I'm sorry, can you point me in the direction of a GOP senate majority?

Can you point me in the direction of a Democrat senate majority?

Happy to be corrected but figures I see indicate GOP 50, DEM 46 and OTHER 2 so GOP have the block numbers to say NO NO NO at will, DEMs do NOT have the block numbers to pass legislation unhindered.

There's two more elections as a run off for the senate and Harris also has a vote in the senate as VP. The independents are Bernie Sanders and Angus King who caucus for Democrat. Never said democrats won, but dispelling the lies above saying Republicans won.

SA is on the increase. 3, then 4 yesterday, and now 17 cases which I'm guessing are all community transmission. Known community transmission, but still community transmission nonetheless. How it got out of the medi-hotel will raise questions, from what I've read Patient Zero worked there and brought it home to her family.

yes that explains why the aged care deaths in other states is so high

Newmarch house?

WA Health Minister being interviewed at the moment. From the way he is speaking, I would not be surprised if the WA border is closed again today.

Doubtful that any reasonable person (in WA) would tempt a holiday or family reunion involving interstate travel now with the threat of 14 days isolation without income on return.

What? Did the Feds ‘neglect’ age care ONLY in Victoria?

That argument makes no sense at all.

17 deaths. A tragedy.
now do that for vic aged care deaths.
in fact do a bar graph of aged care deaths by state and make sure to leave a tonne of room on the y axis for when you get to Victoria.

under what circumstances does the VP get a vote in the senate??

As the tie breaker in case of a 50-50 split.

Bunch of tourist X ADL arrived in CNS by air just after the announcement of QLD imposing Border restrictions on those from SA. Apparently the Holiday has now turned from fun in the sun to enduring 14 days Quarantine.

Would your risk leisure airline travel anywhere in AUS with the State Premiers closing borders at the slightest hint of Covid?

That's fine, presently the GOP has control of the Senate - but that could change....or not.

Point was if there was so much feeling against GOP/Trump the DEMs should have had a great chance to win all 3 (Whitehouse/Reps/Senate) with clear majorities - that didn't happen.

Why??

Not the Birthday present for Qantas that AJ was hoping for

And as I predicted, WA border now closed to SA.

They neglect it right across the country,the operators want to make big profits out of it & they achieve it by being allowed to employ a casualised workforce at the lowest pay possible.
Of course the hotel quarantine caused a lot of it but dont forget who controls the aged care system,the conditions are not unique to victoria.

Less populated states are over represented in the US senate, just like the electoral college doesn't reflect how big Biden's win was. Just by raw votes it's the biggest margin since Reagan.

There’s a real question that needs to be asked.

The two significant outbreaks in Australia (Melbourne and now Adelaide) have come as a result of international arrival hotel quarantine breakouts. Regardless of procedures used it’s too much of a risk to house arrivals in hotels in the middle of major cities and allow workers at the hotel and dealing with the arrivals to be in the same environment and then wander freely around these packed cities on their time off.

Unless we want to have this problem continue to re-occur over the next 12 months, it’s time to lobby the Federal Government to direct all arrivals to remote facilities (ie Alice Springs or Christmas Island) or have them in full facilities/camps on the outskirts of major cities with a requirement for staff dealing with them to themselves be housed in that facility for the duration of their employment.

Otherwise all of us won’t be able to handle this lack of certainty over the next 12 months.

Spot on Doctor, I agree with you with this one.

Australia has dodged a bullet (somewhat accidentally at a National level) in almost eliminating COVID.

Let’s keep dodging that bullet.

Fully Agree...however that would require the Feds to do something, other than hand over control to the states and then stand back as issues unfold.

apparently lots of false positives with testing.

Forget about cases. Cases don't mean deaths in general population.

We must reopen all borders now.

What else are we going to do ? Open & close them everytime we get a few cases in next 10 years ?

No one knows if vaccines will actually work or have no long term side effects.

This video gives an interesting view on the whole corona con job

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xy3t...ature=youtu.be

Plenty of camping available at Alice. Pitch a tent under the wing of a A380. Drink beer watch the cricket on your device. Wacko 2 weeks of star gazing the milky way.
NT version of Birdsville races flyin.

It's such a pity that this has degenerated into an argument based on Political persuasion rather than objective debate. There'd be very few people who would be able to say they avoided going down this path.

The posturing & point scoring makes it sound like we've beaten COVID and are in the Post Mortem of the crisis, not in a Seasonal lull.
Not hard to find. https://www.health.gov.au/resources/...sidential-care

What is hard to find, is accurate & consistent data on the Vic Gov websites. There's either 180 or 159 PSRAC facilities in Vic out of a total of 768 facilities, depending on the website.

We're debating without all the data.

Well obviously there is a weak point, and that’s the hotel quarantine for international travellers and the staff who work in them. It’s going to cause rolling shut down after shut down with no end in sight unless a different approach is taken.

It may have to be a move to a secure facility. Staff could work a roster similar to FIFO workers, 2 weeks on, 2 weeks quarantine, 2 weeks off. If mining FIFO workers can do it then healthcare staff can too. It should only be for a year or so. Yep it’ll be costly, but nowhere near the cost of the breakouts from hotel quarantine in major cities and the ongoing uncertainty with travel that’ll cause. A lot of airline and other employees are out of work and won’t get back to work until this nationwide problem is sorted.

So it’s time for the Federal government to get their act together, if they have to offer big $$$ to get the staff (just like how mining companies pay cooks and cleaners big $$$ to stay in remote mining camps for weeks on end) so be it. The overall cost to taxpayers will be less than these constant major city breakouts.

