So the federal government is considering citing Covid restrictions as a reason for officials to stay away from the Beijing Winter Olympics.

Guardian Australia understands while an announcement could be made soon, the government is unlikely to take as strong a position as the Biden administration, which blasted China over “ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity”.

The Australian government was still considering the language to be used, with suggestions that it may not be presented as a boycott. Instead, it is weighing up saying officials will not go because Covid restrictions meant they would mostly be confined to their hotel rooms.

You can read more from Daniel Hurst’s yarn at the link below:

Operation Covid Shield coordinator Lieut Gen John Frewen fronted a Senate Covid-19 Committee, telling them Australia may look to donate vaccines, and is delaying some imports because current doses are due to expire.

Frewen said Australia was looking at donating Pfizer and Moderna to Pacific and South East Asia:

We’re still doing management to make sure that doses that are nearing expiry are being used first.

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.

When every dose was precious, we were making sure that no vial was opened until we had enough people.

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 of the 10 doses.

So earlier today, Katy Gallagher told Liberal senator Gerard Rennick to speak with parents whose children struggled to breathe with Covid during a Senate committee on Covid-19. Gallagher’s 14-year-old daughter became sick after contracting Covid-19 earlier this year.

Rennick has posted claims from other people about alleged vaccine side-effects on Facebook that he admits may not be “100% accurate”.

You can watch the interaction below:

A different type of health alert has been issued by ACT Health, warning residents not to touch, pick or eat any wild mushrooms.

Acting chief health officer Dr Vanessa Johnston has warned that death cap mushrooms had been spotted in Canberra, likely spurred by the wet weather, and warned against picking or eating any wild mushrooms.

We would normally not expect to see death cap mushrooms in the ACT until March or April, but an early growing season is not unheard of with sightings occurring in January this year.

As the name suggests, death cap mushrooms can be deadly.”

All parts of the mushroom are poisonous and cooking them does not make them safe to eat.

The mushrooms usually grow around established oak trees, but can be found anywhere. There have been four deaths associated with death cap mushrooms since 2002.

The NSW Labor leader has hit out at the state’s education minister for her comments earlier today on the teachers’ strike.

Labor’s Chris Minns accused education minister Sarah Mitchell of being “inflammatory”, after she called the NSW Teachers Federation an “obstructionist protection racket.”

Minns said he was concerned the language used by Mitchell would inflame the ongoing industrial dispute:

The emphasis here should not be on throwing mud, it should be on trying to fix this complicated situation. 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.

Good afternoon all, Mostafa Rachwani back again, with a quick thanks to Caitlin Cassidy for holding the blog down. Much going on, so let’s dive in.

With that, I will hand the baton back to Mostafa Rachwani.

Before I go, nobody asked, but I’m team Tasmania or the ACT for the fifth Ashes test.

Former Nationals leader Michael McCormack is up on Afternoon Briefing responding to his colleague George Christensen’s appearance on right wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’s InfoWars.

Christensen, among other things, laughed when Jones compared Australia’s Covid quarantine to an Auschwitz concentration camp during the program.

McCormack said he watched all 36 minutes of the show, a 36 minutes he would “never get back”:

I watched the 36 minute show, 36 minutes of my life I won’t get back, and very much George could be speaking about all the great things happening in Australia today, he could be telling American viewers about the fact that we have saved lives and projected livelihoods through this global pandemic, but no, he chose to condemn our country, he chose to rubbish our country on the world stage, and for that I think he should be condemned.

More from Glass on the investigation into the Victorian government’s border scheme. She emphasises she was not critiquing the scheme itself, but the manner in which it was applied, particularly as case numbers in Victoria continued to rise:

I didn’t examine every single application, and I couldn’t say whether all of those should have been approved, whether they were legitimate. So I am not suggesting that every decision made by the department was unfair, and I think it is really important that I acknowledge what a fraught environment the department was working in. Trying to deal with a global health crisis.

But the examples we saw in this investigation, the people who spoke to us, the complaints we received, just suggested a lack of compassion, you know, a lack of acknowledgement that some people needed to cross the border and needed to have their individual circumstances taken into account. It seemed that the department was putting much more resources into stopping people getting home, than helping them cross the border safely.

