The prime minister, Scott Morrison, and the treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, will hold a press conference in Canberra at 10.30am. 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. Quite a morning for 2GB. A little earlier the treasurer Dominic Perrottet (who, like David Elliott, is from the right of the New South Wales Liberal party) also said Saturday’s protests should not go ahead. As a father of six kids I go home to a mass protest every day and I can’t take my kids to my brother’s house under these social restrictions that we have in place. You can’t defend the indefensible. I think it’s ridiculous. When people are making enormous sacrifices right now I think situations like this, and protests like this on the weekend, clearly shouldn’t go ahead. So you now have a situation where the NSW police have approved a protest which is being criticised both by senior members of the government and the Labor opposition. I bet the premier Gladys Berejiklian is going to be glad the pubs are open by the time this day is over. The New South Wales police minister, David Elliott, has been on 2GB this morning talking about those protests. He has been, as you might expect, quite uncomplimentary, saying people who plan to attend the protest against police brutality are “not normal”. “I don’t think anyone who goes out during a pandemic and joins a mass gathering is of sound mind,” he said. The protest, near Town Hall, has been authorised by NSW police, and the minister said he believed the protestors would have taken the issue to court if it wasn’t. As the premier said yesterday, there are things in our society that it is virtually impossible to stop,” Elliott said. “The people who attend these gatherings during a pandemic don’t care what their parents say.” There are reports a primary school in Melbourne has been forced to close after a positive Covid-19 case. Some interesting politicking going on in Sydney this morning. As you can see below, the Daily Telegraph, in its inimitable style, has splashed on concerns about a Black Lives Matter protest planned for tomorrow. Those concerns are, in fact, coming from the NSW Labor party. The state opposition leader, Jodi McKay, has told the paper; “Is [Gladys Berejiklian] really giving her approval for a mass rally with potentially thousands of participants, when the maximum number of people allowed to visit a private home remains just five?” Good morning. Bit going on. The home affairs minister, Peter Dutton, has just been talking about the federal government’s proposed new foreign interference regime. The Morrison government wants to institute a new national security test, including expanded powers for the treasurer if national security is at risk. The new rules would also make changes to protect health and tax information stored on servers. The move is likely to draw the ire of China at a time of heightened tensions between Canberra and Beijing, but Dutton says the new rules are “country agnostic”. They are country agnostic and that is important because the threat can come from a number of actors and we need to make sure that we can deal with that threat. When you are saving your data to the cloud at the moment that ultimately end up in a server somewhere in a physical location. If the wrong people own that premises then that information could be exploited and that’s just one example, there are many more that we would need to deal with on a regular basis. I think this is a sensible upgrade in modernisation of the laws and the treasurer will provide that outline later today. I might leave you there for this morning, the esteemed Michael McGowan will take you through the rest of the day. The New England Journal of Medicine has also retracted its paper on the dangers of hydroxychloroquine after reports on Surgisphere by Melissa Davey. Just 38 of a predicted 36,000 food boxes have been delivered under a $9.3m government initiative designed to deliver emergency food supplies to older Australians isolating throughout Covid-19, reports Elias Visontay. “This result indicates that referrals to, and take up of referrals by providers is working very well, but that demand is low for this form of emergency assistance,” said the health department’s response to the question taken on notice, seen by Guardian Australia. You can read the full report here: WA eases travel restrictions in remote communities Western Australia will join the Northern Territory in lifting travel restrictions across remote Indigenous communities today. These communities have been quarantined from the rest of the states since 18 March to shield them from Covid-19. The federal government says the decision has the full support of the WA land councils and Aboriginal community-controlled health services in the state. A spokesperson for the federal health minister, Greg Hunt, said: The Government will continue to monitor the situation in Western Australia in partnership with the Western Australian Government, the National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation. In the event of an outbreak of COVID-19, the Australian Government will work with the Western Australian Government to move rapidly and take all necessary steps to continue to safeguard the health of remote communities. Black Lives Matter rallies draw criticism at time of distancing There are a number of Black Lives Matter rallies planned for the capital cities at the weekend, protesting against the deaths of Indigenous people in custody in Australia and the police killing of George Floyd in the US. The NSW government is allowing the Sydney rally to go ahead, a decision which has drawn criticism from the opposition. “Is [Gladys Berejiklian] really giving her approval for a mass rally with potentially thousands of participants, when the maximum number of people allowed to visit a private home remains just five?” the state’s Labor leader, Jodi McKay, has asked in the Daily Telegraph. In Victoria, Daniel Andrews has asked people to stay home but has said police have decided not to fine protesters for gathering en masse: Do you lock people up, do you inflame what is, I think, a pretty volatile situation given the depth of feeling on these issues? Or … do you take a look and say it’s by no means ideal, but it’s certainly better than seeing that gathering on Saturday deteriorate into something like we’ve seen overseas. Just staying on Covid-19 medication news, the Lancet has officially retracted a paper which caused the World Health Organization to halt trials of hydroxychloroquine. A Guardian investigation had revealed errors in the data that was provided for the research by the US company Surgisphere. These were later explained by the company as some patients being wrongly allocated to Australia instead of Asia. But more anomalies were then picked up. A further investigation by my colleague Melissa Davey found that there were serious questions to be asked about the company itself. Ebola drug remdesivir wins backing as Covid-19 treatment Good morning all, Matilda Boseley here to take you through the morning. First up today, the antiviral drug remdesivir has been officially endorsed as a treatment for patients with moderate to severe Covid-19 infections. The drug has been recommended by the National Covid-19 Clinical Evidence Taskforce, which brings together the country’s peak health groups. Originally developed for the treatment of Ebola, it is the first medication to be recommended as a possible treatment for patients hospitalised after contracting coronavirus. “This is the first information we have that a drug has a beneficial effect as a treatment for Covid-19,” said the taskforce’s executive director, Assoc Prof Julian Elliott. “The preliminary data published so far from two clinical trials indicate that it can reduce the time for someone to recover from Covid-19. However, we do not yet have definitive information that remdesivir will reduce the risk of dying from the disease.” Elliott said the taskforce had reviewed evidence to speed up the development of the recommendation in less than two weeks. Remdesivir is not licensed for use in Australia but the federal government has approved exemptions to some aspects of the Therapeutic Goods Act to allow the drug to be accessed in the context of clinical trials and for compassionate use. The taskforce also said it understood there was a sufficient supply in Australia to meet expected demand.