Australia live news updates: Scott Morrison rules out new taxes, Labor pledges $500m for Indigenous health staff, 10 Covid deaths in NSW, Vic | Scott Morrison

Deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce has defended the government’s handling of the relationship with Solomon Islands on ABC Insiders this morning saying the US and Australia were working in “lockstep”.

This is not something that we were blinded by.

Speaking about the energy transition in regional areas like Gladstone, Joyce sought to pour cold water on efforts to quickly combat the catastrophic risk of climate change by moving to a zero carbon economy.

In a heated exchange, Joyce said the government was supporting hydrogen developments but would not be giving up on fossil fuel industry.

Here is the vital difference – is that we are standing by the jobs they got and investing billions towards hydrogen but we’re not going to be saying to people the word ‘transition’ because that equals to unemployment. Transition to what? There is no other industry here.

The national death toll since the start of the pandemic is approaching 7,000 after 44 deaths have been reported since Saturday, AAP reports.

NSW and Victoria have recorded more than 18,000 new Covid-19 cases along with 10 deaths on Sunday morning.

Some 6,980 Australian lives have been lost to coronavirus, with data still to be reported in most states and territories on Sunday.

The federal Coalition say they are committed to a “lower tax guarantee” if reelected to government.

This decision will lock-in tax cuts of $100bn over the next four years in a continuation of existing government policy.

These tax cuts have been problematic as they overwhelmingly benefit men and those in the highest income brackets while creating future structural problems in the budget.

During an appearance on ABC’s Insiders this morning Labor shadow treasurer Jim Chalmers responded by saying “you can’t believe that Scott Morrison says about the economy and the tax”.

This is the second highest taxing government of the last 30 years.

When pushed for Labor’s commitments on tax reform, Chalmers said Labor was “not proposing any tax reforms beyond the proposals that we will shortly make about multinational tax reform”.

Later in the program he confirmed Labor would be looking to “trim spending”.

We made it clear we need to trim spending in areas like the commonwealth spending on consultants, contractors and labour hire. We think there are substantial savings to be made there. We would be inheriting, if we’re successful on 21 May, $1tn in debt and not enough to show for it.

Chalmers will be giving a press conference in Brisbane at 10am.

Two people with Covid-19 have died in Victoria overnight. Health authorities in the state have reported 7,104 new cases, with 438 people hospitalised, 33 people in ICU and eight on ventilation.

New South Wales has recorded eight new deaths from Covid-19 overnight. The state has reported 11,107 new cases in the last 24 hours with 1,588 hospitalisations and 64 people in ICU.

Good morning and happy Sunday! We pick up the liveblog as the country is about to enter week three of the 2022 federal election campaign.

As we approach the midpoint, the major parties are turning their attention to the Northern Territory today.

Labor is announcing that it will hire 500 extra Indigenous health staff while prime minister Scott Morrison is also in Darwin and was photographed attending Greek Easter services last night.

Royce Kurmelovs will be on the blog and taking you through events of the day. If there is something happening in Australia you think should be on the blog, his DMs are open and you can reach him at @RoyceRk2.

In the meantime, let’s dive in.