PM Address

The Prime Minister just addressed the media following a National Cabinet Meeting:

• New phase for the National Cabinet Meetings now – having established the many baseline supports and measures in place already
• Now it’s about reviewing data and measures on a regular basis to adjust as necessary
• If the virus was still growing at the rate it was 10 days ago Australia would have 10,000 cases today based on modelling (we have just over 5,000) – new cases are down to 5% a day at the moment
• We must continue to do keep the pressure on and abide by all measures to stop the spread
• We are now at the suppression phase and need to put the pressure down on the virus with the controls ready for the recovery phase
• Some modelling work is underway to look at scenarios of how the virus will pace under current measures and data
• At the current rate doing what we’re doing and with upgrades to ICU capacity and ventilators, the trajectory is promising and encouraging (but there are no guarantees)
• Agreed today by National Cabinet:
  • Launch of a new daily national dashboard of key statistics with simple summary of the Chief Medical Officer in the afternoon (on health.gov.au)
  • Places of worship will now be considered ‘workplaces’ for Easter and religious services (to enable streaming to the public) – Churches / places or worship are not open to the public, but this will enable priests etc to conduct streaming events
  • Holiday working visa holders in Australia must self-isolate for 14 days prior to any movements within Australia out to a work placement (ie fruit picking
  • Commercial leases – very close to finalising an approach
  • Industry code for commercial and retail tenancies has been developed with industry stakeholders and will be released in the next few days
  • Each industry is to complete their own code and the code would be made mandatory for tenancies of turnover of less than $50M and participant of JobKeeper program (30% loss of revenue) will be covered under the Code (Landlord and Tenant will be supported) – both parties must negotiate in good faith, there is a proportionality principle is simply – the turnover decrease of the tenant must be reflected into the rental waiver of the landlord – Gov’t does not wish to be prescriptive about this – but landlords and tenants need to work through it together – banks need to come to the party but the Gov’t recognises they are not parties to this landlord + tenant agreement – both tenants and landlords will be protected under the terms