Good morning!
The flood crisis continues in parts of New South Wales with major flooding and evacuation orders in Singleton and several Hunter Valley towns.
Weather conditions are easing for Sydney and the NSW central coast, as almost 30,000 people have been allowed to return home. Applications for the federal disaster recovery payments will open at 2pm today.
Reports say a fourth Covid-19 vaccine dose will become available for Australians over the age of 30, after the health minister, Mark Butler, is briefed today on Atagi’s recommendations following yesterday’s meeting.
The education minister, Jason Clare, has committed to a “reset” of relations between government and universities, announcing a review into the role and governance of the main grants body in a major speech last night.
I’m Natasha May and I’ll be updating you on all these headlines and more this morning. If there’s anything you think should be on the blog, you can ping me on Twitter @natasha__may or email natasha.may@theguardian.com.
Key events:
Monkeypox may be spreading in Australia after New South Wales found infections among the state’s 11 confirmed cases that could have been transmitted locally, AAP reports.
NSW Health says nine of the infections were probably acquired overseas but two may be local cases, which suggests community transmission could be occurring.
NSW records 22 Covid deaths and 1,882 people in hospital
There were 13,343 new cases in the last reporting period, and 62 people are in intensive care.
South Australia’s new abortion laws come into effect today
South Australia is the second last state in Australia to move abortion from a criminal issue to a medical one.
Western Australia is the only state or territory where abortion remains under the criminal code.
The bill in SA was voted on in March last year but the laws come into effect in the state from today.
Farmers’ federation warns on foot-and-mouth threat
Fiona Simson, the president of the National Farmers Federation, is on ABC radio discussing the rising cost of fresh produce as well as the increasing threat of foot and mouth disease entering Australia.
In terms of the biosecurity threat, Simson said Australia needed to help neighbours “step up their biosecurity” as well as make people at home more aware of the risks.
She said the federal agriculture minister, Murray Watt, had been “very responsive” but she would still like to see every passenger screened at airports.
Simson said successive governments had dropped the ball on the increased biosecurity risks.
The risk has increased but budgets have not.
Simson said the reason shoppers were seeing higher fruit and vegetable prices due to flooding was “all about supply and demand”.
She said the flooding had wiped out fresh produce at critical stages of production in “one of the biggest fruit and veggie heartlands in NSW”.
If they get wiped out at any stage of production, people have to start again.
Simson said the weather was damaging crops, which caused shortages, and then caused price spikes at supermarket. Australia’s big supply chains were not so agile.
She recommended avocados and pumpkins as a good buy for shoppers trying to keep costs down.
Scores of NSW flood warnings still in place
Stephanie Convery
The Bureau of Meteorology cancelled the severe weather warning for NSW overnight but scores of flood warnings and evacuation orders remain in place, including several Hunter Valley towns in place, including Bulga, Broke, Wollombi and Dunolly.
Electricity provider Ausgrid has warned Singleton residents’ electricity could be cut off as the company battles to restore power to about 3,000 customers in parts of the central coast, Lake Macquarie and pockets of Sydney.
Yesterday, ahead of his tour of the flood affected areas in the Hawkesbury, prime minister Anthony Albanese announced disaster recovery payments of $1,000 for eligible adults and $400 for children would be available to apply for from 2pm today.
Social services minister Amanda Rishworth said on ABC radio on Thursday morning that these were the federal government’s first emergency payments but would not say what additional support might be forthcoming:
I will continue along with [emergency management minister] Murray Watt … to look at how we can best support communities.
– With AAP
Clare promises boost to low SES and international students
Paul Karp
In his speech, Jason Clare also lamented the fact that although the target of 40% of people aged 25 to 34 having bachelor degrees had been achieved, a separate target for 20% of enrolments to be from people from low socioeconomic backgrounds had not.
Instead, it had “barely moved” from 15%, from when the target was set in 2008. Indigenous enrolment was less than 10%.
The education minister said:
I don’t want us to be a country where your chances in life depend on your postcode, your parents, or the colour of your skin. None of us want that. But that’s where we are today. I am not naive, I know this is hard to shift.
Clare announced a further $20.5m for the the National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education based at Curtin University.
