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What we know today, Wednesday November 10

Victoria has reported 1003 new COVID-19 cases and 14 deaths, but the number of people in hospital with the illness has dropped by more than 100. There are 84 people in intensive care including 46 on ventilators.

Nov 10, 2021, updated Nov 10, 2021
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews. Photo: AAP Image/Scott Barbour.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews. Photo: AAP Image/Scott Barbour.

Vic records 1003 new cases, 14 deaths

Victoria has reported 1003 new COVID-19 cases and 14 deaths, while the number of people in hospital with the illness has dropped by more than 100.

The health department on Wednesday confirmed the figures, which bring the total number of active infections to 15,031.

The death toll since the start of the pandemic is 1206.

It was the seventh consecutive day Victoria reported a daily infection number above 1000.

There are 471 Victorians in hospital, of whom 84 are in intensive care including 46 on ventilators. The seven-day hospitalisation average has fallen by 27 to 588.

Victoria has surpassed 100,000 infections since the pandemic began.

Wednesday’s case numbers take that total to 100,186.

Just under 93 per cent of Victorians aged 12 and over have received at least one vaccine dose and 84.5 per cent both, with 10,778 administered at state-run hubs on Tuesday.

Almost all restrictions will be scrapped for the double-dosed when the state hits its 90 per cent full vaccinated target, forecast for November 24.

Premier Daniel Andrews on Tuesday reiterated the unvaccinated will remain locked out of most venues indefinitely.

“We’re very clear that the vaccinated economy is here to stay,” he told reporters.

“Exactly how long? I know that’s an unfair question, but it’s a little bit challenging for us to answer that because we do have to see what role the boosters play.”

Booster shots began on Monday for those who had their second jab at least six months ago, with about 1.7 million Australians who will need a booster shot by Christmas.

Payroll jobs rise as virus lockdowns ease

Payroll jobs rose in the first half of October as COVID-19 restrictions eased in NSW, Victoria and the ACT.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics said payroll jobs rose by 1.3 per cent in the fortnight to October 16, which followed a fall of 0.5 per cent in the previous two weeks.

“Payroll jobs increased through the first half of October, as lockdowns and other restrictions eased,” ABS head of labour statistics Bjorn Jarvis said.

The most notable changes were in NSW, where payrolls rose 3.5 per cent, while they were up 2.4 per cent in the ACT and 0.8 per cent higher in Victoria.

The report comes ahead of Thursday’s full labour force report for October.

Economists’ forecasts for October point to the unemployment rate rising to 4.8 per cent compared to 4.6 per cent in September, as more people sought work post-lockdowns.

Australian employers appear to be gearing up for a strong employment recovery after the lockdowns put a huge dent in the labour market.

Employers are busily trying to hire staff with online job advertiser SEEK reporting the highest number of ads in a month in its 23-year-plus history.

“A combination of the lifting of restrictions in our two largest employment markets, NSW and Victoria, along with businesses getting ready for what will hopefully be a bumper holiday period has had a huge impact on this month’s job ad volumes,” ANZ managing director Kendra Banks said.

Job ads jumped 10.2 per cent in October and 63.2 per cent higher than a year earlier and 44 per cent up on October 2019 and prior to the pandemic.

NSW records 216 cases, three deaths

NSW has recorded 216 new COVID-19 cases and three deaths after a health alert was issued for three inner Sydney gyms where 11 cases of the virus have been detected.

There are 235 people in hospital and 41 in intensive care after 95,804 tests conducted in the 24 hours to 8pm on Tuesday.

NSW has hit the long-awaited 90 per cent full COVID-19 vaccination milestone. Some 94 per cent of people 16 and older have had one jab and 90.1 per cent of adults have had two doses.

Meanwhile, South Eastern Sydney Local Health District has been notified about 11 confirmed cases of COVID-19 associated with Barry’s Bootcamp gyms at Kings Cross, Surry Hills and Martin Place.

People who attended various “classes of concern” between October 30 and November 4 are being contacted by NSW Health.

Anyone who attended any of the classes between those dates and who hasn’t been contacted by NSW Health should monitor for symptoms of COVID-19 and immediately get tested and isolate until a negative result.

Under the state’s COVID-19 restrictions, gym classes are limited to 20 people.

Transport Department boss to front Chapman inquiry

The head of the state government’s Infrastructure and Transport Department will today front a parliamentary inquiry into whether Deputy Premier Vickie Chapman had a conflict of interest, misled parliament or breached the ministerial code when she rejected a $40 million timber port for Kangaroo Island.

