@psychomath
Thanks
spottygymbag.
Tealights surely there's a middle ground there though, i.e. if the issue is too few quarantine spaces and flights, the government could organise charter flights and build more holding facilities so people could get back in without endangering existing residents. Maybe some compromise system where the government pays the hotel cost for children under 18 and adults fund it themselves. It's not like the only two options are not helping any of their own citizens get back vs open borders and a free for all.
Increasing the number of people coming increases the risk to put it bluntly. There are numerous potential ways a breach could occur and the program has to control for those. More incoming means more potential breaches.
Larger facilities like Howard springs have been mooted but would have their own challenges to get off the ground- federal backing, relocation of adf, police and health staff, transport to and from etc
You also can't take every hotel and turn it into a quarantine facility. They don't all meet the standard to be safely used for that purpose. It may not be financially viable for individual hotels to participate. They also still have to cater for the local market.
The quarantine costs are subsidised and exemptions can be applied for. There was no cost initially but that is not sustainable.
For all of the options more spaces also means more staffing- not just joe blogs off the street (because that didn't work out so well for us) but police, adf and healthcare workers. They can be scaled up but there isn't a massive pool to draw from whilst still remaining operational elsewhere.
There are similar issues for providing healthcare. Covid is still coming in, these people often need medical intervention and hospitalization. Again the numbers need to be kept low so breaches within hospitals can be minimised.
The 36000 is a rolling number, it's not that every single one of those has been stranded since the beginning of all this. As pp have said people have joined as their circumstances have changed.
I think the airlines could be more transparent about their bookings to save the heartache and frustrations of those getting bumped off flights and I wonder if a quota within flights would be possible to make it fairer. But then I also realize that the airlines are struggling too and need to make a profit to continue to operate. A lot of airlines won't even fly here because Australia removed the option of quarantining at home for air crew after suspected breaches resulted in local transmission.
So I'm hoping the NZ bubble gives Oz the chance to work through things and gives enough confidence to pursue a bubble with Singapore in the longer term.