Australia news LIVE:Sydney’s lockdown extended;masks will no longer be mandatory in Victorian offices

Good evening and thank you for reading our live coverage of the day’s events. If you’re just joining us,here’s everything you need to know now:

This isMichaela Whitbourn signing off on the live blog for the evening. My colleagueBroede Carmody will be with you from 6am tomorrow.

Wesfarmers is committed to doing whatever it can to support the COVID-19 vaccine rollout,its chief executive says,but more work is needed to ascertain if it’s feasible to offer vaccinations from its retail premises including Bunnings and Officeworks.

After Federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said on Wednesday that Wesfarmers had offered up some of its premises as potential vaccination sites,the company’s CEO,Rob Scott,said “some of our locations may be suitable as vaccination points,especially standalone sites like Bunnings and Officeworks,and in regional locations,but not all sites will be suitable or make sense”.

“The safe and efficient management of a site for team and customers is always our priority and there would be a number of operational considerations that would need to be worked through on a case-by-case basis to assess whether it would be feasible,” he said.

The Wesfarmers boss also noted that in cases where stores were located within shopping centres it would make more sense to offer part of the centre as a vaccination site,rather than a store itself.

Mr Scott said one of the most important things to do was to encourage and motivate people to get vaccinated,including “helping to explain why it is important” in many different languages. This might also include companies providing incentives,such as paid leave to get vaccinated.

“However,the biggest incentive is likely to be the broader benefits and freedoms that eventually will come to those who are vaccinated,” he said.

“We have done a lot of collective work and collaboration over the last year,and we recognise more will required over coming months if we are to mobilise and scale vaccination. Wesfarmers looks forward to being part of that.”

Federal Liberal MP Tim Wilson says he believes his former parliamentary colleague Julia Banks and is “disturbed” by an allegation in her new book that she was touched inappropriately by a male Coalition minister.

“I believe the allegation of sexual harassment,is that what you are asking?” Mr Wilson said in response to a question by ABC host Patricia Karvelas on News 24 on Wednesday night.

“Her revelations,do you believe her?” Karvelas replied.

“Yes,I do,and I’m disturbed by them like anybody else would be.”

In her book,Power Play:Breaking Through Bias,Barriers and Boys’ Clubs,which is out this week,Ms Banks alleges a Coalition minister whose breath smelt of alcohol put his hand “just above my knee and edged slowly and deliberately to my inner thigh and then further up my leg” during a function in the prime minister’s wing.

“The only saving grace was that this time I was wearing suit pants,not a skirt and bare legs. For a minister to do this in the prime minister’s wing,which was full of Coalition MPs,he had to be astoundingly brazen. I found it unbelievable. And I momentarily froze,” Ms Banks writes.

You can read an extract from Ms Banks’ book here.

NSW Health has just released more venue alerts with a number of businesses,mostly across Sydney’s inner west and west,added to the state’s exposure list.

Anyone who attended the following locations is a close contact of a confirmed COVID-19 case and must get tested and isolate for 14 days.

Anyone who attended the following venues is a casual contact and must get tested and isolate until a negative result is received:

NSW Health has also confirmed there has been transmission of COVID-19 at Club Marconi in Bossley Park.
Anyone who was at the club,apart from the piazza bistro area or the main gaming area,on June 25 from 2pm to 8pm,is a close contact and must isolate for 14 days and get tested.

The same advice applies for anyone who was at the club,apart from the gaming area,on June 26 from 10.30am to 6pm.

Leading epidemiologists say health authorities had no choice but to extend Sydney’s lockdown by a week and the extra time should be enough to crush transmission of the Delta variant that has seen cases spike in three south-west local government areas.

Fairfield,Canterbury-Bankstown and Liverpool local councils,which include more than 100 suburbs,have been singled out as areas where restrictions could be tightened unless authorities can block further transmission.

Only 13 of Wednesday’s 27 new cases were in isolation for their entire infectious period and seven were in isolation for part of it. Nine of the cases have no known source. Premier Gladys Berejiklian said the “difficult decision” to extend the lockdown until July 16 was largely due to the presence of the Delta variant in the community.

Click to reload

Dr Fiona Stanaway,a clinical epidemiologist at the University of Sydney,said of most concern was “quite a few people are still out and about while infectious despite lockdown”.

“We have a good chance of squashing it if people comply with restrictions,” she said. “I don’t think it’s out of control,I don’t think the horse has bolted,but we can’t be sure.”

