Hotel quarantine: PM has abandoned citizens stuck overseas

Scott Morrison’s ‘flawed system leaves tens of thousands of honest Australians stranded overseas wondering what’s the point of Australian citizenship’. Picture: Getty Images

The Prime Minister says that a vaccine is “not a silver bullet”. He warns that “once the vaccines start, that doesn’t mean you can jump on a plane to Bali the next day. It doesn’t mean the masks disappear … or the quarantine ­arrangements for returning to Australia will end.”

It is a telling insight that Scott Morrison thinks the sum total of Australians’ frustrations with border closures is that we cannot jump on a plane to Bali. Given that families have been forcibly separated for almost a year, with no end in sight, it is disheartening that he has shown no desire to ­devise a better system to bring Australians home.

A fortnight ago, Morrison government ministers and other MPs crowed about ­migrants becoming Australian citizens on Australia Day. Those same ministers and MPs will have received dozens of emails from Australians stranded overseas by a defective system that favours B-grade celebrities over our own citizens.

Take Rita Ora. Rita who? She’s a pop star with a tawdry history of breaching public health orders in the UK, who arrived in Australia last week, taking up a scarce hotel quarantine spot at the cost of an Australian citizen. Not surprisingly, one Australian took to Twitter to highlight his 11 cancelled flights home thanks to Australia’s “woeful” quarantine capacity.

Woeful indeed. Morrison handballed 99 per cent of the ­operational risk for quarantine, a federal responsibility under the constitution, to states that then capped incoming arrivals to small numbers to reduce their risk. For assuming the greatest responsibility, taking in about 3000 returning Australians a week, NSW is routinely punished by spooked and incompetent premiers in other states closing their borders on the whiff of a COVID case.

Caps are only part of the problem. They don’t explain a system that is arbitrary and lacks transparency. If you are rich, famous or in politics, come on in. Alternatively, try to game the system by inflating a sob story to secure certain entry on compassionate or health reasons.

Morrison’s flawed system leaves tens of thousands of honest Australians stranded overseas wondering what’s the point of Australian citizenship.

Like many others, one man contacted me last week. Jason Power doesn’t want sympathy, only that Australians at home may see a system that lacks fairness, transparency and certainty. He went to London five years ago with his wife, Sarah, and three young daughters. While he was studying for a postgraduate degree, the Australian firm he worked for went bust. He is now CEO of a power works company in Oxford. They didn’t return home last March as they had built a life, two careers, kids in school, a lease to honour, and ­tenants in their house in Sydney who are ­entitled to a six-month notice ­period. They hunkered down.

Sarah’s mother, who has Parkinson’s disease, took a turn for the worse in September. For the past five months, they have watched the life drain out of her. Wanting to care for her, last October they set in motion their return home, giving notice to their Sydney tenants, advising the girls’ school in London, enrolling them in a Sydney school, giving notice to their London landlord and buying five seats with Qatar to travel home on February 2.

A week before their scheduled departure, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade offered them a repatriation flight, which Jason and Sarah declined. They had secured commercial flights. “We felt guilty it might prevent another family from returning home,” Jason wrote in the email.

Their kids finished at school. Sarah left her part-time job. Their possessions were packed up. And new tenants moved part of their belongings into their garage.

Then, on January 27, Qatar informed them that “in compliance with the passenger capacity regulations of the government of Australia your booking is cancelled”.

The airlines can cancel seats at the last minute and offer first class or business class seats to those who can afford it. The system set up by the Prime Minister and state leaders encourages this predatory behaviour.

“We are now stuck in London, with no place to live as of next Tuesday, our children have no school to attend, my wife has no job, our belongings are at the logistics company about to be sent to Sydney, our family are dying in front of our eyes,” Jason wrote in an email to his local member and NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian.

Jason told me they missed out on repatriation flights last Thursday when he didn’t see DFAT’s 9.19am email until 9.32am. Even business class flights that would cost them $45,000 were snapped up. Qatar has now told Jason they have seats on a February 16 flight home. But with no promises, a wicked, debilitating cycle of uncertainty and anxiety restarts.

Given that a vaccine is no silver bullet, the glaring policy question is how to improve this faulty and cruel system. Most Australians don’t expect flights home tomorrow, or next week. Most are not backpackers or holiday makers with belongings in a suitcase. They must contend with life’s basic logistics: accommodation, employment, kids’ education and finding money for airline seats. Aren’t Australians entitled to a process with greater certainty and transparency? Shouldn’t all Australians expect a system that doesn’t favour wealthy people and B-grade pop stars?

In a second email to the NSW Premier, copied to DFAT, Jason suggested a key change to offer Australians greater certainty. Instead of airlines bumping passengers at will to suit their comm­ercial purposes, DFAT should co-ordinate and control an online registration for hotel quarantine in line with national cabinet decisions. This would provide greater certainty and transparency.

Airlines can advertise flight schedules, sell tickets in various travel classes and require that all passengers have a confirmed hotel quarantine booking before boarding a plane, just as airlines require a negative COVID-19 test result before flying.

This, says Jason, will shift the responsibility and control to Australian citizens and DFAT, rather than foreign-owned airlines. Importantly, it will prevent predatory behaviour.

Alas, there is a preliminary question. Amid the daily back-slapping and self-congratulations from the Prime Minister and Health Minister about their handling of COVID-19, are these men, who have the power to make the system fairer, willing to listen?