Category Archives: New South Wales

Corruption inquiry retrieves ex-NSW MP’s hard drive two years after staffer told ‘it gets lost in the post’

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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.

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NSW Nationals MP Leslie Williams to defect to Liberals over ‘politically reckless’ koala saga

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Port Macquarie MP’s move comes after Nationals MP John Barilaro threatened to implode the Coalition if concessions were not made over koala policy

The New South Wales Nationals MP Leslie Williams has quit the party as the fallout from the koala policy saga rolls on.

In a statement, the Port Macquarie MP revealed she has applied to join the NSW division of the Liberal party.

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Coronavirus Australia live update: Victoria reports 45 new Covid-19 cases and five more deaths

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Queensland to reopen border to ACT residents from 25 September as national cabinet split over flight caps. Follow live

Victoria police have fined 76 people over the past 24 hours, including eight for not wearing a face mask.

Examples include three men “located in a carpark with no legitimate reasons for being there” and one man and one woman who drove from Tarneit to St Kilda East “to buy fried chicken”.

Queensland will re-open its border to people from the ACT from 25 September, the health minister Steven Miles has just announced.

Queensland has announced no new cases today.

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Berejiklian warns Nationals against further public posturing over koala protection policy

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NSW premier implores John Barilaro to stick to agreement after he refused to rule out further threats to dismantle the Coalition

The New South Wales premier, Gladys Berejiklian, has made it clear she will not tolerate any further public posturing by the Nationals over koala habitat protections or new threats by the junior partner to leave the Coalition.

Berejiklian on Thursday also implored her Liberal colleagues to move on and refocus on their jobs following last week’s near split in the government, brought on by the Nationals leader, John Barilaro, threatening to move to the crossbenches with his MPs.

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Victoria records eight deaths and 42 new coronavirus cases, with 10 in NSW – as it happened

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South Australia opens up to ACT and Brett Sutton gives evidence at Victoria’s hotel quarantine inquiry. Follow all today’s developments

That’s it for our live coverage of coronavirus news and other developments in Australia. Thanks to Amy Remeikis for the earlier coverage. She’ll be back in the morning.

You can follow our global coverage here and there is a lot to follow. Outside Australia, the second wave is well and truly surging.

Australia’s cricket coach Justin Langer says he could “see the blood draining out of their faces” when his players were told about the quarantine periods in store for them in the coming months.

AAP reports the team was given the rundown ahead of tonight’s ODI series decider against England in Manchester.

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Covid Australia live update: Victoria records eight deaths and 42 new coronavirus cases, with 10 in NSW – latest news

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South Australia opens up to ACT and Brett Sutton gives evidence at Victoria’s hotel quarantine inquiry. Follow all today’s developments

The Australian National University has announced a restructure that will involve the loss of 465 positions.

Some 230 staff have already accepted voluntary separations, with a further 20 to come, but the ANU announced on Wednesday that there will need to be a further reduction of 215 positions.

All these cuts to Australia’s universities are going to have ongoing impacts for years

BREAKING: ANU has announced 230 staff have taken voluntary redundancies, another 20 are expected to follow in the coming weeks. ANU says Another 215 positions need to go as well. That is almost 500 jobs that will be lost at ANU due to #COVID19 #auspol @conorduffynews @abccanberra

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John Edwards inquest: clerk at gun registry scrolled past domestic violence allegations

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NSW Firearms Registry officer didn’t read into allegations on police profile during an assessment for gun training permit, court told

A NSW Firearms Registry clerk who told investigators John Edwards’ police profile hadn’t “rung alarm bells” for her has been forced to admit she didn’t properly look at the profile.

An inquest was told on Tuesday the pensioner was granted a gun licence about a year before he murdered his estranged children, Jack and Jennifer Edwards, with a legally owned pistol in July 2018.

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Aged care homes with multiple Covid cases named on list published by federal government

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Health department had earlier requested list not be released, saying it could hamper care and put staff off going to work

The Australian government has begun releasing a weekly snapshot of Covid-19 deaths and infections in aged care homes, despite earlier attempting to keep secret the identity of providers with fewer than five cases.

The health department secretary, Brendan Murphy, had previously asked the Senate’s Covid-19 committee not to publish a full list of providers with outbreaks, claiming publication of the data could distract from care and discourage staff from attending work.

