Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Regulating the sex industry via standard business laws will help make sex workers safer and reduce stigma, minister says
The Victorian government will move to decriminalise sex work and regulate the sex industry “through standard business industry laws” following a review that heard the current system left many unprotected.
The review was conducted by the Reason party leader, Fiona Patten, in 2020 and is currently before the state government. The government is expected to release the report and table proposed legislation by the end of the year.
An $11m grant announced to pay for leave for aged care staff to be vaccinated; Darwin in lockdown after four cases; restrictions for WA and SA; Queensland makes masks mandatory in hotspots. Follow live
Here’s a brief summary of the key things Scott Morrison announced:
Another decision out of national cabinet is an agreement to make it mandatory for all quarantine workers, including those working in transport, to be vaccinated. However, this will be the responsibility of the states and territories, not the commonwealth.
This announcement follows the case of a Sydney limousine driver transporting international air crews contracting Covid-19 while being unvaccinated, NSW police admitting this breached no public health orders.
Does parliament even happen if the motion to remove Andrew Laming from his committee role isn’t defeated?
Heading into the Chamber for the daily Laming.
Scott Morrison told Australians Andrew Laming would stand down from all his roles, then allowed him to keep a ~$20k Committee role.
Every day we move a motion calling on the PM to keep his word & every day Lib MPs vote against it
In 10 minutes of my life I will never get back, I just watched Michael McCormack on Sky News (fun fact, you can skip ahead to any point of a McCormack interview and it still makes as much sense if you listened to it straight through.
And of course, even during a trade deal interview, he can’t help but take a swipe at the Greens.
We don’t things just to annoy the Greens, although I think the Greens annoy the hell out of everybody.
I mean I’ve yet have yet to ever see them, condemn the Extinction Rebellion protests, I’m yet to ever see them exalt what our farmers do.
Travel to regional Victoria likely to be barred when lockdown ends Thursday midnight and federal wages support package to be cut off. Follow updates live
Khorshid is asked about the Victorian government’s response to the pandemic, and in particular the current lockdown.
He says:
The AMA has been supportive of the actions of the Victorian government. I think the public expects to be kept safe and this is what is necessary to be kept safe when we’re in an evolving situation. As information comes in, things become clearer, decisions become easier to make. I think the best thing for us all to do is support the advice that’s been given by the chief health officers around the country.
My colleague Paul Karp asked Omar Khorshid about the AMA’s concerns about the recent proposed changes to Medicare rebates.
He asked if the AMA’s concerns have been addressed and what he made of Labor’s warnings of a government assault on Medicare. Are we likely to see another “Mediscare campaign”?
I certainly hope we’re not going see a Mediscare campaign. The sad reality of Medicare is successive governments over the entire life of Medicare have failed to index it properly, and have therefore effectively cut Medicare for 30 years. This review that the AMA has supported was designed to modernise the MBS, and it has taken five years to do, we have a few quibbles and issues with how it was done, but at the end of the day the AMA is supportive of the review process and of most of the outcomes.
It’s been a bit of a heavy morning so far, so here is some dinosaur news from the Guardian’s amazing new science reporter Donna Lu:
A new species of dinosaur discovered in south-west Queensland has been officially recognised as the largest ever found in Australia and among the biggest in the world.
The Australotitan cooperensis, a plant-eating dinosaur of the family known as titanosaurs, likely lived between 92m and 96m years ago, during the Cretaceous period.
Less than 3% of Australians over 16 have been fully vaccinated against coronavirus but health chiefs are tipping numbers will soar in coming weeks.
The sluggish national rollout of jabs continues to spark concern with Melbourne in the grips of another lockdown-inducing outbreak, reports Matt Coughlan from AAP.
There are multiple strains and we will continue to see Covid adapt and mutate – that’s what these viruses do.
We’re likely to see other strains emerging. The sooner we can get the world vaccinated, the less likely it is that it can mutate.
Victoria’s press conference ends – we are just waiting for Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg now
Professor Allen Cheng is asked whether Victoria is just unlucky,or whether there are other factors that mean outbreaks spread further than in other states and says:
I think it is really difficult to know. We thankfully don’t have a huge sample size to say what might be different or not. I think there’s always an element of luck in this.
As I said before, if you have a person in the community with infection, it depends very much on who they are. And we certainly that it is 80% of people with COVID don’t transmit to anyone. 20% of them transmit at least to someone at a very small number transmit to a lot of people. So there is an element of luck to it.
This has been an ongoing frustration for Mike Bowers and the visual reporters – some committees are throwing their weight around about where photographers and camera operators can stand to do their jobs – which means a lot of photos of the back of people’s heads.
The helpful people at the estimates Economic committee placed our photographic positions behind the heads of the Treasury Officials and Minister giving evidence, do I really have to explain again to members of the Aust senate why this will not work? #notTodayPlease@AmyRemeikispic.twitter.com/ysRVbOttpy
Katy Gallagher asks Richard Colbeck who is responsible for vaccinating aged care staff.
Three minutes later, Colbeck says it is a “combined” program.
Victoria is entering a seven-day lockdown as authorities work to contain a rapidly spreading Covid outbreak that the acting premier has warned is “running faster than we have ever recorded”.
The government hopes the restrictions – which start at midnight and include compulsory masks, school closures and a 5km travel limit for shopping and exercise – will act as a circuit-breaker after the state reported 11 new cases of the B1617.1 variant on Thursday taking the cluster to 26.
