Trial to bring international students back to SA on track despite Victoria border closure
Authorities plan to bring back more than a third of nearly 7000 international students back to South Australia – assuming the first wave return safely.
Coronavirus News
Don't miss out on the headlines from Coronavirus News. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Flights to bring up to 2400 international students back to South Australia could begin as early as next month.
Authorities are planning to bring more than a third of the 6757 still stranded overseas in three waves depending on the success of a pilot program to return 800 students.
The first group of students from across South East Asia are likely to return in August on four separate flights via Singapore or Kuala Lumpur.
Trade and Investment Minister David Ridgway said the trial would depend on Adelaide’s capacity to take in the students as well as returning Australians.
“The situation is still unfolding and we are working to ensure South Australians remain safe,” he said.
“Recent developments have seen SA receive more international citizen repatriations that were originally bound for other states and so it’s also a question of our capacity to receive international students at the time we are receiving more Australians returning home.”
Prime Minister Scott Morrison initially warned states he would not allow international students to return from July if internal borders were not open.
“If you can’t come to your state from Sydney, then no one is coming to your state from Singapore,” he said last month.
But it’s understood the Federal Government will allow the trial to go ahead after New South Wales closed its border with Victoria, putting a “ring of containment” around the state.
“It’s difficult, it’s temporary, but sadly it is necessary,” federal Health Minister Greg Hunt said of the closure on Tuesday.
Mr Ridgway said there was “no specific timetable” on when students would return, but the state government was working with health experts, other states and the Commonwealth to ensure they could safely return “as soon as practicable”.
Many students stuck overseas will need to be reissued visas, and it is understood the process could take up to three weeks.
Mr Ridgway said it was “vitally important” to support international education as SA recovers from COVID-19, given the sector is worth almost $2 billion each year.
Deloitte estimates one full time job is created for every four international students.
Federal Education Minister Dan Tehan said the government was working closely with universities to try and limit the impacts of COVID-19 on international students. For domestic students, face-to-face classes will ramp up in the second semester, but many will stay online for the rest of the year.
Returning travellers capped at 1200
South Australia will block the arrival of international flights if the number of travellers staying in hotel quarantine, under police guard, breaches an operational cap.
Official figures show 527 expatriates are serving mandatory two weeks in isolation at two city hotels – or nearly half the state’s official capacity.
SA’s three active patients are overseas travellers.
Another 49 people returned to Adelaide on Tuesday on a Singapore Airlines flight.
The State Government revealed for the first time on Tuesday that up to 1200 travellers can simultaneously stay under hotel guard, just hours after the Opposition called for a legal cap.
Police Commissioner and state co-ordinator Grant Stevens said the figure fluctuated if people travelled separately or as a family.
“We won’t accept a flight if it exceeds that cap,” he said.
“Our goal is to work with the rest of Australia with repatriating Australians coming back to this country and we will do as much as we can to accommodate that.
“But we will also be mindful of the operational and logistics requirements that go with that. We will only be able to accommodate those people in the regime we currently have in place.” Travellers are staying in the Pullman Hotel in Hindmarsh Square and at the Playford Hotel on North Terrace. SA Health is investigating another two undisclosed hotel sites.
There are no redirected flights from Victoria planned into Adelaide, but officials say the Transition Committee would consider any request.
Figures show a quarantined person costs about taxpayers $2806. Authorities are exploring “cost recovery” from returned travellers.
Opposition spokesman Chris Picton welcomed the cap, but said: “We must make sure our arrivals … are tightly managed to keep SA safe.”
- Andrew Hough
