Hugs, handshakes still not okay: Scott Morrison

Scott Morrison has warned that Australians will have to live with social distancing practices, including no hugging or handshakes, for a ‘very long time’.

Scott Morrison signals a virtual handshake with Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong in March. Picture: AFP

Scott Morrison has warned that Australians will have to live with social distancing practices, including no hugging or handshakes, for a “very long time” as he launched a national inquiry into the quarantine system and put a new cap on people returning from overseas.

After a meeting of national cabinet, the Prime Minister said a lesson of the second wave in Victoria was to “protect against complacency in other parts of the country” as formal restrictions on gatherings eased.

“It is still not okay for hugs and handshakes. It’s important to maintain the discipline of the social­ distancing behind closed doors, not just out in the public space,” Mr Morrison said.

“It is important that social distancing­ is the norm, it is not the exception, it is the norm, and it is going to be the norm with us for a very long time, until at least we have a vaccine that can be mass-produced and made available across the population.

“So even in places like in Western Australia, for example, where there is a considerable easing of restriction­s, it is very important that the social distancing practices (continue).”

Mr Morrison said state and territ­ory leaders had endorsed a review­ of the quarantine system, to be led by former Health Department secretary Jane Halton, after lax practices led to an outbreak in Victoria.

The review will assess whether states and territories were managing their quarantine in line with the standards advised by the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee.

This will include staff training of infection prevention, rates of testing, the management of vulnerable people and of suspected or confirmed coronavirus cases.

Mr Morrison said the number of arrivals of those returning from overseas would be cut to about 4000 per week, down from more than 6500 per week, and people would have to start paying for their hotel costs while in quarantine.

“There are no flights going into Melbourne, into Victoria, for obvious reasons, and to ensure that we are mitigating and managing that risk, they will be cut by just over half across all the various ports that are taking those visitors,” he said. “The decision that we took to reduce the number of returned travellers to Australia at this time was to ensure that we could put our focus on the resources needed to do the testing and the tracing and not have to have resources diverte­d to other tasks.”

The Prime Minister said state and territory leaders backed a move towards charging returning travellers for the hotel costs while in quarantine. “Some states already­ have it. Some states are moving towards that,” he said. “We will seek to have some sort of national uniformity across those pricings and we are sharing that information with the states and territories.”

From Monday, there will be a cap on international arrivals of 525 per week in Perth and 500 per week in Brisbane. Sydney will have a cap of 450 per day, with further reductions to be announced in coming weeks.

More than 357,000 citizens and permanent residents have returned to Australia since March. Acting Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly said the nation was in a “very different phase” of managing the crisis, given the second wave in Victoria.

“Those messages we have been giving all throughout about the physical distancing, the hand hygiene­, the cough hygiene, et cetera, people need to continue to listen­ to that,” Professor Kelly said.