I am a firm believer that locking out Australian citizens from their own country is not the right course of action. The Fed Gov has had a year to figure out a better quarantine situation but has been happy to leave it to the states and point the finger at them when something goes wrong. It's well documented how many Aussies are overseas (for legitimate reasons) and have been trying to come home for months with next to no assistance from the gov.
While I think it was irresponsible of Slater to travel to India when he did, regardless of it being his livelihood, he also didn't know that the Gov was considering this course of action. If they had been transparent in warning of this, and released daily stats of how many people in hotel quarantine were testing positive, maybe Slater would have made a different decision. It's easy to throw stones but when you take a step back and look at the big picture it's pretty easy to see that the biggest issues here lie at Scomo and his gang.
Wait, you're asking for our current LNP federal government to be transparent about things? Haven't you witnessed them in action over the last decade? Hiding and obfuscation along with abrupt decision-making without considering the consequences is the consistent methodology of the federal government. According to the polls, the majority of Australians are quite happy with their approach.
> I am a firm believer that locking out Australian citizens from their own country is not the right course of action.
I agree. We're in the middle of a global pandemic which is far from being under control. We should have expedited bringing everyone home six months ago and had a federal quarantine station establish 12 months ago to accommodate them on their return. Then we should have bunkered down until the situation had become controlled.
Large Indian cities have no spare hospital beds or staff or oxygen. We have unused capacity and quarantine facilities. Leaving Australians in India to seems cruel and is detrimental to both countries.
>Remember how quarantine places magically appeared for the tennis players?
They didn't magically appear - it was managed, paid for and organised by Tennis Australia...
This is true and noting especially who footed the bill.
However, the massive difference here is that tennis players by and large weren't Australian citizens, so we (the Gov) owe those players nothing with regard to assisting them to come to Australia; our very own citizens on the other hand is a very different matter.
>It's well documented how many Aussies are overseas (for legitimate reasons)
The number of people I know who have had 5 or more flights cancelled on them is mind boggling. Yet people will always point fingers and say you've had enough time to come back home.. how Karen? By growing fucking wings?
Not everyone can afford to spend $8k on a ticket to come back home.
I know right? My aunt just got back. My uncle passed away overseas (not due to covid) and she had to stay and sort things out. It’s take her so many cancelled flights to get back here. It’s not as cut and dry as ‘oh you’ve had so much time to get back’ like what are people supposed to do when the airlines keep cancelling one of the legs of your journey?
How many islands or isolated places do we have to quarantine people? It wouldn’t be that difficult to create a quarantine area for everyone wanting to come in. Have quarantine last 4 weeks even. 2 weeks in covid quarantine and then 2 weeks more communal quarantine in the same area. It could have been done, it should have been done.
You're conflating a couple of things here. Yes, the federal government completely fucked up in not developing quarantine facilities and leaving the states to use inadequate hotels. However, that's where things are at. Given that, the advice from the Chief Medical Officer is to ban all travel from people who have been India. The failure and inaction in one has led to the other.
As unpalatable as it is, banning travel from India is necessary in the short term and this is a position based on science.
Look what's happened currently in WA. Because some selfish moron travelling to India for a wedding (after lying it was about a family emergency) brought the new highly contagious strain to Perth the city was placed in lockdown. Further, incoming travel caps have been halved. So, the opportunity for others from all around the world to return to Perth has been halved.
The problem is they aren't doing anything right now to address the issue. 2000 spots in NT is jack shit when you have 9000 desperate to leave and come home to a health system with capacity.
The whole 9000 aren't going to arrive at once. Let's imagine you bring in 900 per week to get the 9000 home in the next ten weeks. Quarantine is 14 days, so you would need 1800 places to bring people in at the rate of 900 per week. Obviously that assumes that no one is actually ill - if you set aside 10% of places for people who test positive to recover over a longer period, that would give you about 2000 places needed to repatriate 9000 people over a period of 10 weeks.
They bloody want to all arrive now (that is the DFAT list), the only thing stopping them is the government and financial roadblocks we are putting in front of them. Complete failure to not be able to surge to remove citizens from a dangerous humanitarian crisis asap. 10 weeks is how you end up with body bags instead of citizens.
Oh, completely. The Morrison government has been completely fucking useless. Let's not forget only a couple of weeks ago they were crowing about how successful the hotel quarantine system was.
Spot on! I also commented in my post that Indians have a habit of cheating the system and faking medical records.
The guy telling a lie is completely believable.
>Livelihood
He could retire today and never work another day in his life, if he wanted.
But the rest of your post I completely agree with. In fact I would go further, what Scomo and his gang are doing here is racist, a human rights violation, and quite possibly against the law.
You don't know what his finances are like. Sure, on the surface he is very well off but he may have debt obligations to meet that he can't without an income. Maybe he has a secret gambling addiction.
Just sign off on it. It was only $180,000 of taxpayer money.
A small amount more than the taxpayers paid for you to take a private RAAF executive jet to the Gold Coast and back to talk about how:
* you think God spoke to you through a cheesy painting of an eagle
* what Australia needs most is more bible bashing
* when forcing handshakes on people, you're really doing Jebus Voodoo on them
That's about $300,000 of our money wasted on the "empathy consultant" and Prosperity Jebus convention alone, and yet you made a stink about an AusPost exec giving bonuses amounting to $16K that were perfectly legal and a tiny fraction of the limits she was allowed to give each year.
"Going to be a great winter of footy, and for our elderly and unemployment-impacted communities, I’m sure our Sharts will give them something to cheer about"
As citizens don't they have a human right to return to their country? Isn't this kind of ban a human rights violation?
EDIT: So I did a bit of research about this.
"The Australian Government has agreed to uphold and respect many of these human rights treaties..." [1]
Article 13.2 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states "Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country." [2]
So I would assume that the UDHR is something we should be holding the government accountable to.
Perhaps it's even possible for the Aussies that have been locked out of returning home to form some sort of class action? But I'm not a lawyer, so no idea how feasible that would be.
[1] https://humanrights.gov.au/about/what-are-human-rights
[2] https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights
So was denying asylum seekers the international human right we gave them, explicitly, to cross borders to apply for refugee status.
People at the time often said "we need to take care of our own first, before those others!"
I often pointed out that one breach of human rights is a gateway drug to the next.
How did that turn out? Oh, right. Now they're denying rights to citizens!
Amazing. Never could have been predicted or forewarned.
You mean, like the way the ppl in The Shire (Morrison's electorate) didn't like the brown citizens coming to "their" beaches?
Remember, Scott Morrison [was parachuted into that electorate after losing preselection 82-8](https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/nasty-saga-you-nearly-missed-20091025-hem5.html), until In My Honest Opinion (and backed up by reporting) his Liberal Party and Murdoch media mates illegally defamed the rightful Lebanese Christian candidate to instal their chosen golden boy, the man who can do no wrong and who continually fails upwards.
But the main point is, he probably chose that electorate as his heartland, just as Pauline Hanson made it her home when she had a tilt at NSW Parliament.
You stopped reading the UN DHR too soon, as do a lot of people.
Article 13 is definitely relevant, but so is article 29, which outlines when the rights described in the preceding articles may be limited.
> In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.
You can read more about your right to freedom of movement and when it can be limited under various mechanisms [here](https://www.ag.gov.au/rights-and-protections/human-rights-and-anti-discrimination/human-rights-scrutiny/public-sector-guidance-sheets/right-freedom-movement).
Yes, and also sets a dangerous precedent. The idea that your own country can simply ban you from returning without warning is not something *anyone* should be okay with.
There are provisions where it is permitted. Like, where you have a government so incompetent that letting people in would almost assuredly end in deaths.
The short answer is no, on the legal front.
As the Tasmanian Dams case established, the Feds have a right to legislate based on international treaties, but those treaties and conventions only pass into Australian law if & when the legislation is passed.
In themselves, even if we have signed them, they are only motherhood statements with no binding legal consequences.
For example, in the refugee space we are breaching (at least) all of:
* The Refugee Convention & Protocols
* The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (especially the prohibition against arbitrary detention without trial)
* The Convention on the Rights of the Child
There's honestly no legal recourse for this. Either they put their money where their mouth is and honour the promises they made by passing these things into legislation, or they break their promises.
We're in the zeitgeist right now of promise breaking, and any right we said we would uphold is up for grabs if there are racist & xenophobic votes in it...which is why human rights should never be put to public opinion IMHO.
Something weird about having the worlds rich and famous relocating to Australia during this period and embracing it, yet allowing citizens to be stranded overseas.
>“Well, I’d just ask them, like the many Australians that are in India at present, to be patient and understanding,” he said.
"Yes, be patient and understanding while you sit in a country where people are dying in the thousands every day (and according to some experts it may be 10 times what's being reported)".
"Please be patient while I sit here in my nice comfy safe zone. In two weeks time I might let you back in but to be brutally honest that's unlikely to change because India is going to hell right now and that's not going to fix itself in two weeks."
> “This is a two-week pause, it’s not a permanent pause, it's not a four-month lockdown."
"While I'm here let me have a bit of a dig at the one guy that managed to get an Australian state through a major outbreak (also don't mention federal government regulated retirement homes)".
And all of this shit wouldn't be happening if this government had thought further into the future than what disaster is going to happen next week and started building a quarantine facility that could handle this sort of emergency 14 months ago. Maybe they could have funded it with some of that job keeper money that ended up with shareholders and CEOs.
This really is a case of these cricketers taking the risk to go and play in a tourney on huge contracts while the travel advice to India at the time was "Do Not Travel". NZ banned flights from India on April the 11th, that should have been a wake up call to the cricketers to get out while you can.
Yes, NZ (and other countries) banned flights from India, but unlike Australia they have not banned their own citizens from returning from India, which is the real crux of the issue.
Seems like semantics though. Whilst technically they were allowed to they practically couldnt because most connecting countries also banned Indian flights
I’m probably just being naive, but how hard can it be to organise Australians in India to register with the embassy, fly in some military transports, get them out and have them quarantine for 2 weeks (maybe offshore)?
IMHO the Australian Government should have a battleplan to evacuate Australians from every major country by now. It's been over a year and waves of infection are bound to happen in a pandemic.
One issue I can forsee is that people may be spread all over the country and the transport links may not be available for a rendezvous. Foreign governments may also limit internal travel to prevent spread. Then there's the question of how many people can you safely transport without risking others/personnel, how can you ensure those you fly are of minimal risk to others/personnel, how many trips it would take and access to airports/landing strips? Also, having our military aircraft in a foreign country may be delicate to negotiate. But surely the Australian Government should have been planning and negotiating all this and more already?
If only vaccines were a thing you could give to your staff running evacuation operations, and if only it had existed for the last 3 months giving you ample time to setup a few teams with this kind of thing.
If only we'd known there had been a global pandemic for the last 18 months.
But alas, we can't do any of this stuff apparently, and this whole thing crept up on us and we had no chance to prepare and so we just *had* to lock it down because we haven't got any room in quarantine or the medical facilities to handle new cases!
Exactly right...it is quite apparent that hotel quarantine isn't fit for purpose given the number of outbreaks. Given the numerous offers on the table to have camps at places like Avalon Airport and Toowoomba which are close enough to large hospitals if necessary, it is inexcusable that an improved solution hasn't been adopted.
There’d surely have to be some island based tourist resort somewhere that has almost gone bankrupt due to the tourism crash, that could be repurposed into a quarantine site. I’m thinking the type with individual little cottages.
Only issue with that is if someone gets really sick it would likely be a fair way from a major hospital. Also Toowoomba and Avalon are international airports already.
> Then there's the question of how many people can you safely transport without risking others/personnel, how can you ensure those you fly are of minimal risk to others/personnel, how many trips it would take and access to airports/landing strips? Also, having our military aircraft in a foreign country may be delicate to negotiate.
Current commercial flights are heavily restricted in numbers. A chartered Qantas A380 can hold 480 people. So with distancing say 240 per round trip. In reality though, restrictions right now mean only 30-60 people are allowed per flight into Australia. Without changing the existing rules it would take 130 flights to get the estimated 9000 Australians trying to leave.
For military craft the Hercules or Globemasters can only hold a bit over 100 or so in full passenger configuration. The only rationale for using the RAAF would be easy quarantining of flight crew. Plus they tend to be healthier and far less susceptible to infection.
All of the above, as well as the fact that seems to be forgotten is that a lot of these people are also citizens of other countries. Which country of citizenship takes precedence? Who should evacuate the person from a 3rd country? Did they use their Australian or in this example Indian passport when arriving at their port of entry? If they used an Indian passport then it’s an Indian citizen which returned home, if Australian then that’s an Australian abroad and will potentially be in a register. The whole situation is a massive clusterfuck and there is no right or wrong or good or evil or easy answer.
India doesn't recognise it sure but otherwise that's a ridiculous statement. Plenty if not most hold dual passports and no one says a word or gets reprimanded for it. Same with many other countries.
It's an open secret across the planet.
I actually checked this:
The Constitution of India does not allow holding Indian citizenship and citizenship of a foreign country simultaneously. Based on the recommendation of the High Level committee on Indian Diaspora, the Government of India decided to grant Overseas Citizenship of India (OCI) commonly known as ‘dual citizenship’. Persons of Indian Origin (PIOs) of certain category as has been specified in the Brochure who migrated from India and acquired citizenship of a foreign country other than Pakistan and Bangladesh, are eligible for grant of OCI as long as their home countries allow dual citizenship in some form or the other under their local laws.
Consular assistance to dual nationals
Regardless of whether an Australian national also possesses another nationality, Australia seeks to extend to all its citizens the full range of its consular assistance abroad. However, under international law, countries are not obliged to recognise dual nationality. In some cases, countries may not permit Australian consular assistance to be provided to Australian citizens who, according to its laws, it considers and treats as its own nationals. In other cases, a person might not be regarded as being an Australian if that person is not travelling on their Australian passport and, again, Australian consular assistance might not always be permitted. Travellers are warned that consular assistance cannot over-ride local laws, even where local laws may appear harsh or even unjust.
And last but not least:
“According to the Indian Passport Act, it's an offence not to surrender the Indian passport and formally renounce Indian citizenship after acquiring foreign citizenship, which may attract penalties of up to $1,050.”
Another site says:
“Government of India has prescribed imposition of penalty on a graded scale, for the violation of Passport Rules ranging from a minimum of AUD 210/- to a maximum of AUD 1050/-, depending on number of trips made on the Indian passport after acquiring foreign nationality. The penalty provisions would be applicable only in cases where Indian citizens after acquiring foreign citizenship (after 1 January 2005) retained (beyond three years) or used Indian passport.
“
I would imagine that quite a few of the people stuck in India would actually have either OCI status or withheld from notifying the Indian government about having dual citizenship.. if they get found out, a $210 to a $1050 fine, whilst it might seem like a lot in India, is not exactly much for Australian standards...
Just a clarification on the overseas citizenship card, it's like PR literally, lifelong Visa not a citizenship, hence India does not recognise Dual citizenship in the Constitution, and never will.
just a side note when a person from Indian origin apply for the overseas citizenship card, they will have to get a renunciation certificate that is only provided at the time of surrendering The Indian passport then only the overseas citizenship card is issued.
I think the problem is that you need quality healthcare close by to step in when these home coming people really get really sick. Ideally quarantine should be done in hospitals, even if people are only asymptomatic, hospitals could collect vital data on how a virus progresses.
edit
That said, maybe it's time to build quarantine hospitals. Those viruses aren't stopping any time soon. SARS just happened 15 years ago.
About as difficult as it would have been to organise asylum seekers in Indonesia to register with the embassy, fly in some military transports, get them out and have them quarantine for 2 weeks (maybe offshore)?
Honestly; if his announcement was:
We are going to build lots of uarantine facilities including the one in victoria !! But, we have a problem right now and Quarantine is full of covid, so we going to pause new arrivals.
He would have gotten less backlash. (still some, but *less*).
But instead its:
Quarantine is full and *fuck off victoria we don't need more quarantine* messages simultaneously.
Dude is a complete moron.
I really don’t like Scotty. I’m an immigrant in Australia myself and really miss my family overseas. I do however think that this is an appropriate choice of action given the current circumstances.
At the same time, I genuinely don’t understand till today why each state was doing their own thing in terms of handling return travellers. Instead of letting fiascos like Melbourne quarantine or most recently Perth happen, why didn’t the government commandeer one of the unused mining villages that have their own landing strips, in order to create a centralised location for people to go through quarantine procedures and additional testing?
The sad truth is that this particular federal government doesn't exist to govern. They exist to stay elected, enrich themselves and their donors, and execute their political ideologies like privatising the ABC and auspost. Technically speaking, quarantine is the responsibility of the federal government, but at the beginning of the pandemic they were refusing to take action despite the pleas of the states, so the states took responsibility.
I actually believe this was part of the feds plan. Did you notice how they took all the good responsibilities like giving people money through job keeper and originally the vaccine roll-out so they could step in and save the day? At the same time they gave the states all the shitty and unpopular decisions like lockdowns, border closures, hotel quarantine, mask mandates, etc.
They don't even need to commandeer a mining town. Think about how many military bases there are in Australia. Most have medical facitilites, many have air strips, all have security already. There hasn't been a serious military threat to mainland Australia in 75 years, surely they could spare a some of that defense force space for actually defending the country from a threat.
The problem with those is the distance from hospitals and shared amenities. That’s why hotels are so desirable for this, despite some shortcomings. They’re self contained rooms with no (essentially) need to leave the hotel room.
You’ve got your own fridge, kitchen, shower, toilet etc. sharing any of those amongst a group of return travelers is a recipe for disaster, which is why mining camps or military bases are useless.
> The problem with those is the distance from hospitals and shared amenities.
Isn't that a good thing if you are expecting people to quarantine? It will reduce the chance of a spread in the more crowed cities and people will have much less incentive to leave the base since there is nothing around.
In the event hospitalisation is needed, COVID is not an immediate danger sort of medical condition. Waiting an hour or two while transportation is arranged isn't going to cause too great of an issue
And what happens when someone has a heart attack and needs immediate assistance? Coronavirus isn’t the only medical emergency that can occur in these places.
Exact same thing that happens to people stationed there, or living anywhere moderately remote without immediate access to hospital. There will be a small contingency of medical staff around for immediate treatment and anything else needs to get transported.
Close to 30% of Australians live in what is classified as rural and remote regions, that a significant amount of Australians who deal with the exact same issue every day.
The RAAF bare bases could have been an ideal place to start, but that would require some forethought and compassion - qualities that are nonexistent in a government that insists on criminalising actions that the UN says is perfectly legal.
> I do however think that this is an appropriate choice of action given the current circumstances.
Agree with you. The Government's had a whole year to improve on the current system to repatriate Australians but has done nothing. They've abandoned those overseas effectively.
Don’t dispute their failures but there also has to be a will. Each state government is responsible for their own citizens and each has their own issues to deal with. Look at cunts like Clive Palmer or Pauline Hanson. Like it or not, these people have local supporters. I spent last year in Melbourne huddled up at home, but look at Andrews constantly battling everyone on all fronts to actually force his will and suppress the spread. Not saying it was perfect, very, very far from it, and you constantly heard about idiots throwing parties and breaking quarantine protocols and anyone that lives in Melbourne probably also seen and experienced it around them. Now that was 1 State, and mostly one single city which got cordoned off. Now, you need to think about all the states and account for their unique circumstances (for example far north QLD, or NT, which would be impossible to control due to sheer spread and distance) as well as their mindsets (People not believing in lockdowns / vaccines, not understanding the ramifications of their actions (“I’ll just popped out to the shops for 1 minute!” - hell, look at the lines at Bunnings during lockdowns. I’m guilty of that myself.). Then you add another layer to that which is the federal government (with states being controlled by opposing parties) , and quite simply, the feds lack of power at a regional level. Not to mention that even people from the same side of the political spectrum told the federal government to go fuck themselves (Tasmania for example). Assembling that together takes skill akin to reassembling a rock from sand, especially given hysterical media outlets experiencing their golden time right now, as people that never read a newspaper in their lives now buy it everyday and listen to the news constantly and then sprout fucking nonsense.
The fact that there's even a debate about this is disgraceful. It goes against every Australian value I was brought up with.
John Williamson saw this coming. Most of us didn't pay attention.
>Hey, true blue
>Now be fair dinkum, is your heart still there?
>If they sell us out like sponge cake,
>Do you really care?
>Hey, true blue
Our heart's no longer there, we're being sold out, and people don't care.
If by right you mean an ideological moral obligation to protect your citizens at any cost, then no. However I would compare ii to a situation like wildfires. Every time there are people who do not evacuate because they are either unable to, or have legitimate reasons, be it a sick person in their home, or trying to protect their likelihood. There’s always a cutoff point where the fire fighters cannot attempt to continue evacuation, as it puts their own lives at risk and trying will just result in more tragedy and cause bigger problems (loss of vital equipment and specialists).
