ABROAD AND HELPLESS
GOLD Coasters stranded overseas and desperate to come home have a glimpse of hope today.
Their lot has improved slightly, with National Cabinet agreeing to increase gradually the cap on numbers allowed to trickle home.
The problem at this end has been the states’ preparedness to absorb the people repatriated home into quarantine. With the intake to be boosted, Queensland will start accepting more.
But as demonstrated in our report today on the single mum stuck overseas and pleading to return home to her 13-year-old autistic son, the plight of many Australians stuck abroad is not their fault. The last thing Lynne Stewart would have wanted to do at the height of the pandemic in late July and August was to have to seek an exemption and rush overseas after receiving word her mother was dying. Sadly, she was denied those precious moments to say goodbye, with the elderly woman dying before she could finalise her travel.
Like so many who are the victims of the fallout from a global shutdown, Ms Stewart had no choice but to press ahead. As executor, she had to fly to Scotland where affairs had to be wound up and a funeral organised.
That heartbreak has been compounded by the trial of trying to return. Flights have been cancelled. A 10-hour wait on the phone to speak to an official on the Australian High Commission hotline in London resulted in a “nothing we can do” response to her pleas for help to come home, where her son is being cared for by friends. Ms Stewart is also frantic about covering her mortgage, and has her own health issues.
At the heart of her problem, apart from the slow process in Australia of allowing people to return, is the reluctance of the airlines to fly to Australia with – as Ms Stewart says – limits of perhaps just 30 passengers.
The pandemic is still running hot in Europe, so strict restrictions are understandable. But when we in Queensland see social distancing ignored daily and large groups gathering at the football and on our headlands, we can understand the frustration felt by Aussies who are testing negative to the virus and wanting to come home, but are left dangling by the airlines and a nation dragging its feet.
The Federal Opposition has questioned why Australia is not using military aircraft to bring Australians home. It is a good point. Even if they had to pay, people would be jumping at the chance.
Queensland’s decision yesterday to reopen its borders to the ACT next week is welcome news and a strong indication that at least within Australia, there is a thaw coming in the freeze on cross-border travel that has been causing so much angst and economic hardship.
Our other report on the student nurses who now appear set to be able to return from NSW is also cause to take heart. Many are international students and for a while there, it appeared they might be stuck in NSW, where they had been doing their practical training, with no means of returning and having to pay double rent.
It shows that a warm heart still beats sometimes in bureaucracy.