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Coronavirus Australia live update: Daniel Andrews holds Covid press conference as Victoria reports 35 new cases and NSW four

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Victoria to turn roads and footpaths into dining spaces to help hospitality industry as Queensland border row deepens. Follow all today’s news

When will regional Victoria learn more about its restrictions being eased?

Daniel Andrews:

We will be here tomorrow and hopefully there will be no mystery cases in the data I report tomorrow and hopefully we can have more to say.

No doubt, there will be criticism that we haven’t been given any notice but this is nature of these things.

Professor Brett Sutton is then asked about some of the restrictions being eased today (very small easings).

They are baby steps. We all recognise that it is not an absolute sea change in terms of what is opening up.

That is what we’re trying to manage here. We are managing expectations and we’re being clear that outdoor activities are the low-risk activities.

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As time becomes kaleidoscopic, I find it unbearable to think too far into my children’s future | Delia Falconer

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‘Stop the world’ the musical hero said whenever things went wrong. I’ve been feeling this way for a few years now

  • This is part of a series of essays by Australian writers responding to the challenges of 2020

The sense of time-slip begins during the summer megafires. Walking my children home from school in Sydney under a red sun I have the nagging feeling, beneath my anxiety, that I’ve seen this close orange light before. Then I remember. My father made our family nativity set out of pumpkin-coloured cardboard, topped with a skylight of red acrylic. The sideboard lamp cast the same uncanny glow on to baby Jesus and his shadowless entourage.

Three months later, in early March, my partner and I are driving the twins down the south coast through green dairy country to isolate from the coronavirus. “Does the sky seem particularly blue to you?” he asks as we look up the valley. “I’m having a ‘severe clear’ moment.” A dark joke between us: pilots used the term to describe a sky of perfect visibility on the morning of 9/11. With most planes cancelled, there are no bright contrails in the usually busy flight path above the escarpment. The air is alert and tender. It occurs to me that we haven’t seen a sky like this since our own childhoods, near the beginning of the Great Acceleration, when the indicators of human activity on the “planetary dashboard” began their upward surge.

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John Fahey: former NSW premier and federal finance minister dies age 75

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Liberal premier played key role in bid for Sydney Olympics and also helped thwart attack on Prince Charles

John Fahey, the former premier of New South Wales and federal finance minister, has died aged 75.

In a statement on Saturday morning, the NSW premier, Gladys Berejiklian, paid tribute to Fahey and offered his family the option of a state funeral for the former premier.

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Coronavirus Australia live update: NSW Coalition in crisis as Covid-19 border row intensifies – latest news

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NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian gave Nationals leader John Barilaro ultimatum after stoush over future of koala population. Follow live

We will get additional details, like test numbers, very soon

#COVID19VicData for 11 September, 2020.
Yesterday there were 43 new cases reported. Sadly, 9 lives were lost and our thoughts are with those affected. More information will be available later today. pic.twitter.com/Y5dxX1ixEK

It is just one week short of a year since this photo was taken – which was the last time Gladys Berejiklian’s colleagues tested her leadership over legislation. When the Ched debate happened, Tanya Davies, Matthew Mason-Cox and Lou Amato had announced they were calling a spill motion over the state’s abortion laws.

Berejiklian stared them down as well. There was no spill motion. But what there was, was a debate over whether she was carrying Saladas (as reported in the Tele) or Cheds for breakfast.

big day in NSW politics and you know what that means - the Cheds are back pic.twitter.com/rjdUatDGgV

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Coronavirus Australia live update: Daniel Andrews holds press conference as Victoria reports 51 new cases and NSW records seven

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Greg Hunt says Melbourne curfew should be lifted if ‘there is no medical basis’ for it as two more Sydney healthcare workers test positive. Follow live

The woman who was at the centre of Scott Morrison’s plea today will be allowed to attend a private viewing of her father to say goodbye after her family has held their funeral.

She will be escorted to the funeral home, and then escorted back, a spokeswoman has confirmed.

John Barilaro, who is rumoured to have his eye set on Canberra and the federal Nationals leadership, has effectively removed the Nationals from the NSW coalition, plunged the Berejiklian government into minority after vowing to abstain from government votes (unless its to do with regional NSW), and removed itself from joint party room and leadership meetings – unless the koala protection legislation is scrapped.

