Coronavirus live news Australia: Christmas easing expected for Victorians; PM, Andrews strike $14bn infrastructure deal
Victoria’s Premier Daniel Andrews is expected to announce further easing of social restrictions in the state.
- Tough SA restrictions lifted at midnight
- Donald Trump Jr tests positive to COVID-19
- G20 nations must plug $4.5bn vaccine gap
Welcome to The Weekend Australian’s rolling coverage of the coronavirus crisis. Here are what lies ahead on Sunday and a recap of Saturday’s events, including a joint announcement from Scott Morrison and Daniel Andrews of huge job-creation projects in Victoria.
Sunday Herald Sun 11.40pm: Another easing in gatherings in Victoria
Victorians can look forward to large family gatherings in their homes on Christmas Day with coronavirus restrictions likely to be eased again in the next month, the Sunday Herald Sun reports.
Also, the state government will announce that masks will no longer be necessary outdoors from Monday as long as people keep a safe distance from each other, the Sunday Herald Sun says. But masks will still have to be used indoors where infection is possible.
Changes to be announced on Sunday also include increases to gathering limits allowing up to 10 visitors in a home and groups of 50 outdoors.
But authorities are confident that they will be able to increase the limit on gatherings in home further in time for Christmas, with up to 20 expected to be allowed at indoor gatherings.
Premier Daniel Andrews will announce that pubs and cafes will have their capacity constraints lifted to 100 people indoors and 200 people outdoors, subject to density requirements, while cinemas and theatre caps will also be boosted.
Weddings and funerals will be allowed to hold up to 100 members of the public, with one person for every four square metres at venues.
It is understood the state’s one remaining positive coronavirus case is set to be discharged from hospital in the coming days, a significant milestone in Victoria’s efforts to contain the disease.
Sunday Herald Sun
READ FULL REPORT: Rule change bringing Christmas cheer back to Victoria
Sunday Mail 11.30pm: Changes take effect in SA on Sunday
Just two days into South Australia’s six-day “circuit-breaker” lockdown, authorities have announced major changes to the restrictions that have brought the state to a grinding halt in the wake of the Parafield cluster in Adelaide, the Adelaide Sunday Mail reports.
From 12.01am on Sunday morning, restrictions were to be eased on a whole range of industry sectors, events and social activities.
For a summary read here. Earlier report here.
Agencies 10.30pm: Russia reports record cases as world deaths pass 1.37m
Russia has registers record numbers for daily infections and deaths from COVID-19, two days after having passed two million cases.
Around the world, coronavirus has killed at least 1,373,381 people since the outbreak emerged in China last December, according to a tally from official sources compiled by AFP on Saturday night.
At least 57,583,290 cases of coronavirus have been registered, of which at least 36,725,500 are now considered recovered.
The US is the worst-affected country with 254,424 deaths from 11,913,945 cases. It is followed by Brazil with 168,613 deaths; India with 132,726 deaths; Mexico with 100,823 deaths; and the UK with 54,286 deaths.
In Russia, health officials reported 24,822 new infections and 476 deaths, bringing the national total to 2,064,748 million cases and 35,778 fatalities since the beginning of the year.
Those figures suggest a lower death rate than elsewhere in the world, but the official Russian death toll only includes those in which COVID has been established as the primary cause of death after an autopsy.
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki has warned Poles against any travel over the Christmas period, and said most coronavirus restrictions would be extended but shops would re-open.
The government was looking at ways of imposing movement restrictions, he said. Theatres, bars and restaurants will remain closed until after Christmas, and schools will maintain distance learning.
But shopping centres will be allowed to re-open fully from November 28.
France is preparing to reopen stores for the crucial Christmas shopping season, encouraged by new data suggesting the country is past the worst of its second wave of infections.
Thanks to curfews and partial lockdowns, confirmed new infections dropped by 40 per cent last week, admissions to hospital fell by 13 per cent, and the number of new intensive care patients was down by nine per cent, according to the national health agency.
AFP
ALSO READ: Donald Trump junior has the virus
Emily Ritchie 5.37pm: Drug deal good for patients, investors
Australian-based stem cell treatment developer Mesoblast rose by 11 per cent on the ASX on Friday after announcing it had teamed up with a biotech giant to develop its flagship drug for treatment of acute respiratory distress caused by COVID-19.
