier Dan Andrews made the announcement that will see the entire state return to stage 4 restrictions where Victorians are only able to leave their homes for four permitted reasons: shopping for essential items, essential work, exercise for two hours a day, or caregiving for compassionate reasons. Masks will be compulsory in all settings outside the home, all private gatherings are barred and a 5km ban on movement has been reintroduced
Daniel Andrews says stage four lockdown is to prevent a third wave in response to ‘hyper-infectivity’ of variant
Victoria will enter a “circuit-breaker” five-day lockdown from Saturday in an attempt to “prevent a third wave”, Daniel Andrews has announced.
The premier said on Friday afternoon the government would impose a snap lockdown from midnight because the “hyper-infectivity” and speed of a UK variant outbreak had created a “very real challenge”.
Continue reading...