More flights out of New Caledonia as first Australians arrive home
More than 80 Australians have touched down at home and been reunited with their families after being evacuated from New Caledonia following more than a week of deadly rioting, AAP reports.
Two Royal Australian Air Force planes repatriated 84 Australians and 24 other nationals to Brisbane yesterday. The Pacific minister, Pat Conroy, told the Today Show just earlier:
We’ve prioritised the elderly, the pregnant and the most vulnerable. We’ll continue to work with the French government to make sure we get every Australian out of New Caledonia who does want to leave.
Other nationalities were included due to reciprocal agreements with countries like Canada and Japan that help evacuate Australian citizens during times of crisis, Conroy said.
More than 200 Australians remain trapped in New Caledonia and want to leave. The French government is planning flights from Noumea to Brisbane today. Conroy added:
We obviously have plans developed and planes available should that not eventuate.
Key events
Benita Kolovos
Victorian health minister takes question on abortion access
Circling back to Victorian health minister Mary-Anne Thomas’ appearance at budget estimates:
Thomas is now being asked by Greens MP Aiv Puglielli about a report by the ABC today which raises concerns women are being blocked from accessing abortion services by conscientious objectors, who are then failing to refer them to alternative providers.
The health minister says this is a “key concern” of hers and it’s why the government is planning to open 20 new women’s health clinics, which will offer both surgical and medical abortions.
She said Sexual Health Victoria had also recently established a telehealth medical abortion service. Of the telehealth program, Thomas said:
That is improving access particularly for regional and rural women. So I want the committee to be in no doubt about our government’s commitment to expanding access to abortion care right across Victoria, no matter where girls and women live. And as a regional Victorian myself, I’m well aware of some of the challenges that can be experienced in rural and regional Victoria.
You will also be interested to know that my department has – at my direction, I might say – worked with Peninsula and Eastern and Western health services in order to increase access to surgical termination and create additional capacity for the Royal Women’s hospital.
Victorian EPA responding to reports of fuel leak in Melboune
The Environment Protection Authority of Victoria says it is responding to reports of fuel leaking into the bay from a drain under a pier near Head Street in Elwood.
Please avoid contact with the water while we investigate.
Robbie Katter calls for new state in north Queensland
Andrew Messenger
Queensland state parliament is set to debate “taking the necessary steps” to form a separate state.
Robbie Katter sponsored the motion this morning. It’s expected to be debated this afternoon.
I move a motion that this house supports taking the necessary steps to form a separate state of north Queensland, in accordance with section 124 of the commonwealth constitution.
Independence has long been a pet policy of the Katters.
Benita Kolovos
Victorian health minister grilled on amalgamation plans at budget estimates
Victoria’s health minister, Mary-Anne Thomas, is appearing before the public accounts and estimates committee’s budget estimates hearings this morning for a mammoth 4.5 hour session.
While there’s been plenty of dixers from the Labor MPs on the committee, Coalition members have been grilling the minister on plans to amalgamate some of the state’s 76 health services.
Thomas tells the committee that while she’s received a report from an expert advisory committee, led by former Labor MP and health executive Bob Cameron, her department is still considering its recommendations.
During questioning by Nationals MP, Danny O’Brien, she accused the opposition of “running a pre-emptive scare campaign” on a process “designed to inquire into four of the key challenges that our health service system is facing”.
The four challenges, she said, were the aging population, the workforce challenge, cost of healthcare rising post-pandemic and new models of care.
She said Victoria has far more individual health services than other states and they aren’t communicating effectively with each other. Thomas said there were “resources across our smallest country hospitals” that were particularly “underutilised”:
I have been to rural and remote hospitals, where I know where there are very few patients [than] down the road in a bigger regional hospital, [where] there are patients that should be closer to home. The object of this work is to ensure that people are receiving care as close to home as possible … No decisions have been made. The department is assessing that report and will deliver advice to me and at that time, government will make decisions about the next steps, which will undoubtedly include consultation.
Tamsin Rose
Greenwich and Latham arrive at federal court in Sydney
New South Wales politicians Alex Greenwich and Mark Latham have arrived at the federal court for the start of a defamation trial.
As we flagged just earlier, Independent MP Greenwich brought the action against the former One Nation NSW leader following an explicit tweet sent more than a year ago.
The trial is expected to run for a week.
More from AAP on the Greenwich v Latham defamation trial
High-profile barrister Matthew Collins KC, who is representing Alex Greenwich, said his client was seeking aggravated damages over the abuse allegedly resulting from the tweet.
[Mark] Latham, our ultimate case is, responded in a wholly disproportionate and irrelevant and disgraceful manner.
Several of Greenwich’s political allies, as well as his husband, will be among witnesses called to give evidence about his character and state of mind following the tweet.
Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young and speaker of the NSW legislative assembly, Greg Piper, are expected to be among them.
The trial is expected to run until Tuesday.
