Emergency services say all other residents of the building in North Fitzroy were evacuated safely
A child has died in a fire at a Melbourne public housing building.
Emergency services attended the apartment block at the intersection of Clauscen and Nicholson streets in North Fitzroy about 12.30pm on Saturday.
Continue reading...Agriculture minister calls for federal approach to border rules; NSW on alert over community transmission. Follow the latest news and updates
This came through late yesterday from NSW Health:
NSW Health is advising of a new public health alert for Liverpool Hospital and Dooleys Lidcombe Catholic Club.
Peter Dutton had some things to say about the border closure between NSW and Queensland on the Nine network today:
When you get a premier like Annastacia Palaszczuk making announcements about border closures when Gladys Berejiklian is doing a press conference and she is caught out, the question is asked of her and she knows nothing about it, she hadn’t been contacted by Queensland, well you would imagine she would be a bit miffed. I think it is childish. There is a growing mood here in Queensland at the moment, I have got to say, Ally, of people who say if the doctors are saying close the borders or put in place this regime, fair enough, but there is a lot of politics being played in Queensland at the moment by the state government here in relation to this issue. You see brochures now going out into letterboxes in marginal seats and what not, and Annastacia Palaszczuk is walking a fine line here. People will be cynical if they think these decisions are being made for political reasons and her break down in the relationship with the New South Wales premier, particularly for those people who live in the Tweed or on the Gold Coast, is negatively impacting on those lives and businesses and it is unacceptable.
Continue reading...Premier Daniel Andrews reports eight more deaths and the lowest number of new coronavirus cases for more than two weeks
Victoria’s aged care crisis continues, with the department of health taking control of three more aged care homes due to Covid-19 outbreaks, as the state’s premier raises the hardship payments available to those who must forgo income in order to isolate after testing.
Victoria recorded 278 new cases of Covid-19 on Thursday, the lowest number for more than two weeks, with the number of total actives cases also dipping.
Continue reading...Victorian premier Daniel Andrews says number of mystery Covid-19 cases has risen by 130 as nine new infections announced in NSW
A man in his 30s and six aged care residents are among 12 new Victorian Covid-19 deaths that have taken Australia’s coronavirus death toll to 278.
On Saturday, the Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, announced a further 466 cases of coronavirus in the state. Andrews said the number of cases attributed to no known source had risen by 130 to 2,584.
Continue reading...Australian Defence Force personnel to doorknock close contacts of confirmed cases in Victoria as Western Australia delays easing of restrictions. Follow live
McGowan describes the WA border case as “our war” with Clive Palmer.
He says that WA is disappointed that the Commonwealth did not support their submission to have a fresh trial.
McGowan also announces that the national cabinet today agreed on “a code of practice for the regular testing of interstate freight drivers”.
He says that new arrangements will come into place next week which means “any truck driver entering WA will have to show evidence of having received a negative Covid-19 test result in the past seven days”.
Continue reading...Economists say stage-four restrictions will take a heavy toll, while business groups are urging changes to the permit system and the Andrews government is under pressure to answer questions about hotel quarantine failures. Follow live
People are still trying to get into South Australia:
(via AAP)
Queensland has reported no new cases of Covid-19 in the last 24 hours.
Authorities are still trying to work out how a woman in West Moreton (Ipswich) contracted the virus. She was diagnosed yesterday.
Premier Daniel Andrews confirms a man in his 30s is the youngest person to die from coronavirus in Australia
Wednesday marked Victoria’s most devastating day of Covid-19 cases and deaths, with a man in his 30s among 15 people who died overnight including many from aged care, and 725 new cases of the virus identified.
Three men and a woman in their 70s, three women and a man in their 80s, and a woman in her 90s were among the deaths. Twelve deaths were linked to outbreaks in aged care.
Continue reading...Premier to outline further details of state’s new lockdown, including business shutdowns. Follow all the latest news and updates, live
NSW police have released information on the fines they have issued for social distance breaches:
Police have issued a total of 16 Penalty Infringement Notices (PINs) for non-compliance with Covid-19 Public Health Orders across the weekend.
