Yahoo News Coronavirus Australia latest: at a glance
Good evening, here are the latest developments on the coronavirus pandemic in Australia. This is Michael McGowan and it is Thursday 28 May.
News Corp announces regional paper closures
News Corp Australia announced significant job cuts and the print closure of more than 100 local and regional newspapers, a significant blow to the nation’s media landscape caused in part by the impact of Covid-19 on advertising revenues.
In an email to staff on Thursday, the company’s chairman, Michael Miller, announced that 112 Murdoch-owned newspapers will stop the presses. Of those, 36 will close altogether and 76 will remain as online mastheads. News Corp did not specify how many staff each title will have, if any, or how much local reporting will continue.
The closures mark the most significant hit to local media since the beginning of the pandemic, which has devastated the advertising revenue on which local and regional print papers survive.
Palmer launches border closure challenge
The mining magnate Clive Palmer has instructed lawyers to commence a high court challenge against the Queensland government’s ongoing border closure.
The lawsuit, which Palmer’s lawyers said was in part based on the impact of the closure on Palmer’s company Mineralogy, follows a similar case launched by Palmer against the Western Australian government. That case, the court heard on Thursday, would likely take at least six weeks to proceed to a hearing in mid-July.
Queensland and WA are not the only states to insist on keeping border closures in place despite calls from the federal government for them to reopen; South Australia and Tasmania have also kept their borders shut to outsiders. But much of the angst has been aimed aimed at Queensland and WA.
The New South Wales premier, Gladys Berejiklian, has been in a running sparring contest with her Queensland and WA counterparts over the closures, which she has described as illogical.
New outbreak in Western Australia
The number of Covid-19 cases linked to a live export ship which docked in Western Australia doubled from six to 12.
Of these seven new cases recorded in the state on Thursday, six are crew members from the Al-Kuwait ship which docked in Fremantle this week. The only other case was a returned overseas traveller who is already in hotel quarantine.
The WA premier, Mark McGowan, previously criticised the federal agriculture department and Australian Border Force, claiming they had not sufficiently notified the state government of health issues on board the ship.
“There have clearly been some errors made all around. We can and must do better, and we will,” he said.
Paramedics slam NSW government’s public sector wage freeze
The NSW Paramedics Association slammed the state government’s decision to institute a wage freeze on the public service, which it says shows “complete disregard for us and our colleagues when we have risked our health and safety to keep NSW on its feet throughout the COVID-19 pandemic”.
“The NSW government says this is about saving jobs, but freezing wages of frontline public sector workers only makes us pay for this pandemic, when we have worked so hard to protect our communities,” the association said in a statement.
NSW is not the only state to institute a wage freeze in the midst of the pandemic. The state’s premier, Gladys Berejiklian, has described the decision as necessary to save jobs.
Early access super scheme targeted by fraudsters, again
The government’s early access to superannuation scheme has again been targeted by fraudsters.
On Thursday the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority deputy chair, Helen Rowell, told a Senate inquiry the Australian Taxation Office’s SuperMatch tool has been suspended after fake accounts were set up.
The SuperMatch tool allowed people find all of their super accounts so they can be merged into one, but fraudsters were using the tool to see what other accounts people had.
“We made the decision (with the ATO) to close the system down in order to engage with industry to tighten up the requirements around member account creation,” Rowell said on Thursday.
Sydney braces for ‘new rat plague’
Sydney could see “a new rat plague” once Covid-19 restrictions are loosened.
While empty offices and restaurants in the city have driven hungry rats into homes and suburbs and likely led to rodent cannibalism, experts warn that once people return to cities rats will also return in significant numbers.
“They respond to food within days,” Prof Peter Banks, a rodent expert from the University of Sydney, told the Guardian.
“If you give them a burst of food, that can turn into babies in three weeks’ time, no worries. They usually go through a winter lull, so that is not normally their breeding time. But if we are out in springtime or late winter, out there spilling food, they will be there to exploit it.”
Geoff Milton, a Sydney rat-catcher with 35 years’ experience, agreed, saying: “There will probably be a new plague of rats take over the city.
“But a lot of the ones that are left unattended in suburbia will stay there. They usually eat dog food and all that, because people leave dog kibble out all night. They’ve got readymade meals really.”
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