Australia news LIVE NSW records 356 new local COVID-19 cases three deaths Victoria records 20 new cases Queensland records just three new cases

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The NSW upper house’s COVID-19 oversight committee inquiry into the NSW government’s management of the pandemic is now under way.

Health Minister Brad Hazzard and Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant are among the witnesses being called up.

The inquiry will focus on Dr Chant’s advice in the early days of the Delta outbreak in June before Education Minister Sarah Mitchell and Education Department secretary Georgina Harrisson will be asked to explain the government’s decisions involving year 12 students.

Watch below.

We’re now turning to the NSW Premier’s recent comments that some restrictions could start being eased once 50 per cent vaccination coverage is reached.

Dr Chant says lockdowns pose other health risks such as mental health, and that it is “the role for government to balance the broad range of risks”.

Greens MP Cate Faehrmann has asked who carried out the modelling on starting to ease restrictions at 50 per cent vaccination coverage. Dr Chant replies that the Premier was very much reflecting the evidence base around the Doherty Institute modelling.

“I think what it’s important to say is we are in a very strict lockdown, this is stricter than the lockdown we had in the first wave,” she says.

“I can’t speak for the premier, but certainly I’m very committed to the issues around getting our vaccine coverage up, but very much recognise that we need that 70 per cent before we have too much of a discussion about what easing restrictions look like.”

Dr Chant said the figures showed that NSW would still need restrictions, mask-wearing and public health contact tracing.

Mr Hazzard said the Premier’s comments were made in an attempt to bring some hope to the community.

“I think it’s fair to say that the Premier is trying to give a sense of hope to the community and trying to drive up also vaccinations,” he said.

Dr Chant added that she expects more than 50 per cent of the state to be vaccinated by the end of August.

It’s been a tense start to the inquiry, with NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard stepping in for Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant at multiple points.

He has also taken issue with being interrupted.

“I get to finish the answers or I’m not going to bother,” he said.

Mr Hazzard not impressed at being interrupted.

Upper house Labor MP Courtney Houssos has asked Dr Chant if she has provided recommendations for stronger measures than what the government has already adopted.

Mr Hazzard interjected to answer, before Dr Chant went on to say she wants to see a range of actions taken that reduce the disease.

“I should say that we did observe that the community response to this outbreak was different from the first wave, and we didn’t see the same changes in mobility patterns,” she said.

“We are really working and providing advice across industry about how we can minimise workplace outbreaks.”

Any extra measures she has recommended include “increasing compliance, things that reduce that mobility indicator and also things that go to how we can better support surveillance testing [and] rapid diagnosis.”

Dr Chant is also asked about providing advice regarding further restrictions on people from Sydney travelling to the regions, after a man travelled to Byron Bay before ending up in hospital.

“So there’s requirements around testing for people going to the regions, we’ve certainly been doing a lot of messaging. We’ve been looking at opportunities to provide feedback on elements where the orders can be strengthened or clarified,” Dr Chant said.

“As the Minister has said we are actually asking people to not try and look for loopholes in the orders but rather to comply with the intent.”

Labor MP Penny Sharpe wants to know from Mr Hazzard why further restrictions have not been implemented by the government on the issue.

NSW Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant has started giving evidence to the NSW Parliamentary inquiry into the state’s COVID response.

Dr Chant is asked for the date that health officials started preparing for Sydney to be locked down.

Dr Chant says she would need to check, but Health Minister Brad Hazzard jumps in and says: “I will answer the question because I am the minister.”

Mr Hazzard gets on the front foot.

Dr Chant says the lockdown measures worked in south-eastern Sydney, where the outbreak began after the infection of a Bondi limousine driver who transported overseas air crew.

However, the virus managed to escape into the south-west of Sydney after a birthday party at West Hoxton.

Dr Chant is asked to provide documents about lockdown advice, but Mr Hazzard interrupts and says: “Dr Chant will not be releasing any documents.”

The NSW upper house’s COVID-19 oversight committee inquiry into the NSW government’s management of the pandemic is now under way.

Health Minister Brad Hazzard and Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant are among the witnesses being called up.

The inquiry will focus on Dr Chant’s advice in the early days of the Delta outbreak in June before Education Minister Sarah Mitchell and Education Department secretary Georgina Harrisson will be asked to explain the government’s decisions involving year 12 students.

Watch below.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison will not say if Australia will update its mid-term emissions reduction targets ahead of an international climate summit in Glasgow in November.

“We will meet and beat our targets,” Mr Morrison said. “We will make that very clear about what Australia is achieving and what we intend to achieve. And we will make further statements about that between now and that summit.”

Prime Minister Scott Morrison addressing the media at today’s press conference at Parliament House. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

Australia’s trading partners including the UK, US, Japan and South Korea have upped their goals in an effort to act consistently with a goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees with net zero 2050 deadlines and emissions cuts up to 60 per cent by 2030.

The federal government has not set a deadline to reach net zero but says it will get there “preferably” by 2050 and has committed to make at least a 26 per cent cut by 2030 â€" based on 2005 levels.

