Stop playing politics, Mr Morrison, and bring families home

In 2001, John Howard declared: “We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come.” Some of us who supported that statement never imagined where it might take us. Maybe we should have. Because many Australians have taken this affirmation of sovereignty too far.

Under Scott Morrison, it has been reconfigured to make it damn hard for Australians to return to their own country during a pandemic. To be sure, closing the international border in March last year made eminent sense. But at some point, the health ­imperative was overtaken with a stronger political one.

There is no point in debating when that happened. Clearly, it happened. The Morrison government has spent $90bn on JobKeeper, billions more on other bailouts to look after Australians at home, closely partnered with vaccine-makers and other bodies to manage COVID. The notion that it cannot find health and logistics experts to devise a better quarantine system to allow more Australian families to be reunited after more than a year apart is utter nonsense.

It is also nonsense for the ­government to point to what the states agreed to in March last year. It is now April 2021. The failure to alter course suggests that the feds don’t want to take responsibility for fear of wearing the blame for any stuff-ups. That is a brute political calculation. It has nothing to do with health advice.

A repatriation flight from India lands in Canberra. Picture: AFP.

We are entitled to wonder whether Morrison and his ministers are counting on the status quo holding until after the next election. It explains the Prime Minister’s refusal to talk about thresholds for reopening our border to our own citizens. This, like setting targets for the nation’s vaccine rollout, not to mention more detailed information about available doses, is being treated as secret government business when, in fact, it is important public information.

Health Minister Greg Hunt said that even if the country were fully vaccinated, it wouldn’t mean we reopen our borders. Why not? Vaccination prevents people from dying of COVID. Hunt’s zero tolerance to the virus makes a mockery of the vaccine rollout and sensible risk management.

His daily backslapping press conferences comparing Australia’s doughnut days with a raging pandemic in some other countries are guaranteed to scare Australians into thinking that any change to policy settings will deliver us into a Brazil-like scenario — or India. Hunt should realise he is encouraging Australians at home into treating fellow citizens overseas as pariahs.

Keeping the borders shut might make Hunt’s job easier, but it does little to help manage a country through a virus that will be with us for years to come.

Sadly, confused messaging sits at the top of the Morrison government. A few weeks ago, the PM made cursory remarks about needing to manage COVID in the same way we manage flu. That makes sense. The nation needs to map a new path. Zero tolerance of cases will keep our international border shut for years. It will lead to more economically disastrous state lockdowns. Instead of delivering that critical message day in day out, there is no follow up. Morrison quickly retreated, telling us “Australians would have to become used to dealing with a thousand cases a week or more” if the international borders open.

This is a common pattern. Within 48 hours of Morrison saying the “sensible next step” will be for states to have home isolation for Australians who are vaccinated and have arrived home from overseas, he said he was in no rush to open Australia’s borders to our own people.

No one expects rushed border openings, just a measured plan, sensible thresholds, some idea of what the government has in mind. The most Morrison has offered is a dismal dichotomy, suggesting one day Australians may be able to travel for essential purposes — for business or a funeral. Shouldn’t reuniting with family — hugging your child, partner, parents — count as important? How is offering solace and love to a sick parent less worthy than a business trip? What explains this empathy deficit?

Forty per cent of Australians don’t have a passport. Just over 50 per cent were neither born overseas, nor do they have a parent who was born overseas. That makes it politically easy for a PM to follow isolationist sentiments.

Jenny and Scott Morrison at St Andrew's Cathedral in Sydney.

Would he have worked harder to reunite separated Australian families if he were separated from his daughters, wife or widowed mother? What about other ministers? Has the country’s closed border separated them from their children, partners, parents?

A reprimand from the UN Human Rights Committee for breaching clause 12(4) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights is unlikely to make a difference. Too many Australians have grown weary of lectures from UN committees that routinely overlook major human abuses in other countries. But the fact that stranded Australians are choosing this avenue points to the level of desperation.

Nor will sentiment change if an Australian court overturns the legality of the Biosecurity Determination made in 2020 that bans Australians from leaving their own country. There are good arguments, to be sure. How, for example, can a blanket ban on Australians leaving Australia be consistent with the Act’s requirement that powers be exercised in a way that is “no more restrictive or intrusive than is required”. Desperation has driven some Australians to use NZ, not our courts, as an escape route to be ­reunited with family.

Only leadership of the highest order will allow for more Australian families to see each other again. The PM could provide it if he joined forces with the NSW Premier who is keen to map out a future path for Australia. But that requires Morrison to move away from his daily political calculation on how to win the next election.