Australia Coronavirus Update: 1 Million Australian’s To Get Back To Work

SCOTT MORRISON CORONAVIRUS UPDATE
The Prime Minister has revealed plans to restart the economy.

Australia Coronavirus Update: 1 Million Australian’s To Get Back To Work

The Prime Minister has revealed plans to restart the economy.
SCOTT MORRISON CORONAVIRUS UPDATE
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The Prime Minister has revealed plans to restart the economy, also flagging hopes for interstate travel to restart by the start of next month.

In the latest Australia coronavirus update – Scott Morrison doubled down on his claims that “zero cases does not mean success” for States, which needed to start focussing on getting Australians back into jobs.

The affect on the economy because of restrictions -estimated to be about $4 million a week – put “enormous pressure” on the timeframe of getting things back to normal.

“We now need to get the 1 million Australians (who have lost their jobs) back to work,” Mr Morrison said.

“That is the curve we need to address.”

Job losses so far

Following the release of figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics earlier today, Mr Morrison laid out those industries that had suffered the most in job losses.

In hospitality alone, more than 400,000 people had lost their jobs due to the virus.

“It is the food producer, the supply chain, and what goes into those sectors that we need to take that into account,” Mr Morrison said.

The retail sector also suffered a loss of 146,000 jobs, while construction lost 120,000 and the arts and recreation lost 180,000.

In WA alone, about 90,000 have been put out of work because of coronavirus in the five weeks up to April 18.

Hope for local tourism to restart next month

The Prime Minister said there had been “very positive” discussions among those on the National Cabinet around re-opening intrastate and interstate borders.

“There are still hard boarders with Western Australia, there was a bit of friendly banter about whether Kiwis would be welcome into Western Australia before those from the east coast,” he said.

“There is, I think, no doubt a big benefit once we’re back in that situation where people hopefully, by the end of term school holiday, if they are able to go and have a holiday on the Gold Coast or in South Australia or wherever it happens to be out of one’s home state, let’s hope that is possible because that will be great for those places in terms of the tourism
impact.”

Chief Medical Officer Professor Brendan Murphy confirmed that if case numbers remained low, local tourism would slowly restart.

“That is something we are seriously looking at at the moment.

“If the epidemiology stays good and we don’t have a lot of cases I think there will be a case to look at gently promoting local tourism within Australia including interstate travel.”

Trans-Tasman bubble

While confirming discussions were ongoing for travel to open up between New Zealand and Australia, Mr Morrison said this would not happen before local tourism restarted.

“At some point both Australia and New Zealand will want to connect with the rest of the world again, and the most obvious place for that to start is between the two countries,” he said.

“We could see that happening but not something about to happen next week, it is something that will better sit alongside when we are seeing Australians travel from Melbourne to Cairns, at about that time I would expect everything being equal we would be able to fly from Melbourne to Auckland or Christchurch or things like that.”

The two-way travel between Australia and New Zealand is about 1.4 million a year both ways, with almost as many Kiwis coming here as Australians go there.

However States like Queensland get a much higher share of the Kiwi traveller base than say WA.

Read more: Australia & New Zealand Travel Bubble: Jacinda Ardern Pushes For Travel To Restart

App downloads at about 5 million

Professor Murphy confirmed Australia was getting “tantalisingly close” to 5 million COVIDSafe app downloads, but millions of more needed to take it up for it to be effective.

“As you know, our target population are the 16 million adult Australians with smart phones and we do need more because whilst at the moment with low case numbers the contact tracing is being done very efficiently and well by our State and Territory public health units, if we do get outbreaks in the future that we want to control quickly, the app will be a very significant help to us,” he said.

The target for app downloads is 40 per cent of smartphone users, which is about 6.4 million people.

Full national roadmap expected Friday

While highlighting some plans for the future, Mr Morrison said a full roadmap for Australia could be expected this Friday.

“I would expect that on Friday there will be some restrictions formally eased which many states have already moved on others are yet to move on,” he said.

“I think that framework will assist states but our hope that where we get to on Friday can lay out much more of the roadmap for Australians so they can see what is happening for weeks and months ahead.”

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