Coronavirus: Scott Morrison plays to home crowd over ‘pariah’ expats

Australian Open players and support staff arrive at the Grand Hyatt in Melbourne. Picture: Tim Carrafa

Tennis Australia has shown that where there is a will, there is a way. In the past few weeks, it has arranged 17 flights for 1200 elite tennis players and officials, all foreigners, to enter Australia, and found them additional hotel quarantine spots. Notice that none is being housed in remote miners’ camps in outback Australia.

World no.3 Dominic Thiem (right) is seen on the balcony of his room at the Magestic Suites on Tynte Street in North Adelaide. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Dean Martin

Meanwhile, Scott Morrison continues to outsource decision-making about Australians who are stranded overseas to Australians at home. And, over the past 10 months, we have discovered that many don’t appear to have much compassion for expats trying to return home.

The Prime Minister has also outsourced most of the implementation of the policy to the states, invariably blaming them for setting caps on hotel quarantine places. This has allowed Morrison to absent himself from responsibility for citizens stranded overseas. By sending the Health Department Secretary, former chief medical officer Brendan Murphy, out on Monday to announce that borders will likely remain shut for the rest of 2021, Morrison can keep sidestepping responsibility for a policy that locks Australians inside their country and has left tens of thousands of others stranded overseas.

The PM has made only minor tweaks to a policy set down last March that means citizens can only return home if they win a government-run lottery, or worse, a compassion competition in which an anonymous bureaucrat decides whether they deserve entry to their own country.

Given the arrival of elite tennis players, some with COVID-19, the handling of Australia’s international border is a farce. But that has not budged Morrison from his cold and calculated position.

Australians trying to return home are being forced to peddle their private anxieties about job losses, broken marriages, being thrown out of rented homes, expiring visas and depleted savings.

Why? Because having outsourced his policy to Australians at home, Morrison has shown he will not change the policy without public pressure from the same mob. Only after the arrival of 1200 foreign tennis players and officials did the government announce 20 facilitated flights for Australians over the next few months. But remember, Tennis Australia arranged 17 flights for foreigners over a single week.

You can bet your bottom dollar that if more Australians wanted more of their fellow citizens to have a safe and orderly passage home, Morrison would find a way, using federal quarantine powers, to do what Tennis Australia did for elite tennis players. His reputation for reacting, not leading, puts Australians stranded overseas in a terrible bind. While some have hawked their tragic stories to secure passage home, many others are scared to go public for fear of the backlash.

For expats, even taking to social media is dangerous because an ugly anti-expat sentiment is alive and kicking in this country. Australians are telling expats that they hope they die from COVID. Telling them they have no right to return. Accusing them of being too big for their britches for leaving in the first place. Labelling expats as entitled, spoilt brats who should not get a dime of government help. It is vile stuff, driven by envy, spite, ignorance and fear.

By walking away from his responsibility, Morrison is playing to the insular and smug sentiments of many more Australians, from all walks of life, because the anti-expat sentiments reach well beyond Facebook and Twitter.

Former businessman Andrew Mohl has called for a complete border closure to Australians overseas. Writing in The Australian Financial Review last month, Mohl described them as “biological terrorists”. Though wiser minds at the AFR later edited those words out, the fact Mohl used them at all shows how hideously emotive this issue has become even for self-styled sophisticated people.

Kevin Rudd’s former adviser, Bruce Hawker, also wants our international border closed to Australians. University academics have suggested the same. Former Liberal minister Amanda Vanstone has been spruiking numbers from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade to excuse Morrison’s decision to absent himself from the issue.

It is true DFAT has assisted more than 32,000 Australians to return home, spread across 370 flights, with 11,000 people on 77 government-assisted flights. It is also true 39,000 more Australians have registered as wanting to come home. None of these numbers justifies the continuation of a policy that makes it so damn hard for people to return home.

Morrison could learn about leading from NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian, who last week asked us to put ourselves in the shoes of Australians stranded overseas and imagine how it would feel to be separated from loved ones. “It’s easy for us to be critical of people wanting to come back home, but if it was your loved one, we have to consider compassionate issues,” she said.

Contrary to much of the anti-expat sentiment, most Australians stranded overseas don’t want or need government help. They just want the ability to return home in an orderly way, cognisant of quarantine requirements that apply to all incoming travellers. What is the point of citizenship if the government effectively prohibits tens of thousands of Australians returning? Those antsy about government financial help being given to expats during COVID should remember the billions dished out by the Treasurer to anyone with their hand out at home.

Sadly, though, Morrison’s calculation is crystal clear. He has discovered he was right to count on Australians turning their backs on fellow Australians who have travelled overseas for work, or love, or adventure. Many were more vocal about bringing David Hicks back to Australia, and more recently to get Julian Assange home, than about ordinary citizens caught up in a pandemic raging overseas.

It is hard to imagine John Howard, Tony Abbott or Malcolm Turnbull, or Labor leaders Bob Hawke, Paul Keating, Rudd or Julia Gillard, treating expats as second-class citizens. Their outlook would be more global, more understanding of Australians who head overseas to pursue their dreams. No doubt, it requires hard work to bring stranded Australians home. But leadership is forged in the tough policy arena. Many are waiting for Morrison to lead. A terrific place to start would be to end the outsourcing of policy that treats expats as pariahs.