Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Victoria’s premier weathers upset after his top public servant resigned and NSW premier holds on after Icac revelations. In Queensland, opposition leader Deb Frecklington faces questions over event with Peter Dutton. Follow live
The Queensland Liberal National Party has categorically denied claims it referred its own party leader, Deb Frecklington to the electoral commission over concerns about her fundraising events.
The ABC reported this morning that the party referred Frecklington to the Electoral Commission of Queensland over a series of events, one where Peter Dutton was a guest, involving property developers.
NSW Health have set up a pop-up testing clinic, and alerted to more venues, after two GPs in the Sydney suburb of Lakemba tested positive for Covid-19.
Both doctors worked at the A2Z Medical Clinic, and are linked to a patient who was previously diagnosed with Covid-19, who attended Lakemba Radiology.
Victorian bar owner lodges legal challenge to the constitutionality of the state’s lockdown as fears in NSW grow over number of locally transmitted cases. Follow all the latest updates
Australian scientists have discovered that the virus that causes Covid-19 can survive for up to 28 days on surfaces such as the glass on mobile phones, stainless steel, vinyl and paper banknotes.
The virus survived longer on paper banknotes than on plastic banknotes and lasted longer on smooth surfaces rather than porous surfaces such as cotton.
Phone records of former police chief considered crucial in investigation to determine who made the decision to use private security guards
Victoria police never formally requested Telstra provide ex-police chief Graham Ashton’s phone records to help the hotel quarantine inquiry uncover who made the decision to use private security guards in the botched program, Guardian Australia can reveal.
On Wednesday, a spokesperson for Victoria police told Guardian Australia that police “did contact Telstra and request incoming call data for the former chief commissioner’s phone”.
Scott Morrison says it is the GST top up with has allowed WA to declare a budget surplus.
So, you’re welcome, Mark,” he says
Q: The RBA has warned today that Australia’s historically low population growth rate will heighten the risk of falls in property values in the future. And Treasury has said your housing measures bring forward demand for future years. What will the Government do?
Scott Morrison:
Well, the impacts from the COVID-19 recession are obvious. Whether it’s programs like HomeBuilder and others, there will always be an excess of demand over the supply of housing in this country. Always has been. And that’s what has fundamentally driven house price values all around the country.
And that is still true today. There is still a surplus of demand over supply. And that’s why our HomeBuilder program - and to give you an idea of its impact, what we’ve done in the housing sector is we’ve been unlocking and bringing forward the decisions that home builders want to make. And that will see some 20,000 homes built at a cost of around $500 million.
NSW says a new cluster of three people is likely linked to an existing cluster. The premier Gladys Berejiklian is also warning that the public will be told of “additional venues, additional locations” to respond to during the day.
The remaining three cases of community transmission are all linked, and that source is being investigated by Health. Health has not ruled out also being able to establish a link between that new cluster of three people and also an existing cluster. It’s also important to note that we anticipate during the day there will be additional venues, additional locations, which we’ll be asking the public to respond to.
We anticipate that because we’ve identified these eight cases, that a number of close contacts and family members could be found to be positive as a result, so it’s really, really important for everybody to stay on high alert, look at the information which Health provides during the course of the day, and please react and make sure you take that advice. If you’re asked to get tested and stay home for 14 days, please make sure you do that.
In NSW, another four cases were recorded from returned travellers.
Of the eight locally-acquired cases, one is under investigation and seven are linked to a known case or cluster. NSW Health said:
One new case reported today was locally acquired, is likely to have been infected some days ago and appears linked to the Liverpool Hospital Dialysis cluster. Four more cases are close contacts of this case.
One new case is locally acquired whose source is under investigation. The remaining two cases today are close contacts of this case.
Testing numbers have dropped recently, which is a concern. NSW Health renews its call for increased testing across Sydney, even if you have the mildest of symptoms like a runny nose or scratchy throat, cough, fever or other symptoms that could be COVID-19.
This is especially important for people across West and South West Sydney with these new cases and after the state’s sewage surveillance program detected fragments of the virus at the North Richmond and West Camden treatment plants.
Three of today’s nine new cases have been linked to known outbreaks or are considered complex cases. These are linked to the Butcher’s Club Chadstone Shopping Centre outbreak, with single cases linked to Corrigan Produce Farms Clyde North and Coles Williamstown. The other six cases remain under investigation.
Anglicare is calling on the federal government to increase jobseeker and fund social housing projects in tomorrow’s budget announcements.
“A permanent boost to jobseeker will add billions of dollars to the economy and at least 145,000 full-time jobs. The benefits would go straight to the areas that need them most,” Anglicare Australia executive director Kasy Chambers said in a statement.
Social housing will offer relief for the tens of thousands of people who are homeless in Australia. It also boosts GDP, and creates jobs in construction for the regions that need it most.
With the economy reeling in the wake of the coronavirus, we need to invest in projects that are shovel-ready. There is no time to waste. Social housing projects can get off the ground quickly – and they bring long-term benefits.
The fact is that one-off payments and tax cuts won’t help people out of poverty. And they won’t boost the economy. A jobseeker increase and social housing will do both.
Emergency services have worked for two days to secure 180-megalitre dam in Torquay south-west of Melbourne
Emergency services have told 100 people living in a coastal Victorian town they are able to return home after volunteers worked for two days to secure a 180-megalitre private dam that was found to be leaking on Friday.
