Welcome back to Hawaii, Australia. At Domain:
…expat Australians are concerned the student scheme will lead to a further rise in already skyrocketing return flight fares, effectively locking them out of their country.
Because the government’s travel bans have effectively shut down Qantas International until at least 2021, the few airlines still flying to Australia are being accused of price gouging by selling the few places available at business fares.
Scores of Australians have reported being told to pay or risk being bumped from flights.
Perth mother-of-three Rebecca Overmars has been living in the Netherlands since 2009 and wants to return home in October.
More at AFR:
For thousands of Australians in Bali, they are being told they will be fined $100 a day if they fail to have their tourist visas renewed and are still in the country after Thursday.
Others are furious the government is allowing a limited number of foreign students in to restart their studies in South Australia while Australians are denied entry.
…Queensland Sunshine Coast resident Peter Lillecrap is among the thousands of Australians being blocked from returning home because of the cap.
…”It’s absolutely unfair, especially the way it was put on with no regard for citizens who genuinely can’t get home,” he said.
More at The Australian:
Airlines are demanding first and business fares for the very slim flight options: as only 30 to 60 Australians are allowed on an incoming flight.
Last week many hundreds of Australians were once again disheartened, receiving emails that their flights had been cancelled, after the government extended these caps on international arrivals until October 24.
One London based ex-pat family, who has sent back furniture on a container, their lease expired and are now homeless, was unhelpfully offered new flights to Perth for mid-November.
Yesterday an Australian in Athens had his flight cancelled, with no forward options at all.
And more, summing up the national view of the Morrison Government:
First in line are fee-paying students. Says the Australian government: “Here’s the welcome mat”.
Then it’s highly paid tennis stars like Roger Federer and Serena Williams. Says a tennis official: “Come here at any time, we’ll even give you a bio-secure bubble”.
For Australian citizens, many of them expats returning for job opportunities, or just a desperate wish to visit a dying parent, well, good luck.
The message they are hearing from the Australian government is something like: “We don’t care you are bumped off a flight for the third, fourth, fifth or sixth time — you are a highly unwelcome biohazard risk. If you do make it here, tough luck you had to fork out a house deposit for an upgraded seat.’”
The comments at The Australian were so scathing that I didn’t know where to look.
This is beyond the pale. The universities are currently in the throws of a demonstrated mismanagement of the basic issues of:
- preventing cheating;
- preventing corruption;
- maintaining freedom of speech;
- sustaining pedagogical standards.
Yet now we are supposed to trust that they can manage quarantine procedures, albeit with the aid of the government, with kids that have NO responsibility to the community, state or country, and obviously present a much higher quarantine flight risk.
Not to mention that we must now wonder why:
- we are putting mismanaged university budgets ahead of Aussies for the basic right of living in their own country?
- we are jeopardising the entire country’s health and economy for a few foreign bodies?
- we are paying for any of it? (yes, we pay the universities to serve the nation, including this outrageous quarantine).
- we are bringing in more foreign kids when those already here are 60% unemployed directly competing with the highest levels of jobless since the Great Depression?
Three reasons I suggest.
- Greedy university elites have captured the government.
- Realty interests that own Morrison are in a panic about house prices.
- Labor agrees wholeheartedly with him.
The last is the real problem. Without an opposition, captured policy has no recourse.
So, what should Labor do? Immediately extend its recent attacks on the temporary worker visa scam to include foreign student visas and insist that:
- the borders are locked for the duration of the pandemic;
- the universities rationalise, then agree on new terms of funding with much lower foreign student intakes;
- Aussies are given absolute priority at the border.
That is a massive political and economic win that encompasses both workers and the Coalition’s nationalist base.
