Morrison says public gatherings must be two people only in new Covid-19 restrictions – as it happened

I’ll leave you tonight with political editor Katharine Murphy’s report from Scott Morrison’s post-national cabinet press conference, and a wrap of everything we’ve learned today:

• Only two people should now gather in public spaces and “other areas of gathering”, but it will be up to states to enforce that limit.
• A moratorium on evictions from rental properties for the next six months on the basis of “financial stress”.
• People who are over 70, people with chronic illness over 60 and Indigenous people over 50 are strongly advised to stay home.
• Some new public areas – public playgrounds, outside gyms and skateparks – will be closed from tomorrow, and group boot camps will no longer be allowed. One-on-one personal training sessions are still permitted.
• New “strong advice” for individuals is that people should stay home unless shopping for essentials; for medical care or compassionate needs; to exercise in compliance with the new two-person rules; to go to “work and education if you cannot work or learn remotely”.
• 1,600 Australians arriving home from overseas have gone into mandatory quarantine in hotels today.
• Earlier today Morrison announced a $1.1bn package for health and family violence services, including $669m to expand Medicare-subsidised telehealth.
• Morrison also flagged a wage guarantee, which will include people who have already lost their jobs as a result of the coronavirus outbreak, but has yet to announce details of the policy.
• Two states recorded coronavirus-related deaths overnight. A 75-year-old woman died at Caboolture hospital after returning to Queensland from the Ruby Princess cruise ship. A man in his 80s also died in Victoria. It brings Australia’s death toll from the virus to 16.
• New Zealand suffered its first coronavirus-related death, a woman in her 70s on the west coast of South Island.

Thanks as always for reading. We’ll be back tomorrow. You can also follow our international live blog here. Here’s Katharine Murphy’s wrap-up after this afternoon’s national cabinet:

Now to some important news: the heads of both the National Rugby League and Rugby Australia will meet on Monday to work out a way forward through the Covid-19 crisis.

Like the rest of the world, Australia’s major sporting codes have gone into hibernation and with no broadcast revenue or a firm timeline on a return, many clubs are staring down potentially devastating financial consequences.

At Rugby Australia’s annual general meeting tomorrow, potential large player wage cuts and staff layoffs will be discussed, while AAP reports that the Australian Rugby League Commission chairman, Peter V’landys, will tell clubs and the players he is still hopeful the season can resume by 1 July.

AAP reports that player representatives from all 16 clubs also spoke with V’landys and the NRL chief, Todd Greenberg, on Sunday, along with the South Sydney CEO, Blake Solly, and Brisbane counterpart Paul White.

It’s expected the players’ pay cut for the remainder of the year will sit around 75%, after they have already been paid the first five months of their annual salary in full.

There are still some questions coming out of that (much briefer than usual) press conference with Scott Morrison.

Although he’s been clear on the reasons we should stay home, there seem to be some inconsistencies. Hairdressers and barbers, for example, appear to still be able to operate. And if people should only leave their homes for essential reasons, but can still meet in groups of two, can people who live alone still visit one another?

Morrison made clear it would be up to the various states to enforce these rules, and no doubt we’ll hear more from state premiers on it tomorrow. Expect the states with the largest outbreaks – New South Wales and Victoria – to take the hardest line.

Here’s the key points that have come out of today’s national cabinet press conference:

• Only two people should now gather in public spaces and “other areas of gathering”, but it will be up to states to enforce that limit. The prime minister, Scott Morrison, said households could still gather together, but individual people can only meet with one other person.
• National cabinet resolved there should be a moratorium on evictions from rental properties for the next six months on the basis of “financial stress”. Morrison encouraged tenants and landlords, “particularly” in commercial properties, to work out arrangements in cases of financial stress.
• Some new public areas – public playgrounds, outside gyms and skateparks – will be closed from tomorrow, and group boot camps will no longer be allowed. One-on-one personal training sessions are still permitted.
• New “strong advice” for individuals is that people should stay home unless shopping for essentials; for medical care or compassionate needs; to exercise in compliance with the new two person rules; to go to “work and education if you cannot work or learn remotely”.
• People who are over 70, people with chronic illness over 60 and Indigenous people over 50 are strongly advised to stay home.
• Morrison says vulnerable or elderly people who need help with shopping or other needs should try to access “support through their community or others and I’m sure they could even ring their local MP”.
• The chief medical officer, Brendan Murphy, suggested the rate of infection in Australia was lower than predicted and there was “evidence that the public health measures that we are putting in place and the social distancing measures are likely to be having some early effect”.

