At a press conference on Wednesday 6 May, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the National Cabinet’s focus had shifted to economic recovery following Australia’s successful flattening of the infection ‘curve’ – that is, maintaining a manageable number of active COVID-19 cases.
The number of daily confirmed cases peaked on 28 March; at the time of publication, two states – Western Australia and South Australia – had recorded no new cases for more than a week. Nationally, there had been 6,875 confirmed cases, with 97 deaths and 5,984 complete recoveries.
“We are [now] in a much stronger position to resist and deal with any increase in cases and that gives us the confidence to move into the space that we are now seeking to move into. Just having a low number of cases is not a success, particularly when you have a lot of people out of work – that is the ‘curve’ that I'm looking to address now,” Morrison said.
“We have had great success on flattening the health curve and that is great, and we all wanted that, but it has come at a price and we have to now start balancing that up,” he added.
Details of the phased re-opening are expected to be released on Friday, with cafés, restaurants and retailers likely to be among the first sectors to be allowed to commence trading.
States and territories will have the authority to determine when certain restrictions are removed, which "reflects the fact that states and territories are at different stages of the pandemic response,” a government statement said, adding, “It is [the] National Cabinet’s aim to have a sustainable COVID-19 safe economy in July 2020. This will be subject to strong epidemiology results, testing, tracing and local surge health response capacity.”
To assist businesses in re-opening safely, the National COVID-19 Coordination Commission (NCCC) is developing a series of industry-specific safety protocols, guidelines and resources.
The NCCC was established on 25 March to ‘help minimise and mitigate the impact of the COVID-19 on jobs and businesses, and to facilitate the fastest possible recovery of lives and livelihoods once the virus has passed’.
Nev Power, chairman NCCC, said, “There are a lot of small-to-medium-sized businesses and we’re working with them now to make sure that they have all of the information they need to get their businesses back up and running – not only from a safety point of view, but also that they've got… the working capital to restart, and that they're ready to make sure the public are safe when they come into those businesses as well.”
Treasury has estimated that the current COVID-19 restrictions are costing the Australian economy $4 billion per week.
However, Dr Philip Lowe, governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia, has warned that needing to "re-impose" restrictions after lifting them too soon would negatively impact household and business confidence, leading to “even more challenging” economic outcomes.
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