Australia to prevent citizens ordinarily resident overseas from leaving

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/australia-says-it-will-lock-in-returning-citizens-who-permanently-live-abroad-20210805-p58gb9.html

by L_226 • 5 years ago

27 36 5 years ago

smh.com.au

L_2265• 5 years ago

Particularly galling in my case as I'm a resident of Germany and was about to go home to see my family after 2 years

anigbrowl2• 5 years ago

How does Australia improve its quarantine situation by preventing people from leaving? Halting the flow of incoming visitors temporarily makes a certain amount of sense, but a departing person lessens demand for local resources.

this is a first, prior to this I have only heard of such exit controls in the USSR and similar totalitarian regimes.

L_2265• 5 years ago

Just a continuation of Australia's slow decline into authoritarianism and irrelevance. I wonder if they'll read these comments of mine and revoke my citizenship for sedition

sschueller• 5 years ago

The irony that what was once a prison colony is now preventing people from leaving. Unbelievable.

whack2• 5 years ago

A charitable interpretation is that this law is aimed at Australian residents traveling to other countries for pleasure or non-essential business, contracting covid, flying back home to Australia, and spreading it to others. Over the past year, Australia's covid rates have been far lower than other countries, hence why international transmission is a far greater risk.

One alternative is preventing citizens who've traveled to other countries from returning home to Australia. Presumably this isn't legally/politically feasible because it violates a citizen's right to return home. Hence the government's decision to restrict people's ability to leave instead.

I would hope tat getting an exemption is as simple and easy as "here's my lease and paystub in {COUNTRY}", but it remains to be seen how smooth and painless the process is.

masklinn4• 5 years ago

A charitable interpretation is that this law is aimed at Australian residents traveling to other countries for pleasure or non-essential business, contracting covid, flying back home to Australia, and spreading it to others.

That was already restricted. This change targets citizens living abroad and prevents them from going back home. Who could leave by demonstrating that they are residents of an other country.

anigbrowl2• 5 years ago

But again, you could just say that anyone arriving, citizen or not, has to go through testing and/or quarantine. Saying people need permission to leave because they might come back is pointless indirection.

gumby3• 5 years ago

The theory is that having some people casually coming and going will bring new variants into the country.

Which might be a defensible stanve if there weren’t various incoherent and knee jerk policies and exceptions all around.

I’d like to say, “well look, they’re simply doing the best one could given all the known and unknown unknowns”. But they aren’t even doing that.

Sad to think they might be doing the best they can. Australia’s gone from a strong sensible start to utter incompetence.

hourislate• 5 years ago

WTF happened to Australia? I was under the impression it was a "take no shit" kind of place. It seems like they've become some sort of clown world police state. The Government response is completely over the top considering the situation.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/australia/

Is it because socialized medicine can't cope with a surge in illness (Canada was another example) exposing the poor state of socialized healthcare after spending 10's of billions a year in tax payer funds. Somehow the USA with it's private system was able to scale and accommodate massive amounts of patients without collapse while these other countries were invoking the worlds longest lock downs and basically shutting down everything to try and save a healthcare system that barely functions under normal conditions (Canada as an example, visit any Toronto Hospital).

L_2265• 5 years ago

It's all about control. Sadly people I still talk to down there think it's for their own good. I'm ranting but the government is extremely corrupt and just obviously incompetent. And that's not even related to the literal rapes and sexual abuse that has occurred in the actual parliament building (by government employees, who mysteriously are never prosecuted). The current acting leader of the house "allegedly" anally raped a 17 year old and has had no repercussions this far

elygre• 5 years ago

Is it because socialized medicine can't cope with a surge in illness (Canada was another example) exposing the poor state of socialized healthcare after spending 10's of billions a year in tax payer funds. Somehow the USA with it's private system was able to scale and accommodate massive amounts of patients without collapse while these other countries were invoking the worlds longest lock downs and basically shutting down everything to try and save a healthcare system that barely functions under normal conditions (Canada as an example, visit any Toronto Hospital).