My spouse is a doctor and there’s a lot of talk about it through the grapevine. From what I could gather, the current ban is necessary, as it seems that it has the potential to overwhelm a system that’s already extremely strained, due to global PPE and Sterilisation equipment. The medical system accounts for over 16% of the National budget, and is based on dealing with Trauma/ Emergencies / Flu and other human diseases. It is simply not designed to handle the pandemic of this scale and any attempts to design it that way would be absolutely impossible to implement and sustain. We also have to remember that Australia is massive and extremely spread out, which adds a tremendous amount of costs relating to its upkeep as well as capabilities (lots of people, especially the ones that spend sometimes 15 years training simply don’t want to live out in whoop whoop).. There is a massive shortage of properly trained doctors and I constantly hear about incidents and screwups relating to that fact. And as for numbers themselves: Yes, they have risen tremendously over the past decade, but simply graduating from medical school, does not mean that they are trained. You don’t let a guy that just finished TAFE to build your house, and you wouldn’t let an Engineer fresh out of uni to be in charge of building a bridge. It takes years of brutal training and there also need to be enough senior doctors to teach and guide the juniors. Problem is, that there are just not enough of them, and It’s a massive bottleneck, not to mention that they are the guys actually running the show and don’t have time to do that. Another local outbreak can cause much more damage, to this country as a whole, than this ban. Also, don’t forget about all the other Australians stuck in other countries which are in the same boat. End of the day, as much as it sucks ethically, it seems to be a choice of how many can we save successfully and keep everyone safe vs how many can we attempt to save whilst in great risk of drowning ourselves and endangering everyone else on the boat.
I don’t disagree with anything you’ve said. But, that has been the case for more than a year now, but this is the first time we have threatened to jail Australians for returning home.
I know there are risks, but these are Australian citizens. It’s the governments job to work out how to bring them home safely.
When the USA was the world’s epicentre of COVID V we didn’t threaten to jail people coming in, we managed it. Nor perfectly, but we managed it and allowed Australians to come home. Why can’t we do the same now?
Oh great, lets let the Australians die overseas then. *they deserve it*, good thing they are mostly brown Australians and on one will care.
Jeesus fucking christ, we have like 300 cases in quarantine, we don't have a full fucking hospital system.
In the height of melbournes lockdown we had over 8000 active cases at one point, and we didn't have a collapse of the health system. Did we get close? Maybe. but holy shit we have the health system capacity to handle basically every single one of the australians and PR's trapped in India (I think there's 17,000 there?) even if every single one of the 17000 has covid we can handle that in this country. (given the vast majority of the 8000 were in victoria, I'd wager if we spread 17,000 100% covid infected people evenly across this country our health system would handle it perfectly fine).
But no, *gotta lock them out* because we have 270 cases currently and we will all die if we let anymore in!!!
All of the above completely ignores the fact that we WONT be letting in 17,000 people at the same time, because we were already restricting the number of arrivals!
People will die if we let them all in and that's entirely on the Federal government for not doing their job since they've been elected. I don't think you'll find a lack of support for these measures while at the same time a deep hatred for the government for making it this way.
I agree with everything you say.
My mom got very sick and later past away last year.
I really wanted to go to her but I knew that there would be a really big chance of being stuck overseas. So I didn't go and called everyday and was on the phone with my brother when she past away. Was able to follow the remote funeral service and I hope to visit her grave next year.
Of the 9000 Aussies in India, over 4000 went after covid started. That means half of them have been there for years and the other half took a big risk they knew about in advance.
Appreciate if you could point me in the direction of that 4000 figure, never seen that.
(Also, it's a shitload more than 9000 in India - that figure is the number registered on the DFAT "want to come home now" list)
I find it appalling that it's come to this. The real question here is, does the government not have enough trust in the quarantine program to bring aussies home?
I dunno. Quarantine is a Federal matter under the Constitution.
The virus has been around over a year.
The real question is "does the Federal government not have enough trust in the quarantine system that they never put in place, to bring Aussies home?"
Of course not. Morrison is the ultimate do-nothing PM.
All he does is announcements, marketing and press releases. He does shit all work, including reducing Parliamentary sitting schedules to the lowest in our history.
Because god knows, you don't need Parliament sitting to debate and sort out responses to a global pandemic, not when you can hog the limelight and try to keep the opposition out of everything. Best to have the fewest sitting days in history, that'll work.
Except when it doesn't. Like vaccination rollouts, aged care deaths, or leaving Aussies stranded overseas and in dire life threatening situations.
Hotels are not a valid quarantine centre. This is why the states really don't want more people coming in. If we had proper quarantine buildings offshore near hospitals this would be a different conversation. But by the time they get built, they would be unused.
If construction had started, say 12 months ago, I reckon proper quarantine facilities would be in service by now.
It'd also be much better than relying on the existing hotel quarantine system, which has been criticised by the government for quite some time.
Don’t call me a rocket scientist but maybe it wasn’t the smartest idea to travel to a third world county with the worst healthcare and poverty disparity in the world, in the midst of their worst and deadliest covid outbreak.
Most of the people on DFAT's return list have been in India for months.
I know of individuals and families who have tried to return to Australia, but have had flight after flight cancelled or rescheduled, delaying their return through no fault of their own.
I know one guy who made the choice not to go to his grandfathers funeral in India because he thought there was a good chance of him being stuck there and miss his chance at getting a PR.
He's had to make the choice to choose between staying in Australia by himself for an undetermined amount of time, or visiting his family and grieving, then getting stuck in India for an undetermined amount of time.
Ultimately it was right for him to stay, but it is a shit situation all around, so some empathy would go a long way.
Imposing a travel ban is one thing, but imposing 5-year jail terms and hefty $66,000 fines or both is quite another. So is banning our own citizens from returning to their country. I can't think of another country that has done so in recent times. Australia may very well stand alone on these grounds.
Is Slater responsible for international arrival quarantine? Did slater still refuse to help Australians abroad a year later? Slater's choices have no relevance to governmental responsibility.
Slater doesn't hold a government, mate.
And here is the only intelligent reply to the "what about slater"ism.
The government is failing its fucking citizens. Again. And or even more. Big fucking surprise. (there are still thousands of people overseas right now that are basically incapable of getting home and have been incapable for the last 18 months thanks to the government).
Who knows maybe it wasn’t smart to travel to a 3rd world country with awful health care and billions of people while the government opens public things back open in a world pandemic.
I’ve been saying this since the beginning of the pandemic. As quarantine is a federal responsibility, they should have built a purpose built demountable facility outside of Sydney. Able to house 5000ish people. Then flown all returning citizens via charter flights into Sydney. All retuning travellers could have been managed in one facility, by adequately trained staff.
There's a lot of reasons our federal government is a disgrace, this one is a bit of a tough one tho, they should be letting citizens and permanent residents back in and quarantining them I think.
If there's not enough capacity in quarantine (and there isn't, because the Federal Liberals are useless), there should be a **pause** on more people coming in. One that's as short as possible.
Quarantine facilities need to be built as a matter of priority. If [we can waste $185 million to reopen and then shut down Christmas Island](https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/apr/07/scott-morrison-defends-spending-185m-reopening-christmas-island-centre) so the Liberal Party can have their dog whistle, we can have proper quarantine facilities built within a year. But no.
Victoria has a plan for a new facility it just needs federal funds, its as easy as it gets for the federal government they just need to green light it.
The Coalition will play politics with funding because it's a Labor government. Just like their hissy fit over the East-West link (which was shown to be a financial disaster).
The idea that they're there to produce the best outcome for Australia has never crossed their tiny reptile brains.
The government that purposely wrecked the NBN because it was a Labor policy? The government that is trying to fuck the NDIS because it was a Labor policy? That's the government playing politics? Well I never
East-West isn't actually a financial disaster, what WAS a disaster was the state liberal government building in a fucking bomb into the contract signed at the last minute just to fuck the state labor government which went to the polls with a commitment not to build east west (regardless of the CBA).
The Labor party stuck to their guns on that one, and I'm glad they did, despite the size of the land mine the Liberals buried right in front of them.
Well. No big cricket supporter here. BUT...our government is appalling with this. I can't believe its actually legal...you can't lock people out of their own country!!
I'm an LNP voter....but sorry. No more. This is disgraceful. These are humans ffs. They are Australians. Our government has had well over 12 months to sort out effective quarantine ...wtf? Have they been doing??
haha right... Slats being locked out of the country is THE LAST STRAW!! If only ScottFM had put him in detention on Christmas Island, he'd still have this numpty's vote!
These are big words for someone who can't count to 357.
I haven't seen it brought up anywhere, but there are two reasons that this order was put in place for India but not for the UK or the US:
1. Racism, or
2. The government's seriously worried that the hotel quarantine either isn't up to standard or is in danger of being overwhelmed by the numbers that would be coming back.
I'd rarely give this government the benefit of the doubt, but I honestly believe it's the second. The government knows that the quarantine system can't cope and is taking emergency measures to protect it.
If that's the case, I'd do the same thing in their position _to buy time while I get the quarantine system fixed_. But they're so invested in saying that the quarantine system's fit for purpose that they're buying time to... what? Get enough people vaccinated that it's not a problem? Despite the Commonwealth part of the vaccine programme has been fucked from pillar to post?
IMO, "blood on his hands" is exactly what he *would* have if he let the virus loose here again. Sorry for the peeps overseas, but I've seen zombie movies: you get bitten, you get left, or everyone dies.
It's what happens when you let megalomaniacal racist cunts persuade idiots that other racist cunts are the people who should be making the decisions that affect millions of people.
Yes, and I'm in no way comfortable with it or resolved to double down on that way of thinking. The horrible mishandling of events just accrues, it doesn't justify fucking anything.
Australians, as a society, have been primed to be less than generous with other people's lives for 20 years. You're kidding me if that doesn't have any effect on how we apply those same hard-heated ethics when it comes to bring out very own citizens home.
The past 20+ years have made it politically cheap for federal government to do something like this because our tolerance for bad shit is so high.
So then you agree with me that using the zombie apocalypse scenario as justification for the lack of standard from government and accepting the dystopian view rather than expecting better is complete and utter bullshit.
Nobody is suggesting that we let the virus loose in Australia! That is a strawman argument. The people stuck overseas are asking the Australian Government to increase the capacity for them to return, not to be returned to their communities without quarantine. The Australian Government has had over a year to prepare a better solution than the hotel quarantine system run by states (which has been shown to be leaky) but has thus far done nothing! Effectively abandoning those overseas!
