Welcome to the third week of the spring parliamentary sittings, which will be looking a different from how they were originally planned.
The sitting will pretty much only feature those MPs who stayed in Canberra (and have been in lockdown) with most others appearing virtually, given the travel restrictions across the nation.
The parliament is mostly sitting because the government needs to address a sunset clause in some anti-terrorism bills (the sunset clause isn’t new, but the government didn’t bring the legislation up for debate until the last sitting and didn’t leave enough time for it to be properly dealt with).
And so, Scott Morrison and Anthony Albanese are both in town, but most of their colleagues won’t be.
Not that parliament is the main game anyway.
NSW is again looking at compliance measures for its lockdown, as case numbers hit the 800s. Vaccinations in NSW are looking good, but it’s not uniform across all the LGAs which has authorities a little worried.
Victoria will start doubling down on its own vaccination push as it struggles to contain the Delta outbreak in its own jurisdiction. The anti-lockdown protests have not helped in that regard. Queensland saw those protests too, despite not being in lockdown. The ACT’s lockdown continues but it has to be said that no one is feeling particularly optimistic it will lift in September, as planned. And meanwhile, the federal government is still pushing for an end to lockdowns come the 70-80% vaccination target, but is already facing resistance from states like Qld, WA and Victoria who won’t open to NSW while case numbers are still high.
We’ll bring you all the Covid news, as well as the Afghanistan situation and parliament, as the day unfolds. You have Katharine Murphy, Sarah Martin, Paul Karp and Daniel Hurst in Canberra with Mike Bowers and Amy Remeikis on the blog.
I’ve had a banana and some fudge for breakfast with my (so far) two and a half coffees, so it’s going to be fun.
Ready?
