Category Archives: Tasmania

Coronavirus Australia live news: chief medical officer says global cases could be 5 to 10 million – latest update

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Brendan Murphy says he is totally confident of infection rates in Australia because of our high rate of testing. Follow live updates

• Free childcare: what do the Australian government’s coronavirus changes mean for my family?
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• Coronavirus Australia maps and cases: live numbers and statistics
• See all our coronavirus coverage

We might leave it there for the night. Thanks so much for reading today.

Hopefully you’re enjoying your Friday night, despite these strange times.

The @YourAFAP union says all 220 @TigerairAU pilots have been made redundant effective today.

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Australia coronavirus live update: Scott Morrison announces free childcare as death toll rises to 24 – latest news

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Victoria and Queensland register deaths as Western Australia flags border closure and federal government acts on childcare and industrial relations concerns. Follow live updates

The PM stresses that the “health advice we have is that there is no health reasons why children can’t go to school”.

Asked if taxes will increase to pay for its massive stimulus funding, Morrison does not address this directly.

Obviously there will be a heightened debt burden as a result of decisions we have had to take. They have been necessary decisions. Otherwise the calamity for Australian households economic will be disastrous. We have taken that decisions of government to step up and to make this commitment to provide people with an economic lifeline over the many months ahead. But you are right, we will have to then work hard on the other side to restore the economy. Now, that’s why we are being so careful not to have things that tie the economy and the budget down off into the future. We do need to snap back to the normal arrangements on the other side of this.

Morrison says schools have been planning for a “balance – a combination of distance learning” and, for those who can’t “provide a learning environment at home, for the children to be able to return to school”.

School will return after the holidays. They just won’t be holidays that most school students have known for a long time. And when they go back, it’s the learning that matters, and we hope to have an arrangement that can return as much to normal as possible.

But we have to accept that there will be, for some protracted period of time, this combination of distance learning, and for those who can’t do that at home, no child should be turned away.

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Coronavirus in Australia: how many cases are there? Map, latest numbers and statistics

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We bring together all the Covid-19 confirmed cases, data and stats from NSW, Victoria, Queensland, SA, WA, Tasmania, ACT and NT to get a broad picture of the Australian outbreak and track the impact of government response

Due to the difference in reporting times between states, territories and the federal government, it can be difficult to get a current picture of how many confirmed cases of coronavirus there are in Australia.

Here, we’ve brought together all the figures in one place, along with comparisons with other countries.

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Coronavirus Australia latest: at a glance

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A summary of major developments in the coronavirus outbreak across Australia

• Follow our Australia coronavirus live blog for all the latest news and updates

• Follow the latest global coronavirus updates in our international live blog

Key Australian developments in the global coronavirus outbreak on Thursday include:

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Tasmania university to slash courses from 514 to 120 in wake of coronavirus impact

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An over-reliance on China and the emerging pandemic have forced reevaluation of university’s offerings, vice chancellor says

The University of Tasmania will slash hundreds of courses from its curriculum as part of a major overhaul driven in part by an “over-reliance on China” and the impact of the coronavirus.

On Tuesday, the university’s vice chancellor Rufus Black told staff the university was “facing sustained headwinds” to being sustainable, and would cut the number of courses on offer from 514 to fewer than 120 by next year.

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Bob Brown Foundation activist ban on protesting in Tasmanian forest lifted by court

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WorkSafe Tasmania last week issued a ban on the protesters over ‘unsafe behaviours’ and threatened fines of up to $500,000

Activists from the Bob Brown Foundation have been given the legal all-clear to protest in Tasmanian forests after a ban issued by the state’s workplace safety regulator was lifted.

WorkSafe Tasmania last week issued a ban on the protesters over “unsafe behaviours” and threatened fines of up to $500,000 if they didn’t comply.

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Australia fires: one firefighter killed as bushfires rip through four states

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There are fears that many houses may have been lost on a horrific day in Victoria and Tasmania, with more extreme weather forecast for New Year’s Eve

One firefighter has died and multiple properties are feared lost after terrifying bushfires driven by extreme weather conditions swept across four Australian states on Monday.

The volunteer firefighter from the New South Wales Rural Fire Service died when a truck rolled near Jingellic, about 70km east of Albury, on the border with Victoria. The RFS said two trucks, including the one in which the firefighter died, had been overturned by high winds. Two others suffered burns in the crash.

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Yes, Australia has always had bushfires: but 2019 is like nothing we’ve seen before

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Record low rainfall has contributed to a continent-scale emergency that has burned through more than 5m hectares and alarmed scientists, doctors and firefighters

As the area burned across Australia this fire season pushes beyond five million hectares, an area larger than many countries, stories of destruction have become depressingly familiar.

At the time of writing, nine people have been killed. Balmoral, in the New South Wales southern highlands, is the latest community affected in a state where up to 1,000 homes have been destroyed. A third of the vineyard area and dozens of homes were razed in the Adelaide Hills. It is too early for a thorough examination of the impact on wildlife, including the many threatened species in the fires’ path.

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Australian bushfires: the story so far in each state

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Bushfires have burned 4m hectares and left nine people dead, and fire authorities say they ‘haven’t seen a season like it’

More than four million hectares of Australia have burned and nine people have died since September in an “unprecedented” start to the summer fire season.