Premier Steven Marshall may also be called to answer questions from the committee, which will today grill top bureaucrat Tony Braxton-Smith over whether he believed Chapman, as Planning Minister, should have recused herself from the decision because of her strong connections to the island, where she grew up and owns land.

The inquiry heard yesterday from Peter Lockett, a former executive with Kangaroo Island Plantation Timbers, the company behind the port proposal, who told parliament he believed senior Liberals planned to broach concerns with Marshall about his deputy’s perceived conflict of interest.

He said after a meeting earlier this year with three Liberal MPs, in which they raised a prospective conflict, that he believed former Trade and Tourism Minister David Ridgway “would speak to the Premier” about the matter.

“That was my understanding as the outcome of that meeting,” Lockett said.

He also noted that KIPT’s lobbyist, former Liberal leader Iain Evans, had suggested to “that he understood [Treasurer Rob] Lucas was going to raise the issue” with Marshall, although “I have no basis of verifying that that occurred”.

In a statement yesterday, Lucas said: “The decision in relation to [the port at] Smith Bay was a decision for the Attorney-General alone, and no other Minister – myself included – had any authority in relation to this matter.”

“I have lots of conversations with my parliamentary colleagues, including the Premier, about lots of different things and I don’t propose to ventilate them publicly,” he said.

Asked whether he believed Chapman had a perceived conflict of interest in relation to the port decision, Lucas told InDaily: “No.”

Ridgway, who is now the state’s Agent-General in London, told InDaily via text message: “I had a number of meetings with KIPT over the past five years or thereabouts; however, I’ve not discussed any of those meetings with the Premier.”

He said he did not recall telling KIPT executives he would raise a perceived conflict of interest by the Attorney-General with the Premier.

Asked whether he believed such a conflict existed, he replied: “I don’t know, and I’m not across any of the details.”

The committee will decide today whether to invite Marshall to answer questions about what he knew.

-Tom Richardson

Two dead after Barossa Valley crash

Two men have died after a ute rolled over in Angaston on Tuesday.

Police say they were called to Trig Point Hill Road at around 4:45pm yesterday following reports a car had rolled onto its roof.

Both the driver, a 41-year-old man from Parafield Gardens, and passenger, a 35-year-old man from Elizabeth South, died at the scene.

Trig Point Hill Road has since reopened after Major Crash Investigators attended and examined the scene.

The crash brings South Australia’s road toll to 86, compared with 74 at the same point last year.

SA ambulance patient data stolen

Data containing personal information on 32,000 South Australian ambulance dispatches in the early 2000s has been stolen, the ambulance service reports.

The South Australian Ambulance Service said the data – stolen earlier this year – includes the names, date of birth, medical condition and “other information pertaining to the dispatch incident”, with around 28,000 people impacted by the theft.

The data relates to ambulance dispatches between 2000 and 2003.

The SAAS says the information was stolen from an external consultancy firm which was given the data in 2003 and 2004 to model the impact of federal private health insurance reforms on the state’s ambulance service.

The period the data covers was before the ambulance service was part of the state government.

Photo: Nat Rogers/InDaily

SA Police have completed an investigation into the theft, according to the SAAS.

SA Ambulance Executive Director of Corporate Services Robert Cox said the service was reviewing is procedures for data sharing and disposal and “want to assure the community that they are robust”.

“We apologise to those impacted and have taken urgent action to minimise the risk and to get in touch directly with the affected individuals,” he said.

“While we understand that the information stolen is of sensitive nature, there is no evidence to date to suggest the data has been used inappropriately”.

Cox urged anyone with concerns to contact the SAAS information line, with the ambulance service now contacting those affected and offering counselling and support services.

The SAAS says the breach has been reported to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner and the Privacy Committee of SA.

The latest data breach comes after more than 2000 MySA Gov accounts with registration and licensing information were accessed by hackers last week.

That breach came due to hackers successfully accessing account data in an attack on an unrelated site, according to the Department of Infrastructure and Transport.

Affected users were urged to change their driver’s license number.

Call to lift ‘dangerously lagging’ Aboriginal vax rates

The Kimberwalli Aboriginal Covid-19 vaccination hub in Whalan, west of Sydney (AAP Image/Dan Himbrechts).

Vaccination rates within Australia’s Aboriginal population pose a “critical risk” as the country begins to open up, the nation’s peak GP body says, as the latest figures show just over 41 per cent of Indigenous people in South Australia over-16 are fully vaccinated.

Nationwide, 54.5 per cent of Aboriginal over-16s are double-dosed as of Monday, compared to the overall national rate of 80.6 per cent.

