Coronavirus: Stranded passengers overseas ‘home by Christmas’

Scott Morrison wants 24,000 Australians stranded overseas to ­return home before Christmas after the national cabinet increased hotel quarantine places.

Scott Morrison in Sydney on Friday. Picture: Joel Carrett

Scott Morrison wants 24,000 Australians stranded overseas to ­return home before Christmas after the national cabinet increased hotel quarantine places by 1600 a week and backed COVID-19 exemptions for citizens returning from New Zealand.

In the first step towards reopening international borders, commercial charter flights will be used to move returning residents across the country and emergency evacuations organised, if required, to support the return of up to 4000 vulnerable Australians.

With Victoria not accepting returning travellers, NSW, Queensland, Western Australia and South Australia have agreed to expand their hotel quarantine capacity with support from Australian ­Defence Force personnel.

National cabinet leaders also recommitted to easing COVID-19 restrictions and border closures, with Queensland, Tasmania and South Australia on Friday flagging a wider reopening of their economies over the next six weeks.

The Prime Minister said the ­national cabinet was moving to ensure the majority of stranded Australians could return home by the end of December, offering support on flights, accommodation and consular help.

“I would hope that those who are looking to come home, that we’d be able to do that within months and I would hope that we can get as many people home, if not all of them by Christmas,” Mr Morrison said.

“We understand that, for the reasons of putting the strain on quarantine capacity, we had to limit the number of places that could come in on flights over the last couple of months.

“But with the improvements and with the success that we’ve had as a country in recent months, we can start opening that up again and we can start helping Australians get home again.”

After requesting lower caps on international arrivals in July, NSW, Queensland and Western Australia have agreed to increase their intakes by 1500 over the next three weeks.

ADF personnel will be ­deployed to Queensland and Western Australia to support the expansion of the states’ hotel quarantine, while the federal government will also use the Howard Springs centre outside Darwin to support evacuation charter flights.

The Morrison government is also working on allowing Australians returning from New Zealand to be exempt from quarantine if they travel from areas with no outbreaks of COVID-19.

Mr Morrison said Australians in New Zealand accounted for about 15 per cent of returned travellers passing through quarantine.

“The whole of the South Island is an area where there is no COVID. And so if we can get to the situation soon where those coming home from New Zealand are able to enter Australia without going into a 14-day quarantine in a hotel, or in the worst-case scenario, only having to do that in their home, then what that does is that frees up places in our hotel quarantine system,” he said.

The national cabinet, which will next meet on October 16 to avoid federal budget preparations, also discussed contact tracing by domestic airlines, nationally co-ordinated contact tracing arrangements and boosting aged-care preparedness.

The contact tracing and quarantine arrangements review, led by Chief Scientist Alan Finkel and Commodore Mark Hill, will guide a national system streamlining and bringing together data to manage future outbreaks.

Mr Morrison said the federal government would lead an initiative to connect all the digital systems used by states and territories “so they can interact with each other”.

Australian Chamber of Commerce tourism chairman John Hart welcomed the increase in international arrival caps and the potential for a travel bubble with New Zealand.

“The bubble would provide up to an additional $3.6bn economic benefit to Australia at a time when dollars are greatly needed and would mean thousands of Australian and New Zealand families would be able to reunite,” Mr Hart said.

With Sydney hotel occupancy at an average 27 per cent and low rates across all capital cities, Mr Hart said the lifting of the international visitor caps would benefit the accommodation sector.

“These pitiful rates are completely unsustainable, as is the fact that only 3500 international visitors arrived in June compared to almost 800,000 in June last year,” he said.

Queensland Deputy Premier Steven Miles — under pressure to ease its hard border closures — on Friday confirmed the state would allow ACT residents to fly north from 1am next Friday. Australian Industry Group chief executive Willox said with virtually no cases in regional Victoria, the border closure with NSW should be ­“removed immediately and entirely and not bit by bit”.

“Closed borders are unnecessary barriers and businesses and the community need to have open borders and greater confidence in the future if they are to resume spending and investment and take recovery to the next level,” Mr Willox said.

The national cabinet also ­endorsed new Australian Health Protection Principal Committee advice, supporting risk-based ­approaches to “ensure boarding students can cross borders and safely return home to their families during school holidays”.