As of 30 March, you are only permitted to leave your house for work or if you have a 'reasonable excuse'. In NSW you can be fined up to $11,000 if you leave the house without one. The laws differ state by state (handy guide here), but we've summarised the NSW situation here.
Reasonable excuses
With the exception of work, you are basically limited to going out of your home to:
- buy food or goods/services for personal household needs,
- travel to childcare/school (if remote learning is unavailable), medical treatment or to see parents, children or siblings who live in a different house;
- move house or inspect a house;
- exercise (but not barre, obviously);
- protect your health or safety.
The full list of 15 reasonable excuses can be found here. The list is both extensive and specific. This means if your excuse isn't on the list there's a decent chance it won't be considered reasonable.
Sitting in the park to get some sun, or reading a book in a park (even if on your own) are not listed reasonable excuses to leave your home – as necessary as we may think they are.
The potential problems with this order
Greater restrictions on public movement are undoubtedly necessary to protect the health of the broader community. The power to issue fines for breach of the rule makes it slightly scarier.
Why? The health orders are unavoidably being prepared on the fly. As a result they are high level and don't undergo the usual testing we apply to new laws to consider unintended reach or consequence.
This is compounded by the lack of real guidance for police about how to assess whether someone actually has a 'reasonable excuse'. We think there will inevitably be an overreach by police, however well-meaning that overreach may be. For eg. Taking your dog for a walk is not a listed excuse. A fine could be issued if a police officer thought walking your dog was not exercise and was not, in their view, a reasonable excuse for you to be out of home. Not the intended purpose of the order, but it is a gap in drafting.
The easiest response is to follow the authorities' advice and stay home. If you do go out, objective evidence of your 'reasonable excuse' may go some way to assisting the police in assessing your reason for being outside. Active wear for exercise and shopping bags for shopping are two examples.
We do not disclaim anything about this article. We're quite proud of it really.
