Sea World Helicopters director pays tribute to pilot who died
The director of Sea World Helicopters, John Orr-Campbell, has said it is “shocking” to lose a pilot as experienced as Ash Jenkinson, who was flying the chopper that crashed on Monday.
Orr-Campbell mourned the loss of his passengers and said he could not “imagine the terrible sadness their families and loved ones must be feeling”.
In a statement, he said they had reached out to offer condolences to the families, and paid tribute to Jenkison, who he said had dedicated “over 700 hours” assisting firefighting operations and was involved in multiple search and rescue flights:
Ash Jenkinson, an experienced pilot, who lost his life in the accident was well known to many of us. I knew Ash personally for nine years. He was a fine man and a standout pilot with 6,210 hours of flying to his name.
To lose a man and a pilot of Ash’s calibre is shocking in every sense of the word. I, along with all the staff at Sea World Helicopters are gutted to the core. My heart aches as I think of Ash’s fiancee, Kosha, and his one-year-old son Kayden.
We have lost a first-class pilot, a first-class man and a wonderful father, partner and friend.
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Bomb squad called to UQ
Fingers crossed this report about a bomb squad being called to the University of Queensland amounts to nothing – the Courier Mail is reporting it was an unattended package and that the squad was called out of “an abundance of caution”. I’ll let you know as soon as we know more:
Wildlife left stranded during severe flooding in Kimberley region
It’s hard to properly grasp the scale of these floods in Western Australia, and their impact on humans and animals:
Ben Doherty has pulled together the details on that story about the charges against a woman who was repatriated to Australia from a Syrian refugee camp last year:
Thanks as always to Mostafa Rachwani, whose brilliance far outshines my rather lacklustre gleaming. Guess I’d better see what news is happening around the traps!
And with that, I will leave the blog with the always brilliant Tory Shepherd. Thanks for reading.
Emergency WA has downgraded its bushfire warning for south-west Western Australia to watch and act.
They say that is due to reduced fire activity and stable weather conditions.
The warning advises people in the area to keep up to date in case the situation changes.
A community meeting will be held at 4pm today at the Donnybrook Recreation Centre.
State and territory leaders not ‘going cap in hand’ on health, says NSW premier
State and territory leaders will likely be united in pressuring the federal government to overhaul healthcare services through national cabinet, the NSW premier, Dominic Perrottet, says.
AAP is reporting that Perrottet and Victorian counterpart, Daniel Andrews, came out in agreement this week on calling for better integration between primary care and public health systems across the country.
They say insufficient access to bulk-billing GPs is causing undue pressure on state-run services such as emergency departments.
“I don’t think you’ll find any premier that does not agree with the position that Dan and I have,” Perrottet told reporters on Thursday.
You’ve got Labor and Liberal premiers working together. It’s not about politics – it’s about getting the best health outcomes for our people.
Perrottet chairs the Council for the Australian Federation – made up of all state and territory leaders – and said health was the number one issue raised.
On the heels of a devastating global pandemic, Perrottet said the time was now for the prime minister, premiers and health ministers to work together and fix the national health system.
It’s not about going cap in hand to the federal government. I’ve made very clear, we’re not asking for more money.
We are asking for a better federal system.
If Australia wants to have the best health system change needs to occur.
Paul Karp
Butler reiterates call for China to share genomic sequence of Covid variants
The health minister, Mark Butler, has suggested that pre-flight Covid tests for travellers from China could be lifted if China shares more information about its Covid outbreak.
Butler told reporters in Melbourne:
We want these measures to be temporary. They are modest measures. I think as you’re seeing with flights landing today, they are not proving to be a barrier to all of those people here in Australia who want to travel back to China. And for people from China wanting to travel to Australia, it is a modest requirement to have a PCR, or a supervised rapid antigen test, and I do make the point that to travel to China, you need to show a pre-departure PCR test as well …
What it will do is provide us with a high level of confidence about the transmission of Covid from that country to this. And of course we are hoping, particularly from the regular discussions that are happening between the World Health Organization and China, that we will start to see more sharing of information of the type we see, around the rest of the world, particularly sharing of genomic sequencing of Covid cases that are increasing very fast in China.
