Australia news live: NSW health system ‘catastrophically let down’ toddler’s family, minister admits

Poker machine losses in NSW hit a record high of $8.64bn in 2024, surpassing the record losses of the previous two years and reinforcing concerns that government harm-minimisation measures haven’t gone far enough.

Quarterly data from Liquor and Gambling NSW showed a 7% increase in net profit for the state’s pubs and clubs over the year. Australians lose more money per capita to gambling than the population of any other country.

Chief executive of the Alliance for Gambling Reform, Martin Thomas, said the losses represented “social harm on an industrial scale” across NSW.

Thomas said:

Frequent polls have shown that Australians want real gambling reform including the banning of all gambling ads – which has the support of more than 70% of the community.

While the NSW government should be applauded by banning gambling ads from its transport network, there is no excuse now for it not to implement a carded system of play for all poker machines in the state. It is a move that Victoria has committed to, it’s now time for NSW to act.

And as we approach a federal election we must also see the implementation of the Murphy report which included a recommendation for the ban of all gambling advertising implemented over three years.

The alliance is also calling for mandatory cashless cards with pre-set loss limits, which was a recommendation of the NSW Crime Commission.

IVF clinic apologises after data breach

Josh Taylor

IVF clinic Genea has apologised to clients after suffering a cyberattack where data was accessed.

The ABC reported on Wednesday that phones and patient access had been limited in what was a suspected data breach, and clients had not been informed of the extent of the attack.

In an email to patients on Friday, seen by Guardian Australia, Genea CEO Tim Yeoh, apologised for the incident and said the company takes privacy and data security seriously.

He said the incident was being investigated urgently after suspicious activity had been detected on Genea’s network, and immediate steps were taken to contain the incident and secure systems:

Out of an abundance of caution, this included taking some of our systems and servers offline while we investigated the incident. These are now being restored while we continue our investigation.

Yeoh said Genea was still investigating the extent of data that had been accessed, and what personal information may have been accessed. Once that is determined, patients will be informed as to whether they’re affected.

He said treatment schedules should continue as normal, unless patients are advised otherwise by their local clinic.

Benita Kolovos

Matthew Guy expresses doubt about contactless ticketing rollout

Victoria’s opposition spokesperson for public transport, Matthew Guy, has expressed doubt that Labor will roll out contactless public transport ticketing in 2026.

He said the announcement by Gabrielle Williams only came after a week of scrutiny over the government’s “failure to deliver” several public transport promises:

The Metro Tunnel isn’t open after 10 years, nor is the West Gate Tunnel, and every major project initiated by this government is either delayed, over budget, or both. Given that history, it’s no surprise that Victorians are sceptical about this latest contactless ticketing promise actually being delivered on time.

NT and Tasmania to lose private maternity units

Natasha May

The Northern Territory is losing its only private maternity service, while Tasmania will be down to only a single private maternity facility in the state after Healthscope announced the closure of two wards.

Darwin Private hospital’s maternity unit will close on 17 April while Hobart Private hospital’s maternity unit will close on 20 August, with the private hospital provider citing declining births and workforce shortages as the reason for the closures.

In a statement released on Friday, the Australian Medical Association said it is deeply concerned by the planned closures of maternity services, as the latest in a long list of private hospitals that have closed or downgraded their services in maternity care, mental health and reconstructive surgery.

A government review of the private hospital sector’s financial viability highlighted obstetrics and mental health as two services which were becoming increasingly difficult for private hospitals to offer. The peak body for obstetricians and gynaecologists said the closure of maternity units was a symptom of the gender bias in the funding for private health services, where procedures for men attract higher rebates.

AMA’s president, Dr Danielle McMullen, said:

The importance of maternity services simply cannot be overstated, and those who purchase private health insurance deserve do so with the confidence they will get the care they need.

Maternity services are like the canary in the coalmine and these latest closures announced by Healthscope should further emphasise the urgent need for reform to the private health sector.

Jonathan Barrett

Bullock defends decision to allow filming at board meeting

The RBA governor, Michele Bullock, was questioned by a parliamentary committee over the central bank’s decision to allow television cameras into Tuesday’s boardroom meeting.

The question came about because some people saw the presence of cameras as a sign the RBA was going to cut rates, a popular decision for mortgage holders and the government, before the official announcement was made.

Rate decisions are a closely guarded secret before they are publicly released, given they can dramatically move currency and equity markets. Investors look for any sign to get ahead of a decision so that they can set up profitable trades.

Bullock told the committee the decision to allow filming and photography was made because it was a “historic occasion”.

Next month, the RBA will split into separate boards for rate setting and governance, following a review.

Bullock said:

We felt that it was appropriate to mark that by just having some footage of the last ever meeting of the Reserve Bank board.

The governor then explained that the board members had not yet made a rate decision when the cameras were present.

NSW health minister: system ‘catastrophically let down’ toddler’s family

Natasha May

The NSW health minister has admitted “we’ve catastrophically let down” the family of Joe Massa the toddler who waited hours in a Northern Beaches emergency department and died of cardiac arrest.

Ryan Park spoke with 2GB radio this morning after Joe’s parents, Danny and Elouise, shared their story on the program yesterday morning. Park said:

We let Joe down. We let Joe’s family down, and the system has erred in a way that has had catastrophic outcomes. And that will never be lost on me. I hope it is never lost on the team at Healthscope, and it certainly won’t be lost on the secretary, Susan Pearce, and our staff.

