Working from home “makes a lot of sense” right now, the treasurer, Jim Chalmers, says, but he says the government won’t be enforcing Covid-style mandates on households.

Ahead of the national cabinet meeting today, Chalmers tells ABC News Breakfast the states and territories and commonwealth will need to work together to avoid “harsher” measures as the crisis deepens.

He says that Australians shouldn’t cancel their Easter weekend road trips but should use fuel responsibly.

The best way to get through this is to get through it together, to work through these issues, in a coordinated and ideally consistent way around the country. And the best way to avoid the kind of harsher Covid style measures is to do that work. And the better we do at the front end of this challenge that we have in our economy, the more likely we are to avoid some of those kind of harsher measures and restrictions down the track.

We’re trying to avoid those kind of a heavier-handed Covid [style] interventions. But work from home in a number of instances makes a lot of sense. The prime minister has indicated more of a willingness to go down the voluntary path than the compulsory path.