Australia coronavirus news: Victorian restaurants to reopen 1 June with 100 patrons by mid-July – as it happened
And with that, we’ll leave you for the day. Thanks for following along.
Let’s wrap up the main developments of the day.
The Victorian Department of Health and Human Services says it is working with two Melbourne businesses where Covid-19 cases have been confirmed.
The businesses are a Dominos outlet in Fairfield, in the inner north-east, and The Comfort Group, a bedmaker with headquarter at Deer Park in Melbourne’s west.
“While the risk of transmission is low, as a precaution the Domino’s shop has been closed for two weeks for thorough cleaning. All 16 staff members will be tested and will be quarantined for 14 days,” the department statement read.
“As a precaution, The Comfort Group site has been closed since Friday and will remain closed until at least Wednesday while investigations continue. A deep clean has already been undertaken. The department is currently working to acquire all relevant information and ensure all public health procedures are followed.
“All close and casual contacts will be tested, and quarantine requirements are being implemented as necessary.”
The government earlier today confirmed two women in Port Macquarie have been charged over allegedly fraudulent bushfire and Covid-19 welfare claims.
A government statement said it was alleged the women used 25 assumed identities to try to claim more than $27,000 in welfare payments they were not entitled to. The statement said more than $10,000 was paid.
They allegedly made 25 fraudulent claims for the Australian Government Disaster Recovery Payment and one fraudulent jobseeker payment claim.
The women were arrested on Thursday, granted bail after being charged with eight counts of obtaining financial advantage by deception. They will appear in court on 22 July 2020.
If you missed my colleague Daniel Hurst’s piece looking at what the Australian government has been doing on the board of the World Health Organisation, which we published this morning, you can read it here.
Labor’s candidate for Eden Monaro, Kristy McBain, has just done a Facebook live campaign catch-up/Q&A – the closest thing we can have to a town hall in the era of Covid-19 and physical distancing.
McBain took a question on the $1,100-a-fortnight jobseeker unemployment benefit from Guardian Australia.
She said:
The rate of Newstart is clearly inadequate to live off, $40 a day – I would challenge anybody to live off that. It is too low, it does prevent people getting back into the workforce and getting a job …
[On] jobseeker, we can’t just snap back. We can’t go back to business as usual. Everyone is feeling a bit uncertain at the moment and we need some certainty. We need the government to outline what will happen after September.
McBain also noted the jobkeeper wage subsidy will be reviewed in June, and said it should consider industries “left behind” and why not everyone was eligible for the $1,500 fortnightly payment.
McBain concluded that people are looking “for vision and a plan” and she’s not sure the government is providing it while Labor will outline priorities that drive “towards prosperity and hope”.
There were no new cases reported in Tasmania overnight, the premier Peter Gutwein told reporters earlier today.
But he warned residents not to become complacent, saying it would leave to a second wave of the virus.
“A number of countries around the world have already found that they have been hit by second wave. We don’t want to go through that, that would be devastating both in Tasmania and in this country,” Gutwein said on Sunday.
AAP reports that Gutwein warned some businesses may not survive if the state has to bring back stricter restrictions.
“They will find that having had to recapitalise once, that the second time around they simply won’t come back, so we need to step through this carefully and sustainably,” he said.
No fresh coronavirus cases were confirmed in Tasmania on Sunday, leaving the state’s total number of infections so far at 226.
There are 31 Tasmanians currently dealing with the condition, as 195 people have recovered.
Under eased restrictions from Monday, restaurants and cafes will be allowed to have up to 10 people seated inside.
Other gatherings of up to 10 people are also permitted, including for real estate purposes, small religious gatherings and weddings.
While there is a bit of a lull, I might point you to this lovely feature by colleague Elias Visontay.
With doubt swirling over the future of Virgin airlines, many will be thinking back to the demise of Ansett, about two decades earlier.
As Elias finds, Ansett’s legacy has lived on in some quite unexpected ways.
AAP’s Anna Harrington reports that A-League teams could resume training in June before the competition aims to complete its season in a hub format by the end of August.
Football Federation Australia (FFA) chief executive James Johnson today said officials wanted to complete the remaining regular season games, plus finals.
“We’d like the remaining part of the season to be finished by the end of August,” Johnson told Fox Sports News.
The players could be training as early as June as a team and then we’ve given ourselves that window between June and August to finish the season.
We’re in a little bit of a different situation to the AFL and the NRL in that we only have 27 regular-season matches left and five more play-off matches.
Starting in August is certainly the very, very latest we’d want to restart but we’re hoping that we’re going to have players up and running again on the football pitch training from June at the earliest.
The A-League has been suspended since March.
Jack Billings of the Saints trains at Elsternwick Park in Melbourne. Photograph: Michael Dodge/AAP
The NSW government said in a statement earlier today that more than 1,200 people who were sleeping rough were “helped into temporary accommodation through the rapid expansion of assertive outreach to prevent the spread of Covid-19”.
Minister for families, communities and disability services Gareth Ward said:
Our intense work since the beginning of April has resulted in many people sleeping rough accepting the offer of temporary accommodation for the first time in their lives.
The Victoria premier, Daniel Andrews, today announced plans to reopen restaurants, bars and pubs from next month.
The Liberal state opposition, which has been increasingly critical of the government’s response, is unimpressed with the announcement.
Opposition leader Michael O’Brien said:
Daniel Andrews will belatedly get ‘back on the beers’ even before the majority of Victorian students can get back in the classroom.
It again shows the wrong priorities of this Labor premier.
Our schools should be back already and our small hospitality businesses should be open – just as they are in other states.
Victorian schools will start to reopen for face to face classes from 26 May, before all students return on 9 June.
The WA health minister, Roger Cook, says that the state has identified a historical case “from about seven weeks ago”:
This case is not currently active and is no risk to the community.
The woman in her 30s from the metropolitan area had a PCR test in March as she was a close contact of a confirmed case and was showing some symptoms. So she did the right thing, she went out and got herself tested.
However, the PCR test result came back as equivocal, which means the test, at the time, was not felt to be conclusive enough to provide her with a positive response, result.
Cook says the state has now recorded 557 cases, including five active cases and one person in a hospital.
McGowan says bars and restaurants in WA will be able to reopen for dine-in services from Monday.
He says more than 8,800 businesses have downloaded the state’s Covid safety plan, which provides guidelines for businesses to reopen.
From tomorrow, one of the best things we can do is support each through this pandemic and return to our favourite local cafe or restaurant and resume our sport and recreation as well and help get businesses back to work and back into operations.
Venues will be able to accommodate up to 20 people from tomorrow, says McGowan.
