International students get free hotel quarantine while Aussies pay

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While tens of thousands of Aussies remain stranded abroad unable to return home due to limits on flights and hotel quarantine capacity, we several states have submitted plans to fly international students into Australia ahead of returning citizens and permanent residents:

…federal Education Minister Dan Tehan confirmed that the NT, South Australia and New South Wales were this week submitting plans to restart international student programs in 2021.

As reported yesterday, the NSW Government wants to use one-third of its hotel quarantine capacity – 1,000 beds – for international students, meaning that 1,000 Australians would miss out on returning home. Worse, international students’ hotel quarantine costs would be subsidised by taxpayer funded universities, while actual Australians are forced to pay the full $3,000 hotel quarantine cost:

The students, to arrive on charter flights, will use up nearly one-third of the state’s 3000 passenger a week limit on overseas entries…

The arriving students will need to spend two weeks in quarantine, and some universities are willing to pay the $3000 quarantine cost on the students’ behalf…

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Charles Darwin University (CDU) in the Northern Territory will also pay international students’ hotel quarantine costs, while returning Australians are forced to pay their own way:

DEBT-STRICKEN Charles Darwin University will shell out nearly $160,000 to pay for international students to quarantine at Howard Springs, with that number likely to grow in the coming months…

A CDU spokeswoman confirmed, following questions from the NT News, that it would be paying $2500 for each student to quarantine at Howard Springs, but would not specify where it would get the money…

It is fundamentally unfair to subsidise international students’ hotel quarantine costs when returning Australian citizens and permanent residents are required to pay $2,500 to $3,000 for their stays.

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When foreign students carry more weight than returning Australians, you know our governments have been corrupted.

About the author
Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also a co-founder of MacroBusiness. Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.