Caleb Bond: We’ve made SA residents second class citizens by banning them, but allowing international students in
South Australia is about to bring in international students by the planeload. But a South Australian stuck in Victoria can’t come home to see his family. It’s rank hypocrisy, writes Caleb Bond.
Opinion
Don't miss out on the headlines from Opinion. Followed categories will be added to My News.
- Nicola Spurrier says she supports bringing in international students
- The Advertiser +Rewards – giveaways, offers and competitions
If you are a South Australian who had the misfortune of finding yourself in Victoria for whatever reason, you won’t be allowed back into your home state.
But if you’re an international student, you’re more than welcome. The door is open and Premier Steven Marshall is waiting there with a warm smile.
This is the hypocrisy of our border restrictions. We’ve created two classes of citizens and somehow decided to put our own at the bottom.
The argument, of course, is that international students are important to the recovery of the South Australian economy – and the country’s economy more broadly. If the pilot works here, no doubt it will be rolled out in other states.
They’re right. International students are important to the state’s economy. Particularly the CBD.
I have no real problem with allowing international students to come back. They will undergo all the same hotel quarantine restrictions as the people who’ve jumped off repatriation flights from Mumbai and other places.
Hotel quarantine has worked quite efficiently everywhere – except Victoria. We need not go into the reasons for their failure again.
What I do have a problem with is maintaining uber-strict restrictions on the Victorian border to the point where we are turning away our own citizens because we think they are too much of a risk, when we’ll allow people to come in from overseas.
There is little argument a tough stance on Victoria is needed to prevent spread through the rest of the country – including tough border rules.
But stopping South Australians from coming back to their home state effectively renders them stateless. It’s cruel and inhumane.
And it’s all the more silly when you consider the mad scramble across the border by Victorians when we announced a hard-border closure. There are people living on the border who cannot get to school, medical appointments or work because of these border restrictions. Doctors who cannot do their jobs because they happened to be on the wrong side of the fence at the wrong time.
There’s the sad story of the Wilson family, who have moved into a caravan in SA so they could keep going to work and school because their home was just 500m over the Victorian border.
From Friday, people living in border communities will only be allowed to cross into SA if they have a letter deeming them “essential travellers”. These are real people whose lives are unfortunately affected every day by these border closures.
Yet they have to watch foreign students get shipped in by the planeload because we need the money.
There are many South Australians who have not seen their family for months.
Haven’t met new nieces and nephews. Haven’t been able to visit their parents in nursing homes.
They, too, have to watch foreign students be brought in.
An online poll by The Advertiser found 80 per cent of 16,000 respondents did not support bringing them over here.
You cannot, in all fairness, make life difficult for your own citizens but roll out the red carpet for others.
If people start to feel like they’ve been given the raw prawn, they’ll lose faith. And rightly so. That, in terms of making sure there is no resurgence of coronavirus in SA, is the last thing the government needs to contend with.
If overseas students are allowed to isolate in SA, then why can’t actual South Australian citizens who have come back from Victoria?
Doesn’t matter if your dad is dying. You won’t get to see him in his last moments. Unless you’re a cashed-up international student, who can prop up our universities, we don’t want to know about you.
We are doing this to our own people who only committed the crime of being on the wrong side of the border.
Where is the humanity?
Victorian border restrictions and the reintroduction of international students may both be necessary for different reasons.
But, as they stand, they break every measure of fairness and justice.