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On the eve of the Victorian budget, NSW Treasurer Dominic Perrottet has revealed the date for his state budget, which will return to its usual mid-June date.
Mr Perrottet will deliver his budget on June 22, just seven months after he delivered his pandemic budget, with a historic $16 billion deficit. It was later downgraded to $13 billion.
Qantas has reviewed all the COVID-19 test results of passengers from the Indian repatriation flight over the weekend, including the 42 who were barred for returning positive results, and says the original results stand.
“Qantas and DFAT do not believe that any passengers booked on this flight were denied boarding in error,” the airline said in a statement on Tuesday morning.
Some passengers who were blocked from the flight disputed their results, saying a second test the next day was negative, while doubts were cast over the credentials of the laboratory used.
But Qantas says it re-ran all the tests over the weekend with extra medical supervision and all returned the same results, although it noted some weak positives “may have been interpreted as negative results by other laboratories”.
It said further investigation of the lab’s accreditation found the medical provider Qantas contracts ended up sending tests for processing at CRL laboratories instead of its own facilities. CRL is accredited to do COVID-19 testing, including for the Indian government, but has been temporarily suspended from conducting other types of tests, Qantas said.
A different lab will be used for pre-flight testing in the future.
Qantas chief medical officer Ian Hosegood said it could be expected to see similar levels of positive test results on future flights given the high level of COVID infections across India.
“We understand the tremendous stress people relying on these flights are under and that is why Qantas is working with the Australian government to help bring them home,” Dr Hosegood said.
“But we have to do that in a way that keeps everyone safe and avoids overwhelming quarantine facilities with a high proportion of positive passengers.”
In case you missed the announcement yesterday, people visiting venues in Victoria will now be required to provide their last name to health authorities when they check-in via a QR code.
The Victorian Health Department said that from today people will have to hand over their first and last names when they check-in at a venue.
The extensive list of venues that must be checked into with a QR code include cafes, restaurants, pubs, bars, clubs, nightclubs, as well as physical recreation centres like gyms and play centres.
“This change is all about making sure that the data accessible to our contact tracers is as comprehensive as possible,” the message posted on Twitter said.
In early May, Victorian health authorities rolled out a single QR system as compliance among diners and bar-goers plummeted.
The state government’s centralised coronavirus check-in system will become mandatory for many businesses from the end of May, in a push to boost usage and streamline the process.
NSW has set a new record for the highest number of COVID-19 vaccines delivered in a single day, with 11,415 vaccines administered in the 24 hours to 8pm yesterday.
This included a record high of 5230 at the vaccination centre at Sydney Olympic Park, the mass vaccination hub that was opened last week.
The state has now administered a total of 938,879 vaccines. Breaking the numbers down by provider, 291,550 doses have been administered by NSW Health to 8pm last night and 647,329 have been administered by Commonwealth Government providers, including GPs, to 11:59pm on Sunday May 16.
NSW recorded no new locally acquired cases of COVID-19 overnight.
Three new cases were acquired overseas. The total number of cases detected in NSW since the beginning of the pandemic now sits at 5374.
Deliveroo has lost a major test case on the status of its couriers after a tribunal ruled one of its workers was actually an employee with rights to a minimum wage, superannuation contributions and unfair dismissal protection.
The ruling poses a major challenge to the delivery giant’s business model, which relies on classifying its workers as “independent contractors” who have much more flexible shifts but lack those protections and are therefore generally cheaper to employ.
Fair Work Commissioner Ian Cambridge decided on Tuesday that Diego Franco, the Deliveroo rider who brought the case with the Transport Workers Union’s help, was not carrying on his own independent business but was instead an employee.
Among the reasons were that Mr Franco did not build up his own business or brand as a rider, booked his shifts through a company system, did not have a distinct trade or profession, dressed in clothing with Deliveroo branding, and did not bring his own significant assets to the business.
Mr Franco, the sole breadwinner for his wife and infant daughter, decided to bring his case last year after being booted off the app with seven days notice.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison says the COVID-19 pandemic is “raging” in developing countries and “morphing” every day, and the greatest threat is the emergence of new strains of the virus.
“When you see the pandemic this year raging through developing countries, then the great risk as we’re already seeing is new strains, new variants coming through,” he said at a press conference in Brisbane this morning.
Scott Morrison on Monday.Credit:Dominic Lorrimer
“I’m not going to take risks with Australians’ lives. I’m not going to do that and I’m going to make sure we maintain a regime that so far has avoided the loss of 30,000 lives in this country and has seen more Australians come back into work after the pandemic than were there before.”
It was not yet safe to reopen international borders but Australia was working towards it, he said.
Options being considered included different quarantine arrangements and travel bubbles with other countries like Singapore, but Mr Morrison said “we’re some way off of that”.
