On Friday, the Morrison Government quietly extended its travel bans to 17 September, thus precluding Australians from travelling overseas:
At the same time, the Morrison Government has hypocritically agreed to allow international students to travel into Australia from July:
According to the report:
- Hundreds will arrive as part of a pilot program;
- Only states with open borders will be eligible; and
- Charter flights are planned with taxpayers picking up part of the cost.
What an absolute farce.
Australians have not endured months of house arrest and ongoing travel bans to get COVID-19 under control so that our greedy universities and their captured political mates can import the virus via international students.
We have already witnessed a cluster of COVID-19 infection among workers in a hotel used for quarantine in Melbourne. The chances of that happening again would obviously be multiplied with hundreds of students entering Australia, especially if they come from virus infested nations like India and Brazil.
Nor should Australian taxpayers have to foot any part of the costs associated with quarantine, including accommodation, feeding, supervision and testing.
Australia’s universities have already proven that they cannot be trusted on this matter, as evidenced throughout the pandemic via:
- first campaigning to keep Australia’s international borders open;
- then smuggling students in via third countries after Australia’s borders were closed; and
- campaigning for exceptions to travel bans throughout.
If policy makers had listened to our ‘enlightened’ universities at any stage during the pandemic response, Australia would now be in a far worse position.
Rather than returning to business as usual, the education sector has a significant opportunity to fix its unhealthy reliance on international students, fix its fallen standards, and go back to its primary purpose of educating Australians.
Australians have sacrificed far too much, enduring lockdown at considerable personal and financial cost. Why should we risk all we have sacrificed so that the universities and associated businesses can feather their own nests?