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Morrison continues and flags possible future closures of retail outlets:

When you are going out for shopping, you should be going for just stuff you need and do it and get home. It is not a time for browsing. It is not a time for catching up with friends or bumping into people and having a long conversation.

No, you can’t do that any more. That is what we have to stop doing. That is why we are trying to keep as much of these sorts of things open for people as possible so they can get what they need. But as time goes on the national cabinet will continue to look at a lot of these businesses and may have to make further decisions in these areas and in some cases that may not be too far from now.

Asked why shopping centres remain open, Morrison says people should only shop for things “that you actually need”. He uses the example of jigsaw puzzles.

I will give you an example. Our kids are at home now, as are most kids, and Jenny went out yesterday and bought them a whole bunch of jigsaw puzzles. I can assure you over the next few months we will consider those jigsaw puzzles absolutely essential.

It is important that parents and families and households can get the things that they need to completely change the way they are going to live for the next six months at least, and so what we have done is sought to be practical about these issues. I mean, people are buying sporting equipment at the moment – gym mats and things like that – so they can exercise at home. These are things they are going to need.

Asked how people over 70 can access essentials such as groceries if the advice is for them to stay home, Morrison says it “is not a strict rule”. He also suggests they could ring their local MP for support if necessary.

It is there for their own protection and so what we are encouraging elderly residents to do is to stay home as much as is practicable. Should they need support then I’m sure they can get support through their community or others and I’m sure they could even ring their local MP and I’m sure their local MP would want to help them in any way they could at either a state or federal level, because I have seen that already happening through many of our electorate offices, but I’m sure they could get support through our community.

On gatherings, Morrison said a “household” can be together inside the home or outside.

Otherwise, you can be “with one other person maximum”.

He says previous announcements about the number of people allowed at weddings and funerals will remain in place.

Brendan Murphy continues:

It is very simple. We need to all stay home unless we are going out to shop, to do personal exercise, to go to medical appointments, or to go to work or study if you can’t work from home. So anyone who doesn’t need to be out of their home should be in the home. This is radical. The vast majority of Australians have done the right thing in the last week. We have seen huge evidence of that but we have also seen some very silly behaviour of people who haven’t complied with that, particularly outdoors and sometimes indoors.

The chief medical officer, Brendan Murphy, is now speaking. He says Australia’s rate of infection is “much less than some people might have predicted some time ago without mitigation”.

So there is evidence that the public health measures that we are putting in place and the social distancing measures are likely to be having some early effect. I should say at the outset that we are not Italy, we are not the United States, we are not Spain. We have one of the highest rates of testing per head of population in the world and one of the lowest positive test rates, so we think, unlike countries unfortunately like Italy, Iran and even the US, that when they detected significant outbreaks they probably had much, much larger outbreaks in the community that were undetected.

We feel reasonably confident that we are detecting a significant majority of the cases in Australia. That means that we can get on top of cases when they are detected.

The prime minister says following national cabinet that there will be a moratorium on evictions for the next six months on the basis of “financial stress”.

If they are unable to meet their commitments and so there would be a moratorium on evictions for the next six months under those rental arrangements. Now there is a lot more work to be done here and my message to tenants, particularly commercial tenants, and commercial landlords, is a very straightforward one – we need you to sit down, talk to each other and work this out, about looking at the businesses which have been closed, businesses that may have had a significant reduction in their revenues, and we need landlords and tenants to sit down and come up with arrangements that enable them to get through this crisis.

Morrison says the “strong advice” of national cabinet is for people aged over 70 to stay at home.

“This is not a compulsion, this is strong advice – that people aged 70 and over should stay at home and self-isolate for their own protection. To the maximum extent practical.

“These arrangements should also apply to those with chronic illness, over 60 and Indigenous persons over the age of 50.”

For individuals, Morrison says “the strong advice” is people should stay home unless:

• shopping for essentials
• for medical care or compassionate needs
• to exercise “in compliance with the public gathering rules that I have already outlined”
• And “for work and education if you cannot work or learn remotely”

Further bans on outside gatherings:

In addition, public areas – public playgrounds, outside gyms and skateparks – will be closed as from tomorrow and boot camps will be reduced to two, which doesn’t really make it a boot camp, that makes it a private session with your trainer for those who are accessing those services.