Fiona Martin (Reid, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Will the Prime Minister update the House on how the Morrison government is continuing to take action in response to coronavirus? How is the government protecting Australians from this outbreak and building our resilience to the economic effects?

Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for her question. Earlier today the National Security Committee met for some three hours once again. There were some important decisions made, which I announced prior to coming into question time today. Those decisions related to the extension of the travel bans for mainland China and Iran and also to now extend a travel ban to the Republic of Korea.

The Republic of Korea is one of those countries where we've seen a greater outbreak of the virus. In addition, we have upgraded the travel warnings in relation to the RoK to level 3 for all of Korea, and for Daegu it goes to level 4, which is 'do not travel'. We are also upgrading for enhanced screenings the processes for visitors that come from Italy. We have taken these decisions following the health advice today. Indeed, we have gone beyond that health advice in providing that travel ban in relation to the Republic of Korea. In relation to Korea, where the government is now working to expand its enhanced screening capabilities not just for Italy, which have been put in place effective immediately but also to extend it across a broader range of countries so that we can continue to slow the outbreak of the virus and its introduction into Australia. We still have a very small number of cases compared to the experience of many countries around the world.

I want to commend the state and territory governments working so well with the Commonwealth for ensuring that we are managing this as best as possibly can be done by any country. We are not immune but, as I've said, we got ahead of this and we're staying ahead of this. We will continue to do that through the arrangements we're putting in place to control the pace of the outbreak of this virus. Today we've stood up what is known as the national coordination mechanism, which means that the Department of Home Affairs will lead an initiative, together with states and territories, in a whole-of-government approach to ensure that we're addressing the issues that need to be managed outside the health response. You will also have noted today that the secretary of Treasury reported on what Treasury believed would be the March quarter impacts of the coronavirus.

As I've already reported to this House and in other places, the government is now in the final stages of fashioning our response into the economic impacts of the coronavirus. That will have an important focus on keeping people employed and supporting jobs. It will have a focus on keeping businesses in business so that those businesses can support the jobs and incomes of Australians. It will have a focus on ensuring that we bounce back better on the other side of this with our economy by ensuring we're supporting businesses to invest throughout this time, because there will be a strong recovery on the other side of the coronavirus. In the meantime, we will keep Australians healthy and we will support those in business and those employed to ensure that they are there to enjoy the uptick that we'll see on the other side of the coronavirus.