Health News at Your Fingertips

Aged care pay rises ‘going to take a while’

But that doesn’t solve the problem of aged care workers in the future. Wells says pay is one of the issues, with workers able to “be paid more stacking shelves at Woolies”.

Wells says the government is focussed on getting a pay rise as the first step towards recruiting more staff, but there is a process:

Well, we’re still going through the Fair Work process, our submission isn’t due until the 8th of August. The commissioner will be considering those submissions after further hearings in September, so that is why I’m saying this isn’t something we’re going to solve this fortnight, this isn’t something we’re going to solve this winter.

This is going to take a while to turn the Queen Mary around. No one is under any illusions about that.

It was a busy morning on ABC radio – Anika Wells, the minister for aged care, also spoke to ABC Radio’s AM about the extension of ADF staff in aged care “to get through the winter wave”.

The ADF had been attempting to step down and withdraw from aged care because obviously this is a desperate extreme measure, that a sector would be so neglected that the sort of last-chance opportunity was taken by the previous government in February to deploy the ADF into aged care.

So since that time, the department has been putting together a surge workforce and building that up, so that that has been going up as the ADF has been going down.

… the ADF have generously agreed to put an additional 220 general duties personnel into aged care to get us through this winter wave, alongside the clinician-led teams that will already circulating around the country.

NSW reports seven Covid deaths; Victoria records no new deaths

NSW Health has reported seven people died of Covid in the last 24 hours. Victoria reported no deaths.

Agriculture minister: expert advice on FMD says border closure ‘not needed’

Murray Watt on ABC Radio National this morning said he has asked for advice on whether Australia should close the border with Indonesia and has been told no.

This in relation to the foot-and-mouth disease outbreak.

I am relying on the best biosecurity advice I have available to me because just as we listen to the experts to get ourselves through Covid as a country, it’s important that we listen to people who know what they’re talking about here.

And the advice to me is that that measure is not needed. There’s foot-and-mouth disease outbreaks in about 70 countries around the world at the moment and we’ve never closed the borders to those countries … I don’t know where the opposition stands on this because they’ve got some people out saying close the borders, some other people say no.

Industry is united in saying that we should not close the border.

Australia is making international news again – this time for having the 9th most delayed airport in the world.

Sydney, take a bow. We did it.

Peter Dutton says Australia should shut border to Indonesia over foot-and-mouth scare

Paul Karp

After the Coalition was divided last week on whether the Albanese government should shut the border to keep foot-and-mouth disease out, the Liberal leader, Peter Dutton, has further evolved his position.

Dutton told 2GB:

I believe the borders should be closed, absent the information the government’s got … If there’s an argument why the border shouldn’t be closed, that’s for the prime minister to make. If he’s got a reason, then let him explain it.

Dutton confirmed his position is that the border should close, unless there is “some significant piece of intelligence that this is under control”.

Dutton also called on Anthony Albanese to “take the lead, not the hapless [agriculture] minister in Murray Watt, the most junior minister, who I don’t think instills anyone with confidence”.

Dutton said the government was “playing with a loaded gun” because if FMD gets into Australia, hundreds of thousands of livestock will be slaughtered, an $80bn export industry will shut down, it will take years to recover and prices of meat at the checkout will be “through the roof”.

Queensland Labor MP Graham Perrett woke up and chose violence this morning (in my experience, Canberra residents are very protective over all things Canberra, but most particularly, their bus stops).

Michaelia Cash is upset Labor plans on winding back the powers of the Australian Building and Construction Commission and will be holding a doorstop on that, as the shadow minister, in about 30 minutes.

It’s that time of year (again) – the time when party room meeting doors are flung open to allow the media in for very awkward opening speeches.

The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, will hold a minister’s meeting and I think there is also a caucus meeting. The National party is meeting (probably without the media invite though) and so are the Liberals.

And here is that fog.

Long lines at Sydney airport

Having had a look at social media, it seems anyone travelling from Sydney airport is once again facing lines which snake all the way outside.

There are a few who will be travelling to Canberra – may I suggest the bus? It’s cheap, very comfortable and given those lines, will get you down the Hume faster than a flight at the moment.

(Apparently fog is to blame this morning)

David Pocock ‘excited’ about the coming parliamentary term

Independent senator David Pocock is on ABC Radio’s RN.

Katharine Murphy has an update on the climate trigger he has called for:

Pocock is absolutely across all the issues Patricia Karvelas is asking him about (climate, ABCC, cashless welfare card) but refreshingly, he is not media trained within an inch of his life and responds to the questions like a human.

Pocock doesn’t waste words – he is only answering the questions he is being asked, and there is no fluff.

On climate, his position is as Murph has reported.

On the ABCC, he says he respects Labor’s mandate to scrap it, but wants to know what will be going in its place.

On the cashless welfare card, he supports it being scrapped: “it seems to me to be a failed policy”

He’s happy he has been granted one extra staffer by the government as “there is a huge amount of legislation to get across”.

And he’s “excited” about the coming term and wants to be as accessible as possible to his ACT constituents.

Murray Watt: ‘We want to make sure the country is better prepared for natural disasters in the future’

Murray Watt is also the minister for emergency management – what does he think about holding festivals in flood zones, given what happened at Splendour in the Grass?

(The Queenslander drops in that he was planning on attending Splendour, but decided he needed to work on foot and mouth disease instead – he wanted to see the Strokes, he tells Patricia Karvelas.)

He says the response to climate events needs to change, but no one is looking at depriving regions of being able to hold festivals at this point.

