NEWS Quarantine fee is a burden

A FAMILY trying to relocate to Darwin has described the Gunner Government’s forced quarantine fee as “unfair” for people wanting to call the Territory home.

Lori Vawser, husband Josh and their two children planned to relocate from Melbourne back to Darwin in August but put their plans on hold after learning the $5000 in total quarantine fees would blow their moving costs to more than $13,000.

“We’d have to do quarantine and we’d be moving with dogs as well so we’d have to put the dogs in the kennels,” Mrs Vawser said. “It’s quite expensive … with this added cost it literally could be blown out until maybe next year now.

“We only moved from there for work … we cannot wait to get back but given the situation, it’s kind of taken a toll. We were so ready to start putting everything in place and finding out we’d have to pay that extra $5000, it’s been hard.”

Mrs Vawser felt the fee was unfair for people like her family who wanted to live and contribute to the Territory.

“I understand there’s a reason why they did it but at the same time, we don’t have that extra money just lying around,” she said.

“We want to move back there because we like the lifestyle, and what it means to us to be able to raise our kids in that space and contribute to the economy there as well because we’d be both working.

“To be told that you then have to pay the $5000 on top of that, on top of already having two weeks isolation that we would be without pay because you’re obviously not working, that adds up quite a lot and it can put you off.”

She begged Chief Minister Michael Gunner to announce plans for the borders.

“Even a date or some sort of an idea of when it’s going to be lifted or anything would give us a light at the end of the tunnel,” she said.

“At the moment it looks like a dead end. That’s what it feels like.

“We would definitely be back there as soon as we could because we just love it.”

Mr Gunner maintained the fee was necessary. “At the end of May we will provide our update on what June will look like for Territorians,” he said.