“Australia has obligations to our citizens,to people who are Australians - not just to abandon them overseas,but then to threaten them is quite extraordinary action,” Mr Albanese said on Sunday.
Loading
“The government’s got to justify how it is that the figures from India are similar to what they’ve been in the past from the UK and the US,but we haven’t seen these sort of measures.”
Foreign Minister Marise Payne said the decision was “absolutely not” racist or immoral,and was made on the advice of Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly due to a high concentration of positive cases among arrivals from India in hotel quarantine.
“The experience we had in the month preceding this decision was that 57 per cent of the positive cases in quarantine had been in arrivals from India,that was up from 10 per cent in the previous month. It was placing a very,very significant burden on health and medical services in the states and territories,” Ms Payne said.
The measure will be reviewed by the federal government on May 15.