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You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/live/2020/sep/23/coronavirus-australia-live-updates-nsw-testing-victoria-hotel-quarantine-health-business-economy-queensland-border
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| Coronavirus Australia live update: Victoria reports five deaths and 15 new Covid cases as NSW records six | |
| (32 minutes later) | |
| Premier Daniel Andrews hints restrictions will be eased in Melbourne on Sunday as NSW strives to boost testing. Follow all the day’s news live | |
| It’s also bi-visibility day, so happy day to all our bi-readers. | |
| You are valid and have nothing to explain to anyone. | |
| More people should learn Auslan. | |
| The ABS is looking at retail trade today. | |
| A 4% fall is A LOT (but it is mostly because the nation’s second largest economy had closed shop). | |
| The seasonally adjusted estimate fell 4.2% (-$1,276.3m) from July 2020 to August 2020. | |
| In seasonally adjusted terms, Australian turnover rose 6.9% in August 2020 compared with August 2019. This compares to an annual movement of 12.0% in July 2020. | |
| Included in the note: | |
| Victoria led the falls, down 12.6% compared to July 2020. Stage 4 restrictions in Melbourne, and stage 3 restrictions in regional Victoria, restricted trading for non-essential retail businesses. | |
| Excluding Victoria, the rest of Australia fell 1.5% from July 2020 to August 2020. | |
| All industries fell, primarily driven by the Victorian result, although there were falls in most states and territories. | |
| At the industry level, Household goods retailing led the falls, although sales in this industry remain 20% above the levels of August 2019. | |
| Clothing, footwear and personal accessory retailing, department stores, and cafes, restaurants and takeaway food services, also saw large monthly falls, with the largest falls recorded in Victoria. New South Wales saw a large fall in cafes, restaurants and takeaway food services. | |
| Food retailing saw a small fall, with mixed results amongst the states and territories. | |
| There is a bit of confusion over what ‘community transmission’ means in NSW. Casey here clears some of that up | |
| Here’s an interesting note from Westpac’s chief economist Bill Evans. | |
| Evans thinks the Reserve Bank will be cutting interest rates on the day of the federal budget. | |
| He says it will be a “Team Australia moment” because the RBA will be directly supporting a “bold” federal budget. | |
| Readers of this blog will already know that the official interest rate is already sitting at a historically low 0.25%. | |
| So how much more can the RBA cut? | |
| Well, Evans reckons the RBA will cut the cash rate to 0.1%. | |
| He also suspects it’ll adopt a 0.1% three-year bond target, and adjust the rate of any new drawdown of the Term Funding Facility to 0.1% – both of those rates are currently set at 0.25%. | |
| In the last 24 hours, Victoria police have issued a total of 83 fines to individuals for breaching the chief health officer directions, including: | |
| Eight for failing to wear a face covering when leaving home for one of the four approved reasons. | |
| Seven at vehicle checkpoints. | |
| Twenty for curfew breaches. | |
| 26,966 vehicles checked at the vehicle checkpoints. | |
| Conducted 1,863 spot checks on people at homes, businesses and public places across the state (total of 455,214 spot checks conducted since 21 March). | |
| Examples include: | |
| Seven people who were located in an apartment in Melbourne having ‘going away’ drinks. All seven people were issued with a fine. | |
| Four people who were located in a car which was parked at a sports centre in Greater Dandenong. None of the occupants in the vehicle were from the same household and did not have a valid reason for being together. All four were issued with a fine. | |
| What else happened in that hour? Daniel Hurst has the latest from Paul Fletcher: | |
| Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has taken time out from his campaign of hate against the state of Victoria to extend rules watering down what companies have to tell the stock market. | |
| The watered down provisions, which were greeted with dismay by investors, were part of the government’s war against class actions and were supposed to provide companies and their directors temporary relief during the coronavirus crisis and expire at the end of next month. | |
| But Frydenberg today extended them by another six months, to 23 March next year. | |
| The announcement was dropped to financial tabloid the Australian Financial Review yesterday, which rewarded the favour by giving the article a prime spot on, er, page 4. | |
| Investors are concerned that the watered down rules will allow companies to get away with avoiding telling the market about bad news. | |
| Frydenberg today defended the move, saying that “evidence to date shows that the temporary exemption has assisted companies to continue to update the market during this difficult and uncertain time”. | |
| Corporate Australia, which has been lobbying for the weaker rules to become permanent, will enjoy the extra six months of lax regulation. | |
| Class action lawyers and litigation funders were, unsurprisingly, unhappy. | |
| “This is a cynical use of Covid-19 to justify the long-held goal of reducing corporate accountability for misleading the market,” said Keep Corporations Honest spokesman Ben Hardwick, who is head of class actions at law firm Slater & Gordon. | |
| “The Morrison government’s decision to extend softer disclosure rules is a clear signal to corporate Australia to relax and get loose with the truth.” | |
| Moving on to New South Wales, there have been six new cases reported in the last 24 hours, but all are returned travellers in hotel quarantine. | |
| From NSW Health: | |
| Q: Premier, seeing as we’re ahead of schedule in terms of the 14-day average, will you consider lifting the curfew before the end of October? | Q: Premier, seeing as we’re ahead of schedule in terms of the 14-day average, will you consider lifting the curfew before the end of October? |
| Daniel Andrews: | Daniel Andrews: |
| Q: But there’s no health risk if someone wanted to exercise in the middle of the night, right? | Q: But there’s no health risk if someone wanted to exercise in the middle of the night, right? |
| Andrews: | Andrews: |