Australia news live: calls from business sector to open border before mid-2022 intensify – live
David Littleproud #DavidLittleproud
7.51pm EDT 19:51
Sydney man jailed for massive cocaine import
A 43-year-old man will spend nearly a decade in jail for his role in a failed plan to import more than 500kg of cocaine into Australia via the Solomon Islands, reports AAP.
Two Sydney men were arrested in September 2018 following a joint investigation involving the Australian federal police, Solomon Islands police, US Drug Enforcement and the Australian Border Force.
Their arrests came as police searched the Belgian-registered, double-masted yacht Vieux Malin, which was moored outside the Honiara marina in the Solomon Islands.
The AFP says police found 501kg of cocaine concealed on the vessel, with an estimated street value of between $125m and $250m.
The cocaine had been loaded on to the vessel in South America and was destined for Australia. As the yacht was being searched, police in Australia arrested two men during raids on homes in the Sydney suburbs of Wahroonga, Bonnyrigg Heights, Dolls Point and Caringbah.
In December 2019, a 41-year-old Bonnyrigg Heights man charged with knowingly dealing in money or other property which is an instrument of crime was sentenced in Downing Centre district court to two years’ imprisonment to be served by the way of an intensive correction order and 500 hours of community service.
On 2 May this year a 43-year-old Wahroonga man, who was a key player in the scheme, was sentenced in Downing Centre court.
He was sentenced to 14 years and five months’ imprisonment with a non-parole period of nine years for his involvement in the conspiracy to import the cocaine into Australia.
He was also sentenced to five years’ imprisonment with a non-parole period of three years for his involvement in knowingly dealing in money or other property which is an instrument of crime, valued at greater than $50,000.
The man will be eligible for parole in November 2027.
Updated at 7.57pm EDT
7.51pm EDT 19:51
‘No death is acceptable,’ Berejiklian says in reaction to Virgin Australia border-opening pressure
Looks like the comments from Virgin Australia’s Jayne Hrdlicka, saying borders should reopen sooner than the middle of next year even though “some people may die”, are haunting everyone today.
After saying she would support opening borders if health advice backs it up, Berejiklian was asked how many death she thinks would be acceptable. I swear you could see a brief second of panic that flashed across her eyes, but she recovered quickly:
Please, no death is acceptable. Please don’t put words in my mouth. I’ve never said that and I never would.
We’ve worked hard in New South Wales to protect life, to keep community safety and that’s what we will do. There’s no doubt that the vaccine program is key to our freedom. Having a successful vaccine program is key to making sure that we can make decisions moving forward about our future but we can’t even think about those decisions unless the vast majority of our population are vaccinated.
Any conversations we have now are premature.
Updated at 7.58pm EDT
7.40pm EDT 19:40
NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian has spoken this morning, and the word on everyone’s lips is “borders”.
I think we need to be very sympathetic and mindful to the fact that community safety always comes first but in New South Wales we’ve demonstrate that you can keep the community safe but also push ahead with economic openness and it’s that right balance that has kept New South Wales where it is and we intend to keep that right balance. Community safety always has to come first, but we also believe that you can make some decisions about easing restrictions or opening up to the rest of the world, with facts and science backing you.
NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian. Photograph: Joel Carrett/AAP
Updated at 7.43pm EDT
7.29pm EDT 19:29
Perth hospital staff missed opportunities to help girl who died of infection, investigation finds
Staff at Perth Children’s hospital missed a “cascade” of opportunities to escalate the care of seven-year-old Aishwarya Aswath as she succumbed to a fatal infection.
The confronting finding is contained in a report by Western Australia’s Child and Adolescent Health Service, released in full on Monday.
The report finds that Aishwarya’s parents, who have accused staff of lacking compassion, raised concerns about her deteriorating condition on five separate occasions after taking her to the emergency department on Easter Saturday.
Within 20 minutes of arriving, Aishwarya’s hands were cold, her eyes were discoloured and her respiratory rate and heart rate were significantly elevated.
You can read the full report below:
Updated at 7.37pm EDT
7.11pm EDT 19:11
Continued from last post.
Khalil will argue that multicultural policy must include “substantive policies that ensure every Australian no matter who they are, whatever their ethnicity, faith or cultural background has the same social, economic and political opportunities as anyone else”.
Labor’s taskforce proposes taking the existing model of enterprise incentive schemes – which provide free accredited training, business plan development, business mentoring and a small business allowance – and tailoring it to CALD communities.
Khalil told Guardian Australia that migrants are twice as likely to start a business as those born in Australia and one-third of small businesses are owned by migrants.
He credited migrants’ “tenacity and resilience” for their success in small business, but argued they were also “channelled into that” by the lack of opportunities in professions such as law, academia and in corporate Australia.
Khalil told Guardian Australia that despite a reduction in “casual racism” in Australian society since the 1980s and 1990s, culturally and linguistically diverse communities are still structurally disadvantaged.
He cited the fact that just 15 of parliament’s 227 MPs and senators are of non-European or non-Anglo-Saxon backgrounds, including five Indigenous Australians; as are just 5% of the board directors of ASX 300 companies.
The taskforce also found an uptick in racist incidents since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, showing that “casual racism never really went away”, Khalil said.
He cited concerns about the “distortion of efforts” by Chinese Australians to secure personal protective equipment to keep the community safe, arguing this was presented in the media as profiteering.
Updated at 7.13pm EDT
7.07pm EDT 19:07
Labor pitches small business boost for migrants
Labor will propose a specialist small business program for culturally and linguistically diverse communities including training and business plan development.
The new migrant enterprise incentive scheme is the main recommendation from Labor’s multicultural engagement taskforce, a series of consultations the opposition launched in December 2019 after suffering a swing against it among multicultural communities at the last election.
The report will be launched in Melbourne today by shadow multicultural affairs minister, Andrew Giles, and the taskforce’s chair and secretary, Peter Khalil and Anne Stanley.
Ahead of the launch, Khalil told Guardian Australia that Labor hopes to appeal to CALD communities by focusing on equality of opportunity through its traditional strengths in service delivery including education, healthcare and aged care and hip-pocket concerns like housing.
Despite the greater social conservatism of newly arrived migrants including communities of faith, Khalil said Labor can “continue to appeal to them … by focusing on things that make an actual difference to their lives … bread and butter concerns”.
In his speech, Khalil will take aim at politicians who “focus on the feel-good, the easy photo op elements” of multiculturalism such as “the food, the festivals, the dances, the brightly coloured costumes”, including prime minister Scott Morrison “with his chicken korma cook ups”.
But multiculturalism is so much more than that … what some of my Canberra colleagues often forget, or maybe don’t quite understand, is that our multiculturalism runs so much deeper into the critical question of our national identity – who we are as a people.
Continued in next post.
Updated at 7.16pm EDT
7.03pm EDT 19:03
Queensland reports no new local Covid cases
Covid-19 free Queensland my darlings!
Updated at 7.05pm EDT
6.50pm EDT 18:50
Despite Australia’s relative success at locking out the coronavirus pandemic, we still aren’t moving around nearly as much as we used to. Public transport has been hit especially hard, as have recreational and urban areas generally.
Only road traffic has really recovered to pre-Covid levels, which experts say could be a short hangover of fears about the pandemic. Or it could reveal a longer-term shift as working from home becomes more accepted.
University of Sydney associate professor Matthew Beck says increased working from home will probably continue for some time, meaning transport networks will need to adjust to a new normal.
Public Transport Victoria is now seeing just more than half of its pre-Covid passenger numbers. NSW is faring slightly better, at just more than 62% patronage. Queensland leads the big states with more than 70% of its pre-Covid numbers.
You can read the full story below:
Updated at 7.02pm EDT
6.36pm EDT 18:36
Knives to be banned in NSW schools
Carrying knives in NSW public schools will be banned as the government moves to close a loophole that allows members of the Sikh community to carry ceremonial daggers to school for religious reasons, reports AAP.