Ombudsman Deborah Glass is appearing on ABC Afternoon Briefing, discussing her damning report on the Victorian government’s border exemption scheme.

An investigation into the scheme found only 8% of applications were granted between July and September:

What we saw was a lot of people whose applications didn’t get through to approval at all. We saw a lot of people stranded across the border, because in this bureaucratic merry-go-round where they were asked to supply reams of paperwork which was wholly impractical, people who had to nominate a travel date, but when the travel date passed because the application wasn’t processed in time, found their applications had expired. The list is endless. The angst and the distress that this caused to so many was palpable.

An update from the protests in New South Wales, where public teachers and principals have been rallying in the Sydney CBD. Those who remain on the streets are braver than I as it’s now bucketing down.

The Teachers Federation Union has been calling for more competitive salaries, more sustainable workloads and greater job security.

They want a pay increase up to 7.5% a year to reverse the decline in teachers’ wages compared with other professions.

There’s just been a potentially significant development in the case against Bernard Collaery.

Collaery has been fighting an attempt by the attorney general Michaelia Cash to introduce new secret evidence to attempt to convince the court to hold part of his trial behind closed doors.

You might remember that in October, Collaery had a major win in the Australian Capital Territory court of appeal, which overturned secrecy orders hiding significant elements of his case from the public. But lawyers for Cash are now attempting to put fresh evidence, which Collaery cannot see, before a judge to justify the secrecy, saying that the national security situation has changed significantly in the more than 12 months that the court of appeal took to deliver its judgment.

Collaery’s lawyers opposed the move, saying it was hugely unfair and would create a never-ending “vortex” of delay and secrecy.

Justice David Mossop has just ruled that the government cannot update its evidence or add new evidence in the way that it had desired. But Mossop said the government can, if it wishes, make a new application under the National Security Information (NSI) Act to hide parts of the trial, which would take account of the changed national security circumstances.

Collaery is facing trial for his alleged role in revealing an Australian intelligence operation that bugged the offices of the Timor-Leste government during 2004 oil and gas negotiations. He and his client Witness K, a former spy, helped Timor-Leste mount a case before the international courts on behalf of Timor-Leste.

Residents from a Melbourne aged care home struck by Covid appeared malnourished, dehydrated and “barely conscious” after being transferred to a hospital, an inquest has been told and AAP’s Gus McCubbing reports.

Outbreak managers replaced the entire St Basil’s Home for the Aged staff with an emergency workforce on 22 July last year, during Melbourne’s second wave. Within hours of the handover, inexperienced nursing staff were struggling to care for the mostly Greek-speaking residents, who had already missed meals and medicine.

The inquest into the Covid deaths of 45 St Basil’s residents and another five residents who likely died of neglect has heard evidence from Victoria Atkinson, who handled the intake of 10 residents evacuated from the Fawkner facility to Bellbird Private Hospital on 25 July.

Atkinson said the Blackburn South hospital was converted into a Covid ward within six hours, having only been told St Basil’s residents would arrive the day before. Bellbird staff had to try to learn Greek after St Basil’s residents arrived without identification or medical history.

Atkinson:

The majority of the patients were soiled on arrival and had pressure injuries and appeared malnourished and dehydrated. Patients were deeply unconscious, had low oxygen level sand were unrousable. There was evidence of poor hygiene care. None were transported with oxygen supplementation. All required intravenous fluids for a number of days.

St Basil’s recorded its first Covid case on 9 July before staff were replaced by a commonwealth-sourced surge workforce on 22 July.

In other news, it’s heartening to discover Jim Chalmers’ life is full of deeply rewarding, fridge-worthy memories:

AFP said police had been investigating Foster for more than six months and his eventual arrest was subject to “a whole heap of things and information”.

Queensland police will now seek to extradite him to the state where he will be subject to judicial proceedings.

In Canberra, the Australian federal police (AFP) are providing an update on the arrest of wanted fugitive Peter Foster.

The 59-year-old man was arrested at a house near Gisborne in the Macedon Ranges and is currently being assessed at the Royal Melbourne Hospital for a medical condition. AFP said he was living “comfortably” at his location:

Mr Foster was arrested on the Queensland arrest warrant following his failure to appear in court in May this year, in relation to an allegation of a $2 million fraud. Since that time, the AFP has been working with the police service in trying to locate and apprehend Mr Foster.

