Hi everyone. Thanks to Michael for his efforts today. I’ll be with you through the rest of the morning. That’s me done for the morning. I’ll hand you over now to my colleague Luke Henriques-Gomes. Thanks for reading. Novak Djokovic, the 17 time grand slam tennis champion, says he’s “opposed” to vaccination and would face a difficult choice if one became available for Covid-19. Reuters reports that during live Facebook chat with several fellow Serbian athletes, Djokovic, who most recently won the Australian Open in January, said he “wouldn’t want to be forced” to receive a vaccine. “Personally I am opposed to vaccination and I wouldn’t want to be forced by someone to take a vaccine in order to be able to travel,” Djokovic reportedly “But if it becomes compulsory, what will happen? I will have to make a decision. I have my own thoughts about the matter and whether those thoughts will change at some point, I don’t know. “Hypothetically, if the season was to resume in July, August or September, though unlikely, I understand that a vaccine will become a requirement straight after we are out of strict quarantine and there is no vaccine yet. In these extraordinary times, the Guardian’s editorial independence has never been more important. Because no one sets our agenda, or edits our editor, we can keep delivering quality, trustworthy, fact-checked journalism each and every day. Free from commercial or political bias, we can report fearlessly on world events and challenge those in power. Your support protects the Guardian’s independence. We believe every one of us deserves equal access to accurate news and calm explanation. No matter how unpredictable the future feels, we will remain with you, delivering high quality news so we can all make critical decisions about our lives, health and security – based on fact, not fiction. Support the Guardian from as little as $1 – and it only takes a minute. Thank you. Aboriginal people in remote communities under lockdown are still going without food and essentials, two weeks on from a meeting of the big supermarket chains and the federal government designed to sort it out, and after already enduring months of critical shortages due to the coronavirus pandemic. A coalition of 13 Aboriginal health, housing and medical organisations of the Northern Territory want the national cabinet to “immediately” guarantee an agreed proportion of essentials set aside for the independent suppliers of community stores. “We are getting daily reports of remote stores struggling to supply basic goods. Some stores are running out of fresh food three days after their weekly delivery,” CEO of the Aboriginal Medical Services Alliance of the NT, John Paterson said. “Small, community owned stores must suddenly meet 100% of people’s needs across a much greater range of products. In some stores this means a tripling of their usual orders. “In recent weeks the big supermarkets have responded to panic buying down south by sweeping up the bulk of goods from manufacturers and producers. Independent suppliers are struggling to get what they need for remote stores. “This issue can’t be solved through donated goods. It needs a systemic response from government,” Paterson said. The coalition wants a 20 per cent point-of-sale subsidy of essential food, cleaning and hygiene products, as well as winter bedding and clothing. “A direct consumer subsidy is the best way to guarantee that residents who are no longer able to shop around can afford the basics,” Paterson said. The NT coalition wants to stop people taking backroads into towns to buy the essential and affordable supplies they can’t get at home. “We urge the national cabinet to take action, before it is too late, because time is all remote Aboriginal communities have on their side in their fight against the virus. “We are all affected by this crisis, some more than others when it comes to accessing affordable food,” the CEO of the Central Australian Aboriginal Congress, Donna Ah Chee said. The minister for Indigenous Australians, Ken Wyatt has been sought for comment. After the initial meeting, Wyatt said there had been “immense goodwill” to resolve the problem but said the group would “meet again in two weeks time to see how the goodwill is translated into outcomes.” The national Covid-19 coordination commission has been asked to work with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) to monitor the cost of goods in remote communities. Victoria would have seen 650 deaths per day without restrictions: chief health officer Victoria’s chief health officer, Brett Sutton, has told media that according to modelling prepared for the health department shows that without the current restrictions in place 650 Victorians would have died each day at the peak of the virus, Sutton says the modelling, prepared by the Peter Doherty Institute, Monash University and the Victorian Health department shows “what might have occurred” if the state had maintained only case isolation. He says Victoria would have had 58,000 infections per day at the peak, and would have required 7,000 ventilated hospital beds. It would have peaked at 650 deaths per day, so not dissimilar to what’s being seen across Europe in a number of countries ... You can see that Victoria has taken a different trajectory. We did, along with all the states and territories of Australia, take an early robust measure with the physical distancing restrictions in place. It has pushed our curve on a very different path way than other countries. But Andrews again says it’s too early to think about re-opening bars or restaurants, though he does flag the possibility of relaxing some rules. I want to make it clear though that the notion that pubs are opening any time soon, restaurants, bars, cafes - I don’t think that will be [happening]. The risk will be far greater than any reward. I think there are some areas where we might be able to make changes in around the way people interact, around some of the ... social measures ... I’m trying to give people a sense that there is hope here. These numbers are good. This strategy is working. It’s as much to avoid the alternative as it is to then relax all these rules. That would be exactly the wrong thing to do. Victorian premier Daniel Andrews, who is having a busy morning, has been updating the media after earlier announcing only one new case of Covid-19 in his state in the past 24 hours. Andrews says it’s too early to talk about rolling back restrictions on movement, but that the National Cabinet tomorrow will discuss what the “prerequisites” for roll-backs should look like. National Cabinet tomorrow will have a discussion about some of the prerequisites for relaxing any of the rules. That means you