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Subject: Sun.18.7.21 daily digest

Roderick

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Sun.18.7.21 metro twitter
Aircraft: No ramp access to platforms until late 2021 (pedestrian-underpass works).
Flinders St: still with a lane closed for tunnel works.
Buses replace trains Frankston - Stony Point until the last train (works).
Buses replace trains Blackburn - Lilydale/Belgrave until the last train  (maintenance works).
Trains will not stop at Mooroolbark until late October 2021 (level-crossing works).
Buses replace trains on sections of the Ballarat & Geelong lines until Sunday 25 July. Buses are not stopping at Footscray and Sunshine. Passengers should catch a suburban train to Southern Cross. See https://bit.ly/36zd6wR
Upfield line: All trains will terminate/originate at Southern Cross from 6.15 until 21.00 (works). From loop stations, take a Flinders St train to Southern Cross. [contradicted by item below].
- Buses replace trains North Melbourne - Upfield from 20.35 or 21.00 until the last train.
Sunbury/Craigieburn/Upfield lines: All trains run direct to/from Flinders St. From loop stations, take a train from pfm 2 to Southern Cross.

Sydney’s transport services cut, limited staff at schools to stop mobility. Alexandra Smith, Tom Rabe and Jordan Baker July 18, 2021. 124 comments
Public transport services will be slashed and schools will operate on skeleton staff from Monday with a renewed push for parents to keep children home as COVID-19 infection rates in the community remain stubbornly high.
With the number of people infectious in the community continuing to hover in the high 20s - reaching 27 on Sunday - the NSW government moved to further slow the spread of the Delta strain across metropolitan Sydney.
Premier Gladys Berejiklian says the government is prepared to tinker with restrictions if they are needed.CREDIT:RENEE NOWYTARGER
In addition to a range of new restrictions, including a ban on all construction work and with non-essential retail now closed, public transport services will be cut by up to 50 per cent for the first time during the pandemic.
NSW Transport chief operations officer Howard Collins said the changes would come into effect on Monday with services across all modes reduced by between 30 and 50 per cent for at least two weeks.
“This is probably the most challenging point of the pandemic from an operational point of view,” Mr Collins said.
“The message is quite clear now that we’re in lockdown; we really are encouraging people not to use services, therefore we are basing the timetable on those people who are absolutely essential.”
Schools in Fairfield, Liverpool and Canterbury-Bankstown can also have no more than five teachers on site.
All parents, not just those in the hot spot areas, will also be more strongly encouraged to keep children at home. Last week, only about five per cent of students attended school, but there were as many as 80 at some schools.
On Saturday, the government announced a travel ban stopping residents from leaving Fairfield, Liverpool and Canterbury-Bankstown unless they were emergency services and healthcare workers.
However, after a phone hook-up of 240 business leaders later on Saturday, the list of essential jobs was expanded to include people working at garden centres, bottle shops, factories and other roles such as delivery drivers.
Supermarkets, neighbourhood shops, kiosks and retailers of office supplies were added to the list of essential workers along with alcohol retailers and cellar door premises as well as various manufacturing roles.
NSW recorded 105 new cases on Sunday and the fourth death in this outbreak, with a woman in her 90s from south-eastern Sydney dying on Saturday. There have now been 60 deaths in NSW during the pandemic and 1242 cases in the current outbreak.
There are 76 people in hospital, with 18 people in intensive care, seven of whom require ventilation. In the reporting period, there were 66,671 tests.
Premier Gladys Berejiklian said devising the new restrictions on Saturday was the most testing time of her political career.
“I am not embarrassed to say that in public life, yesterday was probably the most difficult day I’ve had personally because we don’t take these decisions lightly,” Ms Berejiklian said.
“They are decisions that affect the lives and livelihoods, they are decisions that affect millions of people, but my job and the job of our government is to keep people safe, to reduce transmission, reduce the risk ... please know that we rely on the best health advice available, we have the best teams.”
Ms Berejiklian has repeatedly said that Sydney cannot come out of its scheduled lockdown on July 30 until the number of infectious cases in the community is zero, or close to that number.
“We don’t expect those numbers to shift massively for the next three days but we want the community to be more vigilant than ever before, because I am convinced that working together we will start to see those numbers nudge,” Ms Berejiklian said.
NSW Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant said the state’s testing capabilities were being stretched with essential workers from the three hot spot areas now needing to be swabbed every three days.
She said this meant the government had to “balance who we are testing” and there was some “slippage in turn around times” for tests of people who are not from hot spots or deemed close contacts.
“Our pathology testing is capacity is exceedingly good and it’s improved throughout the pandemic but it is limited and we can reach a cap in terms of that capacity,” Dr Chant said.
Dr Chant also urged Sydney’s Muslim communities to stay home during Eid, which starts on Tuesday.
“I know this is a very special time for many in our community, but we asking that prayers only be performed in your house and please, again, do not have visitors to your home, including family members and do not visit others,” Dr Chant said.
RELATED ARTICLE Hay and Yen Lim in their temporarily closed breadshop at Eastwood.  ‘We want to do the right thing’: Confusion over change to workers able to leave home
RELATED ARTICLE Children of essential workers Clemton Park Public School students of essential workers returning to school on Tuesday morning.  NSW government cracks down on schools in the fight against COVID-19
RELATED ARTICLE Laverty Pathology staff conducting COVID-19 tests at the Roselands drive through testing clinic, earlier this month. Wait times for COVID-19 test results blow out
<www.smh.com.au/politics/nsw/sydney-s-transport-services-cut-limited-staff-at-schools-to-stop-mobility-20210718-p58arp.html>

