Wednesday November 18, 2020
Reforms recommended by the Banking Royal Commission will be delayed so the financial industry can recover from the coronavirus crisis, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has announced.
Mr Frydenberg said in a statement that the Government wants the financial industry to deal with the current economic crisis.
There were two rounds of legislation due to be introduced this year — the first in July, and the second in December.
Both will be delayed for six months.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPrbGU0Wyh4
Big technology companies are using the COVID-19 tragedy to increase their power over the American population.
Ten people have been arrested and one police officer has been hospitalised after demonstrators who gathered in Melbourne’s CBD to protest against “self-isolating, social distancing, tracking apps [and] 5G being installed” clashed with police enforcing Victoria’s lockdown laws.
Victoria police said on Sunday that 10 people, including two organisers, were arrested after more than 100 people turned out on the steps of Victoria’s parliament on Sunday in contravention of emergency powers restricting gatherings introduced to slow the spread of Covid-19.
Footage from the Melbourne protest showed numerous confrontations between demonstrators and police. While the majority of the arrests were for failing to comply with public health orders, three people will be charged with assaulting a police officer and another for “discharging a missile” after allegedly throwing a bottle at an officer.
One officer was taken to hospital after suffering a rib injury, Victoria Police said.
In a statement, a spokeswoman for Victoria police said officers would review social media footage of the protest and fine people who attended.
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“When attending the protest today, the priority for police was to quickly arrest those individuals who were acting unlawfully and inciting others to breach the chief health officer’s directions,” a police spokeswoman said.
“Once police made arrests, the crowd started to disperse. Police are continuing to investigate the events of today in order to identify other people who were in attendance. Once individuals are identified, we will be issuing them with fines and will consider any other enforcement options.”
The protest, which was promoted on various Facebook groups linked to fringe conspiracy groups including QAnon and various anti-vaxxers, followed a smaller demonstration in Sydney on Saturday in which a 36-year-old woman was arrested and fined while wearing a sign that read “if you don’t know your rights, you don’t have any. *Magna Carta,” after refusing to provide her details to police.
Demonstrators in Melbourne held signs about 5G, China and the Murray-Darling River while chanting “arrest Bill Gates”. Various speakers claimed Covid-19 was a conspiracy orchestrated by “globalists”, while one of the main organisers of the rally, Fanos Panayides, told the crowd he promised his father he would never be microchipped.
Panayides, previously a contestant on the Nine Network program Family Food Fight, was later arrested by police as he tried to find a verse from the Bible on his mobile phone.
He later posted a video of himself on the train after the demonstration, saying “innocent people were being arrested”.
“I don’t have a problem with what the cops do – I never did – I just have a problem with who they do it for,” he said.
“I sat in the back of a [police] van for the first time in my life. It was quite a surreal feeling. Because I didn’t fight back the police were quite respectful in terms of not causing me any harm. I didn’t give them any reasons to detain me other than being guilty of a summary offence.
“Yeah, it was pretty interesting when I was trying to say that part out of Revelations about the microchip is when they came and grabbed me.”
When questioned about the protests at a press conference on Sunday afternoon, the chief medical officer, Brendan Murphy, said there is a lot of “very silly misinformation” out there, such as the 5G network spreading the virus.
“There is absolutely no evidence about 5G doing anything in the coronavirus space. I have unfortunately received a lot of communication from these conspiracy theorists myself,” Murphy said during his daily update on the Covid-19 pandemic.
He also said while people had the right to protest, they should not be breaching social distancing rules and those who do “should be held to account”.