Australia news as it happened: Polling data shows scale of One Nation’s win in Farrer; Government gears up to deliver federal budget; Iran responds to US’ newest ceasefire proposal

A Victorian man who said his feelings were hurt when he was told to cover up his “plumber’s crack” has been berated by the Fair Work Commission for filing an unfair-dismissal case that wasted the workplace arbiter’s time.

In a decision published last week, Fair Work Commission deputy president Alan Colman said he threw out a case filed by a Woolworths employee seeking compensation from the supermarket giant for a dismissal that never occurred.

“Anyone wanting insight into the phenomenon of unmeritorious claims in the Fair Work Commission may wish to consider [this case],” Colman said, noting such cases compounded the commission’s “burgeoning workload”.

Earlier this year, Fair Work Commission president Justice Adam Hatcher said he expected close to 55,000 cases to come across the arbiter’s table this financial year, up 70 per cent in the space of three years. “There is no sign of this growth trend plateauing out, and we have no idea what the ‘new normal’ will be,” he said at the time, blaming applicants’ use of AI tools.

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The federal government will activate its purpose-built Centre for National Resilience in Western Australia to quarantine five Australians and one New Zealander being repatriated from a cruise ship in Tenerife following a deadly hantavirus outbreak.

Federal Health Minister Mark Butler has just announced that hantavirus will be listed as a human disease under the Biosecurity Act to allow for a national, uniform quarantine response rather than a state response as was the case during the COVID-19 pandemic.

A repatriation flight, being finalised by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, will land at RAAF Base Pearce in Western Australia. The six passengers will be immediately transferred to the neighbouring Bullsbrook quarantine facility, which was built during the COVID pandemic for an initial three-week period.

The key details from Butler’s address:

• While the minister said human-to-human transmission was “very, very rare,” there have been eight cases linked to the cruise ship, resulting in three deaths.
• The group being flown to Australia includes four Australian citizens and one permanent resident—three from NSW and two from Queensland—along with one New Zealand citizen.
• The initial 21-day stay at Bullsbrook covers only half of the virus’ potential 42-day incubation period. Butler said the government would seek further advice from chief health officers on whether to extend this period.
• The minister defended the three-week order as one of the “stronger responses” globally, citing the high risk of transmission during the long-haul flight from Tenerife.
• Continuous testing of samples will be done through the Doherty Institute in Melbourne – the only place in the country able to test for the virus.

The US Department of Health and Human Services says one of the 17 Americans being repatriated from a hantavirus-struck luxury cruise ship has tested mildly positive for the Andes strain of the virus, while a second has mild symptoms.

All the Americans were being flown to the US, and the two passengers with symptoms were travelling in the plane’s biocontainment units, the department said. The second symptomatic passenger had not yet been confirmed as having the virus.

Hantaviruses are a group of viruses that are usually spread by rodents but in rare cases can be transmitted person to person. Health authorities have said the risk of the virus spreading is low.

The US State Department’s airlift would transport passengers to the ASPR Regional Emerging Special Pathogen Treatment Centre at the University of Nebraska Medical Centre in Omaha, Nebraska, and the passenger with mild symptoms would be taken to a second centre, the department said.

Reuters