Trade Minister Simon Birmingham has been slammed for prioritising foreign students over stranded Aussies, following the Coalition’s decision to fly-in 300 international students into Adelaide from next month:
…the move has angered Australians overseas who have been repeatedly bumped off commercial flights because of the government’s unique cap on international arrivals.
International airline carriers have been demanding returning Australians pay for expensive first- and business-class fares to try to get on to the few allowed seats on one of the few flights still flying into the country. Some flights carry as few as 30 Australians. The allowable weekly cap numbers are so low, even those willing to pay inflated fare prices cannot get home for weeks or months.
The first trial of a batch of international fee-paying students will take up 300 of the available 500-a-week quota spaces available in the current Adelaide quarantine numbers and arrive before September.
The Trade Minister, Simon Birmingham told The Australian: “My understanding is that the cap into South Australia has not been reached. There continues to be quarantine capacity for those who can get a flight into Adelaide. There is no taxpayer support for the airfares or quarantine costs international students will face.’’
But the problem is that Australians are struggling to get onto any flights into Adelaide because it is uneconomical to fly into the city under the cap program.
Last week thousands of Australians had their flights cancelled when the Australian government cap requirements were extended through to October 24. Other airlines are continuing to sell “ghost flights” that are then cancelled on the day of departure.
Jacquelin Magnay, a journalist in Europe, took to Twitter to slam Senator Brimingham:
Other Twitter users also reacted angrily:
Until Australians can travel freely within our own country, letting in foreign students should not even be considered.
And to think, this hare-brained policy has come at the same time as international students here now at universities are incessantly complaining that taxpayers are not looking after them and that they cannot land jobs to support themselves.
The Edu-migration “industry” clearly has the federal government wrapped around its little finger, a disturbing symptom of a nation that has lost its way in terms of what’s important.
