Victoria scraps quarantine for overseas travellers

Normally I would agree but there is a small matter of political baggage from previous point scoring against the Commonwealth government, namely that qld govt supported quarantine camp which will require a difficulty of 4.8 to weasel out of explaining why it had to be built despite supposedly agreeing to the National Cabinet plan to get out of the pandemic measure.

But I am sure the spin doctors will sort it out and they will try to force the commonwealth to use it for the asylum seekers onshore detention

The Victorian camp is already looking a bit redundant but given it was made on the agreement of both the state and federal governments, some use will be found for it, probably replacing hotel quarantine for non-vaccinated arrivals.

The Qld camp at Wellcamp was not built with the agreement of or funding from the Federal government so the Feds probably won't be too interested in what happens to it and, if it turns into a white elephant, that will be for the Qld Gov't to explain.

We were slow to get to building these camps but, realistically, when we finally got around to it, it was already too late and it was easy to see that the need for them would soon be declining as the vax rate continued to accelerate.  The Vic and Feds were slow getting going with the Mickleham camp; the actions of Queensland are just mystifying unless they thought it was going to be a trigger to get int'l pax flights into Wellcamp which was always a long bow.

To be honest I really don’t think anyone (except the pessimists) expected the disruption is as long as it did, and unfortunately the pessimists were right to some extent (although the availability of effective vaccine were beyond most people’s wildest dream….. which is part of the reason for the vaccine hesitancy)

Furthermore I don’t think anyone have a good grip of how many people and their reported dependents wanted to come back to Australia, some due to the relative safety of Australia from rampant disease and others due to loss of expat jobs.

I suspect come 1 Nov there will be a short glut of returning Australians for a few months but the rest who had registered to want to come back probably will not take up the opportunity when jobs markets and travel start to open up again, in US, EU and UK and the rest taking advantage of the opening up of borders for the next few months will be those family/parental reunion allowed by today’s announcement. 

Hence those 45k Aussies registered with DFAT may turn out to be 15k when the opportunity presents itself to actually buy a ticket to return (assuming 2/3 on the list would be vaccinated, although not necessarily those recognised by TGA) and maybe another 8k are unvaccinated and hence needed to come by the arrival cap restrictions. 

Hah, today’s Fairfax article titled

“

Dual nationals rush to book flights after parents get the nod as immediate family” 

I haven't read that article but of what relevance is the mention of "dual nationality?" A holder of Australian citizenship is every bit as Australian whether they hold multiple passports or only one. I hold multiple nationalities of which Australian is one. Since an Australian passport is required for entry into Australia, I don't get the point of mentioning dual nationals, who clearly have zero issues.

It's foreigners who do NOT possess Australian nationality but are married to Aussies that is being referred to here as having the right to seek an exemption.

@TheFreqFlyer

It’s Fairfax’s headline not mine. In retrospect, I agree there may be some profiling on they way that was put.

 I was more interested with the part of the headline about parents being now considered as immediate family for arrivals.

@XWu, I know. I like to vent when I see something I don't agree with. LOL. It was clearly directed at FairFax. Again, I haven't read the article so I'm assuming the author is confused about the meaning of "dual nationals" when the problem is there is an important word missing whenever such topics come up, which may cause confusion.

"Australian citizens and their families". Why not make it clearer by adding "and their foreign family members" or something? I don't see the problem with the word "foreign". By specifying that someone is a foreigner or a non-citizen, it becomes clear that they are not Australian but in this case, they are allowed to travel to Australia by virtue of being married to a citizen or being a parent of a citizen.

Returning Australians and permanent residents will be the first allowed to return.  Foreign citizens who require a visa or ETSA to enter Australia aren't covered as yet; it is only Australian citizens and permanent residents and their families so you should be able to get home in the next month or so provided you have already had an approved double vax.

@cross40, it doesn't matter whether an Australia citizen lives in Australia or not. Every Australian should be treated the same. Foreigners can be discriminated against by being denied entry, but not Aussies.

You can't divide Aussies into two categories based on what they do for a living or where they reside. Some people might have lived overseas for years, lost their jobs during the pandemic and want to return home. Others want to visit family and friends. It doesn't matter what the reason is - Aussies always have the right of entry, foreigners do not. The only group of foreigners that do, are permanent residency holders as long as their visas are still valid.

This is the way it is in every country on Earth.

@nouflyer

Not sure why you are upset, particularly with 2 particular states whose announcements are still being limited by federal government to who gets to come in.

Several other states so far have announced measures which does not adhere to the national plan even when their state vaccination hits the 70 or 80% target 

How one interpret the preamble “Phases triggered in a jurisdiction when the average vaccination rates across the nation have reached the threshold and that rate is achieved in a jurisdiction expressed as a percentage of the eligible population (16+), based on the scientific modelling conducted for the COVID-19 Risk Analysis and Response Task Force” based on 70% and 80% targets is obviously different to some others. 

The actual speech with this announcement includes the following: 

“The National Plan will move between phases once Australia reaches key vaccination thresholds - moving to Phase B once 70 per cent of the Australian population 16 years of age and older is fully vaccinated and Phase C once 80 per cent fully vaccinated threshold is met.”

Nothing about having every specific community or jurisdiction or state needed to be having the same vaccination rate, and neither did the Doherty report. 

The average vaccination rate for Australia is at least 70% now. 

Ironically when some states with lagging vaccination rates keeps their borders closed, the average (national) vaccination would still climb and likely to hit 80%. This would be similar in thinking to some states thinking of keeping remote communities locked in/out if low vaccination rates, when their metro capital cities get above 70% or 80% vaccinated. States locking out NSW and Vic is more likely to emboldened these 2 states to even open up more without reservations once the national vaccination cross 80%

Just trying to explain why some people like me do not agree with you, but you are of course entitled to have your interpretation of the National Cabinet plan