Aussies returning home to Victoria could begin next month
Victoria has shut its international border to Aussies wanting to return home. A date for when international flights will come back to Melbourne Airport has been revealed.
Geelong
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INTERNATIONAL flights could return to Melbourne Airport late next month when Victoria revives its hotel quarantine system, the premier says.
Daniel Andrews said on Thursday it was his aim to have international flights arrive at Melbourne Airport well before Christmas.
The government is due to receive interim recommendations for a new hotel quarantine system on November 6 from retired judge Jennifer Coate who is running an inquiry into the first iteration of hotel quarantine.
Mr Andrews said the government would assess the recommendations then announce a new system.
“We will get that next Friday and we will consider it in some detail and we will make announcements shortly thereafter, I think, about the model we are going to put in place.
“It’s probably towards the end of November rather than the middle.
“As soon as we can safely have that system set up and those flights retuning we will.
“This is subject to whatever the board (of inquiry) gives to us. We will have to wait and see what the nature of their recommendations are.”
Last week Prime Minister Scott Morrison said existing international air passenger arrival caps would continue until November 21 but are subject to review from National Cabinet.
Premier Daniel Andrews said it was unclear when the border between New South Wales and Victoria would reopen.
“We’ll get that border opened when it’s safe to do so. I can’t give people a date today.”
Mr Andrews said he expected the number of Australians wanting to return home would rise.
“As conditions (regarding COVID-19) deteriorate in literally every other country in the world barring a handful, there may well be more and more Aussies wanting to come home and be with their family that does present some significant challenges.
“The right of Australians to return home is something that’s very, very important and we will just need to push ourselves further and work harder to make sure we can facilitate that as we can.”
Meanwhile the Department of Health and Human Services annual report shows the number of public health team officials or contact tracers employed in Victoria rose from 57 before the outbreak of COVID-19 to 1891 in June.
Mr Andrews said staff levels met demand, and had grown to 2600.
“When you have a one-in-one-hundred-year event you need to scale up, and you need to scale up fast and that’s exactly what we’ve done.”
Regional Victoria remained COVID-19 free for a second day on Thursday, and three new cases were recorded across metropolitan Melbourne.
One case is a female kindergarten-aged child linked to an outbreak in Melbourne’s north, and two cases could be previous diagnoses who continue to shed the virus, the government said.
Mr Andrews said: “This is another good day of low numbers. It may just be that there is one new case.”
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Originally published as Aussies returning home to Victoria could begin next month