Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
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 thema series of 30m-long cloth figures: three local citrus farmers and prominent Baakandji artist William Badger Bates.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 inresponse 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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Limits on gatherings lift and masks no longer required while shopping in Sydney as Victoria set to ease travel restrictions with NSW. Follow updates live
The bill has widespread support from industry groups, the Business Council of Australia, and the Australian Medical Association. It does not, unsurprisingly, have the support of the federal government.
The government – especially the minister – is with respect at the moment playing politics with our future. They are not interested in listening to the business community, industry, science, our medical professionals, on what needs to be done with urgency. They are instead focusing on political gains and delaying what needs to be done.
We have more jobs in renewable and future-proof industries than in the industries that are transitioning. We know a jobs disruption is coming. Proper government means we prepare communities. We don’t put our head in the sand and hope it will go away.
Seventy per cent of our two-way trade with countries is now under net zero by2050 goals. Australia is being left behind. We need the government to step up and do this. As to prices, it’s simply incorrect. The lowest prices are from renewables. It’s not from delaying our transition.
I think the world will eventually sign up to a target of net zero by 2050 and the Morrison government needs to do that and will do that. The question is how long are they going to drag it out, and how much will the delay cost us? On our current trajectory of where we’re going, we’re on target for $100bn per year of climate impact costs. That’s an incredibly steep price to pay for inaction.
There’s so much upside for us to take action, we’re the continent with the most resources that can absolutely be at the front of this boom. We can be a renewable energy superpower, we just need the government to look to where the economic opportunities are.
I had constructive discussions with the previous Labor shadow minister, and Mark Butler, and now I look forward to having discussions with Chris Bowen.
Western Australia is expanding its mandatory contact tracing registers, about two months after first introducing the QR code system for higher risk venues.
From 12 February, retail venues, commercial buses (including tour buses and party buses – side note I can’t believe WA currently has party buses), visitors at public and private hospitals, takeaway food and beverage services, and events of more than 500 people with a Covid-safe plan will have to use the WA government’s official SafeWA QR code system.
While WA remains free of community transmission, we continue to learn from what’s occurring over east and overseas. With variant strains becoming more prevalent, we need to bolster our processes in case contact tracing is required by our WA health and response teams.
While CSL told the Committee it was too busy to appear, other major companies, including Pfizer and AstraZeneca, have appeared. Pfizer appeared despite currently trying to meet a tight deadline of delivering its vaccine for roll-out in Australia by the end of the month.
It is totally disrespectful for CSL, the recipient of $1.7 billion in taxpayer funded vaccine related contracts, to refuse to appear before today’s Senate COVID Committee. If they won’t respect the Senate’s request, they should expect a ‘subpoena’. #auspolhttps://t.co/ZS3gMO8VoE
CSL appreciates invitation to attend the Senate Select Committee Hearing on COVID-19. Due to our commitment to urgently deliver 50 million doses of a safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine we are unable to resource our participation at this time.
In response to the global pandemic, CSL employees allocated to the COVID-19 vaccine program are fully focussed and working around the clock to ensure vaccines are available for use in Australia as soon as possible. We will be in a better position to consider a similar invitation later in the year.
Virgin Australia has cut another 350 jobs, this time at its head office in Brisbane, the Australian Services Union says.
It comes on top of more than 3000 sackings at the airline since it was bought by US investment group Bain Capital last year after going into administration due to the coronavirus crisis.
The former chief of staff to the CEO was motivated by greed, personal gain and self-gratification, prosecutors argued
A former NAB executive who fraudulently enjoyed $5.4m worth of benefits unwittingly paid for by the bank has been jailed for at least four years and nine months.
Rosemary Rogers, 45, became so used to “enjoying the benefits of her fraud” she was unable to stop over a four-year period, acting judge Paul Conlon told the New South Wales district court on Wednesday.