Key events
Ben Smee
The Queensland government will set-aside more than $500m for a series of new early childhood health and education initiatives, but advocates say kids from regional and remote communities will continue to fall through the cracks until the state addresses a critical shortage of care and support workers.
The premier, Steven Miles, says the state’s strategy, Putting Queensland Kids First, aims to better coordinate support for children in their early years.
Funding will go towards hearing checks for children aged under five, developmental support services in priority areas, family support coordinators in about 200 primary schools, and a partnership fund for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island community organisations.
“Health outcomes start to be determined from the moment of conception, so we will increase efforts directed at keeping mums and bubs healthy during pregnancy,” Miles said.
“Once babies are born, we will make sure they get the support and healthcare they need by sending dedicated nurses to their homes.”
The measures were broadly welcomed by Thrive by Five, an alliance of child developmental and support groups backed by Andrew Forrest’s Minderoo Foundation, but came with warnings that funding might be ineffective without measures to bolster the regional and remote workforce.
Tom Allsop, the alliance spokesman and CEO of PeakCare, said the announcement was a “massive day” for campaigners who had called for a dedicated state plan “for years”.
“However, if the … plan is to be successfully implemented, it must include a dedicated workforce plan to assist in the delivery of these programs,” Allsop said.
“Too many families – particularly those in regional and remote Queensland – are missing out on vital early learning and allied health services due to severe workforce shortages.
“We look forward to continuing to work with the government on ways to address these workforce shortages in the lead-up to this year’s state budget and the October election, ensuring we can guarantee the best possible outcomes for children, families, educators and other critical sector workers.
“Additionally, we urge all other political parties in Queensland to come to the table and commit to an early years plan ahead of October’s state election to ensure all children are provided with the best possible opportunity to thrive.”
Josh Butler
Drones being used to ensure released detainees are not living near schools, Murray Watt says
Watt went on to say again that drones are being used to monitor immigration detainees released under the NZYQ high court verdict. There had been confusion last week after the immigration minister, Andrew Giles, said drones were being used in the government’s response to that court judgement, but police and security agencies told SBS that they weren’t the ones operating the drones.
Watt said:
My understanding is that drones are being used as part of this operation, but more in the sense of monitoring the accommodation people are living in, for example, ensuring that it’s not too close to schools or other areas that they’re not supposed to be living close to.
So drones do form part of the operation that’s involved in monitoring these offenders, but more being done in an operational sense like that.”
The Insiders host, David Speers, questioned this activity, saying “you can use Google Maps to find if someone’s house is too close to a school.”
Watt responded by repeating his understanding that drones were being used in that way. He didn’t note which department or agency was operating those drones.
Watt’s name has been whispered as a potential new minister for home affairs, if there was to be a ministerial reshuffle. He shrugged off a question about whether he would like to switch jobs, saying he was happy in his current role as agriculture and emergency management minister, and supported the work of his colleagues.
“I think that Andrew Giles and [home affairs minister] Clare O’Neil have both performed incredibly strongly in a really difficult portfolio area,” Watt said.
“We need to remember the mess they inherited when we came to office. I mean, basically, they inherited a massive battleship that was off-course and had been torpedoed full of holes. They had to patch that up over the time they have been ministers.”
Josh Butler
Rewritten ministerial direction 99 to make community safety priority ‘absolutely crystal clear’, Watt says
A rewritten ministerial direction on deporting foreign-born criminals will prioritise “community safety” over their ties to Australia, cabinet minister Murray Watt has said.
The agriculture minister was on the ABC’s Insiders this morning, explaining more about the government’s moves to rewrite ministerial direction 99, the immigration rules at the heart of recent controversies where criminals have been allowed to stay in Australia.
Watt said the administrative appeals tribunal had interpreted direction 99 in a way the government hadn’t intended, and that a criminal’s ties to Australia had been considered highly. He said the government didn’t mean for “for community safety to be relegated below that as a priority. It was always our intention that community safety would be a primary consideration.”
What we’re doing now is making it absolutely crystal clear for the AAT and departmental officials interpreting it that community safety is to be the number one priority, more than anything else.
What would have been a mistake is if the government had said that we want to put duration of stay above community safety, and we didn’t do that.
The new direction is yet to be shared publicly.
Search continues for woman trapped after Sydney townhouse explosion
Authorities are searching for a missing person among the rubble of an explosion at a home in Whalan in Sydney’s west.
The blast on Waikanda Crescent levelled most of the two-storey home just before 1pm on Saturday, blowing out windows and damaging a neighbouring townhouse.
Rescue teams are still sifting through the remains, with one woman feared to be in the rubble.
NSW Fire and Rescue commissioner Jeremy Fewtrell said crews were hopeful to safely retrieve the person trapped.
“This is still well within the window for someone to survive,” he told reporters on Sunday morning.
The focus of effort is to really be exploring the building as thoroughly as we can try and make access to either physically inspect or, with the use of our tools, to inspect each possible area.
Fewtrell also said the rescue teams were hampered by a series of setbacks as the search continued through the night.
He said:
There’s been a range of complications throughout the operation.
The job of rescue (teams) is to work their way through and try and find spaces in that collapse area where someone might have been caught.
And so part of that work involves this sort of very manual labour of piece by piece, picking up the debris and moving that away.
Complications included a gas leak, safety concerns about how much work could happen at the site and fire underneath the rubble in the collapsed area.
Firefighters have been unable to directly reach the fire because of the debris, according to Fewtrell.
“But we are able to apply water onto that, the water obviously then drains down and suppresses the fire,” he said.
– with AAP
Good morning
Good morning. Mostafa Rachwani with you to take you through the news this Sunday – let’s dive in.
