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

The announcement I made prior to question time today is a standard arrangement, as I learnt when I was in New Zealand earlier this week. In New Zealand, which has also been a very successful country in dealing with lockdowns, support payments commence after seven days for post-seven-day lockdowns. In our government, we have taken a similar approach. In the first seven days, if a state chooses to put their state into lockdown then, as was the case in Western Australia and as was the case in Queensland, when neither of those states made any request of the Commonwealth, they knew and understood that they had the resources to support those short-term arrangements—and they proved to be short-term arrangements in Western Australia and Queensland. What we have decided as a government is that where a lockdown extends beyond seven days then the Commonwealth will put in place a temporary COVID disaster payment. That payment is $500 a week for those who would normally work more than 20 hours and $325 if they would normally work less than 20 hours.

That support payment is not unlike the types of payments that we make in relation to other disasters, whether it be bushfires or floods or cyclones or the many other areas where the Commonwealth government provides that disaster relief. I see this very much as disaster relief for the people of Victoria. This is not something that they have control over, and, with the lockdown persisting beyond seven days, we believe that it is a responsible thing to do—to provide a support payment to those in lockdowns that go beyond seven days.

But the much better outcome, I've got to tell you, is that lockdowns do not go on beyond seven days. The much better outcome is that students can go back to school, that people can go back to work and that they can do that safely. As a result—

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