I hope those who advocate for a complete shutdown of the international borders realise that almost all people currently entering from overseas are Australian citizens. And that is a deliberately reduced trickle of entries compared to the usual torrent of citizens returning. Many have waited for weeks in the queue to get home. By shutting the borders to them the government would be abandoning our own.

The only non-citizens entering are those with government granted exceptions to the ban on non-citizens, eg. Foreign diplomats and other VIPs.

Thinkabit, who twisted these peoples arms & forced them to depart Oz?

Hasbeen: "Thinkabit, who twisted these peoples arms & forced them to depart Oz?"

Many (most?) of the citizens currently returning were all ready overseas BEFORE the pandemic. Not only did the government close the boarders to foreigners entering but in addition it shut the gate to prevent us citizens leaving. Citizens can only leave if we have a government granted exemption: https://covid19.homeaffairs.gov.au/leaving-australia
Ask yourself, "How would I have liked it if while bobbing around the pacific in my yacht a pandemic occurred and the government decided to shut the border on me?"
Abandoning it citizens like this is just not the "right thing" for a democratic government to do- unless there was overwhelming support from the majority.

So instead of stopping citizens from entering, what it should be doing is concentrating on improving the system. And as I've already suggested there are some simple and obvious changes they could make. Specifically:

1) Drastically lower the chances of the virus outbreaking in the first place by isolating EVERYONE working in the quarantine system that can come into contact with the virus from the rest of us. You can do this by setting up a quarantine zone covering specific areas where people are not allow to exit unless they do two weeks quarantine. So they work say 6 to 10 or so weeks within these zones and then do 14 days quarantine before they return to the general community for a few weeks break. And here I really do mean everyone- from the those who interact with inbound arrivals at the airport (such as customs), the quarantine accommodation staff (quarantine officials/room service staff/cleaners, etc), the nurses and doctors for those infected and requiring medical services, etc. It is not an unprecedented outrageous demand to require people to work isolated and away from home because many people already do this sort of thing- such a defense workers, merchant navy, remote workers at mines/oil platforms, scientists doing antarctic research, etc.

-- continued below --

-- for above --

2) Reduce the chance of it spreading if there is a quarantine failure. You can achieve this by moving the quarantine sites out of the major cities and into regional/remote areas. I've suggested Cairns for Queensland because it has the necessary infrastructure: an international airport, hospitals and accommodation. Although on the cons sides it does have a fair bit of domestic tourism where returning holiday makers could potentially spread it around the country.

"Ask yourself, 'How would I have liked it if while bobbing around the pacific in my yacht a pandemic occurred and the government decided to shut the border on me?'
Abandoning its citizens like this is just not the 'right thing' for a democratic government to do- unless there was overwhelming support from the majority."

Me me me me me me me

Instead ask yourself, 'How would I have liked it if I were a health worker and all these entitled cafe society citizens keep dribbling back putting me, my family, my colleagues and my nation at risk'.

What if these health workers have morgages, parents, debts and kids mouths to feed?
They can't easily quit their jobs can they?

Covid was in over 100 countries PRIOR TO being labelled a pandemic by the WHO.
If they didn't come back prior to the shutdown A YEAR AGO, it's their own fault in my opinion.
Putting our nations and health workers at risk for cafe society citizens is not the right thing to do either.

I've seen more than enough people not taking things seriously here at home.
You want us to put our whole nation at risk for the same kind of people who are overseas?

Why should 99% of the country be held ransom to the 1% of people who didn't want to be here and wanted to be 'somewhere else'?