NSW restrictions to ease as New Zealand detects more cases of variant – as it happened

Chief medical officer, Michael Kidd, made an interesting point at his Covid presser earlier today: the longest Australia has gone without community transmission is 12 days.

We are currently on 10 days without community transmission and we could, if things go well, cross that threshold by the end of the week. Fingers crossed.

Amid all that Western Australia has reported two new Covid cases in hotel quarantine, bringing the state’s total to 897.

Both involve males who’ve arrived from overseas, with the state’s health authorities monitoring 15 current, active cases.

Alleged child abuser Malka Leifer is expected to face a Melbourne court on Thursday after she was extradited from Israel.

Leifer is set to arrive back in Australia on Wednesday evening. It’s expected she’ll front the filing hearing virtually, as she will be serving 14 days of quarantine.

Leifer was rushed out of Israel before the country shut all of its airports in response to Covid-19. She faces 74 counts of child sexual abuse relating to her time as principal of the Adass Israel ultra-orthodox Jewish girls school in Melbourne.

She left Australia for Israel in 2008 amid accusations of abuse. Victoria police filed extradition orders in 2014.

There were more than 70 hearings in her extradition case and in December last year, after Israel’s supreme court found Leifer had been feigning mental illness and was fit to be extradited, the court rejected her final appeal.

You can read more about Leifer’s extradition here:

An update on the breach of Covid restrictions at Parliament House in Canberra, the ACT government has confirmed the risk is low “from a public health perspective”.

This is on the basis that the situation in the Greater Sydney area has improved significantly. The last case identified in the community was 10 days ago, the list of locations where [there could be] exposure to a case is now very small, and the most recent location of significant concern is from 15 January, and therefore the risk of exposure to an undiagnosed case of COVID-19 to the ACT community and staff within Parliament House is very low.

The statement goes on to say the ACT is considering lifting travel restrictions for the NSW Cumberland local government area “later this week”.

Earlier the Department of Parliamentary Services said a group of tourists – who are from the Cumberland area – visited public areas within Parliament House and were asked if they had come from a hotspot.

The new US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, has described the alliance with Australia as “unbreakable” after his first call with the defence minister, Linda Reynolds.

Austin – one of the first of Joe Biden’s appointees to be confirmed by the US Senate – tweeted that the two countries would “stand together as mates, as we have for over 100 years, ready to face the challenges and threats to a free and open Indo-Pacific”.

The Pentagon issued a statement saying Austin had “emphasised the importance of maintaining a free and open Indo-Pacific, founded on existing international law and norms in a region free of malign behaviour”.

In her own statement, Reynolds said it was “a warm and productive discussion between trusted allies” and they had “a wide-ranging discussion on the ambitious year ahead to further deepen our cooperation”.

Reynolds said the pair had agreed that Australia and the US would “continue to work side by side with allies and partners to maintain a region that is secure, prosperous, inclusive and rules-based”.

“We agreed it is vital that we continue working together across the breadth of our relationship as the Indo-Pacific region evolves and faces new challenges,” she said.

While her statement did not mention China by name, she said the Australia-US Alliance had “never been more important as we look ahead to our strategic challenges”. Reynolds said she looked forward to meeting with Austin in person “when circumstances permit” and also to welcome him to Australia later this year for the 2021 Ausmin talks - a dialogue that also includes the Australian foreign minister and US secretary of state.

For more on the two new Covid cases in New Zealand, you can read Eleanor de Jong’s story here:

Just returning to the press conference held by chief medical officer, Michael Kidd, he said Australia would have enough supplies to vaccinate everyone in the country once the AstraZeneca vaccine was approved.

The great advantage we have with the AstraZeneca vaccine is that it is being produced onshore in Australia by CSL. This means we will not be subject to some of the concerns about the supply of vaccine that we have seen affect people in some of the countries overseas.

I can’t tell you the exact number of AstraZeneca vaccine doses that we will be expecting to arrive in the country [or] at what time.

Certainly we are expecting to get, after approval, we are expecting to get international doses first and then very soon after that we will have locally produced doses available.

Facebook users searching the platform for Holocaust or Holocaust denial will be sent a message by the tech giant, telling them to look for credible sources elsewhere.

Facebook’s Guy Rosen made the announcement on International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

The company banned content that denies or distorts the events of the Holocaust in October last year. Rosen said this new step was designed to help counter the “well-documented rise in anti-Semitism globally, and the alarming level of ignorance about the Holocaust, especially among young people”.

The message will pop up in English-speaking countries first including Australia, the US, Canada, New Zealand, the UK, and Ireland, with more countries to be added during the next few months.

The New Zealand Ministry of Health has released a statement detailing the two additional cases of the South African Covid variant.

The ministry says the two people involved had completed their mandatory isolation, and had returned negative results before testing positive.

As a precaution, Public Health staff are checking details with the individuals about their movements since they left managed isolation to identify close and casual contacts [and] if contact tracing is required.

The two former returnees both returned a positive test for Covid-19, however it is yet to be confirmed if they are recent or historic infections. Further urgent testing is being carried out this evening.

Both individuals are currently isolating at home.

