South Australia records two new Covid cases as Dfat reveals 36,875 Australians stranded overseas – live news | Australia news

Opposition leader Anthony Albanese was on Triple M Brisbane’s Big Breakfast show this morning with… Marto, Margaux and Nick Cody (I am reading this from a transcript and obviously do not know who any of these people are).

Anyway, while he was there, he took the “real man quiz”, which it is obviously very important that I tell about.

Host: When’s the last time, there’s a couple of questions, when’s the last time you reversed a trailer?

Albanese: Reversed a trailer?

Host: Do you own one?

Albanese: Oh my goodness. I certainly don’t own a trailer mate. I don’t but I have, it would have been when I was moving or helping actually someone in my office move. So it was last year.

Host: Okay, that’s nice. Last fish caught?

Albanese: I’m pretty ordinary fishing. But I did go fishing on Kangaroo Island down there in South Australia for King George whiting. I’ve got to say, it was fantastic because I had the bloke who, they have really strict catches there, and I had the bloke with us. I cheated a little bit because he knew exactly where to go.

Host: That’s what you need. Right mate. Right position … If I gave you the choice: a VB, a Tooheys New, a TED or a XXXX, which one would you prefer to drink?

Albanese: Oh, Tooheys New.

Host: No the correct answer is they’re all shit.

Quite an extraordinary admission from the New South Wales premier, Gladys Berejiklian, today.

Documents related to the $252m Stronger Communities fund, which overwhelmingly went to councils in Coalition seats, were initially shredded by her office but have been recovered from databases.

Labor and the Greens say the documents show Berejiklian was directly involved in the approval process, but the premier denies she was involved in the approval. She said:

I was consulted and I was provided advice, so were other ministers. But the Office of Local Government was responsible for getting the dollars to councils.

But today Berejiklian has conceded that grants approved in the nine months before the last state election amounted to pork barrelling, but that there was nothing illegal about it. She said:

It’s not something the community likes … but it’s an accusation I will wear. It’s not unique to our government.

It’s not an illegal practice. Unfortunately it does happen from time to time by every government.

My colleague Anne Davies has the full story:

Another little tidbit out of that South Australian press conference is that the premier, Steven Marshall, confirmed the state would begin using a QR code check-in system from 1 December.

The system has been in place in New South Wales for several months.

More from Nicola Spurrier on that high school student who has tested positive for Covid-19 in South Australia:

We are still working through exactly this person’s infectiousness period. We are trying to look at the interpretation of the data that we have from her results and we still haven’t completely nailed exactly how she got infected and when she was infectious. There is also the possibility that there might have been somebody else, so another person who has been infected that this person has become infected through and the jury is still out on that at the moment.

The student attended school on Monday while potentially infectious.

The school was closed today, and the South Australian education department has said anyone who attended on Monday “must isolate immediately with all members of their household until further advice is provided”.

Spurrier said the young person “has done absolutely nothing wrong”.

She’s followed the directions and within her understanding of what she needed to do.

Spurrier can’t give detail on the number of close contacts of the student.

She has also not been able to provide information on questions about whether the student took public transport, or on reports that her teacher attended a cricket clinic in Adelaide yesterday.

South Australia has recorded two new cases of coronavirus.

One of the new cases is a school student from Woodville high school. The state’s chief health officer, Nicola Spurrier, is speaking now.

She said the student was linked to the state’s Parafield cluster and appeared to have picked up the virus at the Woodville Pizza Bar, where she picked up a pizza on 14 November.

It is very important for anybody now in that Woodville area, particularly if you have frequented that pizza bar, go back to our web site and look at the dates where we know there were people infectious and absolutely think: do I need to get tested?

That whole area around Woodville, we are going to be putting out more messaging today and we are going to be doing more testing there. And to help people in that area we are going to make sure we have got enough testing sites available.

The second case is a man in his 40s. Spurrier said he was a close contact of another case and was in quarantine with his family.

The man who has died as a result of his injuries in the New Zealand volcano is 64-year-old Horst Westenfelder.

Police have confirmed Westenfelder actually died four months ago, on 2 July, at a hospital overseas due to medical complications while receiving treatment.

In a statement, Westenfelder’s wife, Angelika, called it an “irreplaceable loss”. She said:

Our lives have changed! It is unbelievable how many months my joyful, sensible and strong husband “Horsti” was fighting for his life and I am thankful to everyone who was thinking of us and helping us during that very hard time. He lost this battle and started his last journey in July.

It is an irreplaceable loss for our family, his friends and of course for myself. In loving memory of a full and exciting life. I will always miss you.

NZ police said:

Our thoughts are with the friends and family of Mr Westenfelder, who have requested privacy as they are still coming to terms with the death of their much-loved husband, father and grandfather.

A 64-year-old man has died as a result of injuries suffered in New Zealand’s Whakaari/White Island volcano eruption in December last year.

I’ll bring you more on this as I get it.

Good afternoon. The former Health Services Union head, Kathy Jackson, has been spared jail after rorting more than $100,000 in member funds.

The 52-year-old was jailed in Victoria’s county court on Thursday for 24 months, but the sentence was wholly suspended for two-and-a-half years.

Judge Amanda Fox said:

You selfishly used the money for your lifestyle purposes. It was motivated by greed not need.

You can read the full story here:

I’ll be passing over the blog to my colleague Michael McGowan, who will take you through the next part of the afternoon.

I’ve been Elias Visontay. Have a great afternoon.