Premiers urged to gamble on Covid-19

State governments will have to give the green light to allow vaccinated Australians to travel abroad and return using home quarantine.

Scott Morrison visits the Yarra Fertilizer plant in Burrup on April 16 near Karratha. Picture: Getty Images

State governments will have to give the green light to allow vaccinated Australians to travel abroad and return using home quarantine, as the business community urges premiers to “radically adjust their risk appetite” towards COVID-19.

The Prime Minister said the “sensible next step” for international travel was for Australians who had received both vaccine doses to be able to go overseas for work, medical or compassionate reasons, and re-enter the country with “some form of home quarantine”.

While the federal government is responsible for the international border, Mr Morrison said it was imperative the states were involved “because ultimately they would have to sign off on those arrangements because they look after public health”.

The government has also appointed Navy Commodore Eric Young as its logistics chief for the vaccine roll-out to oversee supply and distribution, with Mr Morrison due to sketch out more details about the role at Monday’s national cabinet meeting. 

Employers on Friday backed Mr Morrison’s travel plan, which he said could result in 1000 or more cases of coronavirus in Australia per week once the international border was reopened.

Australian Industry Group chief executive Innes Willox said allowing returning vaccinated travellers to quarantine at home was a sensible “transition measure” to broader travel, and the country had to learn to deal with COVID-19 cases.

“Practically no one will want to travel overseas if they are forced into hotel quarantine on return,” he said.

“For Australia to reopen, state and territory leaders need to radically adjust their risk appetite to allow vaccinated travellers to arrive and self-quarantine. The states and territories need to accept that a no-tolerance-of-community-transmission approach is not sustainable in either the short or the long-term.

“Once the elderly and vulnerable and frontline workers are all protected, and the community vaccination program is well progressed, there is no reason why we should not start to open up to more normal international travel.”

Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry acting chief executive Jenny Lambert was hopeful that as more was known about the risk of vaccinated travellers transmitting the virus, the home-quarantine period could be reduced or eliminated.

She called for clarity on what constituted an “important purpose” to travel overseas under Mr Morrison’s proposal.

“From a business perspective, it needs to include tourism operators and those developing and consolidating trade relationships. People meeting the criteria to travel for important reasons would also need to have access to vaccinations earlier,” she said.

“We have long advocated for a prioritisation of certain groups once the most vulnerable cohorts are vaccinated.”

Chief medical officer Paul Kelly could not say if vaccinated Australians would be able to go overseas this year.

He and his state counterparts are preparing advice for national cabinet on the international border reopening, expected to be delivered in May, that will consider how easily the virus can be transmitted from someone who has been immunised, different variants of the disease and what it will mean when Australia’s most vulnerable have received the jabs.

“We are currently very vulnerable because essentially we’re completely open,” he said.