What we’ve said is that we want to make sure the country is better prepared for natural disasters in the future. And also that we respond a lot faster and frankly, I think we demonstrated it can be done after the recent New South Wales floods. So to be clear, there will be a review of events and these kinds of places.

Murray Watt says every piece of mail from Indonesia and China is being screened for animal products, as part of the foot-and-mouth disease response.

Australia targeting high-risk passengers from Indonesia for FMD screening

Murray Watt has responded to reports that not every passenger returning from Indonesia has been screened for foot-and-mouth disease, and says there was never an expectation that every passenger would be screened:

We have never said that every single passenger returning from Indonesia is being thoroughly screened, taken away for questioning, having their luggage search.

You can imagine the chaos that would cause at airports. But what we are doing is risk profiling every single passenger who comes back in the country, and I’ve got some figures from my department over the weekend in response to those reports.

Just in Melbourne Airport alone just on Saturday, there were over there around 3,700 passengers coming in from Indonesia, who were questioned, who were screened, who had [their] shoes cleaned, some combination of measures to make sure that they were they were safe.

And the reason those passengers were chosen is that they either declared that they had been on a farm, been near livestock, were carrying a product something like that, or they didn’t declare it and for some reason in our risk profiling system they were picked up as a possible risk.

So I know there were some reports about people who just roll in through the airport [who] didn’t see anything, nothing happened … I think they confirmed that they heard this specific message that we’re now playing on every flight coming back in from Indonesia, about the foot-and-mouth disease risks … but we don’t bother searching every single passenger because they’re low risk.

What we try to do is make sure that our resources are targeted at people who are the highest risk.

And importantly, we try to target our resources at the importation of meat products, because – as I’ve said all the way along – while there is a risk that a traveller could bring this back from Bali, that risk is much lower than meat products being brought into the country, and that’s why we need to make sure that we’re doing a lot of work around that as well which we are.

Watt: ‘Australia remains foot-and-mouth disease free’

The agriculture minister, Murray Watt, says “Australia remains foot-and-mouth disease free”.

Viral fragments have been detected in some products from the travelling public and imports, but not the live virus, Watt says.

“We have absolutely no evidence at all we have the virus in Australia,” he tells RN.

Paul Karp

Defence minister: ADF deployment into aged care extended until end of September

The defence minister, Richard Marles, told ABC News Breakfast:

There is a significant number of outbreaks, more than a thousand across the country. And so it’s important that we need to be doing everything we can to meet the challenge of that. It’s not just extending the military support to aged care, it’s actually increasing it up to 250 personnel through until the end of September. And it’s an important step, given what the sector faces. It’s obviously important to note that this is not a long-term solution, it’s not what the Defence Force is for. But in this moment, it’s really important that we do everything we can to provide all the assistance necessary, and so this is the right step to take.

… It is an extreme measure and it’s right to describe it as that. We’re doing this now because of the significant number of outbreaks, but as I said, it’s important to understand that we can’t see this as a normal fallback, to go to the defence force. We saw the previous government really, I think, too heavily on this because they didn’t do the work to make sure that there was a surge workforce in place, which we are ensuring happens. But given the number of outbreaks that we’ve got right now, this is the right thing to do, and I’ve got no doubt that those personnel will equip themselves professionally and fantastically in the way they do their work.

It’s the day before the 47th parliament sits and Canberra is once again buzzing with people and anticipation as MPs, staffers and all the associated hangers-on descend on the capital ahead of the first offical day.

So it’s a busy time. We have a lot to get through as agendas are laid out – and that doesn’t even take in everything that is going on outside of parliament.

Climate is still one of the biggest issues (timeless statement). As Murph reports:

Senate kingmaker David Pocock says the Albanese government would build parliamentary support for its climate bills if it was prepared to insert a climate trigger as part of its looming revamp of national environmental laws.

Ahead of the opening of the 47th parliament on Tuesday, the independent senator for the Australian Capital Territory said last week’s state of the environment report, which documented an alarming deterioration in Australia’s natural heritage, made a stark and compelling case for considering greenhouse gas emissions when new development proposals are assessed.

“Reading the state of the environment report, climate cuts across everything,” Pocock told Guardian Australia. “Climate change will affect every part of our lives. For me, [a climate trigger] really needs to be considered and needs to be in there because [the climate crisis is] clearly already having a huge impact”.

Meanwhile, foot-and-mouth disease (the reason you are all seeing FMD reported across social media) is still worrying the agricultural sector – Murray Watt will speak on that very soon.

And of course, the pandemic is ongoing. As Natasha May reports:

As Covid-19 cases continue to rise across the country, the government has extended defence force support to aged care facilities until the end of September.

There are currently more than 6,000 residents and more than 3,000 staff who are infected in aged care facilities. There will be up to 250 Australian Defence Force [members] helping aged care facilities get through the winter wave.

The new federal parliament meets for the first time tomorrow with the intention of introducing at least 18 pieces of legislation in its first week, covering aged care Royal Commission recommendations as well as climate change, domestic violence, and jobs.

So there is a bit going on.

We will cover it all and more as the day (and weeks) unfold. You have Katharine Murphy and Mike Bowers already on deck and all over all the things, as well as Tory Shepherd, Paul Karp and Josh Butler.

You have me, Amy Remeikis, on the blog for most of the day (I’ve missed you) covering off all of the issues, so I hope you have had your weeties. I am on coffee number three and it hasn’t even hit the sides.

Ready?

Let’s get into it.