Damanjeet Sidhu: PSO trainee stalked co-worker in Dandenong set to join ADF. Hugo Timms July 18, 2021 Greater Dandenong Leader.
An unlucky-in-love Police Academy student has been revealed as a creepy stalker — and he could be set to serve on the nation’s frontline.
The court heard Damanjeet Sidhu stalked a former co-worker here, at the Dandenong train station, in late 2018. Picture: Jason Edwards
He was in love, the court heard, just not with the wife he had been forced to marry in India.
Now Damanjeet Sidhu, who has avoided a criminal conviction for stalking a fellow Police Academy trainee in 2018, might be on the frontline in the defence of our nation.
The Dandenong Magistrates’ Court heard a criminal conviction for Damanjeet Sidhu, who has been suspended without pay as a PSO for 18 months, could imperil his future in the RAAF, into which he has been provisionally accepted.
Sidhu, 31, was “in love” with the victim, the court heard, while stuck in an unhappy arranged marriage with a bride he scarcely knew when the stalking occurred in late-2018.
The victim, who according to prosecutor’s entertained the relationship initially because the intimacy had “dried up” with her partner of seven years, is now worried about speaking to men and having her photograph taken, according to a victim impact statement read in court.
The Office of Public Prosecutions said that Sidhu, who was 28 at the time of the offending, commenced an intimate relationship with the victim in 2017 before she called it off in September the following year.
The court heard they had met at the Police Academy in 2017, and shortly after began to see one another in what the victim described as a “casual relationship,” but which Sidhu felt to be more serious.
“I just want to be more friends with benefits,” the court heard the woman told Sidhu.
After the victim ended the relationship a series of smaller incidents, such as seeing the victim at the Dandenong railway station when she was working, culminated in a December evening that Sidhu’s lawyer said was of a more serious nature.
After waiting until the victim finished work at the Dandenong police station in the early hours of a December night in 2018, Sidhu watched the victim enter a car with another man, the court heard.
He followed them to a 7/11 in Narre Warren, and then to Wood Road Reserve in Narre Warren South, the court heard.
Sidhu had the victim under surveillance with his phone and torch.
When the victim and the man pulled up Sidhu approached the two, shone a torch in the victim’s eye, and asked her if her boyfriend knew what she was doing, prosecutors said.
“What’s going on here,” Sidhu was said to have demanded.
“It’s him,” the victim said to the man, once she realised who had arrived at the window of the car, the court heard.
Prosecutors said that at 3.03am Sidhu sent the video to the victim, which she saved.
Sidhu was arrested in December 2018 and has been on bail since.
Addressing the court Sidhu’s lawyer, Tim Harvey, said his client’s relationship as a PSO was “effectively over”.
Mr Harvey said Sidhu had since worked casually for the NDIS, and has now been provisionally accepted into the air force, which was aware of Sidhu’s situation.
He said Sidhu had had no choice in his marriage, which the court heard occurred in India in 2018, and was in love with the victim.
Sidhu received a one year good-behaviour bond, and was ordered to pay $1,000 to the court within three months.
<www.heraldsun.com.au/leader/south-east/damanjeet-sidhu-pso-trainee-stalked-coworker-in-dandenong-set-to-join-adf/news-story/953b1d7802903afc6f8289db1d2c5dc8>