Health News at Your Fingertips

With petrol prices continuing to soar, John Curtin Distinguished Professor Peter Newman from the Curtin University Sustainability Policy Institute says it’s time to make the switch to electric transport.

The oil crisis is finally happening after many previous shorter versions with serious fluctuations in price due to political interference in oil markets. These have been very big disruptions in the past. I was in San Francisco during the first oil crisis in 1973/74 when the whole city fell apart desperately trying to get their last tank of petrol.

We must act rapidly to get all electric transport so we can depend on local sunshine for our transport as well as our buildings.

We have electric trains, but we must go for electric buses and electric modern trams – and, of course, electric cars. It’s time to put the diesel subsidy into getting help for industry to switch to electric freight trains and trucks, electric tractors, and mining equipment. And it’s time for the fuel tax to be put into electric cars and electric public transport purchases and infrastructure.

From AAP:

Victoria’s health minister has been forced into seven-day quarantine after a family member tested positive for Covid-19 as the state’s case numbers grow.

Martin Foley said he returned a negative rapid antigen but since he was a close contact he would undergo isolation, meaning he will miss the first half of this state parliament sitting week.

“I feel healthy, so I’ll continue working remotely and will be doing regular tests,” he tweeted on Wednesday afternoon.

The minister held a press conference about vaccinations in the suburb of Sunshine earlier on Wednesday.

Victoria has seen a 10% rise in Covid-19 case numbers week-on-week as the state government pushes vaccinations ahead of winter.

The state’s daily Covid-19 figure, of 9,426 new infections, is the highest since posting 9,908 on 9 February.

From AAP:

Access to Victoria’s parliament is a privilege not a right, says a lawyer defending the rejection of a media pass for a conservative activist and political commentator.

Avi Yemini, the Australian bureau chief for Canadian far-right website Rebel News, is suing over a decision to refuse him media accreditation to allow him entry to both houses of state parliament, the building and its surrounds.

Yemini, whose lawyers describe him as a member of the “new media”, have argued in Victoria’s supreme court that he was denied procedural fairness when his accreditation application was rejected last year.

He has brought a case against the upper house president Nazih Elasmar, the lower house speaker, Colin Brooks, and the serjeant-at-arms, Paul Groenewegen.

But Chris Horan QC, representing the trio, said all cases for access were a matter of privilege.

“There’s no right or entitlement of journalists or anybody else to have access to any part of the parliamentary precinct,” he said.

“That doesn’t detract from the importance of freedom of the press or reporting on parliament, but the decision not to give a media pass is, of itself, not inconsistent with the freedom of expression or reporting of political activities.”

Justice Tim Ginnane suggested there were different rules for members of the “old media” – organisations who have historically been granted access and accreditation.

But Horan insisted decisions were made on a case-by-case, saying even accredited organisations would have limits on the number of yearly accreditation passes based on things like the capacity in the parliamentary press gallery offices.

From AAP:

A record number of people needing emergency care turned up at NSW public hospitals in the last quarter of 2021, while ambulance call outs also increased amid the Covid-19 Delta and Omicron waves.

The Bureau of Health Information quarterly report covering October to December documented NSW Health services during the peak of the Delta outbreak and the emergence of the Omicron variant.

There were 763,257 emergency department attendances and 320,729 ambulance responses, the highest of any October to December quarter since BHI began reporting in 2010.

NSW ambulances responded to almost 9,000 of the highest priority cases (Priority 1A) – an increase of 21.3% or more than 1,500 responses – compared with the same quarter in 2020.

NSW Health said the median response time for Priority 1A cases was 8.8 minutes, within the 10-minute benchmark.

The lower priority one and priority two patients waited an average of 14.1 and 25.1 minutes, respectively.

