Health News at Your Fingertips

The parliament is winding down for another day, but we will all be back tomorrow.

Nino Bucci will guide you though the evening.

Thank you again for joining me for another packed full parliament-estimates-Covid coverage day. We’ll be back for more tomorrow. I need to go restock my caffeine and sugar supplies, but I’ll be back early Wednesday morning.

Take care of you.

Jim Chalmers has responded to Guy Debelle’s comments in estimates today:

It’s a widely-shared view that it makes no sense for the government to withdraw support in the economy as unemployment continues to rise.

In the fortnight that jobkeeper was cut, jobs were lost in every state and territory.

Today’s testimony follows recent comments from the RBA governor that he wants to see “more than just ‘progress towards full employment’”.

Scott Morrison doesn’t have a goal to get closer enough to full employment, let alone a plan to realise it, with the unemployment rate not expected to return to its pre-crisis level within four years.

Decisions taken by the Liberals and Nationals mean that the Morrison recession will be deeper than necessary and the unemployment queues longer than they need to be.

Qantas is resuming Sydney to Launceston flights, following the border opening between NSW and Tassie.

From Qantas’ statement:

Beginning 4 December 2020, Qantas will operate three return services per week with its Boeing 717 aircraft, increasing to four return services from the following week onwards until 1 February.

This will give travellers almost 900 additional seats on the route each week. The airline will look to add more flights beyond eight week period if there is demand. This is the first time the flying kangaroo has flown Launceston-Sydney since 2004.

With borders opening up, Qantas will also restart flights between Hobart to Sydney, with 11 return services per week from 6 November 2020.

This announcement follows two other new routes the Qantas Group has launched to Tasmania in response to demand – Brisbane-Hobart with Qantas and Gold Coast-Hobart with Jetstar.

A bit more from Mike Bowers’s lens to your eyeballs.

Right, some clarity on the Victorian household rules here from AAP:

From Wednesday, two adults from one household will be able to visit another home accompanied by any dependents.

Households will be restricted to one social gathering a day, meaning those who receive visitors can’t go to someone else’s home that same day.

Melburnians have previously only been able to welcome partners into their homes, or friends under the ‘single bubble’ arrangement.

Under the latest arrangements, people will also have to stay within their 25km travel limit.

So it is one household visit a day. If your teenaged child visits someone, or has a visitor over, that is your visit done for the day. Both visitors have to be from the same household. You can’t meet up with two friends who live in different houses, for instance.

If you live in a share house it is still just one visit from two people (from the same household). If you don’t share friends or family, you will have to come up with some sort of roster, or rotating system.

If Paul has George and his flatmate Ringo over for a visit, then John will have to wait to see Yoko the next day.

Josh Frydenberg has no regrets over his speech

Just on the RBA’s deputy governor’s comments there, it is possible that if Australia records a quarter of positive growth, then technically, you could say the recession is over – the technical definition of a recession being two consecutive quarters of negative growth.

But that doesn’t mean the downturn is over. There is still a very long way to go with this.

Dr Guy Debelle (deputy governor of the RBA) told Senate estimates the bank’s expectations for the economy in response to questioning from Bridget McKenzie about the impacts on the economy from the domestic border closures – particularly Victoria’s.

Speaking in “generalities”, Dr Debelle said:

We are releasing some forecasts next week. We are mindful we have a monetary decision between now and then … but at the moment … our best guess is it looks like the September quarter for the country probably recorded positive growth rather than negative and that the best that we can tell – and this will be confirmed when we see the national accounts .. .the strength of the growth of the rest of the country was more than the drag from Victoria and possibly the drag from Victoria was a little less than we had forecast in August.

The forecasts he is speaking about are ahead of the central bank board meeting next week.