We are going to put this liveblog to bed now. Thanks all for your company and contributions. Thanks also to my fellow bloggers, Cait and Mostafa, for their patience, good humour, and wise counsel.
A summary as I leave:
- National cabinet agreed to continue Covid-era health funding, which the NSW premier, Dominic Perrottet, called “a great start”.
- Electricity reserves across the National Energy Market have improved, meaning blackouts are not expected over the weekend.
- The ASX plunged to its lowest level since November 2020.
- Australia recorded 51 Covid deaths, down from Thursday.
- Pauline Hanson was re-elected to the Senate.
Updated
“When I board the long-haul back over the Pacific for a birthday or for Christmas, Qantas is a big part of the whole nostalgic ritual,” Eleanor Gordon-Smith writes.
“I do still call Australia home, I like hearing accents from home when I board, I like having decent tea with breakfast. I like gluing my nose to the window for the view of Sydney that Clive James described so beautifully, ‘yachts racing on the crushed diamond water under a sky the texture of powdered sapphires’. In a more homesick moment, I hung a Qantas calendar in my office because it reminded me I’d get to go home. Qantas is the only brand that’s ever been able to elicit this kind of saccharine loyalty from me. Until today, I thought it was deserved.”
Read more here:
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