Queensland’s chief health officer hopes to see widespread home quarantine in the state by December, with a trial starting next week, AAP reports.
From Monday, 1000 people who have applied to enter Queensland from interstate hotspots have been offered the chance to go into 14 days of home, rather than hotel, quarantine.
The trial is only being offered to Queensland residents currently interstate, and will not be made available to those who opt to travel to hotspots.
Health chief Jeannette Young says if the trial is successful, widespread home quarantine could be implemented as soon as December.
“I hope to see (it), but let’s wait, let’s not jump ahead of ourselves,” she told reporters on Thursday.
“We’ve got a trial starting on Monday with 1000 returning Queenslanders and we will see how that trial goes, but I would strongly recommend that anyone who would like to be part of the process going forward - go and get vaccinated because you need to have had two doses of vaccine, plus an extra two weeks (wait time for full efficacy).
“So as we gradually do look at this if it is successful, that will be one of the criteria.”
Health minister Yvette D’Ath said trial participants must have had at least two weeks since their second vaccination, a negative test 72 hours prior to travel and must reside within two hours of Brisbane airport.
“If you can’t reside alone, then the whole household will need to quarantine. You will be bound by the testing and home quarantine checking system that we have put in place,” the health minister added.
The government is still wary about home quarantine for international arrivals, and will closely monitor a trial in South Australia.
The federal court has ordered Australian internet providers to block access to an alleged education cheating website.
As Guardian Australia first reported, the university regulator, the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) launched the first-of-its-kind legal case in July, seeking to have Assignmenthelp4you.com blocked under laws passed in 2020 targeting academic cheating websites.
In a judgment issued on Thursday, the court found the website to be engaged in facilitating academic cheating, and ordered URLs and its associated IP addresses to be blocked by Australian internet service providers within 15 business days.
Victorian premier Daniel Andrews said he had no plans to alter Victoria’s roadmap out of lockdown, despite newly installed NSW premier Dominic Perrottet’s accelerating his state’s reopening after it reached the 70% double-dose milestone on Wednesday, AAP reports.
“Other states can make their own decisions. The most important thing for us to do is to continue to see that first and second dose rate tick up,” Andrews said.
The Victorian opposition has called for a return of customer density limits at the 70% target, paving the way for Melbourne hospitality venues to open indoors.
Under the government’s roadmap, cafes, restaurants and pubs in Melbourne will only be able to open for outdoor seated service to a maximum of 50 visitors at that time.
“That doesn’t cut it,” opposition small business spokesman David Southwick said.
Victoria’s more cautious roadmap is designed to protect the health system from being overwhelmed by Covid-19 hospital admissions as the state reopens.
There are now 564 Victorians in hospital battling the virus, up 39 from Wednesday, with 115 those in intensive care and 74 on a ventilator.
A man walks along Collins Street in Melbourne during lockdown. Photograph: Darrian Traynor/Getty Images
On how much the cancelling of the French submarines contract will cost us, Morrison says “we will be working within the contract as it is set out”.
He says he looks forward to the next phone call or meeting with the French president Emmanuel Macron but stands by the decision.
I acknowledge it’s a difficult period, of course it is. There was no way that we could have taken this decision without it having and causing deep disappointment and hurt to France.
There’s no way we could have avoided that. But you know, that’s the thing about difficult decisions. To take difficult decisions, you need to be conscious of what the implications of those are. But understand what the greater benefit is to Australia’s national interest. That’s what I did on the subs. That’s what I’ve done on Aukus.
I put Australia’s national security interests first and now I will work to ensure we deal with the other issues that flow from that. Otherwise, you know, you don’t just get anything done. That’s what I sought to do. It was the right decision for Australia.
That is the end of the press conference.
Scott Morrison says he looks forward to the next phone call or meeting with the French president Emmanuel Macron (pictured). Photograph: Jure Makovec/AFP/Getty Images
Morrison has also said there will be no change to the GST, despite calls from NSW.
When asked whether he would pass legislation for a national integrity commission, the religious freedom legislation and a crackdown on social media misinformation before the next election, Morrison said there had been “great progress” on the first two.
He then launched into a lengthy complaint about social media, which he called “a coward’s palace” (which is interesting because “coward’s castle” is what people call speaking in parliament under parliamentary privilege, free from defamation threats).
Cowards who go anonymously on social media and vilify people, and harass them, and bully them, and engage in defamatory statements, they need to be responsible for what they’re saying. I can’t come out here and you can’t come here and start doing things like that. We all know who each of us are, we’re responsible for the things we say and do.
Yet social media has become a coward’s palace where people can go on there, not say who they are, destroy people’s lives, and say the most foul and offensive things to people, and do so with impunity.
Now that’s not a free country where that happens. That’s not right. They should have to identify who they are, and you know, the companies, if they’re not going to say who they are, well, they’re not a platform any more, they’re a publisher. They’re a publisher. And you know what the implications of that means in terms of those issues. So, people should be responsible for what they say in a country that believes in free speech. I think that’s very important.
And I think that issue is, and the technology that engages it, and lack of accountability that sits around it, is just not on. You can expect us to be leaning further into this.
That seems to be an indication the federal government will push for defamation law reform following the Dylan Voller high court judgment finding page owners are the publishers of comments made on those pages. The proposal would be to make a platform that hosts the content, like Facebook, also liable.
Australia-France relationship is 'bigger than a contract', Morrison says
Morrison has welcomed the return of the French ambassador to Australia, and says he looks forward to taking the relationship forward.
It’s not a matter frankly of what additional things we’re putting on our cooperation. We already have cooperation. See the Australia-France relationship is bigger than a contract. And France’s presence and significance and influence in the Indo-Pacific isn’t about a contract. It’s about the fact they have an actual presence here, in the Indo-Pacific, they have a long standing commitment and work with Australia across a whole range of different issues. I mean, we have other defence contracts with France.
We have about $32 bn worth of contracts with not just French but Europe contractors. So France has a significant and longstanding role and future here, and we welcome that. So it’s a matter of basic picking up on all the things we were working on, and continuing on with them. Because they’re very significant. They’re wide-ranging. They’re very much in our interests and France’s interests and we look forward to just getting on with that job.
On former prime minister Tony Abbott’s trip to Taiwan, Morrison says he travelled as a private citizen, and Morrison did not speak to him before his trip.
On whether the states will stick to the reopening plans, Morrison says we will have to wait and see, but he believes people will want their lives back:
It’s been a long road, and a very long road. People expect when they put that effort in the government will keep that side of the deal. You need to open safely and you need to remain safely open. All states are starting from a different place. I respect that.
Western Australia in particular I say is in quite a different situation to the rest of the country, it always is, that’s the nature of its geography and economy and I understand that. But that said, in what will be probably about a month’s time, we will see people in Sydney travelling again, overseas.
We will see the amount of time I believe, you have to spend in quarantine, fall. I welcome the fact that Queensland is now moving towards home quarantine. That’s great. Things are moving fast. So I note what’s been said. But at the same time, I think Australians will want their lives back, and I think they will make that pretty clear.
On whether hospitals can cope with a surge of cases, Morrison notes NSW fared better than the modelling, and Victoria has a strong plan to deal with its own surge. He rejects suggestions from the states that it is an issue of funding:
This is about management of hospital systems. States must run their hospital systems well, they must prepare ... I want to commend the way that New South Wales and Victoria, and to be fair, the ACT, has been working through those challenges and ensuring they can prepare for what is happening.
But you’ve got to prepare for what’s coming. The pandemic has been running a long time now. But I say this – on the vaccines, that’s why it’s so important for those states who have not yet been hit by large Covid outbreaks, the higher the vaccination rates, the less of an impact on the hospital system. That’s probably the single most important thing that anyone can do in any state and territory to ensure there’s lesser impact on their hospital system from Covid, and that’s to get vaccinated.
On what financial support will be available as lockdowns end to ensure a smooth transition, Morrison says the Covid disaster payment continues, but people will need to reapply for it. Once 80% is reached, it will then fall to $450 the following week.
He says people may have to transition to jobseeker, but admits the federal contribution to jobsaver in NSW will end at 80%.
'We'll make our Australian way' on emissions targets, Morrison says
On the UK High Commissioner’s comments that she would like to see Australia set more ambitious 2030 emissions targets, Morrison says it is for Australians to set the targets here.
The targets will be set by Australians, the Australian cabinet, for Australian needs, and we’ll make our Australian way. I don’t propose to make any suggestions as to what other countries should be doing.
What I understand is this is a global challenge, and that unless we’re all working together on this, unless we’re seeing the technological change that’s needed, particularly in developing countries.
What is important, as I outlined at the Quad meeting, we achieve this new energy economy, new energy technology transformation. That’s what will change the world.
When we see in places like Australia, but also in Indonesia, in Malaysia, in Vietnam, in India, when we see the technology transformation and hydrogen has such a huge role to play in that, that’s when you’ll see the global issues of climate change addressed. We can all go to meetings. But the thing that will actually change it is the transformation delivered by new technologies. And that’s what Australia is focused on.
Scott Morrison speaks to reporters in Canberra on Thursday. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian
