Coronavirus Australia updates: anti-lockdown protest in Melbourne as NSW and WA set to ease Covid-19 restrictions – as it happened

We will leave our live Australian coverage there for the day. You can follow our rolling global coverage here or read a summary here.

Here’s how things stand in Australia:

• Victoria is set to announce tomorrow whether it plans to ease coronavirus restrictions. The current public health orders will expire, but they could be extended or replaced with something new.
• New South Wales and WA announced an easing of restrictions, NSW to come into effect on Friday and WA on Monday week. All other states and territories have announced some easing of restrictions.
• Children are returning to school in NSW this week. Queensland is also seeing the return of kids in kindergarten and students in prep, grade one, year 11 and year 12. Kids in WA are also back at school, but there’s no penalties for learning from home.
• Australia recorded just 14 new cases of Covid-19 overnight. Ten were in Victoria, including one more in the Cedar Meats cluster, bringing the total size of that cluster to 79. NSW and Queensland recorded two each.
• Queensland’s deputy premier and treasurer Jackie Trad, who stood aside amid a corruption inquiry last week, has now resigned.
• Ten people were arrested at a protest against Victoria’s lockdown measures and police have said they will work to identify anyone else who was at the protest (reportedly 250 people) and fine them all for breaching public health orders.
• Australia’s chief medical officer, Prof Brendan Murphy, said that for lockdown restrictions to be eased Australians will have to show some personal responsibility for maintaining an appropriate distance between each other and avoiding crowds. He also said the 5G conspiracy theory, which links the telephone network to the coronavirus, is “nonsense”.
• The dispute between Australia and China appears to have escalated, with Beijing reportedly considering imposing tariffs on Australian barley farmers for alleged anti-competitive behaviour. The Australian government says there’s no evidence Australian farmers engaged in dumping.

Stay well, remain 1.5m apart at the shops or when protesting and wish your mother and other mothers/parents in your life a happy mother’s day from us.

South Australia has established a rapid response team to deal with any coronavirus outbreaks in nursing homes.

Twenty-seven of the 97 people to die in Australia after testing positive to Covid-19, died in nursing homes.

More detail from AAP:

The dedicated SA Pathology team has been assembled to provide greater protection for some of the state’s most vulnerable citizens.

If an outbreak occurs, the team will immediately test everyone in the facility, helping to quickly identify cases, limit the spread and protect both residents and staff.

“A key to protecting our state from a resurgence of this disease is our success in dealing with cases as they are identified,” health minister Stephen Wade said.

“The way to stop a case from becoming a cluster and a cluster becoming an outbreak is to identify and isolate cases and contacts quickly.

“Older people are much more vulnerable to becoming seriously ill with Covid-19 and residents in aged care facilities are at particular risk as we see in both Australia and overseas.”

Ten people were arrested at the anti-lockdown, anti-vaxx, and apparently anti-5G protest outside parliament house in Melbourne today. And police have said they are attempting to identify others who attended so they can fine them too.

Among those arrested were two organisers of the protest.

In a statement, Victoria Police said it “respects the public’s right to protest” but it “made it very clear that if a planned protest was to proceed today, it would be in direct contravention of the chief health officer’s current directives”.

Those directives, which expire tomorrow, allow police to arrest or issue a $1,600 on the spot fine to anyone deemed to be breaching Victoria’s stage three lockdown laws, which state that the only reason a person should be outside their home is for exercise, care or compassionate reasons, to attend work or school, or for essential shopping.

Here’s the police statement:

At the protest on Spring Street today, police arrested 10 people, including two organisers of the event. OC spray was deployed during an arrest of one individual.

The majority of those arrested were for failing to comply with the chief health officer’s directions. Three of the offenders will also be charged with assaulting a police officer, and another offender will be charged with discharging a missile after allegedly throwing a bottle at police.

All offenders were released pending summons.

As a result of the protest activity, a police officer who was in attendance has been taken to hospital for what is believed to be a rib injury.

