Health News at Your Fingertips

The treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, counselled his colleagues that it was important not to accept commentators’ views that Coalition already had the next election in the bag.

At the joint party room meeting, the deputy prime minister, Michael McCormack, said there was no greater privilege than being in government and delivering for communities.

McCormack said in his recent travels he had found Australians encouraging, optimistic and hopeful.

Scott Morrison has urged his Coalition team to be focused on delivery and to work together as a team.

Addressing his colleagues at the joint Coalition party room meeting this morning, Morrison welcomed his team back to Canberra.

Morrison paid tribute to longstanding MP Kevin Andrews and recognised the way he had handled the events of the weekend – losing Liberal preselection in the Victorian seat of Menzies – with great dignity.

Also he welcomed back David Coleman to the party room.

Morrison told Coalition colleagues it was “important we continue our Australian way of handling the challenges before us”.

He argued that approach had set Australia apart from the rest of the world, and Australia must be vigilant about maintaining those efforts. Morrison said not everything goes exactly as we may wish in responding to a global pandemic, but he would much rather be here than elsewhere.

The prime minister said Australians were primarily worried about health and jobs – and so the government must maintain a focus on delivery, in order to maintain confidence of the people.

He said work was needed not just get through but to set Australia up for the period after the pandemic as well.

Morrison described Australia’s workforce challenges as the single largest challenge ahead – including the need to prepare workforce for future jobs, helping workers transition, helping people to fill vacant jobs, and ensuring skills to commercialise science and technology.

“As a party for jobs we have to be a party for skills.”

Morrison noted the death of former Nationals leader Doug Anthony, and stressed that the Coalition parties went to the Australian people “together to seek their re-endorsement”.

Morrison invoked an analogy from his rowing days, urging colleagues to keep their eyes in the boat and work together as a team.

The mayor of the City of Swan in the Perth hills, Kevin Bailey, says at least 30 homes have already been destroyed in the out of control bushfire burning around his township.

The Department of Fire and Emergency Services has yet to release an official figure on the number structures that have been engulfed by flame, but Bailey says the losses are significant.

There’s about 7,000 hectares been destroyed and it appears to be some significant property loss. We are just waiting for confirmation of the numbers but we’re looking somewhere in the vicinity of 30-plus homes lost.

The fire was very aggressive yesterday afternoon and through last night. The fire has come out of the hills towards the flat part of the plain. There is an awful lot of smoke through the northern suburbs of Perth and our suburbs are very much affected by the smoke. It has been a very big fire.

A wind change is now threatening the town of Gidgegannup, placing hundreds of homes in danger. Residents in Gidgegannup and Bullsbrook have been told that it is too late to leave and going now would be deadly.

Bailey said that luckily there have so far been no casualties.

We’ve been very fortunate. One fighter has been taken to hospital with smoke related issues but I understand they’ve recovered quite well. Fire plans have been in place for a long time so it is very pleasing to see people react, look after themselves.

I visited the local evacuation centre about 10.30pm last night and there were about 50 people there at the time. There were still on the way in. A lot of people had relocated to other people’s homes, especially with the Covid restrictions on, they’re taking that option, rather than go into a large crowd, they sought other accommodation. Significant numbers of people have been relocated.

You can read more about the Perth Hills bush fire here:

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Morning all. Amy has brought your attention to the rituals that are deployed at the opening of the parliament.

A trip to the Australian War Memorial. A church service. It’s worth noting that the Labor leader Anthony Albanese raised the frontier wars during his remarks at the war memorial last night – and in stark terms.

Albanese’s point was the stories Australians tell themselves about sacrifices made during armed conflict are not complete.

These stories often omit the war unleashed on the original inhabitants of the land by British settlers. Here’s an excerpt from his speech.

Anthony Albanese:

Our nation has stood against darkness and won, but darkness is not vanquished from the world. Freedom is not something we can keep carelessly. Nor is freedom free. We gather here to remember those who have paid its price. But there are holes in our memory we need to fill. Not least the Indigenous soldiers who went and fought. Those First Australians who donned the khaki and left their homes to fight for a nation that was not prepared to fight for them. A nation that did not treat them as equals. Not when they went. Not when they returned from those distant battlefields. Yet they went. They fought for a continent that had been the home of their people for a long, unbroken chain of millennia. A continent for which their ancestors had fought so desperately during the frontier wars — wars we have not yet learned to speak of so loudly. They died protecting their loved ones. They died protecting their way of life. They died for their country. We must remember them just as we remember those who fought more recent foes.