Chanel Contos’ ePetition has garnered the requisite 20,000 signatories to trigger parliamentary debate over the sex education curriculum in NSW.

NSW Parliament will now debate whether slut shaming, toxic masculinity and rape culture should be taught in the state’s sex education curriculum.

Contos’ petition calls for earlier sex education in schools, including on consent, victim blaming and queer sex, and includes testimonies from thousands of past and present high school students about their experience of sexual harassment and assault in high school.

“We request that consent is taught earlier to reduce the extent of sexual assault experiences amongst youth in New South Wales,” the petition states.

“We, the undersigned petitioners request that holistic consent sex education be included in the curriculum, that acknowledges toxic masculinity, rape culture, slut shaming, victim blaming, sexual coercion, and enthusiastic consent, as well queer sex education.”

The announcement of parliamentary debate comes after the state government vowed to overhaul sexual assault laws and introduce an “affirmative consent model” on Tuesday.

Education Minister, Sarah Mitchell, says curriculum and teaching resources will be updated to reflect a recent announcement to overhaul sexual assault laws.

Contos is leading the charge for the overhauls. She plans to meet Prime Minister Scott Morrison and has met with several private school alumni associations.

Source: Sydney Morning Herald.

The Victorian government has announced a seven-day lockdown today in a bid to curb the state’s growing coronavirus outbreak.

The state’s outbreak has now reached 26 cases, with 11 new cases recorded overnight.

One of the cases is now in intensive care in hospital and on a ventilator.

Mr Merlino said contact tracers had identified 10,000 primary and secondary contacts linked to the outbreak.

The circuit-breaker lockdown will be in place until 11:59pm on June 3. Mr Merlino said there would be only five reasons people would be allowed to leave their homes:

• Food and supplies
• Authorised work
• Care and caregiving
• Exercise for up to 2 hours with one other person
• Getting vaccinated

Schools will close for the duration of the lockdown, but childcare and kinder will be open. Cafes and restaurants can offer take-away only, and public and private gatherings will not be allowed. The vaccination program will also expand in Victoria to include anyone aged 40 years and over.

There are more than 70 exposure sites, including the MCG and Docklands stadium. Exposure sites added last night included cafes and businesses across Melbourne’s south-east and the Mornington Peninsula. 

Exposure sites had previously been largely spread across the city’s north and west.

Testing capacity is being ramped up across the state as the growing exposure sites affect tens of thousands of people.There were 40,411 test results received in the 24 hours to midnight.

That marks among the highest days of testing in Victoria since the pandemic began, with more than 41,000 test results reported on August 9 last year and more than 42,000 on July 26.

Concerns for unvaccinated aged care residents in Victoria:

Concerns have been raised about the safety of aged care residents in Victoria amid the current outbreak, given more than 25 facilities are still waiting to receive their first vaccine doses.

It was revealed yesterday that of the 598 facilities in Victoria, 569 had received a first dose, leaving 29 facilities completely unvaccinated.

The government said 361 facilities had had two doses. It said four more would receive a first dose yesterday, but did not confirm that had happened.

Shadow Health Minister, Mark Butler, said given how quickly the virus spread and how deadly its effect was in aged care homes during Melbourne’s second wave last year, the statistics were unacceptable.

“The idea that 29 facilities in Victoria, given all that happened last year, haven’t even had a single dose, is a scandal,” he said.

“As well, there’s several hundred aged care facilities in Victoria that have only had one dose. These people are not yet protected as Scott Morrison promised they would be.”

Aged Care Services Minister Richard Colbeck said aged care homes still waiting to receive first doses of the vaccine should be covered in the next couple of weeks, but that he was “very comfortable” with the rollout so far.

He said given the outbreak in Victoria, aged care homes there were being prioritised.

“It’s not an overnight exercise, it needs to be done safely and progressively which is exactly what we’ve done,” Senator Colbeck said.

“We will have all of those providers done very quickly and as I’ve said a number of times we’ve prioritised those remaining ones in Victoria.

“We should have all of the providers around the country done within the next week or so.” 

Source: ABC News.

Federal Labor MPs, Maria Vamvakinou and Steve Georganas, have launched a public appeal to the Greek Australian community and all Greeks in Australia to be vaccinated against the coronavirus.

This is what they had to say:

“We have both been vaccinated with the AstraZeneca vaccine, and we would like to send a strong message that what matters is the vaccination, not the vaccine,” Ms Vamvakinou and Mr Georganas said in a joint statement.

“The minimal side effects observed should not be an obstacle to the mass vaccination which will create prospects for the fight against coronavirus and will give us the opportunity to open our borders, to be able to travel to Greece and Cyprus, to open our economy, to regains our freedoms, so that we can live a healthy normal life again.

