The way our governments treat Australians stranded abroad is a disgrace.
One year on from the pandemic and there are still tens-of-thousands of Australians stuck overseas and unable to return home due to: 1) prohibitive arrivals caps and quarantine limits; and 2) extortionately expensive airfares and quarantine costs.
For months we have witnessed our state and federal governments bicker over arrival numbers, quarantine costs, and whether quarantine should be moved from city hotels to the regions. Meanwhile, Australians stranded abroad are watching on in dismay wondering if they’ll ever come home.
In the ultimate insult, our governments have established special subsidised quarantine arrangements for migrant fruit pickers.
That’s right, while the Victorian Government has banned overseas arrivals into Melbourne following last months lockdown, it has paid the Tasmanian Government $7.8 million to quarantine 1,500 migrant fruit pickers:
The Victorian Government will… cover most of the cost associated with quarantining up to 1,500 Pacific Islander workers under its partnership with Tasmania through a $7.8 million funding commitment, with industry contributing $2,000 per worker.
This support package, developed in consultation with industry, will help address the barriers faced by farm businesses in attracting the local workforce that is crucial to this season’s harvest, while also keeping the costs to industry to a minimum.
Meanwhile, the South Australian Government has set up a regional quarantine facility for 1200 migrant fruit pickers:
A regional Covid-19 quarantine facility has been set up to house the foreign workers at Paringa, about 270km east of Adelaide…
About 200 workers are expected to arrive in the coming days, and 1,000 more over the next few months…
The workers will be transported directly from Adelaide airport to Paringa where they will complete 14 days of quarantine before being eligible to work.
A new group is set to arrive each fortnight over the next three months under the commonwealth seasonal worker program and Pacific labour scheme.
The $7m program is jointly funded by the government and industry.
Having stranded Australians return to their own country is clearly less important to our governments than providing farms with cheap migrant labour, subsidised by the taxpayer.
Why aren’t these quarantine facilities being used to house actual Australians desperate to return home? Why aren’t actual Australians being given priority? And why are returning Australians being forced to wear the full costs of their quarantine when taxpayers are subsiding the costs of migrant fruit pickers?
Quarantine facilities must be used first and foremost to return Australians, not to fly in temporary foreign labour.
When foreign fruit pickers carry more political weight than returning Australians, you know our governments have lost their moral compass.
