Scott Morrison fails his Covid test to leave citizens in lurch

After decades of governments urging migrants to take out Australian citizenship for their own good, the Morrison government in the early hours of Saturday morning effectively told them it was worthless.

Health Minister Greg Hunt announced he was invoking the 2015 Biosecurity Act and spelt out the consequences by warning Australians stranded in India, natural born and naturalised, that if they came home they could face jail terms of up to five years or fines of up to $60,000. His email lobbed after midnight.

Hunt says his unprecedented decision was announced as soon as possible after it was nailed down, however it had been foreshadowed six hours earlier by Chris Uhlmann on Nine News.

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Cabinet ministers, including Josh Frydenberg and Marise Payne, mounted defences over the weekend: it was temporary, it was based on medical advice, it was really no different from previous actions, only some of which was true.

COVID has forced governments to make difficult choices, but what has become abundantly clear is this disease has robbed too many politicians of their backbones and moral compasses.

The government’s latest action has drawn confronting accusations of racism. Let’s give it the benefit of the doubt and say it was not driven by such malice, instead by incompetence, an abrogation of responsibilities not just last Friday but for more than a year now, and at root, plain old-fashioned political calculations of where the most votes could be won or lost.

Scott Morrison professed to be heartbroken by having to do it, arguing it was necessary to spare us from a third wave. No. Spare us the hand-wringing. It was heartless and while opinions differ on the legality of the government’s actions, the fact is they are immoral and cowardly because of the Prime Minister’s critical failures to shoulder difficult tasks.

While President Joe Biden has banned travel from India, US citizens and permanent residents can still return home. British and Irish nationals can return home but they must quarantine. Singapore, which has had 31 deaths from 61,000 cases, compared with Australia’s 900 deaths from 29,800 cases, has banned flights from India but its returning citizens go into longer quarantine.

Morrison has had 14 months to expand existing or build new quarantine facilities. Instead, he handballed the problem to the states. He’s had a year to plan the vaccination rollout. He’s been forced to handball that to the states.

The government claimed its action was based on medical advice. This is not strictly true. In tortuous interviews, Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly admitted he had warned about the increased risks associated with travel from India, adding: “And then the response to that was obviously a decision of government to use the Biosecurity Act in that way.”

Signing off on the government’s decision, Kelly also warned that if Australians were left there some of them could die — a point cricketer Michael Slater highlighted when he tweeted the Prime Minister would have blood on his hands.

Morrison also claimed the government’s actions against Australians in India were similar to that taken previously against other countries. Again, not strictly true. Travel bans have been imposed, however Australians were not told if they came home they could be jailed. Chinese Australians were repatriated from Wuhan and deposited on Christmas Island for a couple of weeks. That could happen today with mercy flights beginning with those 600 Australians, out of the 9000 trapped in India, classed as vulnerable.

Western Australia’s Mark McGowan, who has benefited the most by frightening his citizens every time more than one person sneezes, wholeheartedly supported the government’s ban including jail and fines. NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian, who has done the lion’s share of quarantining, who has kept a sensible perspective on handling breakouts, and for whom Morrison should be lighting candles, has not.

Morrison, struggling to perfect the art of simultaneously dismounting and riding, insists he is not backtracking, says he will stick to the temporary ban and anyway there is “zero” chance anyone will be jailed. There would have been no need for it, not even for one day, if he had fixed quarantine.

These past few days have forced me to question my choice decades ago to become an Australian citizen. As someone born in Cyprus, who travelled here as a child on my mother’s British passport, I could have remained a Cypriot, or obtained a British passport or become an Australian.

Back then, you could get a passport by signing a form at the agency booking your overseas travel. The travel agent asked me which one I wanted. There was no hesitation, not for one second. Australian.

It is no small thing to renounce the country of your birth then pledge allegiance to another. However so easy and meaningless was the process then that I have since supported almost every measure to make citizenship harder. Not to exclude people, but to make it more meaningful because — silly me — I thought it was something to be valued.

It’s not that I expect to be looked after by governments. What I would like is for governments and prime ministers not to make me feel ashamed of my choice. The least every citizen should expect is if they are in danger somewhere their government will not forsake them, not cancel them, but move heaven and earth to get them home. Threatening to jail or fine them if they dare return is grotesquely unAustralian.

Opinion Columnist

Canberra

Niki Savva was twice political correspondent with The Australian before becoming national political editor for Melbourne’s Herald Sun, then bureau chief for The Age. She was Peter Costello’s press secretary for… Read more

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