SYDNEY — Reserve Bank of Australia board members will sit down to a markedly different set of circumstances when they meet on August 3 compared to just a month earlier. In early July, Governor Phillip Lowe was lauding the economy to bounce back earlier and stronger than expected. “The Australian economy is on a positive path,” Lowe said. But four weeks on, the outlook has been turned on its head, with economists now predicting a sharp economic contraction in the September quarter. This is largely the result of the lengthy Covid-19 lockdown in Greater Sydney and regional areas in New South Wales. Last…
Author: zenger.news
WELLINGTON, New Zealand — New Zealand is taking another baby step towards reopening to the world, allowing Pacific workers to skip quarantine from next month. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, on August 2, announced eligible workers from Samoa, Tonga and Vanuatu would be allowed entry to New Zealand without the mandatory 14-day quarantine on arrival. The three Pacific nations are as close to Covid-19 as a place can be, with just a handful of cases at the border throughout the pandemic. The policy is designed to assist New Zealand’s ailing agricultural sectors, in particular horticulture, suffering labor shortages. “This policy will open up…
CANBERRA, Australia — The Prime Minister has declared that the AstraZeneca vaccine is making a “comeback” and is vital in the fight against the growing Sydney Covid-19 outbreak. Scott Morrison said that AstraZeneca has been “talked down for a long time.” Still, the jabs were especially vital in Greater Sydney, which has entered its sixth week of lockdown restrictions. A national plan would see border restrictions ease and city-wide lockdowns unlikely once Australia reached a total vaccination rate of 70 percent was given in-principle approval by state and territory leaders. Almost 19 percent of Australians have been fully vaccinated. Morrison said…
CANBERRA, Australia — Federal Labor said Australia is in a housing crisis with a growing number of people finding themselves homeless and a governing minister who rarely wants to talk about it. Labor’s spokesman for housing and homelessness, Jason Clare, said when his party left the government, it was committed to AU$2 billion ($1.47 billion) a year for social housing and indigenous homelessness. This would now be about AU$2.7 billion ($1.98 billion) in today’s money, adjusting for inflation and population growth. However, Clare said the Morrison government has only budgeted to spend AU$1.6 billion ($1.2 billion). “That is a massive cut.…
TOWNSVILLE, Australia — The southeastern Australian state, Queensland, Labor member of parliament Les Walker has been stood down from his parliamentary roles after being charged with assault in the coastal city of Townsville, 700 miles northwest of the state capital, Brisbane. Walker has been charged with common assault after an altercation with a 39-year-old man at a restaurant. The Mundingburra parliamentarian appears in court on August 16 and has been banned from the city’s Safe Night Precinct until August 11. A Safe Night Precinct is a designated area set up in key entertainment areas of Queensland under the Liquor Act 1992 to promote responsible drinking behavior and…
CANBERRA, Australia — A woman from the Australian state of Victoria was jailed for murdering her ex-partner by stealing his ute and running him down did not get a fair trial, the Court of Appeal has heard. In 2017, Janice Bufton was furious after her lover of fewer than two years, Colin Snooks, said he was leaving her and “heading north,” and she jumped into his Holden Rodeo and drove down the driveway of her Grampians property. The ute’s bonnet hit Snooks, and he was crushed under its wheels, dying of his injuries a short time later. Bufton was jailed for 24 years but is…
SYDNEY — Half a million residents in the southeastern Australian state of New South Wales can be vaccinated against Covid-19 per week based on current rates, Premier Gladys Berejiklian said. To secure the state’s “ticket to freedom,” Berejiklian believes August will have to be a record month. More than 82,000 people in New South Wales received the vaccine in the 24 hours to July 31 evening, and with lockdown proving “damn hard,” vaccination was the way forward, she said. “One dose itself reduces your chance of spreading the virus, but it also keeps you out of the hospital,” Berejiklian said. “We know that…
BRISBANE, Australia — Queensland’s chief health officer encourages people aged under 60 to talk to their general practitioners about getting AstraZeneca after a long warning that the vaccine is too risky for younger people. Jeannette Young is currently dealing with the state’s most covid-19 severe threat in a year, with 31 cases linked to an escalating cluster of the Delta variant. She previously advised younger people not to get AstraZeneca due to a sporadic and potentially fatal blood clotting disorder linked to the vaccine. When asked if her view had changed given the current level of risk. “It is important that people have that…
DARWIN, Australia — “I still live in a tin shack,” said Johnny Wilson, a traditional owner in Australia. My floor is bare ground. “When will I get money for my housing?” In Australia’s Northern Territory, people from the Aboriginal and Strait Islander communities are outraged by an AU$50 million ($36.7 million) federal government grant to fast-track gas fracking in the Beetaloo Basin. The money should be spent on housing, health, education, and opportunities to lift Aboriginal people out of the grinding poverty afflicting many of them, a parliamentary inquiry was told. Wilson said many Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory were struggling to…
In the wake of the failure to reach President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s goal of 70 percent of American adults receiving at least one vaccine dose by July 4, the White House has been less forthcoming with benchmarks against which to measure its progress in ending the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet even as the Delta variant of coronavirus explodes across the U.S. — prompting the return of mask mandates even for the fully vaccinated, who can still spread the virus to the unvaccinated — experts told Zenger the only path back to normality remains getting more jabs into arms. “It is…