During the execution of the warrant today, Mr Foster ... disclosed a medical condition and he was subsequently converted to the Royal Melbourne Hospital where he is currently being assessed for his medical condition. The AFP will work tirelessly to apprehend organised criminals of this kind and this should serve as a warning to all criminals that there is nowhere to hide.

Read Ben Butler’s story here:

Stood-down Collingwood Football Club player Jordan De Goey will appear by video-link on Thursday morning after he was charged with assault in New York in late October.

De Goey has been suspended indefinitely from training or playing with the club since the incident. He said he would “vigorously deny” the charges.

It’s beginning to feel a bit like groundhog day over here on the east coast:

And with that I will be taking a short break from the blog, but leaving you in the capable hands of Caitlin Cassidy.

Genomic sequencing is underway to determine if an overseas arrival in hotel quarantine in Victoria has been infected with the Omicron variant.

The traveller, who is fully vaccinated, arrived from the Netherlands via Abu Dhabi and has been in hotel quarantine since arriving on 3 December.

They had returned a negative PCR test initially, but subsequently tested positive with the finding of S gene dropout, indicative of the new variant.

The traveller has not been in the community since arriving, with the source of the infection still under investigations. Health authorities say all other passengers on the flight will be assessed and tested.

The ABC is reporting that WA Police have dropped a fraud charge against a nurse in Perth, who was accused of falsely recording giving a teenager the Covid vaccine.

Police prosecutors reportedly dropped the charges at the Perth Magistrates Court today, although no reason was given.

We’ll bring you more as it comes to light, but you can read on the last update on the story from last month in the link below:

A survey by the Red Cross has found women and younger people are feeling lonelier going into the holiday season.

The survey of 1,000 people found 36 % of 18- to 29-year-olds citing border closures as a concern, more than any other age group, and with 44% of that group experiencing loneliness compared to 33 per cent of all respondents.

The survey also found a similar percentage were feeling lonelier leading into the holiday season.

Forty per cent of women reported loneliness compared with 26% of men.

Red Cross volunteering director Penny Harrison told the AAP the results weren’t a shock considering the year of lockdowns we’ve experienced.

It’s also apparent that younger people are worried about possible border closures keeping them from family and friends.

Pick up the phone and reconnect with someone you haven’t spoken to this year or check in on a neighbour who lives alone.

Good afternoon, Mostafa Rachwani with you this afternoon. A quick thanks to Elias Visontay and Matilda Boseley for their stellar work earlier today. There is still much to get through, so let’s dive in.

With that, I’ll pass you over to my colleague Mostafa Rachwani who will take you through the next part of the day.

Northern Territory chief minister Michael Gunner is providing a Covid update, after announcing a local toddler had tested positive on Monday.

Gunner said “for the positive local case we announced yesterday, there have been 30 close contacts identified across three households in Katherine East”.

Seven of those close contacts, in addition to the positive case announced yesterday, have been transferred to the Howard Springs centre for national resilience.

Gunner reiterated that positive wastewater detections of Covid mean “it is very likely there are more cases in that area”.

Meanwhile, the community of Lajamanu will come out of lockdown later today and move to lesser restrictions.

Katherine – which has had restrictions for more than a month – is set to come out of lockout tomorrow, however a final decision on that is still to be made.

In case you missed it earlier today, the latest Guardian Essential poll has found that voters in New South Wales remain sympathetic to Gladys Berejiklian despite the former premier having to front the state’s anti-corruption commission to answer serious questions.

My colleague Katharine Murphy has filed this report on what voters in NSW think of Berejiklian, and of Scott Morrison’s repeated criticism of the state’s Independent Commission Against Corruption (Icac).

A man who allegedly pointed a gun at a university security guard has been arrested in Melbourne, reports AAP.

Police were called to Swinburne University’s Croydon campus, in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs, just before 10.30am on Tuesday.

Specialist police along with uniformed officers quickly responded and cordoned off the area, arresting the man shortly after.

With that, I shall hand you over to the fantastic Elias Visontay who will guide you through the afternoon of news.

See you tomorrow, love you, bye!

There are now 37 cases of Omicron in Australia, chief medical officer Paul Kelly has confirmed – and only 10 of those are associated with overseas travel.

