Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Experts raise alarm about Covid vaccination rates as Coalition government explores digital certificates that could unlock international travel; trade minister confident of reaching free-trade deal with UK. Follow the latest news live
Real estate website Domain has alerted customers that is has been the victim of a phishing attack - where an email is made to look official and gets a user to hand over their login details - meaning hackers had access to the company’s administrative system, and was able to access the personal information of people who had recently made inquiries about rental properties.
They had then emailed some of those people asking them to pay a deposit in advance to secure the property, but Domain said so far it had received no reports of anyone paying the deposit.
Mick de Brenn claimed he was blindsided when Stanwell chief executive Richard van Breda said company was pivoting from coal to renewables
The board of Queensland state-owned power generator Stanwell corporation spent 18 months planning a transition strategy to pivot from coal to renewables, before the unexpected resignation of its chief executive last week.
Guardian Australia understands Richard van Breda quit Stanwell after the state energy minister, Mick de Brenni, complained to board members he was blindsided by an announcement – revealed by the Guardian – that rapidly changing market conditions would probably force the scaled-down operation of its coal plants.
The health department secretary, Brendan Murphy, has made opening remarks at the Covid-19 Senate inquiry. Murphy said Australia is “still in a very good place” even as comparable countries are battling fresh outbreaks and a fourth wave of the novel coronavirus.
He said:
“We are in a very fortunate place, even though we have border measures in place we are basically living a normal life – we have full football stadiums, restaurants, things are back to normal.”
Two state education ministers, Labor and Liberal, had criticised the milkshake video earlier today, via AAP.
Victoria’s Education Minister James Merlino called for the federal government to pull all content featured on The Good Society website, which launched as part of the Department of Education’s Respect Matters program last week.
No new properties have been purchased under the Queensland government program since 2017, a report finds
Cape York Indigenous groups have warned that a successful Queensland government program to return land to traditional owners is on the verge of stalling, potentially leaving large and significant swathes of the peninsula at the mercy of mining speculators.
The Cape York land tenure resolution program has returned more than 4m hectares of land to traditional owner groups since 2007, including about 2m hectares that is designated as national park.
A number of states have slammed their borders shut to Queenslanders as greater Brisbane enters a snap three-day snap lockdown after authorities discovered four new locally-acquired coronavirus cases.
Queensland’s chief health officer, Dr Jeannette Young, on Monday described the growing cluster of seven cases as “significant community transmission” of the UK variant. She warned people in greater Brisbane to stay home over the coming days.
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.”
‘Accidental’ mayor, elevated to top job under a controversial runner-up succession rule, claims moral (if not actual) victory
A barefoot climate change activist dubbed Queensland’s accidental mayor appears set to fail in his bid to put the coal and beef-loving city of Rockhampton on a greener path.
Chris “Pineapple” Hooper, a bike-riding, self-declared ratbag, is running third as the count continues in Saturday’s mayoral byelection, sparked by the shock resignation of long-serving civic leader Margaret Strelow in November 2020.
Police have charged four men with unlawfully lighting fires on K’gari/Fraser Island that started the blazes which scorched more than half of the World heritage-listed tourism drawcard.
Queensland Police and and Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service carried out a joint investigation and detectives yesterday charged the four men in their 20s who are all from the Warwick area, 130 kilometres southeast of Brisbane.
Berejiklian says she is frustrated with other premiers who are closing borders to the whole of NSW.
“There are parts of New South Wales completely unaffected by this current outbreak and yet everybody in New South Wales is suffering because other state leaders made decisions,” she says.
Exclusive: In email to fellow officials after election loss, Jenny Goodwin warns disciplinary process leads to ‘accusation of bullying’
The president of the Queensland Liberal National party women’s branch has emailed fellow officials to warn of a “culture of anger and mistrust”, amid an increasingly fraught fallout from the party’s state election loss.
News Hub reports New Zealand’s US ambassador has commented on the election. As government employees, ambassadors are prevented from indicating political views (despite being political appointments) but it looks like Scott Brown, for one, is feeling confident enough in the result to be a little honest.
Queensland Liberal National party members have begun agitating for an urgent post-election state council meeting to bring to a head internecine conflicts between the party’s membership, its office bearers and its state leader.
As counting continues in a number of close seats, the LNP’s numbers are likely to go backwards in the next parliament. In her concession speech on election night, Deb Frecklington said she intended to remain as the state leader.
Former deputy premier and treasurer’s seat of South Brisbane was the only seat lost by Labor on election night
Voters in Brisbane’s inner suburbs have turned out in unprecedented numbers for the Queensland Greens who have won at least two city seats at the state election, including that of Labor’s prominent left faction leader Jackie Trad.
Across four electorates spanning the Brisbane CBD and surrounding northern and western suburbs, the Greens polled more than a third of primary votes.