Chief executive Silviu Itescu revealed on Friday morning the company had signed a licensing and collaboration deal with Novartis, a Swiss-based pharmaceutical company, which would include a $US50m ($69m) payment to Mesoblast.
“Our collaboration with Novartis will help ensure that remestemcel-L could become available to the many patients suffering from acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), the principal cause of mortality in COVID-19 infection,” Mr Itescu said.
Mesoblast is investigating the effectiveness of remestemcel-L in treating ARDS in coronavirus patients, the success of which is yet to be reported.
The company has also been trying to get the treatment approved for use against graft-versus-host disease in children.
Read the full story here.
Remy Varga 5pm: Second attempt at hotel isolation
Victoria will again quarantine returning international travellers after the state’s first hotel-based program unleashed the devastating second wave that claimed 800 lives and sentenced Melbourne to months in lockdown.
The state has not received international travellers since the end of July after a resurgence in case numbers was linked to infection control breaches at the program.
The Victorian government on Friday wrote to the commonwealth seeking an extension to the suspension of international flights to finalise the new hotel quarantine program.
A state government spokeswoman said international travellers would start arriving on December 7, with an initial cap of 160 travellers a day.
“Victoria has asked the commonwealth for a short extension of the suspension of international flights landing in Melbourne from November 22 to December 6 to allow the final preparations for Victoria’s reset quarantine accommodation program for returned travellers to take place,” she said.
Read the full story here.
Tom Kingston 4.27pm: Virus deniers are getting dangerous
Adele di Costanzo, 27, an Italian doctor, was not surprised last month when she developed COVID-19 after working in retirement homes with dozens of people who had tested positive for the virus.
She posted a warning on Facebook that even young people like her were vulnerable, and decrying street protests in Italy against lockdowns.
What she was not ready for was the torrent of insults and threats she received. “I got 100 messages claiming Covid didn’t exist and that doctors earn more when they claim their patients die of it, while one wrote, ‘We’ll be waiting for you outside the hospital’,” she said.
After Italians applauded doctors from their balconies and earned the world’s respect for their composure during the lockdown this spring, they are now unleashing their fury on those same staff as a second wave claims about 700 deaths a day.
The windows of doctors’ cars have been smashed, murals honouring their work defaced and one family doctor in Vicenza was beaten up.
“He was pushed to the ground and kicked by a patient who had refused his request to put a mask on,” said Michele Valente, the head of Vicenza’s doctors’ guild, who added that this week he received an expletive-ridden email from a member of the public calling for all doctors to die of COVID-19.
Two hundred Italian medics have fallen victim to the virus, and 23,000 have been infected during Italy’s second wave, which is now beginning to ease but still infecting more people than in France, Spain or Britain.
“People block out anything that frightens them, like death, and if doctors or nurses remind you of that, there is a sense of repulsion, or refusal,” Filippo Anelli, the national head of Italy’s guild of doctors, said. “I’m scared the threats will evolve into violence.”
This month an ambulance rushing to collect a seriously ill Covid-19 patient in Turin was followed by a Porsche Cayenne to its destination, where a man and woman got out and yelled at the cowering ambulance driver, claiming that the virus did not exist.
Alessandro Conte, a doctor who works at a hospital in northern Italy, challenged a man who had managed to enter a sealed-off Covid-19 area. “He was doing a Facebook Live with his phone and claiming, ‘There are no patients here! It’s empty!’,” he said.
Despite the loud praise for doctors in March, fear and resentment was quietly stirring back then, Giacomo Grasselli, the head of intensive care at Policlinico hospital in Milan, said.
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Shae McDonald 3.47pm: China’s latest attack on Australia
China has taken another swing at Australia, this time over its ties with North America.
Tabloid newspaper the Global Times has published an editorial piece titled “If Australia wants to remain Australia, it must tell the US”.
The publication hit back after comments made by Prime Minister Scott Morrison earlier this week that the country’s democracy was not up for trade.
“For most Chinese people, Australia is no longer the original Australia, but has become a vassal of the US in recent years,” it claimed.
The article then went onto quote anonymous readers.
“Australia looks only to the US and bites where the US points,” one said.
The Global Times pointed to Mr Morrison’s visit to Japan this week and his signing of a defence agreement of expanding Washington’s influence in the Asia-Pacific region.
