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NSW and Victoria are scrapping a range of COVID-19 restrictions, including the requirement for household contacts of people with the virus to isolate.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison says the changes reflect the fact that Australia "has come through this pandemic strongly".

"I welcome the fact that in NSW and Victoria they are getting back to normal - hallelujah," he said on Wednesday.

"We have been waiting a long time for these sorts of things and the rest of the states I'm sure will continue down that path."

Victoria's Health Minister Martin Foley says a raft of restrictions will ease from 11.59pm on Friday, after the state passed the peak of its second Omicron wave.

"That's why we're in the position of being able to take some important steps over the coming days," he told reporters.

Close contacts of confirmed cases will no longer have to quarantine provided they wear a mask indoors and avoid sensitive settings. They must also return five negative rapid antigen tests over the seven-day period.

NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet says the requirement for close contacts of COVID cases to isolate for seven days will end at 6pm on Friday.

Close contacts will have to undertake daily rapid antigen tests, wear masks indoors and work from home where possible.

They will also have to notify their employers and avoid high-risk environments like hospitals and aged care settings.

NSW will move towards removing hotel quarantine and ditch the green dots indicating where to sit on public transport.

Although it was not the end of the pandemic, "it is a great day for our state", the premier said.

"It is also a day to reflect on what we have come through ... let's just focus on success for a moment," he said.

Business leaders have been calling for the end to the seven-day isolation rule, saying it will ease staff shortages for businesses trying to recover from the pandemic.

Clinical epidemiologist and head of the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, Nancy Baxter says a quarter-to-half of people who have a household contact with COVID-19, will likely contract the virus.

"We need to protect people from those households contacts if we're allowing them to leave home without isolation," she told ABC TV on Wednesday.

"You'd want them to do RATs, you'd want them in masks and not just in any mask, in a high-quality mask like a P2 or N95."

Employers should be required to keep those people isolated or physically distanced from other workers "because there's going to be a high-risk of getting it into the workplace for these people", she said.

"It is (politically) expedient for all of these things to be relaxed because it signals that COVID is over.

"The problem is COVID hasn't gotten the memo ... and what we're seeing in Australia right now is ... one of the world's highest rate of new cases of COVID per day."

LATEST 24-HOUR COVID-19 DATA FROM ACROSS AUSTRALIA:

NSW: 15,414 cases, 15 deaths, 1639 in hospital, 72 in ICU

Victoria: 10,628 cases, 14 deaths, 437 in hospital, 34 in ICU

Queensland: 8995 cases, six deaths, 594 in hospital, 25 in ICU

Tasmania: 1819 cases, 56 in hospital, two in ICU

South Australia: 4256 cases, two deaths, 252 in hospital, 14 in ICU

Northern Territory: 594 cases, one death, 44 in hospital, two in ICU

Western Australia: 8080 cases, no deaths, 244 in hospital, 10 in ICU

© AAP 2022

The Liberals and Labor have traded barbs over industrial relations policy ahead of the first leaders' debate.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Labor Leader Anthony Albanese will meet in Brisbane on Wednesday night where they will take questions from undecided voters.

While Mr Morrison used the morning to target the ultra-marginal seat of Boothby in Adelaide, Attorney-General Michaelia Cash was doing the morning media rounds to spruik the coalition's crackdown on construction unions.

The government will double the penalties courts can impose on construction unions, should it win office.

Penalties for serious offences such as unlawful industrial action, freedom of association or coercion will be increased to $88,000 for an individual and $444,000 for a union.

Senator Cash said the changes to the building and construction industry act would try to stamp out "bullying and intimidation" by the Construction, Forestry, Maritime, Mining and Energy Union.

"We are going to ensure that their behaviour, their unlawful behaviour on construction sites in Australia, they are held to account," she told the Nine Network.

"The current penalties they merely see as the cost of doing business. That is unacceptable. We need to ensure our construction industry in Australia is as productive as it can be."

Meanwhile, Labor upped the attack on the coalition on working conditions, arguing a re-elected Morrison government would bring back controversial workplace laws.

