Australia news live: ABC sees TV audience slump but wins on TikTok; Pesutto says Victoria’s ‘harsh’ pandemic response can’t happen again | Australia news

AFL Hall-Of-Famer Matthew Richardson (now Fall-Of-Shamer) awkwardly stumbled into his pool while giving it a clean – and caught the moment on a security camera:

Fellow Tigers goalkicking great Jack Riewoldt joked in the comment section: “Fake video…you’ve got someone who does this for you #poolboy.”

Benita Kolovos

Victoria consumer affairs minister on rental reports

As we reported earlier, the Victorian government has announced a suite of rental reforms, including a ban on no-fault evictions and landlords and real estate agents charging fees to process rent or conduct background checks.

Speaking at a rental property in Clifton Hill earlier this morning, Victoria’s consumer affairs minister, Gabrielle Williams, says the reforms will be “gradually rolled out” over the next 12 months. She said:

These are reforms that directly respond to the feedback that we’ve received from renters and renter advocates, issues that we know are playing out in our rental market right now … These are the reforms that we’re introducing to make sure that we’re getting the right balance in that marketplace, that we are, on one hand, providing the opportunities for landlords and property investors, but also that we are making sure that for those renters in our community, they have a safe, secure and fit-for-purpose place to call home and they’re not being unnecessarily and unfairly stung by charges that they should just simply not have to pay.

Benita Kolovos

Victorian health minister on Covid inquiry report

Victoria’s health minister, Mary-Anne Thomas, was also asked about the Covid-19 inquiry report when she arrived at parliament this morning. She said she was yet to read the report in full but would consider its findings and recommendations:

I welcome the commonwealth’s commitment to establish a centre for disease control here in Australia. We are one of the very few developed nations that does not have such a centre. At the time of this unprecedented event that was extremely difficult for all Australians, we took the advice of health experts and put in place a range of initiatives. We took their advice in order to protect the lives and livelihoods of all Victorians. The actions that we took during that time saved lives, and they saved businesses. We kept people employed, but I will take time to read the report in detail, to examine its findings and recommendations, to see what actions we need to take.

Benita Kolovos

Pandemic showed Victoria Liberal party ‘at its worst’, says premier

Back to the Victorian premier’s presser a short while ago.

Jacinta Allan dismissed suggestions her predecessor, Daniel Andrews, failed to communicate decisions made during the early years of the pandemic to the Victorian people. She said:

All Victorians remember so very well the daily dissemination of information from the former premier. He was singularly focused on providing information to Victorians, directly to Victorians, something like 120 daily press conferences in a row that contained significant amounts of information.

Asked about opposition leader John Pesutto’s comments on ABC News Breakfast earlier this morning, in which he said the Victorian lockdowns were “selective”, and the government picked and chose which industries it closed “for no apparent reason”, Allan replied:

During the pandemic, the Victorian Liberal party showed their worst. They were not on the side of Victorians. Their approach to the virus is to let it rip … You know what let it rip looks like? Let it rip would have looked like many, many, many people dying, many, many more people in hospitals and businesses being very, very badly affected. That is the Victorian Liberal party, in my view, at its worst, and it appears that they’re continuing that approach … They were playing politics then, and they’re playing politics now.

Peter Hannam

Today’s inflation data dump to shape RBA’s interest rate outlook

For all the recent chatter about whether the economy was running too hot (eg the latest bumper month for job creation) or if it had stalled (with per capita output still in retreat), the numbers that really matter as far as the Reserve Bank is concerned about will be revealed today.

The ABS’s quarterly inflation figures, out today at 11.30am AEDT, will comfort – or alarm – the RBA board when it meets next Monday and Tuesday to review its interest rate setting.

Economists are primed for good news, both for the headline consumer price index (CPI) and the underlying inflation rate (known as the “trimmed mean”).

The former may well have a “2” in the front of it for the first time since early 2021. The latter may ease to 3.5%, or so economists predict, resuming a retreat that was interrupted in the June quarter.

We explored the prospects that the cost-of-living crisis is abating last weekend, and we will probably get more evidence of that today. Petrol prices have been tumbling for a while (war in the Middle East notwithstanding) and electricity bills have been suppressed by generous government handouts (especially in Queensland and WA).

The RBA governor, Michele Bullock, however, said last month the central bank would likely want more proof inflation is “sustainably” within its 2%-3% target range before it would cut interest rate cuts.

Prior to today’s figures, investors were betting there was only a 10% chance of a 25 basis-points RBA rate cut to 4.1% next week and about a one-in-four chance in December. They estimated a reduction of that size was only a certainty in May next year, according to the ASX’s rate tracker.

We’ll find out in a bit over an hour if those bets are on the money.