“Australian politicians seem not to understand what national interests are, and view values as a pale excuse to follow the US,” it wrote.
“They are entangled as they repeat empty slogans on the one hand while worrying about their country’s trade prospects on the other.
“Australia needs to have independent diplomatic thinking.
“But Australia is doing just the opposite.
“What makes Australia not behave like itself is the US, not any other country.
“If Morrison wants his country to remain Australia, he should have said so to the US.”
READ MORE: Paul Kelly — Australia not an innocent party in China mess
Agencies 3.20pm: Pfizer/BioNTech seek first vaccine approval in US
US biotech giant Pfizer and German partner BioNTech sought approval overnight Friday to roll out their coronavirus vaccine early, a first step towards relief as surging infections prompt a return to shutdowns that traumatised nations and the global economy earlier this year.
The world is looking to scientists for salvation from the global pandemic. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said its vaccines committee would meet on December 10 to discuss the request for emergency use authorisation.
“The FDA recognizes that transparency and dialogue are critical for the public to have confidence in COVID-19 vaccines,” the organisation’s head Stephen Hahn said in a statement.
“I want to assure the American people that the FDA’s process and evaluation of the data for a potential Covid-19 vaccine will be as open and transparent as possible.” He said he could not predict how long the review would take, but the federal government said earlier the final green light would probably come in December.
Pfizer chief executive Albert Bourla called the filing “a critical milestone in our journey to deliver a COVID-19 vaccine to the world.” The BioNTech/Pfizer shot and another one being developed by the US firm Moderna have taken the lead in the global chase for a vaccine.
EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said the European bloc could also approve both before the end of the year.
But the vexed and enormously complex question of how to expedite production and distribution means there will be no immediate reprieve.
And the latest wave of the pandemic is hitting many regions harder than the first that swept the globe after the virus emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan late last year.
Worldwide deaths are approaching 1.4 million and infections nearing 57 million — although the true numbers are unknown since countries have different reporting methods and many cases go undetected.
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Agencies 2.45pm: Anti-mask movement draws strange bedfellows
A dancer in harem pants moves down a Berlin street next to a skinhead wearing a “Reich” flag: Germany’s escalating anti-mask protests in the coronavirus pandemic draw from a wide, seemingly contradictory range of political camps.
A rally of nearly 10,000 opponents of government-imposed social restrictions to curb the spread of COVID-19 in Berlin this week brought together a motley band of demonstrators with ostensibly little in common — apart from crumbling faith in institutions and representative democracy.
On Saturday, another demonstration is set to take place in the eastern city of Leipzig. The protest in the German capital, which led to 365 police detentions, gives a taste of what could be expected.
The scene in front of the Brandenburg Gate Wednesday marked a dizzying confluence of LGBT rainbow flags and Gandhi banners intermingled with posters for the increasingly international QAnon conspiracy movement.
Marchers wearing red Trump “MAGA” hats could be spotted in the crowd next to evangelicals, climate activists and “peace”-shouting hippies.
Most of the protesters remained peaceful while they railed against vaccines and dismissed the dangers of the virus, but a violent hard core attacked police.
AFP
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Ben Wilmot 2.15pm: Grocon collapses, blames Barangaroo
The famed Grocon construction business will go into the hands of administrators this weekend, as the company calls time on its legacy construction companies that were set up by Grocon chief Daniel Grollo’s grandfather Luigi 73 years ago.
The collapse marks one of the highest profile casualties of the coronavirus crisis, and although it had run into trouble on Queensland projects ahead of the pandemic, more builders could find themselves in financial distress as the industry slows.
But the third generation property scion is not going down without a fight and has lashed out at what he calls the “unconscionable” conduct of NSW government agency Infrastructure NSW, over its treatment of the company at the long delayed Central Barangaroo project in Sydney.
That project would have been a $5bn precinct including a landmark skyscraper but Grocon says it was thwarted and sold cheaply to Chinese partner Aqualand, missing out profits of $150m.
That could have made all the difference as the wind-up is for a fraction of this sum but endangers Mr Grollo’s desire to get out of the building game with his head held high in a tough industry renowned for sniping.
The developer launched legal action against the body – and was ordered in September to put up a $1m in security to continue the case – but it is determined to get to the bottom of a secret deal that saw views from projects by James Packer’s Crown Resorts and Lendlease protected and its own scheme decimated.
