Andrew Bolt: We need a better quarantine system now

We can’t rely on a quarantine system so ramshackle we can’t even bring home children trapped in India without pollies claiming it would be “overwhelmed”.

It’s shameful enough Scott Morrison is banning 173 Australian children from flying out of virus-ravaged India and back home to their parents.

That already shows the Prime Minister is listening to the worst of us in shutting our borders to the 9000 Australian citizens in India, including children visiting relatives.

How can we lock out even unaccompanied children from Australia and its fine hospitals, and abandon them instead in a country where the virus is raging and hospitals are running out of oxygen?

It breaks my heart this is the heartless, panicky, every-man-for-himself country we’ve become.

But now there’s even more reason to despair. Morrison told this newspaper at the weekend he also won’t lift the travel bans on the rest of us for quite some time, even though about 2.5 million of the most vulnerable Australians have already been vaccinated.

“I don’t see an appetite for that at the moment,” he said. “What we’re seeing at the moment is the appreciation of the people that the pandemic isn’t going anywhere.”

Prime Minister Scott Morrison says Australia will be closed to the world for a long time Picture: Bianca De Marchi

Oh, I see Morrison is taking his cues from polls, and not from Liberal philosophy.

It should actually be in the DNA of every Liberal that a government does all it can to help citizens live as they please, rather than ban them for its own convenience.

Or to please the braying of the polls.

Yes, I know our freedoms must end at the point others are harmed. Your right to visit India ends where your return means others die.

But who says that’s the real trade-off? Are Australians really so brainless we still can’t figure out a way to let citizens come back without endangering the rest of us?

I ask, because the right to travel is not some trivial indulgence — a luxury that can be lightly taken away.

Nearly eight million of us were born overseas. Millions more — like me — have children or other beloved relatives overseas, including some so old or frail that we may never see them again if we can’t leave soon.

We should be free to leave our own country, whether to visit family, work or simply see the world — long a rite of passage for the most adventuresome and curious.

Australia is not the Soviet Union, banning citizens from leaving without a reason deemed suitable by some government apparatchik.

Correction: That is exactly what Australia now is. And shouldn’t be.

Yes, while the coronavirus still rages, we should limit those leaving so our quarantine hotels aren’t overwhelmed on their return.

But the Morrison government — and the states — have known for more than a year we need much better quarantine services if Australians can again travel abroad.

That is even more obvious now. Even if you get vaccinated, you can still become infectious.

What’s more, this coronavirus is mutating, and some strains can beat existing vaccines.

Morrison himself says we may need booster shots for years to come — which is another way of saying the coronavirus will threaten Australia for many years yet.

India is being decimated by coronavirus.

So how long will we be restricted from travelling? How insular — and ignorant — the next generation will become.

We need a proper quarantine system, and not just to get us over the next few months.

It will have to last for years, and be able to deal with Australians once again travelling overseas in their tens and tens of thousands.

That system will almost certainly switch to a hybrid that includes home quarantine, as Morrison suggests.

But it must also have dedicated and purpose-built quarantine centres to deal with the inevitable outbreaks or more dangerous virus strains.

That means no more relying on today’s quarantine hotels — many barely fit for purpose — that are, bizarrely, in the middle of our biggest cities, making any virus outbreak a potential catastrophe.

We cannot keep relying on a system so ramshackle Australia can’t even bring home 173 children trapped in India without politicians claiming it would be “overwhelmed”.

What kind of country would accept such a system?

What kind of country would say: Let those Australian children get sick in India, where they’d struggle to find some hospital bed?

What kind of politicians would shamelessly argue our quarantine hotels can’t handle the danger of bringing children home?

Let me answer: It’s a country where the most timid and hard dictate policy for the bold and curious.

It’s a country with politicians grown so authoritarian even Liberals would rather control people than let them live free.