PM to consider India border ban after WA lockdown
Scott Morrison is preparing to impose tighter rules on flying in and out of Australia as calls for a border ban with India grow louder.
Scott Morrison is under pressure to lock down Australia’s borders with India and take a tougher line on travel for “weddings and funerals” amid revelations thousands are still jetting overseas despite travel bans.
News.com.au has confirmed Australia is considering even tougher restrictions on flights from India today amid revelations the Perth lockdown was sparked by a man’s overseas holiday to attend his own wedding.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison will convene a meeting of the national security committee of cabinet on Tuesday to consider a further reduction in flights.
A massive humanitarian assistance package is also being developed including oxygen supplies that have been running out even at expensive, private hospitals.
Health Minister Greg Hunt confirmed on Monday that Australia was considering sending oxygen and ventilators to help with the crisis.
“India is literally gasping for oxygen,” he said.
But he also confirmed tougher restriction on inbound and outbound travel to India may be considered at the national security committee meeting.
“If those additional measures are recommended, we will take them with the heaviest of hearts but without any hesitation,’’ he said.
“But we remember the agony that our own Indian community is faced with and I think it is very important that we are sensitive to the suffering that they face and their friends and their family and their loved ones overseas face.”
But state sources have warned the Morrison Government seemed reluctant to consider an outright temporary suspension of travel from India at the national cabinet on Friday and needed to get tougher on allowing Australians to jet out to India and other COVID hot spots for “weddings and funerals”.
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Currently, an estimated 34,000 Australians are stuck overseas who want to come home and the largest single group – 8,300 – are stuck in India.
Acting Victorian Premier James Merlino told news.com.au the Morrison Government needed to stop letting so many people fly overseas to COVID-19 hot spots.
“Given the increasing risks posed in so many countries and the delayed rollout of the vaccine here in Australia, it is neither safe or logical to allow thousands of people to leave every month for a wide range of reasons including attending weddings,’’ he said.
“Australian’s international borders are currently closed for good reason – until it is safe to open them again, people should only be leaving the country for genuinely urgent or compassionate reasons.”
“Victoria would support these processes being reviewed and tightened.”
Mr Merlino said the deadly new variants – including so-called double mutants – also required alternatives to the existing hotel quarantine scheme.
“We have been clear that hyper-infectious, fast moving strains of coronavirus mean we need to consider alternative models to existing hotel quarantine – we would welcome increased involvement from the Commonwealth,’’ Mr Merlino said.
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There’s fury among state premiers including Mark McGowan that Australians are continuing to travel to India and other COVID-ravaged countries and then return for reasons including “weddings” and “athletic meets”.
“I don’t get why they should be allowed,’’ the WA Premier said on Sunday.
“When someone says they are going to a funeral, the Commonwealth just trusts them and lets them go. If people want to go overseas to COVID-infected countries in the middle of the pandemic, I don’t think they should be allowed.
“Leaving Australia for highly infected countries like India should pretty much stop.”
The WA Premier has insisted the Morrison Government agrees to halving international arrivals flying into Perth for the next month.
The reduced cap of 512 arrivals a week will remain in place until May 30.
Infections are now surging to more than 2,000 deaths a day in India and 350,000 new infections a day with experts warning those numbers underestimate the true death toll and infection rate.
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Major hospitals in New Delhi have begged on social media for more supplies to save COVID-19 patients who are struggling to breathe.
India has confirmed 17 million COVID cases so far, second only to the United States in a country of nearly 1.4 billion people.
The official death total is 192,000 but experts believe the true number is much higher.
The West Australian reported today the man at the centre of the WA outbreak flew from Perth to India on December 12 and returned to Australia on April 10 — four months later — with his new bride.
He tested positive at the Mercure hotel in Perth three days later. The virus then spread to his new wife and infected other people in rooms across the corridor.
Talkback radio host Scott Emerson said the situation “didn’t make sense” and that he didn’t think it was acceptable given Australians have been forced to miss funerals and weddings here in Australia because of COVID restrictions.
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On Friday, the Morrison Government announced flights from India will be scaled back by 30 per cent.
“We’ll be instructing the Border Force to ensure only in very urgent circumstances would an exemption be permitted for someone to travel to a high risk country,” Mr Morrison said.
There will also be tougher pre-flight tests for people who have travelled to India but were transiting home through another country.
“An arrangement where if you have been in a high-risk country in the previous 14 days, before getting on your last point of embarkation to Australia, then you would need to have had a PCR test 72 hours before leaving that last point of embarkation,” Mr Morrison said.
“This would apply to India.”
Nearly half of the 49 new cases of COVID-19 detected in WA’s hotel quarantine system in the last month travelled from India.
Despite the grim news in India, the Prime Minister has continued to argue Australia is enjoying fewer pandemic restrictions than almost anywhere else in the world.
“Australians are living like few others anywhere else in the world,” Mr Morrison said.
“We take those border arrangements very seriously. This is a way of matching that risk.”
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