Australia COVID-19 Update: Scott Morrison’s Three-Step Plan for “The Road Out” of COVID-19

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The Prime Minister has laid out a plan for the next four weeks that, if successful, could see restrictions start to lift.

Australia COVID-19 Update: Scott Morrison’s Three-Step Plan for “The Road Out” of COVID-19

The Prime Minister has laid out a plan for the next four weeks that, if successful, could see restrictions start to lift.
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The Prime Minister has laid out a plan for the next four weeks that, if successful, could see restrictions start to lift.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison today unveiled the Government’s plan for the “road out” of COVID-19 with three clear steps that would lead to a rolling back of restrictions and a slow return to normality.

“If we are going to move to an environment with fewer restrictions then you need these three things in place,” he said in Canberra, following a meeting of National Cabinet.

“The first of those, is a more extensive surveillance or sentinel – as it is called – testing regime, so beyond those who are symptomatic… we need an even broader testing regime than we have at this point,” he said.

“The second part of that is making sure we have an even greater tracing capability than we have now. We need to lift that to an industrial capability and do that using technology.”

Read more: Government set to roll out a tracing app that will use Bluetooth to track you and people you have been in contact with

“The third area we need a local response capability and we are seeing this in part right now for north-western Tasmania, where we have an outbreak. We need the ability to move very fast to be able to lockdown an outbreak where it occurs and make sure it does not transmit or broadly within the community.”

See Also: Latest Australian Coronavirus stats

What would “come back” first?

Mr Morrison said, should the three measures be successful, some parts of the economy could start back up.

But don’t get too excited, this doesn’t mean you’ll be seeing your local pub re-open its doors.

Instead, it would start with “low risk, high value” parts of the economy, like construction and manufacturing.

However, Mr Morrison did flag that “some” of the retail sector might follow and people might soon actually go back into work rather than working from home – albeit probably on a roster system.

Suppression not eradication

Mr Morrison said Australia remained in the “suppression” phase, rather than eradication like New Zealand.

“We remain formally, after receiving advice again, in what we describe as the suppression phase,” he said.

“We are not in a eradication mode nor are we in the other mode where we would see a herd immunity approach, these are not the approaches we are following in Australia.”

Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy earlier this week questioned the viability of eradicating the virus, as New Zealand was seeking to do with even stricter lockdown laws, erring on the side of suppression and containment instead.

Schools up to the States

With Term 2 starting back up in Victoria this week and schools across the country set to follow after their respective holiday breaks, the questions on everyone’s lips is: what exactly is going on? Should I send my children to school?

Well, the PM’s answer is – that’s not really up to him.

“I want to make that clear, the Commonwealth does not run schools the State Governments… they set policy and rules,” he said.

“Take the Northern Territory, there they will be back next week and back exactly according to normal, there have been virtually no cases for some time there, so they are doing that from next week I understand.

“More broadly… New South Wales they are working on a range of different options about how they might come back and Western Australia the same, for South Australia as they went into the break they had attendances of 50% and at one point up to 80, you are seeing differences between states about how parents are engaging, how schools are acting, and I would expect to continue to see that.”

Teachers not students the concern

While no State disagrees with the health advice, that children are not as vulnerable to COVID-19 as adults, the PM today made clear the real concern for some States in having schools re-open.

“The health advice has been consistent that for children, schools are a safe space,” Mr Morrison said.

“Where the confusion arises is that for teachers they are more at risk in the staffroom than they are in the classroom.”

Mr Morrison said this meant there needed to be “proper arrangements” in place for teachers and other staff in schools obviously to protect their work environment, without necessarily applying to students “because they have a different level of risk”.

To keep interaction between adults at a minimum, Mr Morrison said schools needed to be “very careful” about drop-offs and pickups.

“At the drop-off and pick-up at my children’s school – you are not allowed to get out of the car, you can’t see the principal who is there, the kids get out and I can’t go to the back and get their bags, they have to do that themselves,” he said. 

“There is no contact between any adults.”

Mr Morrison said he wanted his kids “to go back to school and be taught in a classroom by a teacher” as Term 2 began, rather than earn remotely.

Parliament will sit before August

While the Government has doubled down in recent weeks on parliament not sitting until August, Mr Morrison today said a “trial week” would now be held in May.

“We will be looking to have a trial week of Parliament in May and that would be returning to the normal business of Parliament,” he said.

“That would not be the Parliament coming together to consider necessarily COVID-19-related measures but if they do need to be considered, of course they can be but we want to send a very clear message that we are well ahead of where we thought we might be at this point and that would mean that we might be able to – I would say will be able to – having the Parliament meet again on a regular basis.”

Mr Morrison said there would be “logistical” problems to work out given how few flights were available to get politicians from across the country to Canberra, but that would be looked at in coming weeks.

Job Keeper fraud “disgraceful”

While welcoming the 850,000 businesses who had now signed up for the Job Keeper program, which would give companies $1500 a fortnight per employee, Mr Morrison slammed those taking advantage of the program.

Reports have surfaced in recent days of employers telling employees they would be kept on the books and given some money to support them through the virus if that employee gives them a cut of their Job Keeper payment.

Mr Morrison had a blunt message for those playing the system.

“That sort of behaviour where it occurs by employers is disgraceful and it’s illegal, and they should be reported to the police and the ATO, to make sure that can be followed up,” he said.

“It’s not on, it is appalling behaviour and we will move quickly on that.”

The WHO under review

Mr Morrison signed off his address with a note about the World Health Organisation.

In the wake of the US freezing funding to the WHO while a 90 day investigation into its activities during COVID-19 takes place, the Australian Government made clear it wouldn’t follow suit.

But today, Mr Morrison revealed Australia’s engagement with the WHO was under review and had been for some time.

“What I announced at the Lowy Institute (in October) that we will review how we engage with all these organisations – that included the WHO,” he said.

“There is a report coming back on that very soon.”

Mr Morrison said the criticisms he had for the WHO, including their support for wet markets to re-open were “very valid”, but the organisation also did “a lot of good work”.

“I know they have had criticisms and it has been quite deserved and we have been frustrated but they do do important work and they do important work here in the Pacific and we will keep working with them but it won’t be uncritical,” he said.