Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
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.
Navy divers remove live bomb after fisherman called in find on Lord Howe Island’s Elizabeth reef
An unexploded 45kg bomb has been towed into deep waters after being found off the New South Wales coast.
The weapon was found by a fisherman on Lord Howe Island’s Elizabeth Reef. Defence personnel said it could have posed “a significant risk to the general public”.
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.
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.
The Industrial Relations Commission has supported the government’s plan to prioritise job creation, the NSW treasurer says
Unions will consider legal and industrial action after what they say was a “diabolical and disgraceful” decision by the New South Wales Industrial Relations Commission to award a 0.3% pay rise to public sector workers.
The commission made its decision on Thursday after the NSW government had pushed for a controversial 12-month freeze on public sector wages.
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.
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.
We have a sense of what it means to live in disturbing times, to live under threat. We should not forget the many people who have known this all their lives
This is part of a series of essays by Australian writers responding to the challenges of 2020
One fine untroubled morning in 2019 I was out walking in Potts Point, on my way to see my eldest brother. He lived in a room here when I was 21 and he was 26. In those days, Potts Point was unconventional and impoverished, home to people who minded their own business, which was largely conducted at night.
His room was narrow, with a bed and a wardrobe housing a few shirts on wire hangers. A window opened on to a wall. There was a bathroom on the same floor. I could stay there when he was away; I could borrow a shirt. When he wasn’t away I stayed in a friend’s apartment on New South Head Road and walked to Potts Point to visit him. At the time, I was writing a thesis on the fiction of Samuel Beckett. As I wrote I grew more and more uneasy about the loss of this thesis, and I began to carry my work with me in a small suitcase for safekeeping. With my suitcase and my plain man’s shirt I wasn’t of much interest to the people on the street. I kept writing. The suitcase became heavier and heavier, for it now contained books and all my drafts. I carried it to my brother’s concerts. We began to share this burden, as we walked about the city. Once he stopped and put it down, flexing his fingers. “You do realise I make my living with my hands,” he said, before he picked it up again.
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
Rebecca Cartwright tells anti-corruption watchdog she stored Daryl Maguire’s work computer in her parliament house office from 2018
A NSW government staffer didn’t reveal she was storing former Liberal MP Daryl Maguire’s parliamentary computer hard drive because it may have contained information that could implicate him, an inquiry has heard.
The government whip’s secretary, Rebecca Cartwright, on Wednesday told the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption (Icac) that she has been storing the hard drive in her parliament house office since 2018.