NSW education minister Sarah Mitchell announced the ban on Tuesday in response to a stabbing at Glenwood High in Sydney’s north-west two weeks ago.
The ban will apply from Wednesday to all students, staff and visitors to NSW public schools.
It’s in response to the stabbing of a 16-year-old by another teen with a Kirpan – a ceremonial dagger that baptised Sikhs are required to carry.
On Monday premier Gladys Berejiklian expressed shock over the schoolyard stabbing and flagged a crackdown, saying “students shouldn’t be allowed to take knives to school under any circumstances”.
Mitchell told Sydney radio 2GB this morning that allowing knives in schools was not in line with community expectations and the government would be making the legislative change to close the loophole:
In the interim I’ve also asked the department to send advice out to our schools today updating our policy to say that knives for religious purposes will be banned in government schools.
Mitchell had spoken to representatives from the Sikh community about the stabbing and they were distressed, she said:
We need to act and I think that’s in line with community sentiment and it’s also in line with my responsibilities as minister … I have to make sure that our schools are safe places for our students and staff and that’s why we need to take this action.
Updated at 7.04pm EDT
6.29pm EDT 18:29
Australians returning home from India on commercial flights – now selling for more than $10,000 one-way – will not undergo the same strict pre-flight testing as those on government repatriation flights.
As a fresh row erupts between the Coalition and Labor over the handling of government-supported flights out of India, Guardian Australia has confirmed that those able to afford commercial flights are allowed to leave the country with just one of the two Covid tests that are required for vulnerable Australians supported to return home.
This is despite Scott Morrison announcing last month that “passengers on all future flights will be required to have both a negative Covid-19 polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test result and a negative rapid antigen test result prior to taking off”.
You can read the full report below:
Updated at 6.33pm EDT
6.23pm EDT 18:23
Greens senator asks Virgin CEO to clarify ‘how many disabled people is it acceptable to die’ for borders to open
Greens senator and disability advocate Jordon Steele-John says Virgin Australia CEO Jayne Hrdlicka must be held to account for reportedly saying Australia’s borders should reopen sooner than the middle of next year even though “some people may die”.
Steele-John says this is essentially offering up the lives of disabled Australians and other vulnerable groups as a sacrifice for economic profit:
If you look at the cohorts that are most at risk of Covid-19, it’s older people, it’s First Nations people, it’s disabled people. We are human Venn diagrams of risk when it comes to Covid-19.
Before the pandemic, we are the ones that had the worst outcomes when interacting with the health system. The life expectancy of an intellectually disabled person in Australia is currently 25 years less than the rest of the population. That’s before the pandemic.
So when we talk about changing policy settings and accepting that people “may” die because it will boost the bottom line of a corporation like Virgin, we need to be very clear who we are talking about and put the onus upon individuals that make statements like that to make exactly clear how many people the CEO of Virgin believes is acceptable – how many disabled people is it acceptable to have die in a context where this government’s vaccine rollout has not yet cracked 1,000 people?
Greens senator Jordon Steele-John. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP
Updated at 7.08pm EDT
6.18pm EDT 18:18
Speaking of disability care, Greens senator and disability advocate Jordon Steele-John says he was “infuriated” to see hear about the failures in residential care vaccine rollout.
He is speaking to ABC News Breakfast now:
What it shows us, very clearly, is that, in vaccinating only 999 disabled people that live in residential accommodation settings, the Morrison government has so far vaccinated more politicians and Olympians than it has disabled people, who are acutely at risk of the virus …
I don’t think there’s any way that Minister Littleproud or anybody else can kind of slip out of this one. As the royal commission said the other day, this program has been an abject failure when it comes to vaccinating disabled people, and there must now be accountability among the health department and there must be an urgent review of every single document that the health department has produced in relation to the pandemic to ensure that disabled people are accurately accounted for there.