This is a massive tragedy, a tragedy that shouldn’t have happened, a tragedy that at multiple steps along the way could have been intersected and changed. And the biggest one, having read through the report now four or five times, the biggest one that comes out all of the time is a failure to listen to Mum, and that is a catastrophic outcome as a result of that ignorance.

Park acknowledged the hospital, whose emergency department is operated by the private hospital provider Healthscope in a public-private partnership (PPP), is “not the best model of healthcare”.

Park said he opposed the privatisation of the hospital when it was introduced many years ago but “the parents in that community don’t want to hear that now. They want to hear what we’re going to try and do to fix it. This is not about passing the buck”.

Park apologised to the parents in a phone call yesterday and said he wants to meet with Eloise and Danny, together with the premier, “to see if there’s other things that they might want us to consider”.

Benita Kolovos

Williams questioned on deputy police commissioner Neil Paterson

Victoria’s transport minister Gabrielle Williams was asked about deputy police commissioner Neil Paterson’s contract not being renewed. She denied there was a “sweep out” occurring at the force but referred questions to the police minister, Anthony Carbines.

She was also asked about a report by former Labor state secretary Stephen Newnham into the Werribee byelection, which showed if the Liberals preference the Greens above Labor, the opposition would benefit from a 16% swing, giving them the 45 seats needed to form government.

Williams said Labor had learned lessons from the Werribee byelection and acknowledged that people were “doing it tough” and it would to do more:

I’m not going to comment on who’s a credible analyst or not. What we need to do, as any good government should, is focus on how we’re delivering for our community, on understanding where their pressure points are, and we’re acutely aware that many in our community are under a significant amount of financial pressure, cost-of-living pressure, and we’re working day in and day out to support those communities, to support working families through a range of different initiatives, and of course, always looking at how we can do more, and we’ll continue to do that.

Benita Kolovos

Victorian contactless ticketing to begin with full-fare customers

Williams:

I’ll note that in Sydney, for example, their tap and go technology has only ever been available to full fare customers. They’re actually currently out to market at the moment for the sorts of functionality that we’re currently building now …

We’ve always been really clear that the rollout would need to be careful and considered and therefore incremental, starting with that full fare product and then moving towards an account-based ticketing system being the sort of end stage and moving into other fare types … as well as other modes of transport, as I outlined previously, starting with rail and then moving across our network. Similarly, starting with adult full fares and then broadening out that offering to other groups as well.

Benita Kolovos

More on Melbourne’s public transport ticketing announcement

Transport minister Gabrielle Williams was asked why the government was installing the old ticketing machines across the five new stations of the Metro Tunnel, which will open later this year, and how much it will cost to remove them when ticketless travel begins.

Williams said it was part of the commissioning process to allow them to open on time. She said:

As a part of commissioning those stations, we need to have all the appropriate infrastructure in place that includes ticketing infrastructure. Because when we talk about the testing and trialing that goes on in the Metro Tunnel, people are often focused on the trains, what we’re also testing is all the surrounding infrastructure, from platform screen doors to elevators and escalators to the integration of the ticketing system within the station precinct.

All of that has to work and function well through that commissioning process, and in the lead up to us switching on Metro Tunnel.

She said three stations were commissioned last year, with Town Hall and State Library to be completed in the coming months:

That ticketing infrastructure had to be in place at a point in time that was quite early on in, in CBTS taking over the ticketing contract in parallel and building us this new ticketing system.

But what I will say is as a part of our new ticketing system contract, we have provided for the replacement and rollout of new ticketing readers across the network.

So that doesn’t require us to replace all the surrounding infrastructure at the Metro Tunnel stations. For example, that gate infrastructure and those sort of pillars for whatever better word that the readers rest on – we simply just have to swap out the readers themselves.

Williams said Victorians may see new readers installed over the coming months:

I believe it’s 22,000 – might even be 28,000 readers – that have to be replaced across our public transport system. I’ll get you the exact figure, but it is obviously a very large-scale project to work through our networks and replace one by one those new ticketing readers – that will start in coming months.

It will obviously take a bit of time to get through those sort of tens of thousands of assets and replace them, but we’ve been keen to ensure we can turn on the Metro Tunnel later this year. It will be turned on later this year, and of course, then the new ticketing system on our rail network will roll out from early ‘26.

All readers across the train network will be installed by 2026, she said.

Priority must be given to getting them rolled out across our rail system. But that is an incremental process of getting that new ticketing asset rolled out across our rail, bus and tram networks.

Bullock says Trump tariffs ‘definitely negative for growth’ but inflation impact ‘less certain’

Jonathan Barrett

The RBA governor, Michele Bullock, has told a parliamentary committee that while Donald Trump’s tariffs are bad for economic growth, it’s unclear how the import duties will affect inflation in Australia.

Bullock told the House of Representatives economics committee today:

The bottom line is that it’s definitely negative for growth … The impact on inflation is less certain. It does depend.

Bullock went on to explain that the tariffs could prompt China to export goods more cheaply elsewhere, including to Australia.

This would be disinflationary.

On the other hand, the Australian dollar may lose value against the greenback, which could rise in value due to the higher import duties.

This would be inflationary because a lower Australian dollar makes imports more expensive.