Good evening and thank you for reading our live coverage of the day’s events. If you are just joining us now, here’s what you need to know.
- Victoria Police deployed rubber pellets, smoke rounds, foam baton rounds, and pepper balls in an attempt to subdue masses of protesters who took over Melbourne’s streets for a second consecutive day on Tuesday.
- Chief Commissioner Shane Patton said up to 2000 protesters, whom he described as “angry people ... without any leadership”, attended the rally and were involved in a “rolling series of confrontations” with more than 500 police for eight hours. He said a journalist was attacked multiple times, three police officers were injured, and police cars were attacked and damaged. Sixty-two people had been arrested as at 7.30pm, but Mr Patton anticipated that figure would increase. He said this was not a protest but an “an affray”.
- “We have intelligence that there may be repeat protests tomorrow,” Mr Patton said. “Stay home, I implore you. We will be out in force. Do not come into the city. It achieves nothing. Our tactics will be different.”
- The protesters brought traffic to a standstill on the city’s busiest freeway, the West Gate Freeway, and took over the West Gate Bridge. Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews blasted the participants, saying there was “no excuse for the terrible behaviour we have seen in our city over the last two days”.
- Yesterday’s protest, which targeted the Melbourne headquarters of the Construction, Forestry, Maritime, Mining and Energy Union, appeared to be triggered by the Andrews government’s move to make COVID-19 vaccinations mandatory for construction workers. The CFMEU is pro-vaccine but did not support mandatory vaccinations.
- Today’s protest, which also started outside the CFMEU, did not appear to have a clear objective, although some protesters held a banner saying “freedom” and chanted along the same lines. “To all Australians out there,” one demonstrator said into a camera live-streaming the protest, “this is what defending your freedoms looks like.”
- Late on Monday night, the Victorian government shut down the state’s construction industry for two weeks. Victorian Health Minister Martin Foley said today that 403 coronavirus cases were directly linked to the construction sector. Those cases were, in turn, linked to 186 construction sites.
- While the CFMEU has conceded some protesters are union members, it has maintained that most are not. CFMEU national construction secretary Dave Noonan told the ABC today that “we have seen a heavy presence from anti-vaccination extremists and also from some far-right neo-Nazi groups”, and said protesters had been told on social media to buy high-vis wear “to make it look like people are tradies and construction workers”. “No doubt there are some [unionists] there, though,” he said.
- Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt has written to the managing director of Pfizer Australia, asking the pharmaceutical company to provide data on the effectiveness of its COVID-19 vaccine in young children as soon as possible. Overnight, the company announced trials of its vaccine in children aged 5 to 11 showed it was effective at preventing infection and produced minimal side effects. Children aged 12 to 15 are eligible for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.
- In his letter, Mr Hunt told Anne Harris that if the vaccine was approved by Australian regulators – the Therapeutic Good Administration and the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation – the young cohort would receive vaccines as a priority.
- NSW recorded 1022 new local cases of COVID-19 and 10 more deaths. The Byron, Kempsey and Tweed council areas in northern NSW returned to lockdown from 5pm today for one week after an authorised worker who travelled from Sydney to Byron with a permit tested positive to the virus. Health Minister Brad Hazzard said a rapid antigen test had returned a negative result for the fully-vaccinated worker but a swab test, which is regarded as more reliable, subsequently confirmed the worker did have coronavirus.
- Of the 10 people who died in NSW, six were not vaccinated, two people had received one dose of a vaccine and two people (a woman in her 90s and a man in his 80s) were fully vaccinated. The woman was the third death linked to Guildford Nursing Home, where more than 40 residents have tested positive. Two people acquired their infection in hospital – a man in his 80s who was a patient at Canterbury Hospital and died at Concord Hospital and a man in his 80s who died at Hornsby Hospital, where he acquired his infection.
- There are 1266 COVID-19 cases in NSW’s hospitals, including 244 in intensive care and 118 who require ventilation. Of the 244 people in intensive care, 181 had not been vaccinated, 54 had received a first dose and nine people were fully vaccinated. The total number of deaths in Sydney’s outbreak is now 255.
- From midday today, NSW allowed children aged under 18 in lockdown areas across the state to nominate two friends who are allowed to visit their house. “These two friends must always be the same, creating a three-person ‘friends bubble’,” the state government said in a media release. The change only applies to households where all people aged over 18 are fully vaccinated, all children in the bubble must live within a five-kilometre radius of each other or in the same local government area, and parents and carers are not permitted to stay when dropping off their child. The children need not be vaccinated.
- Victoria has recorded 603 locally acquired cases of COVID-19, the highest daily total in more than a year, and one death, a woman in her 70s from the Hume region.
- Victorian Health Minister Martin Foley said there were 241 people in the state’s hospitals with COVID-19, including 60 in intensive care and 39 who require ventilation. “Of the cases who were in hospital yesterday, 85 per cent were not vaccinated at all. Thirteen per cent were partially vaccinated. And that leaves three people who were vaccinated,” Mr Foley said. He said 73.4 per cent of the population aged 16 and over had received a first dose of a coronavirus vaccine and 44.4 per cent had received both doses.
- Queensland recorded no new cases of COVID-19 in the community and one case in hotel quarantine.
The state will again tighten travel restrictions into the state from the busy Tweed and Byron council areas of the NSW border zone (which are now in lockdown) from 1am on Wednesday, just nine days after reinstating most of the bubble. Health authorities have also identified five new close contact exposure sites at Brisbane’s domestic airport after an infected traveller spent four hours in the terminal in transit between Newcastle and the Northern Territory.
- Western Australia has launched a $3.6 million advertising campaign urging people to get vaccinated. The TV, radio and social media campaign is aimed at boosting the state’s lagging vaccination rates, which hit 61.8 per cent first dose and 43 per cent double dose for people aged 16 and over on Tuesday. Premier Mark McGowan said the campaign, which features a cover of What A Wonderful World, was a “feel good message about happy times”. “We want to continue to have happy times and have happy times in the future,” he said. You can watch the advertisement in our earlier post here.
- The ACT recorded 16 new cases of COVID-19 in the community, up from seven cases yesterday, with at least 11 people infectious in the community. Three people were in isolation for their entire infectious period and the remaining cases are under investigation. Ten people are in hospital, of whom two are in intensive care. Both are on ventilators. In good news, 80.1 per cent of ACT residents aged 12 and over have received a first dose of a coronavirus vaccine, and 54.8 per cent have received both doses. (The ACT’s reporting of vaccination figures differs from other states and territories because it includes everybody aged 12 and over, not 16 and over.)
This is Michaela Whitbourn signing off on the live blog for the evening. Broede Carmody will be back on deck early tomorrow.