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Over 50% of Australians over 16 are fully vaccinated; Berejiklian reopening plans coming ‘next week’ – as it happened

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What we learned today, Sunday 26 September

Enjoy your evening, all, and thanks for having me! Here’s just a taste of what we learned today:

See you tomorrow!

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In case you missed this earlier (I did) please enjoy this piece by Arwa Mahdawi on cancel culture, critical race theory and ... sexy seahorses.

It’s very easy to laugh at a bunch of rightwing moms clutching their pearls over sexy seahorses – but there’s nothing funny about the systemic, organised way in which conservatives are trying to rewrite history and restrict freedom of speech.

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Here’s Katharine Murphy wrapping up some of the troubles facing Scott Morrison on his return from Washington with her usual clear-eyed aplomb:

So, given his internals are a tinderbox, Joyce has stopped saying no to net zero.

Instead of no, we are treated to a word salad.

On Sunday morning, the deputy prime minister told the ABC no coal jobs should be lost “by reason of domestic policy”. But shortly after that declaration, he said protecting coal jobs was “not the bottom line”. He thought he’d quote Voltaire, but then he remembered he wasn’t quoting Voltaire but someone Voltaire adjacent.

You could call this stumbling. But what it actually is is stalling.

(The famous free speech often attributed to Voltaire was used by Evelyn Beatrice Hall in a Voltaire biography.)

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Just in case you haven’t had enough numbers in your day, the prime minister’s office has sent out a bunch of statistics on who has had two vaccine doses:

  • 77% of over 70s
  • 69.33% of over 50s
  • 51.49% of over 16s.

And just a smidge over half of all Australians (remembering that we keep leaving people aged 16 and under out) have been fully vaccinated.

If it was a race (it’s not a race! Or is it?) the ACT is a nose in front of NSW with 61% of residents double dosed, compared with 60.1%.

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That’s all from me today. I’m handing over the blog to my wonderful colleague Tory Shepherd.

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Stick to reopening plan, Scott Morrison tells premiers

There has been several comments thrown around by state premiers in the last few days around whether they are going to open up their borders once 80% of the population is fully vaccinated. The prime minister says that they need to stick to the national plan, AAP reports.

AAP:

Scott Morrison is putting pressure on premiers who are wavering on opening borders, once they strike a rate of 80% rate of double-dosed vaccinations, to stick to the national plan.

The premiers of Queensland and Western Australia are showing reluctance to commit to that reopening target, even though it was a key part of the national Covid-19 recovery plan agreed to by the national cabinet.

“There comes a time when you’ve got to honour the arrangement you’ve made with the Australian people, and that is when you get to 80% vaccination, it’s very clear that you can start opening up,” Morrison told the Seven Network in an interview while he was in Washington.

He said at that stage there will still be some common-sense controls, like QR code logins and mask-wearing in certain circumstances.

“But, you know, comes a time when you’ve just got to move on and get on with it,” he said.

Deputy Nationals leader and Queensland MP David Littleproud said the prime minister has tried to show leadership by bringing premiers and first ministers together through the national cabinet.

“Then they walk out and go different directions. The question has to be why are you changing your mind,” he told Sky New’s Sunday Agenda program.

“All Queenslanders want, all Australians want, is hope and certainty.”

He also had little time for those involved in the violent protests in Melbourne last week.

“That small element are society scum and quite frankly they should be forced into isolation at her majesty’s pleasure,” Littleproud said. “Those people do not deserve to live in this society freely.”

Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese said he agrees with the national plan but some of the restrictions being seen now are the result of the Morrison government’s failures.

“Scott Morrison should accept responsibility for that rather than doing what he always does, which is always to look to blame someone else, always looking for a look-over-there moment,” he told reporters in Sydney.

“No one wants any restrictions to be in place for one day more than necessary. I certainly don’t. It’s very frustrating that it has occurred.”

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Therapeutic uses for illegal substances – including MDMA, DMT and psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms – are now being explored in clinical trials.

Dr Martin Williams, executive director of Psychedelic Research in Science & Medicine and a research fellow at Monash University, is co-leading a clinical trial at St Vincent’s Hospital Melbourne into psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy to treat anxiety and depression in people who are terminally ill.

The trial, which will run until 2023, involves 40 people with terminal conditions such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and motor neurone disease, who are receiving either one, or two, 25-milligram doses of psilocybin in conjunction with therapy.

Read the full story by Donna Lu here:

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