Making criminals of Aussies trying to get home shames us all

Facilities like Christmas Island that are lying largely dormant could be turned operational quickly.

The social contract nations have with their citizens is fairly simple, really: Pay your taxes, obey the law and, as a quid pro quo, your country will protect you.

There are always limitations to the social contract, depending on everything from the ethos of the nation to its wealth and logistical capabilities. Within that spectrum, Australia should be world-leading.

Yet here we are, in the midst of a global pandemic, and our government is doing very little to get overseas citizens home. In the specific case of India we have now made it illegal for Australian citizens stuck in COVID-ravaged India to return, even if they can find a way around the closing down of flights between the two countries.

I can understand suspending commercial flights between Australia and India. I can reluctantly tolerate an indolent government not arranging alternative flights for its citizens to return to safety. But banning them from making their own way home? That is nothing short of unconscionable. It is a dereliction of duty by the state. A violation of the social contract.

It’s not as though Australians in India were on holidays checking out the Taj Mahal. Most have sought travel exemptions, and been approved for them, to attend funerals, weddings and births.

We are told by our political leaders the decision to ban Australians returning is temporary and based on medical advice. The temporary nature of the criminal ban as an excuse for activating it is a red herring. Right now is when Australian citizens in India need their government the most. Temporarily neglecting them in their time of need is akin to a lifetime of neglect in the usual circumstances.

How much longer are serving politicians going to hide behind a narrowcasting of professional advice? In this instance, hiding behind medical professionals, all the while refusing to release that advice publicly.

Indeed, how much longer do we need to witness the cherry-picking of professional advice they choose to listen to? Health advice in the context of the pandemic can’t be strayed from, apparently. Scientific advice in the context of climate change is taken with a grain of salt. Go figure.

Yet you’d have to be naive to swallow the medical-advice excuse for why the government is doing nothing to help its own citizens. Does advice coming from the Chief Medical Officer say that returning Australian citizens from India carries risks? Of course it does, but that of itself is no good reason to cast them adrift. The medical advice is not demanding we don’t return them, it’s simply pointing out the risks. It is up to political leaders to lead, and in this case showing leadership comes in the form of respecting the rights of citizens to return home.

I bet CMO Paul Kelly would also be of the medical opinion that leaving them in India is medically risky for the thousands of Australians stuck there.

Even if the risk of an outbreak in hotel quarantine from returning Australians is real, that’s in no small part a consequence of government failure to follow the medical advice to open designated quarantine facilities, rather than continue to rely on hotel quarantine with all the risks it involves. They have had more than 12 months. You can see how malleable the notion of “following the medical advice” really is.

Australia has a rich history, on both sides of politics, of helping our citizens abroad when they face trouble. But not during this pandemic, for some reason. Labor has been very good at pointing out the failure but, in the case of the travel ban imposed on India, it largely fell into line behind the government, before cautiously beginning to express concerns with the latest development of making it a criminal offence for citizens caught up in the Indian outbreak even to try to get home.

Punishable by hefty fines and even jail sentences. You really do have to wonder how legally sound such (mis)use of the Biosecurity Act is. The problem, however, is that challenging the provisions in court would take too much time, with a resolution only likely in the aftermath of the temporary laws being lifted anyway.

On Sunday, Foreign Minister Marise Payne was quick to dismiss suggestions the move to ban Australian citizens returning home from India was in any way racist. But the simple fact is we didn’t go this far when COVID was ripping through the US. And leaving Australians behind in India is a far more risky proposition for those citizens’ health than doing so in the US was at the height of the pandemic there.

Whatever the faults of the health system in the US, it is of a developed world standard. In India they have run out of oxygen, doctors, hospital beds and treatment facilities. Australians left behind there, and banned from returning to the safe haven of the country in which they have citizenship, really are at risk.

Our air force has the capacity to make multiple return flights to the subcontinent to collect our citizens. To fulfil the government’s end of the social contract between state and citizens. We also have the capacity, even now, despite failures, to plan beyond hotel quarantine, to set up tent cities outside our major cities to house returning citizens. To activate the military to make it happen. There are also facilities like Christmas Island lying largely dormant that could be turned operational in rapid time.

Claims that these options are too difficult or too risky need to be viewed in the context of the risks citizens are being put through now: banned from returning to their homeland.

The policy is almost too heartless for words. Even for this government.

Peter van Onselen is a professor of politics and public policy at the University of Western Australia and Griffith University.