I don't think the data supports the idea that the US healthcare system handled the pandemic better than socialized healthcare systems.

jleyank• 5 years ago

Hmm... US covid deaths per 1M population, 1864.51. Canada covid deaths per 1M population, 707.17. Not a favourable metric for the States. Parts of the US seem to be coping with covid by ignoring it, which fortunately is limited to Alberta so far here.

I've lived in both countries... The health systems work in both of them, although you have to have good insurance in the States to be able to say that.

IdiocyInAction2• 5 years ago

They are going for the zero COVID strategy. Not that I condone it, but the whole idea is to keep their numbers as they are in your link.

Somehow the USA with it's private system was able to scale and accommodate massive amounts of patients without collapse while these other countries were invoking the worlds longest lock downs and basically shutting down everything to try and save a healthcare system that barely functions under normal conditions (Canada as an example, visit any Toronto Hospital).

I am not aware of any collapse faced by the public healthcare system in my country (Austria).

masklinn4• 5 years ago

They’re stopping australian citizen living in other countries from leaving.

How’s stopping Jack and Sheila from going back home in not australia doing anything for covid in australia? Unlike scotty they’re not leaving for two weeks on the seaside or ”stopping off” at the pub on a business trip, they’re going back to their job and obligations.

It’s also completely untrue, the federal governmemt has bungled everything so far.

masklinn4• 5 years ago

WTF happened to Australia? I was under the impression it was a "take no shit" kind of place. It seems like they've become some sort of clown world police state. The Government response is completely over the top considering the situation.

It’s because scotty from marketing is very literally worse than useless, wants to appear strong, and visibly brutalising minorities makes the lib and nat electorate very happy.

helloworld11• 5 years ago

To be fair here, Canada has applied certain strict and in some senses possibly absurd measures at COVID control but nothing like the half baked police state nonsense that Australia is applying both internally and along its borders.

As for the U.S. Overall, despite how many others here comment based more on kneejerk emotional dislike of the U.S. government than substantive argument, i'd agree with what you mention: the U.S did scale surprisingly well considering its enormous population, numerous autonomous internal jurisdictions (the states) and diverse social dynamics. Of course it has many deaths, but for a country of 330 million people that is to be expected.

In terms of death ratio compared to many other countries, the U.S hasn't been among the very worst, and has managed to avoid disasters of both the economic and clinical saturation kind (whether by luck or administrative aptitude, or a mix of both across different states) decently enough. That it managed to not do worse than almost 3 dozen other countries without resorting to the kind of draconian bullshit that Australia's government is trying to normalize is a point in favor of the United States

908B64B1972• 5 years ago

I recall Canadians having to wait weeks to maybe book an appointment to get one of the vaccine variant (they wouldn't tell you which one until you showed up in person) while in the US walk-in vaccine appointments were available... at Walmart!

How can they justify the 50+% tax rate to pay for "free" healthcare?

dmz73• 5 years ago

US can "print" world reserve currency at will and borrow from itself without restriction. It isn't surprising that vaccines are so readily available in the US, at the cost of few 10s of billion, that US can just will into existence at any time, they save their entire economy 100s of billions in lost sales. This is why vaccines are free but healthcare is not - healthcare in the US generates 100s of billions per year and keeps people in workforce on both sides - as employees of insurance companies and as employees of other companies that otherwise couldn't afford insurance. Other countries have to actually earn their money to pay for things.

dragonsngoblins• 5 years ago

What? As a resident I think they aren't doing enough. The reason we haven't had much of a problem is because we've been strict. The problems we are having in NSW that I am currently living through now are because they didn't lockdown fast enough and hard enough to deal with the delta strain.

Socialized healthcare isn't the problem. We aren't trying to save the healthcare system we are trying to save lives and stop people getting a disease which often has permanent effects if they do survive it.

Now aside from our COVID response we've become a clown world police state I'll give you that. Our laws about being able to press software engineers into becoming spies for example, or our stance on encryption, or the way the NSW police keep strip searching everyone all the fucking time.

