Philip Lowe says the RBA is hoping it can revise its hours worked downturn forecast to something more positive - 15% instead of a 20% downturn. We will see further declines in jobs. They will not be as stark as the declines we saw in April. I think the worst of it was the period up until mid- to late-April. Since then, there has been some stabilisation. In certain parts of the economy there has been a recovery in jobs. When we put out our statement on monetary policy in early May, we were expecting a decline in total hours worked in the economy of 20%. So a staggering number. As they’ve come in, they’re progressively revising that number. I don’t have a firm estimate for you, but I’m hoping now that it will be not that declining but more 15%. It will be staggering but as the data has come in we’ve progressively likely downward. This is a very good move, and one which will help a lot of people: Today, AUSTRAC announced a change to the AML/CTF customer ID and verification Rule to help people experiencing family and domestic violence. Under the rule, if a customer cannot produce their driver’s license or birth certificate, or show a different address, banks and other regulated businesses can use alternative ways to verify their customer’s identity. Financial abuse is a form of family and domestic violence and will be experienced by over 2 million Australians over their life-time, with 63% of women experiencing financial stress having a background of financial abuse. The abuser uses violence and intimidation to restrict access to a person’s bank accounts, prevent them from working or accessing benefits, or withholds living expenses from them or their children. AUSTRAC CEO, Ms Nicole Rose PSM said having a bank account independent of an abuser is essential for those who are leaving or have left an abusive relationship. This rule supports our regulated businesses to uphold their AML/CTF obligations while adopting a flexible approach to customer identity processes. AUSTRAC collaborated on the Rule change with the Australian Banking Association (ABA) and the Australian Israel Chamber of Commerce (AICC) NSW who initiated the project and identified the opening of bank accounts as a significant barrier. AUSTRAC consulted with the financial sector and community organisations including family violence services, community legal services and financial counselling services, many of who offer frontline services to people experiencing family violence and financial abuse. A reminder that the ABC is about to undergo more cuts as well, because of cuts to its recurrent funding. Regional and rural communities are losing their voices all over Australia. 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. The Senate committee looking at the Covid response has Phil Lowe, the RBA governor, in front of it today, along with heads of Apra and Asic. Together the troika make up what the business calls “the Regulators” (capital R) but in the least Warren G way possible. Lots more people are getting the flu vaccine this year, which is great, but GPs fear they are missing out on their allocation for their patients. The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners wants the government to prioritise GP clinics when distributing the stockpile: In a survey in April 2020 of more than 1,100 GPs from every state and territory in Australia, 55% reported that they were unable to access enough stock to provide flu vaccinations to their patients. The RACGP president, Dr Harry Nespolon, said the delay many patients faced to get their flu vaccine this year was unacceptable and needed to be urgently addressed: The problem was never that there was shortage of the flu vaccine. The government secured enough of the special flu vaccine for over-65s, who are more vulnerable, for everyone in the country, and we commended them for this. The problem is with the distribution of the flu vaccine and it has been a problem for a long time. Every year we see the same issue – the vaccine comes too slowly to GP clinics and we don’t get enough of it for our patients. This year we saw increased demand due to the Covid-19 pandemic. We were glad to see people heeding our advice – the RACGP and other medical bodies advised people to get their vaccine earlier than usual to prevent the double whammy of the flu and Covid-19 and reduce pressure on the health system. We could not have anticipated this pandemic but we learned a big lesson from it when we saw the impact it had on patients getting their flu shot – the cracks in the distribution system gaped open and many people had to wait far too long. Queensland Health authorities still don’t know how Nathan Turner, the youngest person to die in Australia having tested positive for Covid-19, contracted the virus. A second postmortem test for coronavirus tested negative, but authorities have discounted that test, as it was contaminated “with quite a lot of blood”. The coroner is investigating the death. His partner remains in isolation, with symptoms of the virus. No one has tested positive for Covid in Queensland in the last 24 hours. Queensland’s chief medical officer, Dr Jeannette Young, says more Queenslanders need to come forward for testing, for restrictions to be lifted: For us to go forward and to lift those very onerous restrictions that have been in place now, we must do more testing. We have the capacity in Queensland to test 10,000 