The latest data for South Australia shows 41.6 per cent of the state’s Aboriginal population over-16 is double-dosed, nearly 30 points behind the statewide average of 71.2 per cent.

In all seven Aboriginal statistical areas in SA measured by the federal government,

the average weekly growth in double-does vaccinations is less than three percentage points.

The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners this morning said Aborginal vaccination rates are “dangerously lagging” across the country, particularly in jurisdictions that have been largely COVID-free. 

RACGP Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Chair Professor Peter O’Mara said the “severe gap” in vaccination rates needs to be addressed before the country reopens.

“We urgently need to ramp up vaccine access and education for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, particularly for younger community members and certain jurisdictions, including Western Australia, Queensland, South Australia, and the Northern Territory, which we know are really lagging behind,” O’Mara said.

“We have already seen devastating outbreaks in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, particularly in the eastern states, despite the considerable work that went into ensuring these communities were isolated from the virus.

O’Mara highlighted that there have been more than 7000 cases among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the last three months, with 80 ICU admissions and 16 deaths in NSW, Vic and the ACT.

“The holiday season is just around the corner, but it couldn’t come at a worse moment because we know so many more people will be travelling and visiting regional and remote Australia,” he said.

“While the tourism is needed, it brings enormous risk to communities not protected by vaccination.”

South Australia’s APY Lands earlier this month made it mandatory for anyone wanting to live, work or visit the area to show proof of having received two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine.

SA Health is currently working with the Royal Flying Doctor Service to deliver more vaccines into remote communities, after previous difficulties with limited Pfizer supplies hindered the rollout.

New fund to boost carbon capture, storage

The Morrison government is again trying to change the law to let Australia’s green bank invest in controversial carbon capture and storage technology under a $1 billion fund.

It would give the Clean Energy Finance Corporation an additional $500 million to help fund small-scale start-ups considered too risky for private finance.

The coalition plans to introduce legislation into parliament before the next election due by May 2022.

It would provide seed capital to the Labor Gillard government-era green bank on the grounds its remit includes carbon capture and storage technology yet to be shown to work at scale.

This is not the first time the government has tried to expand the Clean Energy Finance Corporation Act to include carbon capture and storage.

Last year, it flagged a $1 billion expansion of the remits of the CEFC and Australian Renewable Energy Agency to invest in gas and loss-making energy projects.

Carbon capture and storage has been criticised by the likes of mining magnate Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest as an unproven failure.

The rest of the money for the new low emissions commercialisation fund is expected to come from the private sector.

“It will address a gap in the Australian market where currently small, complex, technology-focused start-ups can be considered to be too risky to finance,” Energy Minister Angus Taylor said.

The government lists examples including renewable-powered carbon capture and storage, lower emissions steel and aluminium as well as advancements in battery storage, soil carbon and solar panels.

“Australia can become a world leader in creating low emissions technology that is both affordable and scalable, helping get emissions down while creating jobs,” Prime Minister Scott Morrison said.

He expects the investment to create more than 160,000 jobs this decade and leverage between $3 and $5 dollars for every dollar spent or up to $126 billion in public-private investment.

COP26 climate index pans Australian Government

Australia’s climate policies have been ranked last out of 64 countries, with the nation among the worst offenders for emissions, renewables and energy use.

The country slipped four spots to 58th overall place in the latest Climate Change Performance Index unveiled at the COP26 summit in Glasgow.

Australia ranked last among 64 countries behind the likes of Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Brazil in terms of climate policy.

The country’s highest ranking was 52 for renewables, followed by a score of 54 for energy use and 56 for greenhouse gas emissions.

The index criticised Australia for bringing to Glasgow a 2050 target of net zero emissions that involved no new policies or plans.

Its “technology investment roadmap” was deemed insufficient to decarbonise the economy, cut fossil fuel use and promote renewables.

“This failure to promote renewables … is exacerbated by inadequate infrastructure investment despite subsidies for fossil fuel production and promotion of a ‘gas-led’ economic recovery following COVID-19,” the ranking said.

“The country’s international standing has been damaged by climate denialism by politicians, refusal to increase ambition and refusal to recommit to international green finance mechanisms.”

The annual ranking designed by German environmentalists has compared the performance of countries responsible for 90 per cent of global emissions since 2005 across four key categories.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has emphasised Australia’s “technology not taxes” approach to climate change led by private investment over government leavers.

The government’s latest policy is a $250 million “future fuels” plan aimed at getting up to 1.7 million electric and hybrid vehicles on Australian roads by 2030.

The plan was criticised by the electric vehicle industry for leaving out tax incentives or fuel efficiency standards.

-With AAP and Reuters

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