As it happened: Donald Trump to run for president in 2024 US election; Polish leaders hold emergency talks; floodwaters continue to ravage NSW Central West

“I apologised profusely,” Swan told this masthead. “We had an amicable conversation. Clearly he was very upset. And I was devastated that it had that impact on the family. I didn’t say [it] casually, and if I thought it would hurt either family, I wouldn’t have said it.”

The incident is the latest in a number of controversial statements about COVID-19 by Swan, who became a key figure in Australia’s understanding of the pandemic through his television and radio appearances and daily podcast produced by the national broadcaster.

Michael Koziol has the story.

Orion will leave Earth’s orbit for a 25-day flight within 97 kilometres of the lunar surface before sailing 64,374 kilometres beyond the moon and back to Earth.

The capsule is expected to splash down on December 11.

NASA last sent astronauts to the moon in December 1972, closing out the Apollo program.

This mission, dubbed Artemis I, marks the first flight of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and the Orion capsule together, built by Boeing and Lockheed Martin, respectively, under contract with NASA.

NASA’s top priority for the $US4.1 billion ($6.1 billion) mission is to verify the capsule’s heat shield during re-entry, so four astronauts can strap in for the next moonshot in 2024. That would be followed by a two-person lunar landing in 2025.

It also signals a major change in direction for NASA’s post-Apollo human spaceflight program after decades focused on low-Earth orbit with space shuttles and the International Space Station.

NASA named the Artemis missions after the ancient Greek goddess of the hunt, Apollo’s twin sister, because it intends to select a woman and a person of colour as the two astronauts chosen for the moon landing.

But Artemis I involves only test dummies. Fuel leaks plagued the first two attempts in late summer, then a pair of hurricanes caused more delays.

NASA expected 15,000 to jam Kennedy Space Centre for the launch, with thousands more lining the beaches and roads outside the gates.

If the rocket doesn’t launch within the two-hour window, the agency will stand down until the weekend.

With AP, Reuters

The commission will consider whether “the indefinite lockout of employees ... is protected industrial action for a proposed enterprise agreement that is threatened, impending or probable”.

It acted on its own initiative to intervene as the scenario had the potential to “cause significant damage to the Australian economy”.

Earlier in the week, business groups sought to link the industrial dispute to the Albanese government’s Secure Jobs, Better Pay bill.

With AAP

The state and federal governments this year announced an $800 million buyback scheme for some of the hardest hit areas of the Northern Rivers floods.

Asked whether he would support a plan to raise the Wyangala Dam near Forbes, which has spilled hundreds of thousands of megalitres this week, Marles said the federal government would “take advice” on the issue.

The former Morrison government committed $325 million for the project in the March 2022 budget but the Albanese government revealed in the October federal budget that it had shelved its offer of cash until the business case was completed.

Don’t forget, there’s a separate news blog on the NSW floods.

Burke said this statistic did not tell the full picture.

First, casual workers are no longer seasonal shop assistants and paperboys, but across the workforce.

“Industries that used to be viewed as the cornerstone of secure work, like finance for example, or teaching, have now found themselves a home of insecure [work],” Burke said.

Burke said the “casualisation of permanent work” had occurred in two ways.

First, someone could be a permanent employee working 35 hours a week but with only three hours guaranteed, while the remaining hours are casual.

“For all intents and purposes, it’s like having a casual job, but they turn up in the statistics as permanent employees,” he said.

Second, is the increased prevalence of back-to-back contracts. Burke said this was once the preserve of genuinely temporary jobs, but now people often went from one 12-month contract to another 12-month contract.

“The job is ongoing the whole time but the employment isn’t, creating a situation for a worker where they can be at a point where they should ordinarily be claiming long service leave and yet in the real world of their life they are still every 12 months finding themselves back in a probationary period,” Burke said.

“The impact of that insecurity is real. What happens when you go to a bank and you say ... ‘I’m working 35 hours a week’ and they ask ‘but how many hours are guaranteed?’ and the answer is three? What does that mean for your finance?

“This insecurity is hitting people who were never previously part of what we called the casualised workforce.”

Burke said there were also new loopholes with sham contracting and the gig economy “where people who have none of the power associated with running a small business appear in the statistics as a small business person”.

“When you state, ‘Has the rate of casualisation changed?’ No, not a lot. ‘Has the story of job security in Australia changed?’ It really has,” Burke said.

“And the final layer of that job insecurity ... is when the failure to get flexibility at work means for your personal circumstances you are given a roster change that means you just can’t remain in the job.

“In those circumstances, if the security of a job means that you can no longer meet caring responsibilities, you don’t really have job security. ”