Polls suggest narrow Labor win over Liberal National party but neither side willing to predict result. Follow live
The early counting is good for Labor in Townsville - a minor swing in their favour. Townsville is Labor’s most marginal seat but actually the least likely of three seats in the northern city to flip.
Labor folks are more pessimistic about the Townsville seat of Mundingburra and Barron River, on the outskirts of Cairns.
On Jackie Trad’s chances, Steven Miles says:
The one thing I know about Jackie, she won’t have left one stone unturned to try to hold South Brisbane in what will be challenging contest.
But let’s be clear, it is only challenging because the Liberals had chosen to preference her. If they had preferenced the Greens last, then Jackie wouldn’t be in trouble at all.
There is one Green member in Parliament[Michael Berkman, Maiwar] and that is because of Labor’s preferences, so he that’s crazy he talks about principles. It was amazing enough after the last election when there was a lot of discussion about what the LNP should do at the seat of South Brisbane and basically a revolt from our members with regards to the fact that we didn’t do what we’ve done this time.
Jackie Trad is very polarising, particularly amongst our supporters and they are very comfortable with the decision that has been made. In fact, in some ways you could say that they it, and now we will see what the result will be.
A controversial $1.3bn project brings together angry voters from across the political spectrum in Mark Robinson’s electorate of Oodgeroo
This week residents in Cleveland, a bayside community south of Brisbane, received a letterbox flyer from their local MP, the ultraconservative Liberal National Mark Robinson, talking up his environmental credentials.
All things being equal, the election campaign in Robinson’s safe seat of Oodgeroo would be a foregone conclusion. The born-again evangelical, who employs former Australian Christian Lobby head Lyle Shelton in his local office, won the seat with 52% of the primary vote in 2017.
State’s chief health officer says it was ‘inappropriate’ to single out migrant community in Casey
Victoria’s chief health officer, Brett Sutton, has apologised for comments he made singling out Melbourne’s Afghan community in relation to a Covid-19 outbreak in Casey.
Sutton made the apology as the Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, announced 21 new coronavirus cases and seven more deaths in the state on Saturday. It was the lowest number of new Covid-19 cases in the state since 24 June.
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.
Andrews thanked all Victorians for the role they played in getting the daily coronavirus numbers down below 100.
I’d simply say that, whilst tomorrow’s numbers will be for tomorrow, we are all pleased to see a ‘1’ in front of these additional case numbers, and to a certain extent it is perhaps at that level a little quicker than I thought it might be.
Of course, this Sunday marks the three weeks since the curfew was imposed. Next Wednesday marks three weeks since the most significant workplace restrictions came into effect. To be at this point shows that the strategy is working....
I want to thank each and after Victorian who is making a big contribution to this strategy working. I want to thank them and their families. I want to thank people from all backgrounds, from all parts of the state. No matter your perspective, this is a challenge that none of us are immune from. We’re all in this together. We say that a lot, but it’s true. It’s absolutely true. And because I think more and more Victorians are making the best choices and looking out foreach other, and therefore everybody, we are seeing these numbers come down.
We’ll see what tomorrow holds. But there’s no room for complacency, there’s no way we can assume that this is over. It is an ultra-marathon, and we’re not halfway yet.
The Victorian and federal governments have set up a $15m joint disability response centre, which Andrews said is “essentially mirroring the arrangements we have in aged care”.
There are currently 62 active Covid-19 cases in disability care sectors, across 60 different sites.
We’re grateful to them. That’s not easy. But with that payment, that’ll mean that we can support them to, in turn, keep their clients safe. We all know that, in that sector, that’s what they’re motivated to do – to provide the best care and support to their clients.
Again, I thank the prime minister and the federal government for their partnership. This is yet another example of us working together to deal with a common challenge. And it’s really important that, given the vulnerability of many people across these settings, it’s very, very important that we have a singular focus, and all the senior people around the table at the same time, and that funding to be able to limit the amount of workers who are going to multiple sites.
Japan’s theme parks have banned screaming on roller coasters because it spreads coronavirus. “Please scream inside your heart.” https://t.co/DJjC40H0Ap
Scott Morrison was asked about Annastacia Palaszczuk’s comments about singling out Queensland on the Nine network this morning:
Well, I haven’t. There’s an election in Queensland, so I’m not surprised that the political rhetoric is amping up. Look, we’re keeping all of the country together to focus on this. I made similar comments about the changes in borders in South Australia yesterday. So, look, I think you can file that under a Queensland election.
Anthony Albanese was asked about Annastacia Palaszczuk’s comments yesterday, after she hit back on the border criticism (which included Scott Morrison) and said:
Well, look, I don’t believe that it’s appropriate, and I haven’t sought to politicise a response to the medical issues with regard to borders.
I’m not surprised that Annastacia Palaszczuk, who has shown tremendous leadership in Queensland, is frustrated at the comments of the Prime Minister given he has said time and time again it’s up to the states what happens.