Sticking with the vaccine, Kidd gave some details on the process behind the TGA’s approval and how the rollout might look:

The Australian technical advisory group on immunisation, as part of its normal process when a vaccine is approved, is to go through all the evidence and makes recommendations about the safety for different population groups so the OTAGI group at the moment are looking at issues around women who are pregnant, breastfeeding, frail people at the end of life and other groups and that information will be released once they have made that information.

This is part of the work that is taking place between the Australian Government and the states and territories. As you know, these initial 30-50 major hubs where the Pfizer vaccine will be going to, are going to be in large centres and they will be places where those priority groups will either come to those centres, the hospital workers, the other health care workers at risk of coming in contact with COVID-19, the quarantine workers and the border workers or they will be taking the vaccine from those hubs with our outreach teams to the residential aged care and disability care centres.

On when restrictions across Australia will be lifted, as vaccination programs begin, Kidd says it is essential that all communities are reached and that vaccination rates are high.

Clearly, until we have very significant numbers of people vaccinated in Australia, we can’t look at easing up on the restrictions that we’ve had, those public health measures that have been so much a part of our lives over the past 12 months.

I want to encourage everybody when it comes to be your turn in the priority list to get the vaccine, to please line up, get vaccinated. This will help to protect your health and wellbeing as well as protecting your family and the wider community.

On the potential extension of the suspension of the travel bubble, Kidd says Australia is expecting further advice overnight from New Zealand, and a decision will be made tomorrow.

At this point, the suspension is due to be lifted at 2.00pm tomorrow.

Kidd says the situation is “evolving rapidly” and the government is waiting to hear further details from authorities in New Zealand on further tests.

Chief medical officer, Michael Kidd, is speaking now and has begun by welcoming the news of 10 days of no community transmission in the country.

The New Zealand tourism industry has expressed despair over the suspension of the travel bubble with Australia.

AAP has the story:

New Zealand tourism figures are despairing at fresh setbacks to the trans-Tasman bubble, saying they need international visitors – and soon – to avoid mass layoffs and business failures.

Hopes for quarantine-free travel took a hit this week when New Zealand’s first community COVID-19 case in weeks prompted Australia to suspend its one-way arrangement.

Few want the bubble working more than New Zealand’s tourism businesses.

With borders closed to international visitors, Tourism Industry Aotearoa (TIA) estimates the sector will miss out on $NZ6 billion ($A5.6 billion) this summer.

A third of that spend would have come from Australians, and perhaps more given a bubble would make New Zealand the only international destination available to jet-setting Aussies.

Before Christmas, Jacinda Ardern targeted the “first quarter” of 2021 for open borders but on Tuesday the New Zealand prime minister said Australia’s reaction made the prospect “increasingly difficult”.

Frustrated TIA chief executive Chris Roberts sees the bubble slipping away.

“Every time we almost get to the prize it gets snatched away,” he told AAP.

“The government was proposing to make it two-way in the first quarter and they were going to give us a precise date for that in early January.

“Now we’re at the end of January and our prime minister is signalling it’s getting more difficult.”

Mr Roberts says many companies have enjoyed strong summers thanks to domestic holidaymakers, but those in remote pockets of New Zealand, such as South Island’s Fjordland and Westland, are struggling.

“Te Anau, Fox Glacier, Franz Josef Glacier, places where Kiwis don’t tend to go have felt like ghost towns,” he said.

“Things have dropped away considerably since early January and that will fall again further next week when schools go back.

“Operators are telling us they’re very nervous. Thousands of jobs and hundreds of businesses could disappear because the cash flows from Christmas and the New Year are not going to sustain them much further.”

A Victorian minister has rejected suggestions that it was time to scale back the police presence at the NSW border.

Victorian Police Association secretary Wayne Gatt said that it was time to redeploy the 850 officers currently stationed at the border, saying it was a “huge chunk” of the force.

He noted that Victoria currently lists just one NSW local government area – Cumberland – as a red zone, with the northern state recording no new community transmission of coronavirus for 10 days in a row.

Our members are telling us they are of very, very limited value there now based on what’s occurring in NSW.

We have to start genuinely thinking about bringing those officers home.

But Victorian trade and tourism minister Martin Pakula shot down the suggestion.

We’ve still got one zone in NSW which is red [and] there is a still a border permit process in place for the border crossing.

The Department of Parliamentary Services has given an update on the tourists who allegedly breached Covid restrictions in the ACT. It’s been revealed they visited public areas within Parliament House and were asked if they had come from a hotspot.

The group were asked if they were from a COVID-affected area prior to entering the building. They spent a short period of time in the public areas of the building.

Their movements prior to and during their stay in the ACT are a matter for the ACT Government.

As part of Australian Parliament House COVID-19 protocols, cleaning of high-touch areas occurs three times daily. As a result of the visit yesterday, additional cleaning has occurred, and Parliament House remains open to the public.

A four-year-old boy has died after being hit by a garbage truck in Launceston, Tasmania.

Just after midday, police received reports of a serious crash between a garbage truck and a pedestrian. They confirmed at a press conference earlier today that the boy died at the scene.

Police are still investigating the incident.

Three emus have allegedly been deliberately killed in a hit-and-run incident in Victoria.

AAP has the story:

Three young emus have been killed in Victoria’s Gippsland region, with rescuers adamant they were deliberately run down.