He also said comments by Virgin Australia’s chief executive, who has pushed for borders to be reopened earlier than mid-2022, were “somewhat insensitive”. The Virgin boss said there may be some deaths from COVID-19 but it would be “way smaller” than deaths associated with the flu (the source for which is unclear).
“You know, 910 Australians have lost their lives. Every single one of those lives was a terrible tragedy, and it doesn’t matter how old they were,” Mr Morrison said.
“Some were younger, some were older. They were someone’s mum, someone’s dad, someone’s auntie, someone’s cousin, brother, sister, friend. Nine hundred and ten – all felt extremely consciously by those loved ones around them. And so, no, I find it very difficult to have any part of what was said there.”
Victoria’s Acting Premier James Merlino and Public Transport Minister Ben Carroll are speaking in Ballarat this morning. You can watch the press conference live here.
The NSW government will not step in to help vaccinate people living in disability care after the federal government revealed on Monday that it had vaccinated fewer than 1000 of this vulnerable group nationally.
NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian said it was difficult for the state to interfere in the contracts the federal government had with private providers tasked with vaccinating people in disability care facilities.
Premier Gladys Berejiklian said on Monday NSW is moving faster than the federal government’s projected vaccine rollout. Credit:Sam Mooy
“These are contracts the federal government is overseeing,” Ms Berejiklian said at a press conference on Tuesday morning.
“Of course, we’d like to see the most vulnerable vaccinated as soon as possible and NSW is keen to do that, but the federal government has that responsibility and we urge them to intervene in any which way they can to expedite the process.”
Ms Berejiklian said reopening borders could be considered once 5 million people in the state had been inoculated.
“Medical experts say that so called herd immunity exists [when] between 75 and 80 per cent of the population have been vaccinated, but even then there’s huge risks for those [who] aren’t vaccinated,” she said.
NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian says Australia has “a big job ahead of us in getting most of our community vaccinated” against COVID-19 and until that point any conversation about reopening international borders is premature.
“There is no doubt that the vaccination program is key to our freedom,” Ms Berejiklian said at a press conference in Sydney this morning.
NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian (right) and Health Minister Brad Hazzard at the mass vaccination centre at Sydney Olympic Park on Monday.Credit:Sam Mooy
“We all have a big job ahead of us in getting most of our community vaccinated and until that time we can’t even really have the conversation. We need to get cracking and that’s why NSW is really stepping up to do more than what we’ve been asked to do.
“We want our community vaccinated as soon as possible to be able to give us those choices. At the moment we don’t have those choices and options because our community isn’t vaccinated.”
Virgin Australia’s chief executive courted controversy yesterday by calling for Australia’s borders to be reopened before mid-2022, the timeframe assumed in the federal budget papers, and asserted that some people may die but it would be “way smaller” than the number of people dying from the flu. The health advice underlying that claim is not clear.
Ms Berejiklian was asked about what she would consider acceptable and recoiled quickly from the line of questioning.
“Please, no death is acceptable. Please don’t put words in my mouth. I’ve never said that and I never would.”
She said the state had worked hard to protect life and keep the community safe.
Community safety “always has to come first”, she said, but the government believed that decisions could be made to ease coronavirus restrictions when they were backed by facts and science.
The New York Times has published a feature on the circumstances leading up to the escalation in violence between Israelis and Palestinians in Gaza, which is now at its deadliest point in years.
Cross-border air war: a fire north of Gaza City, along with rockets shot from from Gaza toward Israel.Credit:Getty
It reports on claims that a turning point was an Israeli police raid on April 13 the the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, one of the holiest sites in Islam. It was one of several actions that led less than a month later to the sudden resumption of war between Israel and Hamas, the militant group that rules the Gaza Strip, and the outbreak of civil unrest between Arabs and Jews across Israel.
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMijgFodHRwczovL3d3dy50aGVhZ2UuY29tLmF1L25hdGlvbmFsL2F1c3RyYWxpYS1uZXdzLWxpdmUtaXNyYWVsLXBhbGVzdGluZS1jb25mbGljdC1jb250aW51ZXMtY3Jvd24tcm95YWwtY29tbWlzc2lvbi1yZXN1bWVzLTIwMjEwNTE3LXA1N3NvMy5odG1s0gGOAWh0dHBzOi8vYW1wLnRoZWFnZS5jb20uYXUvbmF0aW9uYWwvYXVzdHJhbGlhLW5ld3MtbGl2ZS1pc3JhZWwtcGFsZXN0aW5lLWNvbmZsaWN0LWNvbnRpbnVlcy1jcm93bi1yb3lhbC1jb21taXNzaW9uLXJlc3VtZXMtMjAyMTA1MTctcDU3c28zLmh0bWw?oc=5
2021-05-18 00:00:02Z
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