Guardian Australia spoke to fire authorities in every state about what they expect to happen next.

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Australia faces ‘massive’ rethink to prepare for long-term bushfires and air pollution

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David Bowman says Australia must retrofit houses to make them heat and smoke-proof

Australia has a “massive adaptive program” ahead to prepare for future protracted bushfires and subsequent air pollution, a professor of pyrogeography and fire science has warned, urging politicians to “tone down the ideology and start solving the problem using the skills Australians have”.

David Bowman, the director of the Fire Centre at the University of Tasmania’s school of natural sciences, said it was too late to call for action to prevent climate change and that people affected by smoke inhalation from fires should demand action to adapt to it, such as retrofitting houses to make them heat and smoke-proof.

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CCTV footage key to inquest of Bernard Gore who died trapped in Westfield stairwell

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Tasmanian man’s body was found in a fire stairwell at Bondi Junction shopping centre three weeks after he disappeared

As Bernard Gore’s wife of 50 years waited to meet him in a Sydney shopping centre, she had no idea her husband was trapped nearby in a fire stairwell where he would later die.

Angela Gore, surrounded by her children, cried silently as an inquest heard how her husband’s body was found kneeling forward – as if he’d fallen off a nearby chair – in the stairwell at Westfield Bondi Junction in early 2017.

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Scott Morrison stands by candidate accused of anti-Islamic social media posts

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Jessica Whelan, the Liberal candidate for Lyons, says comments posted under her name not made by her and were doctored

The major parties are standing by the two latest candidates in hot water for offensive social media posts attributed to them after a flurry of resignations overshadowed the third week of campaigning.

Speaking in Tasmania on Thursday, the prime minister, Scott Morrison, said he would stand by the Liberal candidate for the seat of Lyons, Jessica Whelan, who has denied making derogatory online comments about Muslims.

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Federal election 2019: Littleproud distances himself from Liberal candidate’s ‘Islamophobic’ posts – politics live

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Minister grilled about Lyons candidate Jessica Whelan, who claims her Facebook page was doctored. Meanwhile, the climate policy debate heats up. Follow all the updates, live

Pre-poll is happening in droves.

About 375,000 people have cast a pre-poll vote after three days of early voting, running at approx 125,000 votes per day so far. This compares to a total of 225,000 votes at the same stage of the 2016 federal election. #ausvotes #auspol

Asked about preference deals, and whether the Coalition, being a coalition, had to accept blowback for their partner’s choices, David Littleproud had this to say:

I hardly see it’s disingenuous where we have a democracy, where the Australian people decide. They walk into the ballot box, not me, and they get to determine where they put each number on that ballot paper. And that’s the way it should be. This is merely a way that parties have come to an agreement around where they believe they should go, the least worst possibility, if you don’t want to vote for us. But the reality is, it is and always will be the gift of the Australian people. And it’s something we should always fiercely protect.”

Related: At the mercy of minors: Labor and LNP wrestle for hyper-marginal Herbert

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Melbourne doctor who called for women to be raped stood down during investigation

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Health district responsible for hospital that employs Dr Christopher Kwan Chen Lee says it takes ‘professional misconduct’ seriously

The health district responsible for the hospital which employs an emergency doctor who said “some women deserve to be raped” has ordered the doctor be stood down while they investigate.

Earlier in April Dr Christopher Kwan Chen Lee was suspended by the Tasmanian health practitioners tribunal for six weeks after he admitted to posting a series of sexist and racist remarks online. While Lee previously worked in Tasmania, in 2018 he began work at Box Hill hospital in Victoria as an emergency doctor, and the suspension bars him from working anywhere in Australia.

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‘You will get up with fleas’: Bill Shorten attacks Liberals’ deal with Clive Palmer

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Scott Morrison says Labor and the Greens present far bigger threat to the economy and jobs than the United Australia party

Bill Shorten has criticised the Liberal party deal to exchange preferences with Clive Palmer’s United Australia party.

Speaking in Hobart on Saturday where he announced that a future Labor government would invest $120m into Tasmanian tourism projects, the opposition leader did not deny that Labor officials had held discussions with Palmer over the course of the campaign, but said they would not risk preference swaps with the potential kingmaker in Queensland.

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Australian bird on track for extinction found outside previously known habitat

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King Island brown thornbill was ranked the Australian bird most likely to go extinct within 20 years

Researchers say they have discovered one of Australia’s most endangered birds in forest in Tasmania, outside its previously known habitat.

Scientists from the Australian National University say the find is a rare piece of positive news for the King Island brown thornbill, which was last year ranked as the Australian bird most likely to go extinct within 20 years if nothing was done to secure its survival.

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Scott Morrison says people smugglers will ‘have a crack’ if Labor is elected

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Bill Shorten dismisses PM’s comments, saying it’s possible to have strong borders and treat people humanely

The prime minister, Scott Morrison, has sent out a fresh message on border security, saying “people smugglers know they won’t get through me and Peter Dutton” but would “have a crack” if Bill Shorten became prime minister.

Morrison said the government had “increased the strength, resource and capability again of Operation Sovereign Borders” after the asylum seeker medevac legislation passed parliament this week, in spite of the Coalition’s best efforts to block it.

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