First in line are fee-paying students. Says the Australian government: “Here’s the welcome mat”.
Then it’s highly paid tennis stars like Roger Federer and Serena Williams. Says a tennis official: “Come here at any time, we’ll even give you a bio-secure bubble”.
For Australian citizens, many of them expats returning for job opportunities, or just a desperate wish to visit a dying parent, well, good luck.
The message they are hearing from the Australian government is something like: “We don’t care you are bumped off a flight for the third, fourth, fifth or sixth time — you are a highly unwelcome biohazard risk. If you do make it here, tough luck you had to fork out a house deposit for an upgraded seat.’”
On Sunday Trade Minister Simon Birmingham announced 300 Chinese and Japanese students will fly into Adelaide for quarantine in a pilot program which if successful will see tens of thousands of students encouraged to return to Australia to study.
That’s the good news.
But just 500 quarantine slots are available in Adelaide each week. Because of the government’s strict caps on the number of people allowed into the country each day, most international arrivals cannot even get flights to Adelaide and they make up part of the 350 a day cap Sydney quarantine numbers.
This follows some over-optimistic claims by Craig Tiley, chief executive of the Australian Tennis Open, that 2500 tennis players and their entourages can arrive in Victoria at any time from December, seemingly without having to undergo quarantine like most others apart from film stars and diplomats.
If anyone cared to look at the increasingly frantic and desperate social media posts of Australians overseas, the biggest problem is huge uncertainty about getting onto any flight into the country.
Airlines are demanding first and business fares for the very slim flight options: as only 30 to 60 Australians are allowed on an incoming flight.
Last week many hundreds of Australians were once again disheartened, receiving emails that their flights had been cancelled, after the government extended these caps on international arrivals until October 24.
One London based ex-pat family, who has sent back furniture on a container, their lease expired and are now homeless, was unhelpfully offered new flights to Perth for mid-November.
Yesterday an Australian in Athens had his flight cancelled, with no forward options at all.
Airlines appear to encourage bookings for ghost flights.
The dramas and heartbreaking stories of missing the last days of dying parents, and then their funerals; the gymnastics of young families crammed into a small hotel room without fresh air; has now spread to the ordeals of Australians at home as internal borders are resurrected.
When bureaucrats stopped a new mother in northern NSW from being with her ill newborn baby who had been flown into Queensland for life saving treatment, because she had to serve two weeks quarantine, the loudest of alarm bells should be rung in every state and Federal minister’s office up to Scott Morrison.
Viruses do not respect borders and cap restrictions are nothing but heartless, especially when Australians are treated so disgracefully. The issues of caps, quarantine and borders needs a major rethink and calm, rational reassessment. So far the various hysterical responses and inflammatory language from the states and from Canberra have simply added tension and distress.
Where are the priorities and where is the proportionate response?
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