But to suggest we are doing too much to prevent the spread of COVID seems fucking insane to me

byhemechi• 5 years ago

We've kept our numbers low because of the "over the top" reactions you're talking about. You'd be correct that our case fatality rate is higher, but that's not due to the hospitals struggling, it's because out numbers are so low that an outbreak in a few aged care homes seriously skews the data.

Also, US deaths per 100k: 187.3, AU deaths per 100k: 3.6

shell0x• 5 years ago

It is a police state. I moved from Singapore to here and I can't even see any difference.

[ ] human rights [ ] press freedom [ ] privacy

It's more or less the same, except taxes here are higher.

_-david-_• 5 years ago

Australia is returning to its prison colony roots.

notadev• 5 years ago

Just like China!

gumby3• 5 years ago

I was glad for Australia’s straightforward “lock down to zero until we can do something better” strategy but since then several “better”s have arrived and the Morrison government has been unable to accomplish anything. In fact the whole lockdown regime appears to have been a lucky first guess, as no sensible action has subsequently been taken.

And locking your own citizens out has never been legitimately defensible. But Australia has long taken a “fuck you” attitude to her ex pats, unlike other countries who court them as valuable members of the country.

melbournegrad• 5 years ago

Can you show me a country the size of Australia with <1000 COVID deaths?

gumby3• 5 years ago

Indeed, I think Australia got lockdown right to start.

However there were incoherencies in the lockdown (wealthy foreigners and Hollywood stars can come and go; few Australians can get home). The vaccine rollout has been a shitshow; I'm in the US, another nest of incompetence, and got my second shot in April while some of my friends back home (yep, in Melb) just got their first. And the financial support for people who are really suffering has been nothing compared to the States -- so much for helping the Aussie battler. No intelligent followthrough.

And let's not get started on Scotty jetting off to Cornwall uninvited for a seaside trip while everyone else is bottled up at home.

bogomipz• 5 years ago

Wow. In the last week we have seen the Prime Minister call in the Australia Defense Forces to enforce lockdown in Sydney[1]. We have seen the Police guarding apartment blocks to prevent residents from leaving[2] and now there's a ban on foreign residents leaving the country? As if these things weren't jarring enough, Hollywood celebrities seem to have been given great leeway in being able to to come and go as they please.[3]

[1] https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/defence-force-called-in-...

[2] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-27/blacktown-apartment-b...

[3] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-55851074

sjdrc• 5 years ago

It’s next to impossible to actually get into the country at this point in any case. The whole of Australia is only allowing in 1500 people per week into hotel quarantine - a drop from over 3000 heavily lobbied for by the QLD premier who went to the olympics and then thought that she deserved one of the 214 places per day for the whole country more than one of the tens of thousands of Australians who are desperate to get home at the moment.

Meanwhile as mentioned in other comments we are letting in celebrities and sports players - we hosted the bloody tennis early this year and recently in Melbourne there were multiple large sporting events with international teams - why the hell are the government allowing these players to take valuable spots? Not to mention we come out of a serious lockdown and then they immediately allow 20-80 THOUSAND people to go to the stadiums… where there were several covid transmissions.

Screw this countries leadership. I’m in a long distance relationship with someone overseas and there is zero consideration for the severe mental health impacts that this has had on myself and my partner, and zero response to the thousands of other people in a situation similar to mine, or that of people with sick relatives, be it if they need to leave Australia to visit or non Australians arriving into the country. Just one reason why I hate this country and it’s absolutely moronic conservative government filled with literal rapists, Hillsong religious nut jobs, homophobes, bigots, and people who funnel our wealth directly into the pockets of billionaires.

L_2265• 5 years ago

Here's former PM Malcolm Turnbull (knifed by current PM Morrison) sharing a first hand account of a resident leaving for Italy https://twitter.com/TurnbullMalcolm/status/14234269896086937...

Australia to prevent citizens ordinarily resident overseas from leaving

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