Wildlife carers say the emus were on Monday hit by a vehicle at Golden Beach, a small town situated along Ninety Mile Beach and about 40km west of Sale.

“It had to be a four-wheel drive with a bull bar,” Sue Kirwan of Help for Wildlife told AAP on Wednesday.

“They are a heavy-bodied bird. A normal car would have had a fair bit of damage done to it, cleaning up three of the poor things.”

When a carer arrived to render assistance, two were dead on the road. The third was put down after suffering a broken leg.

“To leave one of them there suffering in that heat and not even call anyone is awful,” Kirwan said.

“If they can’t be saved, at least they don’t suffer.”

Kirwan said the emus were killed on Cooper Street and were part of a family of six.

Police have been notified.

There have been no new Covid cases related to the Australian Open cohort, after one case was reclassified due to evidence of a previous infection.

That means the total number of cases related to the cohort currently stands at eight. One man has recovered and has been cleared to leave isolation, leaving active cases at seven.

Returning to the story of a group of tourists who visited Parliament House in Canberra, in breach of Covid restrictions, the Department of Parliamentary Services (DPS) has told the ABC it was “aware” of the breach.

DPS has been in contact with ACT Health and provided relevant information to authorities as well as undertaking cleaning in line with COVID-safe plans for the building.

ACT Policing also confirmed they were aware of the breach, but said it was not related to the Invasion Day rally held yesterday.

The group is from the Cumberland local government area – the only Sydney council area still subject to a travel ban in the ACT.

Crowd numbers for this year’s Australian Open will be decided in the coming days.

Health authorities are close to finalising how many people will be allowed to attend the Grand Slam and if it will follow other sports events in recent months to have limited numbers.

The tournament is scheduled to begin in two weeks, after it was delayed due to the pandemic. Many of the players are currently still in mandated quarantine.

Victorian sports minister, Martin Pakula, said a decision would be made soon.

Obviously the announcement timeframe for the tennis is a bit shorter than the football given the Australian Open starts in less than a fortnight so we’ll have more to say about that in the next few days,” he said.

In the meantime, federal health minister, Greg Hunt, has welcomed the country’s 10th consecutive day without community transmission:

So, to kick things off, we are expecting an update from acting chief medical officer, Michael Kidd, in 10 minutes.

I’ll hedge a bet it’ll be about vaccinations, but who really knows. I’ll be bringing you the latest updates here, so stay tuned.

Good afternoon everyone, and thanks Calla for another amazing job this morning.

The heat has abated in Sydney and we have returned to miserable weather, but the news continues unabated. Let’s dive in.

I will hand over to the wonderful Mostafa Rachwani to take you through the afternoon.

Take care, stay hydrated, and I’ll see you in the morning.

ACT Health has confirmed that a possible breach of coronavirus travel restrictions was detected at Parliament House yesterday.

They provided this statement to Paul Karp:

This morning ACT Health has received a report of a potential breach of travel restrictions from a group who visited Parliament House yesterday.

The report was received from the Covid taskforce at Parliament House and has been referred to ACT policing for investigation.

A group of tourists from the Cumberland local government area – the only Sydney council area still subject to a travel ban in the Australian Capital Territory – has travelled to Canberra, the Canberra Times has reported.

The group reportedly visited “several national institutions”, including Parliament House.

The Canberra Times said the Department of Parliamentary Services had confirmed it had received a report of a potential breach of travel restrictions and had referred the matter to police.

Queensland’s chief health officer, Dr Jeannette Young, has just addressed the media in Townsville about the Covid vaccine rollout.

She said Queensland is ready to start the rollout as soon as the federal government provides supplies.

The first six hubs will be in our major cities that are ... at the highest risk of having any cases, because that’s where our international border entry comes through. So Cairns, here in Townsville, in the Sunshine Coast, in the Gold Coast, and in Brisbane – both north and south Brisbane.

The hubs will distribute the Pfizer vaccine, which is difficult to distribute widely because it has to be stored at such a low temperature. Once the AstraZeneca vaccine is approved and available, clinics will be set up in regional areas.

So once we get those other vaccines, we’ll be able to enable every single person who’s 16 years of age or over to be vaccinated, which will be excellent.

Another update to this desperately sad story.

The pet dog of a couple killed in an alleged hit and run crash in Alexandra Hills in Brisbane last night has been found alive and well, if frightened, in bushland.

The couple was walking their dog when they were stuck and killed by a stolen LandCruiser. A 17-year-old alleged to have been driving the 4WD has been charged with murder.

The dog, Frankie, went missing and had not been found by Wednesday morning, prompting locals to start a search party.

And just to clarify because we missed the start of the NSW press conference earlier, those restrictions will ease from 12.01am Friday.

Chant said that contact tracers had not yet been able to link the six Covid-19 cases affecting one family in western Sydney to the Berala cluster.

She said:

Any unlinked cases are concerning. There is still some investigations under way there. But at this stage we don’t have a clear link. That’s why any case of unrecognised acquisition causes a lot of concern, because it raises the possibility that there may have been other chains of transmission we’re missing.

Chant said sewage surveillance programs complement that work.

At the moment, we’re optimistic we’re on the trajectory of eliminating the transmission in New South Wales. But it is too premature to say we’ve got there yet.