When attending the protest today, the priority for police was to quickly arrest those individuals who were acting unlawfully and inciting others to breach the chief health officer’s directions.

Once police made arrests, the crowd started to disperse.

Police are continuing to investigate the events of today in order to identify other people who were in attendance. Once individuals are identified, we will be issuing them with fines and will consider any other enforcement options.

I missed this earlier and, frankly, am not sure why I’m sharing it now. But if you want to listen to the same music as the opposition leader, which appears to have been created by googling “coronavirus songs” (seriously Albo, where’s the creativity?) then here you go.

It’s OK, mate. As Nick Hornby wrote, a good compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do.

Labor’s trade spokeswoman Madeleine King and agriculture spokesman Joel Fitzgibbon have released this statement on the proposed barley tariffs.

They write:

Labor is deeply concerned about reports that China may be preparing to impose tariffs on Australian barley.

China is yet to finalise its decision, and the government must use the coming days to resolve this matter to protect Australia’s valuable barley industry.

It is in the interests of both nations to have a productive trading relationship.

Australia and China have a rich history of trade and investment which has been extremely beneficial to both our nations.

The government needs to show leadership on managing this important relationship at this difficult time.

South Australia has reported no new cases of coronavirus. Again. They now have just one active case remaining.

Murphy said that employers would probably have to stagger shift starts when companies begin asking employees to return to work to avoid peak-hour crowding on public transport. The national cabinet’s roadmap has employees working from home, if they are able, until the last stage of restrictions being lifted.

Murphy says:

We are very keen, as well as asking those who are working from home to continue working from home for the time being, but we are also keen for employers and employees to look at staggered start and finish times.

On the need for an independent investigation into the origin of the coronavirus in China, Murphy said the world needed to understand how the coronavirus developed, what was the intermediate species that helped transfer the virus to humans, how it mutated, etc.

Obviously everybody wants to know what are things that each and every country could have done better to stop this widespread pandemic.

He says that Australia and the World Health Organisation have received “a lot of information out of China” and that China has been “readily sharing information and collaborating”.

I hope it becomes a scientific and health-based investigation looking at lessons to be learned.

Murphy says that businesses should be allowed to turn people away if they have obvious flu-like symptoms.

On the stepped path out of lockdown, why did the national cabinet recommend that restaurant patrons be capped at a fixed number rather than a number based on the size of the restaurant?

Murphy says that might happen in stage two of the restrictions being lifted, but in stage one “most of the health experts we have worked with feel strongly that we should keep total group size small”.

You could sell potentially infect 20 or 30 people even in a socially distance restaurant, if you have only got 10 people in a group, that is a smaller group to contact trace as well.

Murphy is asked about the protests that are happening in Melbourne today, which was pushing a number of conspiracy theories including the one about coronavirus being linked to 5G. (Video explainer on that here.)

Murphy said he has been contacted by a number of conspiracy theorists, and that the theory is “nonsense”.

There is unfortunately a lot of very silly misinformation out there. There is absolutely no evidence about 5G doing anything in the coronavirus space. I have unfortunately received a lot of communication from these conspiracy theorists myself. It is complete nonsense. 5G has got nothing at all to do with coronavirus.

Similarly, I understand people have the right to protest, but they should not be breaching those social distancing rules and if they are, they should be held to account.

Murphy says continuing to control the coronavirus outbreak in Australia is a matter of personal responsibility. He says that if people forget those principles of social distancing and only going out when it’s essential after the restrictions lift, the virus will spread.

“Regulation only goes so far,” he says, adding that he has seen images of people out this week “crowded in shopping malls, in other circumstances, where they have not been observing the social distancing norms that are part of our new way of behaving”.

So regulation can achieve things, but every individual can do more than regulation, by behaving in a way that is respectful of social distancing norms, respectful of the hand hygiene practices that we now have, and if everyone can do that, that will enable us as a nation to progressively and cautiously relax the regulations.

