Covidsafe phone app legislation passes lower house – as it happened

• The treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, is self-isolating and being tested for Covid-19 after a coughing fit in parliament as he delivered an economic statement in lieu of the delayed federal budget.
• That update showed GDP is forecast to fall by more than 10% in the June quarter, the largest on record, and unemployment will reach around 10%, or 1.4 million people.
• The assistant treasurer, Michael Sukkar, said Frydenberg was “just a bit run down”, and the finance minister, Mathias Cormann, said the treasurer had not shown any signs of illness.
• China has suspended imports from four big Australian abattoirs, but trade minister Simon Birmingham said it was a “technical” issue.
• The foreign minister, Marise Payne, said she was not consulted before George Christensen announced he wanted to summon the Chinese ambassador to face questions before a parliamentary committee.
• Eight new cases have been diagnosed linked to the Cedar Meats abattoir, taking the total to 85.
  
• The AFL announced that every player and staff member must undergo a Covid-19 swab test before resuming full-contact training next week.

We’ll be closing the liveblog for today. Thanks for reading along – we’ll be back tomorrow morning with more.

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Stay safe and see you tomorrow.

The results have been announced for the Greens membership vote on how to elect the party’s future leaders.

In short, the party members want a change to the system, but are undecided on what form.

The plebiscite of Greens members put forward three options: keeping the current model where only elected federal MPs get to vote, a hybrid model where rank-and-file member votes count for 50% and the MPs count for 50% (which is what federal Labor use), or moving to one member one vote – which would effectively be 100% rank-and-file votes.

It was split into three options: one member one vote or no change; 50/50 or no change; and one member one vote or 50/50.

A supermajority of 66.67% for any option was required to force change.

62% of members voted for one member one vote against 38% for the current model.

62.56% of members voted for the 50/50 model against 37.44% for the current model.

And when asked to pick between one member one vote and the 50/50 model, the votes were split 49.05% to 50.95%.

Out of 13,143 eligible members, 6,065 voted (a 46.15% participation rate).

Labor and the Greens are pressuring the government to reform jobseeker to include universities and entities owned by foreign governments, like airline caterer Dnata, which used to be owned by Qantas but is now owned by the United Arab Emirates government.

12 May 202006.00 EDT

App privacy legislation passes lower house

Daniel Hurst

The bill to put in place data protections around the Covidsafe phone app has now passed the House of Representatives.

The lower house passed the bill just before 7.30pm. It passed “on the voices” rather than with a division where all votes are recorded.

Labor supported the bill but the shadow attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, had moved an amendment urging the government to take a series of steps to build confidence in the Covidsafe app, including explaining why Amazon Web Services had been chosen to host the data and steps taken to protect that data.

The amendment – which failed – also called on the government to provide additional funding to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner and appoint a standalone privacy commissioner “to ensure that the commissioner is able to properly perform the important oversight functions provided for in this bill”.

But Dreyfus thanked the government for making a number of changes to the earlier draft bill to address a number of concerns he had raised.

“For example, there is now greater clarity about what data is protected by the strict privacy safeguards contained in the bill,” he said.

The attorney general, Christian Porter, told parliament earlier today the bill “guarantees that the Australian public can have confidence that their privacy will be protected if they download and use Covidsafe”. He said an increase in the uptake would help the states and territories trace outbreaks and combat the spread of Covid-19.

The bill now moves to the Senate.

Cormann says it is “very hard to predict” when the budget will be back in surplus.

Leigh Sales asks him why the government and the Reserve Bank’s prognosis on GDP is so rosy, compared to previous recessions.

Sales: “In the 1991 recession, GDP fell by about 1.4% and it took the economy about a year to recover to back to where it was. Now we’re looking at at least seven times that fall in Australia’s GDP, but the Reserve Bank assumption is that it might only take a couple of years to recover.

“Why such an optimistic outlook against such a pessimistic and uncertain background?

Cormann says “the fundamentals of the Australian economy were sound as we were going into this crisis”.

“Once those restrictions can be lifted, businesses will go back into doing what they do best ... it is important to note that many businesses in their battle to survive have pursued amazing innovation and adaption strategies which will stand them in good stead on the other side.”

The finance minister, Mathias Cormann, is on the ABC’s 7.30 tonight after the treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, pulled out as he is being tested for coronavirus.

Cormann says that Frydenberg did not show signs of illness before his coughing fit.

“I think that all of us are perhaps a bit exhausted,” he says. “I spoke to the treasurer about an hour or so ago and he sounded perfectly fine.”

He is then asked if Frydenberg had any meetings or close contact with other members of the government recently.

“I can’t speak for anybody else but we have been meeting by tele-presence and from different rooms, electronically,” Cormann says.

“He certainly hasn’t been in close proximity to me. I’m not aware if he has been in close proximity to others.”

In what is becoming a common scene, there were long lines of international students waiting for donated meals today.

This footage was shot in Sydney where restaurants in Chinatown are offering free meals to students who have lost jobs and aren’t eligible for jobseeker or jobkeeper.

12 May 202004.34 EDT

Mike Hytner

Nathan Cleary, the Penrith Panther banned and fined by the NRL for being “untruthful” during the league’s investigation into his social distancing breach, has apologised.

“I’m obviously embarrassed with myself and I’m not happy with what I’ve done,” he told the club’s website. “I just to want to apologise for my actions. My actions were irresponsible, selfish and pretty stupid, to be honest.

“I brought a lot of negative attention to not only myself, but my family, the club, the game as well, and that’s what has hurt me the most.

“To move on from here I need to realise I can’t change what has already happened, even though I wish I could. The reality is I can’t. The one thing I can control are my actions moving forward.”

In a departure from the usual mea culpas from NRL players, Cleary then quoted the American theologian Tryon Edwards, before adding the experience had been a “massive learning curve”.

“Someone sent me a quote the other day that said, ‘Good actions in the future are the best apologies for bad actions in the past,’ ” he said. “And that’s what I’ll be taking on board. It’s a massive learning curve for me. I’ve learnt a lot about myself and I never want to go through this again.

“This could be the moment I can kick on, especially as a leader and as a person and become better. That’s the positive I’m taking out of this, if there is any.”

Cleary will miss the Panthers’ first two games once the season gets back under way, and was fined $30,000 by the NRL.

Victoria has announced 17 new coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours, including eight at the Cedar Meats abattoir.

That means there have been 85 cases linked to the meat processing facility.

There is also a new case in a cluster at a McDonald’s in Fawkner, in Melbourne’s north, taking that total number to three; 92 staff have been tested and the restaurant has been closed for cleaning, the health department said.

Two people who were previously classified as positive have also been removed from the overall total.

The state’s chief health officer, Prof Brett Sutton, said this showed the “battle against Covid-19 is far from over”.

“We are asking Victorians to continue this amazing effort and get tested if they have symptoms, because the more tests we do, the more data we have about the prevalence of coronavirus in the community,” he said.

The department also said “the time it takes to complete a test is improving” due to increased capacity, but it still takes between 24 hours and three days.

Fifteen laboratories in the state are analysing swabs.