Australia news live update: experts urge caution over Covid reopening; Liberals select Christian Porter’s replacement

A freak weekend storm on Sydney’s northern beaches that killed a woman, ripped roofs off buildings and uprooted trees has left thousands of households without power, reports AAP.

Described as a “mini-cyclone”, the storm tore across suburbs from Mona Vale to Forestville, causing a trail of destruction.

A massive Norfolk pine tree hit powerlines, which fell on three women who were trying to take shelter at a car park at Ocean St, Narrabeen.

A 68-year-old woman died at the scene, while two other women – aged 19 and 71 – were critically injured, police said.

The two injured women were taken to Royal North Shore Hospital, where they both remain in a serious but stable condition.

The State Emergency Service responded to nearly 600 calls for help and volunteers are still on the ground with police and NSW Fire & Rescue crews who are helping people clear debris and secure homes that have lost roofs.

Adam Jones from the SES told ABC most calls were for leaking roofs and fallen trees that were blocking roads as well as downed powerlines and people who were stuck in lifts.

We can’t promise that we’ll have everyone ready for Christmas but that is the goal of every member out there today…

Powerlines are incredibly dangerous. If they are down, stay away from them.

Do not assume that they’re turned off because they’re on the ground. Try to stay 16-20 metres away from them.

More than 35,000 homes lost power, with areas including North Turramurra, Frenchs Forest, Forestville and St Ives still affected.

Ausgrid says employees were working around the clock to restore services.

A freak storm has lashed Syndey’s Norther Beaches over the weekend, with many still without power and hundreds of hours of clean up work to go.

I’ll bring you more updates on the situation there over the morning.

Kaldor says the national reopening plan needs to be able to react and adapt to the landscape of Covid-19 across the world as it changes:

Every plan needs to be responsive to changes in circumstances, and what we’ve seen with Covid is that there are twists and turns that are unexpected.

And when Omicron emerged, the first thing to figure out – as with any new variant – is first of all, how infectious and secondly, how much disease is caused and particularly how well are the vaccines working?

And we’ve got the answer to the first one of those three, but we haven’t got the answer to the second and the third is yet.

Kaldor has warned that Australia shouldn’t base too many of their decision on the extremely early studies that suggest Omicrom may cause a less severe form of the disease.

So there have been reports from South Africa that strongly suggest it’s less severe than Delta. But we need to take that information cautiously in our contexts, for a couple of reasons.

First, the information for it is largely from younger people who have traditionally had lower severe outcomes.

But also it’s a population in South Africa that’s had a lot of exposure to circulating virus and maybe a lot of people whose immune systems are more primed than ours would be here.

In a report by the Sydney Morning Herald, the director of the Doherty Institute, Prof Sharon Lewin, who advised on Morrison’s national plan to ease Australia into living with Covid-19, says we should pump the reopening brakes as concerns grow about the Omicron variant.

She called for the return of mask-wearing indoors and stopping large gatherings at pubs and nightclubs.

And she isn’t the only one. Prof John Kaldor, an epidemiologist at the Kirby Institute tells ABC radio that we just don’t know enough about Omicron just yet.

This is a big unknown because we have very good information about how much protection we get from the vaccines against the previous variants, but we have very little information about how much protection we get against Omicron.

There is evidence from overseas and from studies in the laboratory that there will be reduced efficacy, so particularly in the absence of a booster it may actually be a much more severe outcome in terms of its severity.

Butler has been asked if Labor would be calling for booster shots to be moved forward to four or even three months, as a number of other countries have done, but he says they will be sticking with Atagi’s official advice.

The opposition [will follow] the public health advice. Atagi has decided not to shorten it from five to four or even three months.

Right now the government’s rollout isn’t even meeting the demand of a five-month eligibility … let alone being able to meet the extra demand for a four-month or three months eligibility would provide.

Now it’s time to talk about the booster shot program, and this morning Labor is coming out and attacking the government hard over this.

The shadow health minister, Mark Butler, tells ABC radio that Australia is once again falling behind the rest of the developed world.

The first six weeks so far we’ve done a little more than 1 million boosters. By the end of next week, we’d have to have delivered 4 million.

4 million people are supposed to receive their booster shots this month. There’s no way we’re going to achieve that under Scott Morrison’s program.

Liberal party members will select a new candidate to run in former attorney general Christian Porter’s seat after he announced he wouldn’t contest the next election, reports AAP.

The Perth-based seat of Pearce was held by Porter on a 7.5% margin at the last federal election in 2019 but is now considered a much tighter contest after a boundary redistribution.

Labor has preselected City of Wanneroo mayor Tracey Roberts.

Roberts’ council colleague Linda Aitken is touted as a potential Liberal candidate, as is former navy officer Miquela Riley.

The election is due to be held by May.

Porter has held the seat since 2013 and the seat has remained in Liberal hands since its inception in 1990.

The former minister said he wouldn’t recontest the seat after being dumped from federal cabinet following him accepting legal fees from a blind trust.

In a lengthy Facebook post, he said he wouldn’t be able to give the next three years his all after “experiencing the harshness of modern politics more than most”.

Porter sued the ABC after it published a story about allegations an unnamed cabinet minister had raped a now-deceased woman in 1988.

He strenuously denied the allegations after outing himself as the accused minister and has since settled a defamation case against the national broadcaster.

But it was then revealed in September anonymous donors had paid for part of Porter’s legal fees.

Porter denied any conflict of interest and said no banned donors contributed money to the fund, but nonetheless tendered his resignation from cabinet rather than publicly reveal the donors.

The party members will make their selection on Monday.

Good morning everyone, it’s a lovely Monday morning (as much as any Monday can be) and there is plenty of news to get through.

It’s Matilda Bosley here and why don’t we jump into the day.

Today after months of strict border restrictions the Northern Territory is opening up to the rest of the country – well, the rest of the vaccinated country at least.

Travellers from all around Australia will now be able to travel anywhere in the territory as long as they avoid remote communities where less than 80% of the eligible population is vaccinated.

Arrivals must also record three negative PCR tests, one before crossing the border and two in the days afterwards.

In other news, the federal government has committed to spending another $78m to help Australia’s aviation sector recover from the Covid-19 pandemic.

The deputy prime minister, Barnaby Joyce, has announced a “aviation recovery framework” which he says is aimed at rebuilding the workforce and upgrading regional infrastructure.

This will involve a “strategic aviation advisory forum”, whose job it will be to brief the federal government and provide annual “health checks” about the state of the sector.

The funding includes $4m to increase the number of women in the sector and $15m to upgrade remote aerodromes.

Another $29m will be made available through the third round of a regional aviation infrastructure program.

A $30m rebate program will help aviation operators upgrade aircraft safety.

OK! With that out of the way, why don’t we jump right into the day!