Strict restrictions: Australia becomes an anti-corona fortress

Lena Bodewein
ARD-Studio Singapore

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The Australian is angry with his government. He lives as a journalist in Southeast Asia and has not seen his parents in Australia for two and a half years – strict entry restrictions, limited flights, mostly only in business class, plus the quarantine costs – many of the 37,000 Australians who are stuck abroad can hardly return home Afford.

But, says Neubauer, Australia is a rich country: “They could send numerous planes around the world and collect them all, but they don’t. Instead, they say: ‘We’ll see when we let you in again.’ This is incredible! No other country in the world keeps its citizens from coming home. “

Hardly anything goes – in every direction

Australia has turned itself into a Covid fortress, the borders are tight, hardly anyone can get in, hardly anyone can get out. Australia actually has strong connections around the world: a third of Australians were born abroad, two thirds have a parent who was born abroad. The decision not to let almost anyone travel separates all of these relationships.

Rebecca Hatten believes that your country is “spoiled by its island location”. In the beginning, the government insisted that the virus could not land there, and although it turned out differently, the government stuck with this policy.

Hatten works as a project manager in Singapore, Southeast Asia. She has a four-year-old daughter and a 16-month-old boy – his Australian grandparents have never been able to hold him. First Singapore closed its borders, but has long since let them in, says Hatten – “but Australia won’t let them out”.

Some permission comes too late

Anyone who promises to leave the country for as long as possible, preferably permanently, may be allowed out, or anyone who is in a family emergency and has to go to a funeral, for example. But many foreigners in Australia would like to see their relatives alive again at home and not just in the coffin.

So far, Australian exiles like Hatten have been able to visit their relatives in Australia with appropriate applications and after quarantine. They can still do it – but they may not be allowed out afterwards. Anyone who has applied to leave the country since August 10th risks being refused.

“An Australian who lives in Belgium,” says the journalist Ian Neubauer, “who is married there, has a job, house and children there, has come home to see her terminally ill mother again. While she was in quarantine, the mother died without being allowed to see her again – she was not allowed to leave the quarantine! And now she is not even allowed to leave Australia! To her family, her house, her job in Belgium – they say: No, you stay here.”