Kelly has provided an update to a senate select committee inquiry into the Australian government’s response to the Covid pandemic.

He also said that, as the pandemic continues and new variants emerge, they would run out of Greek alphabet letters to name them after, and would turn to stars and constellations instead.

This is from about 45 minutes ago, I’m hearing crowds have since begun to disperse, but a fair turnout at the NSW strike protests today.

Thousands of Victorians were unjustly and inhumanely denied a Covid19 border exemption to return home to farewell dying loved ones, attend medical appointments, care for sick family members or start jobs, reports AAP.

That is the finding of an investigation by the Victorian ombudsman into the Department of Health’s NSW border exemption scheme.

Ombudsman Deborah Glass said the decision to shut the border to Covid-stricken Sydney and others parts of NSW in July left thousands stranded and unable to get an exemption.

Of 33,252 applications from 9 July to 14 September, when the probe was launched, only 8% were granted.

In all, the watchdog received 315 complaints including from stranded souls paying double rent with no job, internet-less caravanning pensioners who were asked for documents they did not have, and a farmer afraid of having to destroy her animals when she could not get home.

Glass did not criticise the border closure call, finding it was lawful and needed to protect people in the face of a public health emergency. But she hit out at the narrow use of discretion, lack of reasons for refusals and delegation of decision-making.

She wrote in the report released on Tuesday:

The overwhelming majority of applications did not get to a decision maker at all, and the guidance did not change even as case numbers in Victoria grew and the risks evolved...

The consequences of that were vast, and unfair, for many thousands of people stuck across the border.

Despite scaling up its exemption team from 20 staff in July to 285 by early September, those responsible for categorising and prioritising applications were expected to complete 50 per hour or one every 30 seconds.

Ms Glass said people felt caught up in a “bureaucratic nightmare”.

NSW secretary for the Transport Workers Union, Richard Olsen, has spoken at the strike protests in the Sydney CBD.

These bus drivers have been relentless over the past few years throughout all the pandemic in ensuring that all essential workers get to and from work. Risking not only their own lives but their families to ensure that everyone who needs transport gets transport to and from where they need to go.

We stand in solidarity with all the bus drivers in region three to ensure that they can get what they deserve to, they have worked under an inferior enterprise agreement, not an industry-standard agreement but an inferior agreement for the past three years.

That has been out of its nominal term for well over six months, yet the company is still not prepared to meet. And they are certainly not putting anything on the table for the bus drivers to consider.

Moving forward as a reasonable industry agreement, we call on transit system to immediately put an offer on the table and [if they fail] to do so we call on the state government to intervene, after all they are the economic employer we must stand up and we must take this fight on.

We cannot allow a company like this to pocket the thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars that the state government has paid them. It should have already been in the pockets of these bus drivers. We cannot allow the company to get away with that nor the state government.

In case anyone was wondering what was going on in South Australia, basically, the premier is just simping over Zac Efron, and honestly, same.

A neat summary of the federal politics news this morning.

Here is what the Greens have to say about the NSW teacher’s strike today:

Viagra could be a useful treatment against Alzheimer’s disease, according to a US study.

Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of age-related dementia, affects hundreds of millions of people worldwide. Despite mounting numbers of cases, however, there is currently no effective treatment.

Using a large gene-mapping network, researchers at the Cleveland Clinic integrated genetic and other data to determine which of more than 1,600 Food and Drug Administration-approved drugs could be an effective treatment for Alzheimer’s disease. They gave higher scores to drugs that target both amyloid and tau – two hallmarks of Alzheimer’s – compared with drugs that targeted just one or the other.

You can read the full report below:

It’s that first Tuesday in the month, and that means the Reserve Bank of Australia’s board meets to announce its cash rates decision.

Well, the board members do take a break over summer (unless there’s a financial meltdown, or its opposite, a meltup?) and so won’t be back to torment us until early February. (Checks calendar: 1 February, in fact.)

Anyway, today’s decision won’t change the official rate at its record 0.1%. The cash rate target was cut in November 2020 and the focus of pundits will be any signs of when the RBA might lift that rate.

So far, the bank has been keen to stress its patience about not lifting the cash rate until inflation is firmly within it 2%-3% a year range, and talked about 2024 as the aim.

Surging global inflation has possibly pulled that back to 2023.
Also of interest (so to speak) will be comments about whether the RBA is going to stop buying up government debt before its planned binge winds up in February. By then, the RBA will be the proud owner of about 40% of government debt, which it will one day have decide what to do with.

In the meantime, most economic indicators are showing consumers are cashed up and ready to spend, and that job ads are on the rise.

An ANZ Roy Morgan Consumer Confidence report out this morning showed that confidence added another 1.4% in the past week, while inflationary expectations remain steady on a four-week rolling average.

A factoid of the day is also from the ANZ. It notes how household consumption as a proportion of the economy has dived to about 51% down from 55% before the pandemic.

With $200bn plus in extra savings and job security looking better by the day (Omicron, permitting), that low ratio is set for a big rebound, most economists think, which could end up surprising the RBA in a way that won’t be great for interest rates.

Seems like household consumption peaked at about 56.5% in 2011, perhaps when the carbon price introduction was offset by income support.

Federal Labor frontbencher Andrew Leigh has slammed National leader Barnaby Joyce’s muted response to MP George Christensen appearing on far-right commentator Alex Jones’ web show.

A spokesperson for Joyce, who is currently overseas, said that “while the deputy prime minister doesn’t agree with the comments made, Mr Christensen has the right to say what he believes”.

Leigh:

Once you’re playing footsies with Alex Jones, one of the great conspiracy theorists of the age, you’ve really got to worry about what George Christensen is doing.

And Barnaby Joyce still seems to have an inability to really recognise he’s the deputy prime minister. He said after the Glasgow meetings that the Nationals hadn’t signed up to net zero by 2050, as though they’re not in Coalition with the government. And now he’s often in Britain, on some private enterprise.

I think Australians just want him to do his day job, to focus on the needs of Australians, the pressures households are facing and the importance of tackling climate change...

You can be sure if it was somebody on the left of politics, Scott Morrison would be out there quick as a flash having a go at them, saying that they ought to be denounced. But when it’s George Christensen or it’s Craig Kelly, people like that seem to get a free pass from the prime minister.

D’ath says Queensland will extend the criminal offence of spitting, coughing or sneezing on essential workers deliberately to include all workers at businesses which require patrons to be vaccinated.

There is another thing that we are going to do to support workers and businesses as well. In April last year we extended the offence of spitting, coughing or sneezing deliberately on people or threatening to do so, we extended that to retail workers because we know they saw appalling behaviour while they tried to just get on with doing their job and serving the community.

Because these workers and every one of the businesses that we are mandating the vaccination are doing their job to keep you safe and to ensure people are vaccinated, we want to protect them from this sort of behaviour.

We will be extending this offence to protect all workers in all businesses that are bound by this public health directive. That means if you behave in this way, then you can see an on the spot fine of $1,378.50 or, if your offence is such that the police choose to take you to court, it could be a $13,785 fine or up to six months imprisonment.

There’s other offences that are already covered under the criminal code as well but we believe it’s important to send a very clear message that these workers are here to do their job, to serve you, to make sure you enjoy your experience at these wonderful venues but we have a responsibility to protect them as well.

Queensland’s health minister, Yevette D’ath says the number of exposure sites on the Gold Coast is likely to grow as authorities try to bring the cluster under control.

I can advise that in relation to the Gold Coast cluster, one of those individuals we advised worked at a private aged care facility. The good news is 89 tests have come back and they have all been negative. Wonderful news for the residents and staff at that aged care facility. Some people may have noticed, and I should say there is likely to be more exposure sites on the Gold Coast going up as we interview this gentleman.

She also explained the reason for Cairns Airport’s recently listing:

We did put the Cairns Airport up as an exposure site. That is because we had an overseas traveller who had travelled through New South Wales, was eligible to come up and fly into Cairns and then to quarantine but they have since tested positive. People on that flight and at the airport are being asked to have a look at the date and times and follow the advice of the public health unit in relation to any testing or any quarantine requirements.

Unions representing New South Wales teachers and public transport workers are blaming the state government for a series of strikes taking place this week.

Thousands of commuters will have to make other travel plans as bus and train drivers take industrial action.

The strikes began on Monday with inner-west Sydney bus drivers walking off the job as part of an ongoing dispute over pay equality.