Benita Kolovos

Victoria premier on Covid inquiry

Earlier, at Victorian premier Jacinta Allan’s press conference, she was asked about the federal Covid-19 inquiry, which handed down its long-awaited report yesterday.

She said while her focus had been on the Auburn South primary school accident, she would review the findings of the report:

It was a one-in-100-year pandemic with a deadly disease that was killing people, and so [the Victorian government response] was based on the best public health expert advice that we had … This informed the measures that we put in place here in Victoria. And so we’ll have a look at the report. But I think it’s important to reflect that this was a one-in-100-year pandemic. It was unprecedented.

ABC television news audience down 4%

Amanda Meade

Audiences for ABC news and current affairs on television are down by 4% on last financial year, according to the ABC Annual Report tabled in parliament late on Tuesday.

News programs on ABC TV and the ABC News channel reached an average of 5.2m viewers weekly across metro and regional areas.

The ABC News website, ABC News app, and current affairs websites combined recorded an average of 8.1m weekly users in 2023–24, down 7% on the previous year.

Meanwhile, audiences for ABC News on TikTok are growing significantly, with a total of 591m video views on TikTok.

A spokesperson for the ABC said audience data should be understood in the context of softening audience trends across the entire media sector.

“The ABC is actively engaged with audiences as they increasingly transition to digital platforms,” the spokesperson said.

This is clearly in evidence with the most recent Ipsos rankings where ABC News is the top news website in the country.

While news audiences were down generally, big news events brought spikes in viewers: including the outbreak of the Israel-Gaza war, the voice referendum, the Optus outage, the stabbing attacks at Sydney’s Westfield Bondi Junction, the federal budget in May 2024 and the return of Julian Assange in June 2024.

Principal asks public for privacy and space

Marcus Wicher has acknowledged the staff and parents at the school who have helped comfort students:

The courage and care can only be described as remarkable.

Wicher requests the media respect the school’s privacy and give the community the space to grieve.

Adeshola Ore

School’s principal says community response ‘overwhelming’

Marcus Wicher, the principal of the Melbourne school where a fatal collision occurred on Tuesday, says the response from the local community has been “overwhelming”.

An 11-year- old boy died after a car veered off the road and crashed through the fence at Auburn South primary school in Hawthorn East at about 2.30pm on Tuesday. Four other children remain in hospital.

Speaking to media, Wicher says the school community’s thoughts are with the family of the boy, Jack, who has passed away.

We are entirely focused as a school community on the welfare of our students, staff and the broader school community.

Together we will get through this.

Members of the school community have been laying flowers near the school fence to pay tribute to the boy who died.

Floral tributes laid outside primary school

Students and community members are paying tribute at the site of a fatal car crash into a fence at Auburn South primary school in Hawthorn East, Melbourne.

A child died and four others remain in hospital with serious injuries after the crash yesterday afternoon.

Police said the 40-year-old driver had driven to the school to collect a child, who was in the car at the time of the crash. Both the driver and the child in the car were unharmed.

The incident occurred when she performed a U-turn, crashed through a fence and into a table where five children were sitting, police said.

Read more here:

Benita Kolovos

Premier stresses importance of giving school community space to grieve

Victorian premier Jacinta Allan has urged Victorians to give the school community in Hawthorn East space to grieve:

When you hear this sort of news, your instant reaction is, how can I help? That shows the best in us … There is that instinctive reaction, you want to help, you want to provide support. I understand that people are leaving tributes at the school, and we will get some further advice on that. But also when we spoke with the department yesterday evening, there was some discussion about how we can provide, perhaps an email address for Victorians to be able to provide a message of support to the school.

Benita Kolovos

Allen says she has spoken to the school’s principal

The Victorian premier, Jacinta Allan, says she’s yet to speak to the family of the 11-year-old who died but reached out to the school’s principal after he had spoken to the boy’s mother. She says:

It was a really tough conversation for the principal. And he relayed to Ben and I just how strong the family is in the toughest of times. And he also, I’m sure he won’t mind, he really did convey his appreciation for the messages of support that have already been coming into the school community. We have spoken to the to the principal, Ben we’ll be visiting the school this morning, we are taking very carefully the advice from the department of education about how we can best provide support to the school. Part of that is having the school open.

Benita Kolovos

Deputy premier to visit primary school

Deputy Victorian premier Ben Carroll says the accident is “every parent’s worst nightmare”. He says he will be attending the primary school with the secretary of the department of education this morning.

Some 25 additional teachers from neighbouring will schools will also be on hand, as well as chaplains and counsellors. Carroll says:

One thing I have learned though over the past 12 months as minister for education is that when tragedy or difficult circumstances strike at the heart of a school, the school community gets around that school and does everything I can to support them.

