Health News at Your Fingertips

Sarah Martin

Milton Dick confirmed as parliament’s new speaker

In case people missed this late yesterday, Queensland Labor MP Milton Dick has been confirmed as the parliament’s new speaker.

In a statement, Dick said he would accept the government’s nomination as Speaker of the House of Representatives for the 47th Parliament. Dick said:

I am honoured to be endorsed today by the Federal Parliamentary Labor Party.

Out of deep respect for the Office of Speaker I will be consulting with Members from across the House of Representatives, to consult and seek their support.

I will now follow and respect the processes of election to this important role.

Brrrr, it’s cold down south

There were very chilly conditions for the southern parts of the country this morning, with frost in Tasmania, while parts of Melbourne had the coldest morning in four years.

Adeshola Ore

Victorian opposition seizes on Ibac findings

The Victorian opposition has seized on the findings of a joint integrity agency investigation that revealed the widespread misuse of public funds for political purposes and a “catalogue” of unethical behaviour in the state’s Labor Party branch.

The investigation found two former Andrews government ministers breached parliamentary codes of conduct when they misused public funds to fuel a vast branch stacking operation, but there was not enough proof they had committed criminal offences to recommend prosecution.

It found the blatant use of public resources in the moderate Labor faction was extraordinary and shocking. But no evidence of potential misuse of public funds was discovered within other factions.

Opposition leader Matthew Guy said the report showed the Andrews government was “mired in corruption, cover-ups, and political games at the expense of Victorians”.

He said in a statement:

Victoria needs a Premier and a government totally focused on ending the health crisis and supporting communities to recover and rebuild.

Remember this November, Daniel Andrews and Labor are not a party for our state’s future.

Josh Butler

‘We have the strongest possible partnership with Sri Lanka’: home affairs minister

Let’s return to the earlier Radio National interview from home affairs minister Clare O’Neil, who said Australia’s aid to Sri Lanka isn’t just “transactional” to stem potential asylum seeker boat arrivals.

O’Neil said Sri Lanka is one of Australia’s “very dear and old friends”, and warned the country’s food and fuel shortages, and economic crisis, would get “dramatically worse in the months ahead”. The minister visited Sri Lanka, historically a key transit point for asylum seeker boats trying to reach Australia, in mid-June and said she discussed the country’s economic crisis, crime, and people smuggling.

O’Neil said:

This is an area on which we have the strongest possible partnership with Sri Lanka.

Foreign minister Penny Wong announced last month that Australia would give Sri Lanka $50m in development assistance for food and healthcare needs. Asked whether Australia would provide more funding to the country, and whether Sri Lanka’s economic issues may prompt more asylum seeker boats, O’Neil said Australia was in discussions.

We’re continuing to talk to Sri Lanka about how we can support them. You’re making this sound very transactional and it’s genuinely not.

There is a geopolitical context here. Australia is safest in a region of prosperous, functional, strong democracies, of which Sri Lanka was one until very recently, so we have an absolute national interest in helping this country back on its feet.

But O’Neil also sent a stern message to people smugglers, reinforcing that Australia’s Operation Sovereign Borders stance on boat arrivals had not changed.

Don’t get on a boat… you will be sent back.

Everyone gets returned. That’s the Australian government’s policy.

There were 9,650 new cases in the last reporting period, and 21 people are in intensive care.

Michael McGowan

NSW opposition calls for answers after Barilaro’s chief of staff’s claims

The New South Wales opposition has seized on the evidence from John Barilaro’s former chief of staff, calling on premier Dominic Perrottet to front the media to answer questions before he leaves on a 10-day trade mission to Japan, South Korea and India on Wednesday.

NSW Labor leader Chris Minns said the submission from Mark Connell suggested the New York trade job was “created by John Barilaro for him to fill”.

Minns said:

These revelations indicate that that was the plan all along.

I think we all need to have the answer as to how and whether any other cabinet ministers in the NSW government were aware of this scheme and if they were, what steps will the NSW premier take in order to rectify this. At the end of the day this goes to the integrity of the NSW government.

Labor’s leader in the upper house, Penny Sharpe, who sits on the committee probing the appointment, also said she would welcome Barilaro giving evidence. She also said:

[It is] clear that both Mr Ayres and Mr Perrottet are going to have to come before the committee sooner rather than later.

Barilaro, as we told you earlier, has denied Connell’s evidence that he indicated he wanted the job as early as April 2019 as “false” and “fictitious”.

Circling back to the Prime Minister’s press conference in Melbourne, where Anthony Albanese was asked about mask mandates.

Q: “Prime minister, did Professor Kelly, the chief health officer, actually recommend mandates to you?”

Albanese responded: “No.”

He was then asked if he is expecting his colleagues to wear masks in Parliament next week.

I’m expecting colleagues to follow the advice which is out there, which is if you can’t socially distance, if you’re around the corridors of Parliament House, then you should follow the advice which is to wear a mask.

The prime minister said chief health officers had spoken about wanting to encourage masks where appropriate.

The rationale is that we listen to the advice from the chief health officers. And what the chief health officers who met last week said was that they wanted to encourage mask wearing where it was appropriate.

And we know that there are some mandates in place. The truth is that if you have mandates, you’ve got to enforce them. And the mandates, like when I spoke to the New South Wales premier last week, he indicated that whilst there are mandates on public transport in New South Wales, not everyone is wearing a mask. So we do want to encourage that behaviour.