Queenslanders every single day. We have not even reached half of that number, so I implore Queenslanders, if you have any symptoms at all, or a fever of 37.5 degrees Celsius or above, or a history of fever, then please come forward and get tested. There’s a number of reasons for that. First, it is vitally important for you. Although we don’t have an effective pharmaceutical treatment, or a drug treatment for this virus, we do have really, really good supportive care we can offer here in Queensland. We know of the 15 people who’ve been admitted to ICU in Queensland, 14 have survived, because we have great treatment available. So please, come forward and get tested for your own sake. Come forward and get tested for your family’s sake, because we know the most likely transmission is within a household. So if we can test you, we can stop you spreading it to other people if you have them in your household. And come forward for your community’s sake. Because then, if you have got a case, we can contact-trace around you and make sure we don’t end up with an outbreak. This is really, really important, as we lift restrictions going forward. News Corp slashes jobs across regional and community titles There were 1,200 jobs in News Corp’s regional and community titles. In the press release announcing the changes to the publishing business, there will be 375 journalists left to cover regional and community news. The loss to those communities is immeasurable. That is a lot of stories which are going to go untold. News Corp Australia is announcing today that: Our major regional titles – the Hobart Mercury, NT News, Cairns Post, Townsville Bulletin, Gold Coast Bulletin, Toowoomba Chronicle and Geelong Advertiser – will continue to publish both in print and digitally. The following regional titles will become digital only: Queensland – Mackay Daily Mercury, Rockhampton Morning Bulletin, Gladstone Observer, Bundaberg News Mail, Fraser Coast Chronicle, Gympie Times, Sunshine Coast Daily, Queensland Times, Warwick Daily News, Central and North Burnett Times, Central Queensland News, Chinchilla News, Dalby Herald. Gatton Star, Noosa News, South Burnett Times, Stanthorpe Border Post, Western Star, Western Times, Whitsunday Times, Whitsunday Coast Guardian and Bowen Independent, news from the towns covered by the Atherton Tablelander, Northern Miner, Post Douglas & Mossman Gazette and Burdekin Advocate will continue to appear, as it does currently, under the regional sections of the Cairns Post and Townsville Bulletin; NSW – Tweed Daily News, Ballina Advocate, Byron Shire News, Coffs Coast Advocate, Grafton Daily Examiner and Lismore Northern Star; Northern Territory – The Centralian Advocate. The bulk of titles in our community groups – NewsLocal in NSW/ACT, Leader in Melbourne, Quest in Brisbane and Messenger in Adelaide – will become digital only. Community print editions were suspended early in April because of the impact of COVID-19 restrictions. It has been one of the most heartbreaking parts of the pandemic – the border closures stopping people from being able to say their final goodbyes. AAP has a story on how South Australia reacted, which included giving an exemption to a woman to visit a relative who was in palliative care, despite having tested positive for Covid-19: A British woman allowed into South Australia to visit a dying relative is among 22 people given exemptions to travel over the past two months, with health officials defending the process despite her testing positive for coronavirus. Premier Steven Marshall said authorities have “got to have a heart” as he also backed the decision to allow the woman, in her 50s, to travel from Victoria to Adelaide. The woman had spent about a week in quarantine after arriving in Australia and had tested negative while in isolation. She wore a mask while travelling to SA but returned a positive swab soon after flying into Adelaide on the weekend and has now been returned to quarantine. She has not yet been able to visit her relative. Chief public health officer Nicola Spurrier said the woman was among 22 people from overseas given exemptions to come to SA on compassionate grounds. About half of those were to attend funerals and the rest to visit a close dying relative. Pauline Hanson issued a 4pm deadline to Annastacia Palaszczuk to open Queensland’s borders or face a high court challenge. Putting aside that is not how a) the federation works or b) how democracy works or even c) how sane people work, the fundraiser set up to crowdfund the move, which was originally going to be pro bono, is still crawling along: $14,731 has so far been raised of the $1,000,000 goal. They are not numbers. They are people. Here are just some of those lives lost. The coronavirus death toll has surpassed 100,000 in the US From our US colleagues comes this tragic news: More than 100,000 Americans with coronavirus have died, four months after the US reported its first confirmed case. The country now has more than 1.6m reported cases and has recorded more deaths from the disease than any other nation. According to Johns Hopkins University data, 100,047 fatalities have been recorded. The actual death toll is likely to be higher the official count, experts say. Up to half the deaths in some states have occurred among nursing home residents and workers, studies suggest. Almost three times as many black Americans are dying of