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Simple form made big difference for Queensland easing border restrictions
By Stuart Layt
Offering a simple form to passengers at Canberra Airport is all it took for Queensland to open its border with the national capital, the Premier has revealed.
Last week, the Queensland government defended declaring the ACT a COVID-19 hotspot because it was in the "middle of NSW". Now, passengers could board a plane from Canberra to Queensland from September 25 provided they had not been in Victoria or NSW in the past 14 days.
ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr and Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk.Credit:Elesa Kurtz/supplied
NSW Treasurer Dominic Perrottet condemned Queensland's decision to open its borders to the ACT and not his state, saying "they’re turning the Newell Highway into the Berlin Corridor”.
The step to easing Queensland's border restrictions stemmed from behind-the-scenes "diplomacy" and a simple change in procedure at Canberra Airport.
Bondi Junction house party costs hosts and attendees $28,000
By Michaela Whitbourn
A Bondi Junction house party has turned into an expensive night out after NSW Police said the occupants and 24 guests would each be fined $1000 for breaching coronavirus restrictions.
Under recent changes to public health orders in NSW, attendees of a gathering exceeding the current 20-person limit may each be fined $1000, in addition to the host.
NSW Police said on Saturday that "officers from Eastern Suburbs Police Area Command were called to a home on Oxford Street, near York Road, Bondi Junction, following noise complaints and reports of a party".
"After speaking with a 26-year-old man, it was established he was one of four occupants and there were 24 guests inside, which exceeded the allowable 20-person limit for private gatherings."
Police said 28 penalty infringement notices would be issued over the unlawful gathering.
Opinion: Cowardice: what Morrison and Albanese have in common on climate
By Sean Kelly
In 2009, Anthony Albanese was asked how long he’d stay in Parliament if Labor lost. "Not one day. I'm out of here." This wasn’t an admission of a dwindling devotion to politics. Eleven years later, Albanese leads his party. It was a reflection of Albanese’s recognition of the power that being in government gives you.
And, he said, there was no point in power for its own sake: “The first thing about power is that you've got to use it.” This reminded the journalist Laurie Oakes, from whose column I’m quoting, of an old piece of Labor wisdom: “You get power by exercising it.”
Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese.Credit:Alex Ellinghausen
We all learned that lesson watching Malcolm Turnbull as prime minister. Time after time, he refused to exercise the power he had. And, sure enough, power slipped away from him, in increments that accumulated over a few short years into the loss of his entire prime ministership. Politics can be disturbingly simplistic and prejudiced. Turnbull was verbose, urbane, wealthy and handsome: weakness could be made easily to fit.
The current Prime Minister and the Opposition Leader are very different men. They speak clearly, and conform to more traditional modes of Australian masculinity. “Weak” is not a word that conveniently matches either Scott Morrison or Anthony Albanese. Yet each, this week, shied away from using his authority, at a time of urgency for our nation.
21 new cases in Victoria is lowest daily total since June 24
By Liam Mannix
The last time Victoria recorded a lower number of new daily infections was on June 24, when the state recorded just 20 infections.
That was the beginning of Victoria's second wave; just a week later, the state would record 75 infections.
Victoria reports 21 new cases, seven deaths today
By Liam Mannix
Victoria has recorded just 21 new COVID-19 infections over the last 24 hours, a new low. Seven people have died from the virus, bringing Victoria's death toll to 757.
It is the state's lowest daily total since June.
The cases, which include a significant cluster in the city of Casey, bring Metro Melbourne's 14-day rolling average to 39.3, down from 42.7 yesterday.
Meanwhile, three people with links to the Casey cluster are now in hospital.
Six months in, we owe it to ourselves to face some challenging truths
By Shaun Carney
The future is just about here and it’s not all that wonderful. It can be hard to recall now, given the woozy, wild ride we’ve been on since autumn, but back in March when the first serious wave of restrictions on our lives were imposed, there was still a sense of optimism around.
Unless and until a safe, effective and long-lasting vaccine is developed, manufactured, distributed and given to a very large proportion of the population, our society and economy are going to remain restricted and diminished.Credit:Bloomberg
Many of us budgeted mentally and financially for a difficult six months once the global COVID-19 pandemic was declared. After that, it was thought that the worst might be over. The federal government built that time frame into its key support measures, notably JobKeeper and JobSeeker. Some over-enthusiastic reports suggested that a vaccine could be developed by September.
