It follows a National Cabinet meeting between Morrison and state and territory leaders, with the decision meaning there will be approximately 4000 fewer international arrivals from Monday.
“We also agreed today a reduction in the number of inbound arrivals into Australia across those ports that are able to accept returning Australian citizens and residents,” Morrison said.
“Of course there are no flights going into Melbourne, into Victoria, for obvious reasons, and to ensure that we are mitigating and managing that risk.
“They will be cut by just over half across all the various ports that are taking those residents returning to Australia.”
Morrison said the decision to cap arrivals was made “in the national interest”.
“There will be capacity for people to return to Australia, as there has been for many months. There will be continuing access to Australia but the number of available positions on flights will be less and I don’t think that is surprising or unreasonable in the circumstances that we find ourselves in,” he said.
“We have to put the national interest first and the health of Australia and Australians first and that is the basis of the decision we have taken. If we can expand that capacity in the future we will do so.”
Morrison said there will be a review of Australia’s hotel quarantine system, with National Cabinet deciding there should be a move towards charging returning Australians for their time in quarantine.
“Some states already have it, other states are moving towards that, and I will leave that to them to make their announcements at the appropriate time and where possible,” he said.
“We will seek to have some sort of national uniformity across those pricings and we are sharing those information with the states and territories.”