Australia news LIVE Victoria begins earthquake cleanup as protests poised to continue NSW COVID-19 cases grow

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Prime Minister Scott Morrison says he will attempt to mend fences in a phone call with French President Emmanuel Macron “when the time is right”.

France has recalled its Canberra ambassador after Australia struck a new submarine deal with the US and ended its $90 billion contract with France.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison and US Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in Washington earlier today. Credit:AP

“The opportunity for that call is not yet. But we’ll be patient,” Mr Morrison said at a press conference from Washington.

“We understand their disappointment ... it was a difficult decision. It was a very difficult decision. And, of course, we had to weigh up what would be the obvious disappointment to France.

“But at the end of the day, as a government, we have to do what is right for Australia and serve Australia’s national security interests. And I will always choose Australia’s national security interests first.”

France has agreed to return its US ambassador after President Joe Biden had a phone call with Mr Macron.

“The nature of the issues we’re dealing with are different, of course,” Mr Morrison said.

“Australia decided not to proceed with a very significant defence contract. And, understandably, we know that France is disappointed about that.”

Prime Minister Scott Morrison says he has received “overwhelming support” for the country’s new defence partnership with the UK and US which will allow Australia to build nuclear-powered submarines.

He is speaking to reporters from Washington DC after he and US president Joe Biden earlier this week sat down for their highly anticipated one-on-one meeting.

“We received overwhelming support when it came to Australia moving ahead to establish a nuclear submarine fleet for Australia, to ensure that we could contribute to the peace and stability of the Indo-Pacific,” Mr Morrison said.

“There is great enthusiasm for us going ahead with these projects whether it’s from the Secretary of Defense, the bipartisan support that was on display today up on Capitol Hill, both at House and at Senate level.

“In the Congress there is an overwhelming sentiment towards Australia.”

SES Chief Officer Tim Wiebusch was speaking on Seven’s breakfast show Sunrise a short while ago.

He said he has received reports that one person was injured in yesterday’s earthquake.

The man was a construction worker working on some repairs when, “in the shaking, [objects] moved and came on top” of him.

“Fortunately, only relatively minor injuries,” Mr Wiebusch said.

“There weren’t too many parts of Victoria that didn’t feel it yesterday. Melbourne [felt it] quite hard, we had 95 calls in Melbourne, we had 50 in regional Victoria.”

Mansfield mayor Mark Holcombe, who lives near the earthquake’s epicentre in regional Victoria, said it was lucky no one in his community was hurt.

“There was just some minor structural things,” he said.

“Beams cracked, rocks fell out of walls. There is a house in one of the outlying areas where part of the wall fell down. But that was it. We are very lucky.”

Almost two-thirds of people in NSW support the plan to reopen when the double dose vaccination rate hits 70 per cent, as the state government plans for the final stages of the path to freedom.

NSW is on track to hit its target of 70 per cent in about three weeks, and Premier Gladys Berejiklian said the government had turned its focus to the next road map when the state hits 80 per cent.

As NSW prepares to emerge from lockdown, 17 per cent of voters are opposed to easing restrictions, according to an exclusive survey for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age by research company Resolve Strategic. The polling reveals 65 per cent of people support opening up when vaccination rates hit 70 per cent.

As of midnight Monday, NSW’s double dose vaccination rate hit 54. 2 per cent, with the 70 per cent target likely to be reached about October 11. The number of first doses had reached 83 per cent.

Read more about the polling here.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison is about to speak from Washington in the United States.

Watch live below.

At least one building worker has already been sacked after attending Monday’s violent protest outside the CFMEU headquarters in Melbourne, and he has accused the construction union of pressuring his employers to lay him off.

A worker from a CBD construction site who attended Monday’s protests told The Age on condition of anonymity that he was sacked on Tuesday morning. He said he was not opposed to vaccination and had not been violent at the protest.

