Australian Covid-19 news: NRL announces it will restart play on 28 May – as it happened

We’re closing our Covid-19 live coverage for the night. Thanks from me, Graham Readfearn, and from my colleagues Calla Wahlquist, Josh Taylor and Amy Remeikis who have been delivering live coverage here over the past 13 hours.

You can follow the Guardian’s global live coverage of the pandemic here.

Here’s a summary of today’s main stories:

• Australia’s death toll from Covid-19 rose by two to 74. NSW health authorities confirmed this morning a man, 75, had died in St George hospital, and a woman, 80, had died in Gosford hospital.
• By 3pm this afternoon, Australia had a total of 6,649 confirmed cases of Covid-19, with 4,761 people recovered.
• Wednesday was another day of very low cases numbers reported by states and territories. NSW reported the highest with five. Queensland had a second day with no new cases.
• The energy minister, Angus Taylor, said Australia would stockpile $100m of fuel to take advantage of the plummeting global oil price.
• The NRL said its season would restart on 28 May and teams would start training on 4 May.
• The competition regulator gave retailers permission to collectively negotiate with landlords about rent during the coronavirus crisis.
• The Australian Bureau of Statistics said retail turnover had gone up by 8.2% in March with strong sales across supermarkets and liquor retailing.
  
• Sydney’s Bondi, Bronte and Tamarama beaches will reopen from next Tuesday.

Thanks for being with us. We’ll be back with more live coverage tomorrow. Stay safe and stay sensible.

Terrible news on the crash on Melbourne’s Eastern Freeway. Four on-duty police officers have died.

Read the full report here:

It’s Jimmy Barnes time again.

The rock legend has been releasing sweet musical treats from his lounge room. However, tonight he is playing the bagpipes (I’m joking, I love bagpipes).

South Australia is encouraging children to return to school for term 2, starting on Monday 27 April.

There’s been a major multi-vehicle crash on Melbourne’s Eastern Freeway. The road is closed in both directions and police are telling people to avoid the route.

Police vehicles are reportedly involved, and there are unconfirmed reports the crash may have been fatal.

22 Apr 202005.21 EDT

Michael McGowan

A little earlier this afternoon the NRL announced it would “definitely” resume its season on 28 May. The league says teams will start training from 4 May. But there are lots of unanswered questions over the announcement.

In a press conference, Wayne Pearce, the Balmain legend tasked with heading up the league’s grandly titled “Project Apollo” to get the season running again, said the NRL had achieved “a lot more clarity around the medical process and what those protocols are” and that “government authorities” were “very supportive” of their plans.

What he didn’t say was what those protocols were, and which government authorities the league has been talking to. Basically, who in the government has given the league sign-off to begin playing again?

I’ve been trying to find out this afternoon, with little joy.

We know that the NSW police commissioner, Mick Fuller, who is in charge of the state’s response to Covid-19, previously wrote to the NRL chairman Peter V’landys saying there was no legal obstacle for the NRL’s plans to resume playing despite strict public health orders.

That’s because the league was given an exemption under the original PHOs issued last month, and stopped playing matches voluntarily.

However in the letter Fuller also said the league would have to develop protocols to demonstrate it could resume safely. The premier, Gladys Berejiklian, said something similar when she was asked about it last week.

So who has signed off on the protocols? NSW Health still hasn’t responded to my queries, and the NSW police seems to think there’s nothing to be signed off on.

Here’s what a spokeswoman told me:

As far as we are aware, there is nothing to be ‘signed-off’. The commissioner has stated previously that the letter was advice in response to their inquiry. I don’t have anything further to provide you.

Perhaps we’ll hear more from the NSW government later tonight or tomorrow, but it seems odd that neither the NRL nor the state government has explained who is in charge of making this decision.

The NRL is also still awaiting clearance from the federal and New Zealand governments for the New Zealand Warriors to arrive in Australia on May 3, a day before the rest of the competition resumes training.

The Queensland premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, has also previously said she would not look kindly on the three teams from her state travelling back and forth to NSW for matches.

Need a distraction from Covid-19? Bit of a night owl? Like shooting stars?

Well, if you’re still up at midnight and you can get a view of the skies to the northeast, you might catch the Lyrids meteor shower.

People have been seeing the Lyrids – debris from Comet Thatcher – for more than 2,700 years. The further north you are in Australia, the better your chances are of seeing them.

But you can look here to find out if you’ll be able to see them where you are.

Don’t go anywhere or do anything that the current movement restrictions wouldn’t allow you to do. Give your eyes a chance to get used to the dark and stare at the northeast sky.

22 Apr 202004.24 EDT

Josh Taylor

Another interesting discussion arising from Victorian health minister Jenny Mikakos’ press conference is the split between public and private health for elective surgery.

They’ve agreed to allow around 25% of elective surgeries to now take place from next week. That includes private hospitals, but the state government paid private hospitals to provide capacity to the public system in the event it is needed as a result of coronavirus.

In any case, it sounds now like people on the public wait list for elective surgeries could get preferential treatment over people waiting for surgery in the private hospital system because the state government bought capacity in the private system.

