The treasurer says today that the international border won't open till 2022 and that it's important that we "follow the medical advice". What is this "medical advice" that everyone seems to be following these days? "Medical advice" seems to cover a multitude of sins - from jailing returning citizens, locking down states and closing borders. Show us the evidence! What is happening in 2022 that renders it safe to open borders then? Why 2022 and not 2023/2024/never?
PM says elimination is not the goal and that borders will reopen when "it is safe to do so". What, like CASA's definition of safety - when zero planes are in the air, when there are zero cases of COVID...?
I suspect the safest thing to do is to have everyone vaccinated, but the govt seems to have shot themselves in the foot on that too - besides botching the rollout, now with minimal/no cases in the community, the side effects of the vaccine are more lethal than COVID and people feel there is no urgency/need to be vaccinated. After all, we're all right, Jack.
I'd love to know what the govt's definition of "safe" is, and how they expect to achieve that in 2022.
I’ve said it earlier and I’ll say it again, Liberal or Labor, ‘Safe’ means ‘electorally’ safe... that is, they aren’t risking next years election to give people their freedoms back.
Once that election is won, it’ll then mysteriously become ‘safe’ for travelers from certain countries/regions, and the vaccinations will be heralded as an unmitigated success to allow for those bubbles and relaxed quarantine requirements... (look at the US relaxing their travel requirements) .
https://www.smh.com.au/business/bank...07-p57q0r.html
...the big business string pullers are already demanding the floodgates open and they do NOT want to pay the wages required to attract the talent, nor provide any costly training to us expensive locals as would have to occur if our borders were to remain closed (they aren’t even attempting to hide this fact). They want the taps for low-wage ‘skilled’ migration turned back on ASAP.
Hard Borders will have to start to loosen because the federal government ain’t getting on with building the quarantine facilities required to funnel masses of people back in. They’ll need the hotel quarantine spots currently used for Australians returning from Europe, the US etc, so that NAB and the like can get their accounting and IT graduates from the subcontinent, and restaurants to get their chefs from the Philippines, etc, etc...
SO, all of a sudden bubbles for the vaccinated become acceptable from Singapore, Europe, the UK the US etc where vaccination rates are high, home quarantine perhaps acceptable from others, reduced quarantine from others... so as not to have those people using up hotel quarantine spots for those other areas that may need 14 days... and on it goes.
The migration Ponzi is far too engrained for us to remain a closed shop for long, but our livelihoods will continue to be sacrificed until the election has been run and done because both major parties have seen just how potent that is with the average voter.