“It won't be long before we'll see more businesses opened up again and we'll try and get back to some type of normal,” Prime Minister Scott Morrison told ABC Radio.
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“The National Cabinet just under three weeks from now has set a date to review what we call these baseline restrictions,” Morrison told Macca of ABC Radio’s Australia All Over on Sunday. “And that is, you know, when we put in place all those businesses that had to close their doors. That is going to be reviewed formally and a decision taken within the next three weeks.
“If it is able to be done sooner than that or if the evidence and on the basis of the medical evidence, then certainly we would do that. But we're already seeing a lot of states and territories who went a bit harder than those baselines now starting to pull that back and considering some changes.
“We need to get our economy back. We need to get livelihoods. I've said it the whole time, this is about saving lives and saving livelihoods. JobKeeper and JobSeeker is there, but it's not intended to be there as a permanent measure. It's to help get us through the worst of this. And we all need to work to getting on the other side where that level of support will no longer be necessary because we'll have our economy up and running. And I want to get back to that as soon as we can.
“It won't be long before we'll see, I think, more businesses opened up again and we'll try and get back to some type of normal. But until there's obviously a vaccine, then things like the social distancing and, particularly, everyone being very conscious of their hand hygiene and all of these sorts of things.”
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In a separate Interview with Radio 6PR’s Oliver Peterson, the Prime Minister said he wanted to see more people getting back to work “ASAP - subject to what's happening with the health advice.
"In many areas that is happening right now and in many areas, you'll see people starting to go back to work in their offices. You'll see retail shops opening up again. You'll see all of this happening. But it'll be different. And we will have learnt a lot during this period of where we've been in isolation or staying at home. I think people should have their built in instinctiveness around, you know, the social distancing and those sorts of things. And you go into retail shops, as it already is if you’re going into some of those big shops or just the small ones for that matter, they're already practising these things.
“So we can go back in what I'd call a sort of a more COVID-safe environment, whether it's in the workplace or whether it's elsewhere in the community.”
The federal government last week released national COVID-19 safe workplace principles designed to help prepare workplaces for the resumption of normal business operations.