Read the full story here.
Emily Ritchie 1.45pm: PM, Andrews strike $14bn infrastructure deal
The proposed Melbourne Airport rail link is due to be operational by 2029 and the train trip between Geelong and the city will be slashed by 15 minutes as the state and federal governments announce they have reached a deal on the combined $14 billion infrastructure projects.
In a joint virtual press conference on Saturday, Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews said the bipartisan relationship had resulted in a positive outcome for the projects and that it was a “proud moment”.
“This is important for jobs, productivity, congestion on our roads and fundamentally doing the things we said we would do,” Premier Andrews said.
“That is what Victorians want, that is what Victorians deserve and am very grateful and very pleased to have such a strong partnership between my government and yours. That is how you get things done.”
Construction on the airport rail link is set to begin by the end of 2022.
Mr Andrews confirmed next week’s state budget would include a matching of the federal government’s $2 billion contribution to the Geelong fast rail, which is due to reduce travel times from over an hour to 50 minutes.
Future upgrades to the project also aim to further cut travel time down to 40 minutes.
Construction on that project is scheduled to start in 2023.
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Chris Kenny 1.15pm: Time for virus alarmists to be unmasked
One reason climate alarmism is so virulent is just that people love talking about the weather, airing personal observations and discerning their own trends — so global warming activism and rhetoric fuels their favourite gossip.
And so it is with health.
Our response to the coronavirus ought to be rational and pragmatic, but much is driven by fear and exaggeration. Pandemic talk is wind beneath the wings of hypochondriacs and bedwetters — my old home state of South Australia has proven that point brilliantly this week.
First, to be clear, yes, this is a serious virus; we do not want it to run rampant and overwhelm our health system. And we must protect the vulnerable.
But state politicians are playing to public panic, and doing great harm. Curfews and heartless lockdowns in Victoria; joblessness behind closed borders in Queensland and Western Australia; and a brutal week of shutdown and hardship for South Australians based on a single known and contained cluster.
Read Chris Kenny’s full analysis here.
Emily Ritchie 12.38pm: NSW records 10 new cases, none locally acquired
NSW has officially recorded two weeks of no local transmission of COVID-19, with ten cases acquired overseas and detected in hotel quarantine in the 24 hours to Saturday.
There have now been 4338 confirmed cases of the virus in the state since the start of the pandemic.
NSW Health said it was now treating 70 people with the virus, none of whom are in intensive care. The health department said 96 per cent of these patients are being treated in non-acute, out-of-hospital care.
Following a recent outbreak, NSW Health is warning anyone who has travelled from South Australia since Friday November 6 should closely monitor their health and get tested immediately if symptoms developed.
NSW recorded no new cases of locally acquired #COVID19 in the 24 hours to 8pm last night.
— NSW Health (@NSWHealth) November 21, 2020
Ten cases were reported in overseas travellers in hotel quarantine. This brings the total number of cases in NSW to 4,338 since the start of the pandemic. pic.twitter.com/bOgGGgqiGN
“Travellers who are not NSW residents who have visited any of the venues of concern in Adelaide will not be permitted to travel to NSW until the 14-day period has elapsed,” NSW Health said in a statement.
“NSW residents are advised to defer non-essential travel to Adelaide, while people from Adelaide should defer non-essential travel to NSW.”
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Emily Ritchie 12.15pm: Tough lockdown restrictions lifted in SA
South Australian Premier Steven Marshall has confirmed there will be a “thorough investigation” into the state’s hotel quarantine outbreak, and has endorsed punishment for people who mislead authorities about their movements during the pandemic.
It comes as a 36-year-old Spanish-national in Australia on a temporary visa was identified as the medihotel and pizza shop worker who lied to health authorities about his movements, triggering the state’s six-day lockdown.
Addressing the media on Saturday, Mr Marshall said “providing false and misleading information that involves a global pandemic is a very serious issue”.
“There is an investigation under way and quite frankly, there has to be consequences. We do not want this behaviour. When people provide incorrect information, it sends us down a course of action that could potentially have lives at risk. When someone is part of a contact tracing exercise, they have to provide full information.”
Mr Marshall said, while businesses had been hit hard by the short lockdown, compensation was not something his government was contemplating.
