‘Hermit Nation’? Is a Warning of Another Year of Shut Borders in Australia

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The prime minister said that he is not going to take risks with Australians’ lives. But the critics also said that it could cause lasting damage putting off reopening until mid-2022.

When the Australian officials announced last week that the country was improbable to fully reopen its borders until mid-2022 due to the coronavirus, the retaliation began building immediately.

The critics warned that Australia endangers becoming a “hermit nation.” The members of the Australian immigration who had been fighting to return home for months now saw it as another challenge. This announcement makes a terrible warning to some businesses, legal and academic leaders.

The polls showed that it is a popular idea to keep the borders shut. But the opposition perceives political exploitation on the part of the government. If this policy of isolationism continued this means young people could “face a lost decade” because of prolonged economic loss and social dislocation as others predicted.

The government is holding out against pressure from many quarters to contemplate an earlier reopening, with Prime Minister Scott Morrison declaring on Tuesday, “I’m not going to take risks with Australians’ lives.” The Australian officials take on that the restrictions on international travel — some of the strictest in the world — are the main reason the country has been so successful in crushing the virus.

It is believed that Australia is the only country to have announced that plans to keep its borders closed for so long due to Covid-19. The officials have made it hard not only to fly in but also to fly out, requires the citizens and permanent residents to apply for exemptions for occasions like funeral plans. A group of specialists warns in a report, titled “A Roadmap to Reopening,” of long-lasting damage to the country, and especially the younger ones.

Tim Soutphommasane, a political expert at the University of Sydney and co-sponsor of the report, said in an interview that, there is an illusion that Australia can go at it alone and be this Shangri-La in the South Pacific. But he thinks that’s it is a misguided view. Other countries that do have a vaccinated population will be able to attract skilled migrants, have their universities open up to international students.

He also added that Australia is a trading nation; it’s an immigration nation. According to him, “Our society, culture, and economy are bound up in a globalized world. Australia should not be turning its back on the world now and become a hermit nation.”

The government was accused by the opposition Labor Party of playing politics. The date for the next federal election has not been set yet, but it must be happening in May 2022 next year. The border closure is politically superior, with a recent poll showing that most Australians support it.

Anthony Albanese, the Labor leader said that what they’ve said is, ‘We’ll open up after the election. Before then, they’ll give a different answer every day.

The consequence of being locked out of the country have been severe for Australians from abroad. A lot was prohibited for few weeks about traveling going home from India due to the pandemic infuriated to that country. Over 10,000 have been separated from their families or have put their lives on suspension as the country refused to move on travel restrictions.

According to an Australian solicitor living in London, Madeleine Karipidis the difficulty in travel has driven her to take a forceful step. Seven years ago, she moved to London from her native Australia. But after a year of being unable to get home to see her family, and after the government announces the extension on closure a week ago, she began the process of applying for British citizenship.

She said, “ I guess I feel less Australian, It’s a startling thing to say, but I just feel like a second-class citizen.”

She also said that she could no longer see the values she grew up with, the things she used to — mateship, as Australians call it, and the culture of helping one another in times of crisis — reflected as of today in Australia. “I do feel like the U.K. would never lock me out,” she added.

For Gwendolyn Hyslop, an Australian permanent resident and a professor of linguistics at the University of Sydney, the effect of the closures has been both personal and professional. She doesn’t have any idea when she and her children will be able to see her parents again in the United States. She was also declined for an Australian travel exemption to go abroad and to take on a prestigious, yearlong research fellowship in Germany, even after she made sure she would be vaccinated before she left as it is what supposedly required.

The frustration would grow among academics who aren’t able to do the research they are hired to as Dr. Hyslop warns the people. “People like me are going to look for opportunities elsewhere,” she said. “The Australian government risks losing researchers to other countries.”

As of now, the government predicts that most people will be vaccinated by the end of the year. But that in itself will not be enough to trigger the reopening of borders, according to Mr. Morrison, because it excludes “millions” of young people and those are the people who choose not to be vaccinated. The vaccines that will be provided might also not be equipped to deal with new variants and mutations, he added.