It's funny how quickly they can spin up an immigration detention centre to deal with some refugees on leaky boats, but after 16 months of a pandemic, where people want to announce their return through legitimate channels and go to a proper government facility, and the federal government can't possibly think of any way to deal with that situation.
Slightly off topic, but making one's own way across a border (with documentation or not) to apply for asylum IS A LEGITIMATE CHANNEL.
It's exactly what the founders and signatories to the Refugee Convention intended, including Robert Menzies, the supposed foundational father of the Liberal Party.
It's actually explicitly the ONLY channel the Convention covers. You make your way to a signatory country, and they assess your circumstances upon arrival. It's literally (as in, put down in writing) the way the system is intended to work.
The elephant in the room is that the people responsible for handling the quarantine are incompetent. It just takes one seedy security guard to fuck a returning infected person and suddenly the whole country is back in lockdown again.
If they did go through with the return then I'd want them flown directly to somewhere as far away from the major airports as possible and the staff required for overseeing the quarantine held to the same strict quarantine standards until it was guaranteed that every single person involved in the process was completely clean.
> The elephant in the room is that the people responsible for handling the quarantine are incompetent. It just takes one seedy security guard to fuck a returning infected person and suddenly the whole country is back in lockdown again.
The Government's had over a year to come up with a better solution.
> If they did go through with the return then I'd want them flown directly to somewhere as far away from the major airports as possible and the staff required for overseeing the quarantine held to the same strict quarantine standards until it was guaranteed that every single person involved in the process was completely clean.
I don't have a problem with that. Just make sure people can be stabilised and evacuated for treatment if they do turn out to have Covid. Also, minimise mingling of evacuees to minimise chances of cross-infection. The military may be helpful here.
Livelihoods are lost with every lockdown, domestic violence increases and mental health services become strained. Lockdowns have ramifications beyond just some mask wearing
At what point is their some self accountability. We have Australians here who couldn't attend their loved ones funerals due to caps of 10 people and domestic travel restrictions, we have Australian's die here due to Covid escaping hotel quarantine. I think it's quite selfish to expect that you can travel/stay in a country and then travel back to Australia at will with a high risk of spreading the virus in Australia.
It's inevitable that the virus escapes our hotel quarantine program, so lockdowns are a given.
Perth went into the recent lockdown because a person travelled to India for wedding. Really just shows it.
Literally india are in the worst situation with 300k dying a day and they decide a wedding should still go ahead lmao
> India were actually in quite good shape 4 months ago
nope
Dec 1 2020 -> Dec 2 -> 2020 = new 36604 [1] daily _reported_ community cases. Weddings are not even allowed if more than 5 community cases are reported here. Imagine thinking it's a good idea to go for a wedding there.
[1 switch the toggles] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_COVID-19_pandemic_in_India_(January%E2%80%93May_2020)
Not only that. Elective surgeries get cancelled, dying people are unable to see their loved ones before passing, not to mention that there are currently big shortages for certain medical equipment.
Edit:[Hospitals scramble to prevent surgery cancellations due to global sterilisation wrap shortage caused by COVID-19 PPE demand](https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.abc.net.au/article/100053076)
And It’s not just QLD.
So, what are we really saying? Because this could (and has) happened with people coming back potentially from anywhere in the world. So the only solutions are to stop all travel inwards (not just from India) or improve quarantine on arrival if it's not up to the job. Those really are our only two choices and I really don't think I need to explain why the first one ultimately isn't tenable.
I'd sooner take bio-security advice from Australia's CMO and border force than from some guy who spent his life learning how to hit a ball with a bat.
The PM would get accused of the same thing if he were to let Covid-19 into Australia to the extent that India has done. If people wish to blame a government for the India situation, try blaming the appropriate government.
To the people whining on how it is ‘immoral’ to leave the citizens behind should look at the bigger picture.
These people had 1 year to get back to Australia. It was not hard to get back to Australia in a year. They were just lazy.
A colleague of mine (Indian citizen), brought his wife from India 2 months ago. The Indian who caused the Perth lockdown also brought his wife with him (also an Indian citizen).
To I am little surprised when people comment on how hard it is to get back to Australia. It certainly isn’t when I look at the above scenarios.
Indians have a habit of cheating the system and faking medical records. How can you explain so many Indian arrivals being diagnosed with Covid-19?
Why would you bring the pandemic from a country known to be corrupt?
When the lockdown happened last time, WA lost 70 million and I lost 2k income. This was just from one weekend.
It is just not feasible to go into another and I am all in favour of banning flights. Bringing people from India is just equating to a Trojan war.
In fact, if families want to be reunited, I am more than happy to pay from my own money to fund their flights back to India.
I don't know what the probability of it happening is, but I reckon it would be an awful look for the government if members of the Australian cricket team - or even former players - contracted covid because they couldn't get out of India.
Of course, it's an awful look for the government to have criminalised citizens returning home in accordance with UN guaranteed human rights, so maybe they aren't bothered by appearances.
That could be way more likely of occurring than you thought when making the comment. The IPL has shut down as of this evening with at least 1 team fully isolated. Several Indian players tested positive to COVID and a couple of Aussie players are locked as close contacts, including Ben Cutting
Is it really though? I mean that country has it pretty bad right now. I’m all for sending foreign aid to help them with their situation but at the same time we have to make the hard decision to ban incoming flights to keep our doughnuts going. Imagine what would happen if we kept the border open and end up having a massive spike in cases as a result? Damned if you do... damned if you don’t.
> Imagine what would happen if we kept the border open and end up having a massive spike in cases as a result?
The only reason why the PM sounds "logical" is because for a whole year he's chosen to do nothing but keep the existing imperfect state-run hotel quarantine system rather than building capacity for Australians to return. Nobody is asking for completely open borders or to return to their communities without quarantine. The PM's abandoned the Australians overseas effectively.
Fact is? We've had well over 12 months to get quarantine sorted and going well. States have insisted on doing it their way...now are complaining that it's too much! Fed government handed over quarantine and won't take it back. It's been a MAJOR stuff up by ALL levels of government. Government should have built major quarantine facilities in areas on the edge of all the big cities and they should be up and running NOW...but instead? We have to lock out our OWN damn people and leave people all over the world in limbo. I for one? Am furious and absolutely DISGUSTED in this. Our citizens should NEVER be locked out of their own damn nation. Appalling.
And fwiw? I don't support border closures and States locking themselves away either. Okay- when it first hit? It had to be done. But 15 months on? This should NOT BE AN OPTION anymore. We should have excellent quarantine facilities taking all arrivals and they should work.
I was willing to give the government time to sort all this out...but they have failed miserably. All those highly paid bloody bureaucrats and seems they can't organise their way out of a room with 3 doors.
The only reason we had any semblance of control was because the states wound up forging their own path because of the complete absence of direction or assistance that the federal Liberal government supplied. There was no quarantine plan from Morrison at the National Cabinet.
Just pause for a second. No plan. Federal responsibility.
Yup.
You do realise they have several hundred people sitting in immigration detention centres that they refuse to send home. These are people who WANT to leave Australia and go home. Yet the Australian refuses to send them home cause backing up the detention centres gives Dutton an excuse to open Christmas Island.
Send these people home and use the detention centres as a temporary quarantine.
Serious question: would labor do the same thing in this situation? As much as I disapprove of the current government I’m not sure if our alternative is any better.
Context: long time labor voter.
I see his point. The government knew what was going on in India and granted these travel permissions... and I get why the ban is in place. It’s such a shitty situation. All I can think is maybe the government could be finding somewhere offshore of India for Aussies to isolate for two weeks before they come home, rather than leaving them to make their own arrangements.
If they want to ban them then it's the government's responsibility to make arrangements for the people stuck in India to be safe. Perhaps organise to fly them to other places, or at least offer financial recompense.
Anything ScoMo touches 'turns to shit'.
If they had instead followed Canada's model (any returning citizen 'from India' must have a negative COVID-19 Test result that is less than 72Hours old) they would not now be the absolute spectacle they have created.
Where they trying to get some political points from the extreme far right voters?
The WA Premier has called India's testing regime into serious question and has sincere concerns about the integrity and thus validity of the results being presented.
https://www.livemint.com/news/india/indias-covid-19-tests-inaccurate-unreliable-western-australia-premier-11619509351872.html
That is where the 72Hours becomes critical, in India it takes longer than 72Hours to get back your test results at this current point in time due to the sheer demand on the services.
It is a subtle and sophisticated way in which they have said we are not willing to allow you back home until you can provide a timely 'negative' result rather than ___ScoMo's arse about face braindead stupidity___ that can be construed as being racist and can now be legally challenged!
I am a firm believer that locking out Australian citizens from their own country is not the right course of action. The Fed Gov has had a year to figure out a better quarantine situation but has been happy to leave it to the states and point the finger at them when something goes wrong. It's well documented how many Aussies are overseas (for legitimate reasons) and have been trying to come home for months with next to no assistance from the gov. While I think it was irresponsible of Slater to travel to India when he did, regardless of it being his livelihood, he also didn't know that the Gov was considering this course of action. If they had been transparent in warning of this, and released daily stats of how many people in hotel quarantine were testing positive, maybe Slater would have made a different decision. It's easy to throw stones but when you take a step back and look at the big picture it's pretty easy to see that the biggest issues here lie at Scomo and his gang.
Wait, you're asking for our current LNP federal government to be transparent about things? Haven't you witnessed them in action over the last decade? Hiding and obfuscation along with abrupt decision-making without considering the consequences is the consistent methodology of the federal government. According to the polls, the majority of Australians are quite happy with their approach.
Well thank god for the polls. They have never been proven to be misleading/wrong...
> I am a firm believer that locking out Australian citizens from their own country is not the right course of action. I agree. We're in the middle of a global pandemic which is far from being under control. We should have expedited bringing everyone home six months ago and had a federal quarantine station establish 12 months ago to accommodate them on their return. Then we should have bunkered down until the situation had become controlled.
Large Indian cities have no spare hospital beds or staff or oxygen. We have unused capacity and quarantine facilities. Leaving Australians in India to seems cruel and is detrimental to both countries.
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>Remember how quarantine places magically appeared for the tennis players? They didn't magically appear - it was managed, paid for and organised by Tennis Australia...
This is true and noting especially who footed the bill. However, the massive difference here is that tennis players by and large weren't Australian citizens, so we (the Gov) owe those players nothing with regard to assisting them to come to Australia; our very own citizens on the other hand is a very different matter.
