What we learned – Thursday 1 August
That’s where we’ll leave the blog for today. Here is a recap of the main news:
The foreign minister, Penny Wong, has warned of “a real risk that the conflict in [the Middle East] escalates seriously, and urged Australians to leave Lebanon.
The prime minister said the government had not “done well enough” on closing the gap.
Football Australia has confirmed that Matildas coach Tony Gustavsson’s contract will not be extended and his four-year tenure has come to an end.
Australians have lodged a record number of complaints against their financial institutions, with scams and insurance issues driving a 9% increase to 105,000 disputes, according to the financial ombudsman.
The Victorian premier, Jacinta Allan, said the state government will host housing summit on Monday.
The defence minister, Richard Marles, refused to say when American B-52 aircraft will start operating from the Northern Territory.
Victorian Coalition MPs have staged a walkout of question time, calling it a “joke”.
NSW Police said a “gas or fume” smell is a line of inquiry in the death of a man and woman on a Sydney yacht.
Healthcare hardly mentioned in government’s disability report, physicians said.
The new minister for Indigenous Australians, Malarndirri McCarthy, said she will “reach across the aisle” to “elevate Indigenous affairs”.
A survey of nearly 20,000 young people, conducted by youth charity Mission Australia, found nearly one in 10 had experienced some form of homelessness in the previous 12 months.
The former Greens leader Bob Brown has urged Tasmanian-born Queen Mary of Denmark to intervene on behalf of the high-profile anti-whaling campaigner Paul Watson after his arrest in Greenland.
Two people have been killed after a large tree fell on their ute as wild weather lashed parts of Western Australia.
Updated
Victorian ambulance response times worsen and the union is not surprised
Victorian paramedics say they have been “screaming” warnings about ambulance response times and it is reflected in the latest data showing the pace has slowed.
Ambulance Victoria (AV) on Thursday published its response time data for the April to June quarter.
It revealed almost two-thirds (64.2%) of urgent cases received a response within the target timeframe of 15 minutes, down from 67.7% across January and March.
The Victorian Ambulance Union acknowledged response times had deteriorated but said no paramedic would be surprised.
“The entire workforce has been screaming ‘iceberg right ahead’, and now the ship is sinking,” the union secretary, Danny Hill, said.
He said paramedics were spending more time ramped at hospitals and responding to trivial cases rather than responding to genuine emergency patients.
But AV suggested paramedics reached code 1 patients faster on average than a year ago despite a 5% increase in demand.
Code 1 cases can include heart attacks, strokes and car accidents.
The services’ executive director of regional operations, Danielle North, said performance had improved after the “busiest quarter ever”, with more than 102,000 code 1 cases.
The previous record of 100,238 was set in the last three months of 2022.
“That’s nearly 5,000 more ‘lights and sirens’ cases compared to the same time last year and a huge 35.2% more code 1 cases than before the pandemic five years ago,” North said.
“The entire health system continues to be extremely busy due to seasonal illnesses.”
Via AAP
Updated