It will depend on the surgery, however. Mikakos noted that some of the procedures that will now be allowed, eg IVF or dental work, could still largely be happening in the private system.

When she was asked what the point was, then, of having private health insurance at a time like this when you’re not getting any benefit out of it, she said part of the government funding for the private sector was to keep the private hospitals running at this time.

Good evening. Graham Readfearn here taking you through the final hours of our live coronavirus coverage.

A quick check around the updates from states and territories today shows very low numbers of new cases of Covid-19 being reported.

There were no new cases reported by Queensland, Western Australia, Northern Territory or the ACT. New South Wales had five and South Australia and Tasmania both reported one new case each.

Victoria did record two new cases, but took two cases off as they were reclassified to other states. So that’s no net gain for Victoria.

Coronavirus has also affected the live cattle export trade out of northern Australia, with the two biggest markets, Indonesia and Vietnam, reporting the biggest price crash since 2011.

That crash was caused by the Four Corners exposé.

This is from ABC Rural:

The Indonesian feeder steer price out of Darwin, is sitting at around $2.60 a kilogram, which is well down on the record $4 a kilo that was paid just last month.

It means a 350-kilogram steer which last month was worth up to $1,400, is now valued at just over $900.

And with that, I’ll hand over to my colleague Graham Readfearn.

Stay well, and if you buy a new bike remember to only accelerate going out of a corner and not into one.

More than 40 Aboriginal people in Western Australia have tested positive to Covid-19, according to Prof Fiona Stanley from the Telethon Kids Institute.

Speaking to the Australian Academy of science, Stanley said:

At the moment there are probably over 40 cases of Aboriginal people that have been identified… all of them are either in cities or urban centres…

Stanley said Aboriginal people who test positive in remote communities have a lower chance of survival, because “there aren’t any respirators out there, no intensive care.”

It’s a long way. And to actually take someone by Royal Flying Doctor Service from a remote community to a centre when they’re very, very ill, may be a death sentence. So I think it would be devastating and the people who would die are the people who they want not to die most, the Elders, the older ones with the morbidities and so on.

Stanley said the lack of available health services for Aboriginal people would be “almost a joke if it wasn’t so very serious.” There are about 850,0000 Aboriginal people in Australia, of whom about 90,000 live in WA.

So the challenge is then, to really get the Aboriginal-controlled health services, who are all around the country, to get together and empower them so that we’ve got all the capacity to both prevent, monitor and then treat Aboriginal people who may develop COVID-19.

Stanley said the pandemic had “exposed our appalling inability to actually improve Aboriginal health outcomes” but she hoped it would lead to more Aboriginal people being trained as health professionals.

Aboriginal people, when given this training and education, have the capacity to implement it very effectively. It might actually end up that we have much better ways of working with Aboriginal people than we have in the past …

And I do think if we can give them a national voice, this is about the best example I can think of. If we can do this with Covid-19 guys, we could do this forever, you know? So the most important thing is to really give Aboriginal people a voice, and I mean power. I mean funding. I mean partnerships that give them the power and we’re the sort of people who just help along.”

Delighted, and slightly worried, that the Greens have agreed with my driving advice.

A mural of Ai Fen, one of the first doctors to raise the alarm about a novel coronavirus in Wuhan, China, has been painted in Melbourne by artist Amanda Newman.

View image in fullscreen

You may have noticed I misattributed an earlier press release from the office of Greens leader Adam Bandt to former Greens leader Richard Di Natale. Apologies, Adam.

Have you bought a bicycle since lockdown began?

You would not be alone. Bikes are, according to one bike retailer, “the new toilet paper”.

Grant Kaplan, manager of Giant Sydney, a bike store in Sydney, told Guardian Australia’s Justine Landis-Hanley:

We can’t keep up with sales. Literally the phone is ringing nonstop.

I have not panic bought a bike but I am monitoring an online horse auction so probably can’t talk.

The manager of a south Melbourne bike store told Justine:

Families are sick of walking everywhere as their form of exercise. The kids are home from school or being home-schooled. If you go to a football oval and there are lots of people already there, you can’t go on [due to social distancing measures].

But on your bike you are exercising and practicing social distancing.

Read the full story here.

22 Apr 202002.47 EDT

Ben Butler

ACCC allows retailers to collectively negotiate rents

The competition regulator has given retailers permission to collectively negotiate with landlords about rent during the coronavirus crisis.

With many shops closed, and those that do remain open hit by a dramatic fall in revenue as shoppers stay home, how much rent should — or can — be paid has become a major battleground between retailers and landlords.

Some retailers, including Solomon Lew’s Premier Investments group, have unilaterally stopped paying rent while their shops are closed.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said it has authorised the Australian Retail Association and its members to negotiate rents collectively and to:

...share information relevant to the negotiations including in relation to requests by landlords for certain information as part of considering and negotiating support to be provided in the context of Covid-19.

Said ACCC chairman Rod Sims:

We see a clear public benefit in allowing retailers to work together in the negotiations with landlords as it will help those tenants who are experiencing financial hardship during this pandemic to reach a fair outcome.

It’s the latest in a series of authorisations issued by the ACCC allowing conduct that would normally be against the law because it was anti-competitive.