“Papers!”
The heel-clicking functionary barking demands to see the official papers of terrified citizens is a stock image of WWII movies. As is the desperate scramble to get official travel documents.
But this is the reality of 2020 for many Australians. Melbournians are not only under curfew for the first time in the city’s history, but citizens must produce official papers on demand from police and army patrolling the streets.
As for getting in or out of the country – good luck.
Unless you’ve the money or, more likely, the backing of a powerful lobby group.
Australians living overseas fear the tentative green light given to international students to enter the country will further delay their return home.
Universities are desperate to start milking their Chinese cash-cow again. In the early days of the pandemic, universities tried to circumvent border controls by literally paying foreign students to take a two-week “quarantine” holiday in Dubai before entering Australia.
Universities are still pushing to place foreign students ahead of Australian citizens.
Under a trial program, 300 students from China, Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore will fly into Adelaide in early September. The students and their universities will pay for the quarantine at a hotel in Adelaide which can accommodate up to 1000 people at any one time.
Expat Australians, however, are concerned the student scheme will lead to a further hike in already skyrocketing return flight fares, effectively locking them out of their country.
The government has effectively shut down national carrier Qantas for at least the rest of the year. The remaining airlines have had to drastically reduce passenger capacity. Naturally, they’re trying to maximise their income by offering only Business and First Class seats.
Scores of Australians have reported being told to pay or risk being bumped from flights.
Perth mother-of-three Rebecca Overmars has been living in the Netherlands since 2009 and wants to return home in October.
She says she has been quoted €11,000 ($18,160) by Qatar Airways on top of the fares she has already paid for her family to get home.
“It’s been enormously stressful not knowing if our flights will go ahead or not and whether we should upgrade to business class to have any hope of getting in,” Overmars said.
Currently, the cost for an ordinary Australian trying to get home is anywhere north of $14,000, including airfares and quarantine costs.
This is being called “price gouging”, but it’s a basic rule of economics: scarcity coupled with high demand drives up price.
The government is trying to make the same argument regarding prioritising international students.
“International education is a huge services export industry for Australia and for South Australia,” Senator Birmingham said.
“It underpins many thousands of jobs and it is important that we work out how we get international students back to Australia safely and appropriately.
Which is all well and good, but the fact remains that this is a scarcity entirely of the government’s making.
At the same time, Birmingham warned Australians to expect restrictions on entering and leaving the country will remain “well into the future”[…]
Since July the state and federal governments have capped the number of Australians who can come home.
Just 350 people can fly into Sydney each day, while only 525 can fly into Perth per week, 500 into Brisbane and 500 into Adelaide until October 24.
Except, as New Zealanders might have noticed as well, governments whacking ordinary citizens with an iron rod seem only too happy to grease the skids for favoured elites.
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