Australia sets out principles for resumption of sport
SHOWS: CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA (MAY 1, 2020) (AUSTRALIAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION - Broadcasters: NO USE AUSTRALIA Digital: NO USE AUSTRALIA .COM.AU INTERNET SITES / ANY INTERNET SITE OF ANY AUSTRALIAN BASED MEDIA ORGANISATIONS OR MOBILE PLATFORMS / AUSTRALIAN NVO CLIENTS / SMH.COM.AU / NEWS.COM.AU) 1.
AUSTRALIAN PRIME MINISTER SCOTT MORRISON ENTERING NEWS CONFERENCE 2.
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(SOUNDBITE) (English) AUSTRALIAN PRIME MINISTER SCOTT MORRISON, SAYING: "The principles today draw heavily on the Australian Institute of Sport's Framework for Rebooting Sport in a COVID-19 environment and they're quite detailed and they'll be circulated.
Many of you will probably be familiar with those already.
They do set out important principles that, for example, outdoor activities are a lower risk setting for COVID-19 transmission.
A lot more of the risk is in indoor facilities, not just playing indoor, but indoor change rooms and things like that and the mitigations you'd have to have in place to deal with that.
It speaks of the need for community sport to be moving, not just elite sport.
Now, that may not be able to be completely synchronised and you wouldn't have one necessarily hold up the other.
But it's important that people should be able to see the sport, but they should be able to play it as well in those participation exercises." 4.
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(SOUNDBITE) (English) AUSTRALIAN MINISTER FOR SPORT, AGED CARE AND SENIOR AUSTRALIANS, SENATOR RICHARD COLBECK, SAYING: "That contemplates a staged recommencement of sport.
It indicates the types of activities at various levels that might be considered as part of that process and so when you see that document, we are currently at level A.
As the National Cabinet considers opening up the capacity to move around.
The opportunity goes then to level B, which talks, as the PM said, of commencing training in small groups of, say, up to ten, with ten athletes and officials working together.
And then stage C, which goes back to full training and full commencement." 6.
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(SOUNDBITE) (English) AUSTRALIAN PRIME MINISTER SCOTT MORRISON, SAYING: "These are the things that will be looked at next week.
Decisions have not been taken to move on any of those matters, but these principles set out, I think, the basis upon which we might be able to go forward when we consider whether we can this time next week." 8.
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(SOUNDBITE) (English) AUSTRALIAN PRIME MINISTER SCOTT MORRISON, SAYING: "The individual jurisdictions will ultimately provide any of the clearances that are necessary on a health basis to deal with any of the major codes.
Be it the NRL, the AFL or others, we had a good discussion on that today.
And we received the advice that we did from the medical expert panel." 10.
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MORRISON LEAVING NEWS CONFERENCE STORY: Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Friday (May 1) that the national cabinet will decide next week how to restart sport across the country.
The government said any resumption of sport should not compromise the public health, and recommends a staggered start beginning with small groups that play non-contact sport outdoors.
The restart would follow a list of 15 principles released on Friday, which details a roadmap for a return of community and professional sport.
With the numbers of new coronavirus infections dwindling, Morrison said state and territory lawmakers would meet a week ahead of schedule on May 8 to determine whether to lift social distancing restrictions.
Restrictions.
(Production: James Redmayne)