At a time when Australia needs brave leaders making brave decisions, Prime Minister Scott Morrison's non-binding advice to avoid gatherings of over 500 people from Monday 16 March doesn't go far enough.

Experts say Italy's out of control Coronavirus spread, which has overloaded hospitals and left over 1000 dead so far, would have been dramatically reduced by implementing social separation measures even just one week earlier. We need to learn from Italy's tragic situation, not repeat it.

We call for all gathering sites of over 500 people to be closed from Monday 16 March. This includes schools, universities, office towers with shared lifts, large retail shopping centres, public libraries, gym and aquatic centres.

Coronavirus is airborne and can live on surfaces for hours. It can be spread without symptoms, and there is a long incubation period that makes this virus invisible in our community.

Those of us who can, pay taxes so our governments protect us all and provide us with the security we need. Our demands will have an economic impact, but so will doing nothing, and we would rather be in a budget deficit than grieving our elderly loved ones, or fighting for our own lives, or trying to save others.

We demand that Australia's federal and state goverments act now instead of reacting later, using the lessons learned from countries who acted too slowly, and are not in our lucky position to truly get ahead of this deadly serious threat.

Thank you.