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Australian cricketers arrive in Sydney on private flight after fleeing India
A group of Australian cricketers and support staff have arrived in Sydney on a private flight after fleeing the COVID-19 crisis in India via the Maldives, Sarah McPhee reports.
The cohort of more than 30 people, including cricketers Pat Cummins and David Warner, touched down at Sydney’s international airport on Monday morning, after a ban on arrivals from India was lifted on Saturday.
David Warner and Pat Cummins are among those who have returned to Australia from India via the Maldives.Credit:Getty Images
“They’ll come back under their own steam, on their own ticket, and ... they won’t be taking the spot in quarantine of any other Australian who is returning home under the NSW caps,” Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Sunday. They will be spread across a number of Sydney hotels for their mandatory 14-day quarantine.
Meanwhile, thousands of citizens remain stranded in India. The first repatriation flight since the ban was lifted landed in Darwin on Saturday with 80 of its estimated 150 scheduled passengers. More than 70 were barred from flying after either testing positive ahead of the flight or being listed as a close contact.
Former News Corp executive appointed to ABC board
Media reporter Zoe Samios has the latest news on a fresh round of appointments to the ABC board – and among them is Former News Corp and Foxtel boss Peter Tonagh, who led the government’s 2018 ABC and SBS efficiency review.
Mr Tonagh was part of an effort to save Australian Associated Press last year and was involved in lobbying efforts that awarded the newswire $15 million in funding over two years in the latest federal budget.
Peter Tonagh has joined the ABC board.Credit:Rhett Wyman
In his role heading the government-funded efficiency review of Australia’s public broadcasters, Mr Tonagh found the national broadcaster needed appropriate funding to maintain the level of service it currently provides, while also recommending a back-office merger of the two.
The Star eyes potential jewel in Crown
In business news, the James Packer-backed Crown Resorts received a $12 billion merger proposal from its Sydney rival The Star on Sunday while US private equity group Blackstone upped its takeover bid to about $8.3 billion. (Chump change, really).
As business columnist Elizabeth Knight writes in her analysis, the bad blood between these casino groups is the stuff of legend.
Jewel in the Crown? Maybe. Crown Resorts has been granted interim liquor licences at its Barangaroo tower but is still deemed unsuitable to operate a casino there.Credit:Peter Braig
Business reporter Patrick Hatch reports today that Crown is now facing growing calls from shareholders to start a formal sale process for the wounded casino giant as its board has so far played a straight bat to the approaches.
The flurry of action comes as a Victorian Royal Commission begins hearings today into the suitability of Crown Resorts to operate its Melbourne casino. A damning NSW inquiry found in February that the casino giant was unfit to hold a casino licence in Sydney, leaving its plans to open gaming floors at its new development under a cloud. That’s not the end of the story, though, and it is working towards becoming suitable.
Crown was set to open the gaming floors of its $2.2 billion resort at Barangaroo in Sydney in late December but NSW’s gaming authority blocked it from commencing operations after the group admitted to the inquiry that criminals probably laundered money at its Melbourne and Perth casinos.
UK-based Aussie doctor warns against COVID-19 complacency in winter
An Australian doctor who oversaw vaccinations in an English city during the UK’s second wave of COVID-19 infections says Australia is at risk of another deadly outbreak unless more people are inoculated before winter.
Chief reporter at The Age, Chip Le Grand, reports today on the warning by Dr Ian Gemmell, the West Australian-born medical director of a large vaccination centre in Salisbury.
“If you have got the ability to vaccinate now, prior to the cold weather coming on, now is the time to be doing it,” said Dr Gemmell.
“If people delay getting their vaccination or choose not to have it because they don’t consider it an issue, it is going to come back and it is going to bite you on the backside.”
In winter 2020, at the height of Victoria’s second major coronavirus outbreak after the disease escaped into the community via hotel quarantine security staff, Victoria recorded a peak of 687 cases in one July day.
NSW, Victoria pressure Morrison government on international borders
You might recall that in the aftermath of the Morrison government’s second pandemic budget last week NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian said she was “more ambitious” than her federal counterparts when it came to the re-opening of international borders.
The federal budget assumes that borders will remain closed until mid-2022.