Mr Morrison said “political solutions won’t solve this problem”.

He pointed out that China’s emissions account for more than the OECD combined and argued Australia was contributing to global action by focusing on low emissions technologies.

When asked whether NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian should go harder on the lockdown, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said it was vital to make the lockdown work.

“I have always said very clearly, that in the suppression phase lockdowns have to work,” he said. “Vaccines certainly support it, and Delta is like nothing else we’ve seen and is a complete game-changer.”

Prime Minister Scott Morrison arriving at today’s press conference at Parliament House. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

Mr Morrison said no one was seeking to eliminate COVID, but it had to be minimised before the country moved into the next, “transition” phase of the pandemic once 70 per cent of the eligible population was vaccinated.

The Prime Minister said the Commonwealth would give “every support” possible to the NSW Government, but the lockdown was crucial.

“Minimising those cases is going to ensure that we go into the next phase a lot stronger,” he said.

“It’s really important: that’s why I say to my fellow Sydneysiders, it’s important we stay home. It is important we make this lockdown work. It’s important that we don’t give up on it. It is important that we apply ourselves to it, and make sure it works.”

Victorian Health Minister Martin Foley says the government has no plans to change the areas which are subject to the stage four lockdown, despite the fact that new outbreaks are more than 100 kilometres away from the Mornington Peninsula.

“There’s no plans to change the definition as to what metropolitan Melbourne is for the purposes of public health orders,” he said.

Victorian Health Minister Martin Foley speaking at today’s press conference. Credit:Chris Hopkins

He said Victoria was not considering geographic, or Local Government Area-based lockdowns because they were not effective, as was evidenced in the current NSW outbreak, which is employing this containment strategy.

“Just look north to Sydney, about what happens when, geographic, local government area based decisions are made,” he said.

“It doesn’t stop in geographic areas ... it’s the nature of those surrounding communities that are part of that. So there’s no plans to change that and the alternative is what’s been happening, of the inevitable creep that we’ve seen in New South Wales.”

Meanwhile, Mr Foley warned Melburnians against travelling to regional areas.

“If you want to have Victoria Police pounced on you, then, fine, take a risk that you’ll be caught,” he said.

“You won’t get service in regional Victoria, because there’s an obligation on all service providers to establish [that] customers [are] from regional Victoria.

“Look at New South Wales, look at the risks that were seen as a result of people travelling from high-risk zones where it’s out of control.”

NSW Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant says there is clear evidence Sydney’s Delta outbreak is disproportionately affecting children, with more teenagers in ICU and childcare centre outbreaks in Sydney than occurred with previous variants.

Earlier in the press conference, Premier Gladys Berejiklian was asked what she thought about unvaccinated children returning to school while the virus was still circulating.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian and Chief Health Officer Dr Kerry Chant at today’s press conference. Credit:Kate Geraghty

“The NSW government never has and never would take decisions which would impact the safety of our citizens,” she said.

“We are always speaking about the safety of our community but, having said that, higher rates of vaccination among adults gives you the opportunity to do things differently in September and October.”

Ms Berejiklian said she would follow health advice to distribute new supplies of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines in younger populations, declining to answer whether it would be people in their 30s or teenagers who would become eligible for the Pfizer vaccine as supply increases throughout the latter half of this year.

Mr Morrison says it’s his “fundamental belief” that action needs to be taken on climate change â€" but that action shouldn’t come in the form of taxes.

The report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, published yesterday, found the world’s temperatures are likely to increase by 1.5 degrees on pre-industrial levels by 2040.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

The report, a “code red for humanity”, will be central to climate negotiations held in Glasgow later this year.

The Prime Minister said Australia would take action, but pointed the finger at other countries for their contribution to global emissions.

“The developing world accounts for two thirds of global emissions and those emissions are rising. That is a stark fact,” he said. “It is also a clear fact that China’s emissions account for more than the OECD combined.”

Mr Morrison said the “Australian way” to deal with the challenge of climate change was through technology.

“The advanced economies of the world have developed their economies over a long time, principally on the basis of fossil fuel industries. That’s accepted,” he said.

“It’s a very fair argument that the developing world makes, which says â€" why should our economic futures be denied when advanced economies around the world have been able to go forward on that basis of their energy economies over a long period of time?

“The Australian approach is not to tax them or deny them the employment and the jobs and the industries that they should have, just as we should have them here in this country, but to enable.”

Prime Minister Scott Morrison is speaking in Canberra, talking about the recent IPCC report on climate change. But before getting into that the COVID situation in Australia gets a mention.

He said the case numbers out of NSW today were “difficult”.

“We are in a tough, tough fight with this Delta strain,” he said. “I want to thank everyone across NSW, right across the country, other places going through lockdowns as well.

“But we know that the fight in New South Wales is the toughest of all those fights and there’s a lot at stake. Now, I want Australia to get to Christmas, but I want everybody around that table at Christmas time.”

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