Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The past few weeks have been remarkable by any standard. For the first time in Australia's history, the government has made it unlawful for Australian citizens to return to Australia, with threats of heavy fines and up to five years in prison. An announcement was made on 30 April that applied only to the 10,000 Australians who are currently stranded in India, caught in possibly the worst humanitarian crisis of the pandemic. The threat at the time was that flights would be banned until 15 May and then reviewed. There has been an enormous outcry in Australia and around the world at the decision the Morrison government made, but it has now walked back from its threats of jail time and promised to resume repatriation fights on 15 May. If it was so dangerous on 30 April, has politics alone caused the government to change its mind? Or was the decision a bad one in the first place? It can't be both.

There has been an outcry. The Prime Minister says we need this ban to keep our quarantine system strong and protect Australians. There is no doubt that the Australian government needs to follow the health advice—we don't want to put the whole population of Australia at risk—but it doesn't mean this ban is justified or that they shouldn't have seen the problem coming. The Morrison government was warned last year about the need for surge capacity in quarantine for emergency situations just like the one India faces now. None of the Indian Australians who have contacted me about this want to put the community at risk—of course they don't—but they simply ask: why were they targeted for criminalisation and where is the government's plan to help them and other Australians stranded overseas get home?

And that's what it comes down to: the Morrison government needs a plan and, instead of coming up with one, they've threatened their own citizens with jail for trying to come home. Australians have been stranded overseas since the borders were closed in March last year. I have had hundreds of people contact my office trying to get home and being unable to do so. We know that there are still 175 children in India, without their parents, who can't come home on the repatriation flights because they're excluded. They have been in India for over a year—toddlers haven't seen their parents for over a year. This has been going on for a long, long time and it has been up to the Morrison government to do something about it for all of that time.

The Prime Minister promised in September that he would bring them all home by Christmas. He knew it was a problem. He knew then it was becoming so drastic that he made a statement that they would make sure people got home by Christmas—and he didn't. They are still there. They are in this dangerous environment, in spite of trying to come home for months, because the government hasn't taken its responsibility for quarantine seriously.

I have a petition here from my constituents asking the government to bring Australians home and I seek leave to table it.

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