the virus as white people. Although the number of cases and deaths appears to be trending down in many states, experts are bracing for a possible uptick as states begin reopening businesses. The key findings from the report: Being unemployed remains the greatest poverty risk factor, with two-thirds (66%) of people in households in which the main earner is unemployed living below the poverty line. This is directly related to the level of pre-pandemic income support payments. The single rate of Newstart in January 2018 (including rent assistance and energy supplement) was $117pw below the poverty line ($185pw if they did not receive rent assistance). Youth allowance (plus these supplements) was $164pw below the poverty line ($232pw without rent assistance). Households that have to rely mainly on social security payments (eg unemployment, parenting, and disability payments) are five times more likely to experience poverty (36%) than those receiving most income from wages and salaries (7%). However, 38% of those in poverty are in wage-earning households; the majority of whom are households with children. In households where the main earner is a female, the poverty rate is 19% – almost double the rate when the main earner is male – 10%. In single parent families in which the main earner is a woman the rate of poverty (37%) is twice that in which the main earner is a man (18%). The biggest differences in poverty rates between households with male and female main earners are in families with children. The average poverty rate among people in families with children where the main income-earner is female is 23%, compared with 10% where the main income-earner is male (which is the more common arrangement). In contrast, among households without children, the average poverty rate where the main income-earner is female is 12%, compared with 10% where the main income-earner is male. Nearly half the children in sole parent families live in poverty (44%) compared with 13% for children living with both parents. While those of working age are at greater risk of poverty than older people, over 65s who are living in private rental face a relatively high risk of poverty (41%). Renters are almost twice as likely to live in poverty as home-owners (19% compared with 9%) with public housing tenants at greatest risk (58%). You can read the whole report here. The Australian Council of Social Services has released a report – Poverty in Australia 2020: Part 2 – Who is affected? – which looks at the impact of poverty before the Covid-19 crisis. Its findings, unfortunately shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. As the acting Acoss CEO, Jacqueline Phillips, says: This report exposes the disproportionate impact of poverty on households in which women are the main income earners. These households are twice as likely to live in poverty as those in which men are the main income earners (19% and 10%, respectively), with the gap even higher in households with children (at 23% and 10% respectively). Disturbingly, more than a third of single mothers and their children are living in poverty (37%). The challenges faced by single mothers that lead to so many being on low incomes have serious implications for the wellbeing of those women and their children. Early indications suggest that women have been suffering some of the worst economic impacts of the current pandemic, and effective policy action is needed to ensure this does not translate into an ongoing reduction in female employment or an increase in poverty amongst women and children. A snapback on childcare or income support risks trapping single mothers and their children in poverty. Good morning Nathan Turner had not worked since November because of some very serious health problems. He had not left his Queensland town of Blackwater, near Emerald, since February. Blackwater had no recorded cases of Covid-19. But when the 30-year-old, who had been showing respiratory symptoms since early May, died on the 26th, a postmortem test proved positive for the virus. Now his grieving partner is in isolation, and the emergency service workers who responded when he was found unresponsive in his home are self-isolating, while Queensland Health authorities race to find out how he may have come into contact with the virus, and try and ensure Queensland’s regional and remote towns remain as safe for residents as possible. As Australia opens back up, you’ll be hearing more about localised clusters. In states like Western Australia and Queensland, where communities are spread far and wide from city centres, opening the state borders to potential community transmission risks still seems like a risk. We’ll hear more about that today, as well as how the states are pushing forward with relaxing the restrictions. In NSW, that means joining Victoria in opening up a ski season from 22 June. There won’t be season passes, or “snow play”, meaning snowball fights are out and of course there will be limits to the number of people on the slopes and ski lifts as social distancing becomes part of the experience. But for many of the surrounding towns, which were hit hard during the summer bushfires, it will be the first time in which they can welcome back tourists. We’ll cover that and everything else as it happens today, which is a Thursday. I know, because I checked. Twice. You have Amy Remeikis with you for most of the day. Ready?