The Business Council of Australia and the Australian Council of Trade Unions – not known for being on the same side of a lot of issues – have released a joint letter calling for a paid pandemic leave scheme:
Dear Attorney,
Declaring a ‘state of disaster’ in Victoria gives police more authority, and hope that Covid cases can be contained within six weeks
Even the vast majority of Victorians who accepted stage 3 restrictions as necessary, if depressing, would have been confronted by what premier Daniel Andrews announced on Sunday. They were the tightest coronavirus restrictions ever imposed in Australia and among the toughest in the world.
Melburnians had just got used to compulsory mask wearing and now are to be confined to their homes from 8pm to 5am except for medical reasons or for essential work, at the risk of a $1,652 fine if they break curfew. Had this ever happened outside war time? There was no such curfew in New Zealand even in their “go early and go hard” response earlier this year.
Continue reading...Federal government may need to give financial aid to sustain Australia’s second biggest economy to limit flow-on effects throughout country
The strict new stage 4 lockdown announced by the Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, along with the shutdown of certain industries to be unveiled on Monday, represents a hammer blow to the Australian economy.
They immediately invalidate federal Treasury forecasts released less than a fortnight ago and will require the prime minister, Scott Morrison, to tip buckets of money into Victoria if Australia is to avoid prolonging and deepening what is already an economic disaster.
Continue reading...State suspends non-urgent elective surgery as Covid-19 cases in nursing homes rises, while NSW announces 14 new cases. Follow live updates
Migrants drove more than a quarter of regional Australia’s population growth before the coronavirus pandemic forced border closures, AAP reports.
Treasury’s Centre for Population officials on Tuesday told a parliamentary inquiry that overseas migration was behind 26 per cent of regional population growth nationally.
A staff member at the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre (ASRC) has tested positive for Covid-19, prompting the organisation to close all of its sites today.
In a statement, the ASRC said it closed all its sites this morning for terminal cleans and that staff would get “appropriate leave and full pay” for those who need to get tested or self-isolate.
Given the unprecedented pandemic impacting all our lives, we have been planning for this scenario for months.
We have taken early and swift action to close down all ASRC sites to protect staff, people seeking asylum and the community.
Continue reading...Federal treasurer unveils largest budget deficit since second world war and NSW records 19 new coronavirus cases. Follow all the latest news
The Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, was asked again about the lockdown of prisoners in Victoria, after it was revealed that a prison guard who works for security firm G4S at the Port Phillip prison had taken a second job working as a security guard in Melbourne’s bungled hotel quarantine program.
A spokeswoman for G4S told AAP:
In recent days, we have received information relating to an employee who, in early April, undertook secondary employment with a security firm without our knowledge. The staff member concluded this contract work in late April. The matter is now the subject of internal disciplinary processes.
We are not making any changes in that regard as a result of the pandemic.
Mikakos also addressed reports that the hospital in Wangaratta, in north-east Victoria, was left short a significant number of healthcare workers yesterday because the new, tighter border restrictions mean that any healthcare worker based in NSW who travels beyond the border bubble has to quarantine for 14 days upon their return.
That means doctors who live in Albury, which is less than an hour’s drive from Wangaratta, will have to quarantine for two weeks to attend regular shifts or consulting days in the regional Victorian hospital.
He has given me a commitment that he will look at his issue. It is really important that healthcare workers, that is people who work in hospital and paramedics and others, are able to provide those services.
Continue reading...AMA wants national network of contact tracers; calls for low-risk prisoner release; Port Stephens in NSW on Covid-19 high alert. Follow all the latest news and updates, live
Burney was also asked about the Black Lives Matter march planned for Sydney next Tuesday.
She said both organisers and people who attend the rally need to observe the health advice. Organisers are requiring people to wear masks and remain 1.5m away from each other, as they did at earlier rallies in June.
I will not be telling people who have lost loved ones not to demonstrate. But they have a democratic right to see their local member, to write to their local member and make it very clear what their feelings are.
Labor has been advocating for years that there needs to be justice targets in the new Closing the Gap targets and I understand that’s going to happen. But there is absolutely no way that it is OK that something like 400 people have died in custody since the royal commission and that continues to happen and the incarceration rates of Aboriginal people and Aboriginal young people are completely unacceptable.
