Key events
Murray Watts is also the minister for emergency management – what does he think about holding festivals in flood zones, given what happened at Splendour?
(The Queenslander drops in that he was planning on attending Splendour, but decided he needed to work on foot and mouth disease instead – he wanted to see the Strokes, he tells Patricia Karvelas.)
He says the response to climate events needs to change, but no one is looking at depriving regions of being able to hold festivals at this point.
What we’ve said is that we want to make sure the country is better prepared for natural disasters in the future. And also that we respond a lot faster and frankly, I think we demonstrated it can be done after the recent New South Wales floods. So to be clear, there will be a review of events and these kinds of places.
Murray Watts says every piece of mail from Indonesia and China is being screened for animal products, as part of the foot-and-mouth disease response.
Murray Watts has responded to reports that not every passenger returning from Indonesia has been screened for foot-and-mouth disease, and says there was never an expectation that every passenger would be screened:
We have never said that every single passenger returning from Indonesia is being thoroughly screened, taken away for questioning, having their luggage search.
You can imagine the chaos that would cause at airports. But what we are doing is risk profiling every single passenger who comes back in the country, and I’ve got some figures from my department over the weekend in response to those reports.
Just in Melbourne Airport alone just on Saturday, there were over there around 3,700 passengers coming in from Indonesia, who were questioned, who were screened, who had [their] shoes cleaned, some combination of measures to make sure that they were they were safe.
And the reason those passengers were chosen is that they either declared that they had been on a farm, been near livestock, were carrying a product something like that, or they didn’t declare it and for some reason in our risk profiling system they were picked up as a possible risk.
So I know there were some reports about people who just roll in through the airport [who] didn’t see anything, nothing happened … I think they confirmed that they heard this specific message that we’re now playing on every flight coming back in from Indonesia, about the foot-and-mouth disease risks … but we don’t bother searching every single passenger because they’re low risk.
What we try to do is make sure that our resources are targeted at people who are the highest risk.
And importantly, we try to target our resources at the importation of meat products, because – as I’ve said all the way along – while there is a risk that a traveller could bring this back from Bali, that risk is much lower than meat products being brought into the country, and that’s why we need to make sure that we’re doing a lot of work around that as well which we are.
The agriculture minister, Murray Watt, says “Australia remains foot-and-mouth disease free”.
Viral fragments have been detected in some products from the travelling public and imports, but not the live virus, Watt says.
“We have absolutely no evidence at all we have the virus in Australia,” he tells RN.
Paul Karp
The defence minister, Richard Marles, has announced the ADF deployment into aged care has been extended to the end of September.
Marles told ABC News Breakfast:
There is a significant number of outbreaks, more than a thousand across the country. And so it’s important that we need to be doing everything we can to meet the challenge of that. It’s not just extending the military support to aged care, it’s actually increasing it up to 250 personnel through until the end of September. And it’s an important step, given what the sector faces. It’s obviously important to note that this is not a long-term solution, it’s not what the Defence Force is for. But in this moment, it’s really important that we do everything we can to provide all the assistance necessary, and so this is the right step to take.
… It is an extreme measure and it’s right to describe it as that. We’re doing this now because of the significant number of outbreaks, but as I said, it’s important to understand that we can’t see this as a normal fallback, to go to the defence force. We saw the previous government really, I think, too heavily on this because they didn’t do the work to make sure that there was a surge workforce in place, which we are ensuring happens. But given the number of outbreaks that we’ve got right now, this is the right thing to do, and I’ve got no doubt that those personnel will equip themselves professionally and fantastically in the way they do their work.
Good morning
It’s the day before the 47th parliament sits and Canberra is once again buzzing with people and anticipation as MPs, staffers and all the associated hangers-on descend on the capital ahead of the first offical day.
So it’s a busy time. We have a lot to get through as agendas are laid out – and that doesn’t even take in everything that is going on outside of parliament.
Climate is still one of the biggest issues (timeless statement). As Murph reports:
Senate kingmaker David Pocock says the Albanese government would build parliamentary support for its climate bills if it was prepared to insert a climate trigger as part of its looming revamp of national environmental laws.
Ahead of the opening of the 47th parliament on Tuesday, the independent senator for the Australian Capital Territory said last week’s state of the environment report, which documented an alarming deterioration in Australia’s natural heritage, made a stark and compelling case for considering greenhouse gas emissions when new development proposals are assessed.
“Reading the state of the environment report, climate cuts across everything,” Pocock told Guardian Australia. “Climate change will affect every part of our lives. For me, [a climate trigger] really needs to be considered and needs to be in there because [the climate crisis is] clearly already having a huge impact”.
Meanwhile, foot-and-mouth disease (the reason you are all seeing FMD reported across social media) is still worrying the agricultural sector – Murray Watt will speak on that very soon.
And of course, the pandemic is ongoing. As Natasha May reports:
As Covid-19 cases continue to rise across the country, the government has extended defence force support to aged care facilities until the end of September.
There are currently more than 6,000 residents and more than 3,000 staff who are infected in aged care facilities. There will be up to 250 Australian Defence Force [members] helping aged care facilities get through the winter wave.
The new federal parliament meets for the first time tomorrow with the intention of introducing at least 18 pieces of legislation in its first week, covering aged care Royal Commission recommendations as well as climate change, domestic violence, and jobs.
So there is a bit going on.
We will cover it all and more as the day (and weeks) unfold. You have Katharine Murphy and Mike Bowers already on deck and all over all the things, as well as Tory Shepherd, Paul Karp and Josh Butler.
You have me, Amy Remeikis, on the blog for most of the day (I’ve missed you) covering off all of the issues, so I hope you have had your weeties. I am on coffee number three and it hasn’t even hit the sides.
Ready?
Let’s get into it.
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