Vaccine taskforce makes recommendation on jab for under-50s – as it happened
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PM provides vaccine rollout update after meeting to discuss possible blood clotting link; NSW to keep border open to NZ despite new Auckland Covid case. This blog is now closed
(From left) Chief medical officer Paul Kelly, health minister Greg Hunt, prime minister Scott Morrison and health department secretary Brendan Murphy announce on Thursday evening that the AstraZeneca Covid vaccine is no longer recommended for Australians under the age of 50 due to rare blood clots. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian
(From left) Chief medical officer Paul Kelly, health minister Greg Hunt, prime minister Scott Morrison and health department secretary Brendan Murphy announce on Thursday evening that the AstraZeneca Covid vaccine is no longer recommended for Australians under the age of 50 due to rare blood clots. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian
There have been some changes in staffing in Anthony Albanese’s office that might be of interest to any political nerds out there.
The shake-up sees the promotion of two women into Albanese’s circle of closest advisers – his so-called “leader’s executive”, which has been without a female voice since the controversial departure of Sabina Husic last year.
Liz Fitch has been promoted to the position of director of media, while Matthew Franklin will take on the role of senior press secretary.
The switch in roles will see Fitch sit on Albo’s executive team, while Franklin will spend more time on strategy, speechwriting and parliamentary tactics, along with his usual journo-wrangling.
The opposition leader’s office is also bringing in fresh talent, hiring Katie Connolly as strategic communications special adviser.
Connolly, who starts in Albanese’s office next week, was lead pollster for US Democrat Pete Buttigieg’s “Pete for America” campaign, and previously worked as a pollster and researcher for Barack Obama.
Connolly will be the team’s strategic communications special adviser as Albanese sharpens his pitch to voters in the lead-up to the election.
How’s this for a cracking picture, from our British print edition yesterday.
Morning commuters in crowded boats on the Buriganga River in Dhaka, Bangladesh, despite Covid-19. Taken by Azim Khan Ronnie.
It’s rush hour in Dhaka. Fantastic double-spread photograph of commuter traffic across the Buriganga River in the Bangladesh capital, by the excellent Azim Khan Ronnie in the @guardianpic.twitter.com/CrFzYeHuHw
Sydney, Melbourne and Hobart will kiss goodbye to the sunshine this weekend when a “polar blast” of icy air will send temperatures plummeting on Sunday, bringing rain, snow and even hail in some regions.
Jonathan How, a meteorologist at the Bureau of Meteorology, said a cold front expected for Friday would be followed by a second front on Saturday, created by a “polar blast” moving north from the Antarctic.
Together they will deliver what may the coldest day of the year so far.
“This is looking to be the last hurrah of the warm season and the summer ... This will be the last time we see the high 20s and low 30s until next spring.”
On Sunday the conditions will move through to Sydney, making for a chilly weekend.
“Even though we’re not going to see any record broken, the main message is that it is going to be quite uncomfortably chilly,” How said. “This sudden swing will catch people by surprise.”
On current BoM projections, the weather in Sydney will hit a low of 13C on Sunday, with the mercury falling to 10C in Melbourne and 0C in Canberra on Monday.
The Northern Territory is offering thousands of dollars to fruit pickers who travel to the Top End and help harvest the ripening melon crop.
Coronavirus travel restrictions and closed borders have stopped foreign backpackers travelling to Australia, leaving growers desperately short of labourers to pick their fruit.
AAP reports the NT government wants Australian workers to fill the shortfall and help harvest the more than 75,000-tonne melon crop, which includes seeded and seedless watermelons and rockmelons.
The $70 million per year NT industry is critical to national melon supply and allows shoppers to buy the produce 12 months of the year.
The NT government is offering $1,000 per worker for up to 200 people to pick the fruit, along with $480,000 for bonuses to help businesses retain them.
A bonus of $200 per week will be available for people who work a minimum of 30 hours per week, for at least five weeks between 12 April and 12 July.
“We produce the best melons in Australia and we have to get them off our farms into grocery shops and supermarkets across Australia,” minister for agribusiness Nicole Manison said on Thursday.
“Our message is simple, come to the Territory to work in a great place, have a great experience, and pick our melons.”
The jobs on offer include picking, packing, sorting and logistics roles.
Workers with licences to operate forklifts, trucks and production machinery will be in hot demand. Manison said the NT’s seasonal and overseas workforce has fallen by 73% over the past year.
The Pharmacy Guild of Australia has lashed the New South Wales government’s move to rollout mass vaccination sites, saying the plan “makes no sense”.
The guild said pharmacies are set to join the rollout from phase 2a, commencing in June, and that they can support rapid delivery of the vaccine in a way mass vaccination sites can’t.
The guild notes there are over 5,900 community pharmacies across Australia, and in capital cities, 97% of Australians live within 2.5km of their local pharmacy.
National president of the Pharmacy Guild of Australia, Prof Trent Twomey, is calling for pharmacies to be considered one of NSW’s major vaccination providers, adding that pharmacists “are used to working over public holidays and being open for extended hours and on weekends”.
Twomey said:
We’re trained and experienced in providing vaccination ... We have the consult rooms set up and ready to go. We’re only down the road for many Australians, who visit us at least 18 times a year on average.
So with this mass vaccination idea, how does it work if I need to go to a footy stadium for my Covid shot? Assuming I’m in a city near a footy stadium, I’d have to take time off work during the week, then have to get to the stadium in the traffic, probably with my young family in tow, wait for hours for my shot in close quarters with hundreds of others, putting us all at greater risk of community transmission, and then wait around, then to find a way home for all of us.
Why wouldn’t I just want to go to my pharmacy down the road from home on a weekend? I could be back at home within 30 minutes with no disruption to my family, and a lot less risk of community transmission. It just doesn’t make sense.
Twomey also claims the “most successful” vaccine rollout in the United States has been in West Virginia because “they’ve gone with the local pharmacy option as the vaccination provider”.
An interesting update from the Guardian’s Brussels bureau chief, Daniel Boffey, related to the tensions between Scott Morrison and the European Union over its vaccine export controls.
On Wednesday, as Morrison shifted to blame Australia’s slow vaccine rollout on the 3.1m doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine that haven’t arrived from Europe, he accused the EU of blocking vaccine shipments.
The EU hit back at the government on Wednesday, saying it had only blocked one shipment, of 250,000 AstraZeneca vaccine doses from Italy in early March, and that it hadn’t blocked any further shipments.
However the Morrison government returned fire and said the EU was “arguing semantics”. This was because it said the EU had signalled it would block future export requests, so AstraZeneca – which has to lodge the requests on Australia’s behalf – didn’t submit any.
It has since been revealed that the 717,000 AstraZeneca doses Australia has been able to import arrived from the UK, according to the Sydney Morning Herald, suggesting the EU has not approved any vaccine export requests to Australia.
Boffey reports that a spokesman for the European Commission confirmed that officials in Brussels had held talks with the Australian government over the 3.1m jabs but insisted the EU would not permit exports by AstraZeneca as long the company failed to live up to its commitments to the bloc.
The EC commission spokesman said:
The European Union itself is not receiving much more than three million doses of AstraZeneca vaccines from the provider,
You will remember that the gap between what the company has delivered to us and what was expected, up to the end of the first quarter is extremely big. And that the gap between what we would have expected under the advanced purchasing agreement, and what AstraZeneca is currently saying it will deliver is also extremely important.
Finally we’re not the only region in the world producing AstraZeneca vaccines and therefore this is a global issue. It is definitely not simply a bilateral issue between one country and the European Union.”
The spokesman refused to be drawn further on the content of the discussions with the Australian government.
You can read more about the vaccine export stoush, and Australia’s plea for 1m of its ordered doses to be sent to Papua New Guinea (low and middle income countries are meant to be exempt from the EU vaccine export control):
Western Australia’s Department of Fire and Emergency Services have warned they expect Tropical Cyclone Seroja, could reach category 3 when it hits the state’s coast over the weekend.
On late Sunday or early on Monday, Tropical Cyclone Seroja is expected to cross the coast as a Category 2 and could even be a Category 3 system.
The will be experience most likely in the area between Carnarvon and Jurien Bay. Destructive winds with gusts and 150km/h and intense rainfall that could cause flash flooding are expected near the system, as it moves over the coast.
A direct impact to Perth is unlikely, but there could be strong rain on Sunday.
However there will be three weather systems that authorities are monitoring that could approach tropical cyclone classification over the weekend.
Authorities believe the first system to hit, named tropical low 23U, will affect the coast off Exmouth on Saturday, and are warning travellers to consider leaving the area now.
Seroja – which originated in Indonesia and was named by that country’s meteorological authorities – will become the main point of concern later on Saturday and on Sunday and Monday, following that first system.
The third system is a tropical low that is not expected to impact the WA mainland but it is forecast to bring heavy rain and gusty winds to the Cocos Keeling Islands on Friday and Saturday.
New South Wales police have now taken a formal statement from a longtime friend of the woman who alleged she was raped by Christian Porter, but insist the investigation remains closed.
In answers to NSW estimates, police have said that Macquarie Bank managing director, James Hooke, a friend of both Porter and his accuser for 30 years, was known to them as far back as July but until recently did not wish to make a statement because “he understood why the investigation had been closed”.
On 12 March Hooke publicly stated he had “relevant discussions” with Porter’s accuser from “mid-1988 until her death” in June 2020 and with Porter from 1992 onwards.
The revelation prompted the NSW police commissioner, Mick Fuller, to promise to reexamine the case, which was closed when the alleged victim indicated to the NSW police that she no longer felt able to pursue the complaint, before taking her life in June 2020.
In answers to supplementary questions on notice in NSW estimates, the NSW police have revealed they were in possession of an email from Hooke that had been forwarded to them by a friend of the victim on 2 July, shortly after her death.
I'm told Australia's Ambassador @AusAmbDili sent his driver to some Dili evacuation hubs to distribute packet noodles and rice, which is a thoughtful gesture. But it does beg question: when will the TL Govt request substantive support from Aus, and what will the response be?
In submissions to the federal court, the commonwealth said LibertyWorks’ argument that the health minister has no power to impose a blanket ban on all citizens leaving Australia ignored the “emergency context” of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The case is the first major challenge to Australia’s strict external border restrictions limiting people’s right to leave the country, but does not seek to overturn the cap on the number of arrivals to Australia.
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