
On Tuesday night, Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced further restrictions have been placed on businesses and other non-essential facilities as part of Australia’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The new rules, coming two days after the federal government announced ‘level one’ shutdown restrictions on Sunday, will come into place from midnight today.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison outlines new restrictions. Post continues below video.
Here are the latest shutdowns.
What non-essential services have been shutdown?
In response to Australians not following social distancing guidelines, Morrison listed even more non-essential services must close their doors. This means the closure of:
- Registered and licensed clubs
- Licensed premises in hotels and pubs
- Entertainment venues and cinemas
- Casinos
- Nightclubs
- Restaurants and cafes, which will be restricted to takeaway and home delivery only
- Gyms and indoor sporting venues including yoga, barre and spin facilities
- Wellness centres, spas and saunas
- Swimming pools
- Beauty therapists, including tanning and nail salons
- Tattoo parlours
- Amusement parks
- Arcades
- Places of worship
- Auction houses and open home inspections
- Food courts, although takeaway from these premises will still be allowed
- Outdoor and indoor markets, excluding food markets – states and territories will address markets in their jurisdictions
- Galleries, museums, historic sites
- Libraries
- Community centres and facilities such as halls
- Strip clubs, brothels and sex on premises venues
These new measures are on top of many rules already in place, including:
- Keep 1.5m between yourself and others, where possible
- Avoid all non-essential travel, including domestically
- Visitor restrictions to aged care facilities
Other stage two restrictions.
The Prime Minister also banned private gatherings including barbecues and parties.
“Visits to your premises, to your house, to your residence, should be kept to a minimum and with very small numbers of guests,” he said.
“We don’t want to be overly specific about that, we want Australians to exercise their common sense. So that means barbecues of lots of friends, or even family, extended family, coming together to celebrate one-year-old birthday parties and those sorts of things, we can’t do those things now. These will be a significant sacrifice, I know.”
Three women on what lockdowns feel like around the world. Post continues below audio.
He expressed concern that people may organise house parties to compensate for the closure of clubs and venues, and said the states and territories will consider whether they’ll put measures in place that could lead to that being an offence.
Non-urgent elective surgeries, whether in the public or private systems, will be postponed. Urgent surgeries will not be impacted.
Top Comments
Obviously ScoMo knows nothing about womens' hairdressing. 30 minutes? Just as well there will be a lock down soon.