Prime Minister
SARAH ABO: Prime Minister Scott Morrison joins us now from Kirribilli House in Sydney. Good morning, PM.
PRIME MINISTER: Good morning.
ABO: Firstly, there was a positive case there at Kirribilli House last week. You've been monitoring symptoms, how are you feeling?
PRIME MINISTER: I'm totally fine. It was at a press conference. It was all outside. Just like everyone else in these situations you monitor, there was no need for me to take a test. I'm not symptomatic. Because if you are symptomatic and you are a close contact, then those tests are free. I want to make that really clear. If you're a close contact or you're symptomatic, the tests are free. What's not free, of course, is where tests are used for other purposes. Casual. But if you're in aged care setting where we do it there, health settings where state governments are doing that, that's free as well. And also, we're looking at what we'd be doing with schools when they return next year, and that's one of the things we'll be discussing with the premiers.
ABO: Well what's not free I guess PM, are those rapid antigen tests that people are trying to get their hands on around the country, they're flying off the shelves. I mean, we need to restock, don't we?
PRIME MINISTER: Well and they are restocking. And the decision we took last week, which meant that, you know, we were very clear about who needs to get a test and who doesn't. If you have to get a test, as I said, if you're a close contact or you are symptomatic, then you go to the testing centres and rapid antigen tests will be being made available through those distribution centres for at the testing sites. That's what we agreed last week. And so if you have to have a test, it is free and that's where you'll get it from. And by making that policy very, very clear, then that means the private market, whether it's in the big warehouse pharmacies or the other pharmacies or the supermarkets, they can now go and stock their shelves with confidence that they won't be undercut by the government.
CHARLES CROUCHER: PM, COVID case numbers are jumping in Queensland, South Australia, Victoria. Hospitalisations in New South Wales have increased by almost 20 per cent in just one day. We're at a stage now where we've had 18 months to prepare for what's happening right now. Are we prepared?
PRIME MINISTER: Yeah. Well, I think you're saying that. I mean, we've got 51 people on ventilators around the country, you know, 148 people in ICU. I make the point on hospitalisation, and this is one of the things we're going to have to discuss this week, I'm heading down to Canberra today, with the premiers is this definition of hospitalisation. There are people being counted as being in hospital for COVID. They didn't go there for COVID. They went there for some other reason and that's why they were admitted and they've been tested when they're there and they've been found to have COVID. So we need to get a standard definition on that because these are the key things we have to track now. The case numbers, I mean, there'll come a time, and I suspect it shouldn't be too far away, where reporting case numbers is really not the point. What matters is the impact on the hospital system. And with 51 people on ventilators, 148, this is the entire country, who are in ICU. Every, you know, we've had around 60 meetings of the national cabinet, pretty much every single one of those meetings we were focusing on these preparedness issues around our public hospitals. That's why we have the agreement with the private hospitals. That's why we changed the definition of close contact to ensure we could get people back to work, particularly in our health system. And we're looking to make further changes on that this week so we can get more staff back into our hospitals and ensuring that we can deal with the need. Now, of course, over summer, I mean, our health professionals have been working incredibly hard. They're taking a bit of a break. That's understandable, and that's why we've got the arrangements with private hospitals and others to try and bridge that gap in the meantime.
ABO: And of course, off the back of that national cabinet last week, it did come up with this definition of a close contact. Most states were on board. Now we know South Australia sort of walked back from that. Will the need for QR codes still exist, given that we have such a tight definition of a close contact, are QR codes redundant?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, I think there will become a time for that, but right now, the reason they're useful now is just to advise people to monitor their symptoms. I mean, exactly what happened here the other day. I mean, someone checked in. They proved later to have COVID, and so everyone was there, was advised. And so we monitor our symptoms. I mean, no one's been isolated now. No one's been kept away from work. No one's had to go and take a test. No one's had to do any of those things. It's just an alert system now, whereas before it was used for contact tracing through a formal method. We've gearchanged now. And I think that's the key point I think we've all got to come to terms with, is we've gearchanged with Omicron. And so the requirements for testing, the requirements for isolation, all of these things have changed because Omicron we now know is around 75 per cent less virulent, less severe than the Delta variant. Now if you were in hospital at the moment, the primary reason for that is you weren't vaccinated. The second reason for that is you've got Delta, not Omicron. And with Omicron there is only a very small number of cases that are in hospital. So we're now dealing with a very different virus. And so we've really got to change the way we think about it. And that's why talking about case numbers now is really not the point. The issue is how we're managing the impacts on the health system. And that's why ensuring we have sensible rules that allow people to go back to work, and that's what exactly what we're doing to ensure we can get on with it.
