Health News at Your Fingertips

With that, we will wrap up the blog for the evening. The election still hasn’t been called, but babies have been kissed, supermarket selfies have been taken, and hard hats have been donned.

Here were today’s major developments:

• In an escalation of the NSW Liberal factional stoush, Matthew Camenzuli has submitted a court application seeking to challenge the preselections in the high court. He has since been expelled from the Liberal party under special powers used by NSW State director Chris Stone.
• New South Wales premier Dominic Perrottet labelled the Liberal preselection saga a “debacle” and an “abject failure”.
• Meanwhile, the prime minister has brushed off speculation about when he will call the election, telling reporters: “I said we would run a full term and I said we would run for three years.”
• In Covid news, Victoria has extended the pandemic declaration for three months to 12 July. Advice and statements of reasons will be tabled in parliament. It comes as NSW health minister Brad Hazzard tested positive to Covid-19, experiencing “minor, flu-like symptoms”.
• In another government headache, opposition leader Anthony Albanese called the former premier of NSW a “straight talker” after further texts allegedly sent by Gladys Berejiklian labelling the PM “obsessed with petty political point scoring” emerged.
• And the Queen has sent a message of support for flood-effected communities in NSW and Queensland as wars of words continue over the commonwealth allocation of disaster funding to affected regions.

Jeremy Rockliff has been confirmed as the next Tasmanian premier following the sudden resignation of Peter Gutwein.

54m ago04:30

Matthew Camenzuli expelled from Liberal party

Anne Davies

The man who has run and funded legal challenges against the NSW Liberal party seeking to challenge captains picks of federal candidates, Matthew Camenzuli, has been expelled from the party.

The NSW state director, Chris Stone, used his special campaign powers today to expel Camenzuli, a businessman and member of the state executive, after he decided to pursue a high court challenge to Tuesday’s ruling.

The NSW court of appeal had ruled in favour of a federal intervention which installed candidates in 12 NSW seats.

Camenzuli had argued the constitution required plebiscites of the members to be held. The expulsion was on the grounds that the director determined his actions were damaging the party’s chances at the imminent election. It will need to be confirmed by the state executive when it meets on Friday night.

“He’s actively trying to stop us from nominating 12 candidates in seats,” one source said.

But the expulsion could prove equally as divisive as the preselection issues themselves.

“I wouldn’t have thought taking legal action against the party was grounds for suspension,” one party member said. “Lots of people have done that and not had any repercussions.”

A spokesman for the NSW division said the party did not comment on internal matters and Camenzuli did not return calls.

Camenzuli sent an email to all members of the party on Tuesday explaining the reasons why he was taking legal action, saying he was seeking to enforce members’ rights. Such emails are permitted from members of state executive.

1h ago04:27

NSW Liberals preselections to be challenged in high court

Paul Karp

Scott Morrison’s hand-picked New South Wales candidates should not receive Liberal endorsement on ballot papers until an urgent high court hearing, Matthew Camenzuli has argued in a court application.

In an escalation of the NSW Liberal factional stoush, Camenzuli has asked to appeal against the NSW court of appeal’s decision upholding federal intervention that allowed a three-person panel including Morrison to select 13 candidates for the upcoming election.

In Camenzuli’s application, seen by Guardian Australia, the businessman seeks a speedy hearing, warning of the “imminence of the issue of the writs” which will formally start the 2022 election campaign and allow party officers to write to the Australian Electoral Commission nominating endorsed candidates.

Camenzuli’s lawyers note the case is “of considerable public importance in that its answer has the potential to affect who is endorsed as Liberal Party candidates” and therefore the constitution of the parliament.

Camenzuli is seeking orders to prevent the federal director, Andrew Hirst, NSW state director, Christopher Stone, and three other Liberal officials from requesting that the AEC print the Liberal Party name beside candidates his case alleged have not been properly endorsed due to the federal intervention.

The case argues that the court of appeal erred in both its central findings: that the internal party dispute was not one courts could rule on; and the federal takeover of preselections was allowed by the Liberal Party rules.

The Victorian premier has extended the pandemic declaration for three months to 12 July.

A pandemic declaration gives the health minister authority to make pandemic orders he considers “reasonably necessary” to protect public health after considering the chief health officer’s advice and other factors – including economic and social.

The advice and statement of reasons will be tabled in parliament.

Premier Daniel Andrews said:

This extension enables us to keep modest and sensible settings in place to reduce transmission and hospitalisation – that means more support for health workers and limiting its impact on our community.

We don’t want rules on any longer than they need to be – we’ll continue to follow the advice to protect what we’ve built while protecting our community.

Personally, I can no longer reach “albanese.com.au”.

The newly minted South Australian premier, Peter Malinauskas, isn’t going to spend his time in power complaining about the state’s share of GST, or other perennial issues, AAP reports.

The Labor leader instead wants to focus on the future.

After a landslide election win in March Malinauskas used a Wednesday National Press Club address to introduce his agenda for structural reforms to higher education, childcare and the economy.

He, of course, vowed support for federal Labor leader Anthony Albanese’s prime ministerial bid, accusing the coalition government of focusing on short-term fixes and “intergenerational envy”:

I want to go beyond the here and now. I am not here to have a whinge about the GST, I’m not here to have a whinge about water. I’m not here to have a cultural war about renewables.

Just as I spent the South Australian campaign talking about the next generation, I want to spend every day in government on the same project.

State governments are “desperate for a federal partner” on future challenges, Malinauskas said. He criticised the coalition for fixating on short-term cash handouts in the recent federal budget to address cost-of-living pressures, instead of long-term reforms.

The government had allowed the national economy to become reliant on exporting commodities such as coal rather than developing “brain jobs” for the future, he added.

