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Scott Morrison says Australia will halve rate of international arrivals during coronavirus crisis

<span>Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP</span>
Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP

Australia will reduce the rate of international arrivals by more than half – with at least 4,000 fewer Australians returning home each week – and states will charge people for compulsory two-week hotel quarantine, Scott Morrison has announced.

The prime minister acknowledged “it will be more difficult” for Australians to return home when the decision of national cabinet comes into force on Monday, but defended it on the basis that halving arrivals would allow health authorities to focus resources on contact tracing and testing for Covid-19.

National cabinet met to consider the worsening second-wave outbreak, which has seen the reimposition of stage-three lockdowns in Melbourne and isolated Victoria with border bans imposed by every state and territory.

Related: Coronavirus Australia live update: Victoria records 288 new Covid-19 cases amid Melbourne lockdown

Victoria recorded an extra 288 coronavirus cases on Friday, prompting updated advice from the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee and Victorian chief health officer that masks should be worn when physical distancing is not possible in places with significant community transmission such as Melbourne.

The chief medical officer, Paul Kelly, said that 99% of Victorian cases were in Melbourne and Mitchell shire, which “appears to be holding”, with the few cases in rural Victoria directly linked to the Melbourne outbreak.

Victoria has diverted international flights for a two-week period after failures of hotel quarantine to contain Covid-19, prompting concern from other states that quarantine capacity will be overrun.

Morrison said the number of flights “will be cut by just over half across all the various ports” that are receiving Australian citizens and residents returning home.

“There is also a view across the national cabinet that they are all effectively moving to a charging system for the hotel quarantine that is in place for those returning [passengers],” he said.

Morrison said arrivals would be cut from Monday for the “foreseeable future”, with flights further prioritised through consultation between airlines and Border Force.

“There will be capacity for people to return to Australia, as there has been for many months.”

Morrison said the decision was neither “surprising or unreasonable” and national cabinet had to put “the national interest … and the health of Australia and Australians first”.

Morrison announced that Covid-19 commission member and former health secretary Jane Halton would conduct a review of hotel quarantine to ensure “greater confidence” in the system.

The review would consider infection prevention and control training for hotel and security staff, compliance by staff, attribution of cases to hotel quarantine breaches, and provision of support services including medical, mental health social services and financial support.

Hardship arrangements for people unable to pay for the two-week quarantine would be a matter for each state and territory, Morrison said.

Related: Victoria records 165 new cases of Covid-19, with 30 linked to known outbreaks

Kelly said there had been “very few” breaches of hotel quarantine but the situation in Victoria proved that a “single breach … can lead to a catastrophic outcome”.

Asked if the AHPPC had recommended halving arrival numbers, Kelly said hotel quarantine was a matter for the national cabinet but chief medical officers had advised “we should be concentrating on the main game and that is a community transmission in Melbourne”.

Kelly also conceded the Covid-Safe app had been used in a “minimal number” of cases to identify contacts but “the app has been used”.

Despite an outbreak at a college in Melbourne which is still under investigation, Kelly reiterated that “the risk to children of this virus is much less than an adults”.

Morrison said he would speak with the New Zealand prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, on Friday, and conceded there was “no imminent starting date” to the proposed trans-Tasman bubble to resume flights between the two countries.

But he said after speaking with the Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe, on Thursday, Japan still regarded Australia as a good candidate for resumption of flights in a “very restricted and limited form”.

Morrison said national cabinet had been briefed on economic recovery by the Productivity Commission chair, Michael Brennan, who had claimed that a “flexible economy would be the most successful in recovering from the Covid-19 recession”.

The national cabinet has tasked state treasurers with identifying “time-based regulations” in place for the pandemic – with the “potential for those to be extended out further and potentially even extended indefinitely”, Morrison said.