Rich Aussie cricketers in India should find and fund their own way home

Our government is right in not prioritising wealthy Aussie cricketers for repatriation flights from COVID-ravaged India.

There are few, if any, Victorians who can look at the COVID tragedy unfolding in India without feeling powerless and utterly heartsick.

People dying in the streets, unable to access medical care and oxygen, and hospitals overrun with the desperately ill.

Doctors, nurses and aid workers labouring around the clock - without the resources and medical supplies available to ‘lucky’ countries like Australia – fighting a tsunami of illness, death and grief.

That our cashed-up cricketers and commentators – many of them idolised in India – should help where they can, by contributing desperately needed funds, is only right and proper.

So they should.

They have been treated like royalty in India for years, and it’s time to give back.

That our government should also refuse to prioritise bringing Australian cricketers in India home - over the 9000-odd Aussies seeking repatriation, including about 650 considered vulnerable because of their medical or financial circumstances – is also right and proper.

David Warner, with Kane Williamson, on a flight between games in the IPL in India.

Our highly-paid cricketers and commentators have the personal wealth and the wherewithal to find, and fund, their own way home.

If David Warner and New Zealand captain Kane Williamson can be suited, head-to-toe, in protective suits and masks as they flew to Delhi for a match – as seen in photos - they are so far ahead of those vulnerable Australians in India, with just a face mask and a bottle of hand sanitiser standing between them and mutant COVID-19, it doesn’t warrant debate.

Our cricketers are rich enough to afford the highest-level protection, chartered flights and the sort of luxurious, “bubble” conditions and quarantine perks most Australians in India could never dream of.

A worker loading and unloading oxygen cylinders at a government hospital in India.

The Australian Government’s recent decision to prioritise our Olympic athletes and support staff heading to Tokyo for the COVID-19 vaccine is also the right one.

The group of fit, healthy and young elite sportsmen and women will receive the jab under group 1b of the coronavirus vaccine rollout, alongside critical and high-risk workers and the elderly.

There will be those who, understandably, question the decision – as Australia’s vaccine rollout stumbles along and other, more vulnerable Aussies are left waiting for their jabs – but the world needs the Olympics to proceed in the safest way possible.

Having said that, Olympic competition is likely the last concern of the Indian government right now, as it fights just to keep its citizens alive and secure that most fundamental of things, oxygen.

Australia’s initial support package to the stricken nation, including 1.5 million masks, 100,000 gowns, 100,000 goggles, 100,000 pairs of gloves and 20,000 face shields, is a good start.

But we can, and should, do much, much more to help our neighbour in its time of need.