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Australia’s professional association for commercial pilots has written to the government to ask that everyone in an aircraft cabin should have to wear a face mask to stop the spread of Covid 19.
The Australian Federation of Air Pilots said the move could stop the transmission of the disease and protect Australians.
An email to the prime minister says:
The AFAP is concerned that if an onboard COVID-19 transmission were to occur, the public aversion to travel on aircraft could continue for an extended period of time.
Given the Government’s COVID-19 strategy is one of suppression and not eradication, and the unavoidable risk of close community contact in an aircraft cabin, the AFAP’s executive committee has resolved to request the Commonwealth government to address this risk by mandating the wearing of face masks in the cabin of passenger aircraft, and that this requirement be for the period of the Covid-19 crisis.
NSW completes a record number of coronavirus tests in the past week
Updated
at 10.54pm EDT
So what’s driving the deterioration in the budget bottom line?
The government’s document says policy decisions it has made since the December 2019 budget update have reduced the underlying cash balance by about $58bn in 2019-20 and $118bn in 2020-21.
Daniel Hurst
(@danielhurstbne)Here are two charts from the economic and fiscal update. Australia’s economy set for largest annual fall in economic activity on official record in 2020. But govt insists its economic support packages have made a difference (would have been much worse without) @callapilla pic.twitter.com/3KZFe7bwrm
This is largely spending in response to the Covid-19 crisis (with the single biggest measure being $86bn spread over two financial years for jobkeeper), but it also includes other measures like a $2bn commitment to establish the national bushfire recovery fund.
Meanwhile, the budget has taken a hit of $32bn in 2019-20 and $72bn in 2020-21 from what is known as parameter and other variations. These reflect the battering the economy is taking and things like the reduction in government revenue from tax. On that point, tax receipts have been revised down by $32bn in 2019-20 and $64bn in 2020-21.
What the government expects to pay out has increased substantially, largely as a result of Covid-19 response measures along with “the impact of automatic stabilisers including the payment of unemployment benefits”.
Updated
at 10.12pm EDT
Back in Melbourne, premier Daniel Andrews says while daily coronavirus case numbers are stabilising, they are not yet declining. And he warns there will be more deaths.
The statistics tell you, the logic tells you, the maths of this is means that people will die.
And that’s really what’s at stake here, and you know there’s been the odd commentator who thinks that it’s not right to be straight with people.
I don’t think that’s alarmist language. It’s a fact. It’s a fact. We all need to work together, doing simple things, doing large and small things, each of us to protect each other.
Updated
at 9.59pm EDT