Clare also spoke about the need to “rebuild” Australia’s reputation for international education, which he said was “smashed” by Covid, and by the previous government telling international students to “go home or [be] left to rely on the kindness of charity”.
Clare said more than 100 staff had been brought into the home affairs department to clear a backlog of international student visas.
Jason Clare promises ‘reset’ with universities
Paul Karp
The education minister, Jason Clare, has promised a “reset” with universities through an accord to achieve bipartisan consensus on issues facing the sector.
This was a policy first announced in opposition by Tanya Plibersek, but details are still scant.
Last night, Clare told the Universities Australia conference:
And that, at its core, is what the Australian Universities accord will be about: a reset. And an opportunity to build a long-term plan for our universities, together. Drawing on the advice of the leadership in this room, your staff, unions, business, students, parents and all political parties.
Looking at everything from funding and access to affordability, transparency, regulation, employment conditions and also how universities and TAFEs and other higher education and vocational education providers and training institutions work together.
To lead this work, in the next few months I will appoint a small group of eminent Australians. I want this to be a bipartisan effort. I want it to come up with reforms that last longer than the inevitable political cycle. I also want your help and guidance, and that starts with making sure we get the terms of reference for this right, and I’ll be engaging with you on these soon.
Canberra-Moscow ties at ‘lowest’ ebb, envoy says
Pavlovsky said Australian-Russian relations had reached their “lowest point”.
Whatever cooperation we had has been destroyed by the Australian side without thoughts to what Australian interests were.
This is really sad.
When asked if Putin will participate in the G20 summit in person, Pavlovsky said Putin would participate “for sure” but the format was still being discussed.
Pavlovsky said the situation with the pandemic would determine the format.
He is very busy with constructive dialogue with many countries. He will not pay attention to virtue signalling from certain leaders.
Pavlovsky said the war could have been avoided if “diplomatic dialogue had not been blocked by the west”.
The west is doubling down prohibiting the Ukrainian side from going back to the negotiating table.
Q: Why don’t you just stop bombing Ukraine? That would end this.
There are important existential reasons for Russia to start this operation. Operation will stop when reasons are removed.
Russian ambassador says west ‘hysteric’
ABC Radio is asking the Russian ambassador to Australia, Alexey Pavlovsky, how Russia can justify its position at the G20 summit.
Pavlovsky responded by criticising the “west’s hysteric reaction”.
ABC Radio is asking the ambassador about the invasion’s impact on global food supplies, and host Hamish McDonald has rebuked Pavlovsky: “This is not Russian state media, you can’t get away with making it up.”
Pavlovsky has denied the situation is a war, saying it is a military operation to protect Russia’s security interests.
You can call it as you wish, our point of view, it is a military operation to protect people of the Donbass, and to protect security interests.
Atagi caution over fourth vaccine dose
Dr Chris Moy, vice-president of federal Australian Medical Association and a member of the Atagi technical advisory group, is on ABC radio discussing the decision to allow Australians over 30 to get a fourth dose of the Covid-19 vaccine.
Moy said a key consideration was wanting to hold the shot until it was needed:
They wanted to hold fire till the time it was really needed because they didn’t want to go too early.
They’ve been under pressure for a long time to go to the fourth shot, everybody, but they wanted to hold this shot because they didn’t want to actually end up firing the shot too early in that actually then, with a new variant, having to make a better fifth shot.
Moy said that 30 was the cut off age because the benefits outweighed risk.
Moy said there was now evidence that new variants had more impact on the lungs:
The three things that are worrying about it, there’s evidence coming from overseas is that [the new subvariants] are more infectious. It’s outrunning BA2, which is the previous subvariant … with high reinfection rates. So people rely particularly just on previous infection for immunity or getting rejected at a higher rate, but also that it has a greater propensity for the lungs – that means more serious disease, whereas the previous periods have been more in the upper airways.
So therefore, because of that, we may be looking at a higher proportion people in …. hospitals. So that combination of a wave coming in for hospitals is testing. A high percentage, even a small percentage … is going to cause the hospitals to get overrun, as they already are at the moment, unfortunately. They already had a fourth set.
Rain and flooding risk move north in NSW
Stephanie Convery
Rain may have eased in Sydney and on New South Wales central coast but the inclement weather and risk of flooding has moved to the Hunter Valley and mid-north coast overnight.