Benita Kolovos

Official investigations under way after fatal Melbourne school crash, premier says

The Victorian premier, Jacinta Allan, and her deputy, Ben Carroll, who is also the education minister, are holding press conference at parliament following the death of an 11-year-old at a primary school in Melbourne’s east yesterday.

Allan says her thoughts are with the Auburn South primary school community after the accident.

Yesterday afternoon should have been a totally unremarkable sunny Tuesday afternoon for the Auburn South primary school community but what we saw unfold yesterday afternoon was just such a deep and terrible tragedy that has touched not only the strong Auburn South primary school community, but it has touched communities right across Victoria, and can I say, my heart and thoughts are with the boy’s family who has passed away. My thoughts are with his family and the broader school community as they grieve the loss of their little boy. And also my thoughts are with the families of the other kids who are continuing to receive care in our hospital system as they as they go through what are, in some instances, quite serious injuries.

Official investigations have been commenced by Victoria police, they’re under way, and they are continuing today so and it’s important to let those investigations take its place.

She says the school has reopened today to provide support to students and staff:

That shows remarkable bravery from the principal and the teachers who are wanting to make sure that the students in their school are supported.

John Pesutto says Victoria’s pandemic lockdown response was “selective”, causing “a rapid erosion of trust”.

Speaking to ABC News Breakfast after the release of the Covid inquiry report yesterday, Victoria’s opposition leader says:

We can never repeat what happened in Victoria. They were the harshest lockdowns.

But also, what really concerned Victorians perhaps more so than Australians in other states and territories was that a lot of the lockdowns were very selective. And the enforcement that coupled those lockdowns were also very disparate across the community. And so there was a rapid erosion of trust in how fair a lot of these measures were. Equally, it gave rise to doubts about how legitimate the lockdowns were in many respects, because they were so disparate and so obviously selective. Some industries were allowed to continue operating, which enabled some people to maintain their livelihoods. Whereas in other cases, like retail and hospitality, livelihoods were smashed for no apparent reason when compared with other industries that were allowed to remain open.

Public health imperatives must always be observed. No one’s arguing with that. But you have to demonstrate that legitimacy and that equality of enforcement and application across the community.

We obviously don’t want those doubts to lead to people disengaging from the important work around vaccinating young kids.

John Pesutto says “we’ve just got to rally around each other in the community” after yesterday’s fatal crash into a primary school in Hawthorn East.

Victoria’s opposition leader told the ABC that high schoolers across the road are sitting their VCE exams:

I think the most important thing today is that we rally around the school, the family of the young boy, in particular, who has tragically lost his life – but also those students who are still battling their way through recovery, and their family.

The other thing to bear in mind … is that, across the road, Burgess Street, there’s Auburn high school, and there are kids doing their VCE exams. It’s a very concentrated area of learning with Auburn South primary school to the north of Burgess Street and Auburn high school to the south. It’s a very busy, lively, concentrated area.

Really, we just have to rally around the school. Whatever lessons we can learn out of it, obviously out of these tragedies, we must learn … That will take its natural course. For now, we’ve just got to rally around each other in the community.

Pesutto says fatal crash at Melbourne primary school ‘felt right across the area’

Victorian opposition leader John Pesutto told ABC News Breakfast the fatal car crash into a primary school in Hawthorn East is “the worst nightmare” for the community, and is being “felt right across the area”.

Pesutto, who is the member for Hawthorn, said:

It’s the worst nightmare for parents and families and siblings and the school community that you could possibly imagine.

The Auburn South Primary School community is one of the most active and engaged school communities I’ve ever come across. They are so involved not just in the immediacy of our local community in the area of Hawthorn East, but more broadly – even in international efforts that they engage in. It’s a really dedicated school. And the principal there, Marcus Wicher, has been a long-term principal and leads that community.

It’s just devastating for them, and it’s been felt right across the area.

Asked about state premiers and different health ministers “going their own ways” on pandemic decisions, federal health minister Mark Butler says “they didn’t have the tools in the toolkit that they needed”.

He spoke to ABC News Breakfast:

Our leaders worked so hard and they made some incredibly courageous decisions but they didn’t have the tools in the toolkit that they needed. Most countries lacked the pandemic plans that we know with the benefit of hindsight, they should have had in front of them when this first hit. They didn’t have the plans. So the report say that is they effectively had to build the plane while they were flying it. We can be in that position again.

The CDC will work with other agencies to make sure that there are comprehensive pandemic plans in place next time. There will be regular stress testing of government systems to make sure that they don’t just gather dust on the shelves – that we have the capabilities in our systems to respond very quickly if the thing hits again. And that will be a central role of the CDC.