Outrage over moves to block Australian citizens’ return from India

Human rights group, medicos slam the federal government’s India travel ban and jail threats as Treasurer digs in.

One of Australia’s peak human right’s bodies has attacked the federal government’s threat of five years imprisonment for Australians attempting to return from India, saying the penalties are totally disproportionate and unreasonable.

Human Rights Watch Australia said the announcement, the first to specifically threaten jail for those breaching a travel ban, was outrageous and draconian.

“The government should be looking for ways to safely quarantine Australians returning from India, instead of focusing their efforts on prison sentences and harsh punishments,” HRWA director Elaine Pearson said.

“Australians have a right of return to their own country.”

Other prominent health commentators and politicians have also spoken out against the move.

Melbourne GP Vyom Sharma told the ABC the federal government said the system was not only disportionate but also inconsistent with responses to outbreaks in Europe and the US.

“It is incredibly disproportionate to the threat that is posed,” Dr Sharma said. “Of course, different people can have different assessments of risk and my concern is that the government is so sensitive to the risk that they can’t take in this increased load of people coming in.

“What strikes me as also bizarre is that the US, back in January, was returning to us Australians, in much higher quantities of people, who were testing positive and yet there was no talk of plan banning those flights then.

“Our families are quite literally dying in India overseas. Many people are trying to come back.

Top epidemiologist Michael Toole said the decision to ban travel from India was a clear admission by the government of a “lack of confidence in the quarantine system”.

Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young took to Twitter to voice her dissent.

“Jail time and fines for Australians wanting to come home? Seriously? I’m horrified that the Morrison government thinks this is an acceptable response to the humanitarian crisis in India,” she said.

Australia and the US have banned travel from India.

The government says breaches of the travel ban could result in five years’ imprisonment, a $66,000 fine or both.

Earlier today Treasurer Josh Frydenberg defended the decision, saying the surge in cases in India required “drastic actions” for the short-term.

More than 9000 Australians in India are registered as wanting to return, including 650 people registered as vulnerable.

Mr Frydenberg said the federal government’s pause on travel from India was the best way to support the country and protect our own quarantine system.

“The decision that we have taken recently with the Biosecurity Act is because the situation in India is dire,” Mr Frydenberg told the ABC. “More than 200,000 people have died and there are more than 300,000 new cases a day.”

Asked whether the prospect of five years’ imprisonment for Australians coming home was justified, Mr Frydenberg said: “This is a drastic action, but designed to keep Australians safe … and it’s temporary, based on medical advice and will be reviewed on May 15.”

“We are in the middle of a once in a century pandemic.”

“When the national cabinet met, they received the most up to date briefing from our Chief Medical Officers and their advice is that we need to put in place these secure measures … so they are temporary, they will be reviewed on May 15,” he said.

Mr Frydenberg said the upcoming May budget would focus on “supporting health measures that we have seen Australia suppress the virus more successfully than any other country around the world”.

“The Morrison government is firmly focused on helping Australians get to the other side of this pandemic … we have avoided the fate of the UK and the US with those huge job losses, and the big falls in economic growth.

“Here in Australia we have outperformed all major advanced economies.