Prime Minister Scott Morrison has announced free childcare for more than one million families, with a funding boost that aims to keep more than 13,000 childcare services across Australia open.

In doing so, the government has backed its earlier recognition of early childhood education and care being an essential service.

Estimates suggest...

The government will provide free child care in a move aimed at ensuring parents, especially in essential services, are able to keep working.

Without a rescue package large parts of the industry could have collapsed, leaving health and other workers finding it difficult or impossible to keep doing their jobs.

More than 945,000 families with 1.3...

To control the spread of COVID-19 we need to identify as many people with the virus as possible. If we know who has it, we can isolate them so they can’t infect others and quarantine their close contacts in case they’ve already been infected.

But some experts are concerned we’re not testing enough. Because of restrictions on who...