But if people don’t do it, we could get widespread community transmission again. That second wave that we’ve talked about, but none of us want to get and none of us intend to get. But it is as much about the rules and regulations as it is about personal responsibility …

So if you are going to a shopping centre to buy something, go and buy something, but don’t hang around the shopping centre for half-an-hour mingling for no purpose. Go home. If you are arriving at a shopping centre and you find a crowd at an escalator not wanting to practise social distancing or crowding together, don’t go in. Leave. Come back later. If you see someone not practising social distancing or behaving irresponsibly, tell them. If a lift opens and you find it is full of people, don’t get in. All of these things are really important.

Murphy says the case data in Australia shows the virus is transmitted by “mobile, fit adults” but the deaths are concentrated among the elderly and vulnerable.

People have said to me, why don’t you just protect really carefully all those with chronic conditions and the elderly? Make sure they are well cocooned away from everyone else in society?

As we have seen already, that’s just not possible if you’ve got widespread community transmission. This virus is incredibly infectious.

The chief medical officer, Professor Brendan Murphy, says Australia has reported 14 new cases of Covid-19 in the past 24-hours.

Ten of those are in Victoria.

Murphy is speaking in Canberra at the moment. He says Australia’s daily case increase has dropped back to under 20 per day, after a brief increase during the Cedar Meats outbreak.

While we are talking about increasing tensions with China, Daniel Hurst just published this report which says that LNP backbencher George Christensen has threatened to call the Chinese ambassador, Cheng Jingye, to give evidence before an Australian parliamentary committee.

Christensen is the chairman of the Joint Standing Committee on Trade and Investment Growth. He has not got permission from trade minister Simon Birmingham for this latest move, Daniel reports.

Trade minister Simon Birmingham has just wrapped up a press conference in Canberra about China preparing to introduce tariffs on Australian-grown barley. Australian barley growers issued a joint statement today saying they understood China intended to introduce tariffs as a result of an investigation into dumping and anti-competitive behaviour.

Tariffs could destroy Australia’s $1.5bn barley trade to China.

Birmingham said Australia was “deeply concerned” by these reports and said there was no evidence that Australia had engaged in dumping of barley. The anti-dumping investigation had been going on for 18 months, with Australia’s cooperation, and Birmingham said Australia sees no basis on which tariffs would be justified.

It appears to be an escalation of the diplomatic row between Australia and China, over Australia’s vocal support for an independent investigation into the origin of Covid-19.

Asked if Australia risked causing greater offence with Beijing if it fought the anti-dumping findings, Birmingham said:

We are mounting a case based on evidence. There should be no offence taken by anybody about the fact that the Australian government stands up for Australian farmers on the basis of evidence that they operate on an entirely commercial basis.

… We don’t dispute the right of any country to receive a complaint in relation to dumping practices or allegations, and to investigate that complaint. But it ought, ultimately, to be resolved on the evidence of the complaint, and the evidence here is compelling that Australian barley producers operate in entirely commercial matters.

Some states are preparing to allow restaurants and cafes to have a handful of dine-in patrons again. But what about the hospitality workers who were laid off and are now surviving on the jobseeker payment. Will most of them be able to return to work, if restaurants are limited to 10 covers? And if this were to happen again — is it reasonable to expect that single adults can live on just $280 per week?

Gay Alcorn looked at this issue as part of a series on life after lockdown. You can read it here.

The protest outside parliament house has reportedly dispersed. We’ll bring you a round up of arrest numbers shortly.

In other, non-protest related Victorian news, more people have now been swabbed in the two-week testing blitz than were tested for Covid-19 in the state between January and the end of April.

More than 154,000 people have been swabbed in two weeks. The initial aim of the testing blitz, which was announced on 30 April, was 100,000 swabs.

The results take between 24 hours and three days to confirm, and are being analysed at 15 laboratories across Victoria.