I’ve also asked my department to reach out to their equivalents in China, to stress our view, that it would be valuable for information to be shared more, comprehensively by China … real time uploading of their genomic sequencing of Covid cases – this is what governments, including Australia are calling for, this is why we’ve put in place these modest, sensible measures.
Butler asked about NSW and Victorian premiers’ comments on Medicare
Finally, before the ABC cut away mid-questions, Butler was asked about the Victorian and NSW premiers “forming something of an alliance” (the journalist’s words, not mine), calling for an overhaul of Medicare to improve access to GPs.
Here is what Butler had to say:
Well, I welcome the intervention from premiers of the two largest states. It’s not the first time they’ve made this intervention and reflects the position that federal Labor has been making right back until quite a time before the May 2022 election.
Too many people are having to end up in a hospital emergency department because they can’t get the care they need in the community when and where they need it. So that’s why the centrepiece of our health policy at the last election was strengthening Medicare and I’ve been working over the last several months, with a range of doctors, nurses, allied health and obviously patient groups in the strengthening Medicare Task Force to help guide the government’s investment of a strengthening Medicare fund that we promised at the last election. That work’s largely complete.
The report is in the process of being finalised and will be published over coming weeks in order to allow us to make decisions in the May budget about the investment of that fund.
Now, look, I value the contributions from premiers and from state health ministers. This is something that I talk with my state health minister colleagues about very, very regularly.
Obviously they’re interested in a primary care system working well for the value for the health of their own citizens. But I say again, state governments are very worried about the impact that the parlous state of general practice is having on their own hospital systems. There is no higher priority in the health portfolio for Labour than strengthening Medicare.
Butler continues…
The health minister is saying he is pleased to see China communicating with the World Health Organisation, particularly sharing genomic sequencing of Covid cases there.
We are hoping particularly from the regular discussions that are happening between the World Health Organization and China that we will start to see more sharing of information of the type you see around the rest of the world, particularly sharing of genomic sequencing of Covid cases, that are increasing very fast in China.
I’ve also asked my department to reach out to their equivalents in China to to stress our view that it would be valuable for information to be shared more comprehensively by China not just with Australia, but with the rest of the world in the way in which other countries are doing real time offloading of their genomic sequencing of Covid cases.
This is what governments including Australia, are calling for. This is why we’ve put in place these modest measures sensible measures out of out of an abundance of caution, and this is why you’ve seen very strong language from the world.
Butler is defending the Covid testing, repeating that it is a “modest” requirement for travellers to show a negative test (and noted that travellers need to have a PCR test before entering China as well).
Butler also danced around questions as to why the government decided to ignore advice from the chief medical officer:
I’ve accepted every positive recommendation contained in the advice. We value transparency. That’s why I took the decision to publish the advice in full on the day that I made these announcements of the four recommendations made by Professor Kelly. I’m implementing all four. If I decided not to implement some of those recommendations, which he had said were important in terms of getting better understanding of what’s happening here in Australia, there would have been a valid criticism, but I have accepted all four recommendations from Professor Kelly.
Now in addition to that, is the relevant minister and the government more broadly have taken the decision, as have been taken by pretty much every government to which we would usually compare ourselves, a decision described by the World Health Organization as ‘understandable’ out of an abundance of caution to put in place pre-departure testing.
Now I said very openly at the time I made this announcement but the consensus view of the chief health officers was that there was no imminent public health threat posed by the resumption of travel between China and Australia, but that I was out of an abundance of caution putting in place this pre-departure testing in light of what the World Health Organization described as an absence of comprehensive information about the situation in China, very similar situation is emerging in Europe.
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