“That is why we appeal to all Greeks in Australia: do not be influenced by what is written or what is said. All the scientific and medical evidence proves that vaccination saves lives and protects us from the coronavirus. More than 38 million have been vaccinated in the UK so far, and there have been very few side effects.

“Therefore, we call on all Greeks in Australia who have remained unvaccinated: get vaccinated. We stress that only with the vaccination will we take back our lives.”

In a multicultural media press conference on Wednesday afternoon, NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian and Multicultural Minister Geoff Lee thanked the people of NSW for their “outstanding support”, also thanking community and religious leaders for the encouragement in the vaccination program.

“Every religion has encountered their major holy days, major traditions and rituals impacted by Covid and I just wanted to say thank you,” the NSW Premier said.

“Now we are entering the next stage of our battle with covid; We need to make sure that all of our citizens, all of our communities from different backgrounds from right across the state, whether there in Greater Sydney or right across our rural regions, have the vaccination.”

“Our communities getting vaccinated means we keep NSW safe, we keep our loved ones safe and we can continue to have a normal way of life, but I also know many communities have strong links to families and friends overseas, and if we want to consider opening up our international borders in the future, we need to make sure our communities are safe.”

In a separate media conference, Archbishop Makarios, who has been vaccinated with both doses, gave a strong message to people of NSW to get vaccinated, saying it’s the only solution to get rid of this pandemic.

“I would like to encourage all the people, it does not matter if they’re Greek or not, Christians or not, Muslims or whatever, please get vaccinated. Take the decision, don’t hesitate,” Archbishop Makarios said.

“It’s not a matter that we have to protect our lives and health, we have to protect our society, we have to protect our country.”

NSW Health administered its highest-ever number of vaccines in the past 24 hours, giving 13,200 vaccines in the 24 hours to 8pm last night, including 5,220 at the vaccination centre at Sydney Olympic Park.

“As the Premier said, what we want to do is get out the message and we’re asking the community leaders to say, ‘Have your vaccinations now, vaccinations are safe, vaccinations protect the individual from the terrible covid-19’,” Dr Geoff Lee said.

“We are working with our faith and community leaders to ensure everyone in our community has access to reliable information about the COVID-19 vaccines.”

People aged 50 and over are encouraged to book their AstraZeneca vaccination through their GP in the first instance, but if they are unable to obtain the vaccine from their GP, appointments can also be booked in NSW Health clinics. 

Those aged 40-49 can now also register their interest in receiving the Pfizer vaccine. They will be contacted and invited to make a booking when there is availability at clinics.

A team of researchers at the Royal Melbourne Hospital have discovered a simple blood test could help thousands of Australians get an early diagnosis of dementia.

People generally consider dementia to be an older person’s disease. But nearly 30,000 Australians who have the condition developed it before they were 65.

Because the first symptoms of dementia are often depression and anxiety, many people do not realise they have the disease. This is especially the case for younger patients.

“In many situations, the blood tests, the brain scans, even the memory testing can be close to normal,” Professor Dennis Velakoulis, from the Royal Melbourne Hospital, told ABC’s 7.30.

“There are many situations that general practitioners and specialists face where it’s unclear if someone has a mental health or psychiatric disorder, like depression.”

Professor Velakoulis hopes the research his team is doing will one day help patients get answers earlier.

“The general feeling when psychiatrists hear about this research is one of expectation and hope,” he said.

The test will work by measuring the level of neurofilament light in the blood.

“Neurofilament light, or NFL, is a protein that lives in brain cells. It helps to maintain the structure of brain cells. And when a brain cell is damaged, it’s released,” he said.

“When we see it elevated in the spinal fluid or blood, it indicates that there’s been some brain injury and the brain cells have died.”

Crucially, neurofilament light is not present in samples from patients with mental illness, meaning this test could differentiate between the two conditions.

This is the first time Australian researchers have confirmed the link.

“People with psychiatric illnesses, or people who are healthy, have normal levels of NFL, because there’s no brain cells dying. But in many neurological disorders, particularly in dementia, there are brain cells that are dying and releasing NFL.” 

At the moment, neurofilament light levels are commonly measured in samples of spinal fluid. But as the technology improves, it should be possible to just test the blood instead.

“In the past, we were measuring NFL only in cerebrospinal fluid, because the levels there were higher. Now with new technology, and new machines that can measure very, very low levels of proteins, we are able to look for it in the blood.”

The team hopes that following more research, the technology will be developed and made available to GPs across the country.

“If the test is confirmed to perform in the same way that it did in our earlier study, then we would be hoping that this blood test would be widely available to general practitioners and other specialists.”

Source: ABC