National cabinet has agreed to cut the number of international arrivals by just over half across all airports to ensure the risk of COVID-19 infections from the hotel quarantine system can be properly managed.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison made the announcement after the national cabinet meeting on Friday, and added all states and territories will be moving toward charging for quarantine.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison.Credit:Alex Ellinghausen
"Some states already [charge for quarantine], other states are moving towards that, and I will leave that to them to make their announcements at the appropriate time and where possible, we will seek to have some sort of national uniformity across those pricings," Mr Morrison said.
He also announced a nationwide review of hotel quarantine, to be run by former secretary of the federal Health Department, Jane Halton, who sits on the COVID-19 coordination commission.
"She will be undertaking that review working with states and territories and that again is an important step in providing reassurances, making sure that as we look into each of these states and territories and how they are managing the quarantine".
Victoria is experiencing a wave of coronavirus infections linked to international arrivals quarantining in hotels in Melbourne, and the city is not currently receiving any inbound international flights. The state is also conducting its own review of the bungled quarantine system.
In announcing a national review, Mr Morrison said it was important "we have even greater confidence in those quarantine arrangements".
The decision to limit the number of international arrivals means 4000 fewer Australian citizens and permanent residents will be able to return home each week, spread across all ports of entry, taking effect from Monday.
"The decision that we took to reduce the number of returned travellers to Australia at this time was to ensure that we could put our focus on the resources needed to do the testing and [contact] tracing and not have to have resources diverted to other tasks," Mr Morrison said. "We will review that as the weeks go by."
The Prime Minister acknowledged it will make it more difficult for Australians to return home, but they have made "judgements in the national interest".
"There will be capacity for people to return to Australia, as there has been for many months. There will be continuing access to Australia but the number of available positions on flights will be less and I don't think that is surprising or unreasonable in the circumstances.
"We have to put the national interest first and the health of Australia and Australians first and that is the basis of the decision we have taken. If we can expand that capacity in the future we will do so."
Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly said the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee has developed "very detailed" guidelines at the national level in relation to quarantine and has "given suggestions to Jane Halton about the types of things that we would like to have checked" in the national review.
"There have been a lot of people have come into hotel quarantine. There have been very few breaches but we have seen, as has been reported in Victoria, a single breach, even if it's low risk can lead to a catastrophic outcome. We absolutely need to know that this is working as best as it can," Professor Kelly said.
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Fleta Page is a federal politics desk editor for the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, based at Parliament House.
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2020-07-10 03:21:00Z
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