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RUBY:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am.

Right now there are thousands of Australian citizens trapped in India unable to get home, as the Covid-19 pandemic continues to devastate the country.

Archival tape -- News Reporter 1:

“The federal government is banning its own citizens from returning to Australia if they've been in India in the previous two weeks…”

RUBY:

Last week the Australian government took the unprecedented step of barring all Australians in India from returning.

Archival tape -- News Reporter 1:

“It’s the first time in history that Australia has blocked its own citizens from returning home.”

RUBY:

That announcement was followed up by the threat of up to five years in jail for anyone who broke the decree.

Archival tape -- Unknown Person 1:

“Anyone who does not comply with these rules, faces pretty severe penalties…”

RUBY:

The legality of the move - which the government says is about protecting Australia from the virus - has been questioned by experts.

Archival tape -- News Reporter 2:

“The Human Rights Commission has raised serious concerns about the government's India flight ban, saying tough new restrictions could breach international law.”

RUBY:

Critics of the policy have also pointed out no such bans were put in place during outbreaks of a similar scale in Europe and the US.

Archival tape -- Unknown Person 2:

“The ban is racist, it's possibly illegal, it’s not supported by the medical advice and it’s got to go.”

RUBY:

Today, Indian-Australian economist Gabriela D’Souza on the situation in India right now, and what the federal government’s new travel ban says about how we treat our own.

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RUBY:

Gaby, the Australian government has banned Australian citizens and permanent residents in India from returning to this country. As an Indian Australian watching this situation unfold over the last week or so, what have you been thinking?

GABRIELA:

Yeah, it's been kind of heartbreaking to witness, you know first, just looking at the absolute devastation and hearing, you know these horror stories that really don't feel real about what's happening in India and then fearing the worst for the people that you know, who live there.

And then, feeling like your government's just turned its back on people like you and people who are in this situation. It's just awful. And, you know, having been in a similar situation early on where I felt like I'd been abandoned with no repatriation flights and no hope of coming back. This just drives the knife even further.

RUBY:

Can you tell me about the situation that you were in? You travelled to India to be with your family. Can you tell me about that decision and what it was like in India?

GABRIELA:

Yes, so my dad passed away, sadly, in June last year, and I wasn't able to make it back very quickly and you know my dad was laid to rest without me being there, about three months later, in September, I was able to go back to India and just be with my mom and spend some time with her and my brother. And I really appreciated that time to be able to grieve this huge loss in my family with them.

And after about a month, I started to make moves to come back to Australia. And I started to look for flights and it was just really, really difficult before I left, the government had made some remarks saying that they would have all Australians back by December. And that was just not that was just not the case. There were just very few repatriation flights to the extent they existed and commercial flights were really expensive.

People say, people seem to think that, you know, why haven't you just gone back to Australia when they look at stranded Australians and like, well, you know, it's so easy. You just jump on a flight, but it's really not. We have a lot of systems in place that have restricted the supply of tickets. We have a really strict you know hotel quarantine system. Obviously, we've got really strict caps on our flights.

So I ended up having to stick around for Christmas and New Year and started to try and come back again towards the end of January. And then in February, I had a really great travel agent who was helping me out. A friend of mine who just basically left no stone unturned in trying to get me back to Australia.

RUBY:

Mm and what is the situation for your family who are in India? Are they stuck there? Are they trying to come back?

GABRIELA:

My mom is an Indian citizen, as is my brother. And so much as I would love them to be here with me, where it's safe and you know where I can, I can have them live with me, that's just not an option that's open to me. So I, it breaks my heart that there's not more that I can do. So they are Indian citizens and so they really can't go anywhere.

RUBY:

Hmm. And so you returned to Australia before this current wave of Covid-19 in India. But what is it like there at the moment? What are your family telling you?

GABRIELA:

It's pretty bad.

Archival tape -- News Reporter 3:

“Breaking news coming in this morning where India has broken all previous records of the highest single day rise in cases…”

GABRIELA:

I'm fairly lucky in that my family live in a state where it hasn't got as bad as, say, in Delhi or in Bombay or in Pune.

Archival tape -- News Reporter 4:

“Makeshift funeral piles burn around the clock. Crematoriums are running out of space too.”