“My obligation is getting as many businesses up as possible and that is why I am delighted that as of midnight tonight [Saturday], the vast majority of businesses will be back trading,” Mr Marshall said. Stay-at-home orders will also lift from midnight tonight.
“There will be some restrictions right through to December 1. The number one priority is getting businesses stood up as quickly as possible.”
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Emily Richie 11.45am: Premier says SA ‘not out of the woods yet’
South Australia is “not out of the woods yet” according to Premier Steven Marshall, with health authorities still “very concerned” about the state’s coronavirus outbreak despite lockdown measures being eased this weekend.
The state recorded one new case of COVID-19 on Saturday, a close contact of a previous case connected to the Parafield cluster.
The man had already been quarantining after his partner contracted the virus, meaning he poses no further threat to the community.
Premier Marshall said more than 19,000 COVID-19 tests had been undertaken across the state on Friday, and that all 26 cases currently connected to the cluster can be traced back to their origin.
“We have looked at those results and we still have no examples of community transmission in South Australia, in fact all of the cases we have identified, we can trace back to their origin,” Mr Marshall said.
There are now 37 active cases of coronavirus in South Australia, with the state’s chief public health officer Professor Nicola Spurrier saying the next seven days would be crucial for the state.
While health authorities have been able to contact over 5000 close contacts of positive cases, Professor Spurrier said they were appealing to 40 people linked to the cluster who they have been unable to reach.
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Emily Ritchie 11.30am: SA lockdown ‘not based on pizza worker’
The South Australian government says the state’s total lockdown was not triggered solely on misleading information given by a medi-hotel and pizza shop employee who lied about his movements to contact tracers.
Government officials are holding a press conference to further explain the debacle, after Premier Steven Marshall yesterday blamed the man — identified as a 36-year-old Spanish national on a visa — for triggering the six-day lockdown.
“To be clear, the decision to lock down hard, and I know it has been very difficult for people in South Australia, and perhaps difficult to understand, was not based on the interview with one man,” the state’s chief public health officer Professor Nicola Spurrier said.
“We would never make those decisions in isolation of just one piece of information, it is very complex. I have a set of principles and the first one of those is the precautionary principle, and that is about acting swiftly without necessarily having all the information, because if you wait too long, you have missed an opportunity, and again, I was acting using that precautionary principle.”
SA Police confirmed the man who misled authorities about his movements is a 36-year-old Spanish national who is in Australia on a temporary graduate visa that is due to expire in mid-December.
The state’s police commissioner Grant Stevens said, had this man been “more upfront, we would not have instituted a six-day lockdown”.
“We are satisfied that we made the right call at the time based on the information available,” Commissioner Stevens said.
“Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but we don’t have the benefit of hindsight at the time we had these decisions, and it is not a black-and-white situation to begin with, these are difficult decisions that have to be made in the best interest of the wider community.”
He said the investigation was ongoing, and that detectives were seeking the assistance of at least two more people.
More to come …
Agencies 11.01am: Donald Trump Junior has coronavirus
US President Donald Trump’s eldest son Donald Trump Jr has tested positive for COVID-19 and has been quarantining without symptoms, a spokesman says.
“Don tested positive at the start of the week and has been quarantining out at his cabin since the result,” his spokesman said.
“He’s been completely asymptomatic so far and is following all medically recommended COVID-19 guidelines,” the spokesman said of the 42-year-old.
More to come …
Christine Kellett 10.50am: Steven Marshall to address the media
SA Premier Steven Marshall is due to address the media at 11am, after calling off his statewide lockdown over a contact tracing debacle.
The Premier yesterday blamed a part-time pizza worker who lied to government contact tracers for triggering the total lockdown of the state.
You can watch Mr Marshall’s live press conference here:
Christine Kellett 10.15am: Testing urged in Melbourne’s west after sewage find
Wastewater testing has revealed traces of coronavirus in Melbourne’s western suburbs, including the areas of Altona, Altona Meadows, Point Cook, Laverton and Sanctuary Lakes prompting health authorities to urge residents there to get tested.
“It could mean a number of things,” Health Minister Martin Foley has told a press conference on Saturday morning.
