National cabinet will cut the COVID-19 isolation period from seven to five days as Prime Minister Anthony Albanese faces calls to ease more restrictions amid a debate on the pandemic’s next phase.
Mandatory mask wearing on domestic flights was also scrapped.
“If you have symptoms, we want people to stay home,” Mr Albanese said on Wednesday after the meeting with the state premiers and territory leaders.
Mr Albanese said there had been no discussion about dropping the isolation requirement entirely.
But he signalled a clear break with earlier phases of the pandemic when the federal government was responsible for much more onerous restrictions.
“There aren’t mandated requirements for the flu or for a range of other illnesses that people [suffer] from,’’ he said.
“What we want to do is to make sure that government responds to the changed circumstances, COVID … is going to be around for a considerable period of time.”
Misplaced security?
Gerard Hayes, head of the Health Services Union, whose members include paramedics and health professionals, said that regulations gave a false sense of security and should be phased out.
“Let’s start talking about what’s really happening, not what we would like,” he told TND.
“COVID is not going away, we have to be able to live with it.
“[Restrictions] should be dropping; personal responsibility is the way forward.
“Otherwise people are just not going to comply so … it becomes Rafferty’s rules. Look at the trams and the trains in Sydney; you have to wonder if we are living in a fool’s paradise.”
NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet had argued beforehand that governments should be moving away from forcing people to do the right thing and towards expecting they would out of concern for others.
Earlier on Wednesday, ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr expressed reluctance to abandon the seven-day isolation period.
Mr Hayes said isolation rules would become even less applicable if the federal government stopped the isolation allowance.
“If the isolation allowance is going to stop what are people going to do? Get tested so they can’t feed their families?”
Pandemic payments warning
Before the meeting, Treasurer Jim Chalmers said there could be no indefinite continuation of the $750 payments currently made to workers who do not have sick leave but have to isolate.
The state premiers believe the payments must continue for as long as isolation is mandated.
In less than a month, Dr Chalmers will hand down the government’s first budget since inheriting national accounts showing debt worth $1 trillion upon winning power.
The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry welcomed the reduction to a five-day isolation period, and said it would ease chronic worker shortages that had become especially bad under COVID.
“Shorter isolation periods will help improve the labour shortages in retail that are crippling our businesses,” said Paul Zahra, who heads the Australian Retailers Association lobby.
Mr Zahra and other business representatives will push for an increase in skilled migration to provide a much greater dose of relief at the federal government’s jobs and skills summit starting in Canberra on Thursday.