Donald Trump has been widely ridiculed for his prediction from around that time that one day the novel coronavirus would just disappear. But deep down, didn’t a lot of us want to believe that he might be right? There’s always been the hope that sooner rather than later the wave of a magic wand by some unseen hand would deliver us from this awful reality – our separation from the sufferers, the fear that the virus was everywhere and everyone else was a carrier, the economic damage.
But here we are at the six-month mark, almost into the final quarter of the year, and the expectation that we could start to meaningfully put the pandemic behind us has been exposed as an understandable bout of wishful thinking.
Victorian government seeking retired police to enforce COVID-19 rules
By Liam Mannix
The Victorian government is recruiting retired police officers to enforce compliance with coronavirus rules.
The Department of Health and Human Services says it is recruiting to fill the ranks of 'authorised officers', people empowered to carry out compliance and enforcement operations for the department.
AOs, as they are known, are not police officers, but do have the power to conduct patrols, inspections and intelligence operations.
The department has reached out to Police Veterans Support Australia to bring retired police officers back into the fold, the Herald Sun has reported.
Despite not being sworn police officers, a bill currently before parliament would give them the ability to detain high-risk coronavirus spreaders.
"We will be recruiting more AOs to ensure we have adequate support across all the streams where they are working including, industry enforcement, testing, doorknocking and the airport," a department spokesman said.
"A key component of this role is undertaking compliance and enforcement work and former police officers are considered ideal candidates because of their enforcement history."
Hard calls for captains: former leaders run the rule over Dan Andrews
By Tony Wright
For 78 successive days, Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews has stood before massed journalists, microphones and cameras, usually for more than an hour at a time.
Hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions, of Victorians have tuned in, riding COVID-19’s wave as Andrews intoned the numbers: the dead, the new cases, the active cases.
The Premier’s edicts - the extended lockdown of Melbourne’s lives and businesses; the curfew; the decision this week to ease restrictions in the state’s rural and regional areas while increasing the fine to almost $5000 for Melburnians daring to try to escape the metropolis - have exposed him to the full range of citizens’ emotions.
The supportive #IstandwithDan army has stood across a gulf from the legions expressing disappointment, despair or fury.
But what of former political leaders for whom crisis was never far away when, in office, the television cameras’ lights pinned them, and who now watch from a distance as Andrews battles on?
We spoke with some of them.
'We'll fight very hard': Public servants lead push to revive Sydney's CBD
By Megan Gorrey and Angus Thompson
The NSW government is pushing for public servants to lead a revival of Sydney's central business district, as the city attempts to ease the $10 billion blow dealt by the COVID-19 crisis.
Planning and Public Spaces Minister Rob Stokes said on Friday getting workers back to offices was crucial to revitalising economic activity in the city's CBD.
NSW Planning Minister Rob Stokes.Credit:Simon Bennett
Australia's largest commercial hub was on track to generate more than $142 billion in 2020, before workers abandoning the city during the pandemic slashed that figure to $132 billion, a forecast showed.
The loss of foot traffic has also had devastating flow-on effects for the hospitality, arts and retail industries.
"We should be encouraging everyone to get back into their workplaces," Mr Stokes said at the state government's summer business summit on Friday. "Government should lead by example."
Aged care lockout 'heartbreaking', but Andrews says it's here to stay
By Noel Towell
Tens of thousands of elderly Victorians face a lonely summer with the state’s aged care homes to remain in some form of COVID-19 lockdown and visits from friends and family strictly limited well into 2021.
Premier Daniel Andrews said visiting residential aged care, where 588 lives have been lost to coronavirus, will not return to normal until a vaccine becomes available or until a rapid test, which could screen visitors as they arrive, was developed.
Visitors are still a way off.Credit:Getty
The Premier revealed his plans after The Age reported the story of 77-year-old Filia Xynidakis who, her family believe, died of neglect as authorities battled to control a catastrophic COVID-19 outbreak at a home in Melbourne's north.
One aged care advocate called for an end to the "lockout" of relatives, saying it was "heartbreaking" that families had been separated for months by the restrictions while federal Aged Care Minister Richard Colbeck and the Council on the Ageing both said compassion should be shown to the sick and the dying.
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2020-09-19 00:08:00Z
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