On Tuesday bus drivers in the city’s south-west are also striking, before the two groups stage a coordinated walkout for two hours during the Friday afternoon peak.

You can read the full report below:

Reporter:

Speaking to a number of parents since the decision was made about the strike going ahead, some weeks ago, the majority of parents have said they are supportive of teachers going on strike today, they’re supportive of parents having an increase in their pay to improve the staff shortage. What would you say to that?

Mitchell:

Well, I know many parents who are incredibly frustrated by this disruption today, that are making tough choices about not being able to go to work with their children can’t be at school.

I think the reality is that as a government we have our wages policy, we have a 2.5% pay increase on the table, it’s the maximum that we can offer under that wages policy, which means each and every teacher across New South Wales would get a pay rise with that approach.

No one is arguing that teachers [don’t] work hard. We know they do an incredible job. We want to offer the pay rise they’re able to. We want to have an adult conversation with the union in the IRC.

What I get really frustrated about is there are measures and mechanisms in place where that can happen. The strike action today is unnecessary. It serves no purpose, other than to disrupt families right across New South Wales and ultimately it’s our children and their education that will suffer from these actions and it’s incredibly disappointing.

NSW education minister Sarah Mitchell:

Today across New South Wales we’re seeing over 350 schools closed. So students who need to be at school, those who have really challenging family circumstances, aren’t able to be at school today because of this action taken by the union.

In a single day, the union has caused more disruption to our public education system than we’ve seen due to Covid throughout the entirety of this term.

We remain willing to negotiate. We are still at the table when it comes to our 2.5% pay rise. We’re working through those issues in the IRC. That’s where these matters should be debated and discussed and ruled on, not through industrial action.

I’m disappointed and I’m frustrated on behalf of parents, the hundreds of thousands of parents impacted by this decision today, the parents who can’t go to work today because their children can’t go to school.

It’s incredibly unfair, it’s incredibly disingenuous from the union and now is the time to put the interests of our students first. We need to make sure our kids are in the classroom, each and every day, but particularly this year, when we’ve seen what is arguably the most disrupted year in education in our history.

Crowds are on the move in the Sydney CBD as part of the major teacher strike.

I’ll bring you more on this soon, but the Victorian Ombudsman has some choice words on the Victorian permit system.

Women were doing 21 hours more unpaid work than men a week and experiencing higher levels of psychological distress in the year before the pandemic, a new report has found.

The annual Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (Hilda) survey is a nationally representative study involving interviews with 17,500 people in 9,500 households.

This year’s report, released on Tuesday and compiled by the University of Melbourne’s Melbourne Institute, covers data from 2019, before the massive social and economic upheaval caused by Covid-19.

While household incomes were rising again after years of stagnation, the national snapshot shows poverty was also increasing, and two groups that would be hit hard by the pandemic were already disadvantaged.

You can read the full report from Stephanie Convery and Luke Henriques-Gomes below:

Here is that chat with Palaszczuk I mentioned earlier.

Pixar and Queensland Bureau of Meteorology collab?

Two birds worth $30,000 each have been stolen in a burglary at a home in Melbourne’s south east, with police on the hunt for the thieves, reports AAP.

The valuable scarlet macaws, named Bubba and Pippa, were stolen late last month after the burglars broke into Frankston home through the front door while the owner wasn’t there.

They belonged to her late father and have a highly sentimental value, police said.

Both birds have their flight feathers clipped and anyone with information on their whereabouts is urged to contact Crime Stoppers.

Labor will extend an olive branch to religious communities through a faith and climate summit on Thursday, Kristina Keneally has revealed.

The ALP’s deputy leader in the Senate announced the outreach effort in a webinar with the Christian lobby group FamilyVoice on Monday evening, in which she also expressed support for every school to require all staff to “live out and profess” its values.

Labor is yet to decide its final position on the religious discrimination bill, pending two parliamentary inquiries to run over summer and report back by 4 February.

Keneally’s comments are noteworthy because overriding state laws with more limited religious exemptions to discrimination law, such as Victoria’s legislation, is one of the key reasons LGBT advocates have urged Labor to block the bill.

You can read the full report below:

Hmmmm, OK, well scratch that, because just 10 minutes later, Palaszczuk has told the Today Show that she “hopes” the border won’t close again.