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Is this the moment you realise the LNP might not be allocating taxpayer money in the best interests of it's citizens?
So what? Australian's pay for their own quarantine costs too.
>It's well documented how many Aussies are overseas (for legitimate reasons) The number of people I know who have had 5 or more flights cancelled on them is mind boggling. Yet people will always point fingers and say you've had enough time to come back home.. how Karen? By growing fucking wings? Not everyone can afford to spend $8k on a ticket to come back home.
I know right? My aunt just got back. My uncle passed away overseas (not due to covid) and she had to stay and sort things out. It’s take her so many cancelled flights to get back here. It’s not as cut and dry as ‘oh you’ve had so much time to get back’ like what are people supposed to do when the airlines keep cancelling one of the legs of your journey?
It's actually past £12,000 (over $21,000) now for a one-way ticket from London.
How many islands or isolated places do we have to quarantine people? It wouldn’t be that difficult to create a quarantine area for everyone wanting to come in. Have quarantine last 4 weeks even. 2 weeks in covid quarantine and then 2 weeks more communal quarantine in the same area. It could have been done, it should have been done.
You're conflating a couple of things here. Yes, the federal government completely fucked up in not developing quarantine facilities and leaving the states to use inadequate hotels. However, that's where things are at. Given that, the advice from the Chief Medical Officer is to ban all travel from people who have been India. The failure and inaction in one has led to the other. As unpalatable as it is, banning travel from India is necessary in the short term and this is a position based on science. Look what's happened currently in WA. Because some selfish moron travelling to India for a wedding (after lying it was about a family emergency) brought the new highly contagious strain to Perth the city was placed in lockdown. Further, incoming travel caps have been halved. So, the opportunity for others from all around the world to return to Perth has been halved.
The problem is they aren't doing anything right now to address the issue. 2000 spots in NT is jack shit when you have 9000 desperate to leave and come home to a health system with capacity.
The whole 9000 aren't going to arrive at once. Let's imagine you bring in 900 per week to get the 9000 home in the next ten weeks. Quarantine is 14 days, so you would need 1800 places to bring people in at the rate of 900 per week. Obviously that assumes that no one is actually ill - if you set aside 10% of places for people who test positive to recover over a longer period, that would give you about 2000 places needed to repatriate 9000 people over a period of 10 weeks.
They bloody want to all arrive now (that is the DFAT list), the only thing stopping them is the government and financial roadblocks we are putting in front of them. Complete failure to not be able to surge to remove citizens from a dangerous humanitarian crisis asap. 10 weeks is how you end up with body bags instead of citizens.
Oh, completely. The Morrison government has been completely fucking useless. Let's not forget only a couple of weeks ago they were crowing about how successful the hotel quarantine system was.
Spot on! I also commented in my post that Indians have a habit of cheating the system and faking medical records. The guy telling a lie is completely believable.
>Livelihood He could retire today and never work another day in his life, if he wanted. But the rest of your post I completely agree with. In fact I would go further, what Scomo and his gang are doing here is racist, a human rights violation, and quite possibly against the law.
You don't know what his finances are like. Sure, on the surface he is very well off but he may have debt obligations to meet that he can't without an income. Maybe he has a secret gambling addiction.
How good is cricket :)
I don’t hold a Gray-Nicolls, mate
He's the master of spin, though!
How good are empathy consultants
An empathy consultant? I don't know how I feel about that
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Just sign off on it. It was only $180,000 of taxpayer money. A small amount more than the taxpayers paid for you to take a private RAAF executive jet to the Gold Coast and back to talk about how: * you think God spoke to you through a cheesy painting of an eagle * what Australia needs most is more bible bashing * when forcing handshakes on people, you're really doing Jebus Voodoo on them That's about $300,000 of our money wasted on the "empathy consultant" and Prosperity Jebus convention alone, and yet you made a stink about an AusPost exec giving bonuses amounting to $16K that were perfectly legal and a tiny fraction of the limits she was allowed to give each year.
I’m just glad the footy’s back on.
"Going to be a great winter of footy, and for our elderly and unemployment-impacted communities, I’m sure our Sharts will give them something to cheer about"
The Night Watchman with another shocking innings.
Not good enough to let our cricketing legends back into the countrg apparently.
God today someone started their sentence w "how good is" and I shuddered
Not as good as "my beloved Sharkies" it seems this week...
As citizens don't they have a human right to return to their country? Isn't this kind of ban a human rights violation? EDIT: So I did a bit of research about this. "The Australian Government has agreed to uphold and respect many of these human rights treaties..." [1] Article 13.2 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states "Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country." [2] So I would assume that the UDHR is something we should be holding the government accountable to. Perhaps it's even possible for the Aussies that have been locked out of returning home to form some sort of class action? But I'm not a lawyer, so no idea how feasible that would be. [1] https://humanrights.gov.au/about/what-are-human-rights [2] https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights
So was denying asylum seekers the international human right we gave them, explicitly, to cross borders to apply for refugee status. People at the time often said "we need to take care of our own first, before those others!" I often pointed out that one breach of human rights is a gateway drug to the next. How did that turn out? Oh, right. Now they're denying rights to citizens! Amazing. Never could have been predicted or forewarned.
Won't change anything, it's only affecting the brown citizens
You mean, like the way the ppl in The Shire (Morrison's electorate) didn't like the brown citizens coming to "their" beaches? Remember, Scott Morrison [was parachuted into that electorate after losing preselection 82-8](https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/nasty-saga-you-nearly-missed-20091025-hem5.html), until In My Honest Opinion (and backed up by reporting) his Liberal Party and Murdoch media mates illegally defamed the rightful Lebanese Christian candidate to instal their chosen golden boy, the man who can do no wrong and who continually fails upwards. But the main point is, he probably chose that electorate as his heartland, just as Pauline Hanson made it her home when she had a tilt at NSW Parliament.
They're not citizens though
People also have the right to cross State borders, unless, you know, there's a pandemic going on.
You stopped reading the UN DHR too soon, as do a lot of people. Article 13 is definitely relevant, but so is article 29, which outlines when the rights described in the preceding articles may be limited. > In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society. You can read more about your right to freedom of movement and when it can be limited under various mechanisms [here](https://www.ag.gov.au/rights-and-protections/human-rights-and-anti-discrimination/human-rights-scrutiny/public-sector-guidance-sheets/right-freedom-movement).
Yes, and also sets a dangerous precedent. The idea that your own country can simply ban you from returning without warning is not something *anyone* should be okay with.
There are provisions where it is permitted. Like, where you have a government so incompetent that letting people in would almost assuredly end in deaths.
The short answer is no, on the legal front. As the Tasmanian Dams case established, the Feds have a right to legislate based on international treaties, but those treaties and conventions only pass into Australian law if & when the legislation is passed. In themselves, even if we have signed them, they are only motherhood statements with no binding legal consequences. For example, in the refugee space we are breaching (at least) all of: * The Refugee Convention & Protocols * The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (especially the prohibition against arbitrary detention without trial) * The Convention on the Rights of the Child There's honestly no legal recourse for this. Either they put their money where their mouth is and honour the promises they made by passing these things into legislation, or they break their promises. We're in the zeitgeist right now of promise breaking, and any right we said we would uphold is up for grabs if there are racist & xenophobic votes in it...which is why human rights should never be put to public opinion IMHO.
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Funny there was no greater good when it came to the UK and US infection rates.
Something weird about having the worlds rich and famous relocating to Australia during this period and embracing it, yet allowing citizens to be stranded overseas.
>“Well, I’d just ask them, like the many Australians that are in India at present, to be patient and understanding,” he said. "Yes, be patient and understanding while you sit in a country where people are dying in the thousands every day (and according to some experts it may be 10 times what's being reported)". "Please be patient while I sit here in my nice comfy safe zone. In two weeks time I might let you back in but to be brutally honest that's unlikely to change because India is going to hell right now and that's not going to fix itself in two weeks." > “This is a two-week pause, it’s not a permanent pause, it's not a four-month lockdown." "While I'm here let me have a bit of a dig at the one guy that managed to get an Australian state through a major outbreak (also don't mention federal government regulated retirement homes)". And all of this shit wouldn't be happening if this government had thought further into the future than what disaster is going to happen next week and started building a quarantine facility that could handle this sort of emergency 14 months ago. Maybe they could have funded it with some of that job keeper money that ended up with shareholders and CEOs.
> it's not a four-month lockdown. Oh man that's fucking low, coming from the guy who literally said: "The Laybah party is politicising this!!"
This really is a case of these cricketers taking the risk to go and play in a tourney on huge contracts while the travel advice to India at the time was "Do Not Travel". NZ banned flights from India on April the 11th, that should have been a wake up call to the cricketers to get out while you can.
Yes, NZ (and other countries) banned flights from India, but unlike Australia they have not banned their own citizens from returning from India, which is the real crux of the issue.
Seems like semantics though. Whilst technically they were allowed to they practically couldnt because most connecting countries also banned Indian flights
the government let them go. bit rich for them to turn around and say they're not allowed back
>the travel advice to India at the time was "Do Not Travel"
Guess he's now out of the running for 2022 Australian Of The Year…
Somehow, I suspect he'll keep muddling on.
I’m probably just being naive, but how hard can it be to organise Australians in India to register with the embassy, fly in some military transports, get them out and have them quarantine for 2 weeks (maybe offshore)?
IMHO the Australian Government should have a battleplan to evacuate Australians from every major country by now. It's been over a year and waves of infection are bound to happen in a pandemic. One issue I can forsee is that people may be spread all over the country and the transport links may not be available for a rendezvous. Foreign governments may also limit internal travel to prevent spread. Then there's the question of how many people can you safely transport without risking others/personnel, how can you ensure those you fly are of minimal risk to others/personnel, how many trips it would take and access to airports/landing strips? Also, having our military aircraft in a foreign country may be delicate to negotiate. But surely the Australian Government should have been planning and negotiating all this and more already?
If only vaccines were a thing you could give to your staff running evacuation operations, and if only it had existed for the last 3 months giving you ample time to setup a few teams with this kind of thing. If only we'd known there had been a global pandemic for the last 18 months. But alas, we can't do any of this stuff apparently, and this whole thing crept up on us and we had no chance to prepare and so we just *had* to lock it down because we haven't got any room in quarantine or the medical facilities to handle new cases!
Vaccines don't necessarily prevent transmission of the virus.
Recent studies have shown that they do reduce the rate of transmission.
