
Political irony doesn’t get much better than this: Scott Morrison having to interrupt his promotion of a new third-of-a-billion dollar package to invest in systems to protect Australia’s cattle from external biosecurity threats, to put out a firestorm over his criminalisation of Australians returning from India. All of which is the product of his failure to invest in systems to protect Australians themselves from external biosecurity threats.
When even hard-right commentators and the Institute of Public Affairs are attacking you, you know you’ve crossed some hitherto-unknown line of offensiveness — and that’s why Scott Morrison, who hoped to devote yesterday afternoon and this morning to a cattle-slaughtering conference in Rockhampton, suddenly felt the urge to do both major breakfast TV shows today to defend his criminalisation as non-racist.
Let’s tackle that first. India’s current level of active cases, according to Worldometer’s COVID page, is 2481 per 1 million people. The widespread assumption, however, is that due to lack of testing, the actual level of active cases is much higher. Let’s quadruple the number to 10,000 per 1 million. Or even quintuple it to 12,500. How does that place India internationally? Still far lower than the United States, where the level is, despite extensive vaccination and a significant drop since the Trump administration was kicked out, at over 20,000 per million.


Some other notable countries are above the Indian level — France (over 13,000); the Netherlands (12,900), Sweden (14,000); Hungary (23,000).
But it is only arrivals from India that prompted Greg Hunt on Saturday to declare in a media release that “failure to comply with an emergency determination under the Biosecurity Act 2015 may incur a civil penalty of 300 penalty units, five years’ imprisonment, or both.”
But in trying to dismiss the questioning of the criminalisation, Morrison told one of his breakfast interlocutors today “the likelihood of anything like that occurring is pretty much zero”.
So, who is right — Morrison or Hunt? If the chances of it occurring are zero, why did Hunt say it at all? Is anything Hunt says in a media release only provisional until the prime minister corrects it? The whole thing looks like a dog-whistle that exploded in the user’s mouth when he tried to blow it.
It’s unhelpful for Morrison, of course, that’s it’s not merely otherwise profileless brown Australian citizen affected by the criminalisation, but Australian cricket figures, like Michael Slater, who accused Morrison of having blood on his hands.
Not merely did the government create this firestorm about racism all by itself, it is the author of the disastrous situation it now finds itself in insisting that Australians remain in harm’s way in India — many of them people who have been trying to come home for the best part of a year.
It is Morrison’s government that has refused to invest in appropriate COVID-19 quarantine facilities, leaving the heavy lifting of quarantine to state governments, in spite of s.51 of the constitution, which clearly makes quarantine a Commonwealth responsibility.
And it is the Morrison government that has dragged its heels on bringing home stranded Australians, despite the PM’s commitment last September to “get as many people home, if not all of them, by Christmas”. More than 36,000 Australians remain stranded overseas three months after that deadline — the most in the UK and India.
As with the vaccine rollout, the extra time the Morrison government has had due to Australia’s ability to contain the virus effectively has been wasted. No quarantine facilities have been built. Tens of thousands of Australians remained stranded despite celebrities, business figures and former and serving Coalition ministers being able to come and go from the country, often without hotel quarantining.
That leaves the government stewing in a poisonous mix of incompetence, complacency and racism, and panicking that it’s been called out on it, even by its allies. It’s announcing more money for beef biosecurity while the lack of biosecurity for returning humans is causing havoc.
Michael Slater makes a fair point. If one of the 9000 stranded Australians in India contract COVID and die or suffer permanent injury as a result of the government’s refusal to bring them home and provide adequate facilities for their arrival, who’s fault is that? Will Morrison accept responsibility for it?
The likelihood of anything like that occurring is pretty much zero.
See how power works in this country.
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Good article
It’s all so predictable I’m starting to wonder if he sold his soul to the Devil, for the PM job. What next – burning witches at the stake? Come to think of it, this mob would be up for it. That may sound crazy, but you know it’s true.
The Devil is his leader, and he’s ambitious for him!
He pats him on the shoulder every day.
You assume that Morrispin has a soul.
He can’t have sold it – wouldn’t be worth 2 bob.
I suspect that some actually also believe he has a conscience.
Scottie from marketing is a functioning psychopath who has neither a conscience or a soul.
100%. Morrison gives me goosebumps. His body language when he doesn’t get his own way. The seething flash of anger that replaces that infuriating smirk. And that photo of “Jen” in her mourning gown straight out of The Handmaidens Tale standing obediently behind her husband as he writes his letter to the Queen.
There’s no politics or ideology in a pandemic, and I am constantly taken aback by those who seek to inject it into it. Quoteth Scott Morrison… What a joke!
I wonder what Dan Andrews would say about that.
Dan Andrews, the man who nearly broke his back trying to get things right for his people despite everything that Morrison & Co threw at him.
