“Australia's borders were slammed shut in March last year as the coronavirus spread across the world, with the federal government trying to take advantage of the nation's island geography to safeguard it from the worst of the deadly virus. In an interview with News Corp, Mr Morrison said he did not believe Australians had an "appetite" for opening borders if it meant having to deal with more coronavirus outbreaks, lockdowns and social restrictions. "We have to be careful not to exchange that way of life for what everyone else has," he said. In a later post on Facebook, he warned borders would only be opened "when it is safe to do so". [ABC News, 9 May 2021]
“The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has revealed more than 36,000 Australians remain stranded overseas with 4,860 considered vulnerable.…...In September, Prime Minister Scott Morrison promised to get as many people as possible on the list home by Christmas.” [AAP General News Wire, 24 March 2021]
If one reads the aforementioned quotes it would seem that Australia has had an all but impenetrable border since the COVID-19 global pandemic began and, that Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has made it his priority to repatriate his fellow citizens stranded overseas by travel restrictions.
Then as the country braces for what is feared will be a widespread outbreak of a highly infectious SARS-Cov-2 variant*, this appears in the media - revealing that after being thwarted by the National Cabinet in his desire to open the national border at the earliest opportunity Morrison then found an underhand way of doing so.
Note: * the Delta variant of SARS-Cov-2 which causes a highly infectious form of COVID-19 came into this country via an infected overseas traveller.
The Sydney Morning Herald, 1 July 2021, excerpt:
The data obtained by the Herald and The Age is collated from incoming passenger cards and is designed to capture the main reason for the journey for both visitors arriving and residents returning to Australia. The government publishes the data online.
During April, 2226 cards listed the passengers’ reason for arriving as “business, conferences or exhibitions”.
In the same month, 8067 cards listed “visiting family or friends” and “taking a holiday” as the reason for travel. The number was down from its peak last December when there were 10,536 arrivals for those reasons in the lead up to the Christmas holidays.
Employment was given as the reason for 5200 passenger movements while 817 of the April arrivals were for education.
Seventy two people were “attending a conference” in April – marking 533 total trips for conferences made since July last year.
The Herald excluded travellers from New Zealand from the statistics, which accounted for many of the 53,872 arrivals recorded in April…..
It was revealed by the Queensland government that its latest outbreak spawned from an unvaccinated traveller allowed to “come and go repeatedly” between Australia and Indonesia, doing multiple stints in hotel quarantine.
Meanwhile, in South Australia, the ABC reported authorities allowed a family to fly in from Indonesia on a privately funded medevac flight after testing positive for the highly infectious Delta strain.
The data shows 2400 arrivals were citizens of the UK, 1900 were citizens of China, 1400 were citizens of India and 1100 were US citizens.
“Thousands of people are being allowed to travel here who are not stranded Aussies,” Mr Miles said.
“In addition to the non-Australians returning, every month about 40,000 Australian citizens and about 6000 permanent visa holders are allowed to leave the country.
“Many of them seek to return. Rejoining the queue, going back through hotel quarantine, putting our community at risk.”
However, Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews accused the Queensland government of misrepresenting the data.
“The data from the Australian Border Force sets out very clearly that, on average, 80 per cent of returning travellers to Australia are either Australian citizens, permanent residents, or immediate family members,” she said.
She said Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk was “arguing against her own travel to Tokyo” to attend the Olympics.
In response to questions about the infected traveller from Indonesia, Ms Andrews said the government was “going through a process of looking at” exemptions allowing people to make multiple trips despite the border closures.
However, she did not believe it was necessary to lower caps on overseas arrivals.
“It’s one of the issues that we have to deal with now, which is dealing with specific needs of our economy while at the same time making sure that we are able to bring in as many vulnerable people and return as many Australians as we possibly can,” she said.
According to the Australian Border Force, between March 2020 and the end of May this year, 156,507 Australian citizens and permanent residents were granted exemptions to depart Australia, while 84,031 requests were denied.
Over the same period 49,017 foreign nationals were granted an exemption to travel into Australia and 104,507 had their request denied.
“More than half of these approvals were for those proving a critical skill to Australia,” a Border Force spokesperson said.
A request may cover more than one person and individual travellers may have made multiple requests.
ABC News, 1 July 2021:
West Australian Premier Mark McGowan has expressed his anger at the "large group of people" leaving Australia during the pandemic to travel overseas, some of whom he said had been enjoying foreign holidays.
Mr McGowan said 82 people had been on four overseas trips, while eight people had left five times and two people six times.
"In other words, there's a large group of people who have been overseas on multiple occasions. And every time they go overseas, they increase the risk," he said.
The Premier said many of those trips were unnecessary, and allowing people to go overseas was "the biggest [COVID] threat vector" Australia faced.
"People book a conference in Europe, and then have a holiday while they're over there, and then come back and join the queue," Mr McGowan said.
"It's just not right. We need to crack down on this."
He said it was time to limit the number of people allowed to travel internationally.
"I actually think there is a strong argument that before anyone can go overseas, they should be vaccinated, and then we should actually crack down hugely on the number of people allowed to go overseas."
This is nuts!!! I must find a conference, I guess. ::sigh::#auspol #COVID19Aus #Quarantine
— 🍩🍩CreatetheWorldYouWant🍩🍩 (@JL_Whitaker) July 1, 2021
Figures from just WA. McGowan reported today. pic.twitter.com/NZ019AU4XD