More than 6,000 residents of the Hunter have evacuated their homes and businesses, while the New England Highway remains closed at Singleton and Maitland.
Major flooding continues in Singleton, where an evacuation order has also been issued, and there is moderate flooding at Wollombi and Maitland.
The Hunter River peaked at 13.7m overnight, exceeding the 13.15m level of the March floods.
On Thursday morning the SES had received about 1,200 requests for help in the past 24 hours, with about 900 of them in the central coast, Hunter and the mid-north coast regions, NSW SES deputy commissioner Ashley Sullivan said.
They had seen about 65 flood rescues in the 12 hours overnight, and efforts were focusing on the flooding in the Hawkesbury-Nepean valley areas.
There were 58 “return with caution” advices current, meaning about 35,000 people could start to return home with care, Sullivan told ABC News Breakfast.
[For those people] the flood threat has eased, the danger has eased from the flooding and it’s OK to head back into your home and do that assessment to see what’s needed next.
Obviously, as people head back into those communities, there will still be floodwater in low-local areas. There’s going to be debris, potentially contaminants from spilt chemicals, and be cautious of power lines as well. Treat power lines as always being live if they’ve been damaged throughout this event. And when you go into your home, do not turn the power back on if it’s been flooded or inundated.
– With AAP
Rishworth says employers should hire people with a disability
Rishworth is asked about her call for Australian employers who are struggling with serious staff shortages to hire job applicants with a disability:
There’s never been a better time for employers to think outside the box when it comes to finding people we hear from employers all the time.
One of the reports that has been done into disability employment is that community attitudes are actually one of the biggest barriers so seeing people with a disability get employment so that’s not having changes to the workplace, but that is the attitude that people have.
So I want employers to have a serious thinking about how they can potentially employ someone with a disability because if they don’t, they’re actually missing out on a wealth of knowledge but importantly, in a time of skills crisis, they going to get the employees they actually need.
Rishworth says she believes a lot of employers are open to the option:
I spoke to a session of the BCA recently where I know they are really wanting to practically work with employer about how they might accommodate those living with a disability and make sure that the adaptions in place, but one of the things we actually need to change is not actually changing the workplace but actually changing our attitudes and that kind of thing.
I’m hoping in the lead up to the job Summit, to have a roundtable specifically getting employers and unions and also those living with a disability around the table to start talking about these are sort of fade into the Johnson we restrict me to say there’s got to be more than roundtables and changes of perception.
Social services minister reaffirms commitment to public housing
The minister for social services, Amanda Rishworth, is on ABC Radio talking about the social pressures facing Australians.
Rishworth is asked about the housing crisis and reaffirmed the government’s commitment to build more public housing:
We’ve got to be really clear a lot of people are facing issues when it comes to housing, not just the cost of housing, but actually being able to get a house so when it comes to housing, we’ve said we will build more public housing that is a commitment through our Future Australia program.
ABC is asking Rishworth about whether it is fair to keep people on $46 a day whilst giving those on over $200,000 a year, a $25 a day tax cut:
Well, the tax tax you’re talking about is in 2024. So we’re not talking about that tax cut being at all related to the immediate pressures that families are facing right now.
It’s about how we can provide a whole of government response to help people in these difficult circumstances and as I said, through each budget, we go through looking at what our priorities are and I will be certainly working with other people in government and our other ministers to deal with that.
Good morning!
The flood crisis continues in parts of New South Wales with major flooding and evacuation orders in Singleton and several Hunter Valley towns.
Weather conditions are easing for Sydney and the NSW central coast, as almost 30,000 people have been allowed to return home. Applications for the federal disaster recovery payments will open at 2pm today.
Reports say a fourth Covid-19 vaccine dose will become available for Australians over the age of 30, after the health minister, Mark Butler, is briefed today on Atagi’s recommendations following yesterday’s meeting.
The education minister, Jason Clare, has committed to a “reset” of relations between government and universities, announcing a review into the role and governance of the main grants body in a major speech last night.
I’m Natasha May and I’ll be updating you on all these headlines and more this morning. If there’s anything you think should be on the blog, you can ping me on Twitter @natasha__may or email natasha.may@theguardian.com.