• Prime Minister Scott Morrison has come up short in his attempts to get all of the states and territories to agree on a plan that would allow the country’s borders to open by Christmas.
• With Western Australia refusing to sign on to a national definition of ‘hotspot’, Morrison said this marks the end of the National Cabinet’s consensus-seeking decision-making model.
• Morrison also announced an intention to include New Zealand in its hotspot model, opening to door for cross-Tasman flights into Australia in the future.
• Visit Business Insider Australia’s homepage for more stories.

The Prime Minister Scott Morrison has announced that the National Cabinet will no longer require consensus to make decisions, after the states and territories failed to agree on a key part of a plans to re-open internal borders by Christmas.

Appearing in Canberra today, Morrison said that all but one member of the National Cabinet had agreed upon a definition of ‘hotspot’, with Western Australia being the only holdout.

After failing to reach consensus, the Prime Minister signalled the change to the National Cabinet’s decision-making process while vowing to continue pushing for an open Australia.

“We’ve decided that this notion of 100%, absolute consensus on any issue is not a way that the National Cabinet can indeed work. And so what we will do is we will set out areas where we can come together, and get as many states and territories as possible to come around that agreement,” Morrison said.

“Not everyone has to get on the bus for the bus to leave the station. But it is important the bus leaves the station.”

The Prime Minister has clashed with state premiers over his intention to replace state-based restrictions with more specific, localised lockdowns to stop coronavirus outbreaks.

A standardised definition for COVID-19 “hotspots” — which Morrison reportedly had suggested would be more than 30 cases of community transmission in 10 days — would be used to pressure states and territories with low cases to re-open.

“The idea of ultimately moving beyond a situation where you have hard borders, but you move to a situation where you can have a workable hot spot concept, then that is something we are going to give it our best possible go to define and to make work,” Morrison said.

In lieu of this national agreement, Morrison said, states and territories will focus on creating agreements between willing states to begin to open up their borders as the year goes on.

Meanwhile, Morrison noted Western Australia’s refusal to agree on a hotspot definition also while keeping the door open for their future involvement.

“I’m not going to hold Australia back when one or two jurisdictions, at this point in time because of their own circumstances, don’t wish to go along with the path that the country is seeking to go in,” he said.

“So, they are not standing completely separate for that process. They will continue to work with us. But, for them, they have got their path set, and we respect that.”

The Prime Minister also announced that he intended to apply the same hotspot approach to New Zealand, clearing the way for New Zealanders to fly to Australia.

He said that the government will increase the number of arrivals into Australia to bring more citizens home, with the intentions to allow ports outside of NSW to receive inbound arrivals.

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