It may be in two weeks’ time we look back and say, ‘Well, actually, at this point in time we probably had’. But for the abundance of caution, we need to just maintain these settings with these relaxations and I’ve got to say that – it’s acknowledgement – we can do this, because we acknowledge the support of the community to date. It gives us confidence in easing some settings that we have done today. But that extra little bit of time will assure us that we’ve picked up any last remnants of transmission.

She then urged anyone who had any symptoms to get tested, saying “we need to sort of have a bit of a pact with the community for you to continue to come forward and get tested and follow those Covid-safe practices of not going to work when you’re unwell, not going out and about when you’re unwell, and get a test”.

Why do some aged care homes remain locked down, particularly in River Hills and Mount Druitt. if restrictions are being eased?

NSW chief health officer Dr Kerry Chant said:

We know that aged-care facilities are the most vulnerable. A key plank of our strategy has been keeping them safe. Whilst we acknowledge the importance of visitation to keep people mentally well as well as physically well and engaged.

So, we go through a process of looking at where the transmission may have been occurring and so, for instance, we have had a case in some – in some of those suburbs that are unexplained. So where the source is not identified. And because of that, we are concerned if we haven’t found the source, there could actually be chains of transmission that are going unrecognised.

Chant said that until health officials are satisfied that the chain of transmission has been eliminated, restrictions on visiting aged care homes will remain in place. She said the advice from the local public health unit was that there were still some concerns in the Cumberland local government area.

Gladys Berejiklian had previously hoped to return the state to the same rules that were in place before the Northern Beaches outbreak, but she said the health advice had changed because of new variants of the virus.

Since the Avalon cluster, much had been revealed globally and, in fact, in Australia regarding the new strains of the virus. Things have changed. And that’s why the advice to government evolves and our response to the pandemic evolves.

But what is very certain in New South Wales is, more than any other state in this nation, that we believe in striking the right balance between allowing the economy to function, people to keep their jobs and move forward whilst we’re keeping the virus under control.

NSW health minister, Brad Hazzard, says larger weddings do not mean more people can be on dance floors:

I have heard reports of, at some weddings, people have chosen to ignore the limit of 20 people dancing. The bridal party and whoever are acknowledged as being in the bridal party. The expectation that they can all get up there and dance.

Unfortunately, dancing, singing is amongst the most dangerous things you can do with this rather evil virus. But if you actually choose to ignore the rules and you put your fellow visitors, fellow attendees at the wedding at risk, that is completely and woefully inappropriate. It also is not fair to the proprietors of the business, when you actually jump up and just dance and allow the business to be exposed to the possibility of a fine. I want to make it clear that that is not acceptable.

We all want you to have a wonderful wedding. We all want to have fantastic weddings. But for the time being, in a Covid environment, dancing will be limited to 20 people in the bridal party. You must not expect that other people will be able to do that within the foreseeable future. So, please don’t put yourselves at risk and please do not put the proprietor of the facility at risk by going beyond the legal restrictions.

Berejiklian said it was very likely restrictions will be eased again in two weeks, if there is no further community transmission in the outbreak in the western suburbs.

In all likelihood, if we continue the current trends, if we continue to see zero to low numbers and reasonable rates of testing ... in two weeks’ time all the settings that we’ve currently described as being subjected to the four-square-metre rule will revert to the two-square-metre rule.

So, it means if you have a wedding or a funeral or any other event, you will be able to subscribe to the two-square-metre rule. That includes hospitality venues, and elsewhere, [where] the four-square-metre rule is in place, will be able to revert to the two-square-metre rule we believe in about a fortnight.

Berejiklian said the change would not be made yet because while there had been two 14-day cycles with no community transmission in the Northern Beaches, it had not been that long since the most recent case in the southwestern Sydney/Berala outbreak.

She added:

We want to encourage people to work in their workplace, so long as they do it in a Covid-safe way. We want to encourage people to go about their normal lives as much as possible. We want businesses to resume their activities so long as it’s all done in a Covid-safe way. We don’t know when the pandemic is going to end. But what we do know is that we have to live with it and New South Wales has always taken a very balanced approach of making sure we keep the virus under control, but that we also make sure that we keep our economy as open as possible. That’s really important, moving forward.

So, I’m pleased to say the restrictions will ease from midnight this Friday. But we also consider the high likelihood, the high probability, of restrictions easing within two weeks further, going from 4 square metres to 2 square metres. We’re sending this message out today so that businesses can be prepared.

New Zealand has recorded no new locally-acquired cases of Covid-19 for the third day in a row.

Hopes are growing that the country has avoided an outbreak after a positive case was detected in the community on Sunday, breaking a 10-week run.

The Labor party has repeated its call for the Australian government to implement an anti-racism strategy, after US president Joe Biden signed four executive orders to tackle racial inequality.

Labor’s Andrew Giles said:

In recent weeks the deputy prime minister has parroted far-right slogans and Scott Morrison has made deeply insensitive remarks to First Nations people.

By stark contrast, Joe Biden said ‘our soul will be troubled ... as long as systemic racism is allowed to exist’.

He added:

It’s time for Scott Morrison to join with Labor and commit to a national anti-racism strategy, one that takes a zero-tolerance approach to racism.

Greens senator Lidia Thorpe says she is disappointed by Labor leader Anthony Albanese’s suggestion that a referendum on the constitutional recognition of First Nations people be held on 26 January, describing it as “bumbling and desperate”.

Albanese first floated the idea in 2018 and put it forward again yesterday. It was pretty universally panned as a bad idea.

Thorpe has been critical of the constitutional recognition process in the past, and said the only way to begin healing the relationship is a treaty. In a statement, she said:

If we’re going to get serious and unite this country, then we urgently need a Treaty - a Treaty that starts with telling the truth about this country’s Blak history ...

A Treaty is ultimately a peace agreement – where First Nations people speak, sovereign to sovereign, with the Australian state, and work together to negotiate an end to the war on our people that first began almost 250 years ago.

A Treaty means real unity – an end to the divide in this country. A modern Australia that has dealt properly with its past, so that we can move forward, together.

It’s in a Treaty process that we can come together and deal – once and for all – with a whole range of issues, including changing the date. If we want real justice and equality, we have to be ambitious – random thought bubbles just aren’t going to cut it.

Here’s the statement from the office of the Australian information commissioner on that decision involving a privacy leak that affected more than 9,000 refugees. You can read more on that story from Chris Kaus here.

The Business Council of Australia has backed a private member’s bill from independent MP Zali Steggall to set a net-zero emissions target for 2050.

Steggall’s bill was announced almost a year ago but was delayed due to Covid. It’s now the focus of a parliamentary inquiry.

In a submission to the inquiry, signed by CEO Jennifer Westacott, the business council said it supported “strong action” on climate change, which required “setting a national target of net-zero emissions by 2050 and, critically, outlining a pathway to achieve this goal”.

The high-level policy framework outlined in the proposed legislation represents an important starting point for the development of a clearly defined, nationally guided and coordinated climate policy response.

You can read more on this story by environment editor Adam Morton, here:

Slater and Gordon and the Refugee Advice and Casework Service have welcomed the privacy regulator’s decision to order the Australian government to pay compensation to asylum seekers caught up in a serious 2014 privacy breach.

The two organisations represented the asylum seekers pro bono after their details were inadvertently revealed on the then department of immigration and border protection’s website, exposing them to potential retribution.

Slater and Gordon associate Ebony Birchall said the ruling was “unprecedented” – the first time in Australian history that compensation had been ordered for a mass privacy breach.

In a statement, Dr Birchall said:

This is the most significant use of the representative complaint powers in the Privacy Act to date, and appears likely to result in the largest compensation figure ever to be determined for a privacy claim in Australia.

It is an important reflection of the fact that privacy breaches are not trivial or consequence-free mistakes, and that increasingly, individuals who suffer loss as a result of a breach should expect to be able to obtain redress.

RACS principal solicitor Sarah Dale said she was “pleased to see it publicly recognised that the Department of Home Affairs breached the fundamental right to privacy of thousands of people seeking asylum in Australia”.

Dale said no decision would alleviate the distress of those “who have already experienced so much pain”.

This breach meant that any person searching the internet could access the personal information surrounding thousands of people applying for protection in Australia. This includes authorities and indeed even the perpetrators of the persecution, in the countries from which they fled.

Birdlife’s Sean Dooley has done a deep dive on the forty-spotted pardalote, which was the Google doodle for 26 January.

He writes:

When the British colonists arrived in Hobart in 1803, the world changed for the pardalotes. White gums tend to grow on the flatter, more fertile land and were soon heavily cleared for agriculture and housing.

Compounding the habitat destruction was the forced removal/slaughter/genocide of the Indigenous Palawa people whose stewardship of the land had created conditions favourable to forty-spots. Who knows what damage was done once traditional land management practice ceased?

By the 1980s forty-spots hung on in about 10 sites with a population estimate of around 3,500 birds- low but but thought to be stable. A new assessment by Matt Webb and Sally Bryant in the 2000s found numbers had suddenly crashed by about 60%. It was slipping away unnoticed.

It would be remiss of me not to point out that you can vote for the forty-spotted pardalote in Guardian Australia’s 2021 Bird of the Year poll, which opens on 27 September. Just 243 days away!

A jobkeeper update:

Florida has asked the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to consider letting it host the 2021 games amid speculation that Tokyo organisers may back out as hosts due to concerns about the Covid-19 outbreak.

I’m not sure how Australian athletes would feel about travelling to the United States, which has the highest number of Covid-19 cases in the world.

From Reuters:

Tokyo organisers have vowed to press ahead with the re-scheduled Games, which are due to open on July 23 after being postponed for a year because of the novel coronavirus, but Florida’s chief financial officer Jimmy Patronis has offered an alternative option.

“There is still time to deploy a site selection team to Florida to meet with statewide and local officials on holding the Olympics in the Sunshine State,” Patronis said in a letter sent this week to IOC President Thomas Bach.

“I would welcome the opportunity to pitch Florida and help you make the right contacts to get this done.”

In an email to Reuters, the IOC said it has not received a letter from Patronis and referred to the statement issued last Friday that said it is committed to having the Olympic Games in Tokyo this year. Given all the planning and preparations necessary to host an Olympics, it is virtually impossible to relocate the event within six months of the scheduled opening ceremony.

In his letter, Patronis drew attention to what he called the strength of the state’s vaccination rollout along with Florida holding several sporting events, including the entirety of last year’s NBA playoffs, during the pandemic.

Florida’s death toll from the novel coronavirus has topped 25,000. The cumulative death toll from the virus in Japan topped 5,000 over the weekend.

“Whatever precautions are required let’s figure it out and get it done,” wrote Patronis.

In case you missed this piece of classic Australian news yesterday, it has now gone international.

ABC America has posted a video of a snake catcher checking a car in Queensland which had a number of signs warning of a snake in the engine.

And because it is Queensland, there was definitely a smoke in the motor.

Charmingly, the only reaction of the car owners was to say that the carpet python is beautiful.

Australia’s foreign affairs minister, Marise Payne, has welcomed the US Senate’s confirmation of Antony Blinken as Joe Biden’s secretary of state.

On Twitter Payne offered her “warm congratulations” to the top diplomat and said the two countries would “continue to work closely to uphold the rules based order, defend human rights & promote a stable, prosperous & secure Indo-Pacific”.

The Biden administration has signalled it will coordinate more closely with Australia and other allies on issues such as China – although the new bipartisan consensus in Washington favours a hard line on Beijing.

Blinken told a Senate confirmation hearing last week that although he disagreed with Donald Trump’s methods, the former president had been right to take a harder line towards China. Blinken also backed outgoing secretary of state Mike Pompeo’s last-minute declaration that China was committing genocide in Xinjiang – something that triggered new Chinese sanctions on Pompeo and other Trump officials. Still, Blinken has previously expressed an interest in carving out areas of potential cooperation with Beijing, such as on climate change and pandemic preparedness.

There has been a lot of discussion on social media in recent months about the NSW government’s management of coronavirus outbreaks, which is very different to how outbreaks have been managed in other states.

The prime minister and others have called NSW the “gold standard”, others have said it’s just luck. Guardian Australia’s Melissa Davey has delved into this question. She writes:

The feared large outbreak of cases over Christmas and New Year never eventuated. NSW appears once again to have contained the virus, although Berejiklian has repeatedly said many times that testing rates need to be much higher before the state can rest easy. However, she has been confident enough to reduce the already minimal restrictions. So can the success of NSW still be put down to luck?

The chair of epidemiology at Deakin University, Prof Catherine Bennett, said: “I think what NSW has done really well is taken a nuanced approach, and tailor their approach to wherever the outbreak is, whatever the challenges are, whatever the opportunities are, and to put the restrictions in place as needed. And it’s proven to be enough.”

Bennett said most of the outbreaks in NSW had been contained within three to five generations of spread, which she described as a “good hallmark of strong containment”. But Bennett said where NSW failed was in its approach to masks.

Despite calls from peak medical bodies and infectious diseases physicians, Berejiklian did not mandate masks until 4 January. Even as the number of cases has dwindled in NSW, masks now remain mandatory for many indoor settings, in airports and on flights, raising questions as to why they were not mandatory when case numbers first began increasing.

“NSW weren’t gold standard on masks,” Bennett said. “Mandatory masks might have meant the person who went to the BWS store while infectious had a mask on and the person serving them had a mask on, and that might have been enough to stop the Berala cluster. We’ll never know what might have happened but I would argue, at least, the number of people infected through the BWS cluster could have been smaller or prevented in the first place.”

You can read Melissa’s full analysis piece here:

Australia’s chief nursing and midwifery officer, Alison McMillan, has been talking about the advertising campaign to encourage uptake of the Covid-19 vaccine.

She said:

I think that we’re all being talking about vaccines now for quite a long time since this pandemic emerged. And it’s important that we provide, government provide really reliable and accurate information to all Australians so that they are informed about the progress of this vaccine and how they can have confidence that it will be safe and effective through all of the mechanisms that we have been talking about.

This campaign, this advertising now is just a part of that phased program of providing information to everyone who needs it. We’re still waiting for the advice from [Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation] about the use of the Pfizer vaccine for pregnant women, and obviously AstraZeneca. This information will develop over time and at the moment we’re always saying to pregnant women, those thinking about getting pregnant or who are breastfeeding, for instance, they’re not part of the target group right now but we’ll make sure we give them the best information so they can make the right choices about themselves and their baby.

She said the government does not have a target for the percentage of the population it wants to take the vaccine this year, but added:

I think we can be really reassured, the uptake we saw of the flu vaccine last year was something we never seen those figures before. It was the greatest uptake. We do know that Australians are great at having vaccines, so we want to get as many of those people we can get vaccinated, vaccinated, anyone over 18, at this point, of course, is our target, but we don’t have a figure in mind. Because his will be a staged rollout through a number of periods over the year.

Rafael Nadal has responded to criticism of his silence on Australian Open quarantine conditions with a veiled swipe at world No 1 Novak Djokovic.

It comes after Argentinian player Guido Pella said he was “surprised” at Nadal’s silence, saying “Djokovic’s balcony is bigger than my room but at least he said something,”.

Djokovic himself been criticised for publicly lobbying Tennis Australia and the Victorian government to loosen restrictions for the 72 overseas players forced into quarantine after traveling on flights with confirmed positive coronavirus cases.

Nadal, who is quarantining in Adelaide, told ESPN on Monday:

Some need to make public all these things they do for others, some of us do it in a more private way without having to publicise everything.

The calls we make to help the most disadvantaged players, some of us don’t need or want to advertise it.

You can read more on this story here:

Here are some of the images from the Invasion Day rallies held across Australia yesterday. You can see more pictures from the day here.

The ABC cannot fill the void created by the closure of hundreds of newsrooms in suburban and regional Australia, the broadcaster has told a Senate inquiry into media diversity.

The news deserts created by the collapse of advertising revenue for newspapers may mean the ABC is now the only news outlet covering a regional or rural town, the ABC submission says.

While the ABC provides the foundation for public interest journalism it does not have the resources to tell all the nation’s stories.

“The ABC was not established to deliver hyperlocal news across Australia,” the submission says. “This was the province of the once profitable local newspaper sector. The ABC was aimed more at delivering national news to communities and helping local voices to be heard in their regions and in national debates.”

Last year News Corp Australia cut costs by closing the print editions of more than 100 local and regional newspapers and the Covid-19 pandemic brought a fresh wave of job losses across magazines, television and newspapers, leaving some communities without a newspaper.

The digital platforms inquiry heard 106 local and regional newspaper titles closed across Australia between 2008 and 2018 as Facebook and Google attracted the lion’s share of advertising dollars.

Read more here:

The deputy prime minister and National party leader, Michael McCormack, has been speaking in Canberra and was asked about an opinion piece written by his predecessor, Barnaby Joyce.

Joyce wrote in the Australian that “the Coalition has devolved into a marriage of convenience that diminishes the electoral prospects of the whole Coalition”.

If the Liberals and Nationals are in a “marriage”, as is often said in a creepy saccharine way, then the wedding photo of the couple is a bit of an anachronism. In question time to the right of the dispatch box, where the prime minister sits, is no longer the deputy prime minister, leader of the Nationals, but the treasurer. He moved into the picture recently with the Covid pandemic and it does not look like he is for moving out of the frame.

The thrust of his argument is that the National party should hold one more cabinet position, based on it holding 21% of the Coalition seats in the lower house, and should control more of the budget spend.

McCormack told reporters in Canberra:

Seeing as though he used the word of marriage, it’s a marriage of strength. We work well together. As you see, we are working together for this announcement. Right across the nation, Liberals and Nationals are working together to build a better Australia.

And regional people have very much, very much, placed their faith in the Nationals. They’re not worried about the power struggles in Canberra, they’re not worried about who might sit on a committee or what percentage of this and that is made up of the government. That hasn’t even been raised with me before today. What they are – what they are absolutely concentrating on, what the people of Australia want from their government is delivery and that’s what we’re doing.

In news relevant to Australia, because the majority of the Australian population at this stage will be vaccinated with the AstraZeneca vaccine, the European Medicines Agency may decide to just authorise its use for younger people, given limited data on how it effects over-65s.

More on this from Sarah Boseley and Philip Oltermann:

The Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine may be authorised only for younger people in Europe, because there is insufficient data on how well it works in the over-65s, the head of the regulatory body has suggested.

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) is expected to authorise the AstraZeneca vaccine at the end of this week, a month after it was approved in the UK.

Emer Cooke, the EMA’s executive director, told the European parliament that it is examining the “totality of the data” provided by AstraZeneca across different age groups.

In an interview with la Repubblica on Tuesday, AstraZeneca’s CEO, Pascal Soriot, acknowledged there was “a limited amount of data” on the effects of the vaccine in older people, but insisted the information they had showed “very strong antibody production against the virus in the elderly, similar to what we see in younger people”.

He said he understood if some countries “out of caution, will use our vaccine for the younger group”.

But he added: “Honestly, it is fine. There’s not enough vaccines for everybody. So if they want to use another vaccine for older people and our vaccine for younger people, what’s the problem? It’s not a problem.”

You can read their full report here:

A tropical low in the Gulf of Carpentaria could develop into a cyclone over the Cape York region over the next few days, the Bureau of Meteorology has warned.

The system is currently 210km north-northeast of Mornington Island and 400km east southeast of Groote Eylandt. The B0M said:

The tropical low is expected to become slow moving over the southeastern Gulf of Carpentaria for several days with an increasing risk of forming into a tropical cyclone from Wednesday. The system is expected to cross the western Cape York Peninsula coast later this week.

If it does develop into a cyclone, it will be called tropical cyclone Lucas.

Berejiklian was asked to comment on the new Covid-19 vaccine advertising campaign, and said the Therapeutic Goods Administration “would not have approved it if it wasn’t safe”.

We’re able to rely on research, the experience that other nations have had, and I for one will be getting it absolutely the day it’s available to me ... I know some people feel strongly about not having a vaccine. I’m not one of them. I think it’s really important for us, for as many of us to get the vaccine as possible in a timely way, to safeguard all of us moving forward. And potentially to give us greater freedoms.

Speaking of those people, said ABC News Breakfast host Michael Rowland, “Craig Kelly has spent months questioning if a vaccine is needed, he’s been promoting all these weird and wacky unproven medical treatments, he described mask wearing as child abuse. Is the time for the prime minister to pull him into line?”

