Bring them home: why we can’t leave Australians stranded in India

The Australian government’s hardline response to its citizens, permanent residents and their families stranded in India during a massive escalation in COVID-19 cases stands in stark contrast to its determination to help those abroad early in the pandemic.

In February last year, officials worked tirelessly to repatriate Australians from China’s Wuhan Province, the drifting Diamond Princess cruise ship and other places ravaged by COVID-19, recognising the “safety of Australians both at home and overseas is, of course, the primary responsibility of any government”.

A relative of a person who died of COVID-19 is consoled by another during cremation in Jammu, India, on Sunday. Credit: AP

As Health Minister Greg Hunt said, the clear national priorities included containing the virus to protect Australians at home and “the protection and support for Australians abroad”.

To meet that responsibility, the government arranged repatriation flights and quarantine facilities on Christmas Island and in the Northern Territory to help Australians who found themselves abroad at the time of significant outbreaks. Since that initial flurry, though, national priorities have apparently shifted to privilege the protection of those “at home” at the expense of supporting Australians facing imminent harm overseas.

As a matter of law, any restrictions on Australians’ return home must be temporary, reasonable and necessary to protect public health. This month, in considering a complaint brought by two stranded Australians, the United Nations Human Rights Committee said Australia should facilitate and ensure their prompt return because they faced irreparable harm in their current circumstances. The committee has previously stated there are “few, if any, circumstances in which deprivation of the right to enter one’s own country could be reasonable”.

The rationale offered by the government for the ban on flights from India until at least May 15 is the priority to protect Australians already on our shores, especially frontline health workers and quarantine officials.

Given the number of positive cases in India, there is a heightened risk that the virus could escape the confines of quarantine if travellers return to Australia. At the same time, the relative risk to the Australian community is low. The vaccination of frontline workers is well under way, and our excellent contract-tracing systems and healthcare facilities mean we are very unlikely to see a mass outbreak. According to the Prime Minister, the hotel quarantine system “is achieving 99.99 per cent effectiveness” – so why is it too unreliable to safeguard the community from the current threat?

Crucially, the Australian government must ramp up federal quarantine facilities – a call that public health experts have been making for months. A Senate inquiry last year recommended “expanding commonwealth-funded quarantine facilities … to assist stranded Australians in getting home”, especially given the federal government’s constitutional responsibilities for quarantine.

The Howard Springs facility in the Northern Territory has seen no cases of community transmission; similar sites need to be created as a matter of urgency. Former health secretary Jane Halton recommended the government “consider a national facility for quarantine to be used for emergency situations, emergency evacuations or urgent scalability”.

The government has had more than a year to take the initiative on facilitating Australians’ return home yet has fallen woefully short. Now is not the time to leave Australians caught in India’s serious outbreak to fend for themselves, or to add pressure to the Indian government’s severely strained medical resources.

The Prime Minister has stressed that when flights resume, the most vulnerable will be prioritised. Our fear is that, by then, some of the most vulnerable may not still be with us.

Regina Jefferies is a Scientia PhD scholar and affiliate of UNSW Sydney’s Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law; Jane McAdam is the centre’s director and a Scientia professor of law.