Unless someone has a better approach? Because the current system clearly isn’t working.

With so many unemployed, and hotel quarantine jobs clearly in hot demand, why not only employ people from single person households?
These “large families” quickly spreading the virus are ridiculous.
PC and equal opportunity crap and all that can get stuffed.

Yes, single people will still mix with outsiders, but to nowhere near the same extent as a crammed household, including kids and the elderly (which of course were living in this outbreak household..)

It’s insane that this infected person is living in a big household, with family members in several other high risk fields.
Employing single people would drastically lower the likelihood of the virus jumping from the hotel worker, and at very least would buy time between the initial detection of the returned traveller and the worker spreading it to others.

I think the amount of available qualified staff who are single and live alone would be very small. They still would have to buy food and do all the other necessities of modern life which involve coming into contact with others and potentially risk the spread of the virus.

Maybe even if we relocated the quarantine hotels to more remote cities or ones with less connecting flights to other state capitals. Maybe a Townsville or Rockhampton instead of Brisbane? A Mildura instead of Melbourne or Adelaide? Although I think a fully remote option like Christmas Island, maybe Curtin, maybe Alice Springs?? Time to activate some of the military bases in the north perhaps? Anything’s better than the CBD of all our major cities and the harm to our national economy that occurs when a breakout inevitably occurs.

I wonder if the lack of attendance recording in pubs, restaurants and numerous other public areas will come back to bite the South Australian government.
On a 4-day trip to Adelaide 4 weekends ago we weren't once asked to record our attendance.

yes I know but old mate either intentionally or unintentionally insinuated he/she held an aditional vote. Was seeking to clarify their understanding


basically the VP vote is moot if either party holds the senate apart from exceptional circumstances

absoultely.
however, again, when choosing my last slice of Swiss cheese Il go with the ADF over unemployed nobodies after a 5 minute whatsapp interview.

This has been suggested many times by many people. In fact the government has been provided many different solutions from many different private enterprises, not dissimilar to the Howard Springs set up. However the government and DFAT say they have it all under control.

Until the general public realise how desperate the plight of the Aussie overseas is there will be little change.

This latest Adelaide thing is??? Let’s hope State of Origin is ‘safe’.

It’s not so much the Feds saying they have it under control, it’s the fact they’ve thrown it to state governments at the current border openings (4/5 major city airports) and the states have take the easiest option for them, bus them to a hotel in the city and hope that a staff member doesn’t spread the big. Hasn’t worked twice now.

Usually governments are shamed into action. The pressure has to be put back on the Federal Government to take responsibility for quarantining international arrivals in secure remote locations. What will it cost? Tens of millions? A few hundred million? Current cost of one hotel quarantine breakout in Victoria - 7 to 9 billion. Willing to have a few more of those over the next year?

C441 - It's also not just the recording.

A couple of weeks ago I was in a state with no recent COVID history where I was eating breakfast outside and the waitress came around and proffered me the clipboard and pen onto which I was to write my name for contact tracing.

I duly complied, and commented somewhat wryly, "What with the same pen all the everyone else has used?" She looked at me blankly, and I said again. She had no idea what I was on about.

The most dangerous states in Aus for an outbreak are the ones where the public - luckily - has not had to be worried about the virus transmission and don't know how to take the most simple precautions. Go to hotels around the rest of the world these days and there is a pile of new clean pens and a basket of used pens at reception. No it's not perfect but it's another 90% barrier. No menus at restaurants either - all QR. Another layer reducing transmission.

Dr,

Wouldnt the problem be that there are not that many places for the Feds to put the returning Aussies.And whilst I would have excepted a Van, or a tent in the Desert, I am very sure that the average overseas Aussie returnee would not, at least without a whinge and then a very supportive public outcry regarding a minimum standard of a 5 star hotel.

And even there lays the problem...a tent or Van in the desert would have to be on ground that is generally under control of a State or territory, not the Feds..

MANUS Island perhaps...but imagine the scream from the left about that...just like when Xmas Island was used for returnees from China.

Solution...mmm not from this forum I think, as as great as we are at solving problems......Constitutional change is a huge step outside our gambit.

No! Passing the problem off to someone else or somewhere else is not the answer. Everyone has to do their bit until there is widespread vaccination and immunity. It is so unfair and un-Australian to see this attitude endemic in our society. Moderate social distancing with hyper vigilance and strict contact tracing ability is how we can all live together in this environment and stymie outbreaks before they become widespread. It’s not that hard and all it takes is a few sensible measures that EVEYBODY abides by.

And therein lies OUR problem

complacency may be what blows the flames on this outbreak, and it’s something that a few certain premiers may need to learn a thing or 2 from.
2 in particular have been sprouting garbage that they’ve been keeping their states COVID free by slamming the borders shut - this in turn leads to complacency which shows in testing numbers, adherence to social distancing, tracing etc.

This whole Adelaide cluster only surfaced because an 80 year old showed up at the ER and then got tested there as part of normal hospital procedure. I’m assuming that means there were days of worsening symptoms with no tests up until the point that a trip to the ER was needed.
Contrast that with Sydney where 20,000 + are turning out daily for tests on advice that there’s traces of covid in the sewerage.

Queen P must be frothing at the mouth today that she slammed the border shut. Seeing QLD is only capable of making one decision a month we will reconvene 26th December or will they be taking the public holiday off?

And then there's Gladys - Still keeping her economy going while not shoving a pineapple up the asre of every CrowEater by leaving the borders to SA open...

Only 1 case in SA from yesterday’s testing blitz. Obviously more results to be processed but the premier seemed pretty positive.