Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
An analysis of the latest government data on coronavirus shows locally acquired infections have outnumbered infections acquired overseas for the past four days.
The analysis also shows the growth in locally acquired cases is slowing in New South Wales and Victoria, the two states for which detailed data is available.
The Australian death toll from Covid-19 related illnesses stands at 34, as of 4 April. This story will be updated as further deaths are confirmed and Australia’s coronavirus victims are identified.
Monitoring work suspended due to restrictions on travel and physical contact, in a blow for research into threatened species
Scientists are being forced to shut down or scale back fieldwork to assess the impact of last summer’s devastating bushfires on threatened species amid the coronavirus crisis, prompting concerns it could affect wildlife recovery.
Several universities have shut down fieldwork to comply with restrictions on travel and physical contact and government agencies working on the recovery have had to scale back some of their operations.
The New South Wales health minister, Brad Hazzard, has defended the role of health experts who allowed 2,700 passengers to disembark the Ruby Princess cruise ship and make their own way home, following reports that authorities knew about the widespread respiratory sickness on board.
NSW Health has confirmed it had been aware of 104 people with “acute respiratory infections” on the Ruby Princess. Leaked emails show the ship’s doctor told authorities on 18 March that people who had presented at the onboard medical clinic with flu-like symptoms had tested negative for influenza.
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.
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.
New South Wales on the brink of new restrictions with only essential services to remain open as department store Myer stands down 10,000 staff and closes all its stores from Sunday. This blog is now closed
With that, we’ll be leaving the blog for tonight. We’ll be back tomorrow to pick it all up again.
Today:
Voting has just closed in Queensland for 77 local councils, and two byelections for state parliament.
But the results may not be known for some time, given over 570,000 people applied for postal votes due to the coronavirus pandemic. However, overall turnout is expected to be very low, which could speed the physical vote counting process.
Maritime union said the requirement for ships to ‘self-declare’ illness was ‘woefully inadequate’ 50 days before Ruby Princess allowed to offload sick passengers in Sydney
The New South Wales Port Authority ignored warnings in January of the need for tighter biosecurity checks, the Maritime Union of Australia says.
In an email seen by Guardian Australia, MUA secretary Paul Garrett warned the NSW Port Authority chief executive, Philip Holliday, that ship captains could not be relied upon to self-disclose illnesses on board.
It will take a full inquiry to determine what really happened, but clearly Australia’s protocols for assessing disease risk were inadequate
There is nothing more unedifying than different levels of government finger-pointing during a crisis.
In the aftermath of the bushfires, there was sniping via the media as the prime minister’s office blamed the New South Wales premier, Gladys Berejiklian, for refusing offers of defence help.
Australian authorities closed Bondi beach and removed hundreds of people from other popular Sydney beaches on Saturday, citing the “irresponsible behaviour” of large crowds that had gathered in clear defiance of public health warnings.
Images of a packed Bondi on Friday – when temperatures in parts of Sydney exceeded 35C – were criticised internationally as governments in Australia announced stricter regulations to encourage social distancing and restrict the spread of the coronavirus.
New South Wales chief health officer Dr Kerry Chant addresses a misconception around paracetamol and the coronavirus crisis. With pharmacies and stores running low on supplies of the painkiller due to hoarding, Chant explained paracetamol only treats symptoms of Covid-19, not the virus itself
Actor and producer Jing Wang acquitted of sexually assaulting woman at the Shangri-La hotel in 2018
A Chinese movie star and producer have been found not guilty of raping a woman inside a Sydney hotel room, ending the near two-year legal saga.
Actor Yunxiang Gao and producer Jing Wang were on Thursday found not guilty of a raft of charges and cleared of sexually assaulting the woman inside the Shangri-La Hotel in the early hours of 27 March 2018.
Dozens of independent schools across Australia are going ahead with shutdowns as the New South Wales teachers union warns it is “impossible” for them to practise social distancing measures recommended by the government.
On Tuesday, Pymble Ladies College in Sydney joined dozens of private schools in Victoria when it announced it would move to online classes from Thursday.
Strong wind warnings also in place for coastal regions across south-east Queensland and northern NSW
Tropical Cyclone Gretel is set to bypass Norfolk Island in the next 48 hours, although it will still create damaging winds.
Tropical Cyclone Gretel may not make landfall but was still expected to have an impact with damaging wind warnings of around 100km/h for coastal regions across south-east Queensland and northern New South Wales.
A nation supposedly forged in the hellfire of war almost crumbled in the face of a virulent threat at home
Newly federated Australia, with its population not yet 5 million, was still enduring shocking fatalities on the European western front when its authorities began paying attention to the virulent strain of pneumonic influenza sweeping Britain.
Early Australian awareness of the “Spanish influenza” – an epidemic in Britain by mid to late 1918 – came with an acknowledgment that the new states grown of old colonies would need to stick together should the virus reach this isolated continent.
Kendall resident Ronald Chapman says he saw the child in the back of a fast-moving vehicle on the day he went missing
A man living in the New South Wales town where toddler William Tyrrell was last seen is “sure” he saw the boy in the back of a fast-moving car, a court has heard.
The inquest into the three-year-old’s 2014 disappearance resumed in Taree on Monday.
Heavy rainfall across New South Wales and Queensland boosts rivers and allow farmers to plant crops for the first time in several seasons
Heavy and widespread rain across three states is bringing joy to parched towns with some farming regions receiving “drought-breaking” rains.
Further rainfall from ex-Tropical Cyclone Esther was delivering water into regional water storages and rivers, with farmers able to plant crops for the first time in several seasons.