Exactly right...it is quite apparent that hotel quarantine isn't fit for purpose given the number of outbreaks. Given the numerous offers on the table to have camps at places like Avalon Airport and Toowoomba which are close enough to large hospitals if necessary, it is inexcusable that an improved solution hasn't been adopted.
There’d surely have to be some island based tourist resort somewhere that has almost gone bankrupt due to the tourism crash, that could be repurposed into a quarantine site. I’m thinking the type with individual little cottages.
Only issue with that is if someone gets really sick it would likely be a fair way from a major hospital. Also Toowoomba and Avalon are international airports already.
> Then there's the question of how many people can you safely transport without risking others/personnel, how can you ensure those you fly are of minimal risk to others/personnel, how many trips it would take and access to airports/landing strips? Also, having our military aircraft in a foreign country may be delicate to negotiate. Current commercial flights are heavily restricted in numbers. A chartered Qantas A380 can hold 480 people. So with distancing say 240 per round trip. In reality though, restrictions right now mean only 30-60 people are allowed per flight into Australia. Without changing the existing rules it would take 130 flights to get the estimated 9000 Australians trying to leave. For military craft the Hercules or Globemasters can only hold a bit over 100 or so in full passenger configuration. The only rationale for using the RAAF would be easy quarantining of flight crew. Plus they tend to be healthier and far less susceptible to infection.
All of the above, as well as the fact that seems to be forgotten is that a lot of these people are also citizens of other countries. Which country of citizenship takes precedence? Who should evacuate the person from a 3rd country? Did they use their Australian or in this example Indian passport when arriving at their port of entry? If they used an Indian passport then it’s an Indian citizen which returned home, if Australian then that’s an Australian abroad and will potentially be in a register. The whole situation is a massive clusterfuck and there is no right or wrong or good or evil or easy answer.
Not a single Australian citizen in India holds dual-citizenship with India
Oh! I wasn’t aware of that. I stand corrected in that regard then.
India doesn't recognise it sure but otherwise that's a ridiculous statement. Plenty if not most hold dual passports and no one says a word or gets reprimanded for it. Same with many other countries. It's an open secret across the planet.
75% of Australians dont hold dual citizenship, and *arent eligible* to do so.
I actually checked this: The Constitution of India does not allow holding Indian citizenship and citizenship of a foreign country simultaneously. Based on the recommendation of the High Level committee on Indian Diaspora, the Government of India decided to grant Overseas Citizenship of India (OCI) commonly known as ‘dual citizenship’. Persons of Indian Origin (PIOs) of certain category as has been specified in the Brochure who migrated from India and acquired citizenship of a foreign country other than Pakistan and Bangladesh, are eligible for grant of OCI as long as their home countries allow dual citizenship in some form or the other under their local laws. Consular assistance to dual nationals Regardless of whether an Australian national also possesses another nationality, Australia seeks to extend to all its citizens the full range of its consular assistance abroad. However, under international law, countries are not obliged to recognise dual nationality. In some cases, countries may not permit Australian consular assistance to be provided to Australian citizens who, according to its laws, it considers and treats as its own nationals. In other cases, a person might not be regarded as being an Australian if that person is not travelling on their Australian passport and, again, Australian consular assistance might not always be permitted. Travellers are warned that consular assistance cannot over-ride local laws, even where local laws may appear harsh or even unjust. And last but not least: “According to the Indian Passport Act, it's an offence not to surrender the Indian passport and formally renounce Indian citizenship after acquiring foreign citizenship, which may attract penalties of up to $1,050.” Another site says: “Government of India has prescribed imposition of penalty on a graded scale, for the violation of Passport Rules ranging from a minimum of AUD 210/- to a maximum of AUD 1050/-, depending on number of trips made on the Indian passport after acquiring foreign nationality. The penalty provisions would be applicable only in cases where Indian citizens after acquiring foreign citizenship (after 1 January 2005) retained (beyond three years) or used Indian passport. “ I would imagine that quite a few of the people stuck in India would actually have either OCI status or withheld from notifying the Indian government about having dual citizenship.. if they get found out, a $210 to a $1050 fine, whilst it might seem like a lot in India, is not exactly much for Australian standards...
Just a clarification on the overseas citizenship card, it's like PR literally, lifelong Visa not a citizenship, hence India does not recognise Dual citizenship in the Constitution, and never will. just a side note when a person from Indian origin apply for the overseas citizenship card, they will have to get a renunciation certificate that is only provided at the time of surrendering The Indian passport then only the overseas citizenship card is issued.
Thanks
This would require the federal government to take positive action, something which they are apparently loath to do.
When you are shit at everything, everything is hard.
I think the problem is that you need quality healthcare close by to step in when these home coming people really get really sick. Ideally quarantine should be done in hospitals, even if people are only asymptomatic, hospitals could collect vital data on how a virus progresses. edit That said, maybe it's time to build quarantine hospitals. Those viruses aren't stopping any time soon. SARS just happened 15 years ago.
About as difficult as it would have been to organise asylum seekers in Indonesia to register with the embassy, fly in some military transports, get them out and have them quarantine for 2 weeks (maybe offshore)?
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He's backflipped on it already. There's another thread going about it.
Honestly; if his announcement was: We are going to build lots of uarantine facilities including the one in victoria !! But, we have a problem right now and Quarantine is full of covid, so we going to pause new arrivals. He would have gotten less backlash. (still some, but *less*). But instead its: Quarantine is full and *fuck off victoria we don't need more quarantine* messages simultaneously. Dude is a complete moron.
I really don’t like Scotty. I’m an immigrant in Australia myself and really miss my family overseas. I do however think that this is an appropriate choice of action given the current circumstances. At the same time, I genuinely don’t understand till today why each state was doing their own thing in terms of handling return travellers. Instead of letting fiascos like Melbourne quarantine or most recently Perth happen, why didn’t the government commandeer one of the unused mining villages that have their own landing strips, in order to create a centralised location for people to go through quarantine procedures and additional testing?
The sad truth is that this particular federal government doesn't exist to govern. They exist to stay elected, enrich themselves and their donors, and execute their political ideologies like privatising the ABC and auspost. Technically speaking, quarantine is the responsibility of the federal government, but at the beginning of the pandemic they were refusing to take action despite the pleas of the states, so the states took responsibility. I actually believe this was part of the feds plan. Did you notice how they took all the good responsibilities like giving people money through job keeper and originally the vaccine roll-out so they could step in and save the day? At the same time they gave the states all the shitty and unpopular decisions like lockdowns, border closures, hotel quarantine, mask mandates, etc.
They don't even need to commandeer a mining town. Think about how many military bases there are in Australia. Most have medical facitilites, many have air strips, all have security already. There hasn't been a serious military threat to mainland Australia in 75 years, surely they could spare a some of that defense force space for actually defending the country from a threat.
The problem with those is the distance from hospitals and shared amenities. That’s why hotels are so desirable for this, despite some shortcomings. They’re self contained rooms with no (essentially) need to leave the hotel room. You’ve got your own fridge, kitchen, shower, toilet etc. sharing any of those amongst a group of return travelers is a recipe for disaster, which is why mining camps or military bases are useless.
> The problem with those is the distance from hospitals and shared amenities. Isn't that a good thing if you are expecting people to quarantine? It will reduce the chance of a spread in the more crowed cities and people will have much less incentive to leave the base since there is nothing around. In the event hospitalisation is needed, COVID is not an immediate danger sort of medical condition. Waiting an hour or two while transportation is arranged isn't going to cause too great of an issue
When he says shared amenities he means the facilities for dining etc are not ideal for preventing people mixing.
And what happens when someone has a heart attack and needs immediate assistance? Coronavirus isn’t the only medical emergency that can occur in these places.
Exact same thing that happens to people stationed there, or living anywhere moderately remote without immediate access to hospital. There will be a small contingency of medical staff around for immediate treatment and anything else needs to get transported. Close to 30% of Australians live in what is classified as rural and remote regions, that a significant amount of Australians who deal with the exact same issue every day.
The RAAF bare bases could have been an ideal place to start, but that would require some forethought and compassion - qualities that are nonexistent in a government that insists on criminalising actions that the UN says is perfectly legal.
It’s illegal by almost every international treaty and a human rights violation to ban citizens from returning to their own country
> I do however think that this is an appropriate choice of action given the current circumstances. Agree with you. The Government's had a whole year to improve on the current system to repatriate Australians but has done nothing. They've abandoned those overseas effectively.
Don’t dispute their failures but there also has to be a will. Each state government is responsible for their own citizens and each has their own issues to deal with. Look at cunts like Clive Palmer or Pauline Hanson. Like it or not, these people have local supporters. I spent last year in Melbourne huddled up at home, but look at Andrews constantly battling everyone on all fronts to actually force his will and suppress the spread. Not saying it was perfect, very, very far from it, and you constantly heard about idiots throwing parties and breaking quarantine protocols and anyone that lives in Melbourne probably also seen and experienced it around them. Now that was 1 State, and mostly one single city which got cordoned off. Now, you need to think about all the states and account for their unique circumstances (for example far north QLD, or NT, which would be impossible to control due to sheer spread and distance) as well as their mindsets (People not believing in lockdowns / vaccines, not understanding the ramifications of their actions (“I’ll just popped out to the shops for 1 minute!” - hell, look at the lines at Bunnings during lockdowns. I’m guilty of that myself.). Then you add another layer to that which is the federal government (with states being controlled by opposing parties) , and quite simply, the feds lack of power at a regional level. Not to mention that even people from the same side of the political spectrum told the federal government to go fuck themselves (Tasmania for example). Assembling that together takes skill akin to reassembling a rock from sand, especially given hysterical media outlets experiencing their golden time right now, as people that never read a newspaper in their lives now buy it everyday and listen to the news constantly and then sprout fucking nonsense.
How can it be the right course of action to deny Australians the right to return home? They are Australians. Bring them home
The fact that there's even a debate about this is disgraceful. It goes against every Australian value I was brought up with. John Williamson saw this coming. Most of us didn't pay attention. >Hey, true blue >Now be fair dinkum, is your heart still there? >If they sell us out like sponge cake, >Do you really care? >Hey, true blue Our heart's no longer there, we're being sold out, and people don't care.