Court showdown begins in Latham ‘homophobic abuse’ defamation case
A bitter feud between Mark Latham and fellow NSW MP Alex Greenwich that initially played out on social media will head to court for a defamation showdown, AAP reports.
Five days of hearings, set to begin in the federal court today, will test claims by Greenwich that the former federal Labor leader’s tweet describing explicit sexual acts between men fuelled a “torrent” of homophobic and other abuse against him.
Latham’s tweet came in response to an earlier post by Greenwich calling him a “disgusting human being”.
The lawsuit targets both Latham’s tweet and statements made during an interview with the Daily Telegraph in which the then One Nation state leader discussed Greenwich giving speeches about sexuality to students in schools.
Latham has denied that he defamed the independent MP for the state seat of Sydney and is defending the lawsuit.
His barrister Barry Dean previously argued Latham’s tweet was a reasonable response to the initial attack and the comments were the conservative MP’s honest opinion at the time.
He also said there had been no serious harm done to Greenwich and “when you look at the reputation of Mr Greenwich, that has not been affected in a material way.”
Latham is also running various qualified privilege defences and a defence that his comments were made in the public interest.
Bird flu detected at central Victorian egg farm
Calla Wahlquist
Bird flu has been detected at an egg farm near Meredith in central Victoria, authorities say. However they are yet to determine if it the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain.
That type of bird flu has been detected on every continent on earth except Australia, including Antarctica.
In a statement, Agriculture Victoria says it is investigating a number of poultry deaths at the Meredith farm and that “preliminary tests have confirmed the presence of the avian influenza virus”.
Samples have been delivered to the Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness at Geelong for further tests which will determine the type and nature of the disease. The property has been placed into quarantine and Agriculture Victoria staff are on-the-ground to support the business and investigate further.
Victoria’s chief veterinary officer, Dr Graeme Cooke, says Agriculture Victoria is “responding with staff on the ground [and] supporting the business with further laboratory investigations as necessary”.
Cooke urged poultry farmers, backyard flock owners and other bird owners to report “any cases of unexplained bird deaths” to the 24-hour Emergency animal disease hotline on 1800 675 888, or to their local vet.
Government welcomes ‘positive engagement’ with Israel over aid worker death
The Australian government has welcomed “positive engagements” with Israel over an investigation into the killing of an aid worker, AAP reports.
Retired air chief marshal Mark Binskin travelled to Israel in early May after being appointed as Australia’s special advisor on Tel Aviv’s investigation into the death of Australian aid worker Zomi Frankcom and six World Central Kitchen colleagues.
An Israeli airstrike killed the aid workers in early April in what the Israel Defence Force called a misidentification in the fog of war.
A foreign affairs department spokesperson told AAP in a statement:
The Australian government welcomes Israel’s positive engagement with ACM Binskin to date. The government has made clear to Israel its expectation of a full, thorough and transparent investigation, and demanded full accountability.
Binskin will provide his report to the foreign minister “in due course”.
Butler comments on ICC seeking arrest warrants
Mark Butler was also asked about comments from the shadow foreign minister, Simon Birmingham, earlier this morning, accusing the PM of “wilful inconsistency” at a press conference yesterday. You can read more about this earlier in the blog here.
Butler denied there had been any inconsistency and said:
The Australian government has essentially voiced a longstanding position that that court (the ICC) is independent and will go through its usual procedures
I think one of the concerning things out of this report has been the sense that there is some equivalence between Hamas and Israel and I think we all – certainly I reject that, the government rejects that… [Hamas has] been recognised as a terrorist organisation in Australia for some time.
But the point that the PM has made, and I know the foreign minister has made, is that the ICC is part of the global architecture that Australia, as a middle power, has always supported. And so decisions by the ICC to do one thing or another are a decision for them, we don’t seek to interfere in that.
Butler was also asked if Australia should boycott any arrest warrants, as requested by Israel, but did not answer the question directly.
I’m the health minister … the foreign minister and the prime minister talk on these issues.
Health minister speaks about ban of replica Ozempic
The health minister, Mark Butler, spoke to ABC RN earlier about the government’s crackdown on replicas of Ozempic and other weight loss drugs. You can read more on this below:
Speaking about the decision, Butler said a “carve-out” called compounding allows doctors and pharmacists to decide a patient needed something that wasn’t commercially available, and as a one-off this was made.
But what we’ve seen over the last several months is a whole lot of business models develop that are using this carve-out, effectively abusing this exception, to put in place large scale-manufacturing operations.
And we have no oversight about what these medicines contain … there’s no ability to gather adverse event reporting, so there’s no sort of line of sight regulators have about what’s happening.
This is something that the American authority, [the] FDA [Food and Drug Administration], has also expressed concern about so over the last several months, we’ve been working with authorities to gauge their views about what we should do and the clearest advice to me, from the TGA [Therapeutic Goods Administration], was that we should remove this exemption.
Asked why the ban is taking effect from October, rather than immediately, Butler said he views it as a transition period not for industry but for patients.