I know what all my Victorian friends & family are saying. Its a big thank you to Andrews for getting them through a long tough winter while the federal government politicised the battle against covid EVERY DAY. Morrison is a maggot.
Maggots aren’t so bad, Penny. They can fight infection in wounds. That is more than Our Beloved Leader can do.
True. Maggots have a use. I have more respect for maggots than the PM.
They don’t actually fight infection – rather, they consume dead & necrotic flesh, cleansing the affected area.
Imagine the feast Scummo would provide.
I signed up to Crikey to supposedly get balanced news coverage….yet here we are.
Yet another Australian media article that conveniently leaves out facts in order to suit the narrative.
Yet again, the comparisons with the UK and US are selective and fail to take into account the ridiculously high percentage of arrivals from India that are positive on arrival. Infinitely higher than the US. The risk to our hotel quarantine system and the broader local community is not from the percentage of a countriy’s population that are infected, but the percentage or returnees that are. That is a uniquely Indian problem at the moment and, having worked in India myself, I suspect the pre-departure negative tests arent worth the paper they are written on. If cash can get you a drivers licence without sitting a test, then of course it can get you a negative test.
The second point that is conveniently left out by the anti-morrison media (I’m an ALP voter who hates him, BTW) is that New Zealand banned flights from India long before we did. So have a dozen other countries.
Yet for some reason, we are racist and horrible and they arent. Why do you think everyone is closing their borders to India?
The fact is this; the government followed the advice of the CMOs to respond to a clear threat to Australia. The biosecurity act is the tool. That act comes with punitive deterrents.
Criticise their breathtaking incompetence on vaccinations, quarantine or failure to target Jobkeeper fairly. But this criticism of the government as implementing an unfair, racist policy is simply disingenuous.
As for millionaire cricket commentator Slater, who somehow was allowed to travel to a high risk country to commentate on sport, and is now sitting in the Maldives drinking cocktails with Bollywood elite, seriously? He gets to have the moral high ground? Please!
They closed the border to China when the Italians had higher COVID levels. They closed the borders to India when many other pale countries have higher COVID levels. Any decent government would be getting Australians out of India ASAP. Well, they would have already done so. Our hospitals aren’t overrun, and of course we should have proper quarantine facilities by now instead of this stopgap.
It’s damaging Australia’s reputation internationally. I spoke to a friend in Thailand on the weekend, an 80-something woman retired on her rural prawn farm, and she asked me why the Australian government was stopping their own citizens from coming home. She’s not an activist, she’s not online, she just watches the nightly news on the local Thai channels. The Australian governments actions are so disgraceful they made the Thai language news reports.
My federal government disgusts me, geejay.
It is so mean-spirited, selfish, narrow-minded and unimaginative it is dragging the Australian people into the gutter with it. This is apart from being spectacularly incompetent in all areas of endeavour.
I also suspect many of its members are dishonest.
This gutter to which you refer – surely the salient point is that some are looking at the stars but most are face down and perfectly content that way.
Your last sentence is way too kind. I know in my bones that the LNP are rotten to the core. Everywhere you look are signs of a corrupt regime. From Crown’s existence as the washing machine of all washing machines, through to our alliance with the gun toting, country busting Americans.
I like the Crown washing machine metaphor.
Thank you. Thats what it is. All those ill-gotten gains washed & tumbled dry quicker than it takes to shoot and stuff a wombat.
Wombats are difficult to stuff, without a couple of sacks of sand handy.
As AUSTRAC records show, an astonishing number of clients win just under $10,000, often nightly.
Week in, month out.
Tedious way to launder millions but better than paying tax and being questioned on the source of the ‘income’.
Oddly, this is one of the few countries which do NOT treat gambling wins as income, unless one registers as a professional gambler.
As did David Walsh, the founder of MONA, payed tax on every zac and still had enough to be a public benefactor.
An accurate assessment
I think it is the severe penalties rather than the stopping of flights that people find offensive
Its both. Its clear that India is being treated far differently to the USA where MOST of the covid cases have come from so far.
Australians were prevented from travelling interstate or inter bubble, of have you forgotten that?
Unlikely but she can’t construe it as racist so dropped down the memory hole.
Flight bans, yes, but I’m not sure NZ went so far as to criminalise returnees from India. I’m not sure any country has done this to their own citizens trying to get home.
How would like it if your spouse was turned into a criminal and jailed for trying to get back to be with their children at a very troubled time?
We are closing the border to AUSTRALIAN CITIZENS because the useless federal government failed to do anything about quarantine. The same government that let billionaires do what ever they wanted & travel where ever they wanted during our worst lockdowns.
The fact is Australians are generally racist and don’t like Indians or Chinese. India won’t pick up the slack from China because India understands what we are.
Speak for yourself.
I said generally but you’re very special.
I just try to avoid negative generalisations about whole groups of people.