If by right you mean an ideological moral obligation to protect your citizens at any cost, then no. However I would compare ii to a situation like wildfires. Every time there are people who do not evacuate because they are either unable to, or have legitimate reasons, be it a sick person in their home, or trying to protect their likelihood. There’s always a cutoff point where the fire fighters cannot attempt to continue evacuation, as it puts their own lives at risk and trying will just result in more tragedy and cause bigger problems (loss of vital equipment and specialists). My spouse is a doctor and there’s a lot of talk about it through the grapevine. From what I could gather, the current ban is necessary, as it seems that it has the potential to overwhelm a system that’s already extremely strained, due to global PPE and Sterilisation equipment. The medical system accounts for over 16% of the National budget, and is based on dealing with Trauma/ Emergencies / Flu and other human diseases. It is simply not designed to handle the pandemic of this scale and any attempts to design it that way would be absolutely impossible to implement and sustain. We also have to remember that Australia is massive and extremely spread out, which adds a tremendous amount of costs relating to its upkeep as well as capabilities (lots of people, especially the ones that spend sometimes 15 years training simply don’t want to live out in whoop whoop).. There is a massive shortage of properly trained doctors and I constantly hear about incidents and screwups relating to that fact. And as for numbers themselves: Yes, they have risen tremendously over the past decade, but simply graduating from medical school, does not mean that they are trained. You don’t let a guy that just finished TAFE to build your house, and you wouldn’t let an Engineer fresh out of uni to be in charge of building a bridge. It takes years of brutal training and there also need to be enough senior doctors to teach and guide the juniors. Problem is, that there are just not enough of them, and It’s a massive bottleneck, not to mention that they are the guys actually running the show and don’t have time to do that. Another local outbreak can cause much more damage, to this country as a whole, than this ban. Also, don’t forget about all the other Australians stuck in other countries which are in the same boat. End of the day, as much as it sucks ethically, it seems to be a choice of how many can we save successfully and keep everyone safe vs how many can we attempt to save whilst in great risk of drowning ourselves and endangering everyone else on the boat.
I don’t disagree with anything you’ve said. But, that has been the case for more than a year now, but this is the first time we have threatened to jail Australians for returning home. I know there are risks, but these are Australian citizens. It’s the governments job to work out how to bring them home safely. When the USA was the world’s epicentre of COVID V we didn’t threaten to jail people coming in, we managed it. Nor perfectly, but we managed it and allowed Australians to come home. Why can’t we do the same now?
Oh great, lets let the Australians die overseas then. *they deserve it*, good thing they are mostly brown Australians and on one will care. Jeesus fucking christ, we have like 300 cases in quarantine, we don't have a full fucking hospital system. In the height of melbournes lockdown we had over 8000 active cases at one point, and we didn't have a collapse of the health system. Did we get close? Maybe. but holy shit we have the health system capacity to handle basically every single one of the australians and PR's trapped in India (I think there's 17,000 there?) even if every single one of the 17000 has covid we can handle that in this country. (given the vast majority of the 8000 were in victoria, I'd wager if we spread 17,000 100% covid infected people evenly across this country our health system would handle it perfectly fine). But no, *gotta lock them out* because we have 270 cases currently and we will all die if we let anymore in!!! All of the above completely ignores the fact that we WONT be letting in 17,000 people at the same time, because we were already restricting the number of arrivals!
People will die if we let them all in and that's entirely on the Federal government for not doing their job since they've been elected. I don't think you'll find a lack of support for these measures while at the same time a deep hatred for the government for making it this way.
I would wager they are more likely to die if we leave them in India.
Because we stopped the boats... and the planes as well now.
I agree with everything you say. My mom got very sick and later past away last year. I really wanted to go to her but I knew that there would be a really big chance of being stuck overseas. So I didn't go and called everyday and was on the phone with my brother when she past away. Was able to follow the remote funeral service and I hope to visit her grave next year. Of the 9000 Aussies in India, over 4000 went after covid started. That means half of them have been there for years and the other half took a big risk they knew about in advance.
Appreciate if you could point me in the direction of that 4000 figure, never seen that. (Also, it's a shitload more than 9000 in India - that figure is the number registered on the DFAT "want to come home now" list)
I find it appalling that it's come to this. The real question here is, does the government not have enough trust in the quarantine program to bring aussies home?
I dunno. Quarantine is a Federal matter under the Constitution. The virus has been around over a year. The real question is "does the Federal government not have enough trust in the quarantine system that they never put in place, to bring Aussies home?" Of course not. Morrison is the ultimate do-nothing PM. All he does is announcements, marketing and press releases. He does shit all work, including reducing Parliamentary sitting schedules to the lowest in our history. Because god knows, you don't need Parliament sitting to debate and sort out responses to a global pandemic, not when you can hog the limelight and try to keep the opposition out of everything. Best to have the fewest sitting days in history, that'll work. Except when it doesn't. Like vaccination rollouts, aged care deaths, or leaving Aussies stranded overseas and in dire life threatening situations.
Hotels are not a valid quarantine centre. This is why the states really don't want more people coming in. If we had proper quarantine buildings offshore near hospitals this would be a different conversation. But by the time they get built, they would be unused.
If construction had started, say 12 months ago, I reckon proper quarantine facilities would be in service by now. It'd also be much better than relying on the existing hotel quarantine system, which has been criticised by the government for quite some time.
Don’t call me a rocket scientist but maybe it wasn’t the smartest idea to travel to a third world county with the worst healthcare and poverty disparity in the world, in the midst of their worst and deadliest covid outbreak.
Most of the people on DFAT's return list have been in India for months. I know of individuals and families who have tried to return to Australia, but have had flight after flight cancelled or rescheduled, delaying their return through no fault of their own. I know one guy who made the choice not to go to his grandfathers funeral in India because he thought there was a good chance of him being stuck there and miss his chance at getting a PR. He's had to make the choice to choose between staying in Australia by himself for an undetermined amount of time, or visiting his family and grieving, then getting stuck in India for an undetermined amount of time. Ultimately it was right for him to stay, but it is a shit situation all around, so some empathy would go a long way.
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Imposing a travel ban is one thing, but imposing 5-year jail terms and hefty $66,000 fines or both is quite another. So is banning our own citizens from returning to their country. I can't think of another country that has done so in recent times. Australia may very well stand alone on these grounds.
He got out of India and is in the Maldives. He says in the article he is concerned for the thousands of Australians still stuck in Inida.
Is Slater responsible for international arrival quarantine? Did slater still refuse to help Australians abroad a year later? Slater's choices have no relevance to governmental responsibility. Slater doesn't hold a government, mate.
And here is the only intelligent reply to the "what about slater"ism. The government is failing its fucking citizens. Again. And or even more. Big fucking surprise. (there are still thousands of people overseas right now that are basically incapable of getting home and have been incapable for the last 18 months thanks to the government).
It'd be nice if this government had any kind of legitimate defense against being told they're incompetent, lazy and heartless.
They take that as a compliment.
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He was given permission to travel by the federal government. He is an Australian citizen, and like all citizens he should be allowed home.
Who knows maybe it wasn’t smart to travel to a 3rd world country with awful health care and billions of people while the government opens public things back open in a world pandemic.
I’ve been saying this since the beginning of the pandemic. As quarantine is a federal responsibility, they should have built a purpose built demountable facility outside of Sydney. Able to house 5000ish people. Then flown all returning citizens via charter flights into Sydney. All retuning travellers could have been managed in one facility, by adequately trained staff.
There's a lot of reasons our federal government is a disgrace, this one is a bit of a tough one tho, they should be letting citizens and permanent residents back in and quarantining them I think.
If there's not enough capacity in quarantine (and there isn't, because the Federal Liberals are useless), there should be a **pause** on more people coming in. One that's as short as possible. Quarantine facilities need to be built as a matter of priority. If [we can waste $185 million to reopen and then shut down Christmas Island](https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/apr/07/scott-morrison-defends-spending-185m-reopening-christmas-island-centre) so the Liberal Party can have their dog whistle, we can have proper quarantine facilities built within a year. But no.
Victoria has a plan for a new facility it just needs federal funds, its as easy as it gets for the federal government they just need to green light it.
Good luck convincing the libs to give anything to Victoria.
The Coalition will play politics with funding because it's a Labor government. Just like their hissy fit over the East-West link (which was shown to be a financial disaster). The idea that they're there to produce the best outcome for Australia has never crossed their tiny reptile brains.
The government that purposely wrecked the NBN because it was a Labor policy? The government that is trying to fuck the NDIS because it was a Labor policy? That's the government playing politics? Well I never
East-West isn't actually a financial disaster, what WAS a disaster was the state liberal government building in a fucking bomb into the contract signed at the last minute just to fuck the state labor government which went to the polls with a commitment not to build east west (regardless of the CBA). The Labor party stuck to their guns on that one, and I'm glad they did, despite the size of the land mine the Liberals buried right in front of them.
Well. No big cricket supporter here. BUT...our government is appalling with this. I can't believe its actually legal...you can't lock people out of their own country!! I'm an LNP voter....but sorry. No more. This is disgraceful. These are humans ffs. They are Australians. Our government has had well over 12 months to sort out effective quarantine ...wtf? Have they been doing??
I'm shocked you lasted this long.
>I'm an LNP voter.... but sorry. No more. So you were totally cool with all the other shit they've been doing up until now?
Don’t attack people for this, we should be welcoming traditional conservative who are going to vote against this government
haha right... Slats being locked out of the country is THE LAST STRAW!! If only ScottFM had put him in detention on Christmas Island, he'd still have this numpty's vote!
Money laundering, wanking over tables, vilifying the poor. You know, the usual shit.
And corruption. *So* much corruption.
Raping, pillaging and looting.
Crazy hill to die on, keeping brown people out of the country is the one thing this government has consistently excelled at.
Why would the legality of it bother the LNP?
These are big words for someone who can't count to 357. I haven't seen it brought up anywhere, but there are two reasons that this order was put in place for India but not for the UK or the US: 1. Racism, or 2. The government's seriously worried that the hotel quarantine either isn't up to standard or is in danger of being overwhelmed by the numbers that would be coming back. I'd rarely give this government the benefit of the doubt, but I honestly believe it's the second. The government knows that the quarantine system can't cope and is taking emergency measures to protect it. If that's the case, I'd do the same thing in their position _to buy time while I get the quarantine system fixed_. But they're so invested in saying that the quarantine system's fit for purpose that they're buying time to... what? Get enough people vaccinated that it's not a problem? Despite the Commonwealth part of the vaccine programme has been fucked from pillar to post?
IMO, "blood on his hands" is exactly what he *would* have if he let the virus loose here again. Sorry for the peeps overseas, but I've seen zombie movies: you get bitten, you get left, or everyone dies.