GABRIELA:

Those major cities are really doing it tough.

Archival tape -- Unknown Person 2:

“I begged him. I literally started crying in front of him. But please, I just need one bed for her…”

GABRIELA:

I read a story the other day about kids who are starting to be orphaned because they had lost their parents through to Covid.

Archival tape -- News Reporter 5:

“Nishiyama also has a picture of a mother in law, Beina, who struggled for oxygen and died when she couldn't get a ventilator in the country's capital Delhi.”

GABRIELA:

The fact that there aren't enough oxygen tanks and it's, it's just it just feels like a bit of a warzone at the moment.

Archival tape -- Unknown Person 3:

“You, you told me that, you know, that there is a bed you told me on the helpline number. That’s why I came here…”

GABRIELA:

Goa, which is why my family is, it's not too bad. The hospitals are starting to get to capacity. And because it's a bit more regional, the quality of the hospitals isn't that great. So I really worry for them. And you know, what will happen to them should they get Covid, which is just a horrible thing to have to think about.

Archival tape -- News Reporter 6:

“The death toll in parts of India, both metropolitan and rural, is staggering.”

“Sir for one minute come and look at my mother, a man pleads. A doctor follows him to the ambulance and prepares to say the words he’s had to say over and over in the past day alone: she’s no more.”

GABRIELA:

But you know, they're doing everything they can to remain safe and to remain indoors and just kind of waiting for it to pass to be honest.

I've spoken to so many of my friends and extended family just you know, there's just a really there's a collective fear and there's a real helplessness as well amongst people who live here, who have family in India and who are just feeling helpless about that situation.

RUBY:

We’ll be back in a moment.

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RUBY:

Gaby, when this outbreak in India began, we started to see some calls here in Australia, from state Premiers - notably Western Australia’s Mark McGowan - to stop all flights from India.

Archival tape -- Mark McGowan:

“Look I support a suspension, because it’s putting at risk this country…”

RUBY:

Not long after that, Scott Morrison made the announcement that - under the biosecurity act - no Australians in India would be allowed to return.

Archival tape -- Scott Morrison:

"I mean there is a raging pandemic and we need to just continue to take decisions that are in the best health interests of Australia.”

RUBY:

And that was followed up by a late night press release making it clear the kinds of penalties a person would face if they did somehow get back into Australia.

Archival tape -- Scott Morrison:

“We've done all the right things to keep Australia safe during this pandemic. This is another very difficult decision. I feel terribly for the Indian community.”

RUBY:

There’s been a lot of talk about this announcement - and the fact that it’s more extreme than any other travel bans that have been put in place over the past year or so. So how rare is it for a country to bar its own citizens from returning?

GABRIELA:

So we know India is going through an awful, awful second wave of this virus, but we know that even when the UK and the US had their second waves, you know their per capita cases were a lot higher than ours and we never banned them. We never said that permanent residence or Australian citizens who are in the UK or the US couldn't come to Australia. Why have we done that for India?

You know these people are our responsibility. They are our citizens, you know. And I did have an Indian passport before I became Australian. And when you become Australian, you give up your Indian citizenship because India doesn't allow you to have a dual citizenship.

So for a lot of these people, you know Australia is the only home they know in terms of where they're from. And it's really just galling that the government's taken this incredibly strict stance on migrants.

Archival tape -- Alan Tudge:

“Oh this is a temporary measure which we’ll relook at in a few weeks time…”

GABRIELA:

So if you look at what Minister Tudge, the Minister for Education, said about this issue.

Archival tape -- Alan Tudge:

“About 15% of our Howard Springs facility now has Covid in it. And nearly all of that is from returning Indians in recent weeks…”

GABRIELA:

You know he talked about the issue at Howard Springs and how there'd been quite a few positive cases, but he referred to the people there as Indians. He didn't refer to them as Australians.

Archival tape -- Alan Tudge:

“And in Howard Springs it’s 15% now. Nearly all of which have been brought about from Indians coming in recently…”

GABRIELA:

Now, the interesting thing about Howard Springs is that you have to be an Australian citizen. And, of course, there'll be some permanent residents as well in that facility. So these people are Australian, they're Australian in documentation, and they've signed up to Team Australia. They've taken the pledge. But to Ministers in the government, they're still Indians.

