TRACKS ON

According to The Age, the Andrews government is considering plans to quarantine returned travellers at home with GPS-enabled wristband tracking devices, as Victoria prepares to begin accepting international arrivals and reboot a strengthened but potentially scaled-back hotel quarantine scheme.

The paper also reports of speculation by Dan Andrews over easing borders with NSW and South Australia within a month; a defence of Victoria’s cautious roadmap from epidemiologists Michael Toole and Brendan Crabb; and complaints that Melbourne’s hidden bars and restaurants will not be able to adapt to new outdoor dining rules.

Ahead of an extraordinary sitting of the hotel quarantine inquiry today, the Herald Sun ($) also reports that key government witnesses are likely to be re-examined including both chief health officer Brett Sutton and Department of Health and Human Services secretary Kym Peake.

PR CORNER: In easily the funniest account of yesterday’s tiff between Dan Andrews and Josh Frydenberg, The Australian’s ($) Joe Kelly and Remy Varga “report” that, “Mr Frydenberg is a passionate Victorian whose wife and children have been locked down while he delivered the COVID recovery budget in Canberra”.

The front page scoop also emphasises federal funding for the state’s pandemic response and — without any obvious reason or context — that votes for Frydenberg’s (federal) seat of Kooyong eclipsed Andrews’ (state) electorate of Mulgrave.

LANDED IN SOME TROUBLE

Estimates kicked off yesterday, with The Mandarin reporting that Department of Infrastructure secretary Simon Atkinson has agreed with Senator Penny Wong’s assertion that public servants appeared to have tried to cover up the Leppington Triangle land scandal.

Atkinson also agreed that the department budgeted $30 million for the land before it received — and ignored — valuations demonstrating the block was worth just $3 million, while the ABC reports that auditor-general Grant Hehir confirmed it was the first time he had ever referred a matter to the AFP after five years on the job.

Elsewhere, SBS reports that Home Affairs secretary Mike Pezzullo resisted requests to discuss a Federal Court finding that acting Immigration Minister Alan Tudge unlawfully detained a person seeking asylum. Pezzullo would only argue that the Administrative Appeals Tribunal had “purported” to issue a visa over the disputed asylum case — which it has the power to do — before declining further questions over a pending appeal.

In much less depressing news, the ABC reports that although medals purchased for Tony Abbott’s knights and dames scheme were once valued at $135,000, the Governor-General’s office has confirmed they are worth exactly nothing.

Finally, The Age reports that Minister for Women Marise Payne responded to criticisms over the gendered impact of the 2020 budget by arguing that tax cuts, wage subsidies and employment schemes are gender neutral.

PS: According to The Conversation, Payne’s comments came after the National Foundation for Australian Women published gender analysis showing that new measures mainly benefit men — i.e. apprenticeships and traineeships (two-thirds of which are taken by males), the construction of physical infrastructure, and asset tax breaks that will primarily assist mining and manufacturing — while female-dominated care sectors were mostly ignored.

BOLIVIA VOTES

In terrible news for lithium billionaires and US imperialism, The Guardian reports that exit polls in Bolivia suggest a landslide win for former president Evo Morales’s socialist party Movimiento al Socialismo.

MAS candidate Luis Arce appears to have secured more than 50% of the vote, after Morales — an Indigenous leader who helped reduce poverty by sharing the country’s natural gas and mineral wealth among Bolivia’s population — was forced out of the country by a pro-US military takeover.

The coup, which directly led to the killing of Indigenous protesters, was in part legitimised by a dodgy Organization of American States report alleging election fraud, as well as what The Intercept recounts as a largely compliant international media.

Self-imposed president Jeanine Áñez, who pulled out last month due to low polling, has acknowledged Arce’s likely win on Twitter.

MOMENT OF TRUTH: SUPREME ACTION

According to CNN, America’s Supreme Court has announced it will hear two cases concerning Donald Trump’s border wall and his administration’s policy requiring people seeking asylum to remain in Mexico after lower courts had found both to be unlawful.

ABC (US) reports that Trump, down in the polls, short on cash, and until very recently COVID-positive, is holding live rallies but campaigning on the defensive this week — his campaign is reportedly worried they have lost the crucial state of North Carolina, internally viewed as “super safe” as recently as just a few weeks ago.

Conversely, (our) ABC recounts how Joe Biden is holding drive-in campaign rallies throughout America’s pandemic.