The NSW Government has flagged a plan to bring back large numbers of international students for the beginning of the 2021 academic year:
NSW Minister for Jobs, Investment and Tourism Stuart Ayres told an international education summit in Sydney on Wednesday that… he had learned “lots of lessons about how to house 60,000 people in 14-day arrangements” which he saw as “quite manageable”. He had also held “a number of discussions with vice-chancellors”.
“I foreshadow that we’ll be able to open borders to international students through a quarantine regime much earlier than we’ll be able to open borders to the visitor economy or tourists,” Mr Ayres said.
“I see no reason why we can’t be optimistic and do something for the start of 2021″…
It is understood the NSW scheme would replicate arrangements being made for international students to return to the Northern Territory, which uses a former workers’ camp at Howard Springs, east of the city, as a quarantine centre…
Phil Honeywood, chief executive of the International Education Association of Australia, said NSW was the market leader for international students and opening the state would send a signal to Chinese and Indian students that the country was open for business.
“There’s been a very strong lobbying campaign that the NSW government is beginning to respond to.”
If NSW does replicate the Northern Territory (NT) scheme, it could see taxpayers pay half the cost of hotel quarantine.
Last month, The Australian reported that NT taxpayers would pay half the cost of international student quarantine:
According to Mr Gunner’s “secure corridor” proposal to the Prime Minister, 100 students from several Asian countries were to have taken a charter flight from Kuala Lumpur to Darwin…
They would have been housed for a two-week quarantine period in the Manigurr-ma residential village at Howard Springs outside Darwin…
The NT government was ready to pay half the $2500 per student cost of the two-week quarantine for students who were studying at Charles Darwin University or other Territory tertiary institutions.
Meanwhile, Australians returning from overseas to the NT are being charged the full $2,500 cost ($5,000 for families) for their hotel quarantine. Thus, international students were to receive more favourable treatment from the NT Government than the Territory’s own returning residents.
NSW currently charges the following rates for its hotel quarantine:
Travellers will be charged $3,000 for one adult; additional occupants will be added as follows:
- additional adults: $1,000 each
- children (under 18): $500 each
- child (under three): no additional cost…
Fees apply to all travellers flying into Sydney including Australian Citizens and Australian permanent residents who are placed in mandatory quarantine accommodation.
So, if NSW follows the NT approach, will international students only pay $1,500 for their quarantine, thereby receiving more favourable treatment than actual Australian citizens? If so, this is unacceptable.
The public anger at the University industry is because their actions on many fronts has been against the national interest and the cause of moral hazard and asymmetrical risk.
We’ve witnessed the universities’ treason with Confucius Institutes on campus, the treatment of Drew Pavlou, negotiating special deals at the start of the pandemic for students to skirt travel bans via third countries, and now a special deal for students to return to Australia as part a wider plan whilst the rest of us cannot travel interstate or leave the country.
Why on earth would the NSW Government subsidise the cost of bringing in infected foreigners from places like India, given the risk of quarantine failure where one outbreak could smash the economy to smithereens?
There is no such thing as a “secure corridor”. This is pure marketing spin.
In order to maintain the strongest possible quarantine integrity, hotel quarantine should be prioritised for citizens and permanent residents.
Only after all Australians have been repatriated should quarantine be used for international students. But only in moderate numbers and without a cent of subsdidies from Australian taxpayers.
The rent-seeking edu-migration industry must not call the shots and socialise the costs (and risks) onto Australians.
