Richard Marles (Corio, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

It is now December. There are 24 days to go until Christmas, and on this day there are 37,000 Australians abroad who are seeking to come home. Eight thousand of those have been determined to be vulnerable. This government owes every one of them a promise that it made back in September to bring those people home by Christmas. In the next 3½ weeks we are going to discover whether there is any meaning whatsoever to the obligations and the promises which those opposite make to these Australians and, indeed, to the Australian people as a whole.

Everyone knows that this has been a year unlike any other. The COVID-19 crisis has affected all of our lives and the lives of humanity, as a health crisis and as an economic crisis. We are seeing the strategic landscape of the globe rewritten as we speak. But one of the most significant ways in which the COVID-19 crisis has manifested is in the way that borders around the world have become closed and in the way that international aviation and international travel has been reduced to a trickle. As our borders closed in February and as we started to see borders around the world closing through the months of March, April and May, we saw this crisis begin to unfold. On 10 July of this year, the government established a national review into the hotel quarantine arrangements, and it appointed to that the former Secretary to the Department of Health Jane Halton. Amongst the terms of reference that she was asked to consider, one was changing capacity requirements of hotel quarantine related to changes in border restrictions. As we start this story, the place to begin is that this is absolutely an obligation of the federal government. National borders belong to the these people. National borders belong to the Commonwealth government. Section 51 of the Constitution paragraph 51(ix) says:

The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of the Commonwealth with respect to:

…   …   …

quarantine.

That's an important point to make because quarantine is the responsibility of the Commonwealth government. As we have watched this government each and every day seek to avoid responsibility at every single level in relation to this crisis and go out and suggest that somehow quarantine is the issue of the states, never forget that, when it comes to the Constitution, it is spelled out in one word—in black and white. It is their job.

As this issue rose during the course of the northern summer, during the months of July and August as the effects of COVID-19 were affecting countries around the world, not surprisingly, we saw more and more Australians seeking to take the opportunity to come home. Indeed, on 2 September, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade gave evidence to Senate estimates and said that the department expected the number of Australians registering an interest in returning will continue to increase. It's at that moment that this government and this minister started to offer a promise to the Australian people. As he left this chamber on 13 September the Minister for Health said, 'We want to ensure that every Australian who wants to come home is home by Christmas.' That's what this minister said in September, and it was backed up by the Prime Minister who said, 'I would hope that we can get as many people home, if not all of them, by Christmas.'

That's the promise that this minister and this government made to those Australians who are stranded overseas. That's the promise that they made to all Australians. The minister says that there were a certain number who had registered at that point. That number was 26,800. At this moment in time, only 14,000 of that number have come home. But, since then, just as the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade predicted, the numbers have continued to increase. As the flow of international travel has reduced to a trickle, what we've effectively seen is international airlines basically only selling business-class tickets to come back to Australia, which means that people are faced with bills of tens of thousands of dollars in order to come home.

All of the electorate offices of members on both side of this chamber have had a flood of people coming in and advocating to us on behalf of constituents who have been stranded overseas. David and Kate Jeffries, with their son Mitchell, are an example. They're still in Canada. They gave evidence in the Senate Select Committee on COVID-19 and said that financial pressures built further as it became increasingly evident that if they are to have any hope of boarding a flight home:

… we will likely have to upgrade to business class tickets, which range anywhere from $9,000 to as high as $17,000 each to get us home. After the $5,000 bill from the Australian government for quarantine, we expect to have paid an absolute minimum of at least $25,000 just in travel expenses to get home. We estimate that the direct additional cost—

as a result of being stranded—

to be well over $50,000 to my family, money which we would much rather put toward Mitchell's education.

In the midst of all of that, this government has done essentially nothing. They have not responded to this.

The Halton review made a whole lot of practical recommendations which could have been implemented. The first thing Jane Halton pointed out is it is their power to legislate in respect of this. She gave advice about how the federal government could run quarantine safely, with exclusion zones around quarantine facilities. She made the point that additional quarantine centres could be opened up, like RAAF Base Learmonth. She suggested that there needs to be a national scalable quarantine facility to deal with exactly the sort of issues that we are facing right now. It was a thorough and thoughtful report and response, but from this government we have seen nothing.

On 15 September the Leader of the Opposition made the point that maybe we could use the Air Force to get our people home. Maybe we could use the VIP fleet to get some people home. It would make a difference. Well, we didn't see the VIP fleet go to Europe to bring stranded Australians back home, but the VIP fleet did go to Europe. It went to Europe carrying former senator Mathias Cormann from Perth. Mathias Cormann, in pursuit of a job for himself, has visited Turkey, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland, Slovenia, Luxembourg, Belgium, Spain and Portugal. It doesn't stop there! There are further visits planned to Austria, the Slovak Republic, Hungary and France. And all of that is at $4,300 per hour. So instead of using the VIP fleet of the Air Force to bring Australians home, we see that the priority of this government is to use that fleet to support a former colleague in pursuit of a job for himself. That says everything about the priorities of this government.

There is a fundamental obligation in this nation to allow Australians to return home. It is an obligation of our law and an obligation of international law. In Air Caledonie International v Commonwealth, in 1988, in the High Court it was put in these terms, as has been said: such a citizen had under the law the right to re-enter the country without need of any executive fee or clearance for so long as he retains his citizenship. That's the obligation that exists. We have a situation now where, despite that being the obligation at law, in order to get home as a stranded Australian, you are effectively faced with a bill of tens of thousands of dollars. What that means is that that fundamental obligation at law is not being met by this government. Much more significantly, the promise that this government offered to those 37,000 Australians who were stranded overseas is not being lived up to right now. We have 3½ weeks for this government to demonstrate that when it makes a promise it actually delivers on it. It is time for this government, on this day, to actually say something in respect of that promise and to stand up and deliver.

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