Coronavirus: Complacency a major risk, warns Deputy Prime Minister

Michael McCormack says Australians should not be lulled into a false sense of security by flattening curve.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack practise social distancing in the House of Representatives.

Michael McCormack has warned Australians not to become complacent with social distancing and isolation requirements because of the country’s lowering COVID-19 infection rate.

The Deputy Prime Minister also indicated special consideration could be applied to drought-stricken businesses wanting to access the $130 billion wage subsidy but who struggle to prove the required 30 per cent reduction in business.

“The numbers are good because people are doing what they’re told,” Mr McCormack told Sky News on Sunday.

“Public sentiment changes so quickly and we see that happening, there’s so much media, there’s so much exposure on social media of these sorts of things and I do hope people, I do hope they don’t become complacent.

“I do hope they don’t see our numbers tracking very well compared to what’s being experienced elsewhere in the world, and they don’t think ‘well why are we being locked up inside?’.

“It could flip and our numbers could start to spark and that’s why it’s been so important for people to stay at home this Easter long weekend.”

The Nationals leader also pleaded with anyone “still considering to sneak away for the couple of days left of Easter” to stay home because “our hospitals in the regions …(are) not geared up to serve and protect a whole swath of people who might come in and who might then infect regional residents”.

Mr McCormack defended the government’s decision to not provide casuals employed by the same business for less than 12 months the $1500 a fortnight wage payments.

“We already have put in place measures that are going to cost this country a lot for many, many years. But we don’t want to saddle ourselves with debt which we just can’t maintain. But we will continue to look at the situation, we’ll continue to take advice from business, from key stakeholders from, you know, people on the ground.

He explained the Australian Taxation Office can use “discretion” to allow larger corporations who fall just under the 50 per cent reduction in business threshold to access JobKeeper.

He also said smaller agricultural businesses, who may struggle to prove a reduction of 30 per cent in activity when compared with their recent drought-affected business performance, could be able to access the subsidy.

“There is the discretion that the tax office will use too for those businesses, which are over a billion dollars turnover which may have lost say 45 per cent or, or for drought-stricken businesses which had no hope of actually losing yet another 30 per cent based on what they didn’t earn last year. So the tax office will use that discretionary power it has.”

Mr McCormack, who is also Minister for Transport and Regional Development, also foreshadowed further government assistance for the struggling Virgin Australia airline, saying “we need a two airline aviation sector coming out of this” while acknowledging $1 billion already spent on the aviation sector.

Mr McCormack also called for a continuation of the bipartisanship between the Coalition and Labor state and territory governments seen so far in the National Cabinet.

“Scott Morrison and the premiers and the Chief Ministers have had some real delivery and so they’ve cut through some of the bureaucracy and, and some of the red tape.

“COAG has always been there but I think there’s been a new spirit of bipartisanship … It’s also occurred with myself and my Infrastructure and Transport ministers, talking to Jacinta Allan and Mark Bailey, Labor ministers for Victoria and Queensland respectively, and making a whole heap of changes in a very decisive and timely fashion for the betterment of Australians generally.

“I think Australians look at those processes and say, ‘that’s actually not a bad outcome’. They’re actually getting on and doing things for the future of our nation, rather than just arguing around the partisan edges.”