Read the full article here.

Dozens of musicians and performers associated with Opera Australia have been ordered into self-isolation and the company’s winter season has been thrown into disarray as a construction worker at the Sydney Opera House tested positive to COVID-19 and Sydney’slockdown was extended one week.

Related Article

Exclusive

Coronavirus pandemic

Opera Australia performers ordered to self-isolate after construction worker tests positive to COVID-19

Members of the orchestra,performers,technicians and creative staff ofOtello were in rehearsal at the time the subcontractor working on the Concert Hall refurbishment was considered potentially infectious.

An internal memo from Opera Australia viewed byThe Sydney Morning Herald andThe Age and sent to staff late Tuesday evening advised all who attended the Opera House across six days to test and self-isolate. The isolation order extends to their families and other householders. The health order is expected to capture members of the orchestra as well as principal singers.

Opera Australia’s chief executive Rory Jeffes also announced to staff Wednesday that performances ofAida,Atillaand next week’sOtelloopening night had been postponed and its winter season was under review.

Read the full article here.

Prominent Crown Resorts director Jane Halton says she has doubts about whether the boss of its Melbourne casino is the right person for the job after he downplayed its rorting of Victorian gambling taxes.

In a sign Victoria’s royal commission into Crown could trigger a new round of bloodletting at the beleaguered group,Ms Halton told the inquiry on Wednesday that she was concerned Xavier Walsh did not tell her about its tax issue when they met in March this year.

On June 7,the commission heard explosive evidence that Crown underpaid Victoria as much as $272 million since 2012 by making illegal deductions from its poker machine revenue and hid the practice from the state’s gambling regulator.

Ms Halton,a former public servant,was one of three Crown directors to survive last year’s damning NSW Bergin Inquiry into the group. She led a review of Australia’s hotel quarantine system for the federal government and was this week appointed to the board of the French company building a $90 billion fleet of new Attack Class submarines.

Mr Walsh,a senior senior executive at Crown Melbourne since 2013 recently put in charge of Crown Melbourne,had known since 2018 there had been a potential underpayment of tax and that Crown had hid it from the regulator.

But Ms Halton said he only told her at their March 4 meeting about an issue that “reflects badly on culture”.

Counsel assisting the commission,Penny Neskovcin,QC,asked whether Ms Halton felt comfortable that “Crown Melbourne is in the right hands while Mr Walsh is the CEO?”

“There are questions here,very definitely,but I have not had the opportunity to talk with him,” Ms Halton said.

Read the full article here.

The number of Australians fully vaccinated against COVID-19 has surpassed two million,the latest daily vaccine rollout figures from the health department show.

As of Tuesday,a total of 2,023,638 people nationwide had received both doses of either the Pfizer or AstraZeneca vaccine,while 4,520,390 people have received just the first dose.

This adds up to 6,544,028 people,or just over a quarter of Australia’s total population,having received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose.

Expand

Tennis star Nick Kyrgios has all but confirmed he will not take part in the Tokyo Olympics.

On Wednesday morning,Kyrgios posted an Instagram story from the Bahamas of his rehabilitation program for the abdominal strain which brought his Wimbledon campaign to an end.

Kyrgios wrote at the top of his notes:“Next tournament - Atlanta 250.”

Kyrgios was last month announced as part of the Australian squad set to play in Tokyo but,a few days later,the Atlanta Open revealed the world No. 60 as part of their tournament line-up.

The Instagram story is the latest indication the Australian star will not join Wimbledon semi-finalist Ash Barty,Alex de Minaur and eight other Australian athletes in Japan.

Read the full story here.

Authorities hope a $1 million reward may provide clues as to what happened leading up to the infamous Luna Park fire in Sydney’s Milsons Point more than four decades ago.

Emergency services were called to Luna Park about 10.15pm on Saturday,June 9,1979,following reports of a fire inside the Ghost Train ride. Six boys and a man were killed in the blaze.

TheSydney Morning Herald’sinvestigative reporterKate McClymont in 2007 revealedclaims that notorious Australian crime figure Abe Saffron was behind the deadly blaze.

A new investigative documentary series earlier this year broadcast by the ABC,Exposed,unearthed further witness accounts of the fire and claims that corrupt police covered for Saffron.

The new reward was announced today and comes as the NSW Coroner considers whether to hold a fresh inquest into the fire.

Read the full article here.