Australians stranded overseas say slashing arrival caps makes returning home ’near impossible’ | Australia news | The Guardian
▻http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/jan/09/australians-stranded-overseas-say-slashing-arrival-caps-makes-returning
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Australians stranded overseas say a decision to slash the number of international passengers allowed to return each week by almost 50 per cent is a “disheartening blow” while others have labelled the move “despicable”.
The prime minister, Scott Morrison, announced on Friday that national cabinet had decided to temporarily halve the number of hotel quarantine spots available each week in NSW, Queensland and Western Australia.
The move comes as authorities work to keep a more infectious variant of Covid-19 – that has emerged in the UK and South Africa – from circulating in Australia. The caps reduction means about 2,500 fewer people will be able to enter the country each week until at least mid-February when national cabinet will review the policy.
Many Australians stranded overseas have endured multiple flight cancellations with only those able to afford business class or first class fares able to return swiftly.Mona Grebing and her two young children left Australia in July to care for Grebing’s gravely ill mother in Germany. Her mother has since recovered and the family had planned to return to Australia at the end of 2020.They were bumped from a Qatar flight on 31 December and are currently rebooked for 3 February but Grebing said she now expected to be bumped again.“I am totally disheartened and don’t even know how to tell my girls such sad news,” she told Guardian Australia. “So far I always felt the government was trying its best to get us all home – so this is obviously a blow in the face.”
Grebing said she feared the cap reduction would make it “near impossible” to get back home. “I knew the risk I was taking when leaving Australia so I can’t complain too much [but] I felt I had no choice at all in the matter,” she said.Mona Grebing and her two children travelled to Germany in July 2020 to care for her gravely ill mother. ‘I am totally disheartened and don’t even know how to tell my girls’.Coronavirus breaches from hotel quarantine might be making Australians less sympathetic to those trying to return home, Grebing said. “I’ve got a bit of an inkling that the Australian people will start to get a bit of a fear of Australians overseas given [the virus] comes from overseas. That’s something this policy, and the virus, creates.”
Grebing has registered with Dfat to potentially return on a government repatriation flight but she said “there are currently no more flights scheduled” that she can access.“And I can’t afford to pay the horrendous prices to return on other [commerical] tickets,” she said, noting some airlines advertised fares for 17,000 euros ($26,000). In late 2020, some 36,000 Australians were still registered as being stuck overseas, unable to get flights back to Australia due to the caps on hotel quarantine.
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