Category Archives: New South Wales

Australia news live: Scott Morrison speaking after national cabinet meeting

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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.

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Scientists call for Kathleen Folbigg’s release, saying children likely died of natural causes

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A group of eminent scientists has cast doubt on the guilt of Kathleen Folbigg, jailed in 2003 for killing four of her children

Prominent scientists are calling for the release of convicted New South Wales child killer Kathleen Folbigg, saying there’s strong evidence she is innocent.

Folbigg was jailed in 2003 for murdering her children Patrick, Sarah and Laura, and for the manslaughter of her son Caleb.

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Australia news live: accused cabinet minister set to address rape allegation; international borders closed until June

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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.

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‘It’s a funeral march’: French artist JR’s powerful eulogy for Australia’s Murray-Darling

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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.

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‘Get the trees back’: NSW minister wanted ‘clearance zone’ around highways after bushfires

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Andrew Constance confirms he demanded the now-sacked transport department head to fell trees 40 metres either side of highways but was refused

The New South Wales transport minister, Andrew Constance, demanded the now-sacked head of his department create an 80-metre “clearance zone” around highways after the 2020 bushfires, an order Labor says could have resulted in countless trees being felled if followed.

During the state’s budget estimates hearings on Thursday, Constance confirmed he had issued the directive to the former department head, Rodd Staples, following last summer’s bushfire crisis.

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When Daft Punk went to Wee Waa: the strangest album launch of all time

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The tiny Australian town was surprised but got into the spirit, selling daft pork sausages and random access rissoles while celebrating a dusty agricultural show it will never forget

In April 2013 word got out that Daft Punk planned to launch their album Random Access Memories from a regional Australian town barely anyone had heard of.

Dubbed the “cotton capital” of Australia, the small town (population 2,000) with the evocative name of Wee Waa in the Narrabri shire of New South Wales was not much known as a dance music hub. The news, which began with murmurs about Sony label reps scoping the area for locations, seemed just bizarre enough to be true. Daft Punk, after all, were never great adherents of the traditional album rollout – and, with the revered French duo announcing their split this week, it’s worth taking ourselves back to their strangest one.

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Australia news live: Covid vaccine rollout begins; more questions over rape allegations

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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.

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Australia’s travel bubble with New Zealand to resume as Victoria records no new Covid cases

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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.

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What Australia has learned from a year of Covid hotel quarantine

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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.

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Australian Proud Boys sought combat-trained supporters to ‘arrest’ police at Covid lockdown protests

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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.

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Productivity Commission says new Australian water deal must recognise climate change

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Federal and state governments are being urged to respond to the effects of the climate crisis and to Indigenous rights to water

States and the federal government should forge a new compact on water policy that explicitly recognises climate change, and which sets “triggers” for rapid policy responses, the Productivity Commission has said.

Releasing its draft report on national water reform, the commission has called for a substantial overhaul of the 17-year-old National Water Initiative, a bedrock document that commits the states and federal government to working together on water policy as well as outlining a work program for the future.

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Australia news live: chief medical officer backs AstraZeneca vaccine after South Africa blow

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NSW and Victoria report no new local Covid cases as hotel quarantine worker in Melbourne diagnosed with UK variant. Follow all the latest news and updates, live

On the vaccine distribution in Australia, Paul Kelly says it is still on track for the first injections to be happening before the end of February, but will not put an exact timeline on it.

The aim will be to get 20 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine before the end of this year, in weekly deliveries. Kelly said the AstraZeneca and Novovax vaccines will also be used if and when they are approved by the TGA:

We don’t want a lot of vaccines sitting out in warehouses, so we will be looking to roll out particularly for those priority populations that people will know about now, as soon as we can. But then will be going back to the same population, those people, to give them a second dose. That is really important.

We will await the TGA advice in relation to AstraZeneca but some of the information that has been coming up in the last few weeks is that it may actually be a longer interval for that second dose.”

Australia’s chief medical officer, Prof Paul Kelly, is also moving to reassure people about the effectiveness of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine.

He said it was still in the process of being approved by the Therapeutics Goods Administration, and talked down claims it was less effective in treating the South African variant of the virus.

I just want to make a very clear statement about people taking small amounts of information quickly, without looking at it carefully. And making conclusions. At the moment, I can absolutely say, and this may change in future, and we will be nimble in the way we look at that information, and putting that into our planning, but at the moment, there’s no evidence anywhere in the world AstraZeneca effectiveness against severe infection is affected by any of these variants of concern.

And that is the fact. What we have at the moment is a small group of people in a study not yet peer-reviewed or published in South Africa where there was an effect on the mild or moderate disease in relation to that variant of concern in that country. But there were no severe infections in any of the people that received the vaccine in regards to any of those types of the virus.”

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Capital cities on alert over positive cases as tennis begins – as it happened

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Melbourne quarantine hotel worker tests positive to virus; NSW issues alert over returned traveller case. This blog is now closed.

That’s where we will leave the live blog for Monday. Here’s what you might have missed today:

AAP has the latest on Covid restrictions in Western Australia:

Face masks are mandatory for teachers and secondary students, a precaution that’s part of transition arrangements for Perth and Peel, after the five-day lockdown sparked by a hotel quarantine security guard’s infection.

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Plans for the plains: the fight over harvesting floodwater in NSW is about to get real

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The state is on the cusp of granting $2bn or more in licences, but has no way of measuring how much water will be returned to parched river systems

In the next week or two, the NSW government will reveal how many floodplain harvesting licences it intends to grant in the Gwydir valley, home to some of the biggest cotton producers in the country.