CROUCHER: PM, the Opposition Leader told us less than an hour ago that it's always a little too late with your government. What's your response?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, he's always full of complaints after the fact,I've found with the Leader of the Opposition. He's like that person on the Monday morning who always says what the coach should have done and what all the players have done. But you know, I don't think you want that bloke running the team at any time. So look, we're just getting on with it, working with everybody. We have the lowest, one of the lowest death rates of COVID in the world. We have one of the strongest economies coming out of COVID. Around 500,000 jobs now back in the economy with the decisions that we've taken to secure this economic recovery. And thirdly, we've got one of the highest vaccination rates in the world, and our booster program yesterday had another record day, which is fantastic. It's running six times faster than the first dose vaccination. And there's 20 million vaccinations in the country for those boosters. So what everyone can do and I encourage them to keep doing is to go out and get those booster shots. And remember, on the 10th of January, we start the children's vaccination programmes for five to 11s. Now I want to also stress to people that the Therapeutic Goods Administration and the Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation are the professional experts that we've always relied upon to guide these key decisions. And we've been doing that for the last two years, and that's why we've been able to achieve those results. Australia is faring better than most of the countries in the world.
ABO: PM, there is lot of confusion out there and the public is trying to do the right thing, but they're not quite sure what to do in each state. The rules do keep changing, especially when we have these national cabinet meetings where not everyone is agreeing to a national consensus. We know now that, of course, the boosters are being rolled out. We hear some premiers say there's not going to be any further lockdowns. Do we need a lockdown, just a short term circuit breaker lockdown to try and get us over this really this peak that we're seeing at the moment of the pandemic, just so that we can safeguard against even higher numbers?
PRIME MINISTER: No. Because it's not about numbers, I keep making this point. This is a different type of variant which requires an evolution of our response. The days of lockdown are gone. We're going forward. We're not going back. That's not how you manage this virus. There'll be high case numbers, but the severity is a lot less. And so you focus on your hospital system. Even over there in the United Kingdom, the number of people on ventilators, I think it's about 850, has remained pretty flat over the last couple of weeks. Their hospital admissions have gone up, but the number on what they call mechanical ventilators has remained fairly static over the period of the last few weeks. So this is another phase. We've changed gear. We've got to keep changing gear. We can't look back to some of these things we were doing before as the way to manage it. We're managing in a different way so we can live with the virus. People can stay at work, kids could go back to school when school starts again. People can keep their businesses open and people can earn a living. They don't have to depend on government payments to get them through. We can take that pressure off the budget and we can keep investing in the health care needs that we have. And for the Commonwealth Government's point of view, that's continuing to invest in the vaccines. We put $35 billion of additional investment in our health system over the last two years to fight this pandemic. That's a record level of investment. And it's not just on things like the vaccines, it's the treatments as well. Those treatments are very important because they lessen the severity when people are in hospital, so we can ultimately manage this like any other infectious disease. That's the pathway out. We're on the pathway out here and we're keeping the economy strong and keeping Australians healthy at the same time.
CROUCHER: PM, we thank you for your time this morning. Wishing you and Jenny a very happy new year and looking forward to speaking to you throughout 2022.
PRIME MINISTER: Thanks a lot. Happy New Year everyone. Have a great New Year's Day holiday.