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| Good morning, early birds. Victorian Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton has warned the state’s outbreak “will get worse before it gets better” and that a second shutdown for hotspot areas is “absolutely an option”, and AAP has been sold to a not-for-profit investment consortium. | |||||||||||||
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WEAR A MASK, VICTORIAFollowing yesterday’s 75 case spike, The Age reports that Victorian Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton has warned the state’s outbreak “will get worse before it gets better” and that a second shutdown for hotspot areas — while difficult, and complicated by the fact advanced notice might spur infected people to leave and relocate elsewhere — is “absolutely an option”. Nine schools were shutdown yesterday, and the majority of new cases were picked up in the testing blitz across the 10 hotspot suburbs — Maidstone, Albanvale, Sunshine West, Hallam, Brunswick West, Fawkner, Reservoir, Pakenham, Keilor Downs and Broadmeadows. Finally, speaking to 7.30 last night, Health Minister Greg Hunt did not rule out the prospect of mandatory face masks across Melbourne hotspots and public transport. The suggestion follows multiple studies and meta-analyses of studies demonstrating the overwhelming, but not absolute, efficacy of masks in preventing symptomatic and asymptomatic spread. | |||||||||||||
AND NOW FOR SOME GOOD NEWSThe newswire responsible for roughly every second piece of breaking news in Australia, AAP, has been sold to a not-for-profit investment consortium led by led by sustainable investment manager Nick Harrington, philanthropist John McKinnon and former News Corp chief executive Peter Tonagh. As The Guardian explains, the group signed off on a deal last night to buy, and officially save, AAP four days after the wire was originally planned to shut for good, and just one day before News Corp and Nine’s subscription ran out. The organisation will re-launch on August 1 with a reduced team of 85 — down from 180 at the start of the year — based in Sydney’s CBD. TWO GOOD NEWS NEWS STORIES? Speaking on last night’s Q&A, Communications Minister Paul Fletcher announced a last-minute reprieve for two community TV stations —–Melbourne’s Channel 31 and Adelaide’s Channel 44 — that will now get another year on air to transition to digital-only content. | |||||||||||||
A CASUAL $1.3 BILLION EARMARKED FOR THE CYBERWARScott Morrison will today announce a 10-year, $1.3 billion boost for the Australian Signals Directorate to recruit 500 cyber spies and build “offensive capability” for cyber-warfare, according to The Sydney Morning Herald. The announcement comes after Morrison earlier this month announced there had been cyber attacks against state and federal governments as well as other critical infrastructure, which, although he would only name a “state-based” perpetrator, security agencies speaking with The SMH later linked to China. It also comes a week after Defence Minister Linda Reynolds confirmed to the AFR ($) that the government plans on spending $200 billion over 10 years on new military hardware and systems. | |||||||||||||
CULTURE WAR: POVERTY EDITIONAccording to The Guardian, a new paper by the Brotherhood of St Laurence and the Nous Group has found nearly a third of people who lost work or had hours cut due to the pandemic are aged 51 to 65. Separately, an ANU analysis has found the proportion of Australians not able to meet their housing costs jumped from 6.9% in April to 15.1% in May and overwhelmingly hit younger generations. COMPARE AND CONTRAST: A front-page story at The Australian ($) today jumps on board Morrison/The West Australian’s recent line about JobKeeper/JobSeeker being too far above poverty rates that some people are refusing to work. | |||||||||||||
IRAN WANTS TO ARREST DONALD TRUMPAccording to Al Jazeera, the Iranian government has issued an arrest warrant for Donald Trump and more than 30 others it believes carried out the January 3 assassination of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad. The call to arrest Trump — which Tehran prosecutor Ali Alqasimehr said the government will pursue even after his presidency ends — also came with a request to assist from Interpol, which has politely noted that its constitution forbids, “any intervention or activities of a political, military, religious or racial character”. GLOBAL WATCH: In a packed night for international news:
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THEY REALLY SAID THAT?
In a very good, very dense fact-check, last night’s Q&A hots puts a cork in that manufactured “$84 million cut vs $84 million not-a-cut?” debate. | |||||||||||||
CRIKEY RECAP | |||||||||||||
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THE COMMENTARIATI’d cover my face to preserve the freedoms we’re regaining — Aubrey Perry (Sydney Morning Herald): “They’re mandatory in more than 50 countries, and a handful of states in the US mandate the use of them in public, too. Experts here, too, are now echoing the call to wear masks and face coverings in enclosed public places and on public transport. ‘The effectiveness of masks reducing transmission is now really clear,’ Professor Michael Toole of the Burnet Institute said last week, citing a review published in The Lancet this month that found wearing a mask could reduce the risk of passing on an infection by 85%.” Time’s up for silence on what happens in chambers ($) — Kathleen Foley (AFR): “On June 24, 2020, as news of the findings of an inquiry into allegations of sexual harassment by Dyson Heydon rocked the legal community, the Victorian Legal Services Commissioner sent a mass email under the heading ‘It’s time to end the culture of silence on sexual harassment’. Yet at the same time, the person who headed the High Court for the first five years of Heydon’s tenure — former chief justice Murray Gleeson — was reported as saying only this: ‘I have nothing at all to say’.” Kean says NSW can be renewable energy superpower, or stick its head in the sand — Giles Parkinson (RenewEconomy): “It’s a theme that is catching on in the conservative side of politics in Australia, not that you’d notice from reading the mainstream media. Kean, of course, is a Liberal MP in the conservative Berejiklian government in NSW, and his views are shared by the Tasmania Liberal government, which has an aim of reaching 200% renewables within 20 years so it can export the surplus to the mainland, or attract clean industries to its state; and the South Australia Liberal government, which wants to reach net 100% renewables by 2030, and also become a renewable export superpower, exporting to neighbouring states and other countries.” | |||||||||||||
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