Peta Murphy (Dunkley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

All that almost 40,000 Australians want for Christmas is to be able to come back home. All that hundreds of thousands of Australians want for Christmas is for their loved ones to be able to come back home. Katherine just wants to be able to come back to Frankston. She's stuck in London as COVID cases surge. She is 63 years old, in poor health and in rental accommodation that the local council want her to vacate. Katherine has had three cancelled flights since August. The help she's received from this government is a call from DFAT asking her if she still wants to come back home—yes, she does. The Prime Minister promised her he would make sure that by Christmas she could experience her own comeback to family, to safety, to home, but he has failed to deliver. Rathina just wants her husband, Ranjith, to be able to come back to Carrum Downs to her and their 14-week-old baby, to come back home from India after having to go to his father's funeral.

This government thinks nothing of giving Mathias Cormann a $4,000 an hour RAAF jet to fly around the world trying to get a job. The Prime Minister sees nothing wrong with paying Liberal mates more than a million dollars for research to come up with a $15 million 'our comeback' marketing campaign. Well, Prime Minister, it's time to make our comeback something more than a slogan. Give those stranded Australians and their families a Christmas present and help them come back home.

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