Australia news live updates: NZ border to reopen in April; man dies in flood waters; steep rise in NSW Covid cases | Australia news

Albanese on China:

I support Australia acting in conjunction with our partners in the world. That’s what we’ve done up to now. We’ve provided bipartisan support for that. It’s important that democracies around the world take action. But I make this point – China has a responsibility to call out Russia’s behaviour and its aggression. It’s outrageous.

Questions now turn to Lismore where he says the PM “never prepares for anything” and cost of living pressures.

Albanese:

The funeral is on Monday. And I’m not going to comment on anything other than that Kimberley Kitching is someone who I had respect for, someone who I – no one else – the one decision I have that doesn’t go to caucus is the appointment of assistant shadow ministers. I appointed Kimberley Kitching as an assistant shadow minister. She remained there.

Kimberley Kitching – it’s a great shock and a great loss and what it shouldn’t be is an opportunity for people [to] speculate based upon I’m not quite sure what.

Questions are now coming in about China and the possibility it may support Russia despite international action to impose sanctions.

Opposition leader Anthony Albanese is speaking live at a press conference now. The Labor opposition has come under fire for promises to marginal electorates and reports about bullying Kimberley Kitching – but Albanese is now pouring cold water on these attacks.

I find it astonishing that, in 2022, I get a question using the term “mean girls”. I find that extraordinarily disrespectful to describe strong, articulate, principled women like Penny Wong, Katy Gallagher and Kristina Keneally. I find it astonishing and a throwback. Decades. Decades. And when I saw that headline this morning, I just thought it was disrespectful to them.

With everything else going on in the world, here is a live blog cleanse with video of a sulphur-crested cockatoo freeing a rat from a trap.

Some might consider this a betrayal of a sacred compact with humanity, others might look at it and see an act of inter-species solidarity – I prefer to think of it as the act of a true maverick.

A poll of 15,000 young Australians of voting age has found climate change, Covid-19 and the cost of living at the three biggest issues of concern going into the next federal election.

The survey was organised by the Together We Can movement, an initiative of the Australian Conservation Foundation, and billed as “Australia’s Biggest Climate Poll”.

It aims to take a “temperature check” on voting attitudes among 1.63 million young people aged between 18 to 24.

The Australian Youth Climate Coalition national director, Alex Fuller, said: “Just a few thousand votes could determine who’s in the driver’s seat on climate action for the next three years.”

“Across the board, one thing is clear: young people want our government to put the health and safety of communities before the profits of big corporations, and our generation needs all parties to have a real plan to protect our future,” Fuller said.

The Covid-19 numbers for Victoria are also in with the state reporting eight people died overnight, 201 are hospitalised, with 24 in ICU and six people on ventilation.

NSW Health reports five people have died overnight as the state reports 1016 hospitalisations, with 36 people in ICU.

They also report 30,402 positive tests in the last 24 hours – though be aware they include 10,000 positive tests that had been left out of official statistics due to a data error.

Wait times blew out for ambulances in NSW for patients with life-threatening conditions such as cardiac arrest during the Covid pandemic, a report published on Wednesday shows.

The Australian Paramedics Association described the findings of the Bureau of Health Information report as “alarming”, but said the pandemic was not entirely to blame for the worsening response times.

The report shows the median response time for patients with life-threatening conditions, known as “P1A” cases, was 8.5 minutes in the October-December quarter of 2021. The benchmark is 10 minutes.

Read Melissa Davey’s full report for more: