Geez imagine how angry you’d be if you were in any other mainland state, where the failures and incompetence are so much worse and the accountability is zero.
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No other state has been subjected to what Victorians have… so yes I’d rather be in any other state.
And then
At some point the hotel operators will be hoping for their businesses to be returned to normal and open for travellers. Hotel quarantine cannot continue indefinitely, alternatives must be found.
Every hotel room has air conditioning and hallways. That is the issue. And the aircon ventilation systems are shared. So if two people are using the aircon at the same time guests are spreading the same air. Also Howard springs does all covid checks outside. Same cannot be done in hotels. Even in Adelaide.
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I was saying that it would be a waste of resources and money to build new facilities at this point in time given the vaccine is coming soon, so we have no choice but to just wait it out and use hotel quarantine.
If we were going to build a dedicated hotel quarantine facility in remote and regional areas, it should’ve been done around the start of the pandemic back in March.
When I said “indefinitely”, I meant that it would have to continue until overseas travellers are no longer required to do 14 days quarantine, which I imagine would be when the majority of the world is vaccinated. God knows when that will be though.
Probably years (potentially even decades) from now.
Yet of the 12 other staff members working at the time, 11 had already tested negative this morning.
I do feel frustrated by how heavy this state wide lockdown is when everything so far still seems like a contained cluster. In all states that have had this strain these decisions have definitely been based more off fear than any detected wider transmission. Although as long as this lasts just the 5 days to ensure all angles are covered then I can deal with it.
Interesting being out today. In my local area the roads were completely dead like the start of the last stage 4. Even on my walk the bike path / parks that I walk along were a lot quieter than they were the last lockdown. Parks were so busy last time. I think being shorter people are just staying home more. Although of the people I walked passed I did notice much less mask wearing outdoors, a lot less. Last time you rarely saw anyone without one so it kind of indicates that a lot of people aren’t too concerned this time. I also went to the supermarket and it was quite busy the and only real place I saw a lot of people today.
I have read through the Sydney Morning Herald and noticed that extra contract tracers were brought in to help with the job in the aftermath of the Holiday Inn quarantine hotel cluster that has sent the entire Victoria into a 5-day lockdown. HOwever COVID Quarantine VIctoria Commissioner Emma Cassar rejected claims that a hotel guest was blamed for the virus that spread through a nebuliser. They claim that there is no record of a nebuliser in this system.
If it’s 5 days, if that’s all it is and we revert back to what we had some trust might be restored. I sense that they’ll take “safe steady steps” and the settings we previously had won’t be reinstated as “they’re simply not safe, if we did that now we’ll be fine for a while and then be bouncing in and out of lockdown” I can hear the words coming out of his mouth now.
Same here in inner east, quite low compliance, I was one of them too in all honesty when there was few people around, on the main strips I put it on and to duck in to grab a coffee etc but I just feel it is not a proportionate response. I had two groups of cops come past and they said nothing - probably over enforcing these rules too.
Herald Sun reports that florists usually turn over three months of trade on Valentine’s Day, and Victorian florists have taken a hit of $36m from not being allowed to operate.
Ouch.
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My local Kmart I was at last night on closing had tables of fresh flowers for $2 each. Roses stems $1. They were $25 bucks a box full price. They said they got pallets of flowers hours before closing Friday night for the weekend with no option to essentially give them away
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You’ve made the same argument a few times. I simply disagree. A pandemic doesn’t automatically mean you have to return to Australia if you’ve been living overseas. People make choices, there are consequences. Right now we need a better system and suspension is the best course of action until we have a system that works.
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Australian citizens have the right to come home and do so for all sorts of reasons. Hotel quantine has had major issues but most of which can be resolved with some common sense and forsight. If I was overseas trying to come home for months and months and been trying to come with lots of flights cancelled at the last minute.
Personally I think they should make use of other facilities such as detention centres military facilities which are better equipped. Queensland building the facility at Toowoomba makes a lot of sense to me and they should go ahead and build it. They don’t need federal funding to do it.