People have been incredibly responsible during this pandemic. People have done it tough. People have looked after each other, and I’m confident that they’ll continue to do so.

We’ll continue to take advice from the experts who are the chief health officers.

Barilaro denies former chief of staff’s claims, calling them ‘fictitious’

Michael McGowan

Former New South Wales deputy premier John Barilaro has put out a statement rejecting the explosive submission from his former chief of staff Mark Connell as “fictitious” and “false”.

As we’ve reported, this morning the upper house inquiry into Barilaro’s appointment to a lucrative New York trade job heard bombshell evidence from Connell regarding a conversation between the two that he alleges took place in April 2019.

Connell said the former deputy premier told him: “this is it; this is the job for when I get the fuck out of this place” prior to the jobs being publicly announced.

But Barilaro has dismissed the evidence, and insisted the inquiry should call him as a witness. He said in a statement:

The conversation he has recalled is fictitious, false and only serves as a reminder as to why we had to part ways.

If this inquiry is genuine in its intent to understand the process and the truth by which I was appointed, then surely I would be called up to provide this detail immediately.

The continued drip feed of select information from the inquiry into the public domain goes against all procedural fairness.

Companies should engage with staff on working-from-home decisions, health minister says

The health minister, Mark Butler, has taken to the mic at that press conference in Melbourne.

Butler is asked what employees should do in a situation where they are able to do their jobs from home but their employers are expressing a preference for them to come into work.

The chief medical officer Paul Kelly yesterday released a statement encouraging employers to consider whether working from home arrangements could be put in place over the coming weeks.

Butler said:

Our view [is it’s] really a case-by-case basis. Employers should be engaging with their employees … In good practice this should not be a decision employers take unilaterally. They should be engaging with their employees. That is the best approach … together coming to a view about the extent to which working from home arrangements on a very temporary basis could be put in place.

Albanese says more than 500,000 people had fourth jab in past week.

The prime minister provided figures on the uptake of antivirals and booster jabs:

As a direct result of the decisions that were made and announced over the past week to make antivirals more available to allow for telehealth consultations to go for longer so that people can get those antivirals prescribed. Some 30,000 additional people have had access to antivirals, bringing that number up to 116,000.

Just as people are out there getting their booster shots in record numbers. More than 500,000 in the last week have had their fourth shot.

‘Get your booster … stay at home if you’re sick’: Albanese on Covid

Albanese says there are four key ways to make a difference … with the spike in Covid cases Australia is going through:

Get your booster.

Get access to antivirals if you’re eligible.

Wear a mask if it’s appropriate.

And stay-at-home if you are sick.

Albanese says health and economy intertwined in Covid response

Albanese is saying health and economic outcomes are intertwined when it comes to the pandemic response, and it is not a choice between the two. He says the vaccine and antiviral medications are “making a real difference, literally saving lives, but also saving economies as well”.

We know that early on in the outbreak, there was a bit of a debate about whether it was health or the economy. And the truth is, unless you get the health outcomes right, unless you get the science outcomes right, the economic impact would have always been more severe.

The lesson of the pandemic very early on was that you needed to improve health outcomes or else you would not have a choice but to see economic costs imposed as a direct result of the pandemic. Livelihoods lost as well as, of course, lives lost. The work that’s being done here is incredibly important. Anti-viral medicines like the ones being made here at WEHI can alleviate the symptoms when people have the virus.

Anthony Albanese is speaking in Melbourne at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, where anti-viral medications are made. He says the pandemic has helped to illuminate the impact of science.

If there is anything that has come out of this dreadful pandemic, that at least is a bit of a positive, it’s that there is now such a broad recognition across Australian society that science isn’t something that’s abstract, that produces books and produces papers – it’s something that makes a difference to people’s lives. It literally, as a result of collaborative research, including research done right here in Australia, including at this institute.

There were 12,984 new cases in the last reporting period, and 45 people are in intensive care.

Amy Remeikis

RBA governor welcomes review

On the RBA review Jim Chalmers outlined today (and Sarah Martin told you about earlier this morning) Phil Lowe says he welcomes the “health check” and thinks it may be quite helpful:

It’s entirely appropriate for the government to take stock ofAustralia’s monetary policy framework, something we welcome. Other central banks have periodically reviewed their frameworks. We have done it internally, continuously, but I think it’s useful in the public domain as well. We very much welcome it.

Adeshola Ore

Not enough proof for prosecution, Victorian watchdog says

More from the press conference with the Victorian ombudsman Deborah Glass and the head of the state’s corruption watchdog Robert Redlich in Melbourne about their investigation into allegations of the misuse of public funds and branch stacking in the Victorian Labor party.

The investigation found two former Andrews government ministers breached parliamentary codes of conduct when they misused public funds to fuel a vast branch-stacking operation, but there was not enough proof they had committed criminal offences to recommend prosecution.

Redlich said it was not uncommon for anti-corruption agencies to find no criminal offences could be uncovered but to reveal institutional failings:

I’m not particularly troubled by the conclusion that we’ve reached in relation to the two former ministers … that we cannot recommend to the director of public prosecutions for a trial to take place.

You can read that full statement from John Barilaro’s former chief of staff here: