Cyclone damage in WA ‘widespread and severe’; Turnbull condemns News Corp coverage of Gillard – as it happened

McGowan has also confirmed a new Covid-19 case on a ship off the coast of Western Australia in what he calls a “very serious” situation.

The ship, called the Aqua Genie, is offshore from Karratha. McGowan says the man, who is in his 50s, is a member of the crew. He became unwell on 8 April and returned a positive result to a rapid Covid-19 test.

McGowan says the case has been coordinated by the commonwealth, and on 9 April the federal government “began planning to evacuate the crew member from the Aqua Genie”.

McGowan says:

On 11 April, a vessel was launched to retrieve the crew member. I am advised all personnel involved in the retrieval wore full PPE, only a small number of specialist staff are involved in the patient care but continue to stick to Covid-19 safety protocols at all times.

Last night the crew member arrived at theKarratha health campus by ambulance. His diagnosis of Covid-19 was confirmed with positive rapid PCR test at the Karratha health campus, it is expected the crew member will be transferred to Perth later today where he will be transferred to the RPH by in isolation ambulance, to a dedicated isolation.

McGowan is speaking now. He says Cyclone Seroja has caused “widespread and severe” damage. It’s now been down-graded to a tropical low but is still bringing strong winds and heavy rains.

While the threat has subsided for most areas, the town of Northampton “remains on red alert”. The majority of the damage, he says, has been felt in the tourist town of Kalbarri, which saw wind gusts up to 170km/h on Sunday.

McGowan says that 70% of properties in the town have suffered “some level of damage”, which he calls “heartbreaking:.

All Western Australians are thinking of those people affected, we are all with you, ready to help in any way we can. The next few days however will be very tough and difficult. We will get through this together.

He also says 31,500 people are without power supply cross Geraldton, Kalbarri Northampton and Port Denison.

The opposition health spokesman, Mark Butler, spoke to reporters in Adelaide this afternoon and called on the government to give Australians greater certainty about when they can expect receive their Covid-19 vaccination.

Butler said the government needed to provide clear vaccination targets, after Scott Morrison revealed there was no longer any set timeline for all Australians to receive their first dose of a Covid-19 vaccine.

Butler said:

Targets may well change and then the prime minister needs to come clean with Australians about what the chain is and what the reasons are for those changes. You can’t have a plan without targets, though. It is simply not a plan.

Australians need to know how this is progressing. They need to have economic confidence that getting their businesses up and running, getting jobs going again, being able to travel first of all within Australia and then, ultimately, overseas as well – to make those plans with confidence.

AAP is reporting that the Victorian government will continue its pause on Covid-19 AstraZeneca vaccinations to people under 50.

Jabs for the younger cohort were temporarily stopped on Friday following advice from the commonwealth about the risks – although very low – of an adverse side-effect from the vaccine.

Acting premier James Merlino said on Monday the rollout of AstraZeneca jabs would be on hold to allow for health information to be translated into languages other than English.

He said there was a large number of Victorians who needed to be able to read commonwealth-provided details about the vaccine in their native tongue.

The government is waiting as well until staff at state-run vaccine centres are trained to adequately inform younger vaccine recipients of health risks and which one – AstraZeneca or Pfizer – they might prefer.

Merlino also wants legal protection against being sued if the jab is administered to a younger person, to be guaranteed for the state-run centres.

Federal health minister Greg Hunt said on Sunday that vaccine indemnity agreements were already in place for GPs across the country, but Victoria wants the same for state-run facilities.

State health minister Martin Foley said he was confident this would be given, but it just had not come through yet.

Given the pause on AstraZeneca to under-50s, the state government is also asking the commonwealth to redirect to GP clinics all the AstraZeneca vaccines due to be delivered to state vaccine centres over the next two weeks, to enable the clinics to deliver more vaccinations to the elderly.

Merlino said:

This is a common-sense approach to get this thing done as quickly as possible.

We say to the commonwealth: don’t send us AstraZeneca – the state sites – for the next fortnight, send it to our GPs so that GPs can administer the vaccine, particularly to our vulnerable over 70s.

Victoria has recorded two new coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours – returned overseas travellers who are in hotel quarantine.

Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull has told the Senate inquiry into media diversity that News Corp was sexist in its coverage of Julia Gillard’s prime ministership.

Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young asked Turnbull whether he thought there was a difference between how his prime ministership and Julia Gillard’s were reported on.

He said there was “a deep misogyny that you see in the rightwing political ecosystem”.

I mean, has there ever been a male politician whose body shape has been commented on the way Gillard’s was? Whose constant criticism was the way she dressed?

There is a deep misogyny in our political system and, you know, I sought to address that as prime minister ... I’m not saying I resolved it at all ... But it’s a fundamental problem.

Turnbull also took a swipe at Scott Morrison’s handling of parliament’s toxic workplace culture, suggesting it might be because Morrison “hasn’t had much experience outside of politics”.

I have to say, you know, with all due respect to Scott Morrison, when he said the other day that other workplaces are like this too, that is complete and utterly untrue.

Now I give him credit that he basically hasn’t worked, hasn’t had much experience outside of politics. So maybe he wasn’t just aware. But the standards that you put up with in parliament, you’re all too familiar with, are completely at odds with modern Australia.

OOFT.

Uber has said it is open to an Australian minimum insurance standard for gig economy platforms and a pool of funds that could provide drivers with entitlements such as sick pay.

But the company acknowledged its own worker compensation program was less than what was offered in some states and that its estimates of a $21-an-hour average pay for drivers was less than the casual minimum wages.

Facing a Senate committee on Monday, the company emphasised its long-held position that drivers and “delivery partners” on the Uber Eats platform were independent contractors, not drivers.

Matthew Denman, Uber Eats’ general manager, said the company was “eager to see national standards around safety”, including a minimum insurance standard.

The inquiry heard earlier that another company, Ola, suspended its insurance scheme in the middle of last year for financial reasons.

Denman cited an Accenture report commissioned for the company that found its Uber drivers and Uber Eats delivery riders earned on average about $21 an hour.

However, Labor’s Tony Sheldon noted other reports had found the figure to be lower. The national minimum wage for a casual worker was $24.80 an hour, he said.

So you’re paying below the minimum wage, and this is during the peak times when there is high demands.

Sheldon said the Uber Eats figure referred only to average hourly pay during peak times.

Research by Alphabeta and Accenture commissioned by the company found Uber drivers and Uber Eats delivery riders earned on average about $21 an hour.

He was opposed to minimum rates because, he said, the company would need to “require that all driver partners use our platform and work fixed shifts in fixed places”.

The company was open to a discussion about “earnings”, as long as it was confined to the period when a person had accepted a trip to when it was completed, and did not include the time when drivers were waiting for a job.

Uber was also open to a “portable benefits” program through a pool of funds that workers could draw on for sick leave or holidays. When pressed for details, however, the company did not have a particular proposal in mind.

Uber’s general manager, Dominic Taylor, said:

We don’t think flexibility should come as a trade-off for protection. There are many options on the table.

With so much going on today, we are just catching up now on what Gladys Berejiklian has been saying this morning.

AAP reports Berejiklian is worried about Australia getting left behind unless the Covid vaccine rollout gets back on track.

She said on Monday:

There will come a point when the rest of the world starts engaging with each other more and we can’t afford to be left behind.

I’m really keen to get the rollout happening as fast as we can. I do have a sense of urgency about it.

NSW is pursuing its plan to set up mass vaccination hubs to inoculate tens of thousands of people each week, despite ongoing supply problems and concerns about a rare side effect from the AstraZeneca vaccine.

But the state is still trying to ascertain is exactly how many more doses it will receive.

Berejiklian said:

We have a rough idea about the next five weeks, which involves us finishing the 300,000 doses we were asked to do.

But beyond that, we are still waiting for some confirmation and it has been lumpy.

In some weeks more doses were delivered than anticipated, and other weeks it was less.

The premier said:

And that’s why it’s really important for NSW to have our 100 sites up and running, a mass vaccination centre ready to go so that if we do get an unexpected source of doses that we are able to vaccinate our population.

The federal government has asked NSW Health to vaccinate 300,000 people, including all high-risk frontline workers and their families.

Berejiklian said:

I’m keen to get the vaccine rollout back on track and we await advice and information from the commonwealth as to what that might look like.

Australian organised crime figures attempted to defraud Covid-19 stimulus packages last year but were largely unsuccessful, a Senate committee has heard.

Michael Phelan, the Australian criminal intelligence committee’s chief executive officer, told the law enforcement joint committee on Monday that while about 5% of government stimulus programs had previously been subject to fraud, there had been significantly less fraud detected for Covid-19 economic measures.

Phelan said this was despite people who are considered Australia’s most serious organised criminals targeting the measures, particularly those relating to the withdrawal of superannuation.

He said the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission identified that people who are among the less than 20 individuals listed as Australia priority organisation targets had planned to defraud the schemes but had failed.

He said:

Criminals are very adaptable and look for new programs, look for vulnerabilities and also look at what they’ve done before.

Phelan was also asked about the prevalence of vaccines and falsified vaccine passports being offered on the dark web, and said that while it was occurring and being monitored it was not happening on a significant scale.

You can do anything you want down there ... [but] we’re not seeing that at scale on the dark web.

He also revealed that Australia’s monitoring of wastewater to detect Covid-19 fragments came about after Dutch authorities contacted the Acic early last year saying that the systems they had in place to detect narcotic use had been finding traces of the virus.

A new report has warned that international travel for Australians is likely to remain restricted until 2024, AAP report.

Deloitte Access Economics’ quarterly business outlook – printed prior to the Morrison government’s vaccination program being thrown into disarray late last week – expects international borders will reopen only gradually.

Deloitte economist Chris Richardson told AAP:

That keeps international travel – both inbound and outbound – pretty weak in 2022, and it may not return to pre-pandemic levels until 2024.

Counter-terrorism police in Queensland conducted a series of raids in response to “neo-Nazi graffiti” spray-painted in a Brisbane park.

The raids, carried out late last week, did not lead to any arrests, but police say a number of “items of interest” were seized and the investigations are ongoing.

It comes after police in South Australia arrested a man for possessing an improvised explosive device while a second has been charged with the possession of extremist material during a series of raids across Adelaide targeting members of the far right last week.

In a statement, Queensland police said detectives from the counter-terrorism investigation group were investigating “racist and neo-Nazi graffiti spray” painted in a park in Calamvale in Brisbane’s south in February.

Police allege that between 3 February at 6pm and 4 February at 6am the footpath at the Calamvale District Park was “spray painted and a racist banner was attached between two trees”.

Police said that during searches at three homes on Brisbane’s southside “a number of items of interest were seized”.

“At this time, no charges have been laid and investigations are ongoing. Detectives continue to appeal for anyone with information to contact them,” a police spokesperson said.

“Everyone in Queensland has a right to feel safe, to not feel threatened or victimised and the Queensland Police Service remains committed to supporting people across our culturally diverse society. The Queensland Police Service urges anyone who feels threatened or fearful by the actions of others to contact police.”

Residents of Kalbarri in Western Australia, which bore the brunt of ex-Tropical Cyclone Seroja, have said half the town has been “flattened” by the terrible storm.

Tree branches “snapped off like carrots”, residents said.

Kalbarri, which lies 580km north of Perth, is home to about 1,400 people.

“I’ve never experienced anything in my life like we experienced last night,” resident and caravan park manager Debbie Major told ABC television on Monday.

“It’s only a small town ... half of it has been flattened.”

Reports of property damage and power outages in Kalbarri and Geraldton began to emerge as the storm’s force was felt and residents took shelter by candlelight.

The Department of Fire and Emergency Services said on Monday the majority of the more than 150 calls for help so far had come from Kalbarri.

“The whole town has been impacted. Some areas had a greater concentration of damage than others,” resident and Kalbarri State Emergency Service chief Steve Cable told ABC television.

“Some of the older buildings didn’t stand up very well but even some of the modern buildings, they just couldn’t hold.

“Large trees with quite substantial limbs just snapped off like carrots.”

Malcolm Turnbull has told the media diversity hearings that Rupert Murdoch tends to “sidestep” direct conversations about his mastheads exerting influence on politics.

However, Murdoch did “acknowledge” that there was this “crazy agenda” that Murdoch loyalist and editor Paul Whittaker pushed that the Turnbull leadership should be damaged so that Tony Abbott could come back to lead the Coalition in 2022.

“It sounds completely unhinged” but it was happening, he said.

Turnbull said his former chief of staff, Clive Mathieson, a former editor of the Australian, was with him and took “copious notes of the meeting”.

Ola, an Indian ride-share company that operates in Australia, is among the gig economy platforms fronting a Senate inquiry today.

The company’s head of legal, Ann Tan, told the inquiry the company stopped providing accident insurance in June last year.

It was a financial decision prompted by the pandemic, Tan said.

Under questioning from the Labor senator Jess Walsh, Tan confirmed drivers who were injured on job would therefore not receive any income support or coverage of medical expenses from the company.

Tan said:

No. We do advise our drivers to make sure that they are fully covered in relation to their insurance and any entitlements that they would require to enable them to operate safely on the platform.

The inquiry heard earlier that more than a third of ride-share app workers have been involved in a car accident at work, according Transport Workers’ Union survey.

Asked about this, Tan said she did not know the proportion of Ola drivers that had been in an accident at work.

She suggested drivers earned an average of $21 an hour, but was unable to provide any more details about the figure.

The company has 75,000 drivers using its platform in Australia and “generally” took a commission of 15%.

Former soldier and Victoria Cross recipient Ben Roberts-Smith has issued a new statement on a 60 Minutes report aired last night, presented by Age investigative reporter Nick McKenzie.

Mr Roberts-Smith has grave concerns as to whether the broadcast this evening by Nine is an attempt to intimidate him into not proceeding with his case against Mr McKenzie and Nine.

Mr McKenzie and Nine are currently Respondents to defamation proceedings in the Federal Court. These allegations are not supported by any evidence filed by Mr McKenzie and Nine in what has been an extensive pre-trial process. Mr McKenzie has chosen not to give evidence in support of the allegations he has made against Mr Roberts-Smith repeatedly over the past three years.

The allegations aired this evening are baseless. These allegations are not supported by any evidence filed by Mr McKenzie and Nine in what has been an extensive pre-trial process. These allegations were not put to Mr Roberts-Smith prior to being broadcast on 60 Minutes and published in the Nine newspapers.

Had Mr McKenzie or Nine wished to engage in impartial or objective journalism, they would have sought Mr Roberts-Smith’s comment on the so called “shameful” allegations which Mr McKenzie asserted had been the subject of a ‘major and deep investigation’.

Mr Roberts-Smith denies that he has engaged in any unlawful conduct and he will not be intimidated by Mr McKenzie or Nine into not continuing with the Federal Court proceedings against them.”

Former PM Malcom Turnbull has told the media diversity inquiry he wants to talk about the dominance of the Murdoch media in Australia and how it is a “real threat to our democracy”.
Media has become so partisan and divided that we now have the ability for people to live in an “echo chamber” in their own silo, Turnbull said, echoing comments made by Kevin Rudd last month at the same inquiry.

Turnbull said the attack on the Capitol in the US “underlines the divisions in America” that have been promoted by rightwing media “narrowcasting”, led by the Murdoch media.

In Australia, News Corp has evolved into a political party with only one member and is used in a partisan way against Muslims and to promote climate change denial, he said.

Turnbull said News Corp puts pressure on politicians who are then intimidated by the power of the newspapers they publish.

The NSW government asked me to chair a committee to advise on zero admissions and a “ferocious campaign” was launched by the Daily Telegraph and they “crumbled”, he said.

The “saddest thing of it all” was the way the NSW minister for environment Matt Keane had to then be quoted in the Daily Telegraph to say News Corp had nothing to do with it, like a fake confession after being beaten by police, he said.

Chaired by Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young, the inquiry was sparked by Rudd’s Murdoch petition which attracted 100,000 signatures.

Australia Post has appointed Paul Graham as its new chief executive, five months after Christine Holgate left over a luxury watch expenses scandal.

Graham will join the organisation from Woolworths Group, where he’s in charge of supply chains.

He has worked in digital marketing and retail across Australia, Europe and Asia for 40 years, including as a senior executive at Deutsche Post DHL.

“Paul has a demonstrated track record of delivering results in large, complex organisations and is a proven leader managing large teams,” Australia Post chairman Lucio Di Bartolomeo said on Monday.

Graham will start in the role in September, AAP report.

Last week, Holgate said in a senate inquiry that she never agreed to stand aside, and alleged that Di Bartolomeo lied about the saga.

Di Bartolomeo said that phone records would back his version of events, and said Holgate “agreed to stand aside”.

Tropical Cyclone Seroja has damaged property and caused power outages in Western Australia after the category three storm hit the state last night.

Seroja made landfall south of Kalbarri at about 8pm AWST on Sunday as a category three storm, bringing wind gusts of up to 170km/h at the centre as it reached land.

The fast-moving storm weakened to a category two system as it pushed inland towards Dalwallinu in a south-east direction at more than 60km/h.

Reports of property damage and power outages in Kalbarri and Geraldton started surfacing as the storm’s force was felt and residents took shelter by candlelight.

The now ex-cyclone was expected to continue to weaken through Monday before moving offshore off the south coast in the afternoon.

More details of the devastation are likely to become apparent this morning.

Read the full story here:

Ahead of today’s ongoing Senate inquiry into media diversity, a new report, commissioned by GetUp, has found that “our media is more concentrated than ever”.

News Corp controls 59% of metro and national print media markets by ownership – up from 25% in 1984, according to the report, authored by Benedetta Brevini and Michael Ward from the University of Sydney.

News Corp also earns 40% of total Australian television revenues.

And three companies together (News Corp, Nine and Southern Cross Media) control 90% of metro radio licenses.

Brevini, an associate professor of communication, said this represented “unmatched levels of media concentration”.

“Australia is in a media emergency and immediate action must be taken to safeguard our democracy.

“This alarming level of media concentration is compounded by a systemic lack of transparency and public accountability is plaguing our media sector.”

New South Wales police passed up an offer by South Australian police to take a statement alleging sexual assault against Christian Porter – apparently without putting the option to the alleged victim – new documents reveal.

The police also rejected a request from Porter’s accuser to take her statement via Skype and alternatives were not pursued because the alleged victim seemed “resigned” to Covid-19 interruptions to travel delaying it until September.

Paul Karp has the story:

The former head of the Australian Christian Lobby, Lyle Shelton, has been picked by NSW MP Fred Nile to replace him in state parliament when the latter retires.

Nile, the founder of the Christian Democratic party, announced late last night that he would retire this November from his role as a member of the Legislative Council.

Nile recommended that Shelton, one of the leaders of the no campaign during the same-sex marriage postal plebiscite, take his place and this was “unanimously” approved by the party’s state board.

“The need for unashamedly Christian voices in public life has only increased in recent years and I can think of no one better than Mr Shelton to carry this forward,” Nile said.

Shelton said he was “honoured that Rev Nile and the CDP state board have recommended that I succeed him in the NSW parliament and lead the party into the future”.

After leaving the ACL in 2018, Shelton worked as the federal communications director of Cory Bernardi’s Australian Conservatives, which was deregistered a year later by Bernardi after winning no seats at the federal election.

Nile was first elected to the NSW Legislative Council in 1981 and is the longest-serving current sitting member of the parliament.

There is no longer any set timeline for all Australians to receive their first dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, Scott Morrison has said.

Previously, the prime minister had set a target that all Australians would receive their first dose by October. The government also aimed for 4 million doses by the end of March, but this was later revised to the end of April, and we are behind both targets.

AAP reports that approximately 1.1m doses have been administered, but Morrison has refused to set a target for the rollout.

“The government has ... not set, nor has any plans to set any new targets for completing first doses,” he said.

“While we would like to see these doses completed before the end of the year, it is not possible to set such targets given the many uncertainties involved.”

The vaccine program has been hit with delays due to international supply issues, natural disasters such as the NSW floods, and errors – with many GPs offices complaining of poor organisation.

Late last week, the rollout was further delayed with the recommendation from the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (Atagi) that Pfizer was prefered to AstraZeneca for people under 50 due to the risk of rare blood clots.

Australia has a contract for 20m doses of Pfizer, but not all of it has arrived – and recently announced a further 20m will arrive, but not before the final quarter of the year.

Read the full story here:

Former soldier Ben Roberts-Smith will continue in his role at the Seven Network, according to a statement issued by the channel late last night.

Last night Nine’s 60 Minutes and Nine Newspapers published a series of joint reports about the former Victoria Cross recipient – who is suing Nine and reporter Nick McKenzie for defamation.

“Mr Roberts-Smith denies that he has engaged in any unlawful conduct and he will not be intimidated by Mr McKenzie or Nine into not continuing with the Federal Court proceedings against them,” the statement said.

Roberts-Smith will continue as Seven’s Queensland managing director, the channel said:

Insofar as most of the material aired is old, Seven notes that it is before the federal court and the court process should be respected. Insofar as new allegations are made they do not appear to be supported by evidence.

In the circumstances Seven does not need to reconsider its position concerning Mr Roberts Smith and him continuing in his position.