“It could mean that there is somebody in the community that we have missed, it could mean that somebody has been travelling through the community and has left the virus
behind, or it could mean that the virus has been shared as pre-existing cases have, through their own processes, started to shed the virus from their body. But out of an abundance of caution and in accordance with the National guidelines we have issued that a lot, particularly after eight weeks of the same sites recording no possible that positive samples and be sewerage. So out of an abundance of caution we are urging anybody in Altona and the surrounding catchment areas, even with the slightest of symptoms, to get tested. Get tested today.”
Victoria has recorded another day of zero new cases and deaths, with just one active case remaining in the state.
Yesterday there were 0 new cases, 0 lives lost. There is now 1 active case remaining. We received 11,333 test results – thank you to all who were tested #EveryTestHelps https://t.co/pcll7ySEgz #StaySafeStayOpen #COVID19Vic pic.twitter.com/2L7acWV7Xl
— VicGovDHHS (@VicGovDHHS) November 20, 2020
Victoria’s border with South Australia will remain closed for the time being, but the state government will have more to say on the matter later today, Mr Foley said.
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Emily Ritchie 10am: South Australia has questions to answer: MP
The South Australian government is being urged to review its hotel quarantine processes as their short lockdown is reversed this weekend following a COVID-19 outbreak that started at one of the state’s medi-hotels.
Adelaide-based Labor MP Amanda Rishworth said while it was encouraging that so many South Australian’s had immediately heeded the restrictions, there were still question marks about how further outbreaks will be prevented.
“What extra things can we put in place in hotel quarantine to make sure that this outbreak doesn’t happen again?,” Ms Rishworth asked ABC News on Saturday morning.
“Are there things that we have not put in place from the Victorian experience? And how can we make sure that everything is put in place to protect the community from hotel quarantine? Because ultimately that is where this cluster started, an outbreak from hotel quarantine, and they are the questions we need to ask and address to make sure that this doesn’t happen again.”
Ms Rishworth also endorsed the implementation of punishment for people who mislead authorities about their movements for contact tracing purposes.
It comes after revelations a medi-hotel worker connected to the Woodville Pizza Bar hotspot lied about his movements.
“I think that we do need to have appropriate punishments in place for people to tell the truth,” Ms Rishworth said.
“I think there needs to be incentives, punishments, however you say it, to make sure that people are telling the truth with the contact tracers.”
Liberal MP Katie Allen praised SA Premier Steven Marshall’s decisive action to initiate a lockdown, even though it was based on false data.
“When there is a rapidly changing scenario with this virus, I think people need to make pretty significant steps,” Ms Allen said.
“It just shows how important it is in this pandemic, particularly in Australia, where there’s a lot of trust in the authorities, that Australians need to do the right thing, but they also need to engage and provide the right information.”
READ MORE: David Penberthy — Pizza lie exposes amateur hour in SA
Janet Albrechtsen 9.30am: ‘SA Premier makes a jolly fool of himself’
This week has provided a colossal example of why Canberra should be Gladys Berejiklian’s next move.
In contrast to her measured, proportionate and transparent management of COVID-19 outbreaks in NSW, the SA Premier’s response to this outbreak has been both confused and feverish. We were told this is a more severe strain of COVID-19. Really? Steven Marshall told South Australians not to panic, as he told them the state is facing a potential catastrophe and has only “one chance” to deal with the virus. “You don’t get a second chance to stop a second wave,’’ Marshall said.
Take a breath, Premier. You are making a jolly fool of yourself.
There will be further outbreaks, and they need to be managed. Will that mean another lockdown in SA? And for how long must South Australians live with the shadow of the Premier’s sledgehammer responses hanging over them?
Marshall and others demonstrate that Berejiklian has governed to a higher standard during COVID. If she headed to Canberra, she would inject some much-needed competition for the top job there.
Read Janet Albrechtsen’s full analysis here.
Ewin Hannan 9am: Coles locks out workers for three months
The United Workers Union has threatened to escalate its dispute with Coles after the supermarket giant locked out 350 distribution centre workers in Sydney until February and accused the union of “holding Christmas lunch hostage”.
Coles took the extraordinary action in response to legal industrial action by Smeaton Grange employees, who are demanding 5.5 per cent annual pay rises and redundancy entitlements equivalent to up to two years’ pay.
Coles chief operating officer Matt Swindells accused the union of “brainwashing” the workers and said Coles had moved to “protect Christmas” by making alternative arrangements to ensure its full range of products would continue to be offered to customers.
