Victoria to extend state of emergency for four more weeks after spike in Covid-19 cases

Queensland declares southern state a ‘hotspot’ while South Australia reconsiders decision to reopen its border

The Victorian government has announced it will extend its state of emergency for at least four more weeks and ramp up its police enforcement of lockdown rules after a spike in Covid-19 cases.

The surge has also prompted neighbouring South Australia to reconsider its decision to reopen its border, while Queensland has declared all of greater Melbourne a Covid-19 hotspot.

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Australia’s Covid-19 restrictions and coronavirus lockdown rules explained: how far can I travel, and can I have people over?

How far can you drive and what are the travel restrictions in NSW, Queensland and Victoria? How many people can you have over at your house in Tasmania, ACT, SA, WA or NT? Untangle Australia’s Covid-19 laws and guidelines with our guide

Australians have been slowly emerging from Covid-19 lockdowns since the federal government announced a three-stage plan in May to ease restrictions across the country.

It is up to each state and territory to decide when and how far they will relax restrictions.

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William Callaghan, autistic teenager missing for two nights in Victoria, found alive

14-year-old, who has non-verbal autism, found near summit of Mount Disappointment on third day of searching

A teenager with non-verbal autism who was missing in the Victorian bush for two freezing nights has been found alive.

Related: William Callaghan: 300 people search Mount Disappointment for boy missing on coldest night of year

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Essential poll: most Australians believe there is institutional racism in the US but not Australia

Almost 80% of those surveyed agree US authorities have been unwilling to deal with racism and that is why incidents continue to occur

A significant majority of Australians in the latest Guardian Essential poll sample believe Americans are correct to demand better treatment for African Americans in their society – but only 30% believe there is institutional racism in Australian police forces.

The latest survey of 1,073 respondents shows the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis at the hands of police – an incident sparking fury that spilled over into mass protests in a number of US cities, including the capital Washington – resonated strongly in Australia.

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‘Deaths in our backyard’: 432 Indigenous Australians have died in custody since 1991

Aboriginal people whose family members have died in custody express solidarity with people on the streets of US cities protesting against the death of George Floyd

Australia’s track record on deaths in custody is again under scrutiny, as Aboriginal people whose family members died in similar circumstances to George Floyd express solidarity with protestors on the streets of major US cities following the death of the unarmed black man.

The family of 26-year-old David Dungay, a Dunghutti man who said “I can’t breathe” 12 times before he died while being restrained by five prison guards, said they have been traumatised anew by the footage of Floyd’s death.

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Night at the museum: Sydney man charged after allegedly breaking into dinosaur exhibit

CCTV footage shows man strolling through exhibits at closed Australian Museum and posing for selfies with head inside mouth of T-Rex skull

A Sydney man will face court on Monday after allegedly breaking into Australia’s oldest museum and snapping selfies with the dinosaur exhibit.

The man broke into the heritage-listed Australian Museum in Sydney’s CBD just after 1am on Sunday 10 May, and was captured on CCTV cameras wandering around the exhibits for around 40 minutes, according to New South Wales police.

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Dean Laidley arrest: Victoria police to investigate leaked photos of ex-AFL coach

Lawyers and civil liberties groups condemn police after images from inside station appear on newspaper front pages

Victoria police has launched an internal investigation into how photos of former AFL player and coach Dean Laidley inside a police station following his arrest appeared on the front page of two major newspapers on Monday.

Lawyers and civil liberties groups have slammed the state’s police force after photos of the 53-year-old former premiership-winning player wearing a blonde wig and dress were leaked over the weekend.

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Australia’s coronavirus social distancing rules explained: state by state guidelines

Scott Morrison has tightened physical distancing restrictions, but how they are applied will be determined by each state. Find out what’s illegal, and what happens if you break the law

Since the pandemic was declared all Australian states have gone into various levels of lockdown.

Now that the country is cautiously optimistic that the curve has been flattened, the big question is how and when we will come out of isolation?

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No evidence doctored documents Angus Taylor used to attack council existed on website, NSW police say

NSW police also say they asked to interview energy minister, but all questions were answered by his lawyers

New South Wales police says it found no evidence that the document Angus Taylor’s office used to attack City of Sydney lord mayor Clover Moore ever existed on the council’s website, casting renewed doubt on the minister’s explanation.

Taylor has repeatedly insisted that the false document he used to wrongly attack Moore for her travel-related emissions was downloaded from the council’s own website.

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Eastern Freeway crash: police arrest Porsche driver who fled scene after four Victoria police officers killed

Porsche driver allegedly posted images to social media and fled after truck ploughed into four officers who had intercepted him

Police have arrested the Porsche driver who allegedly fled the scene of the accident that killed four Victoria police officers in Melbourne.

The crash happened on the Eastern Freeway at Kew about 5.40pm on Wednesday and is the biggest loss of police officer life in Victoria’s history.

