New coronavirus lockdown rules for Greater Sydney announced: what you can and can’t do

From exercise to leaving your suburb, a raft of new restrictions will take effect across Greater Sydney in a bid to ‘stop the rorting’.

Crowds at Bondi Beach this week. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Adam Yip

Gladys Berejiklian has announced a raft of new restrictions in a bid to close loopholes and clamp down on the worsening outbreak in NSW, where 466 new cases and four more deaths have been recorded overnight.

The Premier said a major police operation across hotspot areas would begin, including riot squad, highway patrol and specialist command officers. There will also be 500 extra ADF officers deployed from Monday. Officers will be conducting random checks at key roads and cracking down on public health restrictions.

From Monday, additional fines of $5,000 will apply for on the spot quarantine breaches, lying on a permit or lying to a contact tracer. There will be $3,000 fines for people breaking the two-person exercise rule or travelling into regional NSW.

Across all of greater Sydney, the 10km radius rule will now drop down to 5km.

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Authorities have also removed “recreation” from the public health rules, meaning police will be cracking down on people outside their homes who are not exercising.

“Instead of 10km from your home, it will be 5km from your home and that’s for all of greater Sydney,” the Premier said on Saturday.

“Exercise means only exercise and supervision of children, so the word ‘recreation’ will not leave any doubt. That word is taken out in terms of those local government areas of

concern, exercise means exercise.”

The new powers handed to police will be in place for 21 days, NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller said.

“We know people have been rorting the recreation and exercise (rule),” He said.

“We have the power to demand information if we reasonably believe that the health

orders have been breached and you must carry ID and you must carry a mask as well.

So there are many things we ask you to do to get out of lockdown quicker. But police have been taking a community based policing response and we will be policing much harder over the next 21 days and I do not apologise for that.”

Ms Berejiklian has also extended lockdown restrictions to the Armidale regional local government area amid growing concerns for Covid-19 spreading in Western NSW.

Stay-at-home restrictions will be enforced until Sunday August 22, after 26 new cases were recorded in Dubbo. The rules will be the same already in place across greater Sydney.

“We have to accept that this is the worst situation New South Wales has been in since day one, and as a consequence of that, the worst situation Australia has been in.”