Berejiklian said:

Oh, look, I just focus on what I need to focus on.

Rowland: What is your view as a fellow member of the New South Wales Liberal party about the comments he’s making very publicly?

Berejiklian:

My view is all of us should always follow the health advice. We have experts appointed and serving in positions which have kept all of us and Australia safe to this point in time. All of us owe it to the health experts to follow the advice and what we present is based on science and fact.

Rowland: But he isn’t following the advice. What should the consequences be?

Berejiklian:

He’s not in my team. You have to ask...

Rowland: He’s a fellow member of the New South Wales Liberal party. You’re a premier, he’s a backbencher. You have more stripes than him. What do you say to him?

Berejilklian

I’m not going to add any further to what I said. Please ask me other questions.

Rowland: You don’t have a view on the misinformation he’s spreading?

Berejiklian:

I think I have answered the question twice already. To say you should always base, base the advice, the actions you take based on health advice. And I think I’ve been saying that straight for about a year every day. And I don’t think any of us should waste our time on people who express opinions not based on evidence.

Rowland: OK, I’ll take that as a no. We’ll leave it there. Thank you.

Well, then.

And finally, Frydenberg was asked by a call from former National party leader Barnaby Joyce that the federal government subsidise a new coal-fired power station.

Frydenberg said the federal government had a technology-neutral approach and any project would need to be commercially viable.

So that’s a no to subsidising coal-fired power, Kelly asked?

Frydenberg said:

We are not about to fund a new coal-fired power station.

Kelly asked Frydenberg if that personal and family history gave him a greater understanding or empathy with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples around the celebration of 26 January.

He said:

The first thing I would say is that I acknowledge that that day is a source of pride and also pain for many Australians.

But then added that he thinks the day has a meaning beyond the arrival of the First Fleet.

It tells the broader and longer Australian story, starting with our first Australians who were here for 60,000 years or perhaps more, and right up to yesterday where 12,000 people became new citizens.

Frydenberg then cited federal Indigenous affairs minister Ken Wyatt, and Labor’s Indigenous affairs spokeswoman Linda Burney.

They talk about the importance, not on the day of which it is held, but the way in which we commemorate it.

And still in the area of Australia Day, Frydenberg was asked for his personal view on the decision to grant tennis player Margaret Court Australia’s highest honour, given her public homophobic statements. He said a person should be qualified for an Australia Day honour “not on your social views or your political views but on your achievements in the field that is being recognised”.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has been speaking on Radio National about the creation fo a new Holocaust museum in Canberra. The federal government has marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Wednesday by committing $750,000 to the project.

Frydenberg’s mother migrated to Australia after surviving the Holocaust.

He said it was important that the lessons of that tragedy were not forgotten.

The Holocaust was not just a crime against the Jewish people, it was a crime against humanity ... If we were to observe a minute’s silence for every victim that silence would go for 11 years.

And added:

There is historical revisionism in some parts of the world and some countries and that’s why reminding everybody about that chapter of history is important.

Frydenberg said he was concerned about a rise in levels of anti-semitism, both in Australia and globally.

We have seen swastikas daubed in schools, on advertising for theatre productions of Anne Frank even and businesses owned by Jewish Australians, so we have seen a rise in anti-semitism but also the importance of tolerance and diversity across our nation.

Host Fran Kelly asked Frydenberg how he felt to see some of the anti-semitic, neo-Nazi slogans being worn some of the people involved in the insurrection of the US Capitol building. He said:

Frightening. Despicable. Disgusting. To see that in the nation of the United States, in their capital, was truly frightening, and I think it should for all of us send a very chilling message that we need to double our efforts to ensure never again.

Good morning,

Restrictions could ease in New South Wales today, with the state’s crisis cabinet due to meet. Premier Gladys Berejiklian said at the weekend that she would not look at lifting restrictions until after 26 January, to avoid a public holiday super-spreading event. NSW has gone eight days without a locally-acquired case.

It is currently compulsory in greater Sydney, the Central Coast and Wollongong to wear a mask indoors in public spaces and there’s a limit of five visitors to homes. It’s expected the number of people allowed to gather in homes will increase but the requirement to wear masks in high-risk places, like on public transport, will remain.

NSW has also slipped to its lowest position in the Comsec report in eight years, to be equal sixth with Western Australia, just above the Northern Territory. Tasmania has maintained its position as the top performing state, with the ACT as second and Victoria and South Australia were equal third.

An advertising campaign to encourage Australians to take the Covid-19 vaccine will launch today, promising it is both safe and effective.

The number of coronavirus cases globally passed 100 million, according to the Johns Hopkins tally. More than 2.1m people have died.

The death toll in the United Kingdom has passed 100,000, with prime minister Boris Johson saying he takes “full responsibility” and is “sorry for every life lost”.

And thousands of people attended an Invasion Day rally in cities around Australia yesterday, with four arrests in NSW. Two people, including a counter-protester wearing clothing branded with the Proud Boys and “Fuck Antifa”. You can see a photo gallery of the protests here.

Let’s crack on. You can reach me on twitter @callapilla or email me at calla.wahlquist@theguardian.com