Morrison government embarks on final day of pre-budget publicity blitz with promises of $4bn in infrastructure spending. NSW hopes to start vaccinating 40- to 49-year-olds with Pfizer ‘within weeks’. Follow the latest updates

• Foreign minister Marise Payne visits Afghanistan
• NSW Covid hotspots: list and map of Sydney case locations
• Budget 2021: Coalition to inject more than $4bn into infrastructure projects
• NSW coronavirus restrictions: what you can and can’t do under the new rules
• Liberal senator James Paterson speaks out against India travel ban

4.04am BST

In the federal court, counsel for the India travel ban plaintiff, Christopher Ward, is sketching the limits of the health minister’s powers, and does so with an extreme hypothetical.

Ward argues if there were a pandemic and the only carriers of disease were blue eyed babies, the health minister could not use the Biosecurity Act to have blue eyed babies “incarcerated, forcibly vaccinated” or subjected to “more serious treatment” such as being “physically harmed”.

3.51am BST

This makes for sobering reading – cycling deaths remained unchanged, despite Covid lockdowns.

As AAP reports:

While Covid-19 restrictions and lockdowns changed the way we lived in 2020, many details about lives lost did not change.

The total number of cases, bike rider proportion of total road fatalities and fatalities per state all remained similar to the 20-year average.

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Source: The Guardian