Deputy Premier John Barilaro said he is preparing to fight for certain council areas in regional and rural NSW to leave lockdown after this weekend.
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Mr Barilaro has requested a map be made of regional council's according to three criteria: whether there are any active cases of COVID-19, whether there is detections of the virus in sewage, and if there are neighbouring LGAs of concern.
If a council area doesn't meet this, he believes they have a chance of coming out of lockdown earlier than other regions on an LGA-by-LGA approach.
Mr Barilaro plans to argue for this approach at Wednesday's crisis cabinet meeting, "possibly against health advice [of] keeping everything locked down".
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"If it only leaves a handful of communities open and the rest closed then the easiest thing is to just keep everyone closed and that could be a final decision, but we're not there yet," he added.
On Monday, Mr Barilaro admitted that "crisis cabinet still hasn't signed off on what the criteria could be and should be" in terms of coming out of lockdown.
He also said that whatever is decided moving forward has to be a long-term answer, rather than week-by-week.
"I was confident that we could get out of this [lockdown in] the first seven days and it's not the case," he said.
"If we do go for a further extension - if it's 14 days, if it's 28 days, if it's until the end of September - we need to be upfront about it, because businesses can prepare, communities can prepare and, of course, we can make adjustments to support packages."
Mr Barilaro suggested that a requirement for coming out of lockdown that Health may apply is the 14-day incubation period - meaning an area would have to go two weeks without any new cases for restrictions to be lifted.
"The method [for coming out of lockdown] hasn't been finalised," he said.
"Not everything is in the control of your community; you can't help what happens in an LGA next door."
Mr Barilaro also said that whether or not students in the region can return to face-to-face learning will depend on the lockdown.
"If we don't lift restrictions, school kids won't be going back," he said.
"They're not separate; they are the same."
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