CFMEU secretary John Setka addressing workers outside the union’s Melbourne headquarters in Melbourne on Monday, before the protest turned violent.Credit:AAP

He said his employer had called him and told him he had no choice but to remove him from the job as the Construction, Forestry, Maritime, Mining and Energy Union had threatened the business with loss of trade if he did not comply. Several other workers had also been laid off for attending, the worker said, which has been confirmed by this masthead.

Yesterday, CFMEU secretary John Setka said anyone involved in the protest “may as well go pick fruit in Mildura somewhere because they will not be working in our industry”.

Read the full story here.

Tens of thousands of retired doctors, nurses, psychologists and dentists have been asked to bolster NSW’s pandemic frontline as surging hospitalisations stretch health systems and staff shortages hit critical workforces.

Australia’s medical watchdog on Wednesday doubled the number of practitioners on its pandemic sub-registers to more than 55,000 health professionals who have retired or stopped work but are now eligible to return to practice.

NSW is also calling for help from interstate doctors and nurses as the system braces for a spike in COVID-19 hospitalisations and ICU admissions in October, with hospitals expected to be “technically overwhelmed”.

This comes as a second major COVID-19 outbreak is unfolding at Sydney’s Liverpool Hospital, with 24 patients testing positive in the past week.

More on the situation in NSW’s hospitals here.

Victoria’s education unions have almost universally backed a state government move to mandate coronavirus vaccines for teachers and childcare workers, but an organisation representing Christian schools has warned the sector faces “significant challenges” with the order.

As an ugly dispute over a decision to mandate jabs in the construction sector triggered protests for a third day, state Education Minister James Merlino announced vaccinations would be compulsory for all staff at schools and early childhood centres.

Victorian Education Minister James Merlino addresses the media on Wednesday.Credit:Scott McNaughton

“Anyone who works on site at schools or early childhood settings, they will not be able to work on site if they are not vaccinated,” Mr Merlino said at yesterday’s coronavirus update.

He said staff must have their first dose by October 18 or have a booking within a week of that date.

Read the full story here.

Good morning and thanks for following our live coverage.

It’s Thursday, September 23. I’m Broede Carmody and I’ll bring you some of the biggest stories for the first half of the day.

Here’s everything you need to know before we get started.

Anti-mandatory vaccine and lockdown protesters have vowed to return to Melbourne’s streets this morning, despite police arresting hundreds of demonstrators yesterday. It comes as Victorians are told to expect aftershocks after yesterday’s magnitude 5.9 earthquake that was felt across swaths of Australia’s east coast (the largest earthquake ever recorded on land in Victoria). No injuries have been reported so far, but there have been hundreds of requests for assistance related to structural damage and lost power. Yesterday, Victoria recorded 623 locally acquired cases of COVID-19 and three deaths. Coronavirus vaccines will now be mandatory for teachers and childcare workers and residents of Ballarat are now out of lockdown.

Thousands of retired health workers have been asked to bolster NSW’s pandemic frontline. It comes as new research shows almost two-thirds of people in the state support the Berejiklian government’s plan to reopen when the 70 per cent double dose vaccination target is met. Yesterday, NSW recorded 1035 new cases of COVID-19 and five deaths. Residents of the Albury, Lismore, Gilgandra and Brewarrina local government areas are waking up to their first day out of a snap lockdown.

Queensland recorded one new local case of COVID-19 yesterday. But Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said the new case was linked to an existing cluster and was detected in home quarantine, so is not of concern. Both Qld and Western Australia have opened eligibility to the Pfizer vaccine to people aged 60 and over.

The ACT recorded 17 new cases of COVID-19 yesterday. The majority of new cases were infectious in the community. Twelve people are in hospital and two people are on ventilators in intensive care.

And in overseas news, it appears US President Joe Biden and his French counterpart Emanuel Macron have eased tensions somewhat after Australia cancelled its $90 billion European submarine deal in favour of a new contract with the United States. The French ambassador, who was previously recalled from Washington, will now return to the US capital.

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