With the airline industry at a standstill and farmers desperate for workers, aviation staff are finding opportunities in a new field
The cabin of a harvester in the middle of a vast wheat field might be a strange place to find an airline pilot at work, but for Andrew King it all makes sense.
King worked as a passenger jet pilot for Hainan Airlines but has been on leave without pay since the pandemic hit in February.
Jacinda Ardern says her country will not open up until Australia records a month without community transmission of Covid-19
New Zealand will not reciprocate quarantine-free trips across the Tasman as the Australian Capital Territory joins Australia’s travel bubble with the country.
On Friday, Australia’s deputy prime minister, Michael McCormack, announced New South Wales and the Northern Territory would allow Kiwis to bypass the compulsory fortnight of quarantine on arrival from 16 October.
The government will announce tax and deregulation measures on Friday, as declining Covid-19 cases offer hope for economic revival. Follow all today’s news
Labor’s Julie Collins has responded to the aged care royal commission’s Covid response report:
I am sure the public will have very little confidence that this government, or the minister, is up to implementing these recommendations by 1 December because what we have seen is that when it came to the royal commission’s interim report, very unusual of a royal commission to actually issue an interim report, the very first recommendation – the first one was to fix the home care wait list.
Here we are 12 months later, [and there are] still [more than] 100,000 older Australians waiting for home care.
Linda Burney was on ABC Queensland radio talking about the people the jobseeker changes were going to affect the most.
It’s your mum, your grandmother, or their friends.
The reduction in the jobseeker allowance is going to disproportionately affect older women, particularly women who are over 60.
And it’s very hard for those women to find a job because you face age discrimination. All those – all those issues, of course, that we are familiar with older people trying to get a job.
NSW records no new locally acquired cases for fifth day as pressure mounts over border closures and budget speculation intensifies. Follow all today’s updates
In aviation news, the regional airline Rex has announced it will start flights between capital cities in 2021, as a competitor to Qantas and Virgin.
Rex has signed letters of intent to lease six Boeing 737 planes, which will fly between Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne, AAP reports.
Hi all, it is Naaman Zhou here. Thanks as always to Amy Remeikis for her blog captaining today.
Pokies profits dropped sharply during the first wave of the pandemic, but are still in the billions, according to new figures released today and reported by AAP.
We have learned a lot from the judicial inquiry into hotel quarantine in Victoria, and the lessons should not be obscured by the fact that the failures were systemic and cultural, rather than the result of people acting corruptly or in bad faith.
Ministers, public servants and statutory officers have all minimised their own responsibility and some have had failures of memory we might see as convenient. But pinning guilt on individuals is of limited use.
A man who had been deported to New Zealand, and who was in isolation at a government-run quarantine hotel, is under investigation by the police after he tied bed sheets together to escape the facility from a fourth floor window.
All travellers returning to the country – only New Zealanders and their families, plus others with special exemptions are allowed to pass through its borders – must spend two weeks in mandatory isolation, during which they are tested twice for Covid-19.
I am going to leave you in the very capable hands of Naaman Zhou for the rest of the afternoon shift.
There have been quite a few messages today – I am slowly working my way through them – but if you have anything else to say, or I missed you, you can contact me here and here.
Disadvantaged areas already ravaged by the virus will be devastated when government subsidies are cut
If the slogan of 2020 is “We’re all in this together”, perhaps it should come with an asterisk: *except for those with less, who are hurting more.
Covid-19 hasn’t torn through Australia as it has the United States, Brazil, India and much of Europe, but the economic impact has exposed gaping inequities in almost every facet of our lives.
Victorian premier is the last witness who can shed light on the decision to use private security guards, as border restrictions ease around Australia. Follow live
Peter Dutton then followed up that comment, with this one:
Honestly when we had people who couldn’t go to their dad’s funeral and the same time the Premier was approving people from Hollywood to come in and lay by the pool for two weeks, why wouldn’t we call it out?
It was just unfair and it was unjust. It has now changed.
Peter Dutton was on the Nine Network this morning, talking the Queensland border closures:
I just think we want to work very closely together and we’ve been able to do that, and as the Deputy Commissioner pointed out, the ADF and Queensland Police have had a very longstanding relationship and a necessary one and the ADF personnel are going to provide support at the additional hotels that will be stood up to bring more Australians back from overseas. So that will be a very worthy task for them to be involved in. And already they’ve been involved in providing support to the Queensland Police at hotels where people are quarantining. So I think it was obvious yesterday that Dr Steven Miles, who really just picks a fight every day on this issue, I think back-tracked pretty quickly when he realised what he said was actually factually incorrect. And I think the Premier’s pulled him back into line.
Victorian health minister Jenny Mikakos has told the hotel inquiry she had no role in the hiring of private security, while NSW Covid restrictions eased at schools and weddings. Follow live
Aboriginal legal services say they don’t have enough funding to meet the new commitments
The coroner’s court of Victoria has changed the way it investigates Indigenous deaths in custody to reflect recommendations made in a royal commission almost 30 years ago, but Aboriginal legal services say they don’t have enough funding to meet the court’s new commitments.
The Victorian state coroner, judge John Cain, issued a practice direction on Tuesday outlining new standards for investigating Indigenous deaths in custody. It includes a requirement that the coroner attend the scene of death where practicable, instead of relying on the report of the police officer conducting the investigation.
Police have arrested 16 anti-lockdown protesters and fined 21 others during “chaotic” scenes in Melbourne’s south-east in which demonstrators were chased by police on horseback.
About 50 to 100 demonstrators began protesting at the State Library but moved to Elsternwick Park where they were pursued by police.