The South Australian Government’s plan to lodge 160 international students at a time in quarantine facilities at Parafield Airport has been approved by the federal government:
Medi-hotels in the CBD will continue to be used by Australians returning from overseas.
[CHO] Professor Spurrier said… “the facility it actually an ideal quarantine facility because it is single ground floor units, there’s no corridors basically, so it’s very well ventilated”…
Opposition health spokesman Chris Picton said… “it’s completely inconsistent that we are establishing a dedicated facility for international students, but the government is resistant to establish a dedicated facility for returning Australians… Returning Australians seem to be destined for medi-hotels, in decades-old motels and hotels in the city well into the future, whereas international students have this dedicated facility, which seems to be a safer model than what we have in the city.”
The planned facility looks good. It is low density with no shared ventilation or shared corridors. This alone makes Parafield Airport a far safer quarantine facility than cramped inner-city hotels where virus has spread between guests, staff and into the community (including seeding Victoria’s latest outbreak).
The quarantine facilities at Parafield Airport look good.
My issue is that it is point blank wrong to provide foreign students with more comfortable and safer quarantine facilities than provided to actual returning Australians.
Moreover, any expanded capacity should be first and foremost used to bring stranded Australians home.
As usual, our governments are putting the interests of foreign nationals ahead of actual Australians.
