Coronavirus: Daniel Andrews floats radical international arrivals shake-up

The Victorian Premier wants to let fewer stranded Australians into the country, arguing it is the best way to defeat the UK strain.

Arrivals at Melbourne Airport earlier this year. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Ian Currie

Victorian Premier Daniel ­Andrews will float a radical shake-up of Australia’s international arrivals policy at the next national cabinet meeting and propose letting fewer stranded Australians into the country on compassionate grounds only.

Mr Andrews is suggesting a “smaller program” may be the best way to stop the more infectious UK and South African strains of COVID-19 breaking out of hotel quarantine. The proposal comes only weeks after Scott Morrison and the premiers agreed to lift the number of international arrivals per week.

On Friday, Mr Andrews said he was ready to raise a more targeted international arrivals policy at national cabinet that abandons caps on total arrivals and focuses on compassionate cases.

“I think there needs to be a cold, hard discussion, and I’m happy to lead it if I have to, about whether, with this UK strain — and we haven’t even got on to South Africa yet, because it’s just as bad — should we be having the total number of people coming home?” he said. “Or should it be a much ­smaller program that’s based on compassionate grounds?”

The Premier’s new arrivals stance came after he abandoned plans for Victoria to increase its overseas arrivals cap from 1120 people to 1310 on Monday.

Mr Andrews on Friday floated reducing his state’s current hotel quarantine capacity even further until coronavirus vaccines are rolled out nationally.

“Instead of doing 1310 maybe we should be doing hundreds,” he said. “That is all I was saying. I’m not casting aspersions on anyone travelling home or the people who issue visas or any of that. But it’s a different virus.

“Therefore, we should have a mature discussion about just how many people are coming back and the circumstances in which they are coming back.”

Potential arrivals into Australia are currently designated by the federal government as “vulnerable” or otherwise, and Australians in particular need who are stranded overseas have been prioritised for federal government-organised charter flights.

The federal government’s role in hotel quarantine is likely to dominate the next national cabinet meeting — not due until mid-March — after quarantine-sourced breakouts in Victoria, NSW, Queensland and Western Australia. Earlier on Friday, Mr Morrison again ruled out the federal government taking over hotel quarantine. “Hotel quarantine is never 100 per cent failsafe, and to suggest it ever will be, is just not realistic,” Mr Morrison told Melbourne’s 3AW radio.

“The issue is how you deal with it when it occurs and the contact tracing that then puts in place and the testing system. That’s how you get back on top of it.”

Opposition home affairs spokeswoman Kristina Keneally said the current hotel quarantine system run by states was unsustainable and a national scheme was needed, but did not implicitly back the smaller model proposed by Mr Andrews.

“Dan Andrews is only reinforcing what (hotel quarantine review chief) Jane Halton said in her expert review of hotel quarantine when she noted the current system is not sustainable and that a ‘one-size-fits-all model will unnecessarily restrict system ­capacity’,” she said.