Victorians stranded in Sydney can look forward to returning home after border restrictions were eased for most parts of Sydney, the Blue Mountains and Wollongong. Travel into Victoria from those local government areas was allowed from 6pm last night, providing you had a permit. But the tourism sector is calling for help, after it became clear that even if Covid-19 vaccination became widespread, international borders would remain “substantially” closed this year.
It has been almost two years since Kenneth Hayne, the banking royal commissioner, handed his final report to the treasurer, yet more than half of the recommendations from the inquiry have been abandoned or delayed. Analysis by Guardian Australia of all 76 of Hayne’s recommendations shows that 44 recommendations have yet to be implemented and five have been abandoned, despite the treasurer’s claims that more than 70% of the recommendations had been implemented. Ben Butler’s analysis says Josh Frydenberg has linked the dumping of key recommendations to stimulating the economy as consumer advocates fear lessons from royal commission have been lost.
Victorian premier Daniel Andrews is standing firm on quarantine for Australian Open players. “There’s no special treatment here, because the virus doesn’t treat you specially. So neither do we,” Andrews told the players. Andrews isn’t the only one standing firm against tennis players seeking special treatment: Nick Kyrgios called Novak Djokovic “a tool” on Twitter after the world No 1 reportedly wrote to Australian Open organisers asking them to ease quarantine restrictions for players.
Meanwhile, health authorities in Norway say there’s no evidence of a direct link between the recent string of deaths among elderly people inoculated against Covid-19, and the vaccine they received.