But ACTU secretary Sally McManus blasted the company’s conduct, labelling lockouts “un-Australian” and vowing that unions would back the workers.
“These … people worked tirelessly to carry the whole country through the pandemic, going to work when it has been dangerous to support us all,” she told The Weekend Australian.
Read the full story here.
David Penberthy 8.30am: SA Premier’s humiliating lockdown reversal
Steven Marshall has been forced into a humiliating reversal of his total lockdown of two million South Australians after it emerged the government’s contact tracers had been duped by a part-time pizza worker.
Business groups said the lockdown set a dangerous precedent where state governments, police and health officials unilaterally closed the economy on the basis of questionable evidence.
A leading infectious diseases expert also warned the government had placed the state’s entire population into quarantine based on uncorroborated information that led health officials to incorrectly believe they had a unique and extremely virulent strain of the virus.
Mr Marshall effectively called off the lockdown after it emerged a lie by an infected medi-hotel worker — who was secretly working in a pizza bar — had sparked the move. The medi-hotel worker falsely told health authorities he had simply bought a pizza from the Woodville Pizza Bar at the centre of the Adelaide coronavirus cluster, sparking fears of widespread community transmission over the possibility he contracted the virus by handling a pizza box.
The man, a kitchen hand at the Stamford Hotel, was also working extended shifts as an employee of the pizza bar in close contact with another man who, like him, was working in hotel quarantine as a security guard at the Peppers Hotel. One of the men had infected the other, meaning the entire chain of infection can be traced to close contacts posing no threat to the wider community.
Read the full story here.
Agencies 8am: G20 urged to fill $4.5bn vaccine gap
G20 nations must help plug a $4.5 billion funding gap for a WHO-led program to distribute coronavirus vaccines and pave the way for an end to the pandemic.
In a letter, sent ahead of this weekend’s virtual G20 summit, was signed by Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, World Health Organisation (WHO) chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission.
“A commitment by G20 leaders at the G20 Summit in Riyadh to invest substantially in the ACT-Accelerator’s immediate funding gap of $4.5 billion will immediately save lives, lay the groundwork for mass procurement and delivery of COVID-19 tools around the world, and provide an exit strategy out of this global economic and human crisis,” the letter dated November 16 said.
“With this funding, and a joint commitment to spend a proportion of future stimulus on the COVID-19 tools needed globally, the G20 will build a foundation to end the pandemic,” added the letter addressed to King Salman of Saudi Arabia, the current G20 president.
ACT-Accelerator is an initiative led by the WHO that promotes an equitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, diagnostics, and treatments globally.
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Agencies 7.30am: Violence erupts over ‘whites only’ dance party
Police have fired teargas at opposition activists protesting against alleged racism at a Cape Town school where a whites-only dance party was allegedly organised last month.
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the traditional school-leavers party had been cancelled, prompting a group of students to organise their own, at which some teachers were in attendance.
The school has denied responsibility for the year-end dance, saying it was organised privately and hosted outside its premises.
Anti-riot police overnight aimed teargas and water cannon towards hundreds of members of the radical leftist Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) gathered near the school in protest.
The protesters dispersed and later regrouped a few blocks away. Police had put up razor wire to keep them from the vicinity of the school.
A white man who walked towards the podium while EEF’s secretary-general Marshall Dlamini addressed supporters was assaulted by a group of protesters, prompting police to fire another round of teargas.
Police had said only 100 people were allowed to march to the school. The protests were the latest in a string of demonstrations against alleged racism at Brackenfell High School following the dance held in late October.
Days after the party, EFF members tried to march to the school but were blocked by some of the students’ parents, resulting in fist fights.
Widely shared video footage showed scenes of angry white people punching EFF’s black protesters on the streets on November 9.
President Cyril Ramaphosa called for an investigation, describing the clashes as “deeply regrettable”.
“The spectacle of parents and protesters coming to blows at the school gate is deeply unfortunate,” Ramaphosa said, adding the development brought “back hurtful memories of a past we should never seek to return to”.
The clashes occurred a few weeks after similarly racially-charged protests in the central farming town of Senekal over the murder of a white farm manager by suspected black assailants.
Despite the end of apartheid a generation ago, racial tensions in South Africa can run high.
“Apartheid did not end in 1994. They (whites) keep showing us their true colours,” the EFF tweeted.
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