As it happened: Victoria records four new local COVID-19 cases; Cable car accident in Italy kills 14 people

Senator Keneally said Canstruct had made 111 donations to the Coalition, including former home affairs minister Peter Dutton.

Home Affairs secretary Michael Pezzullo said the decision was taken “within the department, by a Border Force officer exercising my delegation. The minister had no role in awarding the contract.”

The chair of the committee, Liberal Senator Sarah Henderson, suspended the hearing after Senator Keneally began holding up a large photo of the chief executive of Canstruct giving his thumbs up and a separate photo of Mr Morrison doing the same.

You can read Nick McKenzie and Richard Baker’s article, which appeared in today’s newspapers, here. They report that a multinational company that secured a $121 million contract to support asylum seekers in Papua New Guinea boosted its profits by billing the Australian government $75 an hour for local workers it paid just $8.

Ms Brand said 191 people had signed non-disclosure agreements relating to knowing that Ms Tame would win the award.

She said she was working with governments on how to close down future betting markets on the Australian of the Year, which is licensed in the Northern Territory.

“I would be very supportive of the removal of that market,” she said.

And in case you missed it, earlier today Prime Minister Scott Morrison defended his response to Ms Tame’s Australian of the Year speech after she criticised him on a podcast.

“He leant over, and right in my ear he goes: ‘Well, gee, I bet it felt good to get that out’,” Ms Tame said, referring to how Mr Morrison responded to the speech where she talked about trauma and her experience of child sexual abuse.

Mr Morrison said that was “roughly my recollection” but that he only meant to commend her bravery.

We also heard more on the cyber attack that hit Parliament House’s network in March. Senate President Scott Ryan says it was an unsophisticated brute force attempt to get into the network that lasted about 24 hours and wasn’t successful.

The Department of Parliamentary Services shut down its systems to deal with the attack but had to keep them offline for several days, which Senator Ryan acknowledged was a serious inconvenience to politicians and staff.

The March attack was not the first major assault on the Parliamentary network. There were two incursions in 2019 alone.

Health authorities are considering whether there is a ‘missing link’ which connects four new cases to a Wollert man who tested positive to coronavirus in early May.

The man in his 30s from Wollert tested positive for COVID-19 on May 11 after returning to Melbourne on May 4 following time in South Australian hotel quarantine. His suburb is part of the City of Whittlesea, around 15 kilometres north of the Melbourne CBD, where the two households from the same family tested positive today.

Mr Foley said that given the physical proximity of the Wollert man and the new cases, the government would not “rule out the prospect that there is a link”.

“The dates do not line up immediately so we cannot rule out if there is a missing link out there,” he said. “In terms of this [new case’s] infectious period being from May 18 and the fact that our original hotel quarantine case from Adelaide was well and truly in hotel quarantine in Victoria during that period ... they do not appear to crossover.”

The Department of Health is also likely to list Epping Plaza as an exposure site because one of the positive cases visited there while infectious.

“There had been in more recent days a visit to Epping Plaza as I understand it but we’re just working through those,” Mr Foley said.

Read our full coverage of today’s COVID-19 updates from Victoria here.

Professor Sutton said he believed the child who has tested positive was part of a swimming class at the Jump! Swimming School on May 21.

He said health authorities do not know yet how many close contacts were at the premises when the positive case was there. None of the four new cases have been hospitalised.

Health authorities are expecting to receive results from genomic testing - which will try and link the new cases to the positive Wollert man who had also visited Epping while infectious - by tomorrow.

Professor Sutton said the state was working on a hypothesis of local transmission occurring in Melbourne’s northern suburbs, with a special focus on the City of Whittlesea where the COVID-positive family lives.

He said the state “will always be at risk until we have high vaccination coverage” and as such it was important to follow the basic rules: wear masks, get tested and get vaccinated if you can.

Health Minister Martin Foley cautioned against complacency. “After nearly three months of no community transmission, a degree of complacency having settled in, this is a reminder to all Victorians ... this is not over,” Mr Foley said.

“We are a long way from herd immunity in Victoria and Australia.”

A tier one site has been identified - the Jump Swim School at 4/37 The Concord in Bundoora - on May 21 between the hours of 8.55am and 10.15am.

Anyone present at the swim school must get tested immediately and isolate for 14 days.

A positive case also visited Highpoint Shopping Centre on 20 May from 5pm to 8pm. Anyone who was at the shopping centre needs to isolate until further notice and get tested.