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Victoria police respond to family violence risk during ‘very stressful time’ of coronavirus

A new taskforce called Operation Ribbon will keep police in contact with high-risk perpetrators and their victims

Of the approximately 7,000 calls relating to family violence made to Victoria police in the past month, 14% have related to Covid-19, the state’s deputy police commissioner, Shane Patton, said on Tuesday.

When police attended those incidents they were told by the alleged victim or alleged perpetrator that having to stay at home together had exacerbated animosity. Patton said that while there had not been an increase recorded in the number of assaults, police were preparing for such an outcome, and had already experienced an increase in reporting by third parties.

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Australia coronavirus update live: Victoria extends state of emergency as travellers fly in from cruise nightmare – latest news

Premier Daniel Andrews says state of emergency will be extended for a further four weeks as Australians trapped on Antarctic cruise ship arrive in Melbourne. Follow updates live

McGowan says he took his kids camping ... in his backyard ... over Easter because obviously other locations were unavailable.

And that’s the end of the press conference.

“We’ve successfully flattened the curve, but now we’ve got to figure out how to keep it there but also find out a long-term solution to the problem we face,” McGowan says.

He says he is working on getting commercial tenancy legislation in parliament this week. He’s not sure whether residential tenancy legislation will be ready this week but it will be brought in when it is.

The former will be brought into WA parliament for debate on Wednesday.

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Perth endures hottest April day ever, as temperature reaches 39.5C

Beaches remain open in Western Australia as police praise the public for respecting coronavirus physical distancing rules

Police have praised West Australian beachgoers for respecting physical distancing rules as Perth sweltered through its hottest April day on record.

Perth’s temperature reached 39.5C on Saturday, eclipsing the previous April record set in 1910.

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Is hotel quarantine putting the health of vulnerable people at risk?

Thousands of travellers returning from overseas have been forced to quarantine in hotels to reduce the spread of coronavirus. Some say the conditions there are shocking, with reports that some people have been denied access to urgent medical care. In this episode of Full Story, Melissa Davey and Matilda Boseley explain how some people are falling through the cracks in this system

To learn more read this piece on how Ken Watson ended up in a coma after a nine-hour wait to go to hospital, plus how a doctor’s health advice for vulnerable people was ignored.

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Coronavirus Australia live news: chief medical officer says global cases could be 5 to 10 million – latest update

Brendan Murphy says he is totally confident of infection rates in Australia because of our high rate of testing. Follow live updates

Free childcare: what do the Australian government’s coronavirus changes mean for my family?
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We might leave it there for the night. Thanks so much for reading today.

Hopefully you’re enjoying your Friday night, despite these strange times.

The @YourAFAP union says all 220 @TigerairAU pilots have been made redundant effective today.

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Australia coronavirus live update: Scott Morrison announces free childcare as death toll rises to 24 – latest news

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.

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Queensland police’s problem with domestic violence

Police comments last week that they were keeping an ‘open mind’ on the murder of Hannah Clarke and her three young children by her former partner were widely condemned. In this episode of Full Story, reporter Ben Smee looks at the track record of Queensland police on domestic violence, and we hear from one woman about her own shocking story

You can read Ben Smee’s reporting on Dani’s case here, and his piece about how Hannah Clarke’s murder exposes a ‘failure in our system’.

You can also read his reporting on Queensland woman Julie, who was forced to go into hiding after a senior constable, Neil Punchard, accessed her address from a police database and sent it to her violent former husband.

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Queensland police detective stood aside over comments about murder of Hannah Clarke and children

Commissioner says Det Insp Mark Thompson ‘gutted’ at phrasing he used about Camp Hill car fire deaths in Brisbane

A senior Queensland detective who said police were keeping an “open mind” as to whether the deaths of Hannah Clarke and her children were a case of a “husband being driven too far” has been stood aside from the investigation.

The Queensland police commissioner, Katarina Carroll, apologised on Friday for comments made by Det Insp Mark Thompson as he appealed for information into the deaths the previous day, saying the detective was “gutted” at his choice of words.

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Queensland police spark anger with ‘open mind’ comment on murder of Hannah Clarke and children

Domestic violence campaigners appalled force wants to consider suggestions Rowan Baxter was ‘driven too far’ when he set fire to his family in their car in Brisbane

Queensland police have revealed that a man who killed his wife and three children by dousing them with petrol and setting them alight had a history of domestic violence and was known to them.

But in comments that have shocked domestic violence campaigners, the force says they are keeping an “open mind” about suggestions the 42-year-old Rowan Baxter had been “driven too far” and are appealing to people who knew the couple to come forward to understand his motives.

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Chinese student lost in Gold Coast bushland for five days used milk bottle to collect water

Yang Chen says watching survival and adventure TV shows helped her stay alive, as she knew to keep hydrated and warm

A Chinese student who survived in flooded and dense Gold Coast bushland for five days used an empty milk bottle to collect water and get by.

Yang Chen went missing last Wednesday while walking with a friend in the Tallebudgera Valley and spent the next five nights sheltering in caves until she was found by water police near Gorge Falls on Monday morning.

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