Morrison Must Do More to Bring Australians Home

One of the values that Australians hold dear is that we never leave a mate behind.

It’s a value we expect our national government to adhere to, particularly when Australian citizens are stranded overseas and desperate to return home.

This is more than just an Australian value—it is a right enshrined in international human rights law.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states “Everyone has the right… to return to his country.”

And the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights states “No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of the right to enter his own country.”

We are now a year into the COVID-19 pandemic and there are almost 40,000 Australians registered with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) who have expressed a wish to return home.

Some have been trying to get home since travel restrictions were introduced in March last year.

Many Australians would be shocked to know that Australians working overseas were often advised by the government to “stay where you are” when the pandemic broke out.

The advice was that if you had a job and were secure, you could stay put until your employment contract finished.

Many Australians followed that advice, only to find that Scott Morrison had mismanaged the borders so badly, there was no way for them to get home.

The Prime Minister promised that he would bring stranded Australians home by Christmas—he has broken that promise.

With some air tickets to Australia costing $10,000 or more, and Australians having to pay for hotel quarantine on arrival, it is an expensive endeavour to return.

Sadly, there is little choice for Australians who are trying to survive in a foreign country with no job, no income, and in some cases nowhere to live.

It is hard to imagine the hardships many of these people are facing, and they get worse as time goes on.

Many of the stranded Australians who have written to me for assistance are struggling, and desperate to get home.

They are eating into their savings, relying on the generosity of family and friends, and worried about whether they will have jobs or homes to return to.

While some repatriation flights have been arranged, it is too little, too late, and these efforts are still hampered by international arrival caps.

The booking system for repatriation flights has been chaotic—with the ‘first in, first served’ approach giving no assurance that the most vulnerable people get prioritised.

Flights from the United Kingdom have been sold out in a matter of minutes, meaning people have to be constantly checking their email to have the slightest chance of securing a ticket.

Australians understand and appreciate that getting thousands of people home in the midst of a pandemic is a huge logistical challenge.

But that does not excuse the Morrison Government’s failure on this issue, because there is a lot more they could be doing.

That’s not just the opinion of average Australians—the government commissioned a report by a former senior bureaucrat, Jane Halton, which recommended opening up federal quarantine facilities in remote locations.

Not only would remote federal facilities increase the number of people able to arrive in Australia, but it would also reduce the risk of COVID-19 outbreaks from hotel quarantine facilities in our capital cities.

The Australian government has responsibility for national border security, including biosecurity, yet they have been quite happy to handball their responsibility to the states and territories.

If Mr Morrison had created a national border security quarantine plan, when Ms Halton advised him to, it could have avoided the need to cut international flight caps in half and the 40,000 stranded Australians could have been home by now.

Ms Halton’s report provides some sound advice for getting Australians home yet, like so many other reports this government wishes to ignore, it is gathering dust.

It’s the kind of attitude we have come to expect from a government whose ministers are happy to turn up when there’s a photo to be taken or an announcement to be made but they duck for cover when it comes to difficult tasks like national leadership on quarantine arrangements.

And it’s the kind of buck-passing we have come to expect from the Prime Minister who said “I don’t hold a hose, mate.”

The 40,000 Australians stuck overseas are not just stranded—they are abandoned.

They have been abandoned because of the Morrison Government’s lack of leadership and lack of action to help bring them home.

Australians stranded overseas demand, and deserve, a lot better from Scott Morrison and his government.

Catryna Bilyk is an Australian Labor Party Senator for Tasmania.