Labor’s social affairs spokesperson, Linda Burney, said the new permanent jobseeker rate has to be an amount “where people can live with dignity and children, in particular, are not thrown on to the poverty scrapheap”.
Burney told ABC24:
We have heard that the old Newstart rate, which was $550 a fortnight, was just throwing people into poverty, there was absolutely no way it was an incentive to work.
One of the things that Labor is saying very clearly is we believe that the Government missed an enormous opportunity yesterday and that is to announce a permanent increase in JobSeeker, which Labor and others have been arguing for for a very long time.
Continue reading...Record 100 new daily cases confirmed in Hong Kong; UK’s head of Office for National Statistics calls for scaling up of testing; South Africa’s cases become fifth-highest worldwide
Thirty-nine people were detained after police were attacked with “a hail of bottles” at an open-air party in central Frankfurt attended by thousands of youngsters, police in the German city said today..
Five officers were injured in the riot that began at around 3:00 am (0100 GMT) when police intervened to stop a brawl involving around 30 people in Frankfurt’s historic Opera square.
People who travel outside of Ireland have been warned they will invalidate their travel insurance even if the place they visit is on a so-called ‘green list’ of safe countries to by published this week, the Irish Times reports.
It added that travel insurance exclusions denying cover to people who travel contrary to official guides are the norm across the sector. At present, the advice from the Irish Government is that non-essential journeys overseas should be avoided.
Continue reading...Daniel Andrews’s announcement on face coverings comes as state tries to control a second wave of Covid-19
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• NSW reports 18 new cases, the highest number in three months
• What you need to know about Melbourne’s stage 3 lockdown rules
• Melbourne map: where Covid-19 cases are rising or falling
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Victoria has recorded 363 new Covid-19 cases and three more people have died as premier Daniel Andrews announced face masks will be made mandatory across Melbourne as the state attempts to control a second-wave outbreak of the virus.
At a press conference on Sunday, Andrews appeared wearing a face mask and said residents in metropolitan Melbourne and the Mitchell shire would be required to wear “masks or face coverings”, including bandannas or scarves in public from midnight on Wednesday.
Continue reading...Australia’s acting chief medical officer warns people in Sydney are not taking precautions ‘as seriously’ as in Melbourne
Victoria has recorded 217 new cases of Covid-19 and three more deaths, as the prime minister, Scott Morrison, announced parliament would be postponed due to the health risks of MPs travelling to Canberra from Melbourne and south-western Sydney.
Victoria’s chief health officer, Brett Sutton, described the 217 cases as “a relief” following a record 428 new cases announced on Friday, and a then-record 317 new cases on Thursday.
Continue reading...Premier Daniel Andrews reimposes stage three restrictions across metropolitan Melbourne to last for six weeks
A record high of 191 new coronavirus cases on Tuesday has prompted the Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, to reintroduce stage three restrictions across all of metropolitan Melbourne.
“I think a sense of complacency has crept into us as we let our frustrations get the better of us,” Andrews said. “I think that each of us know someone who has not been following the rules as well as they should have.
Continue reading...Melbourne’s Covid-19 spike has prompted the ‘unprecedented’ move to stop people coming into NSW from Victoria. We look at the details
NSW will temporarily close its border with Victoria at 12.01am Wednesday 8 July in response to Melbourne’s coronavirus outbreak.
The closure, announced at a press conference by Victorian premier Daniel Andrews on Monday, will be enforced by NSW police.
Continue reading...Melbourne’s Covid-19 spike has prompted the ‘unprecedented’ move to stop people coming into NSW from Victoria. We look at the details, from how to get a crossing permit to whether you need to self-isolate
New South Wales temporarily closed its border with Victoria starting from 12.01am Wednesday 8 July in response to Melbourne’s coronavirus outbreak.
The closure, announced at a press conference by Victorian premier Daniel Andrews on Monday, is being enforced by NSW police.
Continue reading...A summary of the major developments in the coronavirus outbreak across Australia
Good evening, here are the latest developments on the coronavirus pandemic in Australia. This is Josh Taylor and it’s Friday 3 July.
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