have to have the right amount of testing being done, the right number of coronavirus detections, the contract tracing [so that] if there is an outbreak in a given community, you can have a squad as it were go in there and lock the community down so you don’t get another that runs rampant. We saw in north-west Tasmania how quickly these things can get away from us. We see every day tragically what is occurring in so many parts of the world. Let’s take a quick look at what the newspapers are reporting today. The big news, which you can read about here, is that Facebook and Google will be forced to share advertising revenue with Australian media companies after the treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, instructed the competition watchdog to develop a mandatory code of conduct for the digital giants amid a steep decline in advertising brought on by the coronavirus pandemic. It’s the splash on most of the major mastheads including Nine’s Sydney Morning Herald and the Age, the West Australia, the Courier Mail, the Herald Sun and Sydney’s Daily Telegraph. The Hobart Mercury has a “virus hell” story about a couple who were stranded on board a Coronavirus-stricken cruise ship, while the Canberra Times has a special edition thanking frontline healthcare workers. Daniel Andrews cautions against relaxing restrictions, saying situation "very fragile" In Victoria, where only one new Covid-19 case was recorded overnight, the premier Daniel Andrews has warned it will be some time still before life returns to some kind of normality. Speaking to Melbourne radio station 3AW Andrews said that while it was a “positive result” the situation was still “very, very fragile”. With Victoria’s state of emergency in place until at least late May, he said the state had to “stay the course”. “It’s not just a theory, there are countries who have relaxed the rules and now they’re in a harder lockdown because it [the virus] moves so fast,” Andrews said. “If [the virus] gets away there’s no pulling it back and then we have people using machines to breathe and we can’t have that happen.” He also talked down the possibility that cafes, restaurants and bars could reopen in the near future. “They were closed for a reason. There might be some things we can do, some rules we can let off a little bit, but we have to be careful,” Andrews said. Queensland tells NSW to "back right off" over Virgin Airlines bailout conditions Hoo boy. And some fighting words from the Queensland minister for state development Cameron Dick over some comments from the New South Wales treasurer Dominic Perrottet yesterday on Virgin Airlines. Perrottet told Sky News on Sunday that NSW would consider a bailout for the beleaguered airline if it based itself at the new western Sydney airport. “Virgin should have their headquarters for both Virgin and Tiger in Sydney,” Perrottet told Sky on Sunday night. The premier, Gladys Berejiklian, echoed that this morning, though she did not provide any details on what a potential bailout for the company would look like. Virgin is currently based in Brisbane, and Dick has not held back in blasting NSW, telling his southern counterparts to “back right off”. Dick said no one fought like “a Queenslanders with their backs to the wall” and that NSW could “bring a pea gun to the fight, we’ll bring a bazooka”. “Back right off. Just don’t go there,” Dick said. “There is nothing more dangerous than Queenslanders with their backs to the wall.” Not totally sure what that means, but reading between the lines it seems the Queensland government is not too happy with their NSW counterparts this morning. Queensland premier "overjoyed" as state reports no new cases of Covid-19 in past 24 hours Big news out of Queensland, where the premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has just announced no new cases of Covid-19 in the past 24 hours. She says she’s “overjoyed” by the result and flags easing of restrictions in the coming weeks. This is an absolutely tremendous effort, so our total still sits at 1,019 and if we can keep this up, over the coming weeks, I’m sure that that is going to mean that we will be able to make some changes and ease some of those restrictions on the populations. So thank you Queensland for the enormous effort you are doing. This is tremendous news but we want to see this over a period of weeks and I just, I’m overjoyed we’ve seen this result. The head of the Australian Medical Association, Tony Bartone, has told Seven’s Sunrise program this morning that a major delivery of personal protective equipment announced by health minister Greg Hunt on Sunday should allow elective surgery to resume. Yesterday Hunt said he believed elective surgeries and IVF could continue sooner than previously expected. Certainly, the shortage of masks is one of the reasons why elective surgery was put on hold. It was also about ensuring that we had bed capacity and we had the time to prepare for that Covid-19 surge in demand. We’ve been so successful so far that that’s given us the opportunity now to plan a sensible, safe, graduated return into the low-risk procedures which provide clinical benefit to patients and allow us to not ensure we don’t have, you know, ramping up waiting lists when we come out of the Covid-19 crisis. Just briefly, opposition leader Anthony Albanese has confirmed in a commercial radio interview this morning that he was not one of the people who received a leaked copy of former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull’s book. We revealed yesterday that lawyers acting for Turnbull’s publisher had fired off a letter to a staff member in Scott Morrison’s office alleging he hd been “responsible for unauthorised distribution of my client’s book”. The staff member has since apologised, but it seems the book was shared widely among journalists and MPs before its release. But Albanese says he wasn’t one of the recipients. I did not. I am not on the prime minister’s office’s email list, obviously. But it seems to be a pretty childish thing to do and I am not surprised that it’s been taken seriously by the publishers. You can read the full story from yesterday here: A new report out from the Grattan Institute today warns Australia’s unemployment rate could go as high as 16% due to Covid-19. The report says that in the weeks ahead as many as 28% of Australians could be out of work, although the impact of the wage replacement schemes will keep the official unemployment rate lower. The first of two planes repatriating Australians stranded overseas has landed in Adelaide, the Advertiser reports. The aircraft, carrying 374 passengers, landed at a largely deserted Adelaide Airport at 7.20am. A second flight will arrive tomorrow.