We don’t, actually. What we look at is what’s happening in Melbourne and its surrounds is unprecedented in Australia.
Until this point in time, until this latest outbreak, the vast majority of cases around Australia, including New South Wales, even when we were getting more than 200 case as day, the vast majority of those cases were from overseas travellers or their direct contacts.
And now what we’re seeing in Melbourne is that the vast majority of new cases are from community transmission. And that’s a concern.
Because once it spreads in the community, it’s very difficult … It’s more difficult to control.
And that was the trigger for us closing the border. So when we see evidence that the community transmission is suppressed, that the spread is stopping – that’s when we can consider reopening the border.
And we don’t know when that will be. That’s why we’ve been monitoring the situation in New South Wales very closely for the last fortnight.
We’ve been making sure we have daily health advice. The experts have been briefing us to the best of their ability and they’re doing an outstanding job.
And yesterday morning, when the advice that I received from them was that the border should be shut, I didn’t hesitate.
Because I anticipated this could be the case. We’ve been looking at it for a period of time. And the fact that the community transmission is where it is, has made us make this difficult decision.
