Coronavirus Australia live updates: states face pressure to lift restrictions after weekend BLM protests – latest news

Scott Morrison has maintained his record high approval rating, the latest Newspoll published in the Australian this morning shows.

Morrison’s approval rating is at 66%, and his disapproval rating has fallen a point to 29%, the highest prolonged approval ratings for a prime minister since the early days of Kevin Rudd’s first prime ministership.

The two-party preferred figure remains unchanged at 51-49.

Although the poll shows that support for the Coalition dropped a point to 42% while Labor’s primary vote dropped a point to 34%. The primary vote for the Greens rose two points to 12%, while support for Pauline Hanson’s One Nation lifted one point to 4%.

Morrison was also ahead of opposition leader Anthony Albanese as preferred prime minister, with 56% to Albanese’s 26%.

Albanese’s personal approval rating dropped three points to 41%, and his disapproval rating lifted one point to 38%.

The poll was conducted between June 3 and June 6, based on 1,512 online interviews of voters. It has a 2.5% margin of error.

Dodson was also asked about the destruction of a rock shelter in Juukan Gorge near Tom Price in the Pilbara, despite significant archeological evidence showing it had been occupied for at least 46,000 years.

He said that “some heads will have to roll” at Rio Tinto, for failing to properly implement its monitoring of and consultation about cultural heritage sties with traditional owners. Rio Tinto has apologised, but not said it was in the wrong.

But Dodson said the federal government could have acted to stop the destruction, after lawyers for the Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura peoples sent an 11th hour plea to federal Indigenous affairs minister Ken Wyatt.

Dodson said:

The commonwealth could have issued an injunction for that activity to stop and they failed to do that.

He said that Wyatt, who referred the matter to environment minister Sussan Ley, should bear some responsibility:

The palming off by the minister of Aboriginal Australians to [Ley] … he’s a West Australian, he knows now draconian the Aboriginal Heritage Act is in Western Australia …

They have just failed in their duty. They have failed to act in a way that could give Aboriginal people any confidence that the federal crown and the state crown have any interest in their welfare and their cultural values.

Western Australian senator and Labor’s spokesman for reconciliation, Patrick Dodson, is also speaking on Radio National.

He was travelling and did not attend a protest on Saturday, and said he hoped there would be no transmission of Covid-19 from the gatherings. But he said deaths in custody were a real, present threat to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, and not a sign of a lack of care by Aboriginal people and other activists about the coronavirus threat.

I have lost a nephew recently … he still has to come back from Perth. Family are distraught about that. It’s affected everyone and I don’t think it’s responsible to describe people as uncaring.

Dodson said the dismissal of the Uluru Statement from the Heart, particularly the request for a constitutionally-enshrined Indigenous voice to parliament, meant many felt they had no option but to protest.

I think the Aboriginal community feel very much disconnected and uncared for in society, particularly since the Uluru Statement … there’s no real progress taking place in the deaths in custody arena, and then we have the awful and disgraceful destruction of ancient sites in Western Australia.

Unless there is a voice to parliament, he says, “then you are going to have people defying the odds, as it were, to try and get their points across”.

Trade minister Simon Birmingham has told Radio National that he thought the timing of the Black Lives Matter protests this weekend was “incredibly unfortunate” but acknowledged, when pushed by host Fran Kelly, that the timing was sparked by the alleged murder of George Floyd by US police officers and therefore not of the protesters’ choosing.

Said Birmingham:

The timing was unfortunate and I accept that events that occurred in the US were not in the control of the protest organisers … nonetheless there would have been other ways of trying to create the kind of movement of symbolism that people sought without coming out in a mass gathering.

He suggests something like the driveway lights on Anzac Day.

A mass gathering, he says, shows a “lack of regard for the other Australians who have been making sacrifices” during lockdown, but adds that he “understands the sentiment” of the protesters.

In other news, Tony Abbott has been made a companion of the order of Australia in the Queen’s Birthday honours.

It’s the top gong. Abbott was awarded it for his contributions to border control and the Indigenous community.

Other former Liberal politicians Bronwyn Bishop, Philip Ruddock, former NSW premier Mike Baird, former Victorian premier Denis Napthine were made officers of Order of Australia, the second highest honour.

Bishop was awarded the honour for “distinguished service to the Parliament of Australia, to the people of New South Wales, and to women in politics”.

Marcia Langton, the foundation chair in Australian Indigenous Studies at the University of Melbourne, was also made an officer of the Order of Australia for “distinguished service to tertiary education, and as an advocate for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people”.

Langton said she was:

… very pleased to accept [the award] because it is a way of turning the tide on the historical racism and low expectations that typified an older Australia, and one which I hope we can leave behind.

More on this from Elias Visontay here.