It’s the next chapter in a process that will grant between $2bn and $4bn in water entitlements to farmers as part of a plan to control and regularise a practice that captures billions of litres of water for irrigation during high-rainfall events.

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Woman rescued from car boot after waving for help had been detained for 13 hours, NSW court told

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Kayley Ketley and Latia Henderson allegedly detained the 24-year-old victim in Sydney before driving south on the Hume Highway

An alleged kidnapping victim who was rescued after waving through a hole in her own car’s boot had been detained for 13 hours, a NSW court has been told.

The 24-year-old woman was found with multiple stab wounds in the boot of her Holden sedan after it was pulled over on the Hume Highway at Berrima, south of Sydney, on Wednesday.

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Why a beachside Australian village turned down the World Surf League

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When the opportunity to host a world championship tour event came knocking, Lennox Head said no

Hosting a world championship tour event is an opportunity most cities, let alone towns, would jump at – even bid large amounts of money for.

But the village of Lennox Head in the northern rivers region of New South Wales is quite happy to skip the glitz and glamour in the time of Covid.

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Australia politics live: RBA holds cash rate at 0.1% as government shuts down attempt to censure Craig Kelly

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Doctors’ group lashes out at Liberal MP, saying ‘all public figures’ should ‘act responsibly’; Morrison government to face pressure on jobkeeper and jobseeker. Follow all the latest news and updates, live

• Perth and WA’s Covid restrictions explained
• Perth and regional WA Covid hotspot locations; NSW hotspots
• Follow the global coronavirus liveblog

Ed Husic is also asked about the CFMEU ad that depicts Scott Morrison driving a literal bus (called the omnibus) towards workers, which is meant to illustrate workers being hit by IR changes, and whether it goes too far:

Husic:

Some of the unions, or some people will try and characterise it in that way, and whether or not that works in their favour, to be putting it bluntly, I think there is a genuine concern about what the government’s industrial relations reforms will do, what impact they will have on working people.

When you go through the detail of what they are proposing, they will be seeing the greatest burden placed on working Australians and it’s just wrong. They shouldn’t have cuts to their take-home pay.

Ed Husic is on the ABC this afternoon, where he is asked about the topic of the day – government backbencher Craig Kelly and the government’s leadership refusal to censure him.

Husic:

The prime minister occupies an important place in the country, the words of the prime minister matter, the actions mean even more, and in this case allowing Craig Kelly to just keep rolling on the way he is, to undermine the investment of taxpayer dollars, in information campaigns to embrace the inoculation process, to help us deal with a Covid-19 pandemic that has crippled the economy for the best part of 2020, resulted in 2 million Australians being unemployed or underemployed and the vaccine bringing one way to bring us closer to normal, as it were, this is just wrong, that you could have a government MP being allowed by virtue of inaction by the prime minister for that to continue.

It shouldn’t, and if he did take this matter seriously it would be reined in and it wouldn’t be an issue and you and me wouldn’t be talking about it.

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Australia politics live: Perth and WA’s south-west enter Covid lockdown as MPs quarantined in Canberra

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Much of Western Australia shut down, with politicians returning to the ACT for parliament forced to isolate. Follow all the latest news and updates, live

And you may be surprised to learn that Gladys Berejiklian has no advice for Mark McGowan over what he should do.

Surprised, because the NSW premier had a LOT of advice for her Queensland counterpart ahead of Queensland’s election. Which Annastacia Palaszczuk won, with an increased majority.

I would not presume to have any advice for any of our colleagues apart from saying that please judge New South Wales on our record of how we manage things here, it is not for me to suggest what other premiers should do, that is a matter for them. All of us have to be considerate of what is happening inWA at the moment. Our thoughts are with everyone in WA at the moment.

NSW premier Gladys Bereiklian says there will be extra screening for WA travellers - but the states borders will remain open:

I have confidence that they would do all the due diligence as we have done in the past, when New Zealand or Brisbane went through this, we make sure we had those procedures in place, the key is to make sure we act quickly and to provide as much information as possible, but also to make a proportional response. We don’t know of any community transmission within WA apart from the security guard, so we are acting according to that risk.

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Much of Western Australia goes into five-day lockdown after hotel guard tests positive to UK Covid variant

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Restrictions imposed in Perth, Peel and south-west, with schools suspended and residents only allowed to leave home for essential reasons

• Follow the global coronavirus liveblog
• Western Australia hotspots
• NSW hotspots

Western Australia has imposed a five-day lockdown in metropolitan Perth, the Peel region and the state’s south-west region amid fears a hotel quarantine worker who has tested positive to Covid-19 has contracted the highly contagious UK variant.

South Australia and Victoria shut its borders to the affected areas late on Sunday evening, and in other states and territories, WA residents were told to immediately go into self-isolation, potentially creating chaos in Canberra where MPs had flown in for the resumption of parliament this week.

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Australian Open gets green light for 30,000 a day as WA loosens border restrictions

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WA premier Mark McGowan says travellers from Queensland and Victoria will no longer have to quarantine upon arrival

Crowds at this year’s Australian Open will be capped at half the pre-Covid average, after Victoria’s top health official signed off on allowing up to 30,000 spectators to attend the start of the tournament next month.

On Saturday, Victoria’s sports minister, Martin Pakula, confirmed the government had agreed to a plan that would allow daily crowd capacity of 30,000 for the first eight days of the tournament, reducing to 25,000 per day from the start of the tournament quarter-finals.

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