UPDATE: PM announces new social distancing rules, Federal Budget delayed until October

Prime Minister Scott Morrison addressed the media at Parliament House today where he announced that the May Federal Budget would be delayed.

The Prime Minister, state and territory Premiers and chief ministers met today for the National Cabinet and agreed that it would not be sensible to hand down the Federal Budget in May and as a result it will now be on Tuesday, October 6.

“Putting budgets together at this time, with the great uncertainty that exists, is not something that any Commonwealth or State Government should be doing,” Mr Morrison said.

Mr Morrison also announced that tightened social distancing rules would come into effect from today.

“What we are now moving to is an arrangement for gatherings of less than 100, is that they would be four square metres provided per person in an enclosed space, in a room,” he said.

“So that’s 2m by 2m. So for example, if you’ve got a room, if you’ve got a premises, if you’ve got a meeting room or something like that, that’s 100 square metres, then you can have 25 people in that room.”

As previously advised, outdoor events of fewer than 500 attendees may proceed.

The new social distancing rules have not had an impact on schools.

Chief medical officer Brendan Murphy joined Mr Morrison at the media conference and confirmed that schools will stay open.

“I think it is really important to recognise that, as we’ve said before, we think the risk to children with this virus is very low,” Mr Murphy said.

“Only 2.4 per cent of all the cases in China in Hubei Province were under 19, and there have been very, very few significant cases.

“Obviously we do have some concerns that children may have a role in transmission but most children who have seemed to have got the virus have got it from adults as you’ve seen in this case.

“We think keeping children at home when there is relatively no community spread is probably disproportionate given they probably won’t stay at home anyway.

“They may be cared for by elderly parents.

“There may be circumstances where there are outbreaks in an area where we do need to close schools for a period of time.

“Our strategy for the next six months is to keep schools open and we think that risk is appropriate.”

The National Cabinet will meet again on Tuesday, March 24, to discuss further arrangements for domestic travel prior to the school holidays, arrangements for commercial and residential tenancies, managing critical health and hospital resources, and localised graduated responses to coronavirus.