Australian State Discard the Plan to Quarantine Overseas Students Entering the Country

On Tuesday, local authorities said that a proposal to quarantine international students arriving in the Australian state of Tasmania would not go ahead as expected.

Xinhua news agency cited a Sydney Morning Herald article saying that New South Wales (NSW) Treasurer Dominic Perrottet told local parliament that he had been meeting with officials in Tasmania to concoct an agreement where international students are quarantined in Hobart city before being transferred to NSW.

The scheme was devised to circumvent stringent restrictions on the number of international arrivals that each Australian authority would handle.  However, Tasmanian Premier Peter Gutwein said that the offer was no longer being contemplated due to public health issues in a statement on Tuesday morning.

“The Tasmanian government acknowledges that the NSW government has approached it to quarantine foreign students on their behalf,” Gutwein said.

“At this time, however, we have advised that this is not under consideration, with our top priority being the safe management of seasonal workers entering the state and our foreign students when public health guidance indicates that doing so is safe.”

Currently, NSW welcomes almost half of all recent immigrants in Australia, or just over 3,000 people every week, with many of them coming from other nations.  According to local media outlets, many Australian civilians have now stuck abroad on lengthy waiting lists due to the government’s efforts to shield the public from Covid-19 publicity.

NSW has the most significant number of international students in Australia, and the industry has suffered billion-dollar losses since the pandemic began.

“I’ve had several conversations with the federal Treasurer about the relevance of this,” Perrottet said. “The premier is supportive and concentrating on how to get this industry back.”