Unfortunately this is somewhat true and many Australians are oblivious, since 2007/8 (?) when there was a ‘testy’ cricket series coinciding with attacks on Indian students in Melbourne, latter often dismissed with the ‘mini skirt’ defence.
Two Indian friends from Delhi who studied in Central Europe, one considered Oz after medical studies (vs. Norway) but afraid of ‘being killed’ (presently working in Delhi….) and another works Citibank Central Europe, eligible for skilled migration to both Canada and Australia (had short stint in Sydney) no because Oz is racist and Canada is boring….
In my experience, Australians don’t perceive themselves as racist however they often do exhibit unconscious racist tendencies. In my experience again, this is often displayed in those with limited education levels but is by no means limited to that group. Again, this is a generalization. Education and exposure is the cure for most issues of this nature. One caveat, the Morriscum Federal Government are definately leaning towards the “racist” side of Australian Culture.
I don’t think it’s general Tony. More widespread than it should be but not overwhelming. But the calculation by the government must have been that they would pick up the bigot votes without losing too many other votes. Apparently they were wrong but that will be clearer when the election comes around.
The government must be very proud of going after ‘the bigot’ vote. The LNP are such wonderful role models for us all.
Your arguments may all be rational and the issue isn’t stopping flights, but criminalising australian citizens coming home. That should never be the case. A government should be doing as much as possible to assist australians in getting them out of harms way. They are doing exactly the opposite. What’s so hard to understand about that?
Yet again, the comparisons with the UK and US are selective and fail to take into account the ridiculously high percentage of arrivals from India that are positive on arrival.
Circular argument. The high percentage who are positive is almost certainly due to their being forced to stay in India before being allowed in an orderly fashion to return. It’s an absurd situation, where first they had to wait for ever to get what should, for our citizens, be matter-of-course permission to return (along with many other Australians in various countries) and second, are now forced to stay there indefinitely, facing egregious punishment if they attempt to bypass. New Zealand citizens and their families are allowed to travel home even if they are coming from designated ‘high-risk’ countries (including India, Pakistan, Brazil, PNG).
In any case, the percentage already positive is somewhat irrelevant, is it not? The facilities should have been constructed to allow for that, rather than persist with a makeshift system which actually facilitates the transmission of the virus within the hotels.
Your sarcastic playing-the-man comments about Slater completely ignore the substance of his absolutely pertinent comments. A ban will only increase the proportion of waiting citizens who contract the virus and may die. You seem unaware of the fact we’re talking about Australian citizens. The ban is clearly discriminatory, whether that is on the basis of race or not.
The USA still remains the biggest source of covid 19 arriving in Ausralia. An inconvenient fact for the LNP.
Good points, well set out.
I am sorry that you seem to have misunderstood what the outrage is about in this instance.
It is called racism!
When we paused the flights from PNG 6 weeks ago for 2 weeks, both Cairns and Townsville’s ICU beds were full of Covid19 patients from PNG. Some had to be transferred to Brisbane for treatment.
Most of these people were Australian FIFO mine workers. They have recovered and returned to work, vaccinated.
Did anyone, in this instance, get up and give a dog whistle speech threatening 5 years jail and or a $66,000 if any Australian tried to come home via another country or two??
The answer would be a resounding NO.
What, in essence, was the difference between PNG workers and the Australians stranded in India?
The inherent racism of a threat of 5 years jail time demonstrated by the lily white, supposedly christian Prime Minimal and his lazy government.
They have had a report recommending building specialized quarantine facilities for over a year as hotel quarantine is inherently unsuitable and they have done nothing except make more announcements and hire more consultants.
Michael Slater nailed it with “How dare they treat us like this?”
Prime minimal…excellent!
WRONG. The most case have been from the USA.
THE FACT IS Morrison & the LNP are DOG WHISTLERS OF THE WORST KIND.
This time the dogs don’t seem to be listening.
Didn’t the World Health Organisation find that the amount of under reporting in India could be as high as 20 to 30 times?? That’s potentially 50,000-75,000 cases per million…somewhat higher than the countries mentioned above.
Do you really think a country like the US did honest reporting/testing?
But Mr. Trump said, …..
This mob knows as much about “governing” as a blow-fly – a lot of noise but bugger all help.
They spent all that money on Jobkeeper – some of it going to actual workers that needed it (when their business donor mates were salting it away to their bottom line) – when they could have extended some of that “help” (instead of hand-feeding their mates) to those stuck overseas, to get back?
Klewso, you don’t waste good taxpayer money on the needy, they’ll only waste it on necessities. You entrust it to the rich who’ve already proved that they know what to do with it.
Hey klewso concentrate less on their noise and worry more about the maggots there dropping –
Eating away at the fabric of our society!
They’re not helping either.
Poor analogy – maggots eat only dead & rotting flesh.
Unless you are suggesting that describes (many) aspects of our society.
Now that I think about it…
They are not here to ‘govern’. They are here to enrich themselves & their mates ………