Host:

Can you guarantee that this is the end of border closures? Are you open now for good?

Palaszczuk:

We hope so. We have been open to most of the states and territories except for NSW, Victoria and the ACT.

We are very confident that our tourism industry, that is exactly the extra injection that they need. It will be great for jobs. I know that everyone is looking forward to welcoming family and friends home who they haven’t seen for a long, long time.

A lot of people out there, and grandparents, have been saying to me they will be seeing their grandchildren for the very first time. It will be a very special time of the year.

Okay, let’s chat about the Queensland border. Long story short, it’s opening next Monday, with the state set to reach 80% double vaccination sometime this week.

The premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk is out and about this morning sharing the good news. She told ABC News Breakfast that the Queensland regional hospital system was prepared for the potential influx of cases.

Everyone is prepared, just as in New South Wales and Victoria. We now have to live with the virus and we have heard from our acting chief health officer yesterday that there will be cases. We have to prepare for that.

It will be a different mind set for Queenslanders because we’re used to hearing zero, zero, time and time again. People haven’t seen their families for some months, if not years and Christmas is a time for families to reunite. I have spoken to grandparents who will see their grandchildren for the very first time. That will be very memorable.

This is the right thing to do, as Australia opens up. We have to be mindful that we are in a pandemic and there’s many Queenslanders that have gone about their jobs, people have gone to school. We haven’t had the long lock downs that you’ve experienced in Melbourne and Sydney and we want to keep it that way. I never thought we would get to a situation where we have, coming into opening up for a pandemic, 80% double dose.

This is a very high vaccination rate. We are the 90% first dose. We want that additional protection to make sure people get the test on day five.

Voters in New South Wales remain sympathetic to Gladys Berejiklian despite the former premier having to front the state’s anti-corruption commission to answer serious questions, according to the latest Guardian Essential poll.

Respondents in the survey of 1,094 voters were asked whether or not they agreed with Scott Morrison’s repeated criticism of the state’s Independent Commission Against Corruption (Icac).

The prime minister has characterised the NSW Icac as a “kangaroo court” and claimed Berejiklian had been hounded out of office.

Voters are split nationally about Morrison’s interventions, with 34% in agreement, 31% disagreeing with his comments, and 36% neither agreeing nor disagreeing. Outside NSW, a number of voters are on the fence about the fracas.

You can read the full report below:

Now, as you might remember, the talk of the town is that the former NSW premier, Gladys Berejiklian, could run for the federal seat of Warringah.

But Chris Bowen says he doesn’t think she could win against the popular incumbent MP Zali Steggall.

I mean, I think if the Liberal Party wants to choose Gladys Berejiklian, that’s a matter for them. I mean, it was an important principle for Gladys Berejiklian, apparently to resign as premier because she was being investigated by the ICAC. But apparently, it’s not [for federal politics].

I think it would show the lack of regard for standards in public life by Scott Morrison. I mean, this is a prime minister who turns a blind eye to poor behaviour and now he is actively providing a character reference for somebody who is under investigation by the ICAC and actively promoting them...

I’m not here to make predictions although if you asked me if I suspect Zali Steggall would be quite comfortable running against Gladys Berejiklian.

We’ll have a great candidate as well for Warringah, but I’m not here to pretend to you that we are the favourites. But I suspect that Zali Steggall will be very happy campaigning against Gladys Berejiklian.

Shadow minister for climate change and energy Chris Bowen is speaking now to ABC radio to talk up Labor’s new climate change policy:

We said we will seek to legislate that target as well as our commitment to net zero by 2050 because that is best practice internationally and provides businesses with the certainty they crave.

Legal experts have labelled Scott Morrison’s latest attacks on the New South Wales corruption watchdog “disgraceful” and “stupid”, as the Liberal party ramps up efforts to have Gladys Berejiklian contest the federal seat of Warringah.

On Monday, the prime minister doubled down on his previous comments in parliament last week when he called the Independent Commission Against Corruption a “kangaroo court,” and accused it of trying to “publicly humiliate” the former NSW premier.

“Gladys was put in a position of actually having to stand down and there was no findings of anything,” Morrison said on Monday, in advance of any possible findings by Icac. Berejiklian resigned voluntarily in September, in line with her own ruling that an MP who is a substantial subject of an investigation must stand aside.

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