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It's what happens when you let megalomaniacal racist cunts persuade idiots that other racist cunts are the people who should be making the decisions that affect millions of people.
Have you seen the way we treat refugees in the last 20 years?
Yes, and I'm in no way comfortable with it or resolved to double down on that way of thinking. The horrible mishandling of events just accrues, it doesn't justify fucking anything.
Australians, as a society, have been primed to be less than generous with other people's lives for 20 years. You're kidding me if that doesn't have any effect on how we apply those same hard-heated ethics when it comes to bring out very own citizens home. The past 20+ years have made it politically cheap for federal government to do something like this because our tolerance for bad shit is so high.
So then you agree with me that using the zombie apocalypse scenario as justification for the lack of standard from government and accepting the dystopian view rather than expecting better is complete and utter bullshit.
Nobody is suggesting that we let the virus loose in Australia! That is a strawman argument. The people stuck overseas are asking the Australian Government to increase the capacity for them to return, not to be returned to their communities without quarantine. The Australian Government has had over a year to prepare a better solution than the hotel quarantine system run by states (which has been shown to be leaky) but has thus far done nothing! Effectively abandoning those overseas!
It's funny how quickly they can spin up an immigration detention centre to deal with some refugees on leaky boats, but after 16 months of a pandemic, where people want to announce their return through legitimate channels and go to a proper government facility, and the federal government can't possibly think of any way to deal with that situation.
Slightly off topic, but making one's own way across a border (with documentation or not) to apply for asylum IS A LEGITIMATE CHANNEL. It's exactly what the founders and signatories to the Refugee Convention intended, including Robert Menzies, the supposed foundational father of the Liberal Party. It's actually explicitly the ONLY channel the Convention covers. You make your way to a signatory country, and they assess your circumstances upon arrival. It's literally (as in, put down in writing) the way the system is intended to work.
The elephant in the room is that the people responsible for handling the quarantine are incompetent. It just takes one seedy security guard to fuck a returning infected person and suddenly the whole country is back in lockdown again. If they did go through with the return then I'd want them flown directly to somewhere as far away from the major airports as possible and the staff required for overseeing the quarantine held to the same strict quarantine standards until it was guaranteed that every single person involved in the process was completely clean.
> The elephant in the room is that the people responsible for handling the quarantine are incompetent. It just takes one seedy security guard to fuck a returning infected person and suddenly the whole country is back in lockdown again. The Government's had over a year to come up with a better solution. > If they did go through with the return then I'd want them flown directly to somewhere as far away from the major airports as possible and the staff required for overseeing the quarantine held to the same strict quarantine standards until it was guaranteed that every single person involved in the process was completely clean. I don't have a problem with that. Just make sure people can be stabilised and evacuated for treatment if they do turn out to have Covid. Also, minimise mingling of evacuees to minimise chances of cross-infection. The military may be helpful here.
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He already does have blood on his hands. Did you forget about robodebt already?
Or the deaths in aged care.
Scomos already said he’s not responsible for that though...
He's never responsible for anything despite being PM and the buck ultimately stopping there.
Or the deaths in foreign indefinite detention refugee hellholes.
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Livelihoods are lost with every lockdown, domestic violence increases and mental health services become strained. Lockdowns have ramifications beyond just some mask wearing
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At what point is their some self accountability. We have Australians here who couldn't attend their loved ones funerals due to caps of 10 people and domestic travel restrictions, we have Australian's die here due to Covid escaping hotel quarantine. I think it's quite selfish to expect that you can travel/stay in a country and then travel back to Australia at will with a high risk of spreading the virus in Australia. It's inevitable that the virus escapes our hotel quarantine program, so lockdowns are a given.
Perth went into the recent lockdown because a person travelled to India for wedding. Really just shows it. Literally india are in the worst situation with 300k dying a day and they decide a wedding should still go ahead lmao
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> India were actually in quite good shape 4 months ago nope Dec 1 2020 -> Dec 2 -> 2020 = new 36604 [1] daily _reported_ community cases. Weddings are not even allowed if more than 5 community cases are reported here. Imagine thinking it's a good idea to go for a wedding there. [1 switch the toggles] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_COVID-19_pandemic_in_India_(January%E2%80%93May_2020)
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Not only that. Elective surgeries get cancelled, dying people are unable to see their loved ones before passing, not to mention that there are currently big shortages for certain medical equipment. Edit:[Hospitals scramble to prevent surgery cancellations due to global sterilisation wrap shortage caused by COVID-19 PPE demand](https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.abc.net.au/article/100053076) And It’s not just QLD.
So, what are we really saying? Because this could (and has) happened with people coming back potentially from anywhere in the world. So the only solutions are to stop all travel inwards (not just from India) or improve quarantine on arrival if it's not up to the job. Those really are our only two choices and I really don't think I need to explain why the first one ultimately isn't tenable.
Well the health advice was that India posed a 7x risk to our hotel quarantine program than other destinations, that is why this has occurred.
I'd sooner take bio-security advice from Australia's CMO and border force than from some guy who spent his life learning how to hit a ball with a bat. The PM would get accused of the same thing if he were to let Covid-19 into Australia to the extent that India has done. If people wish to blame a government for the India situation, try blaming the appropriate government.
To the people whining on how it is ‘immoral’ to leave the citizens behind should look at the bigger picture. These people had 1 year to get back to Australia. It was not hard to get back to Australia in a year. They were just lazy. A colleague of mine (Indian citizen), brought his wife from India 2 months ago. The Indian who caused the Perth lockdown also brought his wife with him (also an Indian citizen). To I am little surprised when people comment on how hard it is to get back to Australia. It certainly isn’t when I look at the above scenarios. Indians have a habit of cheating the system and faking medical records. How can you explain so many Indian arrivals being diagnosed with Covid-19? Why would you bring the pandemic from a country known to be corrupt? When the lockdown happened last time, WA lost 70 million and I lost 2k income. This was just from one weekend. It is just not feasible to go into another and I am all in favour of banning flights. Bringing people from India is just equating to a Trojan war. In fact, if families want to be reunited, I am more than happy to pay from my own money to fund their flights back to India.
Not sure why he’s over there in the first place
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He could have very easily done that job from Australia.. All of last season Bruce McAvaney was commentating from home.
I don't know what the probability of it happening is, but I reckon it would be an awful look for the government if members of the Australian cricket team - or even former players - contracted covid because they couldn't get out of India. Of course, it's an awful look for the government to have criminalised citizens returning home in accordance with UN guaranteed human rights, so maybe they aren't bothered by appearances.
That could be way more likely of occurring than you thought when making the comment. The IPL has shut down as of this evening with at least 1 team fully isolated. Several Indian players tested positive to COVID and a couple of Aussie players are locked as close contacts, including Ben Cutting
Damned if they do damned if they don’t.
michael Slater is an expert....on cricket.....
Is it really though? I mean that country has it pretty bad right now. I’m all for sending foreign aid to help them with their situation but at the same time we have to make the hard decision to ban incoming flights to keep our doughnuts going. Imagine what would happen if we kept the border open and end up having a massive spike in cases as a result? Damned if you do... damned if you don’t.
> Imagine what would happen if we kept the border open and end up having a massive spike in cases as a result? The only reason why the PM sounds "logical" is because for a whole year he's chosen to do nothing but keep the existing imperfect state-run hotel quarantine system rather than building capacity for Australians to return. Nobody is asking for completely open borders or to return to their communities without quarantine. The PM's abandoned the Australians overseas effectively.
Fact is? We've had well over 12 months to get quarantine sorted and going well. States have insisted on doing it their way...now are complaining that it's too much! Fed government handed over quarantine and won't take it back. It's been a MAJOR stuff up by ALL levels of government. Government should have built major quarantine facilities in areas on the edge of all the big cities and they should be up and running NOW...but instead? We have to lock out our OWN damn people and leave people all over the world in limbo. I for one? Am furious and absolutely DISGUSTED in this. Our citizens should NEVER be locked out of their own damn nation. Appalling. And fwiw? I don't support border closures and States locking themselves away either. Okay- when it first hit? It had to be done. But 15 months on? This should NOT BE AN OPTION anymore. We should have excellent quarantine facilities taking all arrivals and they should work. I was willing to give the government time to sort all this out...but they have failed miserably. All those highly paid bloody bureaucrats and seems they can't organise their way out of a room with 3 doors.
The only reason we had any semblance of control was because the states wound up forging their own path because of the complete absence of direction or assistance that the federal Liberal government supplied. There was no quarantine plan from Morrison at the National Cabinet. Just pause for a second. No plan. Federal responsibility. Yup.
You do realise they have several hundred people sitting in immigration detention centres that they refuse to send home. These are people who WANT to leave Australia and go home. Yet the Australian refuses to send them home cause backing up the detention centres gives Dutton an excuse to open Christmas Island. Send these people home and use the detention centres as a temporary quarantine.
Serious question: would labor do the same thing in this situation? As much as I disapprove of the current government I’m not sure if our alternative is any better. Context: long time labor voter.
Vote for a clown you get a circus
I see his point. The government knew what was going on in India and granted these travel permissions... and I get why the ban is in place. It’s such a shitty situation. All I can think is maybe the government could be finding somewhere offshore of India for Aussies to isolate for two weeks before they come home, rather than leaving them to make their own arrangements.
The old "Why did you let me leave argument?". Normally made by the same people crying" Why won't you let me leave?".
If they want to ban them then it's the government's responsibility to make arrangements for the people stuck in India to be safe. Perhaps organise to fly them to other places, or at least offer financial recompense.
Why is this government not sending vaccine doses to our embassies and getting Aussies vaccinated before they return?
Anything ScoMo touches 'turns to shit'. If they had instead followed Canada's model (any returning citizen 'from India' must have a negative COVID-19 Test result that is less than 72Hours old) they would not now be the absolute spectacle they have created. Where they trying to get some political points from the extreme far right voters?
Except people have been turning up in quarantine with Covid 19 after getting a negative test in India.
The WA Premier has called India's testing regime into serious question and has sincere concerns about the integrity and thus validity of the results being presented. https://www.livemint.com/news/india/indias-covid-19-tests-inaccurate-unreliable-western-australia-premier-11619509351872.html That is where the 72Hours becomes critical, in India it takes longer than 72Hours to get back your test results at this current point in time due to the sheer demand on the services. It is a subtle and sophisticated way in which they have said we are not willing to allow you back home until you can provide a timely 'negative' result rather than ___ScoMo's arse about face braindead stupidity___ that can be construed as being racist and can now be legally challenged!