01:28
Analysis –
If you find the daily 11am press conferences from Gladys Berejiklian frustrating, there’s a simple reason. After the headline numbers on cases and deaths, it’s practically a fact-free zone, with the next 45 minutes often filled with confusing messages and slogans.
Over the past week, as the cases have spiralled towards the heights reached during Victoria’s second wave in 2020, the messaging has lurched from “just get vaccinated” to “when we hit 6m jabs we can live more freely” to Monday’s brutal reality check.
For the first time, Berejiklian acknowledged what she has previously brushed off. Getting case numbers down to as close to zero as possible in NSW means getting them down to a handful of cases a day – and that is months away, if it’s possible at all.
For the first time, Berejiklian said on Monday that the Doherty Institute modelling for opening up – when 70% or 80% of the adult population was vaccinated – is based on having about 30 cases at that time.
You can read Anne’s full piece below:
01:00
Earlier, Australia’s shadow foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, called on the Australian government to use unallocated humanitarian visa places to bring Afghan activists and women in danger to Australia.
Wong called for “pathways for existing temporary protection visa holders to remain in Australia”.
She noted that the foreign affairs minister, Marise Payne, has said they won’t be asked to return to Afghanistan “at this stage”, but Wong said it was time to “dispense with the fiction people are likely to be able to return” – ie to let them stay in Australia permanently.
Updated
00:48
‘Several hundred’ still need to be evacuated from Afghanistan, foreign affairs minister says
Australia’s foreign affairs minister, Marise Payne, has confirmed that Australia is still working to evacuate “several hundred more” locally engaged staff, Australian citizens, permanent residents and their families from Afghanistan.
Some 1,300 have been brought to Australia since 2013 including 400 since April – but the Australian government has been criticised for being too slow to help the rest.
Payne said Australia is working with the US, which is trying to secure Kabul’s airport, and the first Australian Defence Force flight is en route. But, asked if everyone will make it out, Payne replied that it is an “extraordinarily difficult situation” due to “security issues and the lack of arrangements on the ground”.
Regarding the 4,200 Afghans in Australia on temporary visas and 53 in immigration detention, Payne told ABC’s AM:
All the Afghans in Australia on temporary visas will be supported by the Australian government and no Afghan visa-holder will be asked to return to Afghanistan at this stage. And that is something we’ve discussed as a government.
Updated
