Yahoo News Flight caps fight looms at national cabinet as Morrison pledges pandemic health funding
Scott Morrison will tell the premiers and chief ministers that Canberra will roll over the funding agreement for health services during the pandemic, including telehealth and medical stockpiling, for a further six months, at a national cabinet meeting focused on international flight caps.
The leaders will on Friday discuss what to do about the 27,000 Australians stranded overseas. They will be briefed by the former senior bureaucrat, Jane Halton, who has been conducting a national review of hotel quarantine.
Political pressure has been mounting on the commonwealth because of the large number of Australians unable to get home. Earlier this week, the deputy prime minister, Michael McCormack, shifted responsibility for repatriating them back on to the states and territories, demanding their leaders jointly increase arrival caps by 2,000 a week.
New South Wales, Queensland and Western Australia have been asked to take 500 additional arrivals a week and South Australia an extra 360.
Ahead of Friday’s discussion, Morrison warned his state and territory counterparts the cap would be lifted and they would need to deal with the consequences. “The planes will land with people on them and they’ll be arriving.”
“It’s a decision,” the prime minister said. “It’s not a proposal.”
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Stephen Byron, the managing director of Canberra airport, says he has approached the government proposing relaxing quarantine requirements for those coming from New Zealand.
He said this would be a simple way to allow Australian trapped in New Zealand to come home as well as easing pressure on hotel quarantine allowing more people from other countries to enter.
“We have got to create room in the caps, it doesn’t make any sense for us to take up available hotel quarantine rooms with people who are coming from a country where there is no, or next to no, Covid,” he said.
“What it would do would free up between 15-20% of available capacity. It would be like a 15-20% boost in the numbers.
“If we are saying as a nation that it is safe to travel to Sydney to Brisbane and the border should be open, then it is safe to travel from Auckland and Wellington to Syndey, Canberra, Brisbane and so on.”
Byron said this move could also increase international travel demand for airlines and airports who are financially struggling during the pandemic. “It’s just the logical next step,” he said.
The move could also potentially allow some international arrivals at Melbourne airport – something which has been impossible since the pausing of the state’s hotel quarantine program.
Ahead of Friday’s meeting, the commonwealth has resolved to continue Medicare-subsidised telehealth and pathology services, GP-led respiratory clinics, and home medicines delivery services funded for the pandemic.
The government says it will provide $2bn over the next six months to cover an extension of health services, including in private and public hospitals, as well as additional investments in personal protective equipment.
The commonwealth is providing 50% of the cost of activities responding to the pandemic in hospitals, including a private hospital agreement to ensure access to beds.
In a statement ahead of the national cabinet meeting, Morrison said providing telehealth and home delivery medicine services reduced the risk of exposure of Covid-19 in the community “while also supporting people in isolation to get the care they need”.
He said the funding would cover mental health services, delivered over the phone. “As we continue to suppress Covid-19 while continuing to open our economy up, Australians can be reassured that we have the world’s best medical support in place to protect their health,” Morrison said.
