Gunner flags decisions on lifting some NT restrictions could happen mid-May

CHIEF Minister Michael Gunner today confirmed he will follow Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s lead and revisit current NT coronavirus restrictions in mid-May

A police checkpoint on the Northern Territory/South Australia border ... Chief Minister Michael Gunner said today that the Territory’s border controls will likely be the last restrictions to be lifted. Picture: Chloe Erlich

CHIEF Minister Michael Gunner today confirmed he will follow Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s lead and revisit current coronavirus restrictions in mid-May.

Mr Gunner said that, by the end of April, he should be able to talk to Territorians about what May will look like.

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“The Prime Minister has flagged that about half-way through May we will all look at what we may be able to scale back,” Mr Gunner told Katie Woolf on Mix 104.9.

“That’s a bit of a rough timeline, but I want to be really hesitant about it being a hard timeline. We can’t give a hard timeline.

“It might be that mid-May we say: ‘in June we are doing these things’. So essentially I am asking for a lot of patience from people.

“We originally flagged six months for measures on this and in many ways it will still be six months.

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“Considering the success of the country we can look at how we scale back between now and then over that six-month period.

“I think the last thing that goes will be the Territory border restrictions, and the last thing for the nation will be Australia’s border restrictions.”

Mr Gunner said national cabinet has discussed the need for confidence before scaling back what the rapid response is going to be.

“Identification, tracing and response,” he said.

“So I have to have confidence in those three things to be able to scale back.

“It’s great that we haven’t got any cases (in the past two weeks), but if I have to scale back I have to have extreme confidence that we will identify coronavirus if it rocks up, trace it back real quick, and lock it down hard.

“The point that has been made really strongly to me by a number of businesses is that we have to be mindful of the cost to business to open up.

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“So, it is expensive to restock and if I say you are open, and then a week later we have to shut you again, they will be gone.

“Some of them are saying we want to open once and that’s business as normal. I’m extremely mindful of only having to do it once.

“I’ve asked businesses to shut down. I can’t ask them to open and then ask them to shut down again. It could be the death of them.

“It’s got to be once and I have to get it right.”