Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews wants to open international borders as soon as possible, and says Australia is now “very close”.
Federal cabinet will meet today to consider a date for foreign travellers to return. It’s expected they’ll agree to reopen Australia to tourists and business travellers within two or three weeks.
“We don’t have all of the information that we need to be able to take the decision to open, but we are very close,” Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews told ABC’s Insiders program on Sunday.
“We are going through the process of preparing to open, and we will continue to talk to the health professionals. So as soon as they say yes, we will work with the states and territories and we will reopen our international borders to tourists,” she said.
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said tourists would be the next step in the reopening timeline.
“We will consider that today, health professionals have been looking at the border restrictions, with respect to tourists in the context of a rising vaccination rate and the rolling out of our booster program,” he told the Nine Network on Monday.
“Now our vaccination rate is higher, we have been changing our border policies.”
Former deputy chief medical officer Dr Nick Coatsworth said the timing was right for the border reopening to expand to tourists.
“It’s a really important sign for Australians that things are back on the path to normality,” he told the Nine Network.
“The fact that we’re going to have people coming into the country, students and tourists who have been vaccinated, that’s a safe policy and the right time to do it.”
Dr Coatsworth said the high vaccination rates across the country meant it was safe to let tourists back into Australia.
“I don’t think we can restrict this too much, to be honest, we can safely open borders to people who have had the primary course,” he said.
Chief executive of the Tourism and Transport Forum Margy Osmond said she would like to see the reopening date as soon as possible.
“This will be driven by what government is comfortable with, but we do need a date so we’ve got a little bit of notice to start gearing things up,” she told ABC TV.
“We’d like a couple of weeks at least, and the most important thing here is to understand that this is a staged process.”
Via AAP
