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Watch: AFP press conference on arrest of conman Peter Foster
Australian Federal Police officers are addressing the media at 3pm (AEDT) after the arrest of notorious conman Peter Foster in Victoria earlier today. Watch below:
NSW Labor accuses Education Minister of inflaming teacher strike tensions
By Lucy Cormack
NSW Labor leader Chris Minns has accused Education Minister Sarah Mitchell of being inflammatory, after she said the NSW Teachers Federation was being an obstructionist protection racket ahead of Tuesday's teachers strike."
Ms Mitchell launched a blistering attack on the federation today, accusing it of fighting transparency and hanging students out to dry for political purposes.
Teachers protesting in Sydney today over pay and an overwhelming workload.Credit:Janie Barrett
“Families should not be punished by a protectionist racket focused solely on rewarding the federation’s longest-serving members whilst ignoring the needs of students," she said.
Mr Minns said he was concerned that the language only inflamed the ongoing industrial dispute.
"The emphasis here should not be on throwing mud, it should be on trying to fix this complicated situation," he said. "I wonder whether the minister is in fact inflaming the situation and antagonising it, rather than solving. At the end of the day, we were hopeful that 11th hour consultation and negotiations with the unions would stop industrial action in NSW. That doesn't seem to be the case."
Public school teachers took strike action for 24 hours on Tuesday to reject the state government’s offer of a 2.5 per cent a year pay rise.
Mr Minns accused the government of holding wages flat at a time when rising cost of living pressures had made Sydney one of the most expensive cities on earth.
"In NSW in the last 12 months, petrol has jumped up over 40 per cent ... health care is up over 5 per cent, vegetables and fruit is up 7.6 per cent and rents are up 7.2 per cent," he said. "I urge the NSW government and the Minister for Education sit down with teacher representatives – don't antagonise the situation any longer."
Fugitive arrested in Victoria after months on the run
By David Estcourt
Notorious conman and wanted fugitive Peter Foster has been arrested in the Macedon Ranges after being on the run for six months.
Mr Foster, 59, was arrested by federal police today near the Victorian town of Gisborne, about an hour north-west of Melbourne, after a six-month investigation to locate him.
Peter Foster leaves court in Sydney after a brief mention of his case back in April.Credit:Nick Moir
A warrant was issued for Mr Foster’s arrest in May after he could not be located to attend a court hearing in Sydney.
The 59-year-old was arrested in dramatic scenes in August last year on a beach near his Port Douglas home in far-north Queensland and extradited to Sydney.
He was charged with five counts of publishing false and misleading material to obtain advantage, 10 counts of dishonestly obtaining financial advantage by deception and one count of knowingly dealing with proceeds of crime with intent to conceal.
Federal police said Mr Foster was remanded in custody, and moves were afoot to extradite him to Queensland.
Possible Omicron case in Victorian hotel quarantine
By Marta Pascual Juanola
Genomic sequencing is under way to determine whether an international traveller who landed in Melbourne last week could have been infected with the new Omicron strain of COVID-19.
The traveller, who is fully vaccinated, arrived in Victoria from the Netherlands after transiting through Abu Dhabi on December 3 and went straight into hotel quarantine.
The traveller flew into Melbourne on December 3.Credit:Eddie Jim
The person returned a negative PCR test on December 4 before developing symptoms and testing positive for the virus on December 6.
Health authorities said the test results had shown an S gene dropout in the virus, a sign a person could be infected with Omicron, according to the World Health Organisation.
“Several labs have indicated that for one widely used PCR test, one of the three target genes is not detected — called S gene dropout or S gene target failure– and this test can therefore be used as marker for this variant, pending sequencing confirmation,” the WHO said on November 26.
All other passengers on the inbound flight will be contacted to make sure they have been tested for the virus, as contact tracers try to determine the source of the infection.
The traveller has not been in the community while infectious. Overseas arrivals to Victoria need to quarantine for 72 hours upon arrival and undergo PCR testing within 24 hours. They have to get tested again between days 5 and 7.
Meanwhile, two elderly Aboriginal Victorians have died having tested positive for COVID-19, becoming the first Indigenous people in the state to die with the virus.
In a statement on Tuesday afternoon, health authorities confirmed a 68-year-old woman with coronavirus had died from an underlying health condition, while a 73-year-old man had died from COVID-19.
Future COVID variants to be named after stars when Greek alphabet is exhausted
By Rachel Clun
How long will the pandemic last? It’s difficult to say for sure, but here’s a hint of what the world’s top experts think.
Chief Medical Officer Professor Paul Kelly said the World Health Organisation (WHO) is already looking at how it will name new variants of concern once it runs out of Greek letters.
“In a sign of things to come the WHO has indicated once it has exhausted the Greek alphabet, and they've got 11 left, it will look to stars and constellations for future names,” he told a Senate committee hearing this afternoon.
“It is clear that this will not be the last variant that we will be dealing with.”
The newest variant of concern, Omicron, is still being investigated by health authorities and so far still appears to be milder than other forms of the virus. But Professor Kelly said we need more information.
“Omicron is already here and as it has spread around the world in the past 10 days. There are now 49 countries that have recorded over 1000 cases of Omicron,” he said.
“We have no definite signals anywhere in the world that the Omicron is more severe than any other of the variants that have preceded it. Of course, we're watching that very carefully.”
Professor Kelly said Australian health authorities were not looking to stop the variant from getting into Australia, but rather slow its spread through the country.
Australia considering donating more vaccines as wastage rises
By Rachel Clun
Australia is looking to donate mRNA coronavirus vaccines and has delayed some imports in order to get through millions of existing doses before they expire.
Operation COVID Shield coordinator Lieutenant General John Frewen told the Senate COVID-19 Committee that the government was looking at donating doses of Pfizer and Moderna to countries in the Pacific and South East Asia as vaccines near expiry.
General Frewen at a Senate hearing in July. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen
“We're still doing management to make sure that doses that are nearing expiry are being used first,” he said. “We are working to donate if that's appropriate. We have also delayed some deliveries of mRNA vaccines from overseas to make sure that we haven't gotten vaccines here that the clock has started ticking on for expiry as well.”
There are nearly 9.9 million doses of vaccines sitting unused in clinics around the country this week, and the wastage rate has crept up to 4.3 per cent from 1.2 per cent earlier in the rollout.
“When every dose was precious, we were making sure that no vial was opened until we had enough people,” General Frewen said.
“Now we are saying if you have got a person who needs to be vaccinated they should open a vial ... That means sometimes a vial is being open when they've only got one walk in, and then they might not get any more walk-ins for the rest of the day. So you waste nine at the 10 doses.”
General Frewen said that the wastage rate was still very good, and well below the OECD wastage average of 10 to 15 per cent.
Earlier this year, Australia raided 500,000 doses of Pfizer from a scheme set up to ensure poorer countries received fair and equitable access to vaccines.
Some more information about NSW’s two new COVID deaths
By Mary Ward
As reported earlier this morning, two people have died from COVID-19 in NSW since yesterday’s update. Both were aged in their 90s.
One was a man from south-west Sydney who died at Liverpool Hospital. He was not vaccinated and had underlying health conditions.
The second death was a woman who was a resident at Blacktown Terrace Care Community aged care facility, operated by Opal. She was hospitalised at Westmead and had received two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine but had underlying health conditions.
On Friday, federal government data showed there were two resident cases at Blacktown Terrace, which is experiencing its second virus outbreak this year.
Half of all Australian women sexually harassed: survey
By Jewel Topsfield
One in two Australian women have experienced sexual harassment in their lifetime, with inappropriate comments about their body or sex life the most common complaint.
An Australian Bureau of Statistics survey found 5 million women (53 per cent) and 2.2 million men (25 per cent) have experienced at least one incident of sexual harassment.
The disturbing analysis follows two recent landmark reports into sexual harassment by Australian Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins.
Last week, Ms Jenkins’ excoriating report into parliamentary workplace culture revealed one in three staffers had been sexually harassed.
South-west Sydney’s Omicron cluster linked to recent international arrival
By Mary Ward
A growing cluster of Omicron coronavirus cases in south-west Sydney has been linked to a recent international arrival.
Recently completed genomic sequencing concluded another six cases linked to a cluster across Regents Park Christian School, St Peter Chanel Catholic Primary School in Regents Park and the Sydney Indoor Climbing Gym in Villawood are the new COVID variant.
More cases of the variant will likely be announced this week as further infections linked to the cluster are sequenced.
“The source of this cluster is believed to be a returned overseas traveller, who arrived in Sydney from Doha on flight QR 908 on November 23,” NSW Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant said this morning.
This case was a south-west Sydney man who had spent months living in Nigeria before returning to Australia.
He spent time in the community before testing positive, as he arrived in Sydney before isolation requirements for international arrivals were re-introduced.
There are now 31 confirmed Omicron cases in NSW, including 11 who acquired their infections overseas, or possibly while on international flights.
Dr Chant confirmed none had been admitted to hospital.
“We’re keeping a close eye on that situation,” she added.
Victorian government needs to ‘dial-up compassion’: Ombudsman
By Marta Pascual Juanola
Victorian Ombudsman Deborah Glass has described the hurdles faced by Victorians wanting to return home from NSW during the latest lockdown as a “bureaucratic merry-go-round” which sent families into debt and separated loved ones at crucial times in their lives.
Speaking to Melbourne radio station 3AW, Ms Glass described instances where parents wanting to enter the state for their cancer-stricken children were asked to submit their birth and marriage certificates, documents they could not obtain while living in temporary accommodation.
Victorian Ombudsman Deborah Glass. Credit:Chris Hopkins
In other cases, the timeframes for tests and applications lapsed before they made it across the desk of a decision-maker.
Ms Glass, who earlier today described the system as “inhumane” and “unjust”, said she questioned the thinking of authorities, who had failed to adapt the scheme to changing public health circumstances.
“I have no doubt that people were let down and what I would like to see is the government publicly acknowledging the distress that narrow exercise of discretion caused to so many people who weren’t able to get home,” she said.
Ms Glass said the state government needed to “dial-up” its compassion.
“This cultural caution that we saw within the department was simply not acknowledging that there are people at the heart of the decision-making who are affected by this,” she said.
“There were too many cases here where decision-making seems unreasonable and unfair and unjust.”
Ms Glass dismissed suggestions she would not have been able to publish such a thorough report under the new pandemic laws passed in the upper house last week.
“I have as much power to investigate the decisions and actions of public officials as I’ve ever had.”
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2021-12-07 03:43:05Z
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