Tim Pallas announces plans to strip single-gender social clubs of land tax concessions traditionally afforded to charities
The Victorian government has taken a swipe at exclusive men’s only clubs, announcing plans to strip them of land tax concessions traditionally afforded to charities and social associations.
Victoria’s treasurer, Tim Pallas, is preparing to deliver the state’s 2021 budget next Thursday, and staring down an eye-watering bill from the devastating Covid-19 second wave. In order to raise revenue Pallas has announced new land tax measures, expected to bring in an extra $2.7bn over the next four years.
Long-awaited strategy includes plan to power all government-owned schools and hospitals with renewables by 2025
The Victorian government has promised to cut the state’s greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2030, in an announcement of long-awaited climate targets that outstrip commitments made by the Morrison government.
The plan, announced on Sunday, will see Victoria power all government-owned enterprises, including schools and hospitals, by renewables by 2025.
State commits $50m to domestic manufacturing of cutting-edge vaccines; former Liberal staffer to ask Scott Morrison to fix ‘systemic coercive control’ in Parliament House. Follow live
That is where we will leave the blog for Wednesday. Thanks for following along. Here’s what made the news today:
The government has closed a loophole that would have allowed Australians to use New Zealand as a stepping stone to travelling to another country following the opening of the Trans Tasman travel bubble.
On Monday, health minister Greg Hunt amended the biosecurity legislation to specify that Australians could not go to any country other than New Zealand. Unlike Australia, New Zealand does not have an outbound travel ban.
Travellers should be aware that international travel to any other country, except New Zealand, continues to pose a significant risk to public health, and for that reason outgoing travel to other countries remains restricted.
“Australians considering travel outside of Australia or New Zealand are still required to apply for an exemption from the outgoing travel restrictions through ABF, and ensure they review the information available on Smartraveller relevant to their destination.”
Federal health minister Greg Hunt released from hospital after leg infection
The Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, has been moved out of intensive care and on to a hospital ward after breaking a bone in his back and several ribs when he slipped on wet stairs earlier this week.
Also on Saturday, the federal health minister, Greg Hunt, was released from hospital after a leg infection.
Victoria will enter a “circuit-breaker” five-day lockdown from Saturday in an attempt to “prevent a third wave”, Daniel Andrews has announced.
The premier said on Friday afternoon the government would impose a snap lockdown from midnight because the “hyper-infectivity” and speed of a UK variant outbreak had created a “very real challenge”.
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.
NSW to lift tranche of restrictions while in Victoria it will no longer be compulsory to wear face masks in offices or cafes; federal parliament returns for the final sitting week of 2020 – latest updates
Victoria will begin accepting international flights again from today – a flight from Sri Lanka is about to touch down in Melbourne. All up, there will be about 125 travellers arriving as part of the hotel quarantine program in Victoria today.
There is no longer any private security guards as part of the Victoria program – and any worker has to work exclusively for the Victorian government.
The latest foreign interference laws are also due to pass parliament this week – these ones are the ones looking at agreements with foreign governments that private organisations and state governments have made.
States, Territories and local governments will have three months to handover agreements with foreign governments which @dfat "will carefully and methodically consider against Australia's foreign policy settings" #auspol@Birmo@SBSNewspic.twitter.com/pwT5PtCEta
Federal parliament returns; Asio chief warns of ‘real threat’ from foreign spies; incoming Biden administration vows to sign back up to Paris agreement. Follow all the updates
The motion was voted up 28 to 25 with Labor, Centre Alliance, Rex Patrick, Jacqui Lambie and One Nation combining to warn the Coalition over the draft bill’s inadequacies.
Greens senator Larissa Waters motion stated:
Senate just passed a motion 28:25 for a strong corruption watchdog, listing all of the features the Gov’s weak model leaves out. A defacto vote on the Gov’s bill - the Senate can see through the fig leaf of the Gov’s belated and pathetic model that wouldn’t stop a thing! #auspol
Richard Marles says Labor is not pursing a royal commission into the Murdoch media empire and will “let Kevin speak for himself”.
Andrew Leigh officially tabled the Kevin Rudd-led petition, which had more than 500,000 signatures, in the parliament today.
We have talked about our position in relation to the media over a long period of time. Now, this is not something we have been considering. This is something Kevin Rudd has been pursuing in his capacity as a private citizen. I mean, I obviously note it is a significant petition in terms of those who have signed up to it and it has been presented to the parliament appropriately. That is where the matter is that in terms of the opposition.
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.
Coronavirus didn’t kill the culture wars, it only sent them into a momentary recess
When Covid-19 hit, I’d been wondering for a long time what glued together the disparate positions of the religious right in Australia: for deregulation yet also massive taxpayer subsidy; for free enterprise yet also against the free movement of labour; for the equality of all freedoms as long as one, religion, is more equal than others; for “our children’s future” yet also against climate science.
During the coronavirus crisis, the patterns began to repeat: divergent positions coalescing under an intellectually amorphous but readily identifiable tribal banner. What unified that tribe was, for want of a better word, a contrarianism, what impolite adherents might call an “up yours” to political correctness.
America’s top Covid expert says Victoria lockdown and mask-wearing struck right balance between health and economy and he wished US adopted same mentality
America’s top infectious diseases expert, Dr Anthony Fauci, has praised Melbourne’s response to the coronavirus, saying he “wished” the US could adopt the same mentality.
In an interview hosted by the University of Melbourne and the Melbourne-based Doherty Institute, Fauci said Australia was “one of the countries that has done actually quite well” in handling the virus.