Health News at Your Fingertips

Last night the bills in the religious discrimination package passed the lower house: one with only government amendments (the religious discrimination bill), and one with the Rebekha Sharkie amendments protecting LGBTQ+ students (the human rights amendment bill), supported by Labor, Adam Bandt, five Liberal moderates, Andrew Wilkie, Zali Steggall and Helen Haines.

Will these bills even be debated in the Senate? In general, it would be up to the government to deal with its own bills, but crossbench senators say there appears to be no appetite from the Coalition to bring these on.

Labor has also detected a go-slow in the Senate, with government senators taking the full 10-minute statements to explain matters like why they haven’t responded to inquiry reports and why Richard Colbeck is still aged care services minister.

We’ve checked the rules – and since the religious discrimination bills have passed the lower house, a message has come across to the Senate, and a non-government majority can insist that they be reported immediately and dealt with.

So, if Labor, the Greens, crossbench and Liberal moderates in the Senate wanted to, they could try to force the issue and deal with the human rights amendment bill to protect LGBTQ+ students.

At the moment the bills are just in limbo, and it’s not at all clear they’ll be debated today in the Senate.

Financial counsellors have welcomed a record fine of $2.5m levied on online bookie Sportsbet for spamming customers, saying it strengthens their push for a total ban on gambling advertising.

Sportsbet will also pay $1.2m in refunds to punters after sending 150,000 marketing emails and texts to customers who had tried to opt out and 3000 messages that did not contain a method of opting-out.

The company has apologised.

Lauren Levin, the director of policy and campaigns at Financial Counselling Australia, said:

This sort of marketing causes real harm to people who are already suffering.

One former gambler told me it’s like dropping a crate of beer at the front door of a reforming alcoholic. It’s just not right.

This is why Australia needs a proper roadmap for change across the gambling sector and this must include a total ban on all gambling advertising and marketing of this sort.

You can read more about the fine and the push for a gambling ban here:

The home affairs minister, Karen Andrews, has introduced a critical infrastructure bill to the lower house to secure critical infrastructure.

Last year the government split its own bill in two because of concerns from industry that some of the obligations may be too onerous. The first parts – including requiring the mandatory reporting of cyber incidents and allowing the government to provide assistance to critical infrastructure sector assets in response to significant cyber-attacks – passed before Christmas. This new bill is to deal with the outstanding elements.

Andrews told parliament:

It is a regrettable fact that malicious threat actors continue to target the infrastructure that underpins the provision of essential services that all Australians rely on. The consequences of a prolonged and widespread failure in the energy sector, for example, could be catastrophic not just to our economy, security and sovereignty, but the Australian way of life.

Andrews said the new bill would require critical infrastructure owners to identify “material risks that could have an impact on the critical infrastructure asset and as far as reasonably practicable minimise, eliminate or mitigate the risk from occurring”.

She argued this risk management obligation was meant to have the “lightest regulatory impact”. Andrews went out of her way to play down the red tape impact:

Importantly, none of the risk management program requirements will come into force without additional consultation with industry and careful consideration of any issues they raise, including the timing on when the requirements will come into force.

Indeed, if passed by the parliament my intention is to delay the obligation for critical assets impacted by recent supply chain issues including the freight services and infrastructure as well as food assets until 1 January 2023 at the earliest. Additionally, there are a number of assets that already have existing obligations in place and I don’t intend to apply the risk management program to every critical infrastructure asset.

Andrews said there were “some critical infrastructure systems and networks that are so vital, interconnected and of national significance to the functioning of Australian society, defence or security that if they were subject to a cyber-attack, would cause disproportionate consequences”. She said the bill also set out criteria for the declaration of a “system of national significance”, and these would face extra cybersecurity obligations.

China’s foreign ministry has accused Australia of turning “a blind eye to its own problems”, in the latest example of Beijing attempting to deflect attention from its own human rights record.

At the daily foreign ministry press briefing in Beijing overnight, Chinese state media outlet the Global Times mentioned two reports were recently published by Australia’s Productivity Commission regarding prisons and the justice sector and asked: “What is your comment?”

Zhao Lijian, the Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson, replied that he had “noted the reports” and “the comparison speaks volumes”:

According to the reports released by the research body of the Australian government, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people comprise 3.3% of the Australian population but 29% of prisoners in 2020. In the Northern Territory, they make up 84% of the prison population. And their rate of imprisonment is 13 times that of the non-Indigenous group. At least 474 Indigenous people died during incarceration over the past 30 years. These figures fully expose the grave human rights problems in Australia.

Zhao is the official who triggered a diplomatic storm in November 2020 by tweeting an image that appeared to depict an Australian soldier cutting the throat of an Afghan child holding a sheep, together with the words: “Don’t be afraid, we are coming to bring you peace!”

Zhao went on to say that Australia “adopted genocide and assimilation policies against the Indigenous people” in the past, and “even till this day, the Indigenous people are still subject to grave unfair treatment when it comes to living conditions and law enforcement”. He called on “some in Australia” to “carefully read the reports” and “earnestly do some soul-searching”.

The Chinese government has long attempted to deflect attention from its own rights record by accusing the west of hypocrisy.

Australia has joined the US, the UK and others in staging a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics, with Scott Morrison citing the diplomatic tensions and also “the human rights abuses in Xinjiang and the many other issues that Australia has consistently raised”.

The Australian government has not joined with the US in adopting the terminology “genocide” in describing human rights abuses in the Xinjiang region, but has said it is concerned about “repressive measures enforced against Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang”.

Prime minister Scott Morrison said in his Closing the Gap statement last year that he was committed to “a genuine partnership with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander stakeholders and organisations – a partnership generations overdue, built on mutual respect, dignity, and above all, trust” – with a goal of reducing the rate of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults incarcerated by at least 15% by 2031.

Families and friends will be able to visit dying or labouring loved ones in hospitals under a relaxation to visitation rules across New South Wales.

The updated guidelines, to be distributed to hospitals across the state today, will make it easier for people to visit patients with a terminal or life-threatening prognosis and for partners to be present during birth.

Access will be granted if the visit is seen to benefit the patient’s physical or emotional wellbeing and hospitals will still be able to limit numbers to reduce the risk of Covid transmission.

Visitors will need to be fully vaccinated or have a valid medical exemption.

The shift comes after a number of families came forward over the past week with harrowing stories of being denied the chance to be with loved ones as they die due to restrictions brought during the Omicron wave.

After apologising to those affected publicly on Wednesday, premier Dominic Perrottet said the change was made as soon as it was safe to do so. Perrottet said:

There have been many heartbreaking stories.

It has always been a fine balance. We have to be cautious given the high-risk setting of our hospitals but ultimately we want to make sure that compassion is the major focus.

The [changes] will make a real difference to provide support for those people who are coming to the end of the end of life and ensuring that they have their friends, their carers and a family around them.