Here’s the Guardian report below:

Here are the latest coronavirus numbers from around Australia today, as the country records at least 17 deaths from Covid-19:

ACT

• Deaths: 0
• Cases: 1,226
• In hospital: 39 (with 4 people in ICU)

NSW

• Deaths: 5
• Cases: 30,402
• In hospital: 1,016 (with 36 people in ICU)

Northern Territory

• Deaths: 0
• Cases: 251
• In hospital: 24 (with 2 people in ICU)

Queensland

• Deaths: 3
• Cases: 6,136
• In hospital: 255 (with 21 people in ICU)

South Australia

• Deaths: 0
• Cases: 3,122
• In hospital: 136 (with 10 people in ICU)

• Deaths: 8
• Cases: 9,426
• In hospital: 201 (with 24 people in ICU)

Western Australia

• Deaths: 1
• Cases: 6,062
• In hospital: 123 (with 2 people in ICU)

On the eve of Closing the Gap Day, and just days after the Rolfe trial verdict, Australia’s only First Nations-led national justice coalition, Change the Record, has released its key election demands to all parties.

Change the Record’s ambitious election platform demands that governments abandon the harmful, punitive “law and order” measures that do nothing to keep community safe and drive Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples into prison.

Instead, the coalition calls on all parties and candidates to address the poverty, housing crisis, family violence and discriminatory laws and policies that fuel inequality in our communities.

Cheryl Axleby, co-chair of Change the Record:

Our people are once again in mourning after another young fella was killed in police custody with no consequences, and no justice. We are tired of governments saying they want to “close the gap” but then doing nothing to support our young people in community instead of prison.

Governments say they want to work with us but instead of investing in housing, adequate social security payments and putting our people in the driver’s seat, they continue to lock away our children and criminalise our people.

We are calling on all political parties: if you are serious about closing the gap, look at our Blueprint for Change and start listening to the First Nations experts calling on you to do things differently.

A brief summary of CtR’s key asks:

Housing

• Invest in Aboriginal and community-controlled housing – including an emergency commitment to build new remote housing in response to the crisis of overcrowding and Covid
• End homelessness once and for all
• Commit to systemic reform to realise everyone’s right to a home

Family violence

• Adequately fund family violence prevention and legal services to meet community need (+$32m a year)
• Restore funding to the national peak body, the Family Violence Prevention and Legal Services Forum ($1m a year)
• Establish a self-determined, dedicated National Safety Plan for and by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women

Social security

• Raise the rate of Centrelink so no one is forced to live in poverty
• Abolish discriminatory compulsory income management
• Abolish punitive mutual obligations

Justice

• Establish a National Justice Reinvestment Body (Labor & Greens have already committed)
• End Blak deaths in custody and fully implement police and prison oversight (including intergovernmental agreements to implement the Optional Protocal to the Convention Against Torture (OPCAT))
• Raise the Age of criminal responsibility to at least 14 years old

Some more information on that from AAP:

A man who allegedly murdered three fellow residents in a Sydney boarding house by starting an explosive fire has appeared before court.

The two-storey dilapidated Newtown boarding house was engulfed in flames following an explosion in the early hours of Tuesday, killing at least of 11 residents, according to police.

NSW police are concerned for a fourth man who is yet to be located.

Richard Hotoran, 45, has been charged with three counts of murder and one charge of damaging property by fire or explosion after he surrendered himself to Surry Hills police station on Tuesday night.

The Kingsford man, according to court documents, appeared before the Central local court on Wednesday where he made no application for bail and it was formally refused.

Detective chief superintendent Darren Bennett said that Hotoran was a resident of the boarding house at the time, and was one of the men who police initially feared had perished in the blaze.

“We will be alleging he was there when the fire was set,” he told reporters on Wednesday.

Police said they were still trying to locate the owner of the building and were investigating whether an accelerant was used.

“It has been reported that there has been an accelerant used, and we have had that advice given to us and it will form part of the brief of evidence,” Chief Supt Bennett told reporters.

Hotoran is next due back in court on May 12.