Twelve months is enough: we need a clear lead from the PM on freedom of movement

In 2019, the last full year before the pandemic, there were almost 22 million international arrivals into Australia. That’s Australians returning from overseas trips and foreigners coming to this country. Twenty-two million international arrivals in a country of 25 and a half million people shows how much we take global travel for granted – or used to, before the pandemic, and rules designed to prevent COVID from coming to Australia made it all-but-impossible. 

From March last year, international arrivals that had been averaging nearly two million a month have dropped to just over 20,000 a month – a whopping 99 per cent decrease – and a large proportion of this mere trickle of entrants has been Australians returning…