Sydney’s population swelled beyond 5.3 million before the coronavirus pandemic as migrants flocked to the inner city at record rates, but its claim to the title as the nation’s most populous capital is to be challenged by Melbourne by the middle of the decade.

Population Minister Alan Tudge on Friday cautioned growth was likely to be lower for longer, with the government now set to focus on attracting “job-making migrants” to help rebuild the economy.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics, in its annual regional population report, said the population of Greater Sydney reached 5,312,163 by June 30 last year, an increase of 81,833, or 1.6 per cent.

We may not have eradicated the virus but Australia seems to have done a thorough job of eradicating any remaining shred of the accountability of government ministers. Just about everyone is being asked to make sacrifices for the public good. The front-line health workers who risk their own health for the health of the country are the people who bear the heaviest burden.

Millions of other citizens are expected to accept loss of income, loss of personal liberties, loss of wellbeing. And just about everyone is held to account. Those who don’t are admonished, fined and, in the case of the woman who snuck across the border into Western Australia by hiding on a truck, jailed for six months.

Just about everyone, that is, except those at the very top. We have three glaring failures.

NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller has ramped up audits of security guards at Sydney’s quarantine hotels after a dozen guards were sacked for breaching protocols.

Commissioner Fuller has established a committee to conduct spot audits of hotels providing mandatory accommodation for travellers returning to NSW from overseas or Victoria, and the contract guards tasked with their security.

The committee would audit the cleanliness and cleaning of the accommodation, as well as the quality of the briefings given to hotel staff, Mr Fuller told the Daily Telegraph.

A man who travelled more than 300 kilometres from his home to go to the beach and friends who gathered to watch the footy together are among the latest Victorians to be fined for breaching lockdown restrictions.

Police said two men and a woman were found at a home in the council area of Boroondara in Melbourne’s east after the resident invited friends around for drinks to watch the football.

“The resident attempted to hide the visitors letting them try and flee over a back fence. One of the men was found hiding in bushes,” a police spokeswoman said.

Another man was found in his car at Shoreham beach on the Mornington Peninsula when he lives more than 300 kilometres away in the town of Wedderburn, north-west of Bendigo.

A new government body has joined forces with specialist waste facilities to take on the mammoth task of managing the explosion of clinical waste pouring out of Victoria’s COVID-19 positive aged care facilities.

The Victorian Aged Care Response Centre, a federal body set up in conjunction with state authorities, businesses and regulators, has been working at an accelerated pace to contain the estimated 100-fold increase in contaminated medical waste produced by facilities with positive cases of coronavirus.

There are currently 121 aged care facilities in Victoria with an active case of coronavirus, and with many of them used to managing just a fraction of the day-to-day clinical waste, PPE began to build up across Melbourne.

Potentially hazardous material had been piling up on street corners in bright yellow bags containing masks, gloves and surgical gowns that may have been contaminated with the coronavirus lining the streets of several suburbs.

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Milwaukee: On November 3, James Nash is considering doing something for the first time in his adult life: not voting in a presidential election. The Milwaukee firefighter, who is black, is “definitely not a Trump supporter”. But he is seriously underwhelmed by Democratic Party nominee Joe Biden.

“I liked him as vice-president but as a president I’m not sure,” Nash says while hanging out with friends at the Upper Cutz barber shop on the north side of Milwaukee, Wisconsin’s biggest city.

“He is tied to a lot of laws that have kept black people down,” he says, referring to Biden’s Senate record as as tough-on-crime legislator.

It is time to praise Victorians; the people, of course, not the politicians who represent them at the national and state level. Victorians are proving more resilient, and cohesive, in the second wave of the pandemic than the rest of the country may appreciate. Community support for the second lockdown remains at remarkably high levels despite the blame-shifting between Scott Morrison and Daniel Andrews and the bomb-throwing from the state opposition.

Nine out of 10 Victorians support the wearing of masks, and seven in 10 support the restrictions of movement, and even the nightly curfew, according to research from Roy Morgan released this week. The only restriction that divides opinion at the margin is the ban on visiting family members in another house (with the exception of delivering care or essential services), but even on this question almost six in 10 (57 per cent) are still in favour.

The survey coincided with an encouraging report from the Victorian Coroners Court showing the number of suicides has not surged in lockdown. Every life lost remains a tragedy. But the state total in the year to August 26 – 466 – happens to be the lowest since 2017. This figure echoes the trend in New Zealand, where the national suicide rate is also at its lowest level in three years, according to New Zealand’s chief coroner Judge Deborah Marshall.