Malinauskas also said it will take a federal Labor government to implement an Indigenous voice to parliament, and highlighted his own promise to deliver a state-based treaty and voice for Aboriginal people.

He additionally vowed to advocate for an increase of Australia’s humanitarian intake cap of 13,750 refugee places.

2h ago03:21

Benita Kolovos

Victoria’s parliament is set to hold a joint sitting this evening to fill the Senate vacancy left by the late Labor senator Kimberley Kitching.

Jana Stewart, who ran against federal treasurer Josh Frydenberg in 2019, will be confirmed as senator.

The Mutthi Mutthi and Wamba Wamba woman previously worked as the deputy secretary of Victoria’s Department of Justice.

She was due to be Labor’s candidate for Pascoe Vale at the November state election. Kitching died of a suspected heart attack on March 10 at age 42.

You can watch from about 6:30pm here.

In further anticipation of what we have to look forward to in the coming month, treasurer Josh Frydenberg has also been taking pictures in supermarkets today:

And speaking rudimentary Italian:

2h ago03:09

Daniel Hurst

Further to the previous post:

At the Senate estimates hearing, Penny Wong went on to ask why the government wanted defence to have the response in its name.

She said the article by Peter Jennings was mainly criticising the government and its decisions.

She secured confirmation that the cancellation of the SkyGuardian program was a government decision (to help fund the Redspice cyber security package), which went through the cabinet’s national security committee and expenditure review committee.

Wong said both Peter Dutton and Scott Morrison were on those committees, and she asked why “they’re asking you to defend it rather than them”.

The acting secretary of the Department of Defence, Matt Yannopoulos, replied:

Well, the way I thought about it was the media article misrepresented our view of our capability and hence the short statement.

He said the department had a track record of publishing short statements under the banner “on the record” where it felt that inaccurate comments had been made.

I have no difficulty with the message that was published on our website.

Wong told the Senate hearing Dutton likes to be seen as “talking tough” so “why did he make other people take this up to Mr Jennings?”

The government senator Jonathon Duniam, representing the defence minister at the hearing, repeated that defence had a record of correcting the record:

I daresay that fits in the same vein … I suspect if the department had a strong view about not doing something, they’d not do it.

Labor’s defence spokesperson, Brendan O’Connor, said in a later statement:

If department is expected to be the defenders of the Morrison government’s bad decisions, then when will they find time to do their day job?

2h ago03:07

Daniel Hurst

A request from Peter Dutton’s office prompted the Department of Defence to issue a statement rejecting criticism of the government’s decision to cancel a $1.3bn armed drone program, a Senate estimates hearing has been told.

The acting secretary of the Department of Defence, Matt Yannopoulos, was asked to clarify how the department came to issue a statement on Monday that hit back at criticism from the executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, Peter Jennings.

Jennings wrote in The Australian that the decision to scrap the armed drone program – known as SkyGuardian – was “to use a strategic term, mind-bogglingly stupid” because it was “a rare defence project that was going to deliver new combat capability in just a few years”.

Defence’s statement in response said the SkyGuardian “provides an excellent capability system” but “tough decisions are required to optimise the ADF force structure for the current strategic environment”.

It said:

The Australian Government has made the hard decision to prioritise resources in response to the complex and challenging strategic environment we face.

Here is the key exchange from this afternoon’s back-and-forth between the departmental secretary and Labor senator Penny Wong:

Yannopoulos:

On 4 April, we had a conversation between our media team and our minister’s office. It was suggested we should respond to the Jennings article.

Wong:

I love [that]. It was suggested, meaning the minister’s office suggested it.

Yannopoulos:

… asking if we would respond. We drafted a response, or drafted the statement, and it was cleared in the normal way through the department, noted by the minister’s office, and put up on our website.

Wong:

Did the minister’s office change the draft?

Yannopoulos:

No.

Wong:

Thank you for being upfront about the fact it was at their request, rather than me having to press you on that.

The WA premier, Mark McGowan, and the opposition leader, Anthony Albanese, are having a whale of a time in Perth, from holding babies to taking supermarket selfies.

The shadow minister for disaster and emergency management, Murray Watt, appeared on ABC News earlier this afternoon in the wake of internal and external criticism on the prime minister’s response to the flood disaster.

Watt said his understanding from the Queensland government – who today criticised the prime minister for refusing to provide additional funding support – was that Scott Morrison believed it was a state government responsibility.

The prime minister makes this up as he goes along. If you look back at the bushfires, there were also programs the federal government agreed to chip in for and others that they didn’t. Now we have floods … he would move heaven and earth to get support [in a] National party electorate and he was prepared to leave a Labor party electorate dangling.

Significant news. As we know, the opposition leader is yet to have acquired Covid-19 which could put quite a dent on his election campaign.

The NSW Nurses and Midwives’ Association (NSWNMA) has held talks with the NSW government to discuss staffing improvements and better pay for nurses and midwives.

It comes off the back of a second statewide strike held last Thursday in response to a widespread staffing crisis hitting the public health sector.

The NSWNMA today met with the state health minister, Brad Hazzard, and the finance minister, Damien Tudehope, to discuss the association’s demands.

The NSWNMA general secretary, Brett Holmes, said the pandemic had created challenges for the health system but it had also exposed a “myriad of issues”.

It took a huge amount of courage for our members to participate in last week’s 24-hour statewide strike. They were angry their ongoing pleas for help and support had been ignored.

We look forward to continuing meaningful discussions with the government to address the issues our members have raised repeatedly.

Holmes said the NSWNMA would continue campaigning for shift by shift nurse-to-patient ratios, better maternity staffing, improvements in regional health services and fair pay.

The NSWNMA has been summonsed to the supreme court next week for breaching orders issued by the NSW industrial relations commission in relation to strike actions.