Touring logistics and freight company Toll's Brisbane facility, Mr Albanese said the drag on wages - which would be exacerbated by the laws - is having a direct impact on the economy.

"The dampening down of wages has not only had a dire impact on people struggling to make ends meet ... it's had a devastating impact on our national economy," he said.

Opposition industrial relations spokesman Tony Burke said the government would scrap the better off overall test for workplace agreements and the changes would result in a $14,000 a year pay cut for part-time disability care workers.

"This is legislation that says your ordinary hourly rate, that can stay the same, but every penalty rate, every shift allowance, every loading, overtime rate, up for grabs," he said.

Mr Morrison rebuffed the remarks as a Labor scare campaign, calling the legislation "award simplification".

"It's about simplification and ensuring there's greater flexibility to ensure that these companies can work with what is an often complex industrial relations system which costs jobs, costs higher wages, and costs the Australian economy," he said.

"If you don't have an economic plan, you go and raise false scare campaigns against your opponents."

Labor also took aim at the government's handling of national security after the Solomon Islands inked a security deal with China.

Mr Albanese called the development a "serious foreign policy failure".

"Australia needs to do more than step up with the slogan in the Pacific, it needs to step up with real engagement, deep engagement, with our Pacific island neighbours."

The prime minister says Australia is well aware of the risks posed in the Indo-Pacific and the situation would have been much worse without the actions taken by the government to date.

"You can't always be fully persuasive on these issues," he said.

"What I assured them is that Australia will be there for you as we always are, not because we want anything from you, but because we see the Pacific as our family."

Mr Morrison says he will make a visit to the Solomon Islands at the earliest opportunity if re-elected, and attacked former prime minister Kevin Rudd for his engagement with the region.

"He thought foreign ministers should be sent up there to stomp around and tell Pacific islanders what to do. That was the failed approach of the past," he said.

"We see the Pacific as our family and we want to stand by our family and ensure they can have the sovereignty they've earned."

© AAP 2022

Seven-day isolation for COVID-19 close contacts, compulsory masks for primary school students and the vaccine mandate for venues will be scrapped in Victoria.

A raft of restrictions will ease from 11.59pm on Friday after the state passed the peak of its second Omicron wave, Health Minister Martin Foley announced on Wednesday.

"We know that there will be a long plateauing and tail to this BA.2 Omicron sub-variant wave," he told reporters.

"But what we know is that we've passed the peak and we are able to look to this group of sensible measures being able to take us into a still-challenging winter."

Under the changes, close contacts of confirmed cases will no longer have to quarantine if they wear a mask indoors, avoid sensitive settings and return five negative rapid antigen tests over the seven-day period.

Similar changes have been unveiled by the NSW government.

Business groups have been calling for the seven-day isolation rule for household contacts to be relaxed to ease ongoing staff shortages.

Positive cases still need to self-isolate for the full seven-day period in Victoria and masks will remain mandatory on public transport, in airports and health, aged care and justice settings.

In addition, Victorians will no longer be required to have two vaccine doses or show their vaccination status before entering pubs, restaurants, movie theatres and sports venues.

Premier Daniel Andrews previously said the state's vaccinated economy could remain in place until 2023.

COVID-19 vaccine mandates for key industries such as healthcare, food distribution, police, emergency services and education will remain.

The state's new pandemic-specific legislation shifted the power for changing COVID-19 restrictions from Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton to Mr Foley.

Professor Sutton said health policy was transitioning to individual discretion, given the level of vaccination coverage in the community.

"We've got enough in-built protection as a community that further restrictions are not proportionate or necessary," he said.

Victoria's seven-day case average remains below 10,000, despite the state recording 10,628 new COVID-19 cases and 14 deaths on Wednesday.

Prof Sutton said he believed the wave had plateaued, with daily infections falling 10 per cent over the past week.

"I think today's a blip. It's going to be a long tail and slow decline. We're not going to see a dramatic drop in numbers," he said.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison welcomed the changes.

"In NSW and Victoria they are getting back to normal - hallelujah," he said.

© AAP 2022