Updated at 7.09pm EDT
6.13pm EDT 18:13
Yesterday the vaccine rollout in disability care was labelled an “abject failure” during a hearing for the royal commission into disability care.
Federal frontbencher David Littleproud was asked about this on ABC radio this morning:
Updated at 6.17pm EDT
6.05pm EDT 18:05
Indigenous children dominate out-of-home care
Indigenous children continue to be disproportionately represented in Australian out-of-home care statistics, despite overall rates falling, AAP reports.
A 118-page annual report, released on Tuesday by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, shows one in four of the roughly 46,000 children in out-of-home care in mid-2020 were Indigenous.
At the time there were about 18,900 Indigenous children in out-of-home care, which includes living with a relative or foster carer.
That represents one in 18 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in Australia, and is 11 times higher than the rate for non-Indigenous kids.
Almost two-thirds (63%) of that group were living with family or other Indigenous caregivers, with the rest in other arrangements including foster care.
AIHW spokesman Dinesh Indraharan said:
In positive news, over 80% of Indigenous children who exited out-of-home care into more stable and permanent arrangements, did not return to care within 12 months.
The number of Indigenous children receiving child protection services in 2019-20 was 55,300 – a rate of 166 for every 1,000 Indigenous children, up from 151 for every 1,000 in 2016-17.
Some 14,300 Indigenous children had reports of abuse substantiated, with emotional abuse (47%) and neglect (32%) the two most common forms of mistreatment.
Indraharan said:
Children from very remote areas were three times as likely as those from major cities to be the subject of a substantiation …
That is, when a notification has been investigated and there was reasonable cause to believe the child had been, was being, or was likely to be, abused, neglected or otherwise harmed.
Victoria had the highest reported rate of Indigenous kids in out-of-home care of all states or territories, followed by WA and the ACT.
Updated at 7.10pm EDT
5.46pm EDT 17:46
If you are keen to read more about those comments from Virgin CEO Jayne Hrdlicka you can read this news story from the fantastic Micheal McGowan, who was up last night reporting while we were all in bed.
5.36pm EDT 17:36
Good morning everyone, it’s a lovely (freezing) Tuesday and it’s shaping up to be an interesting day already.
It’s Matilda Boseley here with you for the morning and why don’t we jump right in.
Calls from the business sector to re-open international borders have intensified, as people come to terms with the government’s vague “mid-2022” timeline laid out in the budget.
Virgin Airlines CEO Jayne Hrdlicka has come under fire this morning for commenting that Australia’s borders should reopen sooner than the middle of next year even though “some people may die”.
(That’s really saying the quiet bit of capitalism out loud isn’t it!)
She told a university business lunch yesterday:
Covid will be part of the community, we will become sick with Covid and it won’t put us in hospital, and it won’t put people into dire straits because we’ll have a vaccine…
It will make us sick but won’t put us into hospital … some people may die, but it will be way smaller than with the flu.
The crux of her comments where that Australia risked being left behind if it did not reopen borders once a sufficient portion of the population had been vaccinated.
This is a sentiment that’s been echoed by Australian Industry Group CEO Innes Willox yesterday when he spoke to Sky News:
The concern from business and parts of the broader community here is that the longer we remain closed off walled off from the world, the deeper the economic impacts will be. We will quite simply be forgotten about.
I think there’s a whole range of medical advisors, Nick Coatsworth among them, and many others who are coming to the same conclusion – that Covid is not going away. The vaccinations will help but they won’t be a silver bullet. At some point we do need to re-engage in the longer we take the real risk is that we will get left behind.
This all comes as the prime minister steadfastly refused to commit to a vaccination level target at which international borders will open.
Well, I’m sure that will be the first question off the block for any unfortunate federal government minister that steps up today.
With that, why don’t we get started!
If there is something you reckon I’ve missed or think should be in the blog but isn’t, shoot me a message on Twitter @MatildaBoseley or email me at matilda.boseley@theguardian.com.
Updated at 5.38pm EDT