COVID-19 elimination strategy "not sustainable": Aussie PM

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has warned that a pivot to a COVID-19 elimination strategy would double the unemployment rate.

Scott Morrison said on Wednesday that a dramatic change in Australia's response to the pandemic would cause more harm than good.

The remarks come after Gladys Berejiklian, the premier of New South Wales (NSW), recently rejected the calls to reinstate lockdown measures in Sydney similar to those in place in Melbourne.

Morrison supported Berejiklian's decision, saying that Australia's suppression strategy was the right approach.

"You don't just shut the whole country down. That is not sustainable," he told Melbourne's Triple M radio.

"I've heard that argument. You'd be doubling unemployment potentially and even worse."

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) will on Thursday release unemployment data for June.

On the outbreak of the pandemic the Treasury predicted that unemployment would reach about 10 percent in June, which would be a 2.9 percent increase from the May unemployment rate of 7.1 percent.

Morrison on Wednesday also defended the government's COVID-19 tracing app after the Opposition Labor Party labelled it a "failure" amid reports that no close contacts of an infected person had been identified solely through the COVIDSafe app.