Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Education) Share this | Hansard source

I'm happy to speak on the motion moved by the member for North Sydney. In March 2020, with the emergence of COVID-19, Prime Minister Morrison closed Australia's borders to all non-citizens and non-residents. Australian citizens could still theoretically travel to Australia, but the lack of flights available made it all but impossible for many Australian citizens to return home. In September last year, after Scott Morrison promised all stranded Australians would be home by Christmas his bureaucrats then promised to do whatever it took to support the states to safely increase quarantine capacity to bring stranded Australians home. Both those promises have been broken.

In October 2021 there were about 47,000 Australians still stranded overseas—people who still call Australia home. The Prime Minister recently announced that on 1 December 2021 the international borders will reopen to a range of economic and humanitarian visa holders, including international students who are fully vaccinated. That was good news for universities and other educational facilities who have seen many international students locked out.

For two years the universities and the wider economy have suffered from the international student lockout. Phil Honeywood, the CEO of the International Education Association of Australia, has said publicly that we are down from $40 billion in 2019 to just on $30 billion, which includes tuition fees, accommodation costs, entertainment and all the wonderful ways in which these young people spend money in our economy. On top of that, hundreds of former students who hold a valid temporary graduate visa were caught off-guard overseas once our borders were closed.

I know the Indian community have been lobbying the government for many months on behalf of the many former international students on subclass 485 visas. Many of those former students had returned to visit family after graduating and were making plans to return to Australia to work to upgrade their qualifications before applying for permanent residency. In some cases the subclass 485 visa is only valid for 18 months, and Australia's borders have been closed to these visa holders for close to 18 months. Many other visa holders have been locked out as well. One of my local manufacturers has been waiting for months for Janelle, an industrial chemist who was granted a temporary work visa, to arrive in Australia. He had also sponsored Saeed, who arrived in Australia in March 2020. However, Saeed's wife remained in their home country waiting for Saeed to settle before making arrangements for herself and her son to travel here. However, once the borders closed she was not granted a travel exemption despite numerous requests to be reunited with her husband in Australia.

The announcement by the Prime Minister to open Australia's borders to certain vaccinated visa holders has been welcome. Of course, as we have all come to know very well over the past two years, planning anything while we have COVID-19 and its variants swirling around the globe is difficult—almost impossible. We now have this new strain of COVID-19, the omicron strain, that we so far know very little about. This may again impact on our international borders.

We know we are not out of this pandemic yet. Quarantine is our first line of defence, and the Morrison government still has not built quarantine facilities for returning Australians, returning students and returning travellers, despite our Constitution expressly making quarantine a federal government responsibility. The Queensland government are on track to have the Wellcamp purpose-built quarantine centre, near Toowoomba, up and running by the end of December. Wellcamp will eventually be a 1,000-bed facility situated just outside Toowoomba. By the end of December 500 beds will be in operation, and the whole facility will be completed by the end of March—quite an achievement. This facility will ensure we have quarantine capacity for travellers returning to Queensland, a state that relies heavily on international travellers. Even as restrictions change there will still be a need for a variety of quarantine options to provide appropriate quarantine settings for a range of individual circumstances and public health requirements.

The emergence of the omicron strain—and I know I'm talking about something on which information is unfolding almost by the hour—has highlighted the pressing need for purpose-built quarantine facilities in Australia. Why didn't the Morrison government start building quarantine facilities earlier? The answer is the same as the reason we were at the end of the queue when it came to getting vaccines—not at the start, as claimed by the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister thinks every problem is actually someone else's fault, something for someone else to find the solution to. Every crisis is someone else's responsibility. COVID-19 is a crisis. It has been since March last year. We need a prime minister who will do what's needed to keep Australia safe and to lead us out of this pandemic: Prime Minister Albanese.

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