Health Minister Greg Hunt says India wedding given ‘profound’ travel exemption

A man who went to India for his own wedding before returning to Australia and sparking a COVID-19 outbreak in Western Australia was able to prove “profound” reasons for travel, according to Health Minister Greg Hunt.

Perth was plunged into a three-day lockdown on Friday after community transmission was linked to a man who returned from India, which is in the middle of a destructive spike in COVID-19 cases and deaths.

The man arrived in Perth from India on April 10 with his new bride. He tested positive at the Mercure Hotel three days later.

The virus then spread to his wife and seeped into other rooms across the corridor, infecting three people including a child.

One of those people – a Victorian man – then unwittingly spread the virus to two other people in the community.

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International travel has effectively been banned, with numerous reports of thousands of trapped Australians still unable to return home.

The man returning from India for the purpose of a wedding has infuriated many and sparked confusion about the federal government’s policy on international travel.

When asked about his opinion on Australians being allowed to move in and out of the country, Mr Hunt said these exemptions were “for the most profound humanitarian or compassionate reasons”.

“There are exemptions, only exemptions for people to leave the country under the strictest of circumstances,” Mr Hunt told reporters on Monday.

“Some of those leaving to live overseas, some on critical national business or related business.

“But all of them are done on an exemption basis by the ABF (Australian Border Force) and done on the basis that we know that we need to bring Australian’s home.”

When asked more specifically about whether Australians should be allowed to leave the country to attend weddings and sporting events, he said each case was “considered on its merits”.

“The Australian Border Force operates an exemptions process and that has seen the most extreme reduction in outbound and inbound travel as a consequence,” Mr Hunt said.

“They consider each case on its merits, and I will leave the individual cases to them.

“But essentially, you have the categories of critical work and in assisting the national interest and compassionate exemption.”

Mr Hunt said authorities had adopted varying responses to exemptions with regards to high-risk countries, including North America and Europe, over the duration of the pandemic.

“We now have a crisis in India and we have already taken the steps to further tighten the departures, and so Border Force is managing that on a case-by-case basis,” he said.

“But if more is required then more will be done.”

The update comes after West Australian Premier Mark McGowan renewed his calls for the commonwealth to take responsibility for the hotel quarantine system and use their own facilities instead of hotels.

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has made a similar pitch.

Federal opposition health spokesperson Mark Butler echoed this demand and implored the Morrison government do more to keep Australians safe.

“We need dedicated facilities built outside our CBDs, purpose built for quarantine,” he said on Monday.

“We know hotels are built for tourism. They’re not built for medical quarantine, and Scott Morrison has done nothing on those recommendations.

“Our quarantine system is in a mess and Scott Morrison has to stop pretending it’s not his job to fix it.”

Mr McGowan told reporters on Monday that people should only be allowed to go overseas for the “most extreme and extraordinary of reasons”.

“We can’t have people leaving this country for whatever purpose and then coming back COVID-positive, one, displacing other Australians overseas, but two, putting pressure on our system,” he said.

“So there’s a range of things that could be done, but I think the most important is we need to have a system that has fewer people coming into hotel quarantine and we have to have fewer people leaving Australia and returning.”

Mr McGowan repeated his urging of the commonwealth to stop letting people leave the country to go to weddings and other non-essential events.

“I’ve had multiple occasions of this reported to me – people have been going overseas to play in sporting events, they have been leaving here to go and study, they have been going to funerals and they have been going to weddings,” he said.

“They’re not essential. You can study here, you can get married, people here are missing funerals.

“We need to stop this sort of international travel for these sorts of purposes.”