I agree 100%
I’m disappointed the media and public have not pressured the government more. I’m really dissapointed when I see the vitriol like “you left. Your choice. Now you can deal with it. We don’t want you back here, we’ve been through enough”
Australia signed a treaty that guarantees all citizens freedom of movement which means no citizen can be denied entry into their country. All citizens have the same benefits whether they reside inside Australia or out. That is the beauty of citizenship and being Australian
We can’t say in times of crisis - now is when your citizenship stops working.
The Australians who have been through the worst of Covid and the ones who are at most risk or illness / hospitalization/ death / financial ruin / suicide etc, are the ones OUTSIDE Australia during all this.
It’s sad to see that some aussies don’t have good will or compassion towards other aussies who are doing it tougher than them.
I think this is a humanitarian crisis for AU. The NY Times even called it such
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I couldn’t have said it better myself. The way the government and the public at large are treating stranded Australians overseas is disgusting. To be fair it’s the same vitriol that gets spewed from state to state when there are outbreaks in one location “keep Victorians out of our state we don’t want them here”.
People are overseas for all matter of reasons. My best friend has lived in London for 8 years now largely he has built a life there but if tomorrow it all fell down for him he has a right as an Australian citizen to return home to friends and family. Pandemic or no pandemic.
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I completely agree but this shouldn’t be a state issue. The federal government has simply not done enough. This is their job. They have just hand balled this job off to the states like they have done with most things during this pandemic.
It’s a federal issue so why should QLD put their money towards it to build the facility? The federal government have to start doing something!
Like the bushfires Scott Morrison has done nothing during this pandemic. He simply cannot lead.
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I also completely agree that it should be a federal issue, but at this stage do we want the federal government taking over? The states have all learnt so many lessons from running the program for the past 12 months and whilst there are problems and breaches have occured to have the feds start from scratch could be even more devestating to the community.
Well it’s their responsibility. So yes we do want them taking over. The states have other issues to deal with. And these snap lockdowns are costing their state’s economy. I’m not saying they shouldn’t do hotel quarantine at all. But at a really reduced capacity. While the federal government can take the rest at facilities run and set up by them.
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The thing is that Australia technically isn’t denying entry to citizens - as long as you can get on board a plane and you’re a citizen, you can. The thing that’s unique to Australia is that we don’t have easily accessible land borders - we MUST enter by land or sea…and that is probably one of the things that has saved us from mass COVID infection.
There’s nothing stopping you from sailing to Australia as a private citizen - they’re not going to bring out a gunboat to stop you, but obviously not too many people have the means to do that. 100 years ago we would have said the same thing with the Spanish Flu - not too many Aussies would have had the means to travel overseas.
Now the main problem is how can we bring all these people home whilst guaranteeing that the virus will not spread to the point where we’re left in a state similar to the countries these people are leaving from? It would take an absolutely mammoth logistical task to allow such a thing to happen.
Home self-isolation clearly does not work, we saw in the early stages of the pandemic here that people were going out and about as if nothing was wrong.
We could say ‘all Australian citizens can come home without restriction for the next month’, fill the jumbo jets full of them and call it settled, shut the borders tight and deal with the resulting COVID outbreaks due to people breaking self-isolation (which is extremely common in the UK/Canada/Europe where 14 day isolation has been introduced).
But then one month later we’d have thousands of people complaining that the now watertight border closure is hurting them because they didn’t want to come home in the first mass repatriation phase because they may have still had active work contracts or some other excuse.
I believe there are quite a number of people who hold Australian citizenship who do not have substantial ties to this country (either people who acquired citizenship from a parent but has never stepped foot in the country, or someone who has come here, stayed long enough to get PR and citizenship and then jetted off back to their home country for a number of years) but want to come here because we’re better off.
IMO these people should be left at the bottom of the pile, but I suspect this would be politically unpopular because it would imply that there are two levels of citizenship.
The first thing I would have done way back in March 2020 would have been to strike out the Australian residency requirement for welfare payments so Aussies aren’t left destitute while stranded overseas. In many countries the JobSeeker payment would actually be enough to live off of (and in some places, VERY comfortably), and probably would have placated the worries of many stuck overseas.
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