Tennis chief confident Australian Open will go ahead despite new Covid threat as PM announces 10m extra vaccine doses– politics live | Australia news

And we will leave it there for tonight. Here’s a quick summary of everything that went down today:

• The prime minister today announced that Australia had secured an additional 10 million Pfizer vaccine doses, in what the health department calls “added insurance.”
• Victorian premier Daniel Andrews today said authorities can’t rule out airborne transmission as the source of the new infection.
• Officially, Victoria recorded one new local transmission and two in hotel Quarantine, whilst the WA and NSW recorded no new cases.
• WA premier Mark McGowan praised ‘remarkable’ firefighting effort, as the Shady Hills estate was saved overnight, but fires continue to burn in the region.
• The Australian Open draw was delayed to tomorrow, in light of one of the quarantine worker testing positive, although authorities are still hoping the tournament can begin on Monday.
• 10 suburbs in Melbourne will be considered hotspots in the Northern Territory, with arrivals having to enter mandatory quarantine at the cost of $2,500.
• Collingwood players have written an open letter, apologising for playing a part in allowing a culture of racism to take hold at the club.

Finally, in light of changing border rules with Western Australia and now Victoria, if you intend to travel interstate this week, please take a quick look at the list of WA hotspots, Victoria hotspots and state-by-state restrictions.

Earlier today, the Coalition deleted references to rising far-right extremism in a Senate motion Labor had moved to condemn the movement.

The opposition accused the government of seeking to “downplay and dismiss” the threat of rightwing extremism in contradiction of national security advice.

It came after the immigration minister, Alex Hawke, was on Sky News this morning, denying far-right extremism is on the rise in Australia.

It is extreme elements, fringe elements, in Australia that need tackling, they are being tackled. What we have here is increased social cohesion, not increasing extremism.

Labor had moved a Senate motion seeking to condemn far-right extremism, including claims about voter fraud in the US election, and the cause of the Capitol insurrection promoted by Liberal MP Craig Kelly and National MP George Christensen.

The motion passed on Thursday but only after references to Kelly and Christensen were removed, and condemnation of far-left extremism, communism, anarchism and violence, generally, were added.

You can read more on the story from Paul Karp here:

VicHealth (the new department which is just much easier to write), is sending texts to residents living in exposure site suburbs.

The department seems to be attempting to jump ahead of any potential outbreak by getting information directly to residents.

Kristina Keneally is back firing shots, this time on Twitter.

The Labor senator has quickly latched onto a mistake on the Senate floor, and used it to say the prime minister “has no clear plan for the vaccine”. But in the process she made a mistake of her own. It’s Colbeck, not Colebeck.

Collingwood players have written an open letter, apologising for playing a part in allowing a culture of racism to take hold at the club.

150 members of the club’s football and netball squads signed the letter, saying they felt their silence enabled the “injustices”.

As athletes we are sorry to anyone who, through their association with our club has been marginalised, hurt or discriminated against due to their race.

Through our silence we feel responsible for these injustices.

We acknowledge it is not enough to simply show support for the principles of anti-racism and inclusion. We will confront the history of our club in order to learn, heal and determine how best to walk forward together.

The letter comes in light of the Do Better report, which found a culture of structural racism had developed at the club.

You can read more on the story here:

Effective from 3.30pm CST, 10 suburbs in Melbourne will be considered hotspots in the Northern Territory.

That means anyone arriving in the NT from these suburbs will need to go into mandatory quarantine at a cost of $2,500.

The suburbs are Melbourne, West Melbourne, Brighton, Brandon Park, Clayton South, Heatherton, Keysborough, Moorabbin, Noble Park and Springvale.

Anyone who has arrived in the NT from the Victorian hotspots since 29 January is being directed to get tested and self-isolate until a negative result is confirmed.

Good afternoon everyone, and we begin by first thanking the ever-brilliant Amy for once again skilfully guiding us through what was a truly hectic day.

There is still much to get through and process for the rest of the day, so let’s get stuck in.

On that note, I am going to leave you in the very capable hands of Mostafa Rachwani to take you through the evening.

The daily blog will be back tomorrow, so make sure you check in to keep abreast of all the day’s events. I’ll be back with Politics Live when parliament resumes in a week’s time.

We’ll bring you all of the national cabinet news tomorrow, so make sure you check in for that as well.

Thank you to everyone who joined me this week – you made the return more than bearable. A massive thank you to Mike Bowers, Katharine Murphy, Daniel Hurst and Paul Karp for dragging me through the week. And of course, to you, for making it all worth it.

Make sure you take some time for yourself this weekend. Everything didn’t magically become easier with the change of date. Take care of you.

Friends of the blog who watch the Senate, (so I don’t have to – there is such a thing as too much punishment) just pointed out Richard Colbeck still seems to have an issue with numbers (Colbeck couldn’t say how many people had died in aged-care homes during the pandemic).

Anyways, when asked about vaccine numbers in the Senate today, Colbeck originally said the government had secured an additional “10,000 doses” before correcting himself to “10 million” and then later added:

At this stage we have 40 million doses, based on the announcement this morning, of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. We have 53.8 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, 51 million doses of the Novavax and access to 25.6 million doses from the COVAX Facility.”

We have secured, according to the health minister at today’s press conference, 20 million Pfizer vaccines.

Greg Hunt:

… A total of 150 million vaccines – 20 million Pfizer, 53.8 million Oxford-AstraZeneca, where we’ve seen some very positive results … 51 million Novavax [vaccines].

I am just going to include another photo of the pygmy possums because it has been that sort of day, in that sort of week, in that sort of year.

(Graham tells me this is a fully grown female)