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Coronavirus Australia live update: Victoria Covid cases drop below 50 for first time since June as NSW records four – as it happened

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Melbourne’s stage 4 lockdown extended by two weeks in ‘roadmap’ as Victoria pursues aggressive suppression strategy. This blog has ended

Thanks for following our live coverage of the coronavirus coverage in Australia. You can continue to follow our rolling global coverage here.

A quick recap on what happened today:

Asked if he would step down as premier if the hotel quarantine inquiry laid the blame for the outbreak on his office, Andrews said his responsibility was to keep going.

My position and the responsibility I have is to see our state through this. What is what I’m focused on.

Let me be as frank as I can be: Politics has never mattered less to me. Leadership is not able doing what’s popular, it is about doing what’s right.

The politics of this, that is of no value. The only thing that matters is we all stay the course. We all keep following the data, the science and the doctors and get this done. Then move to the biggest economic repair job that our state has ever seen.

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Victoria reports 76 coronavirus cases and 11 deaths as Daniel Andrews says roadmap not yet ‘finalised’

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New South Wales announces five more Covid-19 cases while Queensland and South Australia report one more each

Daniel Andrews says Victoria’s roadmap out of coronavirus lockdown has “not been finalised” as government and health experts meet before the unveiling of the plan on Sunday.

At his press conference on Saturday, the Victorian premier announced 76 new coronavirus cases and 11 deaths, five of which were historical cases from recent days.

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‘Anyone else smell fish?’: residents across Sydney and coastal NSW report strong salty odour

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Bureau of meteorology says strong south-easterlies could be sending the smell of the sea across the suburbs

A salty smell has wafted over Sydney and coastal New South Wales, as residents who live kilometres from the coast reported a strong sea aroma on Friday morning.

On a drizzly morning ahead of forecast thunderstorms, residents from Sydney’s beaches to its inner suburbs and down to coastal towns like Thirroul have woken to the strong smell of petrichor – the smell of the soil or ground after rain – tinged with salt.

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Australia coronavirus live update: Victoria records 73 new cases and 41 deaths as NSW records 10 new cases

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Figure of 41 deaths in Victoria includes 33 people who died in aged care but not reported until yesterday; legislation to extend but reduce jobkeeper and jobseeker payments will be considered by the Senate today. Follow all the latest news and updates, live

This report from AAP earlier today:

NSW deputy premier, John Barilaro, is calling for a national code to allow agricultural workers to cross state borders without permits.

Twenty Victorian aged care providers have been found to be non-compliant with standards under the Aged Care Act since July.

My colleague Melissa Davey has this report:

Related: Twenty Victorian aged care homes ordered to improve 'inadequate' standards after Covid outbreaks

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Coronavirus Australia live update: Victoria records 113 new Covid cases and 12 deaths as NSW reports 13 cases

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Queensland cancels schoolies events after three new coronavirus cases. Follow live

Coatsworth says he agrees with Scott Morrison’s comments that, even with a vaccine, there is not a “zero risk” of Covid-19.

“It is not simply me agreeing with the prime minister, every chief health officer agrees with that,” he says.

Coatsworth is asked about the Liberal MP Craig Kelly, who has been pushing the discredited drug hydroxychloroquine online as a treatment for Covid-19.

He is asked: “Are you concerned about him using his social media to promote those views against the scientific advice?”

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Unborn twin baby dies after delay approving mother’s Queensland-NSW border exemption

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Case prompts Queensland’s chief health officer to call the sheer volume of medical applications ‘unsustainable’

Queensland’s top health official says the sheer number of people applying for medical exemptions to enter her state is “unsustainable” following the death of an unborn twin in NSW.

Dr Jeannette Young granted an exemption to a Ballina woman pregnant with twins who required emergency surgery on Thursday, but it came only after the expectant mother had waited 16 hours and then flown to Sydney.

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Victoria reports 113 new cases, NSW nine and Queensland two – as it happened

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Labor grills the Coalition on aged care and the PM discusses the foreign relations bill. This blog is now closed

That is where we will leave the live blog for this evening. If you want to follow the latest global coronavirus news you can follow our other live blog here.

Here’s what we learned today:

#breaking Sports rorts: 70% of grants from separate fund went to Coalition seats, Greens say #auspol #sportsrorts https://t.co/iej3ex14JO

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