Now, NSW and Victoria have ratcheted up the pressure on borders, write Alexandra Smith, Rachel Clun and Liam Mannix.
Having a whale of a time. NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian and Treasurer Dominic Perrottet.Credit:Brook Mitchell
“A vaccine target that we can work towards will give business and community confidence that we will not be closed off to the world indefinitely,” NSW Treasurer Dominic Perrottet told the Herald.
Acting Victorian Premier James Merlino said Australia could begin winding back restrictions once a greater proportion of the population had been vaccinated, agreeing with the state’s Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton that we could no longer act as “Fortress Australia”.
Acting Premier James Merlino on Sunday.Credit:Paul Jeffers
But Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Sunday the country could not use vaccinations alone as a reason for reopening its borders.
“Even in that circumstance, you’re still talking about millions of Australians who wouldn’t have been vaccinated because a, they’re children, or b, they’ve chosen not to be,” Mr Morrison said.
Australia passed the three-million mark for administered vaccine doses on Friday.
Gaza City hostilities ‘absolutely appalling’: UN
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the UN Security Council on Sunday that the Israel-Palestine hostilities, which have escalated dramatically over the past week, were “utterly appalling” and called for an immediate ceasefire.
Opening the 15-member council’s first public meeting on the conflict, Guterres said the United Nations was actively working towards a ceasefire and called on both sides to allow mediation talks.
A ball of fire erupts from a media building in Gaza City after an Israeli airstrike.Credit:AP
But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that Israeli air strikes on Gaza City, which started on May 14, were continuing at “full force”. At least 42 people were killed on Sunday, medics said.
Peter Greste, founding director and spokesman for the Alliance for Journalists’ Freedom, writes that “on Saturday, an Israeli air strike destroyed an 11-storey apartment building used by local and international media companies, including the Associated Press (AP) news agency and Al Jazeera, my former employer”.
“It followed similar strikes on Tuesday and Wednesday targeting high-rise residential buildings that foreign and local journalists also used as offices,” he says.
The Associated Press’ top editor wants an independent investigation into the bombing of the building that was home to her news organisation and Al Jazeera.
World editor Michelle Griffin joined Nathanael Cooper last week on our podcast, Please Explain, to discuss the growing tensions in the volatile region.
Welcome to our live coverage of the day’s events
By Michaela Whitbourn
Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of the day’s events. I’m Michaela Whitbourn and I’ll be keeping you informed of this morning’s need-to-know news and analysis.
Here’s what has happened overnight:
Palestinians attend the funeral of two women and eight children of the Abu Hatab family in Gaza City, who were killed by an Israeli air strike, on Saturday.Credit:AP
- Temporary social restrictions imposed in Greater Sydney (including Wollongong, the Central Coast and the Blue Mountains) eased at 12.01 this morning. The restrictions were imposed after an eastern suburbs man and his wife tested positive to COVID-19. The man’s infection was linked to a returned traveller from the US, but the “missing link” between his infection and the traveller was never found. The couple remain the only locally detected cases to date of the B.1.617 variant of the virus in NSW, which was first detected in India in October. The state reported no new locally acquired cases, and three overseas acquired cases, in the 24 hours to 8pm on Saturday.
- The Israel-Palestine conflict continues to escalate. Israeli air strikes on Gaza City flattened three buildings and killed at least 42 people on Sunday, medics said, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suggested the war between Israel and Palestinians in Gaza would continue despite international efforts to broker a ceasefire.
- The first repatriation flight from India to Australia since a temporary travel ban lifted landed in Darwin on Saturday with 80 of its estimated 150 scheduled passengers. More than 70 were barred from flying after either testing positive during their mandatory three-day hotel stay in Delhi or being listed as close contacts of those cases. Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the government would work with Qantas to ensure no more COVID-positive cases entered Australia from India after an Australian man received a positive nasal swab test result for COVID-19 after landing in Darwin. But the man has since tested negative and had previously had the virus, so the infection may be historical.
- No new local cases of coronavirus were detected in Victoria on Saturday following a positive case in a Melbourne man who acquired the virus in South Australian hotel quarantine before returning to the state on May 4.
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2021-05-16 21:27:39Z
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