The Morrison government has backtracked on a contentious plan to charge people $1,000 for their evacuation from China to help contain the spread of the coronavirus, while Peter Dutton has departed from the government script by urging Australians planning an overseas holiday to stay home instead.

With senior government figures on Sunday warning the pandemic will, alongside the drought and the bushfires, create a significant hit on the Australian economy, the home affairs minister urged Australians to spend their money at home.

“We need Australians, frankly, if they are considering a holiday at the moment, to reconsider whether an outbound overseas trip is what they want to do,” Dutton told Sky News. “If they’ve thought about seeing parts of Australia, now might be a good time to book that holiday.”

The government’s official travel advice, thus far, covers travel to and from China, which is the epicentre of the virus. The chief medical officer, Brendan Murphy, told reporters later in the morning he wasn’t part of any “discussion” with Dutton before his remarks, “but I think it’s always sensible when you’re planning to travel to consider the health advisories at the time”.

“But at the moment, the medical advice is principally around China.”

As well as departing from the official travel advice, Dutton also appeared unaware during his interview on Sunday morning that the government had dumped the plan to charge people for their evacuations to Christmas Island. He said cost recovery was “common sense” and he noted “most people will have paid much more than that for a return commercial flight”.

The health minister Greg Hunt later told reporters the mix up happened because “the point was that the treasurer was announcing it this morning”.

The government late on Saturday implemented significant border control measures aimed at containing the spread of the virus. Scott Morrison announced that foreign arrivals from mainland China will not be allowed entry into Australia. Australian citizens, permanent residents and their immediate family, legal guardians and spouses will be excepted from the strict measure.

While the government advised last week it would apply cost recovery to looming evacuations from China, Josh Frydenberg said on Sunday that would no longer be the case. He blamed the about face on the foreign affairs department, which he said had given the government incorrect information about past practices.

The government had said previous governments had charged for airlifts such as those run out of Lebanon in 2006, and Egypt in 2011. But this was fiercely contested.

Former prime minister Kevin Rudd, foreign minister at the time of the Arab Spring and the Egyptian evacuation, said online: “Morrison’s claim that Labor charged Australians for tickets on charter flights out of Egypt during the 2011 uprising is an outright falsehood”.

“The cost (about $3400 per person) was borne by the government. Why is ‘Scotty from Marketing’ slugging Aussies to get them out of Wuhan?”

The prime minister Julia Gillard said in a media release “the charter will be provided free of charge”, and the then head of the department of foreign affairs and trade, Dennis Richardson, confirmed at Senate estimates the costs of the charter were all borne by the government.

Frydenberg said the government was still working with the Chinese government to determine when the first plane removing people to quarantine in Christmas Island would proceed. “We hope that approval is imminent,” the treasurer said.

Frydenberg was asked on the ABC on Sunday whether the various hits on the economy could result in a negative quarter of growth, given growth was already weak before the disasters of the summer.

The treasurer said he did not intend to speculate. He noted the economy had been resilient to date, but there were now many factors beyond the government’s control.

“There are things that we can control and things that we can’t control,” he said. “When it comes to the outbreak of the virus, when it comes to the fires, when it comes to the floods, when it comes to the trade tensions between the United States and China – we can’t control those factors – but it does underline the importance of our disciplined economic management.”

Frydenberg refused to say whether he would, in the circumstances, be able to deliver a budget surplus, despite declaring definitively last year that the budget was back in the black.

He said the government’s primary focus was not on the number, but on “delivering the support to the Australians who need it”.

Asked whether he got a bit carried away in the lead-up to the election in declaring repeatedly “the budget is back in the black”, when the government had not yet delivered a surplus, and the economy was exposed to a number of external shocks, Frydenberg said the government had delivered a balanced budget, and “that’s a significant achievement”.

“In terms of a surplus, you’ll have to tune in on budget night,” he said. “What we do know is that these events outside of our control are going to have a significant impact on the Australian economy”.

With economic growth now imperilled because of the calamities of the summer, Dutton told Sky News the government was looking at measures to help the tourism sector, which has been hit by people staying away in the peak holiday seasons because of the bushfires, and now the impact of the virus. “The government will have more to say in due course,” he said.

“There is no question this will have an impact on the economy, but the first priority for the government at this point is the health and wellbeing of Australians,” Dutton said.