Coronavirus: No overseas travel this year, says health chief

Australia’s chief health bureaucrat has warned the country’s international borders are unlikely to reopen until at least 2022.

Professor Brendan Murphy, Secretary of the Department of Health, has predicted international travel won’t resume until 2022. Picture: Gary Ramage

Australia’s chief health bureaucrat has warned the country’s international borders are unlikely to reopen until at least 2022, to the dismay of many in the embattled travel industry.

Department of Health secretary Brendan Murphy offered the grim prediction on Monday, suggesting the federal government would need to see the impact of widespread vaccinations before allowing international travel to resume.

“I think we will go most of this year with still substantial border restrictions,” the former chief medical officer said.

“Even if we have a lot of the population vaccinated, we don’t know whether that will prevent transmission of the virus, and it’s likely that quarantine will continue for some time.”

Flight Centre founder Graham Turner said Professor Murphy’s comments were “quite a worry if he knows what he’s talking about — my feeling is it’s a case of underpromising so they can overdeliver if Australia gets its act together and vaccinates the way they say they will”.

“In Canberra, they’re saying publicly they expect to have the majority of the population vaccinated by October, but privately the view is vaccinations should be finished by July.”

Australian Federation of Travel Agents chief executive Darren Rudd is also convinced Professor Murphy was offering an ultraconservative view to manage people’s expectations.

He said the pace at which a vaccine had been produced and was being rolled out in countries such as Britain and Israel was reason to believe international travel would resume well before 2022.

“I would optimistically think the pace at which things are moving, that people will start firming up bookings and we’ll see products and inventory being released, like Qantas did recently, well before (2022),” Mr Rudd said.

“We are definitely very eager for travel to commence so that we can maintain the industry, its foundations and the jobs in it. We’re losing jobs quite quickly out of this industry.”

Qantas recently resumed selling seats on international flights, in a sign the carrier was confident borders would reopen in the second half of the year.

Chief executive Alan Joyce said he had the flexibility to “manage the schedule” should that not occur, but he was hopeful the global vaccination rollout would lead to overseas flights taking off.

“It may be in stages, or maybe the countries that are more advanced start rolling it out, (which is) where Australia is as well,” said Mr Joyce, who has been forced to cut 8500 employees.

“We have confidence that will happen at least sometime in 2021, and hopefully in the middle of 2021 — that’s still our hope.”

Less optimistic was Australian Tourism Industry Council executive director Simon Westaway, who said Professor Murphy’s remarks were a “reality check” at a time when many countries were still struggling to get on top of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The reality of the situation is that the hard international border is going to be with us for some time, and I think the travel industry has been accepting of that,” Mr Westaway said.

“We’re not going anywhere in terms of the international restrictions. But it absolutely reaffirms why we need consistency with state borders, and to keep them open. There are too many jobs at stake to continue with the current border openings and closings.”

Mr Rudd also said Australia was lagging behind countries such as New Zealand that were developing a domestic cruise industry to meet the demand for travel.

“The benefit of (having a) cruise bubble is that it provides ­inventory for travel agents to sell,” Mr Rudd said.

“Australia is lagging in its adoption and modification of processes for COVID-safe cruising, and that has to be looked at.”