RUBY:

Mm hmm. And. Let's talk a bit about what the response has been to this policy, because I think in the past, travel bans have been somewhat popular among people who are obviously fearful of the virus. But there has been a backlash, I think we've seen, to this particular announcement, and that has come from some unexpected places.

GABRIELA:

Yes, so I think I know what you're getting at there. You know, we did see the first wave of backlash from, you know, migrant communities and peak bodies.

Archival tape -- News Reporter 7:

“How is the Australian Indian community perceiving this travel ban?”

Archival tape -- Unknown Person 4:

“They are very much frustrated and they’re feeling left out and second class citizens feeling out sitting in India, saying why is Australia’s government abandoning us?”

GABRIELA:

But when the thing came in about possible jail terms and fines for you know Australian citizens and banning them from effectively banning them from entering their own country, that's when things got extremely heated.

Archival tape -- Karl Stefanovic:

“Jailing and fining returning Aussies, I mean as a sitting PM it’s incredibly heartless…”

Archival tape -- Scott Morrison:

“Well Karl, as I’ve said…”

GABRIELA:

And then we saw the likes of Andrew Bolt and the IPA come out and say that this is unacceptable.

Archival tape -- Andrew Bolt:

“Are we really saying that if these Australians get sick with the virus we want them to stay in a country where they will battle to even find a hospital bed, or a hospital with oxygen! We’d say that?”

GABRIELA:

So we’ve seen the Prime Minister come forward and maybe even some would say walk it back…

Archival tape -- Scott Morrison:

“I think it would be remote, a very remote circumstance that would see them imposed in these circumstances…”

GABRIELA:

And say that some of these sanctions might not necessarily be used and that they'll be done by my read of that was that they'd be done on a case by case basis.

Archival tape -- Scott Morrison:

“So I don’t want to see them necessarily imposed anywhere. because I don’t want to see people breaching the rule. And if everyone cooperates then we can get things in a stronger position and that means we can start those repatriation flights again…”

GABRIELA:

I'm hopeful that by the 15th of May, they will have stopped that. But it remains to be seen. The government's not committing to stopping it.

RUBY:

Mm and so what do you think is underlying this, Gabriela, what is this really about when it comes down to it? Because I think there is obviously a genuine fear of this particular strain of Covid-19 and and other countries have banned arrivals from India as well. But there is no other country that has banned their own citizens from returning, let alone laid out criminal penalties for doing so. So is this about our quarantine facilities not being good enough? Is this about complacency, as some people have suggested? Is it about racism?

GABRIELA:

Yeah, I think I think it's probably the latter. So I think there is a hint of racism to this for sure. You know, there's ways that we can improve our quarantine systems and the government should at least come out and say what they intend to do over the next two weeks whilst they're both supposedly bolstering our quarantine systems and should say what metrics they're going to use to try and bring people back once, once they've decided that a quarantine systems are effective, they've done none of that.

So I think the, I think the interesting thing with this is that we saw the Labor Premiers in WA and in Queensland kind of taking a bit of a hard line stance on this issue.

And it does seem like as a country and even within our own states, and we've seen this play out for the last 14 months, that we're very keen to close off our borders to anyone who we think might endanger us. And obviously that's currently being unfairly used against Indian Australians.

You know, closing down borders should be a difficult decision that the government makes. It shouldn't be the first thing we reach for. But time and again we’ve seen it’s the first thing governments reach for.

RUBY:

Gaby, thank you so much for your time today.

GABRIELA:

Thank you so much.

RUBY:

I really hope everything goes ok with your family.

GABRIELA:

Yeah, I hope so too.

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RUBY:

Also in the news today...

A Sydney man in his 50s, with no known links to current Covid-19 cases in hotel quarantine, has tested positive to virus.

NSW authorities say urgent investigations into the source of the infection and contact tracing are underway.

Meanwhile the General Manager of infection control at the agency running Victoria's hotel quarantine program has been stood down.

The man allegedly breached protocols twice in the past two months, with the head of Covid-19 Quarantine Victoria describing the breaches as minor but disappointing.

I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am, see you tomorrow.

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