Australia news live: Porter should stand aside, Labor says; PNG’s Covid-19 crisis danger for Australia

On the basis of medical advice and the on the basis of discussions I’ve had with prime minister Marape over the last few days and with the premier of Queensland, we are taking the following actions to support the initiatives in Papua New Guinea and also to protect Australians from the spread of the virus from Papua New Guinea to Australia, and in particular protect Queenslanders. Queenslanders, particularly in north Queensland, are most at risk from this.

We’ve been very conscious of that, and these measures are decide very much with them in mind.

Starting at midnight tonight, we will further reduce the risk of Covid-19 transmission from PNG to Australia by suspending passenger flights from Papua New Guinea into Cairns.

We will do that for a fortnight and reassess the situation over the next fortnight.

Freight, though, I stress, will continue, and be supported to ensure that necessary supplies are able to get from Cairns to Papua New Guinea.

We’ll be suspending all charter flights from Papua New Guinea to Australia, with limited exemptions for medevac and other critical flights.

We’ll be reducing passenger caps by one-quarter from flights from Port Moresby to Brisbane, effective at midnight tonight.

We’ll be suspending all outbound travel exemptions by Australians to Papua New Guinea, except for essential and critical workers, including humanitarian and medevac-related activity.

This will include no general Fifo workers.

You FI or you FO. If you’re there, you stay.

If you’re here, you stay. We cannot risk people going into those areas and back to Australia.