Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Australian government yields to expert advice that Pfizer should now be the preferred coronavirus vaccine for adults under the age of 50
Australia’s vaccine rollout has suffered a major shock, with an advisory slapped on the AstraZeneca vaccine warning people under 50 it may cause extremely rare but potentially deadly blood clots.
On Thursday evening, the Australian government announced it had accepted expert advice that Pfizer should now be the preferred vaccine for under 50s, who will be warned AstraZeneca should only be taken if it is clear the benefits outweigh the risks.
Gladys Berejiklian says a NSW Covid immunisation centre will be capable of administering 30,000 doses a week; EU denies blocking further shipments of AstraZeneca earmarked for Australia. Follow the latest updates, live
Australia needs to manage the increasingly complex relationship with China, even as the government seeks areas to diversify its export markets, according to a new report out this afternoon.
The Asia Taskforce – which includes the Business Council of Australia and Asia Society Australia – calls for a target of boosting Australia’s exports to 35% of GDP by 2030 (up from 29% in 2019).
Popular support for the open economy cannot be taken for granted. Retreating to old familiar relationships in western markets, falling behind in Asia literacy and failing to build connections with new Asian business partners should not be seen as a serious default choice when consumption in Asia will likely fuel future global growth.
The Greens are once again calling for an independent rapid review into the vaccine rollout to identify any issues and restore public confidence.
Senator Rachel Siewert, Greens spokesperson for health, said in a statement:
With targets missed, persistent problems with vaccine supply, and troubles getting the available vaccines to where they’re needed, the rollout of these vital jabs hardly inspires confidence...
We shouldn’t let this devolve into a game of finger pointing and blaming shifting between the federal and state governments. This pointless squabble doesn’t inspire confidence in the rollout, and can only serve to add further delays to the process.
Prime minister refuses to say how many doses of AstraZeneca vaccine CSL is producing in Melbourne each week
The prime minister, Scott Morrison, has rejected claims Australia’s vaccine rollout has been held up by the batch testing of 2.5m domestically made doses and instead blamed international supply issues.
At a press conference on Tuesday after New Zealand announced a trans-Tasman travel bubble, Morrison said Australia had not received 3.1m AstraZeneca doses from overseas. He said that was to blame for the massive discrepancy between the 855,000 vaccinations administered so far and the missed target of 4m doses by the end of March.
The Victorian state government won’t release a three-page email chain in which a decision to put Melbourne under a coronavirus curfew was made, reports Karen Sweeney from AAP.
Victorian opposition MP David Davis requested all documents relating to the curfew to be released under Freedom of Information.
These are the documents that relate directly to the decision to put Melbourne under a curfew and the reality, in our view, is there is little reason the documents should not be in the public domain.
We have one document - it is three pages of an email chain containing legal advice.
It is a single document - it may just be a single decision has to be made by the tribunal...
It’s just hard to see why this has been strung out for so long.
It’s worth considering how soon this lockdown is coming after the end of jobkeeper and how close it is cutting it to the start of the federal government’s half-priced plane ticket program.
Jobkeeper ended on Sunday, and the tourism sector support program is slated to start on 1 April.
Federal Liberal MP Andrew Laming has pleaded for privacy after announcing he will not recontest the next election, saying he will seek immediate help to improve his behaviour.
Following a series of reports about Laming’s poor behaviour towards women, including an incident where he allegedly photographed a woman’s bottom, the Queensland MP said he would “own those mistakes” and quit parliament.
Scott Morrison says China’s 116.2% to 218.4% levies on Australia’s wine imports are ‘retaliation’
Australia’s trade minister threatened to take China to the World Trade Organization on Saturday over its “unjustifiable” decision to increase duties on Australian wine imports for up to five years.
PM issues Facebook statement saying he ‘deeply regrets’ raising a sexual harassment claim in response to question from journalist; forecast improves on east coast but flood waters still pose risk. Follow all the latest news and updates, live
The bells have rung for the House sitting - but day three of estimates is upon us as well.
The Treasury secretary is up from nowish, if you want to tune in
The two News Corp major city tabloids have made their displeasure with Scott Morrison for attacking a Sky News journalist during his press conference yesterday abundantly clear this morning.
Despite the mea culpa from the PM late yesterday the Herald Sun and the Daily Telegraph carry very negative front pages and unflattering mocking headlines: “Sco-woe” and “Sco-D’oh”
More than 100 federally funded clinics will take bookings for Covid-19 jabs from Friday and will begin administering them from Monday. Follow latest updates
This is Elias Visontay bringing you this morning’s main stories: some Covid vaccine developments, a growing political feud, and misogyny culture in the spotlight across the globe.
Pared-back bill now relates only to casual employment; government faces scrutiny over its botched vaccine booking website. Follow all the latest updates
After 100,000 women marched for justice on Monday, the federal government faces scrutiny over whether it’s listening. Follow all today’s latest news and updates, live
Scott Morrison’s address to the joint party room spoke about the March4Justice issues, as well as the wider concerns about harassment and abuse at work, included a comparison to the Kokoda Trail.
He said, according to Sky News’ Andrew Clennell,
He actually compared it to walking the Kokoda Trail, is what I’ve been told out of the party room and said we are on a narrow path, we have to look after each other and focus on what matters.”
You wonder how you’ve got over the first hill and the next one’s even bigger.
That’s what it’s like in the pandemic,” he said, citing the next hill as being weaning the economy off government support.
Brittany Higgins’ voice shook as she addressed the crowd outside Parliament House in Canberra.
She had decided at the last minute to speak to more than a thousand people, mainly women, holding signs calling for justice for women, for sexual assault survivors and for Higgins herself, who has alleged she was raped by a colleague inside Parliament House.
More than 100,000 women are expected to march in Canberra, Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane to demand action in response to allegations of workplace abuse. Follow latest updates
Janine Hendry, a founder and organiser of the March4Justice, explained to the ABC this morning about why organisers turned down Scott Morrison’s offer of a private meeting with a small number of march delegates:
I think it is really quite disrespectful to the women whose voices need to be heard to have a meeting with our prime minister behind closed doors.
I have invited the prime minister, as I have all other sitting members of parliament, to come and march with us, to come and listen to our voices. I don’t think it is really a big ask – we have come to Canberra.
The PM has rejected claims of favouring Coalition and marginal seats through subsidised flights; and WA opposition leader Zak Kirkup insists he has no regrets as he prepares for landslide defeat. Follow all the latest updates, live
Good news for NSW residents in Auckland, they will once again be allowed to return to Australia without quarantine, as the New Zeland cluster dies out with no more new cases reported in the recent Auckland cluster since 28 February.
NSW health released a statement last night confirming the (one-way) travel bubble will reopen:
People who have been in Auckland in the past 14 days will be exempt from hotel quarantine provided that they seek testing for Covid-19 after arriving in NSW. They must self-isolate in their accommodation until they receive a negative result.
NSW Health will follow up arrivals from Auckland if a negative test is not recorded for them, to inform them of their obligations.
The OECD has so far been unable to find a clear winner in the contest between former Australian finance minister Mathias Cormann and former European trade commissioner Cecilia Malmström – so the decision may not be finalised until later this month.
Cormann and Malmström, the Swedish candidate, are the final two nominees for the role of secretary general of the Paris based OECD. The selection process is based on seeking to find consensus among OECD member states.
Following discussion with the Selection Committee, the Chair’s conclusions were finalised and these were communicated first to the nominating ambassadors, and then to the Heads of Delegations in plenary. Following these consultations, the Chair has been unable to identify which candidate has the most support. Further steps will be taken in March, with the aim of concluding the process.
The $1.2bn package to provide cheap flights has already been dismissed as ‘second-rate’ by tourism sector, as opposition questions scope
Labor has questioned why 13 regions to benefit from half-price flights to boost tourism include marginal seats in Tasmania and Queensland while neighbouring areas miss out.
The Morrison government on Thursday unveiled its $1.2bn tourism and aviation rescue package combining discount flights with business loans – but the scheme has already been labelled “second-rate” by the two sectors that warn it is an incomplete replacement for jobkeeper wage subsidies.
After a turbulent two weeks in parliament, Katharine Murphy talks to Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young about her experiences in fighting toxic cultures in the workplace. They discuss the ways women in the spotlight can be supported, and whether the domino-like effect will continue
The PM needs to decide whether to let the attorney general’s defence be the last word on the case or to represent all the interests involved, including the alleged victim’s
If Christian Porter was somehow unaware that survivors of sexual assault in the #MeToo era have had enough of being silenced, the Australian of the year, Grace Tame, appeared at the National Press Club on Wednesday to remind him.
Only an hour or so before the attorney general confirmed the worst-kept secret on the internet – that he was the unnamed cabinet minister at the centre of a rape allegation from 1988 – Tame stood before reporters in Canberra and delivered a speech of piercing moral clarity.
Labor’s assistant shadow treasurer, Andrew Leigh, has been on Sydney radio contrasting the government’s attitude towards companies that got jobkeeper and welfare recipients it pursued in its unlawful and botched robodebt scheme.
At Leigh’s request, auditor-general Grant Hehir is investigating the administration of the $100bn job subsidy scheme, and yesterday Leigh asked for the probe to be extended to touch on stevedore Qube, which got $30m in jobkeeper.
But the bulk of Australian firms haven’t handed it back, and they haven’t received the pressure to do so because the Treasurer hasn’t come out and been clear about how the JobKeeper scheme operated...
In terms of the government, we gave Josh Frydenberg extraordinary latitude to tweak JobKeeper where it wasn’t working as intended. But he hasn’t used that at all to prevent money flowing to shareholders and executives. He’s been as silent on this as the government was noisy about RoboDebt, clawing money out of the hands of social security recipients in an illegal approach.
Attention at the Albanese press conference has now turned to the historic rape allegation levelled against a (currently unnamed) cabinet minister in the Liberal government.
Albanese has been asked if he thinks the minister should stand down:
Quite clearly, this woman told multiple people, including people in public life, but also her friends that she wanted an investigation of this. It is very clear [the government] are pretending that this will go away, it will not ...
It is very clear that, in my mind, that this will require further leadership and action ... and I await the statement by the minister involved, the presumption of innocence is a critical part of our legal system but now that the existing legal processes have been unable to proceed, certainly in terms of NSW police, I think people will be looking for further responses beyond any statement that might be made today by the minister.
I was very disappointed by Scott Morrison’s statement yesterday where he said that he hadn’t read the documentation that was forwarded to him by the woman who was at the centre of the allegation who then took her own life by her friends.
He then also said, essentially, that he had spoken to the minister and that he believed the minister. That stands in stark contrast to what Scott Morrison said in May of 2019. About the need to believe people. Who come forward.
While agreeing that police were best to investigate the complaint of sexual assault, which allegedly occurred in 1988, the Labor leader argued on Sunday that Morrison must separately “assure himself … the current make-up of the cabinet can continue”.
Usually media-savvy Scott Morrison has been unable to find his footing dealing with the fallout of an alleged assault inside a minister’s office
Scott Morrison, the Australian prime minister, prides himself on his ability to shape media narratives. A former advertising executive, he is used to controlling the message. But over the past two weeks one story has refused to bend to his will and exposed a weak spot: women.
Morrison is struggling to